The Minority Report

Thank you for being one of our valued customers. We are writing to you today to make a very sad announcement. BeamItDown Software and the iFlow Reader will cease operations as of May 31, 2011. We absolutely do not want to do this, but Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple to make a profit selling contemporary ebooks on any iOS device. We cannot survive selling books at a loss and so we are forced to go out of business. We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game. This is a very sad day for innovation on iOS in this important application category. We are a small company that thought we could build a better product. We think that we did but we are powerless against Apple’s absolute control of the iOS platform.
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I know it’s just my perception but perception eventually becomes reality. I keep reading more and more stories across then entire spectrum of iOS application developers where they are being screwed by Apple.

Apple just passed Google in valuation so stories like the above are increasingly reminiscent of Microsoft in the 90′s. Crushing innovation, unfair pricing and backroom deals. Watching small companies innovate and then including the functionality into Windows for free. Changing the development tools to lock in developers, etc.

I’m not saying that Apple = Microsoft but it certainly is a possibility that Apple could turn into the Evil Empire itself. I’ve always thought that Steve Jobs had a certain jealousy of Bill Gates, but not like this….not like this.