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iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

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Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#121

Post by Vicinity9635 »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #97
justanotheratom wrote: post #60

Apple is generally on the side of customers, but this is a clear example of how anti-customer-friendly their policy was. As a customer, I had to jump through hoops to buy a book on their premium platform.

> Apple is generally on the side of customers, I'm not convinced; Planned obsolescence, repair issues, phone-home privacy issues, vendor lock-in, etc Apple is certainly innovative which helps consumers, but that's about it. The rest is bare minimum for the price point.

Apple maps, "Intelligence", siri, etc all run on device because Apple is in the market of selling devices. As many as they can. Whereas google is in the market of selling you to advertisers.

It's literally a major difference in their fundamental business models.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#122

Post by lurk2 »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #109
lurk2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head: - Substantially poorer performance - Keyboard is less accurate - YouTube videos can’t be played on the lock screen without some tricks - Apple Maps (it is basically at parity now, however). - Translate feature doesn’t have a copy button - The storage bug - No option for manual cache clearing - SMB protocol doesn’t work with Windows and doesn’t display error messages - File transfers are substa…

> - YouTube videos can’t be played on the lock screen without some tricks Waiwaiwait. Hold the phone. That’s GOOGLE’s decision, not Apple’s. This whole thread is a circle jerk about how Apple doesn’t let developers do what they want. It’s a general purpose computer and all that. This is an example of what happens when Apple doesn’t prevent developers from doing something anti-consumer.

We can ignore that one, then, but my understanding was that the functionality has been disabled twice; first by Apple, and later by YouTube. I could be wrong, though, it's been almost 15 years.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#123

Post by adamwk »

justanotheratom wrote: post #60

Apple is generally on the side of customers, but this is a clear example of how anti-customer-friendly their policy was. As a customer, I had to jump through hoops to buy a book on their premium platform.

I guess this is a side-effect where, as things stood, developers were incentivized to just forgo IAP and force users to jump through hoops to find how to give them money; and that in turn wasn’t customer friendly. But in general I much prefer IAP to whatever payment system the developer uses. It makes it so easy to do things like change or cancel any payments I have.

In general I think centralized stores are customer friendly but anti developer. As a less controversial example, see how many gamers will wait months or years for a game to leave the Epic game store and go on Steam.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#124

Post by vlovich123 »

adityamwagh wrote: post #113
redczar wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I don’t think Apple is a saint. I think it understands that forcing consumer friendly practices for its customers makes sense especially if they get paid to do so.

Making people pay more on Apple devices for the same service is customer friendly?

Have you tried cancelling your audible subscription? Compare that with the experience cancelling a subscription with Apple and you quickly realize the experience is more consumer friendly. You look at it from a price perspective while others look at it from a value perspective.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#125

Post by davidjade »

cyberax wrote: post #95
madeofpalk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why, as a developer, would you be stupid enough to launch your app as a paid product on the App Store? Higher conversion rate.

That's been highly questionable for a while.

Anecdotal I know but my app converts from free trials at 4x iOS vs Android. Has done so for years and years. Same app, same price, same audience (North American boaters). Similar free trial numbers too.

Niche app that sells at a higher price than your average app. Ie my users have disposable income but the Android users don’t like to pay for higher priced apps like iOS users will.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#126

Post by thaumasiotes »

redczar wrote: post #119
thaumasiotes wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t want to deal with anyone other than Apple for refunds, cancellations, etc. I don’t trust anyone else to make these things easy. Amazon has an incredibly generous return policy. This is a strange argument to make for the Kindle app.

Try cancelling Prime. Then try buying something from Amazon without them trying to trick you into a Prime membership. Amazon sucks. Also its return policies over the years have gotten quite obtuse for physical goods in my experience.

I have canceled Prime. It was a straightforward process. Orders go the way they usually do. There is a call to get Prime, but it's not like it's occupying a place where something else would normally be if you had Prime.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#127

Post by redczar »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #126
redczar wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try cancelling Prime. Then try buying something from Amazon without them trying to trick you into a Prime membership. Amazon sucks. Also its return policies over the years have gotten quite obtuse for physical goods in my experience.

I have canceled Prime. It was a straightforward process. Orders go the way they usually do. There is a call to get Prime, but it's not like it's occupying a place where something else would normally be if you had Prime.

You can’t in good faith try to convince anyone that cancelling Prime is as easy as canceling a subscription on iOS. After cancelling prime whenever you order something dark patterns are used to try to get you to sign up. One such patten is that orders default to charging for shipping with a message stating that if you sign up for Prime shipping is free. This is even if your order qualifies for free shipping. Another is that when you checkout you get taken to a page that offers you Prime at a reduced rate for a week or two. You have to decline before checking out.

You are not engaged in a good faith discussion. Peddle this nonsense to someone else.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#128

Post by wmf »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #115
wmf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple will change the rules back in seconds if the court decision is stayed. Literally billions are at stake here.

There was a period where the Android Kindle app stopped allowing you to make purchases. (You'd have to visit Amazon instead.) But they've resumed. I'm curious about what happened.

Google and Amazon had some kind of cold war about them both wanting to control the living room or something. A few years ago they both decided to play nice.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#129

Post by cyberax »

davidjade wrote: post #125
cyberax wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been highly questionable for a while.

Anecdotal I know but my app converts from free trials at 4x iOS vs Android. Has done so for years and years. Same app, same price, same audience (North American boaters). Similar free trial numbers too. Niche app that sells at a higher price than your average app. Ie my users have disposable income but the Android users don’t like to pay for higher priced apps like iOS users will.

Oh, that's been true for quite a while. iOS is way more lucrative in the US versus Android.

I'm thinking more about web versus AppStore. AppStore discovery just sucks.

Re: iOS Kindle app now has a ‘get book’ button after changes to App Store rules

#130

Post by amanaplanacanal »

wmf wrote: post #128
thaumasiotes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a period where the Android Kindle app stopped allowing you to make purchases. (You'd have to visit Amazon instead.) But they've resumed. I'm curious about what happened.

Google and Amazon had some kind of cold war about them both wanting to control the living room or something. A few years ago they both decided to play nice.

Strangely I still can't buy kindle books from the Amazon app on Android, it still says I have to visit the Website.
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