Speaking to analysts yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said that sales of the Kindle e-book reader are still outstripping their ability to fill orders (though he wouldn’t actually say HOW MANY orders there were). Also this week, Amazon announced that it was acquiring audiobook company Audible. Cory Doctorow points out that Amazon says they don’t plan to drop DRM from Audible products unless/until they begin to receive a lot of customer complaints. Their e-books also come with a DRM scheme that makes it exceptionally difficult to do things like lend your e-book to a friend. And yet, Amazon has been very loudly trumpeting the discontinuation of DRM on their MP3 downloads.
Media blogger Rex Hammock had quite a few things to say about Audible, Kindle, and Amazon yesterday, including the complaint that Macintosh support for the Kindle is virtually non-existent. Given that Amazon is now going head-to-head with Apple in the content business, that was probably to be expected, as it was de rigeur among PC device makers for years to avoid Mac compatibility so as not to piss off Uncle Bill.
