I'm a bit afraid of the German eBook situation when it comes to the Apple iPad. I am totally willing to switch from snail mailed paper magazines to eBook magazines, as long as I got a good reading device to handle them and the iPad seems like just the one thing that makes me do this.

But in Germany, as you may know, it's always a bit different: We are always disadvantaged by our media, because they tend to be late on every single comfort advance. We're paying more for mobile phone calls than anyone else in this world (okay, that's polemic, I don't know if that's true, but you get the clue), we still have a really awkward situation here when it comes to video on demand or high definition tv and for god's sake, we're not even able to watch the shows we'd like to watch, because everything that comes to television is at least half a year behind, almost never available in its original language (for those who like to enjoy it this way, like me) and it gets cancelled and they're mixing up seasons like being on drugs. It's just no fun to not pirate stuff over here, haha.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, I'd like to take advantage of the iBooks store the iPad is offering us. It sounds like heaven to me: Buying your magazines online, not having that paper mountains in your home office any more, without the need to throw them away.

So, Apple told in their press briefing that the iBooks store will be open to US customers at its release date. That's not telling us that international iBooks stores won't be online at that date, but it tells us that Apple's not sure yet, if it gets its contracts signed until that. For me that means that it's safe to say that Germany will once more be behind the states again. It's a bummer, but that's just what we have to live with. As far as I can imagine that's for sure not Apple's fault, it's just the German publishers not getting their ass up to make customer friendly deals again.

Anyhow, that much for spraying out some polemical opinion here again. What's way more interesting: Yesterday I asked myself if the German magazine publishers are even willing to publish their magazines on this platform (or even the Amazon Kindle, for those who prefer that) or if I'll be stuck in that typical German cage at this topic, too. So I emailed the Heise Verlag (just exemplarily, because I like their magazines very much) and asked them if there's any chance to read their mags without having the big old paper problem in the near future. And the answer is not very surprising, but yet very promising - and I totally hope that 2010 is the year to switch from paper subscription to eBooks:

"We're currently not offering an online subscription, but we're actually working on an implementation for this. This includes an implementation for eBooks, too. As soon as we have found a practical and legal solution for this, we will announce it."

Again, that doesn't sound as good as I hoped, but it's at least a step forward and I'm totally positive that it's going to be better with magazines than it is with television. Thank you, Heise Verlag!