Nathan Myhrvold's $500 Cookbook Now an $80 iPhone App 193
Nathan Myhrvold's six-volume foodie encyclopedia, Modernist Cuisine, writes reader SmartAboutThings, is one of the most expensive cooking encyclopedias, the original six-volume version retailing for $500, with the two-volume addition that followed after that selling for $115. "Now, Nathan and his team have transformed their huge food encyclopedia into
an iPhone/iPad app. It's not just a digital book, but rather an expensive $80 interactive app that can do more than just provide recipes. The interactive digital cookbook is the fruit of a development team of 10-15 people that have worked over nine months on the project. The app contains 37 technique videos, 416 recipes and 1,683 photos."
Another slashvertizement! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I look forward to the .IPA!
Re:Its free over (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting, I think it is the first time I see a link to copyright infringing material here. Will it be deleted?
Re:I'd spent my money somewhere tastier (Score:4, Interesting)
1) You wouldn't, obviously.
2) People cook for lots of reasons, not all of them are based on your argument.
3) Home cooking can be cheaper than anything you buy pre-cooked elsewhere - or else restaurants wouldn't be able to make a profit selling it.
4) Not everyone is a dolt in the kitchen. Home cooking is rarely a "dozen attempts" kind of thing if you have anywhere near half a brain and have done it a few times before. Those that are dolts need recipes to follow to become "non-dolts".
5) Home cooking can be prepared when you like, how you like, without having to try a dozen restaurants that are open when you want and where the cook is one that you happen to like (how many attempts would that take you, trying all your local restaurants?) - there isn't a "professional chef" in the world that will cook to you exact preferences, or else there's no point being a chef. You get what you're given, and the modifications you can make apply to the removal of certain ingredients and choosing how well done you want it.
6) Cooking, in itself, is a hobby.
More to the point, the argument I would propose, is why do you need to pay someone to tell you approximate proportions of ingredients when the web is full of millions of free recipes (many of them reviewed, and even ripped directly from recipe books without attribution) and you can't really "copyright" a recipe - you can copyright the exact text, the arrangement of them within a book, the photos of the dishes, etc. but there's not much to stop people sharing recipes and their own variations of your recipes.
My girlfriend's "recipe shelf" is full of more scrap cut out from newspapers, handwritten notebooks of recipes from friends/family, and photocopies of single recipes that she happened to like than anything else.