When will I be able to buy Kindle books through the iOS app, dammit?

In the paid section of last week’s BTTR roundup newsletter (go on, subscribe! Just $10 a month!) I briefly discussed the fallout of a US federal district court finding Apple was in “wilful violation” of a 2021 injunction designed to let developers offer alternate payment options to customers in their apps.

I would rather not spend too long rehashing the news – it’s a week old now. But I do want to reshare some of the Judge’s comments in its order:

”This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party wilfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays. As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The Court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anticompetitive acts to avoid compliance with the Injunction. Effective immediately, Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases.”

Now, there’s been a lot of talk about Fortnite returning to the App Store as a result of this injunction (as I write this, it still hasn’t appeared, though). And Apple has appealed the ruling, so these changes may be short-lived in the scheme of things.

But what has happened in the past week is that several big apps have added buttons that let customers pay without going through Apple (and paying them the required 30%).

Amazon’s Kindle app has added a button to “Get book”. Spotify has updated its app to show US customers lower prices if they subscribe outside the app. Patreon now lets your financial support to go to the creators, instead of Apple, when you donate to a creator through the iOS app.

A quick note on buying books. I know that Amazon is a shopping behemoth that you might think can afford to pay Apple its 30% cut anyway. But John Gruber at Daring Fireball does a great job of breaking down why Amazon’s Kindle book store is the perfect justification for Apple opening up to external payments. It all comes down to the business model, where for eBooks, Amazon doesn’t set the price and gets a 30% cut of the sale. If Apple takes the 30% cut, Amazon gets nothing.

But this is a legal stoush, and the jurisdiction of this disagreement is firmly placed within the borders of the USA.

That means that for Australian Apple users these changes have not occurred. If you open up the Amazon Kindle app, you can either download a sample or add it to your Wishlist. If you want to buy the book, you’ll have to leave the app, head to a browser, find the book and buy it there.

The Australian Spotify app merely states

“You can’t upgrade to Premium in the app. We know, it’s not ideal”.

When you think about it, this is obvious. The court of America has no sway on the laws of Australia, so Apple will keep the 30% app fee gravy train flowing for as long as it can in as many markets as it can.

But is there any hope for change in Australia? Turns out there is.

Epic vs Apple, Down Under edition

While it’s a bit of an over-simplification of the entire industry and the regulatory focus of various governments around the world, a big reason Apple has been forced to open its marketplace is because of Fortnite.