The Apple Tablet

[pauljholden]

Steve Jobs (and other high muck a mucks) have said something is being launched tomorrow. If it's not the tablet it'd better be something better!

-pj

[Jim_Campbell]

There are also apps for reading cbr files.

There are? I'm buggered if I can find one!

Steve Jobs (and other high muck a mucks) have said something is being launched tomorrow. If it's not the tablet it'd better be something better!

Well, they've booked a venue and invited the media to a press conference, so they're going to look pretttty silly if it's a speed bump to the MacBooks ...

Cheers

Jim

[pauljholden]

At least two - Comic Reader Mobi (expenssive, but good £8.99) and ComicZeal (£2.99)

Comic Reader Mobi has a really cool auto zoom function - tap on a dialogue box and it'll zoom the dialogue box alone - making it neat for reading...

-pj
ps Try and ignore the rampant use of Comic Sans in the Comic Reader Mobi app/website - it's better than the font...

[Jim_Campbell]

At least two - Comic Reader Mobi (expenssive, but good £8.99) and ComicZeal (£2.99)

Ta!

Jim

[James Stacey]

ooh ... how does one get the .cbr on the phone or is all revealed when you actually try and use it ?

[Jim_Campbell]

ooh ... how does one get the .cbr on the phone or is all revealed when you actually try and use it ?

Looks like they both come with a separate synching application that lives on your PC/Mac.

Cheers!

Jim

[James Stacey]

Looks like they both come with a separate synching application that lives on your PC/Mac.

Cheers!

Jim

Cool I might give that a bash

ta

[staticgirl]

*muses* I was thinking that if I created a comic for something with a small screen I would probably start changing the layout completely so that one panel fitted on the screen and you scrolled down for the next one. That would create new rules wouldn't it?

Each panel would become a mini story and maybe compressed storytelling could make a comeback.

You could have links to extra content, commentaries and roughs like the DVDs.  I might start telling stories about the space-pirate guy seen on panel 63, in the background, lassooing a robot dinosaur, for example. You'd end up with an interconnecting story universe which could be ace.  You'd probably have to bring in social collaboration networks to make it happen. Yeah! Creative Commons Licensed Characters! *gets excited for a minute*

Although I'm not going to have enough moolah to buy any of this kit (including smartphones) any time soon I think I'll still start thinking about it.

Subscriptions; micropayments; downloading direct from the creators; publishing companies having to come up with extra merchandise to help it sell (like bands are now focusing more on one-off things like live performances to raise revenue when faced with mp3 pirating); merging with other artforms - I can see that comics could possibly have a renaissance.... After all they have a coolness to capitalise on that the movie industry loves - they'll need their inspiration!

*crosses fingers*

[Jim_Campbell]

like bands are now focusing more on one-off things like live performances to raise revenue when faced with mp3 pirating

I should point out that before Napster, bands claimed that live performances were the only way they could make money from due to the iniquities of their record company contracts.

I wish bands would wake up and realize that the internet allows them to connect directly with -- and even go a long way towards creating -- a fanbase and that outlets like iTunes allow them to generate revenue from that fanbase with getting buttfucked by a record label.

And ... to get back to the point at hand, anything that lowers the entry cost of putting a comic onto the market whilst simultaneously widening the potential market is unreservedly, unequivocally a Very Good Thing. If the demise of print kills off the speculator market once and for all, that's a price worth paying, too.

Cheers!

Jim

[Dandontdare]

The trade costs £10, they deduct £2 (or whatever) for every digital issue you have on your player.
You get to read your comics they day they come out and also get the all important hard copy to put on the shelf and re-read properly

That would be fantastic but I can't see the big companies passing up an opportunity to screw you twice for the same content. It's more likely that the download will have a time limit and you'll have to press that button and pay again if you want a permanent hard copy. Didn't Amazon have some copyright cock up with the Kindle and actually 'hacked' (wrong word) into people's devices to delete copies of books they had bought? I've also heard of issues with refreshing DMR rights on music and losing tracks legitimately paid for, but I'm not au fait with the technicalities.

Or am I just a old cynic?

[radiator]

Yeah, pricing is a real issue with this sort of thing. I still can't for the life of me work out why music download prices are pretty much the same if not more than a physical CD. It seems crazy - the overheads are presumably so much lower, so I've never understood why this isn't reflected in the price to the consumer.

Likewise with things like Clickwheel - AFAIK the digital copy of 2000ad isn't that much cheaper than the paper copy, which seems strange.

[uncle fester]

So what time is the press conference tomorrow? I'm assuming the world and his dog will want to watch if they're near a screen...

[Jim_Campbell]

It seems crazy - the overheads are presumably so much lower, so I've never understood why this isn't reflected in the price to the consumer.

Because the content producers are:

1) Greedy

2) Idiots

They still genuinely, seriously regard downloads as the enemy of their 'real' business and will gouge the online consumer for every penny they can get rather than endanger their precious CD and DVD sales.

I don't have an issue with music, which generally is cheaper than the equivalent product, but TV producers' habit of setting the per-episode price of online TV shows by dividing the price of a DVD box set by the number of episodes is outrageous, and movie pricing even more so, with new releases costing pretty much the same as a DVD with no extras is simply impossible to justify on any economic basis.

Interestingly, the one of latest rumours doing the rounds is Apple agrees with me about TV shows.

Cheers!

Jim

[radiator]

Because the content producers are:

1) Greedy

2) Idiots

Well, maybe. But I've also heard a lot of industry types saying that it's very hard to make money from music downloads - maybe that's just spin.

[Jim_Campbell]

So what time is the press conference tomorrow? I'm assuming the world and his dog will want to watch if they're near a screen...

10am Pacific US, which (I think) is 5pm for us lot.

Cheers!

Jim