Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
Now the same retailers have been going on zero revenues from these sales for a couple of months while hastily making preparations to move to web apps.
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Can you back up this "zero revenues" claim? Apple can't take a cut of a sale that doesn't go through them, and for that to happen, devs have to update their apps. Apple hasn't yanked apps that failed to comply by the deadline, and those that have updated did so by removing links to their store, so I'm not sure where this figure comes from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sil_liS
I can tell that you understand this, but you choose to say that Apple asks for a cut, when, in fact, it asks for ALL the revenue of the book retailers.
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Which in this case is semantics. The end result is the same either way. My whole point is that Apple in this case really can't write a good policy that is simple, fair, lacks major loopholes, and doesn't squeeze middlemen out of their platform. The problem is that now folks like Kobo are considered middlemen because of how the platform works.
They backpedaled on the "must be the same price or lower" restriction, and that the app must provide a way to buy content if it is available elsewhere (you just can't link to the elsewhere). So it is possible that these retailers can throw Apple's cut on top of their pricing, as long as their contracts with the publishers allow them to. But nobody would honestly believe that would fly. Almost nobody would pay it, so why bother offering it?
Yes, it sucks that this model simply doesn't work for retailers using various platforms to sell their digital wares unless they get an exception or loophole in the pricing structure. Yes it sucks that Apple doesn't have a policy that allows this to work. But I don't think a suitable compromise lies in the pricing policies directly, but rather making it possible for retailers to carry the burden of costs related to distributing their apps in exchange for leeway in the pricing policies.