SethGodin
Latest
Apple rejects iBook with links to Amazon's store
This is just one specific case out of the many, many organizations and individuals publishing content on Apple's iBookstore, but it's an interesting call by Apple nevertheless. Seth Godin tried to publish a book of his through Apple's iBooks, but the content was rejected by Apple's system. Not because it was offensive in some way, but simply because it contained links to Amazon's booksore. These weren't even links to Godin's books -- they were simply links to reference books, but because they went out to a competing service, Apple pulled the plug. Before anyone starts yelling about censorship, keep in mind that this is Apple's playground, and it can take its ball home whenever it wants, no matter how inane the reason. But this reason seems particularly inane -- Apple can't really be worried about one link in a ebook promoting a competitor's sales, right? Not to mention that the book in question was a hardcover copy, and unless I'm mistaken, wasn't even sold on Apple's iBooks store anyway. Apple's staked a claim to be at the center of technology and creativity, and of course it's done plenty to cement a spot for itself there. But education and information are a key part of creativity, and if Apple is openly choosing to shut down certain purchases on its stores just for the petty reason of trying to keep one or two sales away from a (sort of) competitor, that's a mistake. [via AppAdvice]
How to make $150 million in a day
Seth Godin has a great post up that serves as a good capper on what may have been Apple's best product launch ever. He puts the money made by Apple last Saturday morning at around $150 million, and even if that's not exactly right, I have to say that having been through a few Apple launches now, I think the iPad's launch was the smoothest and easiest opening I've seen -- for all of the complaints and problems people who haven't bought an iPad seem to have, those who did buy one on Saturday seemed happy to me. So how did Apple pull it all off? As Godin says, they started years ago. Apple is one of the only companies in the world with not only the power to set up limits on access on a device this big, but also keep a rabid fanbase hyped and waiting. Apple has created an image designed exactly for releasing products like this, with the secrecy and speculation and announcement events, and so on. And the company has backed up that image with pristine engineering and design -- as Godin says, rather than be everything to everyone, it promised a few things to a certain group of people (the iPad can't do Flash or multitask or take pictures), and then delivered (but it can do the things it does really, really well). And perhaps most importantly, when launch time came around, Apple's management didn't focus on "launching," they focused on simply getting the product into customers' hands. The iPhone had all kinds of issues with setup and purchasing and activating and so on, but Apple went out of its way during the iPad launch to make sure customers had the iPad when they were supposed to --waived shipping fees, plenty of inventory in stores, and a push for delivery at exactly the right time. That's how you make $150 million in a day: Promise what you'll deliver, and deliver what you'll promise.
