It's hard to muster too much outrage about this. You can't read your "rightfully purchased iBooks" on any other device either; you can't read them on a Kindle, nor, to the best of my knowledge, on an Apple Mac computer of any sort. You can't to my mind reasonably expect to play them on jailbroken phones either.
Why are you even buying iBook books? I can't understand the market proposition to them. Kindle books work on Apple and Amazon hardware, and have a wider selection. eBooks are already content-protected (this doesn't bother me, but bothers most geeks); why would you opt into the more protected of the two major options?
> Kindle books work on Apple and Amazon hardware, and have a wider selection.
Kindle's DRM seems to be a sweet spot: effective enough to prevent casual piracy, but generally not annoying, and easy to bypass for anyone who cares about controlling their own media.
> Keep in mind that by doing so you would still be supporting a consumer-hostile ecosystem.
I find Kindle to be a massive upgrade over tangible books for me - I travel, so physical books get gifted away after finishing them, while I get to keep my Kindle books. And they're cheaper.
As a consumer, it's been a huge win for me. Could it be even better than now? Yeah sure probably, but I love paying less for books, getting them instantly, and being able to keep them instead of gifting them on for weight/space reasons.
Compared to what? I think it'd be easier/cheaper for anyone of moderate technical skill to learn how to remove DRM from a kindle book in order to duplicate it than to scan or photocopy a physical book in order duplicate it.
Many tech publishers sell unrestricted .mobi files if you buy directly from them. Some sci-fi publishers do as well, though most of what I read on my Kindle comes from feedbooks.com.
I didn't say don't do it; just to be aware that by buying books from Amazon, you're sending a message that you're OK with DRM.
According to the Topaz developer[1], it was cracked over a year ago; apparently the Topaz algorithm was, like .azw before it, trivially bypassed by prodding at the KindleForPC application.
Furthermore, Topaz is a rarely-used specialty format. It has existed for at least three years (based on the blog's date and text), but AZW/mobi continues to be by far the dominant format for purchased Kindle books.
While I can't speak to why other buy via iBooks, I have made exactly one iBooks purchase which was for a title that was not available in Kindle format. Everything else I get is in Kindle format that gets the DRM stripped and is then put back into iBooks because I prefer it to the Kindle app for reading. I have no idea why some books come out in iBooks first, but what was a non-issue at the time is now a minor annoyance.
As I understand, iBooks lets me highlight and add bookmarks and synchronize these. People read differently, but I'm the kind of person who needs to highlight or use those Post It! bookmarks.
I am sure you can highlight and synchronize on the kindle. After all, Amazon even publishes a top 10 list of most highlighted passages. (I haven't tried highlighting myself yet).
Why are you even buying iBook books? I can't understand the market proposition to them. Kindle books work on Apple and Amazon hardware, and have a wider selection. eBooks are already content-protected (this doesn't bother me, but bothers most geeks); why would you opt into the more protected of the two major options?