I did something amazing today.

I held out for nearly four hours before pre-ordering an iPad. Seriously. That's a huge deal for me. I mean, I own the Apple Airport Extreme, okay? I've got an Apple TV and a Mac Mini. My Apple fanboyism teeters on psychosis.

To reward me for my loyalty (and my recent herculean effort and inevitable cave-in), Apple continues to release details on the iPad that have nipped any lingering buyer's remorse in the bud. For example, there's this info delight that comes courtesy Wired's Gadget Lab:

And for EPUB titles that are not offered through the iBooks store, you can manually add them to iTunes and then sync them to the iPad ... That's good news for iPad customers, because that means bookworms won't be limited to the offerings in the iBooks store, which are based on partnerships that Apple inked with publishers.

This is a genius move on two fronts:

1. It makes the iPad semi-open. If you've already got EPUB files hanging around, you can port them to the iPad. And if you buy future EPUB-based books from smart publishers that support the format (ahem), you should be able to sync those titles with the device as well. The original iPod took off because it automatically worked with the pre-existing MP3 collections people had built up. Now, there aren't that many people out there with EPUB stockpiles. I realize that. But if you do have those files, or you want to buy material outside the iBookstore down the road, you can read all that stuff on the iPad. Well played, Apple.

2. It puts Amazon in a bind because the Kindle doesn't support EPUB by default. Now that the iPad does support the format natively, that makes the Kindle even more restrictive. Think about that. Apple -- the poster child for a totalitarian product ecosystem -- is making Amazon look like the bad guy.

I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say about the iPad in coming days. Lord knows I can't stop tweeting about it. But for now, I'll revel in the anticipated joy the weekend of April 3-4 will bring: iPad on 4/3 and Red Sox opening night on 4/4.

Tablets and devices will get all the coverage, but I believe ebook pricing is going to be 2010's biggest issue for publishers.

To illustrate ... this New York Times piece explains how Apple's $12.99-$14.99 range represents the outer limit for iBooks pricing. Those price points aren't set in stone. From the Times:

... Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers -- so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon's $9.99. Essentially, Apple wants the flexibility to offer lower prices for the hottest books, those on one of the New York Times best-seller lists, which are heavily discounted in bookstores and on rival retail sites. So, for example, a book that started at $14.99 would drop to $12.99 or less once it hit the best-seller lists.

Sounds like Apple and Amazon are closer than we initially thought, right?

Nope. Not at all.

The single most important sentence in that Times article is buried at the very end:

Under the agreements with Apple, both the publishers and Apple should make money on each book sale. [Emphasis added.]

Ahh, there we go! Whether the price is $14.99, $12.99, $9.99 or $1.99, Apple will take its 30 percent. Set the price lower and sell more books? You betcha! Jack the price up and sell fewer? Absolutely!

What Apple won't do is subsidize a price point.

Kudos to Joel Johnson for elegantly noting one of Apple's most profound strengths: it doesn't muck about in vaporware.

The fact that Apple does not reveal prototypes but shipping products is the fundamental difference between their entire business strategy and that of the rest of the industry. It evokes a feeling of trust between Apple and consumers -- that when Apple actually reveals a product, it's something that they're confident enough to support for years to come.

Put another way ...

Hey book people: don't be fooled by the Kindle. Amazon has no interest in hardware.

That's the conclusion Joe Wikert reaches in an excellent bit of analysis. I couldn't agree more. The Kindle is a big, shiny object that's distracting everyone from Amazon's more subversive (and smart) move: It's trying to become the source of ebooks. It doesn't want to own that market. It wants to rule it.

It's entirely possible that Jeff Bezos and Co. originally sought to duplicate Apple's iPod-iTunes model. But take a look at the evidence Joe presents: At some point in the last two years, Amazon realized it's not Apple. The hardware gambit only works if you create something miraculous. The iPod and iPhone certainly qualify as technical marvels. Spend 30 seconds with an Apple product and you'll come away deeply impressed. Spend 30 seconds with a Kindle and you'll want your 30 seconds back.

Amazon just can't cut it in the hardware game. I bet the higher-ups don't particular care, either. This is a company that redefined retail efficiency. It's masterful at satisfying consumer demand, more so than Apple or even the big daddy of the retail chain, Wal-Mart. Publishers need to realize -- and the smart ones already do -- that the Amazon threat doesn't lie in a device. It's in the distribution.

What I find most interesting about the iPhone App Store gold rush is the way Apple is combining its platforms -- online, mobile, traditional advertising -- to benefit the company and external developers.

From the New York Times:

IBird was one of three applications that appeared in the [advertising] spot, and while it got only about seven seconds, that was all it needed to become the No. 1 "reference" app in the iPhone App Store, a software star among the 35,000-plus applications now crowding the store's shelf. [Link added.]

On a broader level, the more I study the interaction between the Web, audiences and revenue streams, the more I'm convinced that platform, naturally scarce products, and attention are the most important resources in the digital realm (they're important off-line, too, but geography and other physical elements shift the dynamic).

I know economists would smirk at my elementary platform-scarcity-audience analysis, but there's another component here: sustainable digital businesses arise when all three elements are present. That's one key difference between Twitter -- which has platform and audience, but no scarce products -- and Apple.

Hand-Picked Related Links

• iPhone Ads (Apple)
• Coder's Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone Gold Rush Is Still On (Wired)
• iPhone Developers Go From Rags to Riches (Wired)
• There's Gold In Them iPhones (Newsweek)

A passage from the New York Times article "Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press" explains why newspapers, magazines and other print-centric companies are failing in the digital domain:

Unlike tiny mobile phones and devices like the Kindle that are made to display text from books, these new gadgets, with screens roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper, could present much of the editorial and advertising content of traditional periodicals in generally the same format as they appear in print. [Emphasis added.]

Why would anyone want a print experience on a digital device?

Worse still, why would we go backwards? The novelty of reading magazines and newspapers on the Web died when savvy Web developers meshed content with interactivity. But now, we're supposed to forget about hyperlinks, comments, mashups, video, audio, and other common Web functions and instead turn our (allegedly) eye-strained pupils to these non-interactive grayscale devices?

The genius of the iPhone and the iPod Touch is that they bring an experience we all rely on -- full Web access, and its accompanying efficiencies -- into a whole new arena. The value proposition is obvious.

Large-form e-readers -- especially those that aim to recreate the print experience -- are the antithesis of the iPhone and iPod Touch. They benefit the wrong group: antiquated publishers with the stink of desperation.

This is precisely why I hope rumors of Apple's uber-tablet are true. Just as the iPhone washed away the horrid smartphone experience -- my old Treo is an abomination now -- a high-resolution, multi-purpose device that combines the mobility of an iPhone and the size/computing power of a souped-up netbook could ignite a new wave of content innovation. We need to nip this low-res, locked-in, print-centric thinking in the bud.

Hand-Picked Related Links:

• Ergonomics and Ebook Success (TOC)
• The Media Industry's Perspective Problem (TOC)
• Lamenting the Digital Decline is a Dangerous Path (TOC)

The only thing keeping me from full-on Hulu evangelism is the television experience. I want to access Hulu's content through my flat panel without resorting to patch sticks and expensive work arounds.

According to VentureBeat, I'm in for a long wait:

The company [Hulu] has been receiving some criticism of late for blocking the popular content player startup Boxee from accessing its content. Hulu's content partners, it seems, do not want their content on Boxee even though Boxee isn't doing something like blocking advertisements. It seems likely the content partners are afraid of the fact that Boxee users are hooking up devices to their televisions capable of playing content just as if they were watching normal TV. [Emphasis added; links included in original post.]

There's two reasons why the "normal TV" issue is moot:

1. Technologically, screen size and resolution are the only legitimate differences between televisions and computer monitors. If you port a video feed from your laptop or you own an Apple Cinema Display, those difference start to evaporate.
2. I can use TiVo's well-documented 30-second-skip code to blow by all the ads in my recorded programs, but Hulu forces me to watch ads in three short, innocuous blocks. If I have to endure advertising -- a reality I fully accept -- Hulu offers the most elegant option. Industry execs concerned about Hulu cannibalizing TV advertising aren't acknowledging the realities of DVRs: I'm not watching your ads.

The content providers' myopia (the eternal return of media) obscures a huge opportunity. A Hulu set-top box could be the Wii of DVRs -- a scaled-down product that opens new markets by focusing on a core experience. All those folks who don't own DVRs could get DVR-like utility through an ad-supported model, and people (like me) who don't need a full DVR experience on a second or third television could use Hulu as a "good enough" solution.

And while I'm on the topic of TV-Web convergence, I think the days of Apple selling one-off TV episodes for $1.99 or $2.99 a pop are numbered. There's no reason to pay a premium for access when access is free elsewhere. Apple should take a note from the DVD world and position its TV offerings as high-resolution collector editions packaged with commentary, deleted scenes, podcasts, etc. (i.e. "Battlestar Galactica, the Complete HD Series With Every Extra We Could Find").

Hand-Picked Related Links

• Content Owners and Consumers Need Digital Quid Pro Quo (TOC)
• Hulu Withdraws its Content from TV.com, Boxee (Wall Street Journal)
• Doing hard things (Hulu Blog)
• The Real Format War Has Yet to Begin (The Indiepub Blog)