

Five Lessons Apple Can Learn From Amazon - mediaman
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=8271

======
saurik
This article is actually entirely wrong. :( Amazon, in fact, should be
learning about future proofing purchases from Apple, not the other way around.
Apple's "you will throw this device away in a year and get a new one"
hardware-oriented monetization strategy has caused Apple to /nail/ future
proofing.

[http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-
ug...](http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-
and-it-is-ugly/)

Amazon's Kindle service provides you with a limited number of downloads for
each of your purchases, and there is no obvious way to back up your data. Burn
through too many devices and you are out of luck; there isn't even a way to
tell how many that magic number is.

Meanwhile, Apple always provides powerful backup and migration mechanisms: you
can get a new Mac, plug it into the old one via Firewire, and have it transfer
all of your apps and data seamlessly to the new system.

(And yes, I'm "that saurik", and I obviously have no reason to be defending
Apple, my sworn enemy ;P. This article is simply jacked up.)

~~~
ableal
Revisiting notes, much later - thanks for the comment. Also, some of the ZDnet
comments attribute iPhone 'removed' app problems to API breakage, not
deliberate deletion.

"That Saurik" :) [http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/13/360idev-saurik-on-the-
mobile-...](http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/13/360idev-saurik-on-the-mobile-
application-market/) , <http://cydia.saurik.com/>

P.S. submitted the TUAW link, good piece.

------
mediaman
Not that I agree with everything in the article, but it's interesting how
Amazon's cross-platform distribution mechanism makes it a significantly more
attractive option for readers.

------
jleyank
To first order, Amazon sells content and Apple sells hardware. Folks who sell
the former tend to be way, way more platform agnostic than those who sell the
latter.

------
ableal
_I had a very handy WiFi scanner on my iPhone that I used for identifying dead
zones on my network. One day after an iPhone update, the program was no longer
on my phone — because Apple deemed WiFi scanner programs as having “mimimum
functionality.”_

 _I’d paid for that program, but I no longer had access to it — and Apple
refused to refund the measly two bucks I paid because it was a purchase over
30 days old.[...]_

The store works like that ? Poof, gone, no refund, if you dare to update
firmware ?

 _To be fair, Amazon pulled this stunt with a copy of 1984 (of all things).
But unlike Apple, as soon as Amazon became aware of how grossly stupid it was
to yank a book off Kindles (and the delicious irony of it being 1984), Jeff
Bezos came out with an apology and made an explicit promise not to do it
again._

I'd rather they could not do it, period. And that one didn't even involve
firmware updates - just a plain yank on the leash ( _their_ 3G link) ...

[I suppose it's a lost cause pointing out that the title is _Nineteen Eighty-
Four_ , not _1984_ ? Ah, the time when writers were paid five cents per word
...]

~~~
hga
It's also fair to point out that while the way that Amazon removed _Nineteen
Eighty-Four_ and _Animal Farm_ was maladroit, they didn't have any choice in
the matter. In some parts of the Anglosphere, but not the US, their copyrights
has lapsed. The company who's copies they pulled didn't have the right to sell
them in the US.

This is very different from Apple's [whatever you want to call it] approach to
what you can do with a stock i[whatever].

~~~
ableal
Just a late note: if Amazon, or whoever, sold me, by mistake, a pirate copy of
some paper book, I'd be rather miffed if one of their employees came into my
house and took the book from my shelves.

With electronic devices, the "sellers" are making it normal for them to keep
the keys to the house. Sounds more like a rental, with rather uninhibited
landlords ...

~~~
hga
True, but if you were ever under the impression that you were buying Kindle
books instead of renting them you weren't paying attention. As of yet, the
doctrine of first sale just does not apply.

And that makes sense given the architecture: even if your Kindle could hold
every book you "bought", the system still protects you against loss or
destruction of that device (or it's inevitable eventual replacement). Given
that, the legal liability of Amazon changes a whole lot from the old world
where they had no responsibility after shipping it to you.

~~~
ableal
Good points, thanks. I didn't look because I'm not interested in DRM'd files -
never "bought" one yet.

Arguably, it may be deceiving the customer to have the buttons say "Buy"
instead of "License". The terms are elusive; with a couple of minutes of
clicking, I only found this for the paper+ebook "Amazon Upgrade":
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=110749011)

 _You may return a particular Online Book for a full refund within 30 days of
your purchase date, provided that you have not accessed more than 20% of its
digitized pages._

Interesting.

P.S. Ah, terms for ebooks are under the Kindle hardware (unlike MP3s, etc.)
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200399690)

 _[...] Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy
[...]. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you [...] you may not sell
[...]_

I seem to remember some legal kerfuffles a while ago about resale of boxed
software (with the 'first sale' you mentioned). Things don't seem to be going
well for "buyers" ... (And I wonder if _that_ is really good for sellers, in
the long run.)

