
Emails Reveal Why Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller Blocked In-App Kindle Purchases - feross
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/31/emails-apple-blocked-kindle-purchases/
======
Fej
This article buries the lede, which should be at the top. It states:

> Yesterday, further emails published by the U.S. antitrust subcommittee
> revealed that Apple offered Amazon lower App Store fees to convince it to
> launch its Prime Video app on the App Store and Apple TV.

> The news that Apple made exceptions for Amazon for Kindle prior to 2011 and
> for Prime Video has caused confusion among some observers, as Apple has
> consistently claimed it treats every developer the same. Phil Schiller
> stated ahead of the antitrust inquiry this week that all apps in the App
> Store have been treated "the same - one set of rules for everybody, no
> special deals, no special terms, no special code, everything applies to all
> developers the same."

Phil Schiller was rather dishonest - implying that it always been this way,
when it clearly has not. If his statement was identical to how MacRumors
writes - the words "have been" are outside the direct quote from Schiller,
where he could have said "are" in the present tense - then it was an outright
lie. Not a good look in an era of renewed antitrust scrutiny.

------
hermanradtke
I find it funny that people keep quoting Steve Jobs as saying Apple didn’t
want to make money from the App Store. That may be what he said in public, but
emails like this are evidence that he was not much different than the current
crop of big tech CEOs.

------
panpanna
Here is my take on this:

Apple should demand its 30% cut...

... but ... companies should be allowed to compensate for their loss by adding
30% to the price when a purchase originates from the app store. They should
also be allowed to inform the customer about this.

Seem overall pretty fair to me.

~~~
kyawzazaw
I think companies do that.

~~~
cordite
I hear YouTube plus does that, but they don’t really label it as a fee or show
a price comparison if bought through the web browser.

------
eeixlk
Interesting to see the internal debate, even if i totally disagree with what
they decided on. Has anyone ever tried to run a company will full
transparency?

