Not because its hard, but because of device OS fragmentation and device hardware differences.
Now for a little app like this, it should have been fairly easy to pull off, we're just talking about a pretty standard text displaying UI and some accelerometer reading to control their 'innovative' (I already have other apps on my iPhone that have done this since at least 2008, not really that innovative considering it existed before the company claiming it as innovative).
They should have ported it, wouldn't have been that hard, but its silly to think anything other than a relatively straight forward app is going to be able available to all those 100 million devices. Massive amounts are still using 1.6, who ACTUALLY gets to UPDATE their android device without hacking around? Maybe some guys AT GOOGLE? And then different screen resolutions, processor variations and such it starts to be a complete whore if you're doing anything moderately complex.
With that said... this app would have been trivial to port well for most devices, and you pick up blackberry along the way.
This 'business' failed because the people running it didn't know what they were doing.
These guys developed a book reader when Apple did not had one, and now are being bullied out just because of Apple's greed.
Apple iBooks was released, April 2010.
This guys app was released December 2010.
Not real sure how you can think any of your statement is true considering it is pretty clear that Apple was there 8 months before these guys even hit the store shelf.
Now Apple is forcing publishers to sell to everyone at the same 30% margin.
No. No. NO. NO.
Apple doesn't have any control over what the publishers are doing, they changed to these rules ALL ON THEIR OWN.
Apple isn't forcing them to price at a 30% margin, the publishers are. Apple is forcing them to pay 30%, which when the content licensors all started switching to forcing a standard 30% margin, fucked this company.
You're misunderstanding part of the problem.
Yes, Apple is forcing a 30% cut and equal pricing, but on the supply end, its the content producers which are now ALSO locked at 30% that fucks over this company.
Lets also note that this company is nothing more than a middle man... who's riding on the back of another middle man, expecting to not pay anything, and make a profit off the work done by everyone else.
The publishers changed the rules, effectually cutting out all these little BS middle men who try to take a cut of the profit while providing nothing of value.
By giving them several years notice that they needed to upgrade their apps to the new APIs?
Or do you mean by not allowing flash and all its infinite CPU munching ability onto low cpu power, running on batteries device that can't afford to waste its time and electrical energy rending images from a piece of software thats recognized throughout the entire industry as being a perfect example of bloated, slow, buggy code that gets exploited regularly?
Its not like Adobe screwed over anyone when they purchased Macromedia or anything... oh wait... they did... several companies who jumped on the SVG bandwagon with Adobe when they were trying to beat up Macromedia... and then when they bought Macromedia they immediately ditched SVG, started actually LOWERING the support their apps had for it, and proceeded to kill off several Macromedia products that companies depended on... say like Macromedia Generator.
Our company depended on Generator for our product, it was a big portion of the backend for the product... they killed it, provided no viable alternative for anyone other than big time print publishers AND proceeded to sue the living shit out of the one guy making a generator clone until he ditched that rather than going broke fighting them.
Lesson learned however. Our company now has a massive case of 'not invented here' syndrome, since it would appear that when ever we depend on someone else, we get fucked and loose more in the end than had we just done it ourselves ANYWAY.
I'm not defending Apple here, but they don't have jack shit on Adobe when it comes to being bastards to their customers. Fuck, just try to GET RIGHTS to use an adobe font for online publishing. I'm not talking about how much it costs even, just try and get Adobe to even DO IT. You want to do publishing, you need to buy publishers right to the font from Adobe, you can't use any other license... okay... fine... whats that going to cost me? To which Adobe responds... oh, we don't actually sell anything you can buy to resolve this issue. So then you have to go track down some other font, thats really freaking close, and hope no one comes across a big enough difference that notice.
Or... you know... its free when you put the second CD that came with your Mac in the drive and tell it to install Xcode.
If you want the latest version you can buy the latest OS (Xcode will still be included with Lion) and use the version that came with it for free OR pay $5 for a newer version and not have to hunt down your OSX install disk.
Of course, Xcode is also free if you're a member of any of their developer programs (which aren't free).
Basically, the only thing that has happened is that very recently, Apple started charging an upgrade fee for XCode if you wanted the newer version than came with your OS, but its a new thing, not 'since the 80s'
And much like the idiot complaining in TFS, you'd be rather stupid for assuming you can end-run Apple's policies in order to not have to pay their cut. They can reject your app 'because', and performing and end run qualifies as 'because' to me. Then, next month, the rules will be updated to ensure that whatever sneaky trick you came up with is no longer an option.
And seriously? Apple isn't going to miss the Kindle app. It makes them no money what so ever and brings nothing to the device that can't be had already... and lets be realistic, the kindle app for iOS fucking sucks for reading anyway, but thats more of a flaw with iOS hardware than the software.
The bad press would be far more of an issue for Apple than any lost customers because of the Kindle app, but it wouldn't be enough for them to care methinks.
Simple don't direct them. Just say that to add books to your collect you must go to the Amazon website.
And apple will reject your app and take it off the store. If you actually had read the rules for iOS development you'd already know that wasn't an option as its clearly listed as against the rules. If you sell online something that can be downloaded and used on an App that is on the app store, it must be available via in-app purchase as well.
I want to be able to hack my microwave, but it wouldn't be that much more useful if I could. I regret that companies don't make hackable microwaves but it's not a big deal.
I've seen hacked up microwaves with custom microcontrollers to do various weird things, so it doesn't seem useful to you because you don't have a use for it yourself, others do and have hacked them. Also (not that its AS LIKELY) people have been... damaged beyond repair... by such microwave hacks.
And even more useful if their DRM formats were hackable.
The only useful thing you can do by hacking their DRM at this point in time is steal content, so you can define that as useful, but no one but a thief is going to agree with you. You can argue that the DRM will need to be hacked in the future when apple turns off the servers, but since Apple DRM only applies to things intended to run on the iOS devices, its not useful to do anything with it outside of theft... you aren't going to run those apps on something other than an iPhone ANYWAY.
Your iOS device would be more useful to YOU if you could 'hack' it. Of course, you already can, for a fee, but you're ignoring that. I can pretty much do whatever I want with my iPhones and iPads, but I paid the fee to get that feature.
You can get that feature for free if you are willing to hack your device, just like any other hack, don't expect the manufacture to support you when you install Cydia.
Apple is telling ebook retailers that they have to buy from publishers at a fixed margin.
Apple is doing no such thing, thats simply FUD being spread by the man with a failed business plan. Apple has nothing to do with your relationship between you and your content licensors.
If you knew much about the workflow that books go through, you'd realize that converting a book that has already been in a print production run to an ebook is almost as simple as a CSS stylesheet change.
No, they don't use HTML, but any of the formats used to send to publishes come from software that makes turning a standard book into a pdf or ebook rather trivial.
Yes, it would take someone doing some work, but the cost per copy of said work isn't even noticeable on volume sales, its statistically irrelevant on any sort of decent seller.
That is perfectly acceptable, as long as those same books are available for sale through the device at the same price as on Amazons website.
Apple doesn't care that you can buy them elsewhere, they care that people have the option to buy them on their devices as people expect, and they you aren't pushing people away from in app purchases (where Apple takes a cut) by charging more on the device than you would on your own store.
The kindle app is more than welcome to link to the kindle store... as long as Apple gets its 30%
You must sell books from major publishers at the same price as Apple does.
Which is entirely wrong.
You can't see books cheaper than Apple does, you can certainly charge MORE. This is a rather common thing in retail.
You are required to sell in app if you sell online and allow that to be downloaded too the app.
If you sell books on your own website (that you can get on your iOS device as well), then you have to charge the same price (or more) than it costs to get them on the iOS device. Basically you can't charge $200 for a book on the device, and $20 on your website as a way to skirt around Apple requiring you to sell them in the app.
Those publishers must give you exactly 30% commission.
Apple does not say that anywhere, nor do they have ANY control over who much you pay to license content from others. This is just bellyaching and lies.
iOS booksellers have to give 30% of their revenue to Apple.
Yea, and if you have even the slightest clue about the retail world, you'll know that when you put your shit in someones store, they take a cut. 30% is pretty much THE standard amount. In big box retail, there are times when you end up paying more to be in the store, per item, than your item costs total. Its not just a loss to be in the store, you're actually loosing more than just the cost of your item!
There is no enforced 0% profit margin, though I'll admit, why would you buy from someone other than the iBookstore if the iBookstore is the cheapest, but thats just business. Don't like it? Sell on someone elses device or make your own. Ever heard of Windows Mobile, Android, or BlackBerry?
While what you state is more or less true... they reversed the decision because new management came in and said 'holy fucking shit batman, if we keep this up we're going to be bankrupt in a year! This has to stop!'... said management then proceeded to turn the company from a massive looser into a market dominating force.
Had they not changed their minds on that particular event, Apple wouldn't exist, which would have resulted in the EXACT SAME THING for those people making hardware to run System 8.
Sometimes you sacrifice a few people so that you don't kill everyone.
Seriously, building an entire business around one iPhone/iPad app and in app sales of content that can be had anywhere? You pretty much were doomed to fail from the start before Apple changed the rules.
You are also an idiot for NOT expecting Apple to make that change. Why on Earth would Apple leave a blindingly large loophole in the system that allowed you to sell services which funnel through Apple and as such require Apple to support them (which costs money) and without you making any contribution to the system? If you thought at any point Apple was going to let you charge for in app purchases without ever taking a cut, you're an idiot. Theres no other way to state it, you're simply too stupid to run a business on that alone.
Finally, the most important thing to point out here...
If you've made all that investment and got a bunch of software, hardware, and book licenses... WHY ARE YOU NOT SELLING BOOKS FOR ANDROID, BLACKBERRY AND WINDOWS MOBILE/PHONE?!
Yes, caps were required, because thats the obvious thing to do, and once again, you're a complete fucking moron for not doing it.
Instead you said 'OMG WE FAILED BECAUSE OF APPLE!!!'. If you take off the word because, and everything after it, the sentence is true.
You failed, and you did it to yourself. Go back to sucking on mommies teet for safety, you don't belong in the business world, no one is going to carry your weight for you.
Its certainly doable with SVG and some javascript, which I'm not sure if SVG is anywhere in the HTML5 spec, but pretty much every HTML5 capable browser DOES support SVGs enough to do this sort of thing, just needs basic a basic SVG viewer with support for scaling, javascript and images.
"But, we're not infringing cause we shove what would otherwise be infringing function calls first through some shared memory! But we released the code to the modifications we made to add the ad-hoc IPC!".
You do realize that using that definition means that all GPL code can never be communicated with by non-GPL code since basically every method used by two programs to talk to each other is just a form of IPC... generally using shared memory... including things such as network connections.
Do you really want to imply that the only code that can legally talk to a Linux based machine is something else released under GPL? It would effectively wipe Linux off the face of the Earth when you effectively cut it out of functioning as a server pretty much everywhere except a few businesses I can count on my fingers.
Don't get irrational with how far you push the limits of what is derived code, it'll bite you in the ass in the end.
Actually, the license makes no comment on when you have to make the source available, just that you do have to make it available.
I'm fairly certain that could be argued in court by a well paid lawyer. Doesn't matter what the intent was, what matters is how the written words can be twisted to fit the sides fighting the battle.
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The problem is, developing for Android is a cunt.
Not because its hard, but because of device OS fragmentation and device hardware differences.
Now for a little app like this, it should have been fairly easy to pull off, we're just talking about a pretty standard text displaying UI and some accelerometer reading to control their 'innovative' (I already have other apps on my iPhone that have done this since at least 2008, not really that innovative considering it existed before the company claiming it as innovative).
They should have ported it, wouldn't have been that hard, but its silly to think anything other than a relatively straight forward app is going to be able available to all those 100 million devices. Massive amounts are still using 1.6, who ACTUALLY gets to UPDATE their android device without hacking around? Maybe some guys AT GOOGLE? And then different screen resolutions, processor variations and such it starts to be a complete whore if you're doing anything moderately complex.
With that said ... this app would have been trivial to port well for most devices, and you pick up blackberry along the way.
This 'business' failed because the people running it didn't know what they were doing.
These guys developed a book reader when Apple did not had one, and now are being bullied out just because of Apple's greed.
Apple iBooks was released, April 2010.
This guys app was released December 2010.
Not real sure how you can think any of your statement is true considering it is pretty clear that Apple was there 8 months before these guys even hit the store shelf.
Capitalism is ALL ABOUT anti-competitive. Its not about being nice to your competition, its about driving them out of business.
Why do people have this retarded idea that businesses are all supposed to be nice to each other?
Except, as common as your mistake is, it still doesn't make it true ...
You can charge more, you can't charge less. It must be equal or above.
Well, other than Apple didn't actually tell the publishers anything, they did it all on their own.
And the fact that Walmart pretty much does EXACTLY THAT.
Yea, I'd say you got it perfectly correct ... except completely wrong.
Now Apple is forcing publishers to sell to everyone at the same 30% margin.
No. No. NO. NO.
Apple doesn't have any control over what the publishers are doing, they changed to these rules ALL ON THEIR OWN.
Apple isn't forcing them to price at a 30% margin, the publishers are. Apple is forcing them to pay 30%, which when the content licensors all started switching to forcing a standard 30% margin, fucked this company.
You're misunderstanding part of the problem.
Yes, Apple is forcing a 30% cut and equal pricing, but on the supply end, its the content producers which are now ALSO locked at 30% that fucks over this company.
Lets also note that this company is nothing more than a middle man ... who's riding on the back of another middle man, expecting to not pay anything, and make a profit off the work done by everyone else.
The publishers changed the rules, effectually cutting out all these little BS middle men who try to take a cut of the profit while providing nothing of value.
How exactly have they screwed Adobe?
By giving them several years notice that they needed to upgrade their apps to the new APIs?
Or do you mean by not allowing flash and all its infinite CPU munching ability onto low cpu power, running on batteries device that can't afford to waste its time and electrical energy rending images from a piece of software thats recognized throughout the entire industry as being a perfect example of bloated, slow, buggy code that gets exploited regularly?
Its not like Adobe screwed over anyone when they purchased Macromedia or anything ... oh wait ... they did ... several companies who jumped on the SVG bandwagon with Adobe when they were trying to beat up Macromedia ... and then when they bought Macromedia they immediately ditched SVG, started actually LOWERING the support their apps had for it, and proceeded to kill off several Macromedia products that companies depended on ... say like Macromedia Generator.
Our company depended on Generator for our product, it was a big portion of the backend for the product ... they killed it, provided no viable alternative for anyone other than big time print publishers AND proceeded to sue the living shit out of the one guy making a generator clone until he ditched that rather than going broke fighting them.
Lesson learned however. Our company now has a massive case of 'not invented here' syndrome, since it would appear that when ever we depend on someone else, we get fucked and loose more in the end than had we just done it ourselves ANYWAY.
I'm not defending Apple here, but they don't have jack shit on Adobe when it comes to being bastards to their customers. Fuck, just try to GET RIGHTS to use an adobe font for online publishing. I'm not talking about how much it costs even, just try and get Adobe to even DO IT. You want to do publishing, you need to buy publishers right to the font from Adobe, you can't use any other license ... okay ... fine ... whats that going to cost me? To which Adobe responds ... oh, we don't actually sell anything you can buy to resolve this issue. So then you have to go track down some other font, thats really freaking close, and hope no one comes across a big enough difference that notice.
There were several methods to develop for a Mac in the 90s that involved no codewarrior or a Lisa. I know, I did it.
Or ... you know ... its free when you put the second CD that came with your Mac in the drive and tell it to install Xcode.
If you want the latest version you can buy the latest OS (Xcode will still be included with Lion) and use the version that came with it for free OR pay $5 for a newer version and not have to hunt down your OSX install disk.
Of course, Xcode is also free if you're a member of any of their developer programs (which aren't free).
Basically, the only thing that has happened is that very recently, Apple started charging an upgrade fee for XCode if you wanted the newer version than came with your OS, but its a new thing, not 'since the 80s'
And much like the idiot complaining in TFS, you'd be rather stupid for assuming you can end-run Apple's policies in order to not have to pay their cut. They can reject your app 'because', and performing and end run qualifies as 'because' to me. Then, next month, the rules will be updated to ensure that whatever sneaky trick you came up with is no longer an option.
And seriously? Apple isn't going to miss the Kindle app. It makes them no money what so ever and brings nothing to the device that can't be had already ... and lets be realistic, the kindle app for iOS fucking sucks for reading anyway, but thats more of a flaw with iOS hardware than the software.
The bad press would be far more of an issue for Apple than any lost customers because of the Kindle app, but it wouldn't be enough for them to care methinks.
Simple don't direct them. Just say that to add books to your collect you must go to the Amazon website.
And apple will reject your app and take it off the store. If you actually had read the rules for iOS development you'd already know that wasn't an option as its clearly listed as against the rules. If you sell online something that can be downloaded and used on an App that is on the app store, it must be available via in-app purchase as well.
I want to be able to hack my microwave, but it wouldn't be that much more useful if I could. I regret that companies don't make hackable microwaves but it's not a big deal.
I've seen hacked up microwaves with custom microcontrollers to do various weird things, so it doesn't seem useful to you because you don't have a use for it yourself, others do and have hacked them. Also (not that its AS LIKELY) people have been ... damaged beyond repair ... by such microwave hacks.
And even more useful if their DRM formats were hackable.
The only useful thing you can do by hacking their DRM at this point in time is steal content, so you can define that as useful, but no one but a thief is going to agree with you. You can argue that the DRM will need to be hacked in the future when apple turns off the servers, but since Apple DRM only applies to things intended to run on the iOS devices, its not useful to do anything with it outside of theft ... you aren't going to run those apps on something other than an iPhone ANYWAY.
Your iOS device would be more useful to YOU if you could 'hack' it. Of course, you already can, for a fee, but you're ignoring that. I can pretty much do whatever I want with my iPhones and iPads, but I paid the fee to get that feature.
You can get that feature for free if you are willing to hack your device, just like any other hack, don't expect the manufacture to support you when you install Cydia.
Apple is telling ebook retailers that they have to buy from publishers at a fixed margin.
Apple is doing no such thing, thats simply FUD being spread by the man with a failed business plan. Apple has nothing to do with your relationship between you and your content licensors.
The problem is when the gatekeeper decides to enter the selling ebooks market
I'm sorry, what idiot didn't see that one coming?
If you knew much about the workflow that books go through, you'd realize that converting a book that has already been in a print production run to an ebook is almost as simple as a CSS stylesheet change.
No, they don't use HTML, but any of the formats used to send to publishes come from software that makes turning a standard book into a pdf or ebook rather trivial.
Yes, it would take someone doing some work, but the cost per copy of said work isn't even noticeable on volume sales, its statistically irrelevant on any sort of decent seller.
No, you can't.
Apples rules dictate that if you can buy online, you must by able to buy in-app at the same rate.
That is perfectly acceptable, as long as those same books are available for sale through the device at the same price as on Amazons website.
Apple doesn't care that you can buy them elsewhere, they care that people have the option to buy them on their devices as people expect, and they you aren't pushing people away from in app purchases (where Apple takes a cut) by charging more on the device than you would on your own store.
The kindle app is more than welcome to link to the kindle store ... as long as Apple gets its 30%
If 40% isn't enough to make a profit, how do the publishers and Apple manage to do it on 30%?
Its possible, it just doesn't' result in truckloads of money showing up at your door for no apparent reason.
You must sell books from major publishers at the same price as Apple does.
Which is entirely wrong.
You can't see books cheaper than Apple does, you can certainly charge MORE. This is a rather common thing in retail.
You are required to sell in app if you sell online and allow that to be downloaded too the app.
If you sell books on your own website (that you can get on your iOS device as well), then you have to charge the same price (or more) than it costs to get them on the iOS device. Basically you can't charge $200 for a book on the device, and $20 on your website as a way to skirt around Apple requiring you to sell them in the app.
Those publishers must give you exactly 30% commission.
Apple does not say that anywhere, nor do they have ANY control over who much you pay to license content from others. This is just bellyaching and lies.
iOS booksellers have to give 30% of their revenue to Apple.
Yea, and if you have even the slightest clue about the retail world, you'll know that when you put your shit in someones store, they take a cut. 30% is pretty much THE standard amount. In big box retail, there are times when you end up paying more to be in the store, per item, than your item costs total. Its not just a loss to be in the store, you're actually loosing more than just the cost of your item!
There is no enforced 0% profit margin, though I'll admit, why would you buy from someone other than the iBookstore if the iBookstore is the cheapest, but thats just business. Don't like it? Sell on someone elses device or make your own. Ever heard of Windows Mobile, Android, or BlackBerry?
While what you state is more or less true ... they reversed the decision because new management came in and said 'holy fucking shit batman, if we keep this up we're going to be bankrupt in a year! This has to stop!' ... said management then proceeded to turn the company from a massive looser into a market dominating force.
Had they not changed their minds on that particular event, Apple wouldn't exist, which would have resulted in the EXACT SAME THING for those people making hardware to run System 8.
Sometimes you sacrifice a few people so that you don't kill everyone.
Seriously, building an entire business around one iPhone/iPad app and in app sales of content that can be had anywhere? You pretty much were doomed to fail from the start before Apple changed the rules.
You are also an idiot for NOT expecting Apple to make that change. Why on Earth would Apple leave a blindingly large loophole in the system that allowed you to sell services which funnel through Apple and as such require Apple to support them (which costs money) and without you making any contribution to the system? If you thought at any point Apple was going to let you charge for in app purchases without ever taking a cut, you're an idiot. Theres no other way to state it, you're simply too stupid to run a business on that alone.
Finally, the most important thing to point out here ...
If you've made all that investment and got a bunch of software, hardware, and book licenses ... WHY ARE YOU NOT SELLING BOOKS FOR ANDROID, BLACKBERRY AND WINDOWS MOBILE/PHONE?!
Yes, caps were required, because thats the obvious thing to do, and once again, you're a complete fucking moron for not doing it.
Instead you said 'OMG WE FAILED BECAUSE OF APPLE!!!'. If you take off the word because, and everything after it, the sentence is true.
You failed, and you did it to yourself. Go back to sucking on mommies teet for safety, you don't belong in the business world, no one is going to carry your weight for you.
Its certainly doable with SVG and some javascript, which I'm not sure if SVG is anywhere in the HTML5 spec, but pretty much every HTML5 capable browser DOES support SVGs enough to do this sort of thing, just needs basic a basic SVG viewer with support for scaling, javascript and images.
"But, we're not infringing cause we shove what would otherwise be infringing function calls first through some shared memory! But we released the code to the modifications we made to add the ad-hoc IPC!".
You do realize that using that definition means that all GPL code can never be communicated with by non-GPL code since basically every method used by two programs to talk to each other is just a form of IPC ... generally using shared memory ... including things such as network connections.
Do you really want to imply that the only code that can legally talk to a Linux based machine is something else released under GPL? It would effectively wipe Linux off the face of the Earth when you effectively cut it out of functioning as a server pretty much everywhere except a few businesses I can count on my fingers.
Don't get irrational with how far you push the limits of what is derived code, it'll bite you in the ass in the end.
there is no permission to delay.
There is no mention of timing at all, there fore, permission is to delay is implicit unless otherwise stated. Consider it a license flaw.
The license simply requires that it be made available, but it in no way stipulates WHEN it must be available.
You and I know what it implies, but from a court room perspective, what it implies is not what matters.
Actually, the license makes no comment on when you have to make the source available, just that you do have to make it available.
I'm fairly certain that could be argued in court by a well paid lawyer. Doesn't matter what the intent was, what matters is how the written words can be twisted to fit the sides fighting the battle.