The Apple Reaper

Doesn't the Kindle Android app allow you to buy ebooks and subscriptions?

Also,while Microsoft does support in-app purchases in their store, they don't restrict other payment methods like Apple does. From Microsoft's Store guidelines:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/maki...

Using your own billing system

Your app and service may already depend on a particular transaction provider or benefit from ties to other lines of business. Your customers want the trust and efficiency of a familiar, trusted transaction experience. You can use your own transaction provider within your app to provide the experience your customers expect.

If you are not using the Windows Store as your transaction provider, you will want to make sure that your app meets all of the certification requirements such as: Identifying the transaction provider to the user during purchase confirmation Prompt the user for authentication before processing the transaction Your payment processor must meet the current PCI Data Security Standard

Google's Play Store ecosystem disallows you to use any other provider but the Android in-app billing via ToS. Likewise, Kindle disallows you from using any other in-app payment mechanism besides their custom in-app SDK. FYI, Kindle apps need approval, unlike apps in the Google Play store. So this is no different (in fact worse, because you now have to maintain two code bases and accounting systems).

Good to know about Microsoft - thanks.

Edit: Ah, the Kindle app for Android. I misunderstood. It's possible that Google might deem those violations (see links to the relevant section I posted in parent). Their DOJ mess with eBooks might prevent them from taking such measures though.

> This trend of running straight to social news sites (e.g. HN) whenever something goes wrong is very strange

This seems more general than just when things go wrong. I've noticed a lot of posts on Reddit in /r/math and /r/physics from college students asking for advice on what order to take classes, for example. A student might state he is a math major, and want to know if he should take linear algebra or real analysis first. Typically, he omits to state what school he attends, or what kind of math he is interested in.

These questions puzzle me, because the answer to this kind of question depends on details of the school's math curriculum, and vary from school to school. For instance, at some schools linear algebra is the first "proofs" course, and typically should be taken after freshman calculus as a transition to higher math.

At other schools there is a separate course specifically on proofs and mathematical reason designed to prepare students to transition from the practical oriented calculus courses to the theory oriented "real" math classes. At such a school, the order of linear algebra and real analysis is probably best determined by what courses have which as prerequisites and what the student is interested in.

I would expect the obvious thing to do when wondering what order to take courses in would be to (1) check the requirements for your degree--there should be specific courses you have to take so you need to make sure you don't do anything to screw taking those, (2) work out from that and from the prerequisites from those courses any constraints on when you must take specific courses, (3) look at examples your school gives of typical schedules for students pursuing that degree, and (4) TALK TO YOUR ADVISOR--I assume schools still assign to each student an advisor in their major to give them guidance on course selection and such.

Similarly, people will post saying they are taking a course in X next term, and would like to get a head start--what book should they read? Again, the often don't tell us the school so we can go look up the course and try to figure out what level it is at. They don't tell us what the textbook is so we can pick something that fits in well with that.

It apparently never occurs to them to ask their professor what would be a good book, or to ask older students who have already taken the class, or to go to the library and spend an afternoon looking at a few books on the subject to find one on their own.

"why hasn't Apple fixed this fucking stupid review process?"

Are you asking why it's not perfect? That's an impossible standard. In general app approval seems significantly ahead of where it was in past years.

"They have the resources to pay cheap reviewers who are probably better than this guy."

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most large businesses have the resources to hire people better than their worst employees. Again if you're asking why their staff is not all 5 star employees who never make mistakes I don't even know where to start.

"Why not allow all apps into the store as long as they pass some security checks done by Apple (no downloading executables etc)?"

Because they don't want spam, porn, hate apps, whatever. It's easy to make sweeping judgements about what's best when you aren't actually managing a 200 billion dollar brand.