Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

I think we were all afraid of some move like this. Nobody cares about Sony's ebooks. Everybody (me included) cares about Kindle.

I can sort of understand where Apple is coming from in this. They provide an ecosystem and apps live within their ecosystem.

That being said, I can't see Amazon or any other big player rolling over on a margin of 30%. This is the problem with one fixed margin: it works well for apps and music but not necessarily for other things.

You see the same problem with the Mac App Store: smaller devs love it. Will you see Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on it? I doubt it. 30% is just too much for those big players to hand over.

I consider Kindle to be a key part of my iPad experience and I can say if the end result of this is that I can't read my Kindle books on my iPad I will be pissed. I bought them specifically because I could.

Ultimately though I think Apple needs to give up control here. They should provide a payment infrastructure and if it's comeplling, people will use it. If it's not, they won't. But don't make me a casualty of war in the names of the the consistency of your 30% cut.

30% can be the entire profit margin for electronic content. The apps themselves are free and the provider has to pay a significant chunk back to the content owner (author, label, studio or publisher), leaving a much smaller margin for the retailer. 30% to Apple simply makes iOS unprofitable.

This also extends to subscription services. Do you expect Netflix or Hulu to hand over 30% of subscription revenue? I don't think so.

> Everybody (me included) care about Kindle.

I am very happy with my Nook and the no-DRM policies adopted by O'Reilly, Manning Pragmatic and probably others. I am also delighted with the amount of interesting material freely available on Feedbooks (in Kindle-friendly format too)

You'd think the App Store pricing model would repulse the big players, but Microsoft have actually said they're seriously considering the Mac App Store (http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/20110127/microsoft-consideri...).

I too am not happy about losing the ability to read Kindle books on my iPad. But does Amazon allow Apple (and Google and Sony) to sell their ebooks on Kindle? This is shaping up to be a battle of walled gardens. While the gardens battle, Google Books and Android are looking a lot more attractive.

Anyone can sell e-books on-line and email them to your kindle. Baen's Webscriptions (http://www.webscription.net/) has been doing this for years.

A color Kindle can't come fast enough. Then I'll have no need (and little temptation) for a Kindle app on my iphone.

If Amazon don't roll over, then someone else will and they'll be laughing all the way to the bank.

No they won't.

This isn't something Amazon (or another big player) can do, they simply don't have a large enough profit margin to support giving apple 30% of the full purchase price.

This will end up being nothing more than another straw on the camel's back. When (if?) a true competitor comes out, it seems that the best marketing for the new device will be done by Apple themselves.

It'll work for someone, it always does.

When debating the openness of platforms, an example oft mentioned is consoles: Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony each own their respective console market, taking a tithe from every transaction occurring on the device. Such an example has frequently been used to justify various of Apple's actions.

I don't buy it, though.

My xbox is just a toy, in essence. It's an entertainment device that I could discard with little loss. A general computing device, which is what I think both smartphones and tablets are, however, are not game consoles. They are not merely entertaining frills. This sort of "landholder" gatekeeper model cannot and will not fly.

      Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony each own their respective 
      console market, taking a tithe from every transaction occurring 
      on the device

That's why I never owned a console and played games on my computer: consoles and the provided game titles are way too expensive for the value provided, not to mention "features" like multiplayer over the network have been in PC games like Doom since the early '90 or even earlier.

The right comparison should really be versus Microsoft and Windows.

As much as I hated Microsoft's iron hand over the years, seeing Apple in action makes Microsoft look like saints interested in interoperability, openness and innovation for the greater good; the fuck? :-)

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