Petty Apple is petty. Amazon, Kobo, and others have changed their applications to conform to Apple's App Store rules, and if there's one word that describes the situation these booksellers are in, it's petty. Still, it's leading to good things: Kobo has announced it's going to bypass the App Store by writing an HTML5 e-reader for iOS (and thus, for other HTML5-capable mobile devices).
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-11-13
Apple didn't take anything away from me. They told the ebook sellers that there were to be no more sales which circumvented the app store, which they were doing in order to deprive Apple of their cut of the sales.
It's no different than the rules on ebay. You can't sell an item on ebay and then circumevent ebay when selling more items to the same customer.
Why is Apple always portrayed as the bad guy? For f***'s sake, they allowed competing vendors (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc.) to to put their ebook apps on the iPad and now people are bitching because Apple wants a cut of the book sales? Do you see Amazon allowing Kindle owners to buy books directly from Apple's ebook store? Yeah, didn't think so.
So rather than Apple selling an ebook for $10, they get $3 when it's sold through one of their competitors. In return, the competitors get access to a huge market of iPad owners.
Member since:2005-07-06
You are right, it's not as bad as it sounds. However, I think the issue is they tell EVERYBODY what they can and can't do. Users, here's all you can do. Developers, you can only do A, B, C. Vendors, you can only do this. The list of do's and don't they require from the whole ecosystem starts to get a little creepy. You start to think they have a bit of an over-inflated image of themselves. At some point, everyone might just move on to friendlier confines. But probably not. Doesn't mean we can't all whine about it!
I think the defining moment for me was when the first Mac Mini came out. You could choos a Combo Drive (DRD-Rom/ CDRW) or a Super Drive (DVDRW). Coming from the Windows world, I thought I might get the combo drive and later upgrade it to the Super Drive. Only that was not allowed. No one was allowed to upgrade it to a Super Drive. If a user, a 3rd-party, or even an Apple Store did so it voided the warranty. Instead, your only option was to sell yours and purchase one with a Super Drive. I thought line of reasoning was REALLY strange. I also felt the same about non-relaceable batteries in many of their devices. You had to pay someone to replace the battery for you - at a high premium. Wierd!!
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about."This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Member since:
2005-07-06
1. Dangle sparlkley items in front of customers.
2. Abuse customers.
3. Own the market
It's sounds wierd, but it seems to work. Unfortunately, prior art from the U.S. colonization may invalidate the patent.