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Amazon Launches a Web-Based iPad Kindle Reader
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Okay, let's summarize the old discussion again.
Apple pretended to champion HTML 5 for very simple reasons: Flash is a cross platform tool that allows the creation of STANDALONE applications - the app that you build for the iPhone would also run on an Android device or a Mac or a PC. Cross-platform capabilities are very dangerous to you when you want to lock-in people to your platform. Also, the Flash video format runs on any supported platform and since Apple wants to establish its own DRMed video format as a de facto standard, of course they don't want a third party technology competing with their own technology stack on their own platform.
HTML 5 on the other hand still is not an official standard and it requires a web browser to run. No standalone cross-platform apps, not even an official standard for video yet. So it's not remotely dangerous to Apple, especially since it's still more comfortable to use native apps (sold through the Apple App Store) over web apps. And Apple even looks good in the eyes of many users because they boast to support "an open standard" instead of "the proprietary Flash technology". Everybody who works in IT knows that this is all just BS, but the average Apple customer does not have enough technical background knowledge for making a proper judgment.
I'm sure that at this point Apple hates web browsers as much as Microsoft hated Netscape back in the day and that Apple would love to remove Safari from iOS so that their users would be forced to use apps for everything. When you sell platforms, open technology and open standards that make customers independent from your products are your natural enemy.
Companies like Amazon and Google have one major advantage in this game: They don't need to sell platforms or hardware in order to be successful. They ARE their own platforms and they are completely independent from hardware. They don't care what hardware you use because their software and stores work equally well across all platforms.
Apple's success is dependent on both their hardware AND their software; iTunes is only successful because of the iOS devices, and the iOS devices only sell because of the content and software fueled to them through the iTunes stores.
Now having a browser-based reader application is amazingly cool for Amazon customers. I'm running it here on my Windows notebook at work (in Google Chrome) and this thing works exactly as I expected it to work. It knows the position where I stopped reading on my Galaxy S2 or my Kindle at home and I don't even have to install anything on my machine to continue reading. I can now roam around the server room and read on any damn machine there if I want to while I wait for some computer jobs to finish. I love it.
Apple, on the other hand, has not even managed to ship an iBooks version of Mac OS X, let alone one for Microsoft Windows or - heaven forbid! - Android. No wonder that iBooks is not even remotely as successful as Kindle. Amazon, because they are not dependent on hardware sales, can provide a solution that is 100% customer oriented. Apple -has- to make compromises in order to protect their hardware sales. And in this case, these compromises make iBooks a less flexible and thus inferior offering.
It's just a question of time now until other content providers follow Amazon's example - or even use their platform - and publish their digital content using pure web technologies. As a side-effect, this will level the playing field between Android and iOS even more, since a huge amount of those apps in Apple's App Store are actually just eBooks, videos or music encapsulated in a reader/playback application.
Anyway. This is web reader is a win for customers and for Amazon, and it's big loss for Apple.
The irony is that the web, which made a lot of Apple's late success possible, is now turning against them. I guess the web simply doesn't like closed, proprietary technologies and attempted vendor lock-ins.
Yes indeed, Microsoft was stupid to ship a half-baked HTML5 implementation when other rendering engines are so far ahead of its own.
Microsoft only has Microsoft to blame for lack of support of their browser. They never quite got what "web standards" were about and now that people have moved on from their proprietary garbage, they are left out in the cold with the garbage, where they belong.
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Wow, some of you people should start a business. Might knock some of that self righteous and ill-informed attitude out of the forum...
Apple always said that if you don't want to deal with their rules, go with a web app. I sincerely doubt that Apple gives a flip about this move, contrary to all the conspiracy theorists posting here. The simple fact is that some apps are best done on the web and some are best done native. And it's the consumer who will decide who wins. Until they get fickle and want change for its own sake.
Apple always said that if you don't want to deal with their rules, go with a web app. I sincerely doubt that Apple gives a flip about this move, contrary to all the conspiracy theorists posting here. The simple fact is that some apps are best done on the web and some are best done native. And it's the consumer who will decide who wins. Until they get fickle and want change for its own sake.
I think they care. Who is to say how much though. I think with their new restrictions they knew of all the scenarios possible. They knew they risked bumping some apps to web apps and wouldn't gain their revenue. They also probably hoped that they might still retain those apps and see some $$. If not longterm - at least while these companies got around to releasing their web app.
Amazon wasted no time. Almost as soon as they were forced to remove the buy button, they released this app.
Apple isn't losing money they technically never had. They just won't be benefiting from Amazon either....
Well the offline support is a great feature...! Rather ironic that it's such a buggy and crashy app though...
Exactly.
I can't understand why no one has put Apple's 30% cut in the light of "a tax for the webapp-lazy"? (or distribution-lazy, etc, etc...)
The app might be buggy, but a bug in a web application shouldn't be able to crash the browser. If the browser crashes it means there is a problem in the browser itself and they are better fixing it before more malicious people try to exploit the crash in more nasty ways.
LOL ..but really, hopefully this will get apple to just give up on this stupid "30% or get out rule ..
Since it's HTML5, it's a bit like Amazon beat Apple at their own game with this.
And it really does serve Apple right for the terms they enacted. It's also a good move should Apple decide to become even more anti-competitive with their App Store terms.
As you certainly know there are a bunch of laws against anticompetitive practices and given Apples market share antitrust laws might apply as well (both in the EU and USA). This is certainly a case that would be decided by courts.
Can you elaborate why you are so sure that these laws don't apply here?
Do you really believe everything you just typed?? Cause you’d have to be a bonafide physic/mindreader to know all that….
I am sorry but I don't think it is wrong for Apple to be charging for in app purchases. They are giving the companies another very popular medium on which they can make money. Why shouldn't they get some of the profit and 30% is honestly not that much. Come on people they designed the worlds most popular device and now they are just getting the money that they deserve from making that device. Amazon sells there app for free so Apple has all the rights to tell a company that they have to give some of the profit to the person that is making them money.
They were not getting money from book sales before, they are not getting them now, you can still read them on iOS, and they now have a web app that shows off the power of HTML5 and why Flash is not needed anymore...
You do realize that article is talking about what will happen if they stay in the app store with the buy now button, right? Apple didn't collect 30% of Amazon revenue from iOS at any time. If they had since day 1 then Amazon wouldn't have removed the buy now button and created this web app because they would have been accustomed to the 30%.
There is no law that states you have to support 3rd parties, rememeber when iPhone came out there was no such thing as apps for it...
They never got a dime, the kindle purchases did NOT go thru apple. When Apple decided to play hard ball and enforce it, the solution was to remove the link to the kindle store. Meaning Apple never got 30% of kindle purchases. Ever.
Same for nook, kobo/borders, Netflix, hulu+ and others.
Touche! Apple, Looks like Amazon has pulled a sneaky one over on you. Sounds like a great idea. Wondering how far it will go before apple makes a move to get a hold it. Not everyone is going to agree these demands. I'm sure more workarounds are in the works