OpenReader Flawed?

I have been reader some facinating discussion about the OpenReader Consortium on the excellent eBook Community Yahoo Group. OpenReader is an attempt to come up with an open source ebook format that can be read across a wide range of platforms. A very worthy goal.

While poking around the OpenReader site I came across the Implementation Roadmap page and was shocked to scroll down and find that under "Operating System Support" the first version of OpenReader would not work on Mac OS X. I was even more surprised to see that Palm OS would not be supported in the first two versions and even the third and forth versions of OpenReader only list Palm OS support as 'Maybe'.

Sorry, but I think OpenReader is completely missing the boat. PocketPC PDA's will not work with Apple computers. By ignoring both Mac OS X and Palm OS, you effectively eliminate all Mac owners from using any OpenReader ebooks. Moreover, Palm OS is the most widely used PDA operating system it seems silly not to make it a priority since most people prefer reading ebooks on mobile devices.

It looks like OpenReader is hitching it's wagon to Microsoft Windows and Microsoft PocketPC. (They do support Linux and Solaris but frankly neither of those operating systems are yet ready for the desktops of the masses.)

While the technical plans for OpenReader are impressive, their near total reliance on Microsoft powered devices is, IMO, a fatal flaw.