NYT: Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store

[Graham]

To be fair, I suppose reading completely literally, Trudy Muller could be referring just to the subscription offerings of content sellers like Amazon.

However, if this is the case you would have expected a clearer statement from Apple by now.

Graham

[Graham]

And in this fast-moving story... Google wades in with their own subscription platform!

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...oogle-one-pass
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20032217-1.html

and they reckon they can make it work only charging 10%.

Graham

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

Why would Amazon do that? No one knows how many kindle books are actually bought from the app or kindle it self. I for one like to browse the amazon website, check out reviews and such before I plunge in.

In simpler terms: if people buy from their website or kindle. Fine. If people buy from the apps, ok, it's 30% less, but it's still a sale.
If amazon pulls their app, they lose a potential market. 30% less on a sale is still much, much better than no sale at all.

The way I read it, what Apple is saying is that if the book is for sale on Amazon's website, it must also be for sale from within the app at the same or a lesser price. If that's the case, it's why Amazon removes their app - or rather, Apple kicks them off. Amazon can't just leave it there as a pure EBR app.

My working hypothesis is that now that the iPad is established in the hands of millions, Apple figures that it wins either way. If Amazon goes off the iPad, that means that the iBooks is the premiere EBR on the iPad. If it doesn't, that means Apple gets a 30 percent cut of Amazon's iPad based sales. All this translates to me that Steve still thinks that people don't read books much.

On a different track, I'm wondering if Apple isn't after 30 percent of all sales made through apps - not just books. Take Woot, for instance. Does Apple get 30 percent of their sales made through the Woot app?

[CyGuy]

The answer to this seems obvious to me: Stay away from the apple business model, period. If people don't fall for it they won't get away with it.

[vaughnmr]

The UK publisher industry web site "The Bookseller" weighs in...

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/ap...y-e-books.html

[Horemheb]

Originally Posted by Crowl

Aren't the apps, media, books etc. all hosted by apple, while it is excessive to equate that with meriting 30% of each transaction it isn't entirely fair to declare that they provide nothing.

Apple does not host any Amazon books. Amazon hosts them. iOS is only ONE of the literally dozens of platforms through which you can buy content from Amazon. So yes, I think it is more than fair to declare that Apple provides nothing for the claimed money. At least provides not one bit more than Microsoft, Ubuntu, Red Hat, RIM and any other platform providers through which you can buy Amazon content. There is simply no value added to the fact that you buy content on iOS comparing it to buying content from your Windows PC.

Given their complaints about free apps being there entirely to supply content that they don't make any money from, the logical way to alter things would be for them to make people like Amazon charge for the ios Kindle app and get their cut from the app sales and not the content sales which have almost nothing to do with them, but do serve as a selling point for the particular platform.

No one cares about their free apps. Stop supplying them for free if it is not worth it. But grabbing money from publishers and content providers in exchange for nothing is robbery.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

The answer to this seems obvious to me: Stay away from the apple business model, period. If people don't fall for it they won't get away with it.

I asked you once before and you didn't answer:

If I'm not technical, what tech is "good" to buy?

I think your "obvious" statement doesn't take into account that many people aren't technical and that there are limited tech choices.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

if this is NOW suddenly sbout only subscriptions it does not address why the Sony app was originally 86'd and the general statement issued that ALL app providers better get in line or get bounced.

This is not the same as the Sony app issue. They wanted to sell books directly from within the app, without using the Apple in-app system. That has always been a no-no, and is not what Amazon do.

[Graham]

Reading and rereading the press release and subsequent comments, I now think that at the moment Kali Yuga may well be right, and that this refers only to subscription offerings.

The mention of content in the press release is in relation to blocking web links in the application, and can be read as "if Amazon offers magazine subscriptions through their Kindle app on iOS then they must use the iOS in-App purchase method and remove links to their external site that offers content and subscription purchase".

Without further clarification from Apple, it does leave the door open for the Kindle app to work the way it does now as long as it doesn't offer magazine subscriptions (the Android app does offer them).

The fact that the Sony Reader app was pulled may have no bearing on this, as the suggestion was that it tried to offer an alternate in-App purchase method, not an external website-based one.

Graham

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Graham

Reading and rereading the press release and subsequent comments, I now think that at the moment Kali Yuga may well be right, and that this refers only to subscription offerings.

The mention of content in the press release is in relation to blocking web links in the application, and can be read as "if Amazon offers magazine subscriptions through their Kindle app on iOS then they must use the iOS in-App purchase method and remove links to their external site that offers content and subscription purchase".

Without further clarification from Apple, it does leave the door open for the Kindle app to work the way it does now as long as it doesn't offer magazine subscriptions (the Android app does offer them).

The fact that the Sony Reader app was pulled may have no bearing on this, as the suggestion was that it tried to offer an alternate in-App purchase method, not an external website-based one.

Graham

Apple is keeping everyone in the dark so it can get the most from content providers. That will vary with each vendor. Negotiations will not happen in public.

Meanwhile, consumers are left to guess whether they'll lose access to content, if not now, maybe later. Even if deals are struck now, Apple can cut off vendors if they don't meet terms later. And as Apple has demonstrated, terms (or enforcement) can change and vary as it sees fit.

As a consumer, I don't need to stick around to see whether Apple can maximize profits at my expense.

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

I asked you once before and you didn't answer:

If I'm not technical, what tech is "good" to buy?

I think your "obvious" statement doesn't take into account that many people aren't technical and that there are limited tech choices.

Sorry that I missed that before. There are currently many options, with more and more coming very soon. Look at some of the upcoming Android devices, or even some of the Windows 7 devices. Just don't buy into any business model where you are not in control of the device and the content on the device. You decide where you get apps from, where you get content from, what the device can and can't do...

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

Sorry that I missed that before. There are currently many options, with more and more coming very soon. Look at some of the upcoming Android devices, or even some of the Windows 7 devices. Just don't buy into any business model where you are not in control of the device and the content on the device. You decide where you get apps from, where you get content from, what the device can and can't do...

That's the problem for my uses: Android is moving toward what I need, but it's not there yet. It's got a lot of momentum and I see myself switching over in the next year or so, but it isn't viable for me now, and it sure wasn't when I bought an iPad nearly a year ago.

Windows 7 looks like a nonstarter for me. My husband, who used to work at Microsoft and still uses MS, has his reservations as well.

I try to keep up even with my limited tech know-how, but tech is a moving target and there are many tradeoffs, no matter the platform, IMO.

[ProfCrash]

I would guess that most users won't even know what is happening and will continue to buy the IPad and other Apple products oblivious to what Apple is doing.

It is no different then people who buy a particular e-reader because it is the one that they know or people are talking about or that they have seen advertised without doing research.

As long as people are able to get the content that they want on their IPad they don't care who is getting the money. The onyl way that many people will know something is up is if they go to use an app and it is no longer there.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Graham

Reading and rereading the press release and subsequent comments, I now think that at the moment Kali Yuga may well be right, and that this refers only to subscription offerings.

The mention of content in the press release is in relation to blocking web links in the application, and can be read as "if Amazon offers magazine subscriptions through their Kindle app on iOS then they must use the iOS in-App purchase method and remove links to their external site that offers content and subscription purchase".

Without further clarification from Apple, it does leave the door open for the Kindle app to work the way it does now as long as it doesn't offer magazine subscriptions (the Android app does offer them).

The fact that the Sony Reader app was pulled may have no bearing on this, as the suggestion was that it tried to offer an alternate in-App purchase method, not an external website-based one.

Graham

I suppose that's possible - there's enough ambiguity surrounding what Apple means in relation to ebooks that the bottom line might be that Apple intends to enforce the 30% rule except when it doesn't.

But the trajectory I see is "if you make money off your app, we make money off your app." So my bet is that by summer, either the Kindle App will be off the platform, or Amazon will be paying some kind of tariff for books sold from the Kindle app.

I expect that Amazon will do the math before deciding what to do. One possibility is that they might decide that not all ebooks sold by Amazon will be readable on the Kindle App. Maybe it will depend on the deal with the publisher - Amazon could simply pass the tariff on to any publisher that wants to shoulder it. Those books would be sold on on the Kindle App, but also be the only books readable on the Kindle App.

And I also have to wonder whether Amazon will care if the Kindle App goes south. At this point, do they need to be on the iPad?

And finally, I still wonder if Steve gives a damn about whether the iPad is used for ebook reading. In Steve's universe, ebooks are a drop in the bucket. I doubt that there are very many iPads that would go unsold should the Kindle App disappear.

Certainly it would not have influenced my own buying decision. The iPad is the worst of all ebook readers, IMHO. Too heavy, and not portable in any eBook reading sense. So I really wonder how many people rely on on the iPad as their primary EBR. (I don't even list it as one of my Devices over there on the sidebar...)

Dang. I think I've just talked myself into thinking that Apple knows exactly what it's doing here.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

Sorry that I missed that before. There are currently many options, with more and more coming very soon. Look at some of the upcoming Android devices, or even some of the Windows 7 devices. Just don't buy into any business model where you are not in control of the device and the content on the device. You decide where you get apps from, where you get content from, what the device can and can't do...

But you see, here's the thing. It turns out that Apple devices always seem to do pretty much what I want them to do. And in half the time. Conveniently and predictably.

Oh, sure, at the margins, maybe I'd like a tweak here & there. For instance, unlike with Android devices, I can't get my iPad to make me popcorn while I stream from Netflix. But it's simply not worth my time to bother with such stuff. Besides, my wife always makes popcorn for me.