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Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

iBooks has a significantly smaller variety of books than Amazon.

But will this be true for long, now that this particular shoe has dropped?

Apple's primary target here is probably Amazon. A company which, incidentally, is no stranger to the art of using a powerful distribution network, an existing customer base, and a DRM-locked e-reader platform as a lever to demand big shares of revenue:

http://www.jeremyrossmedia.com/2010/02/21/word-kindle-70-30-...

According to this article, and the Stross piece linked therein, Amazon's standard deal is that they take seventy percent. Their "generous" deal for self-publishers is that they take a mere 30%... but the publisher must give Amazon the right to set the price as Amazon sees fit.

Makes Apple's 30% cut look pretty good, actually. But, of course, if you're a print publisher you pretty much have to have a deal with Amazon, so I expect there are a lot of negotiations going on right now.

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To be clear, I don't actually care about how much Amazon actually makes on each copy sold. What bothers me is that Apple has seemingly made it economically unviable for distributers to exist in the AppStore at all. This means we have to rely on Apple for content on our iOS devices, and until Apple scales up its content sources, the users are losers in this deal.

If users are truly the losers in this deal, then won't they vote with their wallets?

In what sense? Many (like me) already own iOS devices and are invested in it with all the apps/games/songs/books that we already bought. I probably won't switch platforms based on the absence of a newspaper/music subscription service, but I sure would like the option of having those.

Wasn't it obvious when you bought the non-transferable music, books and apps that this was the sort of company you were dealing with?

It strikes me that this is a pretty unreasonable complaint. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I don't think it's fair to moan when it turns out it's a duck.

I'm not knocking Apple, I like Apple but we as consumers need to be aware of what we're buying into and I don't think we can moan that it was in anyway unclear the way they behave, particularly to the sort of person who frequents Hacker News and really can't feign ignorance.

I think you missed my point: I'm not feigning outrage at the fact that I can't transfer everything I bought for phone A onto phone B.

I'm saying that shutting out apps because they don't cough up Apple's ransom only hurts the customer and that customers won't necessarily vote with their wallet and move somewhere else because they have already invested in their current platform/device.

If they won't do anything about being hurt, then the question is surely how hurt are they?

It depends on what you consider the injury to be. If they didn't have a smartphone before they purchased an iPhone, then having a phone that lacks the features of other smartphones doesn't really injure them, it just makes them jealous, which is possibly bad for business. But if they don't switch, then the lack of that feature isn't as important to them as the other apps they have purchased, etc. Are you injured? Well, you got a bad deal, and in a way Apple changed the terms of your contract without notifying you, but it's hard to say that you've really lost anything. More, you just made the wrong purchase due to asymmetric information.

Still, in this case, I think Apple is engaging in a weird sort of brinkmanship with distributors, and I'm not sure they're in a position to dictate such terms.

So it's ok to hurt customers a little bit. Just as long as it's not enough to force them to move platforms. Ok, Got it. Just as long as you're honest with it.

We can still be disappointed even if we're not surprised.

In the sense that if you are unhappy with your iPad, your next tablet will be something else. New customers won't buy an iPad if it doesn't do what they want.

True, some users might have some switching pain, but that's true for most things. Windows to Mac, Xbox to PS3, Kindle to Nook. Lock in is real, but rarely determinative.

Consumers vote with their wallets. The free market is a powerful thing.

People who own an iPhone or iPad bought it because they perceived it as their best option. Whether they buy something else, or just grit their teeth and bear it because there's still nothing better, they're being hurt when their best option gets worse.

Agreed, but shame on the competition if they're unable to build a product good enough to convert dissatisfied iPad customers.

How often do you expect to replace an item like an iPad? I'd expect one to last at least 2 years.

(Songs have no DRM, you can play them everywhere.)

Eventually, but many are locked in by 2 year contracts. Apple probably figures it can force them to switch from Kindle to iBooks and then once their cell phone contract is up they will have even more incentive to by an iPhone 6 because all of their content is inside Apple's walled garden.

Amazon has made a substantial investment in digitizing backlist titles. Is Apple going to do the same? If not, Amazon will always have the edge on books.

"But will this be true for long, now that this particular shoe has dropped?"

iBooks is still an also-ran. Publishers pretty much have to work with Amazon. iBooks is easier to ignore, I should think.

We'll see. Your logic was impeccable a year ago, before any iPads were sold; that's probably why iBooks is such an also-ran today. (Contracts take time to run out, the iPad isn't even a year old, and its success has taken even the optimists by surprise.)

But ignoring the iOS market gets harder by the day. There's a lot of tasty, tasty customers out there.

We'll see what happens. Note that Apple's new, um, clarification of its policy doesn't take effect for several months. I expect there will be weeks of furious behind-the-scenes jockeying for position among Apple, Amazon, and various publishers, after which there might be more announcements.

The thing is, publishers and distributors can make better deals with Amazon, because Amazon will carry a wider array of stuff including physical books, including books that don't make sense as ebooks such as pop-up books, or the books that come with accessories like tree seedlings to plant or meditation beads or whatnot.

If I remember correctly, Amazon's planned Android app store caused a giant ruckus a few weeks back because of the ridiculous pricing policies.

Of course Android allows competing app stores--indeed Amazon's is one. So both developers and users have a choice on Android that's not available on iOS.

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