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If Apple allows you to buy them any more.

O'Reilly sells DRM-free ebooks through their store, so they're unaffected. You load the ebooks onto the iPad using the usual transfer methods for media.

It's one of the nice side-effects of selling DRM-free books: they don't need an app that has the DRM baked-in -- you can use iBooks or any third-party reader.

A downside to this approach is not having an easy way to purchase books without a computer. iBooks has a great checkout experience and the only way O'Reilly could have something similar is by coughing up 30%. Tech savvy users can figure installing something like GoodReader and then downloading the PDF in MobileSafari and sending it over to GoodReader, but it's a UX nightmare. O'Reilly at least has technical users, other publishers are even more screwed if they want to go non-DRM.

Given that O'Reilly books are of technical nature, and you can't actually code on an iPad (unless you're using SSH/VPN), this is a perfect fit for the O'Reilly... you'll need a computer anyway.

Furthermore, I'm never on vacation and think, Oh, I'd love t read up on RoR... I usually already have the book.

Unaffected for now.

I seriously doubt Apple is going to forbid users from loading and viewing their own pdf files on the iPad.

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