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Comment by eavc | Hacker News Reader

"It's customer centric, and, if they pull it off (With a good streaming, book reading, and content delivery platform) - brilliant."

I don't see how this is customer-centric in the traditional idea of the term at all. Customers want to be able to listen to Pandora and sync with their Kindle. Customers do not want restrictive DRM and policies that lock them into a given company for eternity.

I thought we were headed in a more open direction regarding the ownership of digital property. Thank goodness for Android.

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We want to be able to listen to Pandora and sync with our Kindle to read e-books. The vast majority of the iOS userbase just want to listen to music and read e-books and do not care as much about what delivery mechanism provides the content. As much as I hate to admit it, they are not really going to miss Pandora or the Kindle app as much as we might like to hope. [For future reference, try not to use the Kindle as a counter-example when talking about restrictive DRM and walled gardens, it may be possible to remove the DRM but pretending it is not there in the first place isn't really honest...]

It is important to draw a distinction between "the Kindle" (the hardware device sold by Amazon) and the "Kindle Store" (Amazon's e-book sales platform).

The Kindle Store, yes, is all about the DRM. And it's the "platform" accessed by the Kindle app on assorted devices.

However, if you're talking about the hardware device then it's entirely reasonable to ignore the DRM issue. You plug it into your computer and it mounts as a USB drive, onto which you can drop books in a variety of non-DRM'd formats (annoyingly not ePub). You can purchase said books from a variety of vendors who are happy to sell you non-DRM-encumbered products.

Amazon obviously really wants you to use these two things together, and the Kindle (device) is well set up to work with the Kindle Store. But they're not forcing you to use only their DRM with the hardware you bought.

The iPad also displays and sync ePubs with no DRM with iTunes, same as the kindle.

Yeah, I didn't want to imply that iOS was forcing DRM on people. I just see the argument that the Kindle == DRM far too much, and wanted to correct it. :)

My mother recently said to me:

"My friend showed me how to use Pandora. I love it, but you probably wouldn't like it because its all my music."

Point being, I think you're drastically underestimating Pandora/Netflix accessibility and market penetration.

This would make a nice video campaign for Pandora. Various different types of people saying "It's all my music." with references to the music they love.

"Customer Centric" as opposed to "Content Creator Centric" or "Developer Centric" - Apple is focusing on creating an experience for the customer.

Now - whether you _want_ Apple to be doing that, instead of just creating a neutral hardware system that permits others is another thing. I, personally, would prefer that Apple focus more on insanely great hardware, and developer centric policies, while simultaneously allowing all content providers to sell me their movies, TV, magazines, and Music.

I understand why Apple is choosing a different path, though. If they succeed - they just might create something we've never had before - A consistent, seamless, unified content purchase and presentation platform.

It will be interesting to see how it works out - and yes, I couldn't agree with you more - Thank goodness for Android - we've got choice.

Apple is "Customer Centric" in many ways, but this isn't one of them. I don't think the motivation for this decision was on creating a great customer experience.

I think the phrase you were looking for is "Apple-centric" since you yourself listed several ways in which this move hurts the customer.

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