I think it's the iOS 7 icon. They changed it with iOS 8.
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Apple to Pay $450 Million E-Book Settlement After Supreme Court Declines to Hear Appeal
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Yes, Apple should be above the law.
Laws trample our freedom and snuff them out forever.
Apple should write there own laws and put Tim on Mt. Rushmore.
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That and the kool-aid iv.
The biggest reason that Swedish librarys have so few e-Books to lend out is that they are much more costly in payment to publishers per issue lent out than paperbooks. Librarys can not afford lending e-books instead of paperbooks.
Got to love all the armchair lawyers defending Apple here in the thread. Apple screwed up and has to pay for it. Book closed!!
Umm, sorry, but in this case Apple was clearly in the wrong, they set a clause that stated if a publisher wants to be in the Apple store, then they cannot sell for less anywhere else. That is called price setting and is indeed illegal.
In all honesty, I think the fine is way to small, it should be equal to something like 80% of all ebook sales until the policy was changed.
How dare you answer with logic and reason! Somehow, I think it will be lost on the person you are replying to.
Depends on your definition of "ripping people off":
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/technology/writers-feel-an-amazon-hachette-spat.html
Wrong on the two important points here.
Apple wanted to sell books using the same model they sell apps by. I.e. the publisher/developer sets whatever price they want and Apple takes a 30% cut. That's why you're wrong about them not being able to compete on price -- it wouldn't matter to them what the prices were.
To do this they had to get publishers to agree to that model, which the publishers preferred anyway (because they didn't like Amazon devaluing book prices). Apple negotiated with them separately to get those agreements. Nothing wrong with that on either side.
Afterwards Amazon stopped selling ebooks at a loss (nominally selling them for $9.99 but paying $12.50 wholesale). So yes, prices went up, but do you think Amazon was going to sell ebooks at a loss forever? They had about 80% market share and no one wanted to get into the market to compete with them because no else wanted to burn money like that. Once Amazon became the de facto sole source for ebooks they could start charging even more than prices are now. You were going to pay higher prices sooner or later. The uproar over this is just because it happened to be sooner.
Except that this is not what was determined during the trial: Apple was found to have knowingly and directly participated and facilitated a horizontal price fixing conspiracy. The court opinion is pretty clear on these points:
Furthermore:
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Also this point is questionable. First of all Amazon was selling selected titles below price as loss leaders, but as far as I understand it was overall profitable in the ebook market. It's debatable whether loss leaders sales should apply with book titles but as far as I know nobody questioned the legality of this practice yet. This means they could have kept selling ebooks with this strategy forever since the strategy was actually profitable.
Furthermore, even assuming Amazon operating at loss, the predatory pricing scheme you describe to be actually illegal requires the market to have a barrier-to-entry so that when the "predator" increases prices competitors would have difficulties in getting back into the market they left. I doubt this would be the case with ebooks.
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I wouldn't call them crap, but being limited to Apple only platforms is definitely a negative. IBooks and the books I bought all work great. But I read a lot and my two most preferred platforms are Kindle and Nook for the reason that they work on practically anything.
Having a monopoly is not illegal, correct. Using money from other areas of your business to sell a given category of product at a loss so as to prevent entry of new competitors and to financially ruin existing competitors, however, is illegal. That's what Amazon does when they enter a market, and that's why I'm surprised Apple's actions were deemed illegal. They increased competition and the health of the market in significant and measurable ways.
What a corrupt legal system we have where Amazon is rewarded for being a monopolist and publishers are punished for fighting back. Surely this wasn't what the authors of the Sherman Act intended?
They aren't being punished for fighting back. They are being punished for colluding. I think that's pretty clear. There's nothing stopping publishers and other companies that want to enter the industry from going against Amazon and other competitors. However, they should be doing that within the confines of the law.
Again, as far as I know this is not what Amazon was doing with ebooks: Amazon was selling selected titles as loss leaders but they were not losing money in the ebooks market.
Furthermore it's actually not illegal to engage a predatory pricing scheme if competitors re-entering the market would likely prevent the "predator" from recouping its losses.
On top of that, the impact on the market plays a role only if the business practice is to be evaluated under the rule of reason to find out whether it violated the antitrust act or not. Business practices evaluated under the rule of reason can be either legal or violations depending on many factors including the impact on the market.
This is not the case with Apple's business practices, which were found to be per se violations of the antitrust act. In per se violations the actual impact of the business practices on the market is irrelevant and the practice is illegal period.
Considering all the shady crap that Amazon pulls constantly, I'm disappointed that Apple would be the one to be called out on this. Furthermore, the iBooks Store is pretty small compared to the entire market. IMO it hasn't really ever gained much traction, despite coming installed on hundreds of millions of devices. But sure, fine them hundreds of millions of dollars.
They now have no choice but to pay the fine, however this whole eBooks case does not pass the 'smell test'.....
This logic is faulty. Apple is a mega-billion dollar company - but they shouldn't be penalized because their iBookstore isn't a huge money maker?
Perhaps if Apple opened up their iBook to be available cross-platform, it would be a better value for people to purchase their books.
That's a consequence of the DRM, not Apple's fault. Even if Apple wanted to, there's no way to make their books available on the e-ink kindles since that's a totally closed platform.
They could create an iBooks app for android and for the amazon store though... just like they allow Amazon to have an app in their store...
You are forgetting about the Apple music app for android devices, and before that itunes for windows. The original iPod was mac only. The ipod didn't really sell well until it was compatible with MS Windows.
Apple commits a crime. The SCOTUS confirms that a crime has been committed. You say
'Apple should not have to pay the fine'. Wow, really? They broke the law. And for the non-lawyers like yourself, 'morally right' has nothing to do with being legal or, in Apple's case, illegal.
Apple is a great company. It has great products, but they are not perfect. And occasionally, they screw up, as they did in this case. This has nothing to do with 'trampling on our freedom'. This is a legal issue, and, Apple broke the law and it was confirmed by the highest court in the land. Period.