18 ms·

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sen

Let me tell you how to buy a kindle book for my kid’s Kindle that is connected via a child account in “Amazon Household” to my Amazon account. (This opening sentence already signals how the rest of this will go). A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them. 1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 2. I open Kindle app on my iphone and find the book there - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. 3. Turns out - you can only buy a book by opening a web version of Amazon in Safari on the iphone. I open up Safari, go to Amazon, dodge and dismiss repeated prompts to open the Amazon app, find the book - it says “Kindle”, it says “Available instantly”, it says “$2.99”, but there’s no “Buy” button. Instead - “The Kindle title is not currently available for purchase.” 4. I find another book, I buy it. Now I need to find how to share it with my kid. 5. I open app Kindle app on my iphone, click on the book expecting some kind of “share” - nope, nowhere I look am I able to find share functionality in the app. 6. I google “how to share your kindle book with child account”, here’s the answer I get: “ On the Amazon webpage, click “Account and Lists”, then click “Manage content and devices” in the “Digital content and devices section of the page”. On the “Digital Content” page, click “Books”. Delightful experience.

kelnos 3y ago
I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; I think Amazon is actually right to refuse to play ball on this. Regardless, though, once you know how to do it, you only have to do two of those steps, which seems... fine?
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; That only explains steps 1-2.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > That only explains steps 1-2. Okay, so Steps 1-2 can be explained by the closed ecosystem of the device. You don't get these hurdles if your device is not closed-off. Step 3 can be explained by the retailer of that good complying with international IP laws. Step 4 is just step 1 for everyone else. Step 5 is a legitimate WTF moment. Step 6 is once again the result of avoiding the open ecosystem (the web). Of those 6 steps that the GP complained about: 1. 3 of them are self-inflicted because of his choice of device and usage, 2. 1 is due to legal issues, 3. 1 is not a valid complaint, 4. 1 is an actual and valid complaint about the lack of a feature in the app.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  Amazon is not innocent here. They are incredibly predatory as a middleman
  - muzani 3y ago
    I buy a $10 book on Google Books, $3 goes to Google, $7 goes to the publisher. I buy the same on the Kindle Android app, $3 goes to Google, ?? goes to Amazon, < $7 goes to the publisher. Since Amazon had been selling books on the Kindle app for a while, I assume they made more than 30% to be worth it, or pushed the cost to the publishers? Or probably worked out some deal with Google, which seems a bit unlikely.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      For a long while everybody ignored the Google's cut from the purchases. Google only started enforcing it a couple of years ago.
      - muzani 3y ago
        Ah that makes sense. I think the workaround was that you could pay without entering payment information, but Google didn't go into every app to enforce this at the time.
    - orwin 3y ago
      Amazon's cut is 60%, 75% if you're not in an Amazon exclusivity deal (you also won't get boosted). So basically Google 3$, Amazon 4$, publisher 3$. If you go to Amazon marketplace directly, Amazon gets 6$, publisher gets 4$. Amazon complaining about predatory marketplace is rich.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mcphage 3y ago
  > but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods I imagine that Amazon did the math here and decided that the 30% is more than the lost sales due to the obnoxious process involved, but I struggle to see how that's true.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Apple prohibits Amazon from selling books on the iOS Kindle app, trying to force people to buy it via Apple Books instead.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    Apple is not prohibiting anything. This is purely Amazon's decision. They make customer's life hell to save money.
    - mavhc 3y ago
      Amazon don't want to pay Apple's ransom, Apple has no part in the transaction, has no costs, yet is acting as the Mafia, demanding their cut if you operate on their territory. Giving in to Apple's crimes would be immoral.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        Crimes? It's market economy, man. Apple created great phones. Think Apple and its phones are bad? Don't offer your app on them. Oh but everyone uses these phones. So if you're amazon you now offer the app in a half-assed way to capture customers but avoid giving Apple money for further improvement of their phones... Cool beans! Way to take care of your customers.
        mavhc 3y ago
        That's the point, if a lot of people use the platform you can't ignore it, so you're forced to either offer a bad experience or pay the extortion fee, EU will have to fix it I guess https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/AT.40437 https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/AT.40437
        politelemon 3y ago
        This is completely wrong and sportsteamy. Apple set the scene by getting away with a light wrist slap for colluding with major publishers. That set the scene for the book ecosystem as you see it now. Twisting the situation to fit a brand loyalty is in poor taste.
contingencies 3y ago
Just teach your kid libgen and be done with it.
- jdshaffer 3y ago
  But libgen doesn't have "Good night, Gorilla". :-) Personally, I stick with paper books for kids, even books (and not picture books.) EDIT: Added a missing closing parentheses. I'm a bad LISPer...
  - fjkdlsjflkds 3y ago
    > But libgen doesn't have "Good night, Gorilla". https://annas-archive.org/search?q=good+night+gorilla https://annas-archive.org/search?q=good+night+gorilla
    - notcensored02 3y ago
      [dead]
    - jdshaffer 3y ago
      Nice find! :-)
- prawn 3y ago
  We use the Libby app. Just need a local library card and kids can freely reserve and borrow ebooks to read on phones and tablets. Helps with voracious readers who finish reading short novels in the car home from the shops if you buy them a physical book.
manicennui 3y ago
I'm pretty sure you can't buy Kindle books with Amazon's iOS apps because Apple wants a cut.
- VincentEvans 3y ago
  And yet I can buy entire contents of the amazon using the Amazon shopping app. Or Walmart app. Or Target app. Or Best Buy app. Opening amazon.com via Safari on an iphone is a throwback and a very odd experience - I haven’t needed to use a mobile version of amazon.com in ages - i use the app for all my Amazon shopping. And one other thing - I can’t stand Musk, but given my experience with Amazon in a world where WeChat exists - perhaps Musk has a chance with his X super app plan after all.
  - lathiat 3y ago
    The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website. This does not apply to physical goods. Which is why all the apps you mentioned are fine. This is the same issue that has been talked about for years, the cause of Epic (Fortnite) vs Apple, etc.
    - VincentEvans 3y ago
      Heh, ok. But re-read the above adventure in digital commerce that I have described. Can none of this be made easier if a company gave even a fractional amount of care? Like, for instance - allow searching and requesting a purchase from a child’s Kindle pending an approval action by a parent? That’s just one example I thought of instantaneously - because I used the damn thing. Can none of the, probably thousands, product- and user-experience experts adept in Amazon Principles and commanding six-digit compensations solve this so that I don’t need to post about it on HN?
      - lathiat 3y ago
chii 3y ago
> Delightful experience. compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read and enjoy.
- zen_1 3y ago
  cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough
  - all2 3y ago
    I also appreciated recent HN threads on Anna's Archive.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    Do the ends justify the means, matey? Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons? How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?
    - chii 3y ago
      > deprived of sales but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle. So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.
      - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
        Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?
grogenaut 3y ago
Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button. It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally. The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't want to pull your copy of "catcher in the rye" to their device accidentally. edit: common question: what's a computer... it's a dying concept where you own the machine you bought instead of rent it, typically consisting of an open source os distribution, and the manufacturer doesn't take 30% of all transactions taking place on that hardware. edit: I want to buy it on my phone: would you be ok paying 30% more than on a pc? Amazon doesn't think so. And giving 30% cut to apple / google would end up with amazon paying apple to sell the book. At that point why ?
- darknavi 3y ago
  > go to amazon on a real computer What's a computer? /s
  - pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
    > /s Thanks, I wouldn't have noticed
- VincentEvans 3y ago
  I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    Flippant? I thought you said iPhone not a Samsung folding phone. That's Android.
    - Izkata 3y ago
      They didn't mention a Samsung phone. "Flippant" is a normal English word that means "dismissive or disrespectful".
munchler 3y ago
I understand your frustration, but what does this have to do with the article?
- VincentEvans 3y ago
  Only to point out that Amazon’s dominant market position allows it to pay very little attention to the issues plaguing participants on both sides of its marketplace with, as it appears, little effect on its bottom line, and I wouldn’t expect them to be resolved in any haste.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
You download the epub off of Library Z or Libgen, and you airdrop it to their device. What you were doing isn't "buying" anything, Amazon has on more than one occasion deleted books off of devices after they had been purchased. On the subject of children's book, a few weeks ago I checked to see if there were retail versions of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books (there were, for Kindle!). Turns out, none of the "turn to page X" instructions are links, but also none of the pages have the original page numbers. $8/each, and you can't get a refund. The Amazon pages are full of 1-star reviews of people bitching about it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
auggierose 3y ago
That's unfortunate, but has nothing to do with the post.
s6ro 3y ago
This "delightful" experience is not just Amazon. Its what happens when large tech. companies play "who blinks first". Apple has a fair share of blame here, with their cut of 30%/15% from digital content they did not help to produce. As someone who enjoys reading on my Kindle and as an early Audible customer, the crap in app browsing and purchasing experience was one of the reasons I put off having an iPhone. After years of complaints, now at least in app Audible books browsing and purchasing works on iPhone, sigh ... Now having an iPhone, I have simply traded one set of bad experiences for another, as currently the set of bad experiences on an iPhone, is less important than the on an Android.
huganabaga 3y ago
If a product is crap, don't buy it. Perhaps a real book on real paper is an alternative?
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Or a open phone...
hathchip 3y ago
Most of this is because the makers of the phone you chose to buy have decided that if you use the Kindle or Amazon app to buy books, they should get 30% of the price of the book.
pavel_lishin 3y ago
We bought an iPad instead of a Kindle Fire because of crap like this. The iPad is still an atrocious experience. I cannot tell if I'm simply aging out of being able to figure out new technology, or if none of the product managers at Apple have young children. But it's marginally better than the Kindle, and it runs Roblox.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
> “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. Apple really want that 30% cut.
fennecfoxy 3y ago
I call this "technoshit", which is the general downhill trend of UX as technology and software becomes more complicated. I suppose there's Doctorow's "enshittification", however that lends more to intentional anti-patterns whereas I try to describe the feeling of "why couldn't they just try harder to make this not shit". Stuff like your experience with Amazon, mine even just last night having to: find where I can buy something I want to stream (already a nightmare), buying it on the "new" Google TV app only to cast to the TV before playing it and getting "this content cannot be played on your TV", before starting it playing on my phone first and _then_ casting, after which it worked.
- VincentEvans 3y ago
  Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?” Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses. So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”. But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality? All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.

kelnos 3y ago

I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; I think Amazon is actually right to refuse to play ball on this. Regardless, though, once you know how to do it, you only have to do two of those steps, which seems... fine?

dragonwriter 3y ago
> I agree that this is ridiculous, but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods; That only explains steps 1-2.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > That only explains steps 1-2. Okay, so Steps 1-2 can be explained by the closed ecosystem of the device. You don't get these hurdles if your device is not closed-off. Step 3 can be explained by the retailer of that good complying with international IP laws. Step 4 is just step 1 for everyone else. Step 5 is a legitimate WTF moment. Step 6 is once again the result of avoiding the open ecosystem (the web). Of those 6 steps that the GP complained about: 1. 3 of them are self-inflicted because of his choice of device and usage, 2. 1 is due to legal issues, 3. 1 is not a valid complaint, 4. 1 is an actual and valid complaint about the lack of a feature in the app.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
Amazon is not innocent here. They are incredibly predatory as a middleman
- muzani 3y ago
  I buy a $10 book on Google Books, $3 goes to Google, $7 goes to the publisher. I buy the same on the Kindle Android app, $3 goes to Google, ?? goes to Amazon, < $7 goes to the publisher. Since Amazon had been selling books on the Kindle app for a while, I assume they made more than 30% to be worth it, or pushed the cost to the publishers? Or probably worked out some deal with Google, which seems a bit unlikely.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    For a long while everybody ignored the Google's cut from the purchases. Google only started enforcing it a couple of years ago.
    - muzani 3y ago
      Ah that makes sense. I think the workaround was that you could pay without entering payment information, but Google didn't go into every app to enforce this at the time.
  - orwin 3y ago
    Amazon's cut is 60%, 75% if you're not in an Amazon exclusivity deal (you also won't get boosted). So basically Google 3$, Amazon 4$, publisher 3$. If you go to Amazon marketplace directly, Amazon gets 6$, publisher gets 4$. Amazon complaining about predatory marketplace is rich.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mcphage 3y ago
> but blame Apple and Google for wanting their 30% cut of digital goods I imagine that Amazon did the math here and decided that the 30% is more than the lost sales due to the obnoxious process involved, but I struggle to see how that's true.
fragmede 3y ago
Apple prohibits Amazon from selling books on the iOS Kindle app, trying to force people to buy it via Apple Books instead.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  Apple is not prohibiting anything. This is purely Amazon's decision. They make customer's life hell to save money.
  - mavhc 3y ago
    Amazon don't want to pay Apple's ransom, Apple has no part in the transaction, has no costs, yet is acting as the Mafia, demanding their cut if you operate on their territory. Giving in to Apple's crimes would be immoral.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      Crimes? It's market economy, man. Apple created great phones. Think Apple and its phones are bad? Don't offer your app on them. Oh but everyone uses these phones. So if you're amazon you now offer the app in a half-assed way to capture customers but avoid giving Apple money for further improvement of their phones... Cool beans! Way to take care of your customers.
      - mavhc 3y ago
        That's the point, if a lot of people use the platform you can't ignore it, so you're forced to either offer a bad experience or pay the extortion fee, EU will have to fix it I guess https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/AT.40437 https://competition-cases.ec.europa.eu/cases/AT.40437
      - politelemon 3y ago
        This is completely wrong and sportsteamy. Apple set the scene by getting away with a light wrist slap for colluding with major publishers. That set the scene for the book ecosystem as you see it now. Twisting the situation to fit a brand loyalty is in poor taste.

contingencies 3y ago

Just teach your kid libgen and be done with it.

jdshaffer 3y ago
But libgen doesn't have "Good night, Gorilla". :-) Personally, I stick with paper books for kids, even books (and not picture books.) EDIT: Added a missing closing parentheses. I'm a bad LISPer...
- fjkdlsjflkds 3y ago
  > But libgen doesn't have "Good night, Gorilla". https://annas-archive.org/search?q=good+night+gorilla https://annas-archive.org/search?q=good+night+gorilla
  - notcensored02 3y ago
    [dead]
  - jdshaffer 3y ago
    Nice find! :-)
prawn 3y ago
We use the Libby app. Just need a local library card and kids can freely reserve and borrow ebooks to read on phones and tablets. Helps with voracious readers who finish reading short novels in the car home from the shops if you buy them a physical book.

manicennui 3y ago

I'm pretty sure you can't buy Kindle books with Amazon's iOS apps because Apple wants a cut.

VincentEvans 3y ago
And yet I can buy entire contents of the amazon using the Amazon shopping app. Or Walmart app. Or Target app. Or Best Buy app. Opening amazon.com via Safari on an iphone is a throwback and a very odd experience - I haven’t needed to use a mobile version of amazon.com in ages - i use the app for all my Amazon shopping. And one other thing - I can’t stand Musk, but given my experience with Amazon in a world where WeChat exists - perhaps Musk has a chance with his X super app plan after all.
- lathiat 3y ago
  The reason is that Apple specifically requires all digital only purchases to only use in-app payment and must give Apple 30%. You are not allowed to process digital purchases through an app with your own payment system. You also can’t tell people that or link them to the website. This does not apply to physical goods. Which is why all the apps you mentioned are fine. This is the same issue that has been talked about for years, the cause of Epic (Fortnite) vs Apple, etc.
  - VincentEvans 3y ago
    Heh, ok. But re-read the above adventure in digital commerce that I have described. Can none of this be made easier if a company gave even a fractional amount of care? Like, for instance - allow searching and requesting a purchase from a child’s Kindle pending an approval action by a parent? That’s just one example I thought of instantaneously - because I used the damn thing. Can none of the, probably thousands, product- and user-experience experts adept in Amazon Principles and commanding six-digit compensations solve this so that I don’t need to post about it on HN?
    - lathiat 3y ago

chii 3y ago

> Delightful experience. compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read and enjoy.

zen_1 3y ago
cough mobilism.org/libgen.is/irc channels/z-library cough
- all2 3y ago
  I also appreciated recent HN threads on Anna's Archive.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  Do the ends justify the means, matey? Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons? How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?
  - chii 3y ago
    > deprived of sales but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle. So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?

grogenaut 3y ago

Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button. It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally. The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't want to pull your copy of "catcher in the rye" to their device accidentally. edit: common question: what's a computer... it's a dying concept where you own the machine you bought instead of rent it, typically consisting of an open source os distribution, and the manufacturer doesn't take 30% of all transactions taking place on that hardware. edit: I want to buy it on my phone: would you be ok paying 30% more than on a pc? Amazon doesn't think so. And giving 30% cut to apple / google would end up with amazon paying apple to sell the book. At that point why ?

darknavi 3y ago
> go to amazon on a real computer What's a computer? /s
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
  > /s Thanks, I wouldn't have noticed
VincentEvans 3y ago
I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.
- javajosh 3y ago
  Flippant? I thought you said iPhone not a Samsung folding phone. That's Android.
  - Izkata 3y ago
    They didn't mention a Samsung phone. "Flippant" is a normal English word that means "dismissive or disrespectful".

munchler 3y ago

I understand your frustration, but what does this have to do with the article?

VincentEvans 3y ago
Only to point out that Amazon’s dominant market position allows it to pay very little attention to the issues plaguing participants on both sides of its marketplace with, as it appears, little effect on its bottom line, and I wouldn’t expect them to be resolved in any haste.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

You download the epub off of Library Z or Libgen, and you airdrop it to their device. What you were doing isn't "buying" anything, Amazon has on more than one occasion deleted books off of devices after they had been purchased. On the subject of children's book, a few weeks ago I checked to see if there were retail versions of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books (there were, for Kindle!). Turns out, none of the "turn to page X" instructions are links, but also none of the pages have the original page numbers. $8/each, and you can't get a refund. The Amazon pages are full of 1-star reviews of people bitching about it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

auggierose 3y ago

That's unfortunate, but has nothing to do with the post.

s6ro 3y ago

This "delightful" experience is not just Amazon. Its what happens when large tech. companies play "who blinks first". Apple has a fair share of blame here, with their cut of 30%/15% from digital content they did not help to produce. As someone who enjoys reading on my Kindle and as an early Audible customer, the crap in app browsing and purchasing experience was one of the reasons I put off having an iPhone. After years of complaints, now at least in app Audible books browsing and purchasing works on iPhone, sigh ... Now having an iPhone, I have simply traded one set of bad experiences for another, as currently the set of bad experiences on an iPhone, is less important than the on an Android.

huganabaga 3y ago

If a product is crap, don't buy it. Perhaps a real book on real paper is an alternative?

Ekaros 3y ago
Or a open phone...

hathchip 3y ago

Most of this is because the makers of the phone you chose to buy have decided that if you use the Kindle or Amazon app to buy books, they should get 30% of the price of the book.

pavel_lishin 3y ago

We bought an iPad instead of a Kindle Fire because of crap like this. The iPad is still an atrocious experience. I cannot tell if I'm simply aging out of being able to figure out new technology, or if none of the product managers at Apple have young children. But it's marginally better than the Kindle, and it runs Roblox.

extraduder_ire 3y ago

> “This app does not support purchasing of this content”. Apple really want that 30% cut.

fennecfoxy 3y ago

I call this "technoshit", which is the general downhill trend of UX as technology and software becomes more complicated. I suppose there's Doctorow's "enshittification", however that lends more to intentional anti-patterns whereas I try to describe the feeling of "why couldn't they just try harder to make this not shit". Stuff like your experience with Amazon, mine even just last night having to: find where I can buy something I want to stream (already a nightmare), buying it on the "new" Google TV app only to cast to the TV before playing it and getting "this content cannot be played on your TV", before starting it playing on my phone first and _then_ casting, after which it worked.

VincentEvans 3y ago
Indeed, in my original post I tried hard to stick to relaying the facts without too much editorializing, to let people make up their own minds as to the level of frustration what I describe evokes in them. But if I were to get to the point - I would express it in the words similar to yours - “what the actual fork?” Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses. So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”. But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality? All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.