But at least Apple and Amazon control their own destiny. If you're going to do DRM, there are some plusses to that.
If you just choose the "standard" DRM, you can end up with what happened to Microsoft customers and their MP3 players. "Apple is proprietary! Get PlaysForSure." It was a real good pitch, up until your Dell Whatever stopped being able to get new music because MS had abandoned PlaysForSure and Dell wasn't going to update their old players.
Amazon and Apple have large incentives to keep their DRMed content working on older devices, at least for a couple of years. Adobe has very little incentive to ensure that their DRM keeps working on the various Sony (and other) Readers.
Apple's tying of iBooks at least partially to iOS updates actually makes them the worst offender in this area. I'm willing to bet 1st gen iPads can't get some new iBooks, but I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.
I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.
You lose this bet. There are quite a few Kindle books like this: http://cl.ly/image/2t2m2V3Y0513 that won't play on basic Kindle devices. I discovered this when I tried to read one of my books on my gen 1 Kindle.
There are also some unexpected restrictions on some titles, such as books that are viewable only on 1 or 2 of your devices, which is quite annoying to discover when you're not near one of the previous devices to deactivate it.
I can't comment on the functionality of iBooks on Gen1 iPads because I've never purchased an Apple iBook, but your guesses about Amazon are, sadly, wrong.
I think the "available only on this devices" thing is about formatting, not DRM, although I could be wrong. (Of course, one might wonder why the original Kindle isn't being updated to support the new stuff...)
The point stands that I can't read those books on original Kindles at all. It's not like there's a "let me read the text, and don't show some graphics" option.
"There are also some unexpected restrictions on some titles, such as books that are viewable only on 1 or 2 of your devices..."
You can check this when purchasing on Amazon: the small print you're looking for in the Product Details section is "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited". If you don't see that, it means your Kindle book is restricted (I believe to 5 devices simultaneously, though perhaps it varies from book to book.)
It varies from book to book. Some of them are only 1 or 2 devices. The annoyance is that I inevitably forget which books are device limited and end up unable to open them from work / while traveling / etc.
If you just choose the "standard" DRM, you can end up with what happened to Microsoft customers and their MP3 players. "Apple is proprietary! Get PlaysForSure." It was a real good pitch, up until your Dell Whatever stopped being able to get new music because MS had abandoned PlaysForSure and Dell wasn't going to update their old players.
Amazon and Apple have large incentives to keep their DRMed content working on older devices, at least for a couple of years. Adobe has very little incentive to ensure that their DRM keeps working on the various Sony (and other) Readers.
Apple's tying of iBooks at least partially to iOS updates actually makes them the worst offender in this area. I'm willing to bet 1st gen iPads can't get some new iBooks, but I bet all 1st gen Kindles can still buy all books from Amazon.