Ebooks and Apple’s iBooks are a hot topic in many corners, and joining the fray is the new app, Bookle. A joint project between Take Control Books and Stairways Software, Bookle brings ePub-reading capabilities to the Mac. Adam C. Engst and Peter N. Lewis talk about how the app came to be and why, their adventures with the Mac App Store, issues surrounding digital rights management (DRM) with some of the major publishers and more. An explanation of the sandboxing controversy and how it affected the development of Bookle and their thought processes on setting a price for the app are all included.
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Chuck Joiner is the producer and host of MacVoices, MacVoicesTV, MacNotables and The MacJury, a group of shows and web sites that make up The MacVoices Group, and is part of MacLevelTen . You can catch up with what he’s doing by following him on Twitter, friending him on Facebook, or circling him on Google+.
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Adam C. Engst is the publisher of TidBITS and Take Control Books. He has written numerous books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series, and many magazine articles – thanks to Contributing Editor positions at MacUser, MacWEEK, and now Macworld. His innovations include the creation of the first advertising program to support an Internet publication in 1992, the first flat-rate accounts for graphical Internet access in 1993, and the Take Control electronic book series. His awards include the MDJ Power 25 ranking as the most influential person in the Macintosh industry outside of Apple every year since 2000, inclusion on the MacTech 25 list of influential people in the Macintosh technical community, and being named one of MacDirectory’s top ten visionaries. And yes, he has been turned into an action figure. Want more? Follow Adam on Twitter for 140-character musings on a variety of topics.
Stairways Software was founded in April 1995 by Peter N. Lewis to further develop and sell the world-class Mac software that made him famous. Stairways is a privately held Propriety Limited company based in Perth, Western Australia, and Peter continues to lead the company as president and chief executive officer. Peter’s goal was to bring high quality Internet and Unix tools to the Mac, combining the traditional Mac ease-of-use with the power of the Internet and Unix. This placed Stairways Software in exactly the right position to capitalize on the massive growth of the Internet from less than one million computers to hundreds of millions. The familiarity with Unix also proved invaluable as Apple transitioned Mac OS to the Unix-based Mac OS X. You can follow Peter on Twitter.
