[Steko]

"In Steve's world, Apple's raising the price by 30% and then taking 30% is a benefit to the customer and not Apple"

The price was already $12.99. The fact that Amazon was willing to eat a large amount of that price on a tiny volume of ebooks in the short term doesn't mean that would have favored consumers in the long term. Today, with agency pricing, the average price of an ebook is around $8. Hasn't that benefited consumers?

[jonknee]

> Today, with agency pricing, the average price of an ebook is around $8. Hasn't that benefited consumers?

Thanks to the settlement, Amazon can now [again] charge what it would like and the result was an immediate drop for titles by publishers that settled. Consumers were hurt by Apple and have benefited from the DOJ's case against Apple's business practices.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/80961.html

> The settlement approved Thursday requires the publishers not only to kill their contracts with Apple within a week but also to end contracts with any e-book retailers that specifically place restrictions on a retailer’s ability to set prices on e-books. And the settlement also bars the publishers from granting a retailer “most favored nation” status for five years.

And: http://www.mhpbooks.com/amazon-begins-discounting-macmillan-...

[Steko]

I'll take your word that that's what happened, but that cite doesn't really support the claim. I think we all agree there was a settlement and those contracts were cancelled.

There may have been some specific things in the Apple model that were anti-consumer (perhaps there were price floors, it's not clear) and if so good riddance but the linked negotiation seems to be indicate that the major points of contention were:

(1) the migration away from wholesale pricing (publisher sells online stores X copies of an ebook, do whatever they want with them);

(2) publishers wanting to force higher prices but Apple insisting on a price ceiling. The MFN was explicitly tied to this in the first email from Harper Collins.

(3) Apple's commission.

What specifically about the app store pricing model hurts consumers?

Does a wholesale model makes sense for digital goods?

Does anyone really believe that Amazon was going to keep losing money on ebooks at the same scale as before when they were 2% of volume?