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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Just like other online book shops don't sell their books on the Kindle device store app.

That's not a good comparison. An iOS device is not like a book shop. The iBooks application is. Nobody's asking that you can buy Kindle books in iBooks, but you can't even buy Kindle books in the Kindle app because Apple would demand 30% of the book. If you open the Kindle app on Windows you can buy books in there and Microsoft doesn't take a cut of the sale. People would lose their mind over this. Why is Apple different?

You can import books via iTunes.

You're still missing the point.

Apple owns a mall (iOS). In that mall, Apple owns a book store (iTunes). Amazon also has a book store in the mall (Kindle).

Apple does not want to sell Amazon's books (Kindle format ebooks) in it's store (iTunes). Ok.

Apple decrees that no store in the mall shall sell any books but iTunes books, which only they may sell. Not Ok.

Amazon is free to sell books in their app, they just need to pay a portion of their revenue for the privilege of doing so much like in the mall.

And Apple is forcing everyone to sell in their mall and no other. That's pretty much the point.

There are other malls available, across the world Apple's mall is quite small.

We're not talking about the world. We're talking about the universe of the iPhone.

In the brick-and-mortar world, malls are fungible, and stores that sell the same goods are fungible. The iPhone is not fungible.

We are talking about the universe of mobile devices.

You are; I don't think we are. Spotify certainly isn't, and it may be entirely reasonable to view the world through that lens.

In relative numbers yes, but I wouldn't call short of a billion active devices "quite small".

Still, there is a choice for anyone that wants to sell products.

Anyone that wants to constrain themselves to a single market, needs to accept the rules of focusing on a single market.

Are you really free to do something if it comes with highly unfavorable conditions then?

Do malls take a portion of the revenue generated from the stores? I assumed they just paid rent and kept the money generated.

How malls and stores negotiate rental agreement is very ad-hoc and strategic but yeah it is often directly or indirectly tied to revenue.

But, at the very least, Amazon doesn’t prevent you from reading ebooks from outside their store on a kindle. They just don’t favilate their discovery. (Unless things changed since I last owned a kindle which was quite a while ago)

Just like Apple does when you import books via iTunes.

Big fan of iTunes, aren't you?

Big fan of pointing out hate agenda of others, that leave details out to make their points.

Apple allows you to have PDFs and ePub files in their Books app as well.

So not sure what you mean.

I just airdrop/send/email even open ePub/pdf in the browser and I can open them in books (the app) to read them!

It’s the same (technically easier as I don’t need to convert ePub to mobi)

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