You can still purchase books on Apple's devices from Amazon's store. You just can't download an app for Apple's store and sell in-app purchases without paying a cut. I buy Kindle books all the time on my iPad. I just go to amazon.com, which is Amazon's main store.

You also can't link to your ebook store website from within the app. That's the issue.

That's not what the original post is arguing. If that was the crux of it, I'd agree with it. A good middle ground would probably be that Apple still gets a cut of in-app purchases but website links are allowed.

That doesn't make any sense.

> Amazon's website is not Apple's store.

Indeed, and Apple gets no money from things you buy on Amazon.com.

> The analogy would be Walmart getting a % from songs bought on an iPod if the iPod itself was purchased from Walmart.

Only if you buy those songs through Walmart.

They disallow Amazon from linking to their ebook store from within the app.

> Only if you buy those songs through Walmart.

With Walmart disallowing songs to be bought from anywhere other than Walmart.

That's why the analogy (which has been repeated over and over) is rather silly. When you purchase something from a retailer you establish 2 relationships; one with the retailer and one with the product you purchased. In the App Store universe, Apple places itself in between the second relationship. Whether this is legal or not I will leave to those with relevant degrees.

> With Walmart disallowing songs to be bought from anywhere other than Walmart.

But that's not the case, you can buy kindle books directly from Amazon.com and the process has nothing to do with Apple.