Guest post by “Apple is further tightening its control of the App Store. Some application developers, including Sony, say Apple has told them they can no longer sell e-books within their apps unless the transactions go through Apple’s system. Apple rejected Sony’s iPhone application, which would have let people buy and read e-books from the Sony Reader Store.”
Somebody please enlighten me, how can they say this to Sony and at the same time allow the Kindle App on iOS?
kindle app is just a front end to a browser, I think. The more alarming aspect is a statement that I read on Ars http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/02/apple-responds-to-app-sto…
“We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”
This seems like a change. Though Apple is so inconsistent and weird about their app store policys no one really knows what they are going to do until they actually do it. But if they does happen. Amazon and a lot of other retailers are going to be pissed. Very pissed
“kindle app is just a front end to a browser, I think”
Well, judging from the Kindle app I have, I seriously doubt that..
The shopping part of Kindle is done through the browser (at least on Android). Then the Kindle app synchronises with Amazon, downloading whichever books you have bought and displaying them. It seems that Sony wanted the book store itself built into the app, if I understand this correctly.
That’s the whole issue. According to Apple’s new rules publishers need to also have their content available as an in-app purchase. At least Sony’s reader was not approved on these grounds.
The store part sends you to a browser, obviously the e-reader and library sync aspects are a native app. At least thats what all the commentary suggests and is consistent with apples past app store rules, They have always forbid in app purchases. I don’t an idevice to check for myself though.
There is only one constant in Apple’s practices: money grab. This change is all about levying app store tax on content. Nugh said, I say.
Why would you spend all that time fencing up your garden just to leave the gate open?
It’s all about charging a fee at every possibility and in all parts of the supply chain. Which they are very free to do. But that’s why I sit in the street throwing rocks in the garden when I pass by.
Minor correction, but this is not true. They can still sell content outside Apple’s system, but they also need to make them available as an in-app purchase. What is not clear is if they are required to offer the same prices on both places.
If not, the whole thing is a non issue. They offer content as an in-app purchase for $n or with a 30% discount through a browser. The publisher makes the same amount of money on both cases, and the consumer gets to choose if the slight inconvenience is worth a 30% discount.
If they are required to offer the same price though, things are quite different. The in-app purchase UX, plus the fact that the user has to care about a single account, will probably mean that the customers will choose this mechanism. This in turn means that the publishers will either have to lose that 30% or offer increased prices to compensate.
All this because iBooks sucks and Apple cant’ be bothered innovating to compete. I quite like my Kobo app…
What’s the attraction of reading ebooks on an iDevice until they do one with an E-Ink or Pixel Qi screen?
I have a Kobo ebook reader (e-ink screen), and I find I really use my iPad for it more, mostly because I happen to have it with me. The only thing I dislike is I can’t read in portrait mode with my sunglasses on, thanks to the nature of LCD screens and polarised glasses
You read with sunglasses on? Doesn’t that result in lower contrast?
I read on the bus to and from work. Reading without them means a lot of glare on the screen. My glasses aren’t so dark, just polarised enough to cut glare rightdown.
This is vintage Apple stuff. Its about two things. One thing is controlling what the customer does. What Apple wants is total control over what you do with your Apple appliance. What network you use, what apps you use, what you see or read or buy.
The second thing its about is using this control to extract a percentage of all your spending which is in any way related to that device. Hardware, software, media.
We will move by slow incremental steps to the end goal of preventing any user of any Apple product from installing any application except through the app store, and preventing any Apple user from buying or reading or viewing anything on the Apple Index.
These people are fascists dressed as Walt Disney 1955. And people think its ‘cool’ and about preserving the user experience! Amazing.
You’re right, we shouldn’t be surprised by this. However, to me, there is only one motivation to this control behavior by Apple: pressure from the stock exchange via merciless scrutiny of quarterly results.
They’re basically admitting Apple is incapable of creating a good user experience without locking everything down, without controlling everything.
Just about every other industry seems to get by just fine without with such total control.
This isn’t a new rule. It’s been there for some time, it’s just that Apple has just begun to enforce it.
In my view they’re obviously trying to take make more money but at the same time enhance user experience. In store purchases are much more convenient for users than redirecting you to the browser.
Obviously though a content provider would rather not give its users this choice since it’s pretty obvious what they would choose.
How hypocritical of people like Thom and others saying that everyone else is doing just fine without such a controlled App Store.
I guess people forget very quickly what Apple has done to the mobile device business.
For years and years companies were milking the users by small incremental updates of hardware with no significant innovations, not until the iPod and the iPhone came along and showed them how to do it. Don’t get me started about the App Store.
You can whine all you want but Apple is the only company that focuses on ease and user experience of the average user and this is a big reason they’re so damn successful.
Edited 2011-02-02 11:55 UTC
iOS is built on top of Palm’s PalmOS ideas and concepts. The two are so similar it’s disingenuous not to mention it.
If only someone had come up with the idea of central application repositories before Apple did…
Wait.
Yes ignore my main points without refuting any of them and just quote something completely irrelevant. You’re missing the point, just like usual.
Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player or the mobile phone or multitouch displays or the App store.
It has made a successful ecosystem of devices and software with design and ease of use at its core. In-app purchases are a part of it.
Just so you can get a jab at Apple you’re ready to take the side of greedy content providers. Go on ahead, that turned out so well with music and mobile phones in the the previous years.
Edited 2011-02-02 15:05 UTC
Linux repositories? Where is the unified repository for Linux where I can download or buy/sell software or content?
Throw a ton of opensource apps together. It is fine, but that doesn’t make a store.
That’s simply BS. TH……Arguably the fragmentation of the Android universe isn’t a swell experience for many of the users I rub shoulders with. It’s finding the right balance of control and freedom.
Sounds like Apple is just making it even harder to manage an e-book collection than it is already.
It’s sad really because I love my Sony e-reader and having reading material to match any mood at my fingertips. What I don’t love is having to boot into windows and use two separate (but equally horrible) programs just to get past the DRM and get the damn thing to sync. </rant>
This is all a bit off topic but it really does annoy me that the likes of Apple, Sony et al seem to be actively trying to make just getting an e-book to work a very painful experience.
Apple customers agreed to put their user experience under Apple unique control. They deserves it all.
Software developers who agreed to put their software business model under Apple unique control deserves it all, too.
Twice.
Because, contrary to main stream Apple customers, they should have known better about Apple track records.
Apple since a long time already gives its future customers only one and single choice: render all control or flee.
What this does mean and no one has considered it yet:
If a product is required to be in both places for it to be sold onto the device, the product has to fit Apple guidelines for appropriate content. If it doesn^aEURTMt make the cut for the App Store, it wont be able to be sold singularly through the 3rd party shop.
So basically Apple can now censor 3rd party shops on their platform^aEUR|
BAIL. NOW.
If you do not want someone to filter out bad quality software or zillion of clones of the same thing, you should use Android.
But why do you crying like a baby?
Just do not use Apple products. That’s all.
Edited 2011-02-02 18:36 UTC
Because the only good experience is a ^aEUR~curated^aEURTM one? Get over yourself. Apple does not control the App Store to filter out bad quality, but to maintain *control*. That is all.
I do not use Apple products, nor am I crying like a baby. Is that all you can respond with?
Its not an adequate reply to say, if you don’t like an industry leader’s products, do not buy them. The problem with Apple is that its an industry leader and its example is influential. So when Apple does censorship and lockins, it has far more impact than if my local computer shop tries it. Apple is showing the way – it has an effect on the industry as a whole.
The reason why it is right and proper for people who have no intention of buying anything made by Apple to object to the Apple business model and conduct is exactly this. They are objecting to a model, which if it is widely adopted by imitators, will be the enemy of intellectual freedom and access to information.
It was the same thing with MS. It was not a reply to say, you don’t like the lockins, don’t buy the products. MS was a player at a society level, and so is Apple. I will never buy another Apple product. I still think their business model and example is damaging. I still think I have a stake in how they behave. I did not when they were tiny and peripheral, but I certainly do now.
Yes, nice insight! Law of unexpected consequences.
Samsung does the same since the day one of their bada platform.
Hell, before January 2011, you couldn’t even have an ad banner in free apps.
I’m not saying this makes Apple’s policies any better, just that they aren’t the only evil/idiotic company out there.
Edited 2011-02-03 09:23 UTC