Shira Ovide, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is revamping its digital bookstore in another attempt to take on Amazon’s dominance. I can’t help thinking: What if?

This is a reference to this article, about Apple remaking the iBooks Store and the iBooks app, simplifying both and making book reading a better experience.

More from Shira:

The missed opportunity was for Apple’s business partners, particularly newspaper and magazine companies, which Apple persuaded to turn themselves inside out to take advantage of the iPad. It turned out that Apple was leading those partners to a dead end.

This is a bit of a curmudgeonly statement, but there is truth at its core. A number of publishers went all in on the iPad, with visions of a simple path from print to digital, with subscriptions intact.

The eighth anniversary of the iPad’s introduction was on Saturday. Allow me to take you on a trip back to that time. Steve Jobs set off on a sales pitch to media companies that he hoped would make the new tablet computer more useful. Jobs was a true believer that the iPad would be an amazing opportunity for books, newspapers and magazines to reimagine their products, capture readers and patch up their ailing business models.

All-in-all, a fascinating read.