NYT: Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

Why is everybody so pessimistic? This could very well be a good thing.

Maybe Apple can make the same move as they did with music. Force DRM-free content. DRM, something we hate more than anything.

and my AM-BM is going to yield 24kt gold bricks soon as the "coffee effect" kicks in this AM.

I am editing to add that I would certainly prefer DRM as it exists here and now if it means my access to content of my choice is as I expect it based on how any other computer I own functions. Or should the creators of a word processor used by an author get a "cut" of the author's royalties and advances for every novel or article written using that word processor? Or for every nail driven by the hammer a carpenter drives into a piece of wood?

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

Why is everybody so pessimistic? This could very well be a good thing.

Maybe Apple can make the same move as they did with music. Force DRM-free content. DRM, something we hate more than anything.

Maybe Apple will break DRM's back. I don't think it likely, though.

I try to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

[TallMomof2]

Amazon was selling DRM free mp3 music before Apple so I don't see how Apple broke music DRM's back.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Amazon was selling DRM free mp3 music before Apple so I don't see how Apple broke music DRM's back.

Exactly. Amazon DRM-free from January 2008, Apple DRM-free from January 2009, Napster DRM-free from June 2009.

I wonder if there's any sign at all of it happening in the eBook world? Who might lead the way?

Graham

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Amazon was selling DRM free mp3 music before Apple so I don't see how Apple broke music DRM's back.

Well Apple did invent Al Gore after all so I am "sure" they are also responsible for breaking the back of music DRM.

FYI, in case someone has been living under a rock for around the last 15-yrs, our former Vice President was famous for hyperbole of amazing proportion when public speaking off the cuff. In one instance he said something to the effect that he was responsible for creating/inventing the internet. sigh...thing is the guy is actually a very well educated and intelligent man. But, oh, heck who cares...another sigh is needed now,

Of course there was the true master in former Vice President James Danforth Quayle. Dude was a Jedi Master of the malaprop. He made Yogi Berra looks like a Harvard Law valedictorian. Plus he spelled potato with an 'e' as in potatoe and was caught on video doing it...double sigh-sigh.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Amazon was selling DRM free mp3 music before Apple so I don't see how Apple broke music DRM's back.

Originally Posted by Graham

Exactly. Amazon DRM-free from January 2008, Apple DRM-free from January 2009, Napster DRM-free from June 2009.

I wonder if there's any sign at all of it happening in the eBook world? Who might lead the way?

Graham

History lesson time:
Apple pushed hard for DRM-free music from the very beginning of the iTunes store. The big labels wouldn't permit it. Eventually, Apple got one label (EMI, I think) to go along with DRM-free tunes. Around the same time, the other big labels grew concerned that Apple had too much clout in the market for digital sales of music. In an attempt to reduce Apple's influence, they permitted Amazon and several other vendors — but not Apple — to sell DRM-free music. This choice by (all-but-one) of the big record labels is the entire reason why other stores had DRM-free music first.

Further, the N-1 big labels used their power to refuse DRM-free tunes as a negotiating point to push Apple into something the labels had wanted all along—variable pricing in the iTunes store. Which is why so much music now sells at higher prices than pre-DRM-free. So much for the label's claims that "only the newest and most popular" releases would be priced at the higher rate, and that their long tail of older music would be at the $0.69 per track lower price.

Xenophon

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by carld

If Apple also requires that the prices in-app match prices out-of-app, I could see Amazon being unable to make a profit on their ebooks and exiting the iPad market.

What you could see is them simply stopping development of the app and advising their customers of the reason why this has happened, you would still have access to your kindle content, but would end up with improved features on newer kindle apps making other platforms more attractive.

It is definitely weird timing for Apple to even start enforcing their existing rules, you'd think the perfect time to do this would be shortly after the ipad2 had launched and they had just raked in a load of new hardware sales.

[elcreative]

Careful Xenophon... this time you're against the Apple's responsible for all the world's ills brigade... never mind, it'll be the evil Amazon tomorrow and probably ducking the Agency 5... aways have an "evil" to blame...

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

History lesson time:

...

Interesting, thanks Xenophon.

Graham

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

FYI, in case someone has been living under a rock for around the last 15-yrs, our former Vice President was famous for hyperbole of amazing proportion when public speaking off the cuff. In one instance he said something to the effect that he was responsible for creating/inventing the internet. sigh...thing is the guy is actually a very well educated and intelligent man. But, oh, heck who cares...another sigh is needed now,

He was misquoted on that, arguably for political reasons, which caused all the confusion. That being said, he did write and push through many bills which gave funding to ARPANet, and later the Gore Bill (High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991) provided the funding for creation of the Mosaic browser, and much of the fiber network we have now. I'm not a fan of Gore, but this is one area I have to defend him on.

[carld]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

In one instance he said something to the effect that he was responsible for creating/inventing the internet.

Except that he never said that. This was a lie willfully spread by the media because it was "fun." What he said was that he was one of the people who was instrumental in securing funding for ARPNET which eventually became the Internet. He made a factually correct statement only to have it distorted by America's right-wing friendly press.

[Valentino]

The main thing that I've been wondering is when amazon has to make ebook sales available in the apple store, they would have to be epubs?
Since apple also has strict rules on the type of content that is in their store.

/edit
Ahh nevermind, It seems just the billing has to go through apple so they can take a cut of the money. One of the articles made it seem like the content had to be sold in the apple store as well.

All the articles seem to be saying things a little bit differently.

[drofgnal]

Originally Posted by Crowl

It is definitely weird timing for Apple to even start enforcing their existing rules, you'd think the perfect time to do this would be shortly after the ipad2 had launched and they had just raked in a load of new hardware sales.

No I think this is perfect timing. They are counting on large sales anyway and a new influx of ipad customers who won't know the rules have changed or at least the enforcement of the rules have changed.

For me, my dad is going into assisted living. I think I'll give him my ipad for playing solitaire and I'll buy him a book from time to time. Me, I think I'm done with ipad and will order a K3.

[tomsem]

I've pored through the Apple submission guidelines and can find nothing that states 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." But I guess it is all a matter of interpretation.

Technically, an app cannot prevent purchase of a book outside of the app. In the case of the Kindle app, what we are talking about is that it launches Safari with a particular URL. So are they saying apps can launch some links but not others? Pretty silly.

Amazon (or sony) can simply develop a web app that can be installed on the Home Screen (it takes a couple of clicks, and authentication). As a web app, it is able to store data securely (such as an account name and password), behaves like a native app in some important ways (has its own icon on the home screen, appears like any other app in the dock, etc.), and updates can happen seamlessly. Web apps don't require iTunes Store approval. All that is missing is that the user needs to find the (Kindle or Sony) Store button on their home screen or running in the dock when they want to purchase something from their iThing. Such a web app uses few system resources and would not need to be shut down very often.

Then, in the app, instead of a 'Kindle Store' button they have a 'Install Kindle Store web app' button somewhere, which takes you to a web page where you can install the web app.

However, many reader apps integrate the store-browsing experience directly in the app, and only launch Safari to complete a purchase. They will need to shift the store-browsing over to the web app, and somehow get people to install the web app.

But really, Apple: why put us all through this? Everybody is happy with the way it has been, you won't generate a dime more revenue from enforcing this policy, and on the contrary will sow a lot of distrust and angst and defection to competing platforms.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I've pored through the Apple submission guidelines and can find nothing that states 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." But I guess it is all a matter of interpretation.

Technically, an app cannot prevent purchase of a book outside of the app. In the case of the Kindle app, what we are talking about is that it launches Safari with a particular URL. So are they saying apps can launch some links but not others? Pretty silly.

Amazon (or sony) can simply develop a web app that can be installed on the Home Screen (it takes a couple of clicks, and authentication). As a web app, it is able to store data securely (such as an account name and password), behaves like a native app in some important ways (has its own icon on the home screen, appears like any other app in the dock, etc.), and updates can happen seamlessly. Web apps don't require iTunes Store approval. All that is missing is that the user needs to find the (Kindle or Sony) Store button on their home screen or running in the dock when they want to purchase something from their iThing. Such a web app uses few system resources and would not need to be shut down very often.

Then, in the app, instead of a 'Kindle Store' button they have a 'Install Kindle Store web app' button somewhere, which takes you to a web page where you can install the web app.

However, many reader apps integrate the store-browsing experience directly in the app, and only launch Safari to complete a purchase. They will need to shift the store-browsing over to the web app, and somehow get people to install the web app.

But really, Apple: why put us all through this? Everybody is happy with the way it has been, you won't generate a dime more revenue from enforcing this policy, and on the contrary will sow a lot of distrust and angst and defection to competing platforms.

I put "apps" on my homescreen that are nothing more than web bookmarks all the time. Amazon, Kobo, Sony, etc should really invest in HTML5 - until Apple takes away our bookmarks.