jemmons

...But it turned into a blog post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2618913

As an aside, is it really so unusual to see an iOS (or any mobile platform developer) ignorant of their platform's corner-cases when it comes to things like mail or the web? We spend all our time on laptops coding, just like everyone else ;-)

So yeah, it's harder to distribute US-only than to the world. Not sure what The Daily's reasoning is there.

Developer: No you don't. I have the benchmarks to prove it.

What's laughable is Joel's implicit assumption that the majority of 37s clients are, apparently, Chicagoans. How charmingly pre-internet of him.

I'm looking forward to all of the new Android devices that are apparently waiting in the wings, but this long downtime hasn't done the platform any favors.

I'm not seeing what Palm's page adds to the conversation.

Also, for what it's worth, I'm comfortable labeling any new iPod/iPhone user who's most recent Apple hardware hails from over a decade ago as "new to the brand".

iPhone users: breath a sigh of relief that there's no Flash on your platform yet.

This seems to insinuate the last thing I should want from my eReader is for it to be highly focused on the one task I actually use it for. For my money, the opposite is true.

This is all basic troubleshooting that we would normally perform (or insist on being performed) before passing judgement. And yet for some reason, if it's an Apple product and you're new to the brand, you're somehow expecting to be screwed. So you blame any and every error on Apple and their evilness.

2) You're not being dramatic, you're being inaccurate. They were able to do this because you explicitly gave them authorization to do so when you signed up. If I give my car to a friend, and he drives it somewhere without telling me, I cannot claim the car stolen.

3) What's the incentive here? How could Amazon in any way profit by putting a bunch of illegal books online, having people buy them, and then refunding people the money for them? Best case: They break even and have a lot of bad-will amongst publishers and customers alike. Worst case, they have all that and loose money due to credit transaction fees.

4) The book is not "just gone". Amazon notified the boy to let him know that the book had been removed and his account reimbursed. You can claim inconvenience at having to spend another minute downloading a legal copy of 1984. You cannot, in good conscience, claim that minute is equal to the value of shipping you a free $10 book. Just as a baseline: A person making a $100k/year is still only netting 20¢/minute before taxes. If Amazon decided to do such a thing, it would be well beyond "the least they could do".

Granted. But what are you really out? For them to provide absolutely full remuneration to you, they'd have to pay you 99¢ (which they did. Immediately). At that point all your losses are covered. You can go and buy another 99¢ book or put that 99¢ towards a fair and legal copy of 1984.

But you ask for more. You seem to say that in addition to their error in selling an illegal book, Amazon's also offended your sensibilities in their handling of the situation. They've issued you a frank apology and promised to do better in the future, but that's still not enough for you. You want free stuff. I can't help but see this as greedy and overreaching.

If those customers had bought an "illegal physical copy" from a bookstore...

The customer could have kept the book or returned it to the bookstore for a refund. Not both. It's true that Amazon made the choice for you, forcing you to return the book for a refund (which was in bad taste and they've apologized).

But it should be pointed out that if these hypothetical people had decided to keep their book instead of returning it for a refund, the book would be no less illegal. They are still at this point guilty of possessing bootlegged material. The publisher could, in theory, still go after them in a court of law. So it can at least be said that, in choosing between these two alternatives, Amazon chose the legally unambiguous one. That may turn out to not have been the best choice, but it's certainly understandable, is it not?

Amazon _shouldn't_ have the right or mechanism to do any different.

You're saying they're not allowed to build the device they want or write the software they want? You're so filled with righteous indignation over Amazon's invasion of your perceived "rights" that you think they should send you free books. Yet you think nothing of oppressing their own freedoms. Self-contradictory at best and downright hypocritical at worst.

Now I'm afraid Jeff Bezos will come in the night and take my shoes.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

I mean the question honestly. I'm wondering where this sense of entitlement comes from.

But I absolutely refuse to feel anything but joy and elation when I consider the miraculous tools I have available to me that allow me to complete works undreamed of by any generations previous.

It may naive, but I have to believe that if we are to care for the children of Ghana, we have to make more of ourselves, not less. To put it another way, would I know anything of Ghana's plight were it not for my shiny electronic computer and its connection to the miraculous interconnected network of shiny electronics?

But, though it's become a cliche in this context, I think what makes these products world-changing is Apple's vision. [EDIT: actually, now that I think about it, it's not their vision. It's their business model (the very thing the OP was deriding). Apple sells hardware and can use software as a loss leader. So it's able to sell Logic and Final Cut for much less than when they were the sole income of their respective companies] After Apple bought Final Cut and Logic, they slashed prices, refined the interfaces to make them much more approachable, and gave users a way to migrate from simple iApps, to Express versions, to the full-blown Studio packages.

This ease of use, low cost, and easy migration vision of Apple's all works together to democratize the creation of media. As a platform, it places an emphasis on the creation of media, not merely the consumption of it.

That's what I find world-changing about it, and I think its all stuff that's happened post-Apple-buyout. But I'd love to hear more about any similar efforts made before Apple bought these products.

The iPod. The iTune Music Store. The iPhone. A world-class music studio for $500. A world-class motion picture studio for $1000. The evolution of the digital hub. The insistence that technology should "just work". I honestly don't know what else you could expect from any other company of any size or business model.

Mea culpa.

I agree completely that opportunity cost is very, very, very hard to measure. Which is why I'm more likely to believe someone with resources, incentive, and skin in the game rather than anecdotal armchair talk.

It seems unlikely that a corporation with so much to gain would not have done the numbers and research here. I understand you think those with your point of view are legion, but the mere fact that a large business is successfully pursuing a strategy counter your beliefs itself argues against this notion.

Make up Mad Magazine-esque nicknames for the subject of your argument that you (but no one else) find clever and at least semi-derogatory. See also: M$, winblows, iSheep

I think we're all better off without DRM, but the iTunes model was the next best thing to no DRM at all. Hardly "draconian".