I can't has cheezburger

Of course, TechCrunch is hot on the heels of the people who are against what Apple has done in rejecting Sony’s eBook reader app.  I thought I was a bit of an Apple apologist, but these guys really take the cake.

It is certainly the case that the policy is consistent with what it was before, except for the part where Apple is rejecting the app merely because it’s capable of showing the user content that wasn’t purchased through an in app purchase on the App Store.

What really took me aback about this post was TechCrunch’s apathy about Apple using these kinds of tactics to make the iBookstore get ahead, citing it as just business.

It’s certainly true that Apple is permitted to control the ecosystem in whatever way it pleases (unless the government decides to put the kibosh on this), but it’s positively un-Apple like to take measures like this just for competitive reasons.  The iBookstore is not really a core part of Apple’s business model; it’s more of a resource that Apple is providing to iPad owners so that they can ensure there exists an eBook reading experience that Apple has control over (and is thus a good experience).  It’s ethically questionable that Apple gives itself a leg up with iBooks by not having to pay itself a 30% cut of each book sale, and it’s even more ethically questionable given the context that Apple’s iBooks app is a direct ripoff of Kindle (which Steve Jobs admitted when introducing iBooks last January) with the UI being a ripoff of Classics and Delicious Library.

And as MG Siegler said, this isn’t going to cause iPad sales to plummet.  Nobody’s going to say “I was going to buy that iPad but opted not to because I couldn’t get the Sony Reader app for it.”  But the sad thing about this all is that iPad is really the only viable tablet choice at the moment, and probably will be fore the foreseeable future. Apple’s just got too many legs up already.

What this whole situation really begs for, though, is an in-app purchasing system that Amazon and Sony (and others) can use to let users purchase content from right within apps, but for a nominal fee instead of the sizable 30% charge.  This could be used for consumable content like books, movies, etc. that Apple doesn’t have to host itself, but simply can be the payment processor for. And perhaps Apple’s planning just this. But in the meantime, they’re always quite opaque about upcoming plans, and it leaves people like us wondering why Apple’s being so cruel.