It's Apple's platform, they can do what they want with it. The market (including consumers, developers, and entrepreneurs) will decide whether their rules are good things or bad things. Long term, if Apple doesn't continue to foster development on its platform the developers will leave and then (eventually) the customers will follow.
As long as Apple doesn't have a monopoly I agree with you. It should be left up to the consumer marketplace to punish or reward this behavior. Thanks to Android there are options.
That's my biggest beef about the whole thing. I guess you could argue it is Apple's prerogative to change rules, but Kobo and Amazon can't even communicate why things are changing to their customers. It really points out how much the App store is sharecropping. Making apps is not a viable business when so much about developing a business is the customer relationship.
It looks like a popular sentiment that developing apps for the App store is sharecropping. This pops up every time there is a negative wave of news about the App store. Consider Amazon's Kindle app. I buy books from Amazon and read them on my iPhone and iPad. I don't own a Kindle nor other dedicated e-readers. When I get a Kindle, I'll be able to read my Amazon ebooks on it. I'll be happy. And I can continue to read…
The part I consider sharecropping is the lack of communication with your customer. In Amazon's case they've been able to build a very strong brand with lot's of global mindshare, but they had to rely on a webpage in a Kindle blog to explain the changes in the iOS app. They couldn't even put a link in the release notes to explain the loss of a popular feature. In this case, it's sharecropping because you drop your high value branded crop in the Apple cotton gin and Apple decides what commodity that suites their needs comes out the other side.
On one hand I suppose nobody should get a free ride. Apple put a lot of hard work into building such cohesive and user-friendly ecosystem. If they have their own bookstore they're trying to run why should they enable a competitor's in their own home? On the other hand this stinks for consumers. Slightly. They can still go to the website on their own but Apple made it a bit more inconvenient. If you're already a Kindl…
Free ride? That's ridiculous. Developers and partners make or break a platform. How many iPads did Apple sell because of the Kindle app? While there aren't hard numbers, plenty of bloggers talked about deciding between getting an iPad or a Kindle. Based on ebook sales figures, we also know that iBooks is probably third on their own platform, which is another significant clue about what ebook readers would have chosen…
I totally agree with you. I haven't followed this story until my buy button disappeared in Kindle. I think most app users won't realize until they go to buy a book. I'm surprised there isn't more outrage. Apple deliberately reduced the functionality of an astounding number (has to be millions) of their own customers and we've barely complained...? (btw, Apple did not respond to my online complaint.). Now any android or blackberry user has a more functional reader experience than I do on my $900 iPad? Seriously? Maybe the typical eBook reader hasn't realized what happened. It's the only explanation for the lack of public ire.