KerryB

@analogfile Jeez, that sounds great... what bank is that?

The terms state explicitly that the price charged within the app must the the same or lower than that charged elsewhere (e.g. the provider's web site). And the press release said specifically :

"In addition, publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app."

As eBooks are "content", this would seem to indicate that the same rules apply to those.

Amazon can either charge the same $10 in their app that they do on their site, but receive only $7, or they can charge $14.30 in both places, to maintain their $10 net from app store purchases (while making much more on web site purchases, of course, though the consumer pressure of a 43% increase in their costs is significant). Or they can do some number in between that tries to keep their total net between both systems as close as possible to $10 * Number of Sales. In either of the latter scenarios the price the consumer sees goes up... in the former, Amazon takes a 30% hit, which is absurd to contemplate them doing.

There are options of course, other than abandoning the platform completely... they could bury the in-app purchasing option deep in some settings menu that's a pain to get to and say in plain words (not a link!) that content "may" be purchased from their website, which would probably be enough to avoid most people bothering with in-app purchasing.

Or they could, probably, write a mobile web app that replicates the functionality. I believe it's possible... Mobile Safari supports the new offline storage (only 10MB, but enough for a few ebooks at least) and gesture support. The primary difficulty would be managing the DRM & other content control mechanisms, which I can't speak to in detail.

In all, it matters a lot to anyone who wants to sell content to iOS users, and without taking sides, I suspect a great deal of fallout in the next few months.

Gosh, I only graduated from college 8 years ago, but I hardly remember anyone using computers for notetaking (though I know that even in 2001 100% of law students had a laptop).

Maybe it was the physics and math classes that made up the bulk of my coursework, but I never took a single note using anything other than a 0.5 mechanical pencil and engineering paper.

Of course I walked to class uphill, both directions, in the snow, too ;)

Bad analogy. Think of it this way.

You were hired to develop software, and your contract stipulates that you get X percentage of every DVD copy sold.

Now imagine the entire industry has started distributing software on the internet rather than DVD.

So now you get X% of nothing. You got fucked.

If you were in a position to do so, you might strike, or otherwise seek renegotiation so you can get a percentage of each *license* sold, regardless of distribution method.

You may argue that that was a stupid contract to sign, and in the software world, it would certainly have been. All I can say is that the software industry and the media industry aren't the same. Residuals have always been a component of compensation, and those who depend on it simply want to ensure that they don't get fucked because of a paradigm shift their standard contracts (negotiated some time in the past) couldn't or didn't predict.

Now, a discussion of whether the whole content industry would be improved if everything was work for hire can commence. I think not, namely because even more money would end up collecting in studio executive suites, but there's room for rational people to debate that.

Wow, cool that TUAW just like that decided to change the policy for App names.

I was going to suggest a compromise, that the links still go to the site's article search function, but that a link to the product home page is inserted above the search results.

It turns one click into two for the users -- which isn't so bad -- and still gives Weblogs, Inc. the ability to promote their story archive.

Anyway, moot now, I guess.

@something

This is a tired old saw. You simply cannot claim that the user experience of the MacOS would be equivalent on a commodity PC. Or rather, you can claim it, but it's not sensible.

I'm not a zealot, I've run every OS under the sun (no pun intended) on hardware ranging from generic WalMart cheapies to high end DEC Alphas and SGI boxes, including MacOS on a licensed PowerComputing clone. At the end of the day "superiority" is measured by the ability of the user to accomplish what they want to accomplish.

Your claim that "the hardware's not that different these days" makes no sense. If there's little to differentiate a Dell XPS from that $300 machine down at WalMart, why the price difference? Why do people buy the Dell? I don't mean to pile on, but the notion that hardware issues would be "left to the manufacturers" and "resolved quickly" is laughable. I could recite a litany of customer "service" experiences dating well back into the days of wonky TNT video cards that put that assertion to rest.

Windows can -- and does -- run great on a machine with good parts and good integration, and runs like shit with inexplicable instabilities, slowdowns and malfunctions on lesser hardware. OSX would likely suffer likewise.

Apple simply does not wish to contend with the enormous support burden of trying to run on everything from a good, well-built, well-tested machine to a cheap piece of crap that you KNOW people would try to install OSX on. If your metric for OS superiority is "runs on everything", then fine, OSX sucks, but that's not a good metric.

I consider OSX a superior desktop OS in major part because it runs on hardware that's well made and stable, on top of offering features that I like and a vibrant developer community. In other words, it lets me do what I want to do.

Now, if you wish to argue that the gap is diminishing because Apple's attention to detail and QA department has been slipping in the past year or so, I'll happily (well, not so happily, in truth) agree with you, but that's a different argument.

It's a pretty remarkable comeback, all in all. The licensing debacle Slevin@10:05 makes note of was perhaps at it's peak around the time that Wired came out.

I myself owned a PowerComputing brand mac clone, which served me reasonably well, but only for about 2 years when it inexplicably started experiencing extreme instability, random shutdowns, etc. Perhaps part of the blame was on the crappy power at university, but I knew many people who didn't have those problems, so, I remain unconvinced. That was in 1998.

That was the last "Mac" I owned until I bought my current PowerBook G4 about 4 years ago, which, considering it's still running great and just barely showing it's age, says something about the difference between the two pieces of hardware.

Anyway, Apple of late has been showing some unfortunate signs of laziness, hostility towards users and troublesome business practices. I see this article as a reminder of where a misguided company can end up, and hope Apple sees the light soon.

Like many who read this blog, I expect, I have that issue of Wired... it's a potent piece of history for any old time Mac head. May it never be repeated.

Seconded. I was only 6 or 7 when we got our first Mac (the same, 512k, though we later got a nice 1 MB ram upgrade ;)


I have fond memories of Chipwits and am damn near guaranteed to pick up a copy of this....

@PaulnJean

Hm, I seem to have no trouble reading books in bed. "Lamps" sure are a handy invention.

Sorry, maybe I have shitty eyes, but trying to read more than an article-length text on an LCD is quite literally torture, especially after a whole day sitting in front of one for work.

Also, "backlights" only work for transmissive displays, which this is not.

RE: Andrew @ Sep 20th 2007 2:05AM

who said "we are people, we are NBC watchers and most importantly we are consumers and should not be shut out."

Fortunately, there's a mechanism in place to show NBC that you're not pleased with this behavior. It's called "the free market" and while I'd never claim it's perfect, *this* is one of those times that it works.

Boycott them.

Of course, if you're serious, you should cancel your cable too, since they get a cut of that pie.