> eBooks don't need printing, warehousing, distribution and retail shelving
But they do need editing, layout, design, marketing, etc, which are a significant part of the cost of a book. A book is never a solo endeavor by an author.
Not really. The person I'm replying to wants to watch streaming services and their own files. Grab any streaming box that supports the services, and it almost certainly has a Jellyfin app or a compatible one. Problem solved.
> I would rather pay them than pay the publisher for them to only get a small cut.
Publishers aren't just stealing money that should go to authors. We can debate percentages and such, but buying a book also pays the editors (who any author will tell you are just as important to a book as they are), the typesetters, the designers, etc.
I've used it for basically any text editing task. Quickly jotting stuff down for later, web development, writing articles, drafting emails, whatever. I've used VS Code a lot and have used Obsidian for notes/worldbuilding in TTRPGs, but neither really gave me anything I wasn't already getting in BBEdit for general-purpose coding and text editing, and neither come close to its ability to do elaborate text transformations.
These days I use emacs for most of that stuff, but I have such a fondness for BBEdit, and still drop into it for regex stuff enough, that I'm buying the update.
They do, but under a completely different system than the way that they do for print books. When a library buys a print book, they can keep it in circulation for as long as they want and it's physically durable, but for digital, they're paying either per circulation or for an amount of time. They never own anything, they pay for temporary licenses, just like you never own the digital media you purchase in most cases.
The point that the person you're replying to is making is that this totally breaks the way libraries have always worked, and that it takes a lot of power away from the buyers (whether that's you or your local library) and puts way more in the hand of the publishers.
> that's 100% the plugin's fault, not Obsidian's no matter which way you look at it
It doesn't really matter to me whose fault it is. Basically no one is using Obsidian without plugins, and the impact plugins have on your portability is something to consider when choosing to use Obsidian.
"there is no lock-in" is a thing that's said a lot about Obsidian and, as an Obsidian fan, I feel like isn't totally true. Yes, Obsidian just stores markdown files, but it has unique syntaxes, especially if you're using plugins, that aren't transferable. So while I can get my files out, I still have to go through the annoying process of fixing them and getting it working in whatever new system I switch to when I leave. It's still far better than a lot of other proprietary tools, absolutely, but it's also not trivial to drop Obsidian if/when you stop using it
Maybe it varies by location, but in my experience, Whole Foods is significantly more expensive than Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's is pretty affordable. It may not be Walmart cheap, but it's no worse than Target.
"A lot of people use this tool" and "this tool is productive and useful" don't necessarily track. People do and use all kinds of things that aren't actually useful, they just feel useful, and I think that's the argument most AI critics would make.
Countless other things about the way they work and how they handle what you want to do with them? We're not comparing radically different things, I was intentional about my comparison of Jeep vs Civic: they're the same basic tool, with different applications and contexts where they shine. This isn't an airplane and a bicycle.
I feel like Linux proselytizers are always talking about how Linux will revive or improve low-powered hardware, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so great. Then when it’s still a poor experience, the same Linux users say things like this, that no software can save bad hardware. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Also, Linux expressly aims to run on a wide array of hardware, and macOS doesn’t. So Linux should be judged across a large range of hardware and macOS shouldn’t, in the same way a Jeep should be judged on its off-roading abilities and a Civic shouldn’t.
> I see no reason why I should be paying the same (or often more) than the paperback version.
I rarely see the ebooks cost more than print, they're usually slightly cheaper. But the reason they aren't drastically cheaper is that a significant portion of the cost of a book isn't actually in the paper or the printing, it's in paying the author, editors, designers, marketers, etc. All of those people are crucial to the book publishing process, whether it's print or digital or, usually, both.
But they do need editing, layout, design, marketing, etc, which are a significant part of the cost of a book. A book is never a solo endeavor by an author.