4 ms·

Is an iPhone app against the iOS T's&C's?

by josh33 16y ago

YooLi 16y ago
Lack of an iOS player is interesting. I don't see a technical reason why Amazon couldn't make one. Ditto with an iOS video player for Amazon Video-on-Demand. Not making either of those (plus the Amazon Appstore & Kindle) makes me think Amazon is working on an Android platform of their own. They have the capabilities for a pretty solid media-ecosystem (music, video, apps, books, etc).
- unfletch 16y ago
  It actually looks like they could make the web-based UI work in Mobile Safari without too much work. (Easy for me to say.) The UI renders perfectly already. As far as I can tell, playback is the only thing that doesn't work. (But if you "download" a track it'll open in the built-in quicktime player and start playing.) Despite the Flash requirement for uploading, they're already doing non-Flash playback. I don't have Flash installed on my desktop and playback works great. Seeing as Safari has had background audio support since before it was granted to third-party apps, the web UI would be a decent stopgap in lieu if a native iOS app. Here's hoping it's just a bug!
  - trotsky 16y ago
    In a recent article about html5 audio there was a lot of talk about how safari intentionally didn't support automatic audio playback (vs. say chrome and chrome lite). I'm guessing that this would mean you'd have to click a button each time the song changed in your playlist - this would probably suck enough that it explains why they didn't launch with mobile safari support.
    - unfletch 16y ago
      Damn, you're right. I'd played around with Cloud Player a bit last night in Safari/Mac, but I guess I never let it play two songs in a row. I just tried to play an album and it stopped after the first song.
mschwar99 16y ago
The 30% cut of in app sales has to figure in somewhere as well. First time in a while I got a warm fuzzy for having an Android device.
sudoscience 16y ago
Surely Amazon didn't want Apple to have any advance notice.

Is an iPhone app against the iOS T's&C's?

by josh33 16y ago

Is an iPhone app against the iOS T's&C's?

YooLi 16y ago

Lack of an iOS player is interesting. I don't see a technical reason why Amazon couldn't make one. Ditto with an iOS video player for Amazon Video-on-Demand. Not making either of those (plus the Amazon Appstore & Kindle) makes me think Amazon is working on an Android platform of their own. They have the capabilities for a pretty solid media-ecosystem (music, video, apps, books, etc).

unfletch 16y ago
It actually looks like they could make the web-based UI work in Mobile Safari without too much work. (Easy for me to say.) The UI renders perfectly already. As far as I can tell, playback is the only thing that doesn't work. (But if you "download" a track it'll open in the built-in quicktime player and start playing.) Despite the Flash requirement for uploading, they're already doing non-Flash playback. I don't have Flash installed on my desktop and playback works great. Seeing as Safari has had background audio support since before it was granted to third-party apps, the web UI would be a decent stopgap in lieu if a native iOS app. Here's hoping it's just a bug!
- trotsky 16y ago
  In a recent article about html5 audio there was a lot of talk about how safari intentionally didn't support automatic audio playback (vs. say chrome and chrome lite). I'm guessing that this would mean you'd have to click a button each time the song changed in your playlist - this would probably suck enough that it explains why they didn't launch with mobile safari support.
  - unfletch 16y ago
    Damn, you're right. I'd played around with Cloud Player a bit last night in Safari/Mac, but I guess I never let it play two songs in a row. I just tried to play an album and it stopped after the first song.

mschwar99 16y ago

The 30% cut of in app sales has to figure in somewhere as well. First time in a while I got a warm fuzzy for having an Android device.

sudoscience 16y ago

Surely Amazon didn't want Apple to have any advance notice.