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Comment by mcritz | Hacker News Reader

I think this ambiguity of terms is bad for consumers. My mom might buy Apps through the Amazon "App Store" and expect it to run on her iPhone. I think Amazon is coat-tailing on Apple's branding in a deliberate attempt to create a false sense of equivalency.

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You think Amazon is trying to sell stuff to people that they can't run and will ask for refunds on?

Apple chose a name with that ambiguity when they gave it the generic-sounding 'App Store' instead of a more brandable alternative. (Quick test on the name: What is the App Store? It's a store for apps.) The quote of Steve Jobs himself using "app stores" in a generic manner really highlighted this point and effective killed Apple's chance of success in this case.

This is not a good argument. To me, protecting a name like "App Store" would be as silly as protecting the word "Computer" before commonplace in society. Can you imagine the ads for such a company? "Don't be fooled by those other microcomputer systems! We're the real Computer^tm^!"

And yes, there are examples of this today already, but that doesn't make it a good idea.

Computer was a generic term even before computer devices. "Computer" was used to refer to people that performed computations. If you paid someone to perform busy-work computations all day, then they were a 'computer.'

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#History_of_computing

How would one's mom buy an app from Amazon's android store without doing it through an Android Phone?

Like so: http://www.gadgetsdna.com/how-to-install-android-2-2-froyo-o...

Looks like an Android phone to me. Why wouldn't Android apps work on it?

Yes, that looks exactly like something my mother might accidentally do.

First thing I've seen on the internet today to actually make me laugh out loud.

If you go to amazon's home page there is a link on the left that says "Appstore for Android".

Have you tried trying to get something from there? You'll need to have the Amazon App Store App on your phone. It's pretty much impossible to accidentally buy Android apps from that store without an Android phone.

She might Google for "Angry Birds App Store Download" and hit the second link.

if your mom can get the amazon appstore to work on her iPhone you should consider hiring her skills to work on the next jailbreak.

seriously, what a comment!

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