This seems like a lot of whining and crying by Apple. Instead of stopping them from offering better deals to Amazon they should be pushing them to give them the same opportunities that they give Amazon to offer the deals.
That's exactly what they are doing. Pushing the labels to treat everyone the same. Especially over the date issue.
Amazon uses all that digital stuff (including ebooks) as loss leaders to draw folks into their stuff. A lot of the time, they make merely a penny, sometimes not even that, on their deal prices. And that's fine. That's their call.
But they get those deals before everyone else. It's not a pre-order. You are buying it that day and downloading it that day. THAT is what has Apple pissed. And they are telling the labels if they play that game, they won't get prime placement in the itunes store. They picked Amazon as their exclusive hype spot.
Now if they treat everyone the same and drop even the option to go on sale early with one location, Apple will talk to them about those big banner buttons and such.
In a way this is the flip of what happened with the ebooks. Apple offered the publishers the pricing flexibility they wanted and they went to Amazon and demanded the same. This is the same end result, but just started by one of the stores, not the publishers.
And point of curiosity, I wonder how many of the day before torrents out there are sourced from Amazon's daily deals. Especially back the early day was required.
Exactly right. Apple is behaving appallingly in this case by abusing their monopoly.
Not they aren't. Because they don't have one. Plus this isn't abusive behavior.
Abusive behavior would be more like using their power (if they actually had it) to force labels to only sell on the iTunes store, or to give them way better prices and/or that early day (or hey how about a week, that will really give itunes an advantage)
I agree. One of the reasons I ended up on this site is because I was considering buying a Macbook Pro (to dual boot). Now, I am getting more and more unlikely to give money to Apple each time they do one of these things (the HTC thing, now this...)
So you don't like companies that want fair treatment and that defend their IP.
The fanboys will tell you that Microsoft are a monopoly so it's different
And they are right. Sometimes. It depends on what Microsoft is doing.
If they were arguing this early sales date treatment issue they would probably be in the clear so long as they weren't trying to leverage better treatment for themselves.
and that Apple are not a monopoly so don't need to be punished for anti-competitive behaviour
If you knew the law you would know that tying is not inherently legal. It's the nature of the tying that makes it so. Microsoft was in trouble because they used their power in one market to leverage an unrelated product into a higher position over the same product made by other folks.
Apple has not done this according to the courts. Not with their computers or anything else.
Restricting itunes files to play only on Apple products. that would be in the realm of abusive. Prohibiting all non Mac OS support of any ipod products so you have to have a Mac to have an ipod/iphone/ipad. that would certainly be abusive.
Demanding music labels treat everyone the same over release dates, not abusive. In fact that move by the labels might be cause for a lawsuit. And a rather big one. Even the Brick and Mortar stores would have cause to jump in because they too are damaged by this early day issue. Why would I get up and go buy from them, even at the same price, when I can have it earlier than their required sales date and I can stay in my pjs even.
even though they would like to be a monopoly, and will continue to try to get there
You say that like you know it for a fact, but I'm betting you don't work for Apple.
IF Apple wanted to be a monopoly, in any realm. They could. Just by dropping prices. Knock an easy $500 off every computer and $50-200 off the ipod line. forgot the whole wi-fi only ipad and make the +3g at the wifi prices. and so on. Cut music tracks to 50 cents each, tv shows in their 720hd to $1 and movies in 'HD' to $5 with a 50 cent one week rental. Boom. So cheap why would anyone not buy it. Their share would soar.
And hey why not just make all warranties 3 years for computers and 2 years on everything else standard. and just give away that year of training with the computer. Oh and Mobile Me. Let's include that for free as well.
