Why not let Apple sell the devices and Amazon sell the content? Great question. It does seem efficient, what with comparative advantage and all. Because then

Why not let Apple sell the devices and Amazon sell the content? Great question. It does seem efficient, what with comparative advantage and all. Because then then that's an experience that's either customer-integrated or concessionary. A customer-integrated experience means bringing your own food to the stadium, maybe from the place across the street. That's what MP3 players were like before the iTunes Music Store. Dedicated experts love customer-integrated experiences, but they're the only ones. A concessionary experience means renting the stadium's food stand to the highest bidder. The highest bidders are either cheapskates or have deeper business motives. The best case is that they just want to expose consumers to some other brand. But when the parties have overlapping interests, things get messy and unstable (i.e. Google on Yahoo, otherwise a great win for users). These types of experiences both have an annoying tendency to suck out loud. Apple's mastery in creating great integrated experiences is one of Steve Jobs' greatest legacies. It's something great creators strive to do and customers are happy to pay for. If Apple were to move away from providing a well-integrated experience, they'd be moving away from not only their key strength but their key value to their users.