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Article from Issue 242/2021
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Today I'm remembering an episode that happened a few years ago. We are still a proud print publishing company, but, like most publishers, we deliver some of our copies in electronic form through content platforms available for personal computers and mobile devices.

Dear Reader,

Today I'm remembering an episode that happened a few years ago. We are still a proud print publishing company, but, like most publishers, we deliver some of our copies in electronic form through content platforms available for personal computers and mobile devices. One of those platforms at the time was Apple Newsstand, a virtual newsstand for iPhone and iPad devices. The user interface for Apple Newsstand looked just like a magazine shelf at a bookstore, with a picture of a bunch of magazine shelves. Then, if you purchased a magazine, an icon with the cover of the magazine appeared on the virtual magazine shelf.

The goal of Apple Newsstand was to be a perfect little replacement of a real neighborhood newsstand – you buy any magazine you want (from Apple), and all the magazines you buy line up along your own personal virtual newsstand. The international company I worked for back then had several magazines, and they submitted applications for their magazines to be on Apple Newsstand. Linux magazines? No problem. System administration magazines? Sure. Raspberry Pi and Drupal magazines? Of course. But when we submitted a request to sell an Android magazine, the application was quickly rejected. It turns out that Apple was banning anything that mentioned Android from their newsstand because Android was competing against the iPhone and (according to them), it was an inferior, copycat technology. In other words, Apple Newsstand was a perfect little replacement for a real neighborhood newsstand, except that it inhabited an imaginary universe in which Apple's enemies did not exist.

[...]

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