Articles like this happen all the time, the conversation usually doesn't make it all the way to the street - so I'm doing my part.  Apple loves their online store, and loves that they have such a large captive audience.  Hopefully this will what takes them down.  Here is an example, Apple has lots of people using their products, which can ONLY install apps

from the app store.  So Apple puts out a new product that is extremely cool - the iPad - and starts signing publishers to distribute ebooks on the app store.  They have a captive audience, so why not exploit that.  Apple sets a high price on the ebooks, which then starts to affect the market even OUTSIDE of the app store.  Publishers go to Amazon and ask them to raise their prices at Amazon so they are the same high price as the Apple app store. http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/01/30/1341235/Amazon-Pulls-Book-Publishers-Listings-Ebook-Wars-Underway

Some articles have had headlines saying Amazon is attacking bookstores.  This is good for the free market, book industry, and people.  This creates market fluxuation, happens to be lowering prices, which make people switch TO Amazon, and make it easier for more people to get books.  If we get to a point when all book shopping is done online, what is a physical bookstore good for anyway?  (I personally like having coffee at Borders and hanging out)  When a company attacks another company or industry to bring the people better selection and lower prices, this is good for us, and good for their business.

Then there is Apple, who has an approval process for their app store, and a waiting list, and rules, if they don't like you, you don't get your app listed.  The app store doesn't even work for developers all the time.  There are many stories about apps getting rejected that seem to be legitimate apps, even people putting up other app stores for hacked iphones to cope.

It seems that the google app store - the android marketplace - does NOT share those same restrictions and process, anyone can upload an app and get approved, and google doesn't have anything to say about the process compared to what Apple is doing.  Hopefully google can just make an interface that people like as much as the iPhone so we can all switch to a clearly better model.

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