I've grown to accept Apple's App Store policies for the sake of keeping app quality high. However, when it comes to distributing content that people actually use to learn new things and enrich their lives, there is absolutely no room for this type of policy. To anyone who is selling their books via Apple: GTFO right now.
I mean, yes this is clearly terrible, but if you're surprised by Apple doing this then you haven't been paying much attention the past few years.
I don't begrudge people who choose to use Apple products, they certainly have their charms, but I do get slightly annoyed when they are suddenly offended when Apple does something like this because post-App Store Apple pulls crap like this all the time.
Not everyone has been following Apple as closely, nor does everyone open up their eyes at the same time. Better late than never, though. (And the more people that do this, the merrier. Maybe this way things will improve some day...)
It's sad to see the awful attitudes a company can get away with when it makes such sleek and wonderful products.
Please see my response to inerte's comment, if you have not already.
It's not that I'm surprised that Apple would do this. I am just shocked that the definition of "book" could change in front of everyone's eyes and the common person will ignore it because they enjoy Apple's "magical" devices.
How is the raw number of apps relevant ? There could be hundred of millions of harmless apps, that doesn't make it okay to block a few of them based on a dubious agenda.
Interesting thing is, traditional book publishers could do the same. Maybe they have, and we wouldn't be aware of it. My impression is that they mostly haven't and mostly wouldn't. I think Apple, Amazon et al. are particularly extractive, and they come at anything firstly from the point of view of how they can control and channel the experience, the level of focus being unique to them.
...Barnes and Noble’s budget electronic edition of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” had searched for and replaced all incidences of the word “kindled” (a variant of the name of Amazon’s e-reader, of course, but also a legitimate English word) with the word “Nookd.”...
That wasn't by B&N. It was by a cheapass public domain parasite who did a search to replace "Kindle" (probably as in "Kindle Edition") and wound up FUBARing the book before submitting it to B&N.
And you don't have to buy your iBooks books from Apple. In fact, I rarely (maybe never) have, but I prefer it's reading experience to the Kindle apps (for whatever reason). I just use Calibre to convert.
The difference to me is that they're calling this a "bookstore," and the thing that they're selling is supposed to be a new way of consuming the thing that we traditionally know as "books."
That's what I used to believe their business was.
Now, it's clear that an iBook is not a book. It is a digital material sold to people who like to consume content via their pretty and pricy devices. I agree that Apple makes it fun to consume content their way. And I'm sure that for the most part, people can still mostly absorb all the same knowledge that they would from a traditional paper book. But, this content has to be approved and modified to be consumed and therefor, it is not a book.
So the reason I am not comfortable with all this is for the reason I stated above. I was essentially tricked into believing they were selling books. Now that probably sounds extreme. But, the truth is that I am an educated "tech person" who looks at this stuff every day, and I did not think about this problem until now. The people they are trying to sell to are those in education, who are going to be raising and educating young people by reading these iBooks. When I was a kid, we were taught that books were magical and that the more we read, the more open our minds would become. In elementary school, we made us sing songs about books to make reading seem more fun and appealing.
If schools are adopting this form of content, then they are telling young people that the best way to learn things is via a model that is filtered (simply to increase Apple's profits).
How is this different from a legacy bookstore? Apple is way more permissive than they are. You can't just walk into a legacy bookstore with a manuscript and say, "Here, sell this."
Major distribution has always meant going through filters. The publishing houses reject most of the stuff that comes through their doors, and bookstores only buy a fraction of the stuff that the publishing houses put out. If you are scandalized that Apple rejects one book out of millions, I can only suppose it's because you aren't familiar with legacy publishing. Traditionally, only a tiny fraction of books ever had a chance to be seen by readers.
(I say this not to defend Apple, per se, but to illustrate how good writers have really got it now if this is considered a subject of outrage. Just ten years ago, getting rejected was the expected outcome of trying to get a book published!)
It's different because via Apple's model, you are holding the bookstore in your hands. There isn't an option to go to a different bookstore down the street, or order a book from a website that will send it to you in the mail. I'm thinking about the "ideal" (to Apple) world in which schools just expect content to be consumed this way (text books are a huge and important market), and it's disgusting.
And yes, you are right. I am admittedly ignorant to the nuances and history of publishing, and am thus probably neglecting to look at this from different angles.
Only by going through the web browser, which apple can't now shut down without alienating too many users. If they thought they could get away with it, they would.
They have actively worked to disable any other store - for example, the kindle app cannot allow purchases or even link to the kindle store online, you have to manually search out links online instead, then download. It's absurd, not in the users' interests, and an abuse of Apple's power over the platform, but that's what Apple require.
Unless I'm missing something, this is something which other "bookstores" in the offline space do routinely. The Rough Trade store down the road from me sells books which are pretty obviously curated around sections, and according to the preferences of the staff there, and, no doubt, by commercial imperatives too. If they can't make a margin they're happy with, ultimately there is no bookstore. The magical experiences in books which Rough Trade do not sell is neither here nor there, because if I don't like, value, or care for their curation, I can choose another bookstore. I don't see why this is any different.
A major difference is that an offline bookstore necessitates curation, due to limited physical space. Barring very extreme cases (such as trillions of books requiring petabytes of server space), an online bookstore doesn't require such curation. (An online bookstore could be selective about the titles it highlights in its front pages. But there is no need for making a book completely unavailable through restrictive policies such as these.)
If book stores are curating simply based on physical space then all of them would pick the top 1000 books in order to maximise profits. But they don't. They curate based on the type of books THEY want to sell and that represents them.
A single newspaper using patents to make sure their expression and opinions are the only one we get to hea?
Thats not creepy at all.
And this one message travels the world. For our standards, here in Holland, the app store policy representa fundamentalistic christian values. If they keep this up,we might actually see legislation concerning allowing side-loading.
Where in the world do you get the idea, that Apples Walled garden has anything to do with quality?
Its about one thing: extorting content producers, by limiting access to consumers. And they will eventually get into legal trouble. Its textbook anti-competitive, and if they ever get big enough to be a "monopoly" every aspect of their policy would need to change.
I've grown to accept Apple's App Store policies for the sake of keeping app quality high. However, when it comes to distributing content that people actually use to learn new things and enrich their lives, there is absolutely no room for this type of policy. To anyone who is selling their books via Apple: GTFO right now.