Apple – Rotten To The Core
Image by ultraBobban via Flickr
Apple have announced that from the end of March they will be “enforcing” an existing rule that will have profound implications for owners of iOS devices. Personally Im hoping that an outbreak of common sense will occur before then driven by what I anticipate will be an avalanche of bad press in the coming weeks.
Essentially what Apple plan on doing is blocking apps which allow access to content purchased outside of the App Store unless users can also purchase that content inside of the app or the App Store where they can reap 30% of each transaction. They have also said that newspaper publishers will not be allowed to provide a free iPad version to print subscribers. This will have serious ramifications for ebook, newspaper and magazine apps as well as potentially video subscription apps such as Netflix.
On the face of it this doesnt sound so bad – but I daresay that Apple will not take to kindly to providers marking up prices by 30% to accommodate this impost so where margins are tight content providers may be squeezed out of the game.
Ultimately I think Apple have forgotten one major point. Unless Im mistaken I bought my iPad – at great expense – and as far as I’m aware this means I own it and therefore have the right to decide what goes on it.
I was prepared to put up with the closed ecosystem argument as long as it was to provide a better user experience by keeping crashing, nasty apps out of my hair – but this move is just greed. As one ebookstore – I think Kobo – commented, Apple’s 30% cut is the entire profit margin given by the publisher – so why bother…
Also as a 7-day print subscriber to the Sydney Morning Herald I have enjoyed free access to the iPad version – and why not? Why should I have to pay twice for the same content? As far as I know the data is going from the servers of the SMH provider Newspaper Direct to the iPad that I OWN and I’m also paying bandwidth for at my end. Frankly – what business is it of Apple? Surely this is restraint of trade – if not from the sellers point of view, from mine. These are restrictions that were not in place when I bought the device and had I known this was the going to be the case I would not have.
What happened to the days when Apple would have encouraged good content as a way of selling the hardware? Again, this is just pure greed on Apple’s part and as a loyal Apple customer of many years I’m bitter and disappointed and they have lost a free advocate – heavens only knows how many people have Apple gear now on my recommendation.
At the moment Android is less polished than iOS – but the Motorola Xoom with Android 3.0 Honeycomb launching soon is looking far more likely to get my next discretional dollars than the iPad 2…
Related articles
- Apple’s New Approach To Content Sales Is A Rotten Plan (businessinsider.com)
- Did Apple Just Neuter iPad Ebook Apps? [Apple] (gizmodo.com)
- Apple Tightens Reins (online.wsj.com)
- Reactions to Apple in-app purchase policy change continue (teleread.com)
- Apple Rejects Sony Reader App Over In-App Purchases. Kindle Next? (wired.com)
- “Apple Is Evil! Boycott The iPad! – Sent From My iPad” (crunchgear.com)
Save The Australian Net
- Image via Wikipedia
Regrettably the government have decided today that they will pursue online censorship in Australia via Internet filtering at the ISP level. Whilst this sounds admirable – after all I don’t really want my kids looking at kiddie porn – in practice it is an issue for two reasons.
The first and most important is that this sort of filtering will be almost technically impossible to achieve accurately. As one pundit pointed out, while the trial only generated a 3.4% false positive rate – in reality this will bar access to over 7 MILLION websites. The likelihood is that we will need the increased speed of the NBN to counterbalance the slowdown from this filtering!
My second concern relates to handing any government in this day and age the ability to censor information sources. With the doubts around the legitimacy of the war in Iraq – not to mention Climategate – I’m not sure I trust the motives of any government in denying access to the Internet. Finally – any sixteen year old pimply kid who knows how to tune in to Channel BT and surf for porn will likely be able to bypass these filters quite easily.
So have your say. GetUp have a petition going to give you the chance to have your say. See below for details.
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Apple – Great Products, But Pray They Don’t Go Wrong…
- Image via Wikipedia
SEE UPDATE BELOW…
As those of you that read Dr Gadget just may have picked up by now I’m something of an Apple fanboy. I switched to Mac November 2004 and since then we have had 3 iMac’s, an iBook, 2 white MacBooks and a MacBook Pro. This is not to mention the umpteen iPods, the three iPhones and the AppleTV. Our house is a veritable shrine to Apple. In addition I have been a keen evangelist for Apple and have converted many friends and family resulting in tens of thousands of dollars more sales.
Early in 2005 the logic board (Mac’s name for the motherboard) failed on my home iMac and it took a month to get repaired. Whilst this was a nuisance, I had an iBook for work and so it did not impact me there. Last year, however, as laptop performance converged with desktop I decided to consolidate on to one machine and for the first time invested heavily in a MacBook Pro. The machine cost nearly $5000 – and I took out the Applecare warranty for an additional sum in excess of $500 – to me a small fortune. My belief was that this is a business level machine and that the Applecare plan would ensure prompt service if I had any issues.
On Monday night my Mac died – refusing to boot at all. I was not unduly concerned having a Time Machine backup with all of my data for the last three months. Additionally we have some family friends who run an Apple Certified service business and who I knew would do their best to speed up any fix.
I was mortified today to receive a phone call from them to let me know that problem was again the logic board and that Apple were out of stock and would not be receiving new stock until the 10th of October. This meant that with the best will in the world I would not be getting back my machine until somewhere near the 15th… three more weeks of running the Aspen IT and web infrastructure with a Lenovo netbook – ouch.
Aghast I called Apple Customer Support and after being transferred around the world three times a very nice young man assured me he would try and speed things up and would call me back in a day or two. I do feel a bit sorry for these call centre folks – he copped a real tongue lashing from me. I put my case that when paying through the nose for a professional machine – and extra for the warranty – Apple had a responsibility to hold stock of spare parts. Do they anticipate that customer’s can keep a spare $5000 computer in case their main machine breaks down?
So I don’t know what will happen next. I have ordered a Dell laptop with better specifications that my Mac for about a quarter of the price. It even includes a free upgrade to Windows 7!! Perhaps the time has come to switch back?
UPDATE: Well I guess I had better stop complaining about Apple now. I received a call from Apple Customer Service and they are replacing my Macbook Pro with a brand new machine. They took on board my comments and accepted my position and did the right thing. Way to go Apple!
