I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.

Flippant? I thought you said iPhone not a Samsung folding phone. That's Android.

They didn't mention a Samsung phone. "Flippant" is a normal English word that means "dismissive or disrespectful".

You are very kind to explain this, and I now feel slightly guilty for making the joke (which is a bad pun).

You should be mad. But not at Amazon - at Apple - that wants to charge every 3rd party book store 30% to sell a book on an your smartphone, but not it's own book store.

Microsoft was fined billions of dollars and went through years of litigation over something much less egregious.

Apple's (And Google's) digital tax is what you should be mad at.

If your device of choice is one that you don't really control but that instead is just a pile of limitations on top of constraints, I'm quite amazed by your expectation.

> I am sorry for being so flippant and unreasonable expecting to buy a digital book using my smartphone in 2023.

I feel that you are being unreasonable: you willingly bought into a closed ecosystem, and now you're mad that other people are not part of that ecosystem.

What did you expect?

How many ecosystems are available, if you want your child to read books on a digital device?

The only activities I do on the phone are browsing internet, chatting, and taking/viewing pictures.

Anything that requires active involvement waits until I am in front of a PC.

Mobile UIs are just insufficient for most activities.

You drive Tesla to go grocery shopping? I strongly prefer a manual transmission diesel F350 because it can pull a loaded trailer full of construction materials over dirt road like nobody’s business.

Hard to haul my desktop onto the Tube just to read for 30 mins on my way to walk.

They did say "read the internet". Tho I'd bring a kindle and read a book on a 30 minute ride or listen to podcasts.

> go to amazon on a real computer

What's a computer? /s

> /s

Thanks, I wouldn't have noticed

Instead, small authors who self-publish and give Amazon exclusivity, I'm entitled to 40% of the proceed of the book. For basically access to the marketplace.

If you go to some authors discord and make small donation (often half of Amazon's price), they'll send you drm-free ebooks. That's what you should do if you really want to support author and dislike markup from marketplace monopolies.

> It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally.

It's just a book. I'd hope most parents would rejoice if their kid read well enough to get through that, or Mein Kamp.

I certainly hope not.

Found the non-parent giving parenting advice.

Look I had to pick a title that would resonate with people on what they might not want their kids to read. I'm sorry I offended you that people might want to censor the materials a child might read but it's a very common use case, so much in fact that there have been class action lawsuits against companies like amazon/apple/google/sony/microsoft for not allowing parental controls (and not locking the kids out of buying smurfberries).

And yes, as a parent it's part of my job, and my right, to pick and choose what I think my kid is ready for.

> I'm sorry I offended you that people might want to censor the materials a child might read

No offense taken - I'm not sure why you think that.

I suppose people do want to limit what books children read - I still think that's generally misguided - but your points on people actually wanting parental controls are well made.

I still think parents would be better off celebrating reading comprehension than censoring books (Now discussing books with your child is a different matter).

At any rate I guess the prevalence of trash/spam on Amazon is higher than your average library - so there's that...