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Comment by leviathant | Hacker News Reader

As much as I'd love to give Apple a hard time over this, I'm going to put it out there that this is likely just capitulation to publishing companies. You have to pay to re-download MP3s and eBooks, but not apps from the app store. I may not like Apple's philosophy regarding a lot of things, but they're generous by comparison to record labels and publishing companies.

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If that's the case why is it that the kindle will sync all my books to my k1, k2, iPhone 3G/3GS and iPad with zero fuss and no repurchases required?

Amazon and Apple my have a different contracts with the publishers?

Amazon is better at negotiating with publishers or has more bargaining chips?

I don’t really know whether Apple’s heart is in all this book stuff (Steve Jobs famously said that Americans don’t read anymore), they might not care all that much at the moment. iBooks might just be a fallback solution in case Amazon tries funny stuff (or some other competitor emerges which doesn’t want to play ball with Apple).

I was under the impression that he said that because he didn't have a book reading application yet and was downplaying the kindle until the iPad was out. Similar to how he downplayed the netbooks until the iPad came out. (Yes iPad and the netbooks are different but they are in the same field. I think it's harder to reinvent books compared to small portable computers. Hence why iBook is pretty much the same as all the ebook software).

I think looking at something (netbooks), then turning around and selling 3 million units of a vastly more expensive and higher margin product in a few months, shows that he was right to downplay it and that the iPad does actually offer something fundamentally different that consumers really want.

> [T]he iPad does actually offer something fundamentally different that consumers really want.

Prestige?

"Your laptop's so small! How do you type on that keyboard?"

"Woah, dude! The screen on your iPod's enormous! That must've cost a mint!"

Amazon's Kindle has similar limits[1].

[1]: http://consumerist.com/2009/06/amazon-tries-to-clarify-downl...

Perhaps so, but I can't buy into the idea that Apple is helpless in the face of their greed. Apple is a huge company, bigger than many publishers, and Steve Jobs is a business god. If he calls up a publisher and explains that iBooks is like someone installing a new bookshelf for the books they already own, and that making them buy new books for a new bookshelf would be laughable (especially when it might dampen their inclination to make more purchases), they're probably going to pay attention to him. I just can't see him passively sacrificing his new revenue stream on the altar of their technical ignorance.

On the other hand, I can sort of see him telling people 'it's not my fault you wedged all those Ebooks into itunes. Are books tunes? Is e = i? No? Then get with the program!'

Edit: 'bigger than any publishers'. D'oh! They're the second biggest publicly traded company by market cap, so arguably Apple is larger than the whole book publishing sector put together in pure $ terms.

Actually, if you buy an app when it's on sale and then try to download it again after it goes off sale, it won't let you.

I once caught a an app that was temporarily free and got it in iTunes with my account it in one of my computers, expecting it to show up as an available download when I got back to the one I sync my phone with. It doesn't appear and I had to copy the .ipa file there.

I have no experience trying to redownload paid apps that are still the same price, but first thing I did was to add .ipa files to my daily mozy backup.

In my experience if you delete an app you have paid for you have to try and re-buy it and type your password in but just before it would normally do the transaction it tells you that you already have the application and its a free download. I imagine the same thing might have happened if you had tried to buy the app you got on sale again.

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