Steve Jobs' Email Shows Apple Changed In-App Purchasing Rules Specifically To Retaliate Against Amazon

from the oops dept

Fri, Aug 23rd 2013 2:20pm — Mike Masnick

In the ongoing legal fight between Apple and the DOJ over how Apple will be punished for violating antitrust law concerning ebooks, the DOJ has presented one interesting bit of new evidence: an email from Steve Jobs, in which he flat out tells Phil Schiller to change how in-app purchases work solely to punish Amazon for daring to suggest that it's easy to switch from an iPhone to Android, since your Kindle books show up in both places.

In case you can't read that, it involves Schiller complaining to Jobs and other top Apple execs about a Kindle TV ad that shows someone buying an ebook via an iPhone and having it appear on an Android phone as well. He then notes:

While the primary message is that there are Kindle apps on lots of mobile devices, the secondary message that can't be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android.

Not fun to watch

Less than an hour later, Jobs replies with a suggestion:

The first step might be to say that they must use our payment system for everything, including books (triggered by the newspapers and magazines). If they want to compare us to Android, let's force them to use our far superior payment system. Thoughts?

That's pretty damning, as it shows the decision had little to do with reasonable choices for consumers, and a lot to do with punishing a competitor.

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Filed Under: android, antitrust, doj, ebooks, email, in-app purchasing, iphone, kindle, retaliation, steve jobs
Companies: amazon, apple

34 Comments

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sehlat (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 2:44pm

Well, what did anybody expect?
It's been pretty plain for a long time that, in Mr. Jobs' mind, it was HIS world and the rest of us were born to rent it from him.
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- Alana (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:20pm
  
  Re: Well, what did anybody expect?
  Anything to stop competition.
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blaktron (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 2:48pm

I think this is a big part of 'entrepreneurial spirit' that we all look so fondly on. The willingness to do ANYTHING to protect your 'baby'.
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- Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:18pm
  
  Re:
  This isn't 'entreprenurial spirit." This is acting as if you own your customers.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 Aug 2013 @ 12:23am
  
  Response to: blaktron on Aug 23rd, 2013 @ 2:48pm
  Which was the point made in 'Risky Buisiness': you have to do whatever it takes however illegal or immoral to succeed in business. Its only when Tom Cruise offers the Harvard Professor a bribe to be accepted into Harvard Business School does the professor deem Cruise evel enough to be a modern business man. Its an idea that really spread fom the 80s.
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GeneralEmergency (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 2:54pm

Figures...
.

It is exactly this kind of "Prick" behavior that keeps me from -ever- having an iTunes account, even though I own several Apple IOS based devices.

I deeply resent walled gardens.

.
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Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:01pm

Wait..
Wouldn't that flood the e-book market if Apple's purchasing system was fully interchangeable with Amazon's?

I ask this because doing that was one of the the main cause of the North American Video Game Crash of 1983. The Colecovision could play Atari 2600 software natively and all you needed was a hardware adapter to for the differing pinouts. Oh sure it's good for the consumer, but that also needs balance with making a profit off of licensing.

I really cannot justify the words shown though. Personally though, at that time, the Kindle Fire was a terrible product unless you decided to root it.
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- blaktron (profile), 24 Aug 2013 @ 6:41am
  
  Re: Wait..
  Hey, I've read a few of your post now, and I have a general comment to you. There's nothing wrong with liking apple, they are a cool company, but you are making arguments that are based on a misunderstanding of history and some bent timelines. For example: the kindle fire didn't exist in 2010, and the iPad was only a year old with precious few competitors. Apple's payment system was considerably better than Googles at the time, a fact fixed in 2011.
  
  Your history below is also fairly inaccurate and seems a bit based on bio movies, and all this ties together to give you a bit of a fanboyish zeal and makes your arguments easily dismissed. Which is too bad because even if I disagree they are well articulated.
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  - Wally (profile), 24 Aug 2013 @ 7:31am
    
    Re: Re: Wait..
    I never said anything about Google. The letter in the article pertained to Amazon's Kindle Fire payment system. I never said I disliked Apple..I grew up on the Macintosh.
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apauld (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:12pm

I really
can't remember the last time I've read an article that made me want to buy any apple products. Even positive reviews always seem to have some catch that puts me off. And I loved my apple IIc with it's 1200 baud modem back in the day.
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- Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:21pm
  
  Re: I really
  My family's first computer was a Mac Plus. My dad being a teacher, the bitmapped typeface GUI made it 100 times easier to make tests. Our first CD-ROM attached to to via SCSI and my old man had to basically install 4MB of RAM to support the CD-ROM drive and the game that was bundled with it...Cosmic Osmo.
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That One Guy (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:12pm

Say one thing, imply another
'let's force them to use our far superior payment system.'

Yeah, if a system is really superior, you don't have to 'force' your customers to use it as opposed to what your competition is offering, they'll chose to do so on their own.

Now if it's worse on the other hand...
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- Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:30pm
  
  Re: Say one thing, imply another
  The purchasing system for both Anazon and iBooks were as good as each other. Amazon itself had fairly cruddy hardware to read e-books on.
  
  Keep in mind that by this time, Steve Jobs was having his first treatments chemo therapy done and they gave him steroids so his body wouldn't shut down. This makes a person crotchety and downright squirrelly.
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 24 Aug 2013 @ 5:11pm
    
    Re: Re: Say one thing, imply another
    This makes a person crotchety and downright squirrelly.
    
    Yes, but Jobs has been crotchety, squirrelly, and a general asshole for at least his entire adult life, according to pretty much everyone who spent time with him. You can't blame it on the steroids.
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- That Crazy Freetard (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 4:13pm
  
  Re: Say one thing, imply another
  Steve Jobs' words there. What would that say if he didn't fully believe(even falsely so) that it was completely superior in every way?
  
  Let alone the fact that Jobs was an arrogant douche.
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Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:15pm

Type of attitude...
Historically speaking, that's the same type of crap that got Steve Jobs ousted from Apple in the first place.

He was initially booted from the Lisa project (named for his daughter) and so to get revenge he poached both former Xerox STAR and current Apple staff...some of the latter were working on the Lisa. It's when his obsession with a quiet appliance got the better of him with the Apple III that got him fired.

Other things about Steve Jobs people really didn't like is that if he didn't like your idea, he would totally ignore you. That attitude sparked the development of the Macintosh II series after his ouster.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2013 @ 3:18pm

I dont see how using one payment system over another would prevent a book from showing up on a different system.

It would still be registered on your amazon account that you purchased a book.
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- Anonymous Coward, 24 Aug 2013 @ 2:56am
  
  Re:
  If you force somebody to pay you and only you it doesn't matter what they do after the fact does it?
  
  That is what he meant by "forcing to use our superior payment system", it doesn't matter in what hardware you conduct the sale Apple would get a cut, further if the other side is forced to use that and can't use another they also get boxed in and have to listen to the demands of the payment system dude meaning the payment system master also gets vetting powers.
  
  Get it now?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 24 Aug 2013 @ 2:39pm
    
    Re: Re:
    That's a complete lie. Amazon has a choice, either use Apple's IAP for eBooks, or not offer any eBooks for sale through their app. They chose the latter. It just means you have to purchase your books using Safari instead of the app. Ideal? No, but why should Amazon get a special dispensation that no other app maker gets? Because they had a monopoly on eBooks at the time?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2013 @ 4:59pm

Oooh. lets stop living in the past and play blaming games concerning who said what and why what they did to each other.

Let's just rejoice and be glad that bastard is dead.
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- Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 6:04pm
  
  Re:
  Jobs had his good and bad moments just like every other person the tech business (well save Steve Wozniak...who...well let's face it, he's his own freaking category of awesome that separates him from everyone else). That "bastard" (as you put it) was a major influence in the technology world when he and Woz founded Apple Computer. Apple's Apple I was the first computer that didn't require some sort of RGB monitor or a converter for display output.
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 24 Aug 2013 @ 5:14pm
    
    Re: Re:
    That neither makes him less of a bastard, nor justifies his bastardness.
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silverscarcat (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 5:35pm

And people wonder why I never got an iphone or ipad.

That i stood for Steve Jobs.
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- Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 5:53pm
  
  Re:
  In spite of his attitude, it was his vision to get an easy to use home computing appliance into the home computer market. My avatar resembles the 512K Mac...which is the predecessor to the original. The original Macintosh did raise the bar in affordable home computing. It only had 128KB of RAM and had yet it had a fully bitmapped GUI which is something to be said.
  
  So while I don't blame you or judge you for not buying an iPhone or iPad, I will condemn anyone who might judge him as selfish without looking how the original Macintosh affected the world.
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  - Wally (profile), 23 Aug 2013 @ 5:55pm
    
    Re: Re:
    *...which is the successor of the original.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2013 @ 7:10pm
    
    Re: Re:
    uh, ya he was, vindictive too, among many other things
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 24 Aug 2013 @ 5:17pm
    
    Re: Re:
    I will condemn anyone who might judge him as selfish without looking how the original Macintosh affected the world.
    
    I'm confused as to why these concepts should be related to each other? Did the Mac have a huge affect? Undoubtedly (not for the better, in my opinion, but that's a different discussion).
    
    Does that mean he wasn't selfish? No, it doesn't speak to that one way or the other.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2013 @ 5:54pm

Spying on Email
Is that not a bit too much NSA for you Masnick ?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2013 @ 6:36pm

I definitely don't hate steve jobs, but yeah, these kinds of laws hinder creativity and progress, not enhance them.
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Shon Gale, 24 Aug 2013 @ 7:44am

Oh Noooooooooo! Competition.
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someguy70 (profile), 24 Aug 2013 @ 9:10am

what's more fun is that we now have some Apple exec's email addresses. EECB!!
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- Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2013 @ 1:52pm
  
  Re:
  Won't do you any good as Phillip Schiller was ousted after iOS6 release and Steve Jobs is dead.
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  - DinDaddy (profile), 25 Aug 2013 @ 4:34pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Forstall was ousted. Schiller is still there.
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jobtardis1, 30 Oct 2013 @ 11:47pm

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Job Openings in Amazon
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