Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
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Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#2[with Kindle for the Web] iOS users can just point Safari to Amazon’s site, buy the Kindle ebook, and read it right there in Safari.
I was also thinking along those lines. There's the issue of local storage (so that one can read without a network connection), but the HTML5 features on that front will probably be enough.
P.S. the iOS Safari browser neatly allows users to place a webpage link on the home screen. It can have its custom icon, if defined, or default to a snapshot of the page as visible. Also: http://www.apple.com/webapps/
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#3So, would I still be able to read my whole library of books offline on my iPad?
Seriously, if the Kindle app would get pulled from my iPad, the iPad would lose half its value for me. That would be a terrible shame.
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#4It would be pretty fitting if the end result of Apple's new pricing rules were that everyone refocused on mobile webapps, thereby reducing the value of iOS drastically and allowing it to much more easily be supplanted by commodity Android devices.
If everything you're consuming is through webkit, who cares if you're on Android or iOS? Might as well use the one with better Javascript performance anyway.
Apple will still be winning on games but Google is clearly trying to address that with the recent pushes in NDK development and given Apple's track record with game developers it seems like only a matter of time until they do something to ruin that as well.
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#5I had the kindle app for about a year before iBooks came out. I bought some books, but having had an unfortunate incident with Amazon taking a book I'd bought away from me in the past, I didn't invest much time in it.
The Kindle app is so clunky it might as well be a webpage.
Once iBooks came out, the experience was so much better that I was happy to switch. I now have several hundred books in iBooks, including all of my technical books, lots of free books, pdfs, DRM free ebooks from people like pragmatic programmers.
If amazon were to release books in a DRM free epub format, I'd buy them and read them in iBooks too.
But for all the gnashing of teeth and exclamations from people who seem to think this is the Great Tragedy of The Ages, I'm amazed that after so long people haven't figured out Apple's priorities.
Apple does right by the customer. It is the key to their success. non-discriminatory pricing is right by the customer. consistent-terms across sales methods is right by the customer, and by the developer.
Imagine if subscriptions were only %10 while sales were %30-- suddenly instead of buying your apps we'd go back to the way things were before liberated the mobile landscape, where if you wanted Doom on your phone, you had to pay $2.99 a month to rent it.
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#6So, would I still be able to read my whole library of books offline on my iPad? Seriously, if the Kindle app would get pulled from my iPad, the iPad would lose half its value for me. That would be a terrible shame.
You own a Kindle and prefer to read Kindle books on the iPad?
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#7I had the kindle app for about a year before iBooks came out. I bought some books, but having had an unfortunate incident with Amazon taking a book I'd bought away from me in the past, I didn't invest much time in it. The Kindle app is so clunky it might as well be a webpage. Once iBooks came out, the experience was so much better that I was happy to switch. I now have several hundred books in iBooks, including all o…
You seem to be glossing over a lot of details to make this sound like a good thing, just because you like Apple and you don't like Amazon and Apple wins in this situation while Amazon loses. For example, the pricing is discriminatory — Apple doesn't have to pay 30% of all its profits from its competing service to anybody. And shutting out entire classes of apps that are no longer financially viable isn't friendly to the customer.
Imagine if Apple didn't take money they hadn't earned at all — suddenly there wouldn't be any problem.
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#8It would be pretty fitting if the end result of Apple's new pricing rules were that everyone refocused on mobile webapps, thereby reducing the value of iOS drastically and allowing it to much more easily be supplanted by commodity Android devices. If everything you're consuming is through webkit, who cares if you're on Android or iOS? Might as well use the one with better Javascript performance anyway. Apple will sti…
I find it kinda amazing how rumor becomes mythology which eventually morphs into accepted fact. Apple has good relationships with game developers. They may not kowtow to egomaniacs, and it always seems a roll of the dice whether a given iteration of hardware compromises results in a pan or a plug from carmack.
I develop apps. This is how I make my living. It would take a complete reversal of apple's attitudes and directions to get me to develop for android. Apple treats me well, pays me on time, and has a viable market where the rules are consistent and reasonable.
Apple treats game developers well. Apple embraced OpenGL way back in the day so that developers could write to one API and deploy on multiple platforms (even Linux, presumably) This isn't Java, of course, but then, Apple also supported Java completely until it became obvious Java had lost in the marketplace (or market segment.)
Apple provides great APIs and functionality to support games on iOS. Maybe Google will catch up, but they're still working on allowing native development.
But this subscription thing is a perfect example of the disconnect between android lovers and reality. Apple has offered a new mechanism to make payments to developers. Do you think developers are angry about this? You think we're switching to android because Apple allows us to sell our software by subscriptions? Why would we be angry? This gives us more flexibility, and saves us the hassle of setting up paypal or whatever.... I've got thousands of customers, and I can assure you, less than a fraction of a percent of them visit my website.
As a developer for and a user of iOS this just furthers Apple's value to me.
I've considered porting apps to Android. I'm not inclined to because I'd rather spend the time making new apps in a market I know is viable for my type of apps.
To win me over, Android would need to: 1) Provide native development (in progress) 2) provide a level of APIs and frameworks of comperable quality to Cocoa touch 3) provide a hardware reference platform and require android licensees to build to it (apparently impossible) 4) develop enough of a market of that common reference platform such that I can develop no more than 2 variations and address >%90 of the market (I develop two versions for iOS an iPad and an iPhone version.) 5) Provide a market where I can sell internationally, where people can easily buy my product, and where people are in the habit of doing so. Right now that's three things the android market doesn't offer.
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#9So, would I still be able to read my whole library of books offline on my iPad? Seriously, if the Kindle app would get pulled from my iPad, the iPad would lose half its value for me. That would be a terrible shame.
You own a Kindle and prefer to read Kindle books on the iPad?
When I didn't own a kindle I used to buy and read a lot of kindle books on my iPod touch. Even now that I own a kindle I share it with the wife, and we might both be on a bus/airplane without internet wanting to read.
I really hope this is not the way forward.
Re: Why Amazon Isn’t Worried About Apple’s In-App Purchasing Rules
#10[with Kindle for the Web] iOS users can just point Safari to Amazon’s site, buy the Kindle ebook, and read it right there in Safari. I was also thinking along those lines. There's the issue of local storage (so that one can read without a network connection), but the HTML5 features on that front will probably be enough. P.S. the iOS Safari browser neatly allows users to place a webpage link on the home screen. It can…
HTML5 local storage isn't ideal for this. It can only hold five or six ebooks at a time.