11 ms·

Apple's 30% vig for ebooks just killed the iFlow Reader app

• tsuraan 16y ago
  I've never used the app, but I'm not seeing why their apparently unique approach to eBooks couldn't run on WebOS, Meego, or Android. I assume there's a good reason, since you don't throw away years of work easily, but I'd love to hear what that reason is.
  • irons 16y ago
    Build a business on Meego? Are you trolling? People in these parts honestly believe Android is a hospitable business environment, but if your business involves selling things, you have to content yourself with a tiny fraction of iOS's revenue potential. That's why these guys aren't pivoting. Their business wouldn't have existed in 2011 without iOS.
    • abrown28 16y ago
      Are you saying that Android is not a hospitable business environment? I'm curious on your take because I'm working on an Android app.
    • tsuraan 16y ago
      Heh, I guess with Nokia's pivot, I should have said WinMo7, but I had actually forgotten about its existence. The point was that there are other phones out there, with app stores that people (apparently) use. I can't imagine any environment (even Meego's) being less business friendly than Apple's, at this point.
      • chc 16y ago
        Even with Apple's developer-hostile policies, it seems like it's at best a toss-up at this point between the massive amount of money available on iOS and the greater freedom elsewhere.
        • Steko 16y ago
          If only we could go back to the salad days before Apple's app store when mobile developers had it good.
          • chc 16y ago
            I think your sarcasm hides a lack of an actual point to your comment (beyond reiterating my comment's point, which was that selling mobile apps seems to kind of suck in general).
            • Steko 16y ago
              I think my actual point was actually that Apple has been great for developers not hostile as you claimed. I think that's true by inspection. I think this developer had a terrible business model that was exposed by entirely predictable changes to market conditions and went out of business and is lashing out.
              • chc 16y ago
                Eh, the fact that Apple has been "great for developers" is largely an accidental consequence of the fact that their platform has a lot of users who are willing to spend money. Apple attracted the users because Apple wanted the users, not because they wanted to help developers out. Without the userbase, iOS would be relatively unattractive (and I don't think Apple would feel like it could pull this kind of move). A large portion of what Apple does that's specifically targeted at developers these days is negative. The NDA, rules so broken they were never consistently enforced, arbitrary rejections, retroactively rejecting apps when they decide to come out with a competitor, etc. Also, I dispute the claim that this rule change was "entirely predictable." Can you show me somewhere that you or anybody else predicted this rule change before it came to light?
    • vlucas 16y ago
      I sell an SEO app ( http://semtab.com http://semtab.com ) on both iOS and Android, and the Android version is outselling the iOS one by a wide margin. It caught me a bit off guard because everyone I know keeps repeating that iOS users buy more than Android ones, but that just hasn't been my experience so far. I even put the iOS version on sale at $0.99 in hopes to increase purchases, but it is _still_ not resulting in as many purchases as the Android version at the original $1.99 price.
      • cageface 16y ago
        Very interesting. Have you marketed them in the same way? Maybe the sheer size of the Android handset market is beginning to turn the tide.
      • gridspy 16y ago
        Now that is an interesting data point. I guess your target market is the tech savvy crowd who are often put off by the iOS closed platform.
      • aaronbrethorst 16y ago
        You may want to consider a new icon for the iOS app (also, please make sure you have an @2x variant of it, too). edit: i've had a couple minutes to try using it. You may want to consider overhauling the application's user experience. It doesn't look or 'feel' like a proper iOS app, and I'm guessing that's why the Android version is outselling the iOS one. * the icons really need @2x variants. * The user workflow is brittle, especially given how few view controllers there are, here. I shouldn't be able to choose to look at the 'Web' or 'Social' tabs until I've selected a domain. * The domain entry experience feels cumbersome. Why is it capitalizing my domain name? * Why do I delete a domain from the 'Web' and 'Social' tabs, and why isn't there an alert prompt? Add Domain: * The navigation bar tint color shouldn't change. * This should be a modal view controller. * The text shadow behind the label looks weird. * The label's text should be something more like: "Domain name:", especially since you already give an example in the text field with its placeholder. * You should call -becomeFirstResponder on the text field when this view controller appears. Anyway, I know you didn't ask for any of this, but hopefully it proves helpful in driving up your sales. Good luck!
  • Osiris 16y ago
    I'm curious about that too. What limitations does Android have that make pivoting hard to do? Why weren't they working on both an Android and iOS app, no to mention WebOS and WP7. It does seem there are a lot of options out there, so there must be a very good reason not to have utilized those platforms. Does iOS provide some APIs that make this type of online purchasing model so much easier than other platforms that it's not even worth investing in something else?
    • pagliara 16y ago
      I think Android users are just less likely to spend money on apps/content vs iOS users.
      • will_lam 16y ago
        I think that's quite the blanket statement. I don't believe that to be the case at all.
      • imrehg 16y ago
        [citation needed]
      • julianz 16y ago
        I have a data point of one (me) who disagrees with that. I've spent heaps on apps. I was shocked to find that iOS makes you enter a password before buying stuff - what kind of a PITA is that?
        • camiller 16y ago
          "I was shocked to find that iOS makes you enter a password before buying stuff - what kind of a PITA is that?" On webOS (myself, wife, daughter) I had the option of requiring a password every time an app was purchased or just letting my 13 year old daughter rack up whatever credit card charges she felt like on her phone. I don't consider it a PITA to enter a password, I consider it a security feature. I am shocked that you imply that android does not have such a requirement and I feel further vindicated in choosing webOS over android.
• axxl 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, why can't they have it as a reader of books that you download on your computer and transfer over via iTunes/any local area network. I admit this is not what they wanted most likely, but they could look into developing applications for Android devices and such as well that allowed royalty-free purchase in an application. As an iOS developer myself, I believe this would bypass the restriction, but I don't know for sure.
  • virmundi 16y ago
    The problem is that this is not the model that is the most hip. What an iDevice user wants is one click purchase to download system. Apple knows this and knows that requiring such would defeat their competition.
    • axxl 16y ago
      Valid point I guess. I also wonder how a company like Amazon handles this situation.
      • jimrhoskins 16y ago
        Amazon is too big to fail/be kicked out of the market.
      • jonknee 16y ago
        Jeff calls Steve and they trade curses and laughs until coming to an agreement and handing off the details to VPs.
    • deleted 16y ago
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• GrandMasterBirt 16y ago
  BOO FREAKETY HOO. They put all their eggs in apple's basket. Sorry dudes, bad strategy.
  • muppetman 16y ago
    You put it a little more harshly than I'd have done, but this is essentially what I was going to say. You shouldn't build your foundations on ground that can move at any time.
    • chc 16y ago
      What ground can't move at any time? Being completely independent of anybody else is mind-bendingly hard. I bet you aren't either. Very few are — most are just lucky enough not to have had their dependencies fail so catastrophically.
      • endgame 16y ago
        There's building on shaky ground, and there's building on ground that's got a known habit of disappearing without warning. iDevices are pretty neat pieces of kit. I was going to dev for iOS, once. I'm glad I didn't make THAT mistake.
        • EdiX 16y ago
          I'd put it this way: there's building on shaky ground and there's building on ground that's designed to disappear as soon as you get something good going. I'm sorry for iFlow's people but if your business requires to be approved by a potential competitor to exist you are going to be in trouble.
      • MatthewPhillips 16y ago
        A web company is the most independent company that exists. They are even, in some cases, outside of control of the government (although this is starting to change). And it isn't mind-bendingly hard; a couple of the biggest companies in technology (Google and Facebook) were started by college students in their dorm rooms / garages.
• ghshephard 16y ago
  Hopefully every (re)seller on the planet is now aware that they should not attempt to build a marketplace on the IOS platform without getting a licence agreement with Apple. I'm very interested in seeing how Netflix and the Kindle play out on the iPad though. If Apple gets too agressive in trying to lock down revenues, they may just end up driving people off their platform on to Google's. Thank goodness for competition - can you imagine if the iPad was the only tablet option for the next couple years. At least this way, Apple will have to exercise some restraint.
  • api 16y ago
    Can't you avoid this by just always buying content via Amazon.com and then downloading it to your device, and avoiding actually shopping on the device? That's what I do.
    • statictype 16y ago
      I think this violates Apple's terms. If you make your content available for sale outside the app, it must also be made available in the app at the same price or less. I'm not sure if this covers normal eBooks or only subscription-based periodicals, though.
    • SoftwareMaven 16y ago
      I believe the rules say if you can buy it online, you have to be able to buy in in-app. I love my Apple products, but this particular rule is making me reconsider how committed I plan on staying.
      • eevilspock 16y ago
        No, I believe this is only true if you provide a link from within your app. For example, as long as Amazon's Kindle app doesn't have a link to the Amazon Kindle bookstore, they don't have to support in-app purchase (and hence don't have to give Apple a cut).
        • 16y ago
• andrewcooke 16y ago
  [mike, if you're the author, you've got a grammatical/cut+paste mixup: "The first of this letter part"]
  • mikecane 16y ago
    I am not associated with iFlow Reader.
• 9999 16y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't they do what Amazon does and just redirect the user to Safari for purchasing books? I suppose that's a very small inconvenience compared to iBooks' direct purchase, but I find it worth the tradeoff to have my purchases available on more devices.
  • rcoder 16y ago
    This "loophole" was closed by Apple during the last round if App Store approval rule changes back in December of last year. The Kindle app seemingly gets a pass, but a number of other applications have been rejected since then.
    • 9999 16y ago
      Ah, that stinks. That kind of inconsistency is very annoying. So you can't even have a link to your web based store (that's all that the kindle app really has now) in the application any more?
      • glhaynes 16y ago
        You can, but if you do you have to offer the same stuff at the same price via in-app purchase.
        • MatthewPhillips 16y ago
          No, you can't have a link to the web store.
          • glhaynes 16y ago
            However, Apple does require that if a publisher chooses to sell a digital subscription separately outside of the app, that same subscription offer must be made available, at the same price or less, to customers who wish to subscribe from within the app. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/15appstore.html http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/02/15appstore.html Also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2535773 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2535773
• epistasis 16y ago
  There are two components to this company: an eBook reading app, and a bookstore. They clearly took much more pride in the app, and that's where they have true value. With the store they are just middlemen, and though perhaps they could add value by helping people find they books they'd most enjoy, they don't seem to be innovating there. In the end their eBooks are just Adobe DRM protected ePubs. So monetizing the middlemen part won't work, but aren't there any number of ways to monetize the reading app part? I, for one, wouldn't mind a flow-based reader. I've bought eBooks from a few places now, but also hate the page-turning interface. This comes across as a stunt to try to change the agency model for book selling. Good luck on that, though, because now you need to convince both Apple and all the publishers to give them 20% again. But why would they do that? Extra middlemen are not going to offer 20% of value in a digital distribution chain.
  • 83457 16y ago
    By extra middlemen are you referring to anyone who sells something on an Apple platform which Apple also sells?
    • epistasis 16y ago
      I'm referring to collecting money through Apple's payment system: Customer --> Apple --> Reseller --> Publisher as opposed to: Customer --> Reseller's website --> Publisher. iFlow says in the linked article this second model is unworkable for them because iFlow can't get by on 30% of the transaction. iFlow wants 50% like they were getting before the agency model.
      • gridspy 16y ago
        If you read carefully, they get (up to) %30 of the book price in margin from the publisher. Then they are asked to turn around and pay %30 of the book price to Apple. This means they make %0 net. Subtract from the %0 net margin the costs of doing business and you are in a lot of trouble. Sounds like they need to move to a premium app model and stop trying to make money from book sales.
• daimyoyo 16y ago
  I think the lesson here is never build a business on another companies platform unless you have rock solid licenses guaranteeing they won't change the rules like this. Same thing for Twitter or Facebook. They can put you out of business if they choose to and it's not wise to give another company a kill switch for your investment.
  • biafra 16y ago
    Following your advice no one could develop anything for iOS. Or Android. Or WebOS. Or any other computing platform. Every platforms vendor could change the rules your depends on.
    • hessenwolf 16y ago
      Or in any legal system (see another of today's posts re changing the rules of online money transmissions in California).
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• mgkimsal 16y ago
  As much as Apple is problematic here, the "90% of ebooks being controlled by 6 publishers who all fix prices and pricing rules" seem to be at least as big an issue as well. I'd think there'd be an opp or two for someone to get in to publishing and selling just ebooks not owned by the big 6, but that market may be too small to try to nurture at this point.
  • Steko 16y ago
    Honestly what is problematic about Apple here? I mean if I start selling ebooks in the corner at Starbucks they may tolerate that but when Starbucks gets into the ebook business there should be a huge red flag going off telling you that the rules will eventually change: either they'll disallow my ebook sales or demand a cut. Another huge red flag is a business model based on buying egoods from a wholesaler and reselling them in another vendors shop. Another question: why couldn't they continue as a reader app and a web app store run by a separate company? (the store licenses the DRM to the reader company) If the answer is that the business doesn't work without the legion of customers the app store brings to the door that's another red flag.
    • MatthewPhillips 16y ago
      I disagree with your analogy. iOS is not a store. The App Store is a store. I'd instead make this analogy: The owner of a bookstore is also the mayor of the town. He enacts a law (via declaration) requiring all bookstores to accept his bookstore's credit cards (of which he gets 30% of the sell price). Luck for Apple they aren't dominant in ebooks. If they do the same thing to iTunes competitors (and it looks like they might), they could be in real trouble with regulators.
      • Steko 16y ago
        Speaking of bad analogies, iOS is not a town that Apple just happened to get elected mayor of. It's more like Disney World and Apple is Disney. Good luck starting your business inside Disney World without living by their rules.
    • 16y ago
• jacobian 16y ago
  The link's plenty interesting, but next time please try to avoid editorializing in the title. A "vig" is the cut taken by a loan shark or bookie and has strong connotations of crime and dishonesty (at least in the US). Apple's not breaking any laws here (right?) so calling it a "vig" is pretty far off base.
  • jrwoodruff 16y ago
    I think it actually conveys the tone of the article well, but yea, it does kind of border on libelous. I don't think the article goes as far as calling it a vig, but it is clear the iFlow team is understandably angry.
  • mikecane 16y ago
    "Vig" was famously used by Nathan Myhrvold in an internal memo to Bill Gates in which he proposed a structure whereby Microsoft could obtain a portion of content transactions that occur on the Internet. He used the term "vig" and it's appropriate here. http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/the-day-apple-became-nathan-myhrvold/ http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/the-day-apple-beca...
    • deleted 16y ago
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• nnutter 16y ago
  Their aesthetics are bad and their iTunes ratings are low. Pretty sure they would have lost to Kindle, iBooks, Nook, etc. anyway.
• jaysonelliot 16y ago
  I love the convenience of ebooks, but the ease of shenanigans in the distribution channel and the ability of a customer to lose an entire library's worth of books over business rules or technical issues distresses me. When you read a paper book, you can be certain that the content in it is the same as when it was printed, and hasn't been edited or censored since you bought it. It can't be taken away from you by the publisher, except by physical force. You can resell it at will. Publishers and retailers who wants to try different pricing strategies can do so without facing the powerful control of Apple or Amazon. I plan to keep on reading ebooks, but I'll buy the books I actually care about in physical form.
  • danilocampos 16y ago
    Alternatively, buy your eBooks and strip the DRM right off the bat. I'm taking no chances and I'm sick of heavy boxes when I move.
    • spiffworks 16y ago
      Alternatively, pirate everything and laugh all the way to the bank
      • fakelvis 16y ago
        Laugh all the way to the bank? It'll be the bank laughing at me if I turn up saying "Look, I saved $9.99 on an ebook by pirating it."
      • berkes 16y ago
        The moment that none-pirated material is a) accessible and buyable by me (Linux, .nl based) b) at least as easy to find and get as pirated material I will immediately buy. In all other situations: I am not going to fiddle with drm-ripping python scripts, convertors, virtual-machines, geo-ip-faking-proxies and so on, just to be able to pay for stuff that I can get without all that hassle for free. I even track down authors for books I like and wire them the money personally, if for some reason their publishers hide behind all this DRM nonsense.
• senthilnayagam 16y ago
  Badmouthing iOS platform and appstore policies wont help. They knew the risk when the appstore was launched, the only exit strategy was acquisition by a established publisher or seller, which did not materialize. Apple is a thought leader, Android and others just copy their policies, so expecting the margins on other platform is not viable on longer term. If I was CEO of iFlowReader I would retune the business models for current realities, tying up with self book publisher like lulu, xlibris, who can offer 50% margins on ebook sales.
• richcollins 16y ago
  Apple is doing the job of the publishers (marketing). If anything the publishers should reduce the amount that they take.
• GHFigs 16y ago
  tl;dr : retailer's cut under agency model - platform provider's cut of in-app purchases = 0 The author attributes the agency model to Apple, which I think is understating the role of the publishers, who would have rejected it if it hadn't been very much in their own interests. Expecting the publishers to keep giving you outsized discounts[1] for no reason but inertia was a mistake. Even Amazon couldn't keep that gravy train rolling. The market was begging for a shaking and Apple shook. [1]:Does this sound stable? "There is no comparison between the retailers’ costs and risks associated with physical books and those associated with ebooks. There is no economic justification to providing the same level of discounts. But that’s where we are." That's from April 2009. -- http://www.idealog.com/blog/ideas-triggered-by-amazon-buying-lexcycle http://www.idealog.com/blog/ideas-triggered-by-amazon-buying...
  • mikecane 16y ago
    >>>The author attributes the agency model to Apple This is because it was Apple that devised the Agency Model and was the first to propose it to the Big Six publishers as a way of getting them on iOS. This led to Macmillan battling with Amazon one infamous weekend and had Amazon retaliate by removing all Buy buttons from Macmillan books. Amazon soon capitualted, other publishers -- except for Random -- piled on, moving to the Agency Model. When Random finally joined, all their books went up anywhere from $2 to over $7 in price.
    • GHFigs 16y ago
      This is because it was Apple that devised the Agency Model and was the first to propose it to the Big Six publishers as a way of getting them on iOS. "....which I think is understating the role of the publishers, who would have rejected it if it hadn't been very much in their own interests." Apple just gave them a better deal than the one Amazon was willing to fight dirty to maintain.
• ssebro 16y ago
  This is exactly the reason that I haven't bought an iPad 2- I intend to use it for the netflix and kindle apps, and I'm not sure if they're still going to be there in 6 months. For a $500 device, the risk was just too high. I got a kindle instead, and I just use my laptop for netflix...
  • ssebro 16y ago
    Apple needs to realize that their greed may kill their platform. Nobody would buy an iOS device with no killer apps - especially when android is getting better every day. As an iOS developer, I fully expect the platform to go the way of the dinosaurs.
    • kovar 16y ago
      What previous similar missteps has Apple made that support your theory? Apple's been batting well over .500 and their sales and stock price both indicate appreciation and support.
      • te_chris 16y ago
        Yeah, they're doing great, but you can't backup your theory with two measures that are heavily dependent on past results. If you think Apple are going to keep doing as well as they are now in the face of some pretty ferocious competition then you can't just cite current sales and stock price.
      • ssebro 16y ago
        This is just common sense- most customers wouldn't buy an iBrick (iphone w/o killer apps), and even apple knows it- that's why they focus on killer apps in their ads. Google is smart enough to know that you shouldn't tax your business partners out of business, even for short-term gains. Sure, apple is going to own the ereader market on the iOS platform, but they've introduced so much risk into being an iOS developer that it's very, very silly to build a business on top of them.
• biot 16y ago
  One word: disintermediation. iFlowReader was acting as an intermediary, selling a publisher's ebook to a reader and taking 50% of the revenue. Why should Random House pay someone 50% of the selling cost for doing an arbitrage play on a bunch of ones and zeros with no additional effort? Random House can cut out the middle man (who adds no value) and sell it themselves. It's a smart business move. Now iFlowReader claims to offer a more compelling interface, so pivot and find a way to sell the reader software either to end-users who can import their already-purchased ebooks or license it to the publishers. Offer branded versions of the software to the publishers if it's that good and charge the publishers based on a percentage of the gross purchased through the software, which should be quite easy to track.
  • KaeseEs 16y ago
    Except RandomHouse isn't cutting out a middleman here, they're just using a different one.
    • biot 16y ago
      I was of course referring to a middleman between Random House and Apple. Whether Apple is also a middleman is a different discussion.
      • MatthewPhillips 16y ago
        How was iFlow Reader a middle man between Random House and Apple?
        • hollerith 16y ago
          In that the owners of IFlow Reader tried to monetize by getting a piece of every ebook sale, and when that strategy failed, they decided to stop selling iFlow Reader.
• robert_nsu 16y ago
  I'm not sure how much money they have made over the time before Apple imposed a 30% fee on book sales and the like, but I fail to see why they couldn't port their app to another platform. You know, instead of kicking the sand around and calling it quits.
• marcamillion 16y ago
  This is sad...but it has a very self-pittyish tone, which makes it come across as annoying. Like the brat at the party that everybody wants to smack.
• comex 16y ago
  They should wait until June 30th and see what happens between Apple and Amazon.
• kleptco 16y ago
  When you decide to develop for a platform, you are dependent on the platform provider's goodwill if they are not open source. Why would anyone who has paid any attention to Apple, depend on their goodwill?
• trezor 16y ago
  As a iPhone-user gone Android, I can't wait to see all the awesome services which will be coming my way as Apple makes iOS an unfeasible platform to build on. So far their greed has been tolerated due to an early iOS lead on app-profitability. Now that the iPhone is getting (severely) dated with next to no advantages to bolster, and with Android overtaking iOS in every way (including the one which counts: marketshare) I can't see this holding up for very long. Soon enough enough people will say "Fuck Apple" and just head to Android, leaving iOS as a niché market. Why develop for 10% of the world's smartphones when you could be doing 80%? Even if Android customers were 400% less willing to buy apps (and no, no current market trends indicate that is the case), Android would still be more profitable to developers. Apple is doing some serious gambling here, and I honestly don't think it will play out to their advantage.
  • pseudonym 16y ago
    The problem is that it's not an if-else scenario with Apple and Android. Right now Apple is booting developers out with their restrictions, and in this case, the developer is making the same app as Apple has for free (iBooks). And if there's not sufficient Android users to make developing this app for the Android worth doing, then the developer isn't going to swap platforms, they'll just pack up and go home. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see more Android developers. I just don't think it's very likely until and unless Android picks up more steam...and that probably won't happen until the Android App store is as saturated in iOS's.
• Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  Why should I be that bothered about this? As a consumer I want less people between me and the actual producer of the work so another intermediary going out of business bothers me not at all. My ideal world is that I buy a novel direct from an author, perhaps paying a small commission to a single intermediary. Author to publisher to iFlow to Apple to me isn't efficient. Yes there is an issue here with how Apple and the publishers behave but there is also a significant issue with how much value iFlow were adding in exchange for their cut. A slightly different (maybe better) reader simply isn't worth the 30% they seem to be planning on.
  • user24 16y ago
    As a consumer why would you care about the route content takes from producer to consumer? The only thing that matters is the content and how you consume it. If iFlow offered a better way to consume it then you should be happy to get it from them, and sad that you can no longer. I really don't see where 'efficiency' comes into it?
    • Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
      My point is that for a business to work the value you add must be in some way proportional to the money you make - if it's not you're going to be vulnerable and that's what happened here. I don't care about efficiency as a consumer but I recognise that if a business is making a transaction less efficient while adding little actual benefit that's likely (not certainly but likely) to be a problem for them. In essence the iFlow USP seems to be their reader app - everything else was being done by someone else either the same or better. How is that seriously going to a warrant 30% cut (which is what they were getting from the publishers) in the face of greater choice and likely better prices from Amazon and Apple? Selling books from large scale conventional publishers is a bulk market right now and if you can't answer the question "how do I compete with Amazon?" you're in trouble and "a nice reader app" simply isn't a good answer.
  • asknemo 16y ago
    Consumers never benefit from a single dominating middleman in the long run.
• nextparadigms 16y ago
  The biggest problem I see with this is Apple won't even allow them to raise prices. So they are knowingly taking them out of the business when they take their 30% cut. If they are going to charge 30% for this, they might as well allow them to raise prices to remain profitable. Why aren't these service companies switching to a HTML5 web app though? Wouldn't that allow them to continue their business untouched by Apple?
  • MatthewPhillips 16y ago
    Untouched by Apple and untouched by customers... You're talking about a company that named itself using Apple's product naming convention. They went all-in on the iOS model. They probably hired strictly ObjC programmers, they probably have no business experience with the web either. I'm not saying they couldn't switch, it just doesn't sound like this is the company with the chops to easily do so.
    • nextparadigms 16y ago
      OK, that makes sense. But if Apple does the same to Amazon or Netflix I can see them going the web app route if they are not allowed to raise prices, because it would eat all their profits, too. Amazon has already showed a web app version of their store, and Netflix is experienced with HTML5, too.
      • MatthewPhillips 16y ago
        Amazon was working on the HTML5 version well before this decision came about (they previewed it during the Chrome Web Store launch). What they showed doesn't looked optimized for touch use. That could change, of course. I imagine their strategy is to stay quiet and hope Apple doesn't go after them; and when/if that happens they'll adjust. They could be one of the few companies capable of eating the cost to stay on the platform but that would mean strengthening a direct competitor. I'm very interested to see how they handle it. As for Netflix.. if you're talking about their HTML5 player that was in the news a few days ago to be on Chrome OS, that requires a plugin. <video> doesn't support DRM -- and never will/can. I think Netflix may be the one company that is given an exception due to their influence over Apple TV sales.
• inkaudio 16y ago
  I wonder why so many publishers and resellers insist on building only native apps. With the current technology you could invest in a web app that is cross platform. DRM can be cracked and it's just an annoyance to people who want to pay for content. However, if you insist on developing commercial apps on the IOS platform than you have to realize that sooner or later Apple will want a cut. In business their is no free lunch, people/companies always want something in return. Google is no different, see: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_skyhook_case_goes_on/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/05/google_skyhook_case_... A Massachusetts court has denied Google's efforts to dismiss a hot-button lawsuit that accuses the company of unfairly using its Android operating system to strong-arm mobile handset makers into using Google location services rather than those of rival Skyhook. The suit specifically claims that Andy Rubin, who oversees Google's Android project, told Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha that if Motorola didn't drop Skyhook from its phones, Google would remove official Android support from the devices. This would mean the devices could not use proprietary Google apps or the Android name. The suit says that whereas Google paints Android as open source, Google still maintains exclusive oversight of the OS. This may be even worse if entirely factual, because Google doing the exact opposite of what it claims to be.
• michaelcampbell 16y ago
  I found it interesting (perhaps ironic), that that blog post, from a company who is in the ebook business, whose very domain is "iflowreader.com", doesn't flow the text to a narrow browser. It was unreadable on my handset due to the horizontal scrolling required, and I got horizontal scrollbars when I resized the PC browser to smaller than its width.
• jimrandomh 16y ago
  Have you consulted with any lawyers? You might have legal redress against Apple. (Or you might not, depending on details of the Sherman Antitrust Act and other laws with which I am not sufficiently familiar.)
• dusklight 16y ago
  To all developers who own apple products .. why? Seriously? It's like jews cheering for the nazis. I don't understand?
• alanhooker70 16y ago
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