Tumbling into 20xx

An argument which I didn't hear you guys address in re. the Comixology/Kindle books Amazon-Apple debacle.

1) Apple and Amazon agree a deal for Amazon to get a special rate for the App Store. Maybe even 5%. All is sunshine and roses.

2) After a year, maybe two, Amazon backs out.

Following this chain of events, Amazon are now in a much stronger position in the court of public opinion, as they can simply state that Apple would not agree to a more reasonable term for them. After all, they are Amazon.com, don't they deserve special treatment? Now in the eyes of consumers, Apple is the bad guy for not hammering something out with Amazon.

The issue with the whole "cut a deal" argument is that it inevitably sets Apple up for a fall once terms can no longer be reached. c.f. Apple/Google maps data.

Cutting a deal with a partner assumes that both sides are in a position to negotiate. I'd agree that Apple certainly is, and could even use volume discounts to its advantage to drive App Store sales. But that assumes that there is always a huge imbalance in the power dynamic. Otherwise, the pursuit of business growth by the partner sooner or later makes the relationship untenable.

Amazon has a long history of screwing its business partners and is fairly unusual in that it operates at break even for quarter after quarter without triggering a shareholder revolt. Their long term aim is clearly to be the supplier for everything to everyone, and once they hit sufficient market share prices will be raised and they start raking in the cash. Right now they are focused on controlling their cashflow to maintain as large level of infrastructure development as possible. They don't want to give anyone else a cut of revenue wherever possible. I'd also wager that Amazon already has some sort of volume discount with its current payment processors, creating a further disincentive to route money through any other third party.

Apple is interested in selling everyone in the world an Apple device, but they don't really care what you do with it once you have it. Just buy a new iPhone every two years, an iPad here, MacBook there. Apple is building a very different business for a very different future than Amazon.

As an ATP listener (and possibly even something of a Casey fan) I was overjoyed that at long last, we finally got the unabridged, full-Liss Software Methodologies podcast.

I'm generally fascinated by strategies for wrangling creative talents, having been on both ends of similar systems myself, albeit in science rather than software.

My takeaway is that at the heart of all of these systems beats communication. From what I understood of Casey's hashing out of how his employer does Agile development, a lot of it centers around the simple act of trying to get everyone on the same page with regards to how hard development projects are, and then the system follows from there with user stories, velocity etc.

What lead me to write this post was Casey's description of the joy he experienced when the client bought in to Agile. It's an awesome feeling when you are working in a team with common goals and a fervor to achieve them. Even better when the person in charge understands the opportunity cost involved with ad hoc project changes. I've been in those teams, felt the rush and sat happy on the endorphins for days.

However, Casey, was it Agile that you enjoyed so much, or was it the functional team which - critically - included the client as an active member?

Who am I?

A mid-20's guy, scientist by day, gamer by night and parent all the time. British by birth, American by marriage and Marylander by location. Full time nerd.

I've been mucking around with computers ever since forever it seems. Life started in BASIC on an Acorn BBC B computer and graduated into the WIMP world on an Archimedes 3000.

A RISC PC later and the death of Acorn forced me into the Windows world with a hand-me-down 486 machine with a whopping 4 megabytes of RAM, but mine, all mine.

A combination of real money income, peer pressure and Apple's switch to Intel got me into a Mac mini, and now I live out of a late-'08 MacBook having been seduced by the new and shiny Unibody design.

iPhone user since the 3G hit the UK, gone through a white 4 and now on a slate 5.