iPad's growing competition from Android could quell Apple antitrust talk - Page 2

Since that's not what Occam's Razor is about, it doesn't really apply. Amazon "invited Apple in" when they signed the developer agreement.


Dumb idea. Sucks for consumers. Impossible to determine a "fair" price. And most app developers would probably scream even louder about such a scheme just to satisfy a few corporate giants like Sony and Amazon, although, I don't think they would like it very much either.

There are zero entry barriers in this business. Go create your own (and likewise, Google, publishers, et. al) if you want.

They're just a bunch of whiners.

PS: I see that my post might have been wasted. Saw after I posted the above that a bunch of very well-reasoned arguments by others barely made a dent in you lack of ability to grapple with the real world.

If Apple brings one of their customer to the channel via Apple's device, Apple's OS and the app that Apple marketed, promoted and allowed to be installed, then the channel has to pay the going price.

If they don't want any business from Apple's customers, then stay the hell off the iPad!

Or "If they don't want any business from Apple's customers, then stay the hell off the Mac!"

Or "If they don't want any business from Microsoft's customers, then stay the hell off the Windows!"

Apple does not own me. I am not their slave. I own my iDevices, not Apple. They have no right to say what apps I can and cannot run on my own device.

Apple will not allow just anything onto its devices as a means to preserve the user experience that Steve worked so hard to perfect.

If people want porno, they ain't the kind of people that buy Apple devices in the first place. If they want some kind of weird death grunge suicide music, well, maybe Android is a better choice.

At first I thought this was a bit outrageous of Apple and to a greater extent I still do. But ultimately its just going to benefit other platforms. Apple think they've been clever by stopping ideas of 2 buy buttons where apples service costs more, and by forcing the price to be the same on the app as on a website. But the simple answer is just have an iPhone subscription seperate from the other devices and charge more for it. Keep all the other devices the same and charge extra for iPhone. Then put in your FAQs that the reason for this is Apple charging 30% for content on your phone.

I like history books. Is that equivalent?

Inkling 106 posts - I don't know if as detailed and thought out as this one. Anonymouse 3,838 posts - I suspect drivel just like this.

Give the counter argument why you think it's nonsense or get off the net.

What about all the apps in apples adds that make people buy the phone or the 300000 apps in the app store. Apple doesn't give them 30% for helping to sell the phones. If they did then last quarter each app would recieve $9500

Remember being a monopoly is not illegal - it's your behaviour using the power of monopoly.

Conversely even if you don't have a monopoly unethical behaviour should be dealt with.

I own my letter box. People who send me things pay the post office to deliver items to me. People not involved in the delivery don't make money out of it.

Seems that content is delivered to the iPad that I own via the Internet no participation by Apple required, yet they want a 30% cut on that. Sounds like highway robbery "Bail up!".

If it is legal it's like a tax - wasn't it "no taxation without representation". Really, no taxation or payment without contractual benefit to the payer. That is the basic ethic of our society.

This is causing content deliverers a lot of angst, as well as customers.

Is that a reasonable assessment of the situation?

I take it you are in favor of Net neutrality


And so Apple is charging everyone 30%. A fixed rate, and the same for all companies.


But they can invoke "traffic shaping" routines on your data-flow, if they feel like it.


Not just the iPad, every iOS device.


Can you show where it is documented that this "hefty" surcharge is identical to the entire income that Amazon earns from its e-books?


Those apps can continue to access any data the user wants. But if they try to purchase an item or subscription, Apple gets 30% of the price.


Suddenly? They announce in February that the change will take place in June, and that's suddenly?

And in-app subscriptions weren't available before now, so how is this a "sudden" change?


Grats on the win.


Back to the Net Neutrality argument, I see.

What with the GOP in washington trying to gut the FCC, I don't see anyone there too interested in any more restrictions on Comcast, Verizon, Apple, Google, et al.

Great idea.

Its a free market, and a free country, so they are free to inform Apple that they want 30% of the price of every iOS device sold - if- the owner of that device uses it to buy anything from Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, etc.

I hope they have fun with that.

Your kidding right? I would be shocked to learn that those 75% were buying that much. Apple's app store sells more software in an hour, than the Android store does in a day. (I am being extremely generous to the Android store btw).

Android users don't buy Apps from anywhere in any meaningful numbers and neither do BlackBerry owners. The confusing thing about that survey was how high the blackberry numbers were.

I think that with actual content producers (apps, movies, songs, etc) 30% isn't excessive and in some cases lower than what they have to pay using legacy channels.

For retail sellers this is a killer since Apple is asking for their slice of the pie.

Who is screwed?

Book publishers? No. Amazon? Yes.
Movie companies? No. Netflix? Maybe.
TV studios? No. Hulu? Maybe.
Newspapers? No. Amazon? Yes.

I think that Apple will backpedal in a couple months just like they did with Adobe. But notice that those couple months were probably important in terms of protecting a dev ecosphere from poorly ported flash apps.

I think that Apple will backpedal in a couple months just like they did with the restrictions on mobile ads and analytics. But those couple months gave iAds and perhaps other admob competitors a little boost.

You can argue that Apple was forced to pull back or you can argue that Apple deliberately drew a line in the sand for a certain effect and did a planned pull back.

This move seems far too bald not to see the same pull back in a month or two but I suspect that Apple will have inched their position forward quite a few yards in the process. Oh, okay, we won't do 30%. Google's 10% seems fine...

And folks will gloat that Apple had to pull back and forget that Apple used to get 0% and also not realize that if Apple asked for 10% people would be bitching and moaning just as loudly today anyway.

Instead Google has set the standard at 10% and helped monetized what hadn't been monetized before. I'd almost claim collusion if I were the cynical type.

10% screws Amazon even worse than 30% if content producers moved the agent cut from 30% to 10%. For both Google and Apple this is secondary income. For Amazon that's their primary income. 10% still screws resellers as content direct from producers (via Google eBookstore and Apple iBookstore) is still less. It's a slow death as opposed to instant death.

Nope. It's a highly biased assessment of the situation and assumes that the value of the iPad and iOS ecosystem is zero. Great if you can get folks to buy a flawed premise but hardly reasonable.

As a customer I have no angst.

Why? First, from a selfish point of view, I have the Kindle and Netflix app. It strikes me as unlikely that Apple will nuke these off my iDevices. It also strikes me as unlikely that either Amazon nor Netflix will do something to disable these apps. So for the short term I'm losing no functionality and for the lifecycle of the actual device I own the short term is the most relevant.

So no angst required.

Second, from a global point of view, these sorts of things work out. And if they don't, the iPad is a consumable device...a little less consumable than a phone but more so than a PC. I'll replace it, if not this cycle, then the next. Apple will make it work out or I'll get something else.

So no angst required.

The biggest whiner thus far is The Wall Street Journal and they have an affiliate program that pays a commission of 35% on subscription sales... Of course with those, the WSJ still has to process the payment. Online subscriptions pay the same commission as print. When a user buys through the App Store instead of an affiliate link, WSJ is making more money, not less. Good luck convincing the courts Apple is behaving in an anti-competitive way when they are providing more service for less money than you pay other people.

WSJ argument seems to be that should be able to use the App store to bring in new customers and paying nothing at all for doing so.

Amazon is only paying about 8% for high volume associates on the Kindle, but they are not paying anyone (other than Apple now) for in app purchases.

Add in Apple hosting the App itself and all of the updates.

It is remarkable how little people understand about the world around them..

Hyperbole much?

So jailbreak your iDevice and go your merry way. How hard was that?

Ever notice that Apple doesn't REALLY mess with hackintosh folks except when some idiot tries to make a business out of it? Then only long enough to stomp the idiot into the ground and not lock OSX up and start some bizarro war of escalation with crackers.

Ever notice that Apple doesn't REALLY break jailbreaks even though they could do a lot more to make it annoying?

Do you really think they want to make YOU their slave?

Or do you think that maybe Apple giving Amazon, Adobe and Google the occasional wedgie is a good thing to try to make the user experience a little better. Do you really LIKE getting junk mail?

Giving Apple my contact & demo info is bad enough but at least they seem to understand that sort of thing annoys most users...so they push opt in vs opt out. I dunno if opt in really works but opt out simply doesn't work.

It is challenging for a reseller to pile on another reseller. I am sure Apple would prefer only to work with content producers directly.

They could work out an alternate system for some of these resellers that are hosting the content themselves. 15% is probably reasonable if you consider the 8%+ Amazon is paying to high volume Associates on Kindle books. Apple is handling the payment and doing a little marketing. Amazon is handling the distribution.

That was the fundamental assumption underlying his argument, that Apple somehow controls all my purchases simply because I made a single purchase from Apple. I am perfectly willing to pay Apple for products and services which I have decided are valuable to me. I find it abhorrent for Apple to assume that they have some sort of God given right to insert themselves between me and the reseller I have chosen to do business with simply because I was impressed enough to buy a product which was designed by Apple. They've already earned my money. I resent having pay them again, and again, and again for the "privilege" of having purchased one of their products.

Non-Apple customers should resent Apple even more for attempting to force content resellers to raise prices on their products just because someone, somewhere is experiencing the "privilege" of using some content from that reseller on an iDevice, in effect charging them for the "privilege" of someone else using one of their products.

Too bad that isn't actually the scenario. You have to deliberately make an in app purchase for them to get a cut. Did Apple somehow deprive you of free will? Orbital mind control lasers I suppose?


Then simply don't purchase from within the app. OMG! What a concept. Apple may not have a god given right to insert themselves between you and a reseller (eeww) but they do have the right to decide how their app store works. You then have the right to buy something else if it pisses you off so much.


eBay has an easy tech item buying program for your iDevices. If you resent it that much voice your resentment in the best way a consumer can. By voting with your wallet.

However, based on the interesting ways you describe Apple's actions (resent, abhorrent, privilege, slave, yada yada yada) I'm guessing you're more troll than indignant. It's a freaking tech toy. M'kay? Abhorrent? Rly?


Maybe if that was vaguely in the realm of reality they might resent that. More likely nobody but geeks and trolls have noticed and the impact outside a couple apps get pulled is zero.

That's why a ton of porn websites created mobile specific versions of their website soon after the iphone was launched with such creative names as iPorn, right?

Google's system isn't a one stop shop for their android devices though. It's an option presented to anyone who wants it for a payment method if those companies don't want to set up their own payment system. Google's not using the 90/10 split in their bookstore for example, but if Randomhouse wanted to sell books direct to consumers, they could setup a system through Google checkout.

I really don't know why people are comparing Google's payment system to Apple's here. They're two totally different systems targeted at different markets for different purposes.

No, they did not deprive me of my free will. That was my point. My response was to Long On Apple's claim which is based on the idea that Apple somehow did take away my free will. Read it for yourself:


I resent you distorting my words and arguments.


Yes, they have a general right to control their own store. However, they do not have the right to control other companies' stores or pricing, which is what they are trying to do.

I do not intend to buy anything through In App Purchasing, but how do I keep from paying more for the exact same content when prices everywhere go up due to Apple's policies? I cannot. Period.

Think this through:

- Apple has arranged things so that the easiest method (by far!) to purchase content is via an In App Purchase. They have done so by requiring that IAP be part of content applications, AND that content sellers Are Not Permitted to include active links to their own sites to handle purchases.

AND

- Apple requires that IAP prices be equal to or lower than non-IAP prices. In other words, the price on the content seller's site may not be lower than the IAP price or Apple will pull the app.

AND

- In App Purchases have a significantly higher cost (30% of retail) than at the content seller's own site. Without Apple's pricing equality requirements, IAP prices should be 43% higher due to the cost difference imposed by Apple. But because of the price equality requirements, content sellers will be FORCED to raise prices on their own site to make sure they don't lose money due to IAP sales. (I ran through the math here.)

There are ONLY two ways pricing won't be raised for everyone:

1) Content sellers pull their app from iOS devices.

2) Almost no one buys content via IAP. Remember, something like 99% of iOS users will have no idea about this issue. (You basically said this.) All they will see is that you have to manually open a browser and type in a site name then do searching to purchase from the content seller's site, and the price will be no better anyway. Can you seriously argue that this is even a remote possibility of this happening?


I have a couple thousand dollars tied up in content which is made available on iOS devices only due to the availability of apps. If those apps get pulled, I lose access to that content. Wouldn't you consider that to be a Big. Fricken'. Deal?!?

I also have plans to add another $650 of content to one of them. Seeing those prices increase by the kind of percentages needed to cover Apple's greed (up to 43%, something like 25% is far more likely) even right on the seller's site is also a Big Fricken' Deal. Can you give me a legitimate reason why I should not be bothered by such numbers?

Right, but in the app itself. The ONLY option is to purchase using apple's system. The developer can't even provide a LINK to a payment system outside of the app. They also can't provide any incentive for a customer to use a different payment system.

Convenience always wins. Apple knows this, which is why they had the strict "only our option" stipulation. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if apple rejected any app that even TOLD customers the preferred way was to sign up online.


Again, that's not the issue here. Apple's made it so that your ONLY option if you want a book on your phone is to buy it on the phone, unless you somehow decide to wait until you get home and buy it there for some reason (no incentive to do so). It's that convenience that app developers will have to build into the cost of happing an app on the iphone. They'll either need to increase the prices everywhere (bad), not have an iOS app (bad), or accept the loss (fatal)



And what about the people who don't. And then decide they hate it later only to find out all of those books (possibly hundreds of dollars) are locked so they ONLY work on idevices.


Sorry, but anyone trying to dictate what I do with my media earns my resentment. Kindle has DRM, that's true, but they don't limit you to hardware. DRM for media is a necessary evil, but at least they TRY to get on as many platforms as they can so you're not locked.



companies are most likely trying to get Apple to back down, they're not going to pull right away. And people will notice if apps do get pulled or if prices increase. Companies won't just eat these costs.

The iOS market is NOT WORTH IT if they're not making a profit. And no, volume doesn't mean Jack if someone is charging you PER SALE and each sale has a negative value (as it does with Kindle right now for 5 of the 6 top publishing groups)

It seems to me that you should still be able to use Safari on the iDevice to handle the purchase without having to wait until you get home. Even so, it would still be a much more significant pain than simply tapping a button or three within the app.

Otherwise, very well said.

you technically can, but you'll need to remember to bookmark the kindle site, or the'll have to redesign the mobile site to make it more obvious. As it is now, you click a button in app and it takes you right where you want it to.

Should be interesting to see if Apple will even let "Purchase this via the web using your creditcard/paypal or purchase via itunes" (with only itunes link active) through their approval. Somehow I doubt it though.

Apple's built their entire product, and marketed to consumers that convenience trumps nearly all. They know that this requirement will bring them a ton of money. Sure, you can still go through the web, but most users won't do that, especially when there is no incentive to do so.

Then you will have to suffer with Android. Your choice.

You agreed to all of that when you bought your iPhone. A wise man once said that education is what you get when you read the fine print, and experience is what you get when you don't.

I think that most all of Apple's real customer base knows why Apple is doing this, and they agree with the policy wholeheartedly.

You've gone to a pretty irrational place there. Do you resent your credit card company because they assume they have a god given right to insert themselves between you and a reseller every time you use your card just because they issued you one? (And, not using your card is like not using your iPhone, your choice.) Yes, we should all hate Apple because their attempt to create a better experience for customers is creating utter misery and despair for non-customers.

The question is, are you an astroturfer, a fandroid, a deluded Apple hater or just generally angry at the world. You remind me of someone trying to explain why evolution is "just a theory".

The latest incarnation of the troll previously known as iLuv, I think.

Well, let's see, at least you recognize your hypocrisy regarding DRM, Amazon and Apple, but a clumsy attempt to explain it away. Besides that, it is extremely unlikely that anyone buying Kindle books will ONLY buy books through in-app purchases on iOS and, consequently, the cost to Amazone won't be 30% of their total sales. The per sale amount is meaningless. All that matters is will they make more money being on iOS or not being on iOS and the answer, I assure you, is the former.

Interesting how we have so many posters who are so concerned about Amazon, though.

Carnivore - well actually its newer versions

Carnivore was an Internet surveillance system developed for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) so that they could monitor the electronic transmissions of criminal suspects. Critics, however, charged that Carnivore did not include appropriate safeguards to prevent misuse and might violate the constitutional rights of the individual. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reported in early 2005 that the FBI had replaced Carnivore with other, unspecified surveillance software from commercial sources. Such software usually includes a packet sniffer.
EPIC, a public interest group dedicated to emerging civil liberties issues, was the chief critic of Carnivore and continues to be concerned about violations of privacy rights. The group sued and got the FBI to release background information on the system, although the Bureau refused to turn over Carnivore's source code. A private study conducted by the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute, which was commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department, found several shortcomings in Carnivore. For example, the system did not keep track of individual users, so any operator defaulted to "administrator," leaving no audit trail. Also, the system lacked a feature that would require users to confirm that a court order was granted.

well its not used for making money unfortunately, its used to control you, I don't worry about commece knowing stuff about me, I'm more worried about the government knowing stuff about me and what I read for political purposes

No. It's not. It's a choice which is being made by Apple if their new policy drives the apps off iOS.

Neither is the higher prices.

Did you miss the part about it being a CHANGE in Apple's policies?

Ever heard of cash? Checks? PayPal? They're called payment OPTIONS for a reason.


Let's see. My first computer was an Apple IIe. My first Mac was a Mac Plus. I currently have a PowerMac G5 and Mac Pro sitting under my desk, three other Mac notebooks in the house, 5 or 6 iPods in the house, 2 iPhones, and one Windows computer I had to have for work (which never gets turned on anymore 'cause I can now do that work on the Mac Pro). Therefore, I must be an Apple hater.

I'm just irritated by irrational assertions which ignore relevant facts and distinctions. What's your excuse?

If "commerce" knows "stuff" about you and what you read, you're only a national security letter away from the government knowing it too.

Yeah, you have the option not to use an iOS device too. But let's stop pretending that Apple's enforcement of these policies is going to cause consumer harm, that's just bullshit. It might be a negative for Amazon, but Apple isn't under any obligation to tailor its business practices to suit every other company's business model. That they are is an absurd proposition, and exactly what you are arguing.

As for what you own, a) you could be lying, b) you could be astroturfing for Amazon, or c) you could simply be irrationally upset.

You must irritate yourself a lot.

Fraid so. When you see those report them (already have this time). The mods are pretty good about banning his various incarnations, once alerted.

It's called math. Ever heard of it?

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