As a partner of Apple, we have an obligation to respect its policies for apps and the books offered in apps.  Based on our understanding of those policies, we believed that Saga #12 could not be made available in our app, and so we did not release it today.

We did not interpret the content in question as involving any particular sexual orientation, and frankly that would have been a completely irrelevant consideration under any circumstance. – Comixology, in a statement about the removal of issue #12 of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staple‘s Saga from the Comixology store for iOS devices.

Yesterday a lot of the comics world got up in arms to defend this week’s issue of Saga from what even the book’s creators thought was censorship from the folks who run Apple’s online content marketplace. Since Saga is already a comic with lots of lovingly depicted violence and sex (and wonderful characters, humor, and themes like love, war, and parenting), this seemed even stranger. The only new thing in this issue appeared to be that there were a couple tiny depictions of graphic sexual acts performed by men with men. Comixology does not elaborate more on why they felt Saga #12′s content went over what they thought Apple’s line was, and I wish they would, simply to emphasize their statement that sexual orientation had nothing to do it. I’m also glad they end with an apology: as a retailer it’s Comixology’s responsibility to communicate to creators about why their books won’t be appearing for sale where they usually do before any misconceptions can be made. Comixology has word from Apple today that Saga #12 does not violate guidlines, and says the issue will be up for purchase through iOS devices soon.

Digital is a fast growing distribution method for comics, and an essential one for folks who don’t live a convenient distance from any of a shrinking number of independent comic shops. So when Apple bans a comic from the app store, that means that anyone who regularly gets their comics through an App store app, like that of Comixology (the most popular and in some cases only distributor of digital comics from DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, and other American comic companies), will be unable to see it on their iOS devices, even if the rest of the app and the rest of the issues in that series are still available.

The Hugo Award nominated, mature readers series Saga, for example, has been banned from the Apple store for two teeny, tiny images of sex that involves two dudes, and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes so I’m just going to make a list.

If you were annoyed at having to wait three months for Downton Abbey Season 3 to hit PBS, you’re going to love this news. Apple is set to offer the final three episodes of the season before they air. Could this work for other shows?

Have you seen the recent Apple commercials where the company makes a big deal about their Geniuses and how you should make sure you’re always going with the real deal? (If you haven’t, here that is.) Well some Star Wars fans thought it would be fun to parody that with a shady Death Star sale. Hmm, I wonder who’s selling it…

(via tipster Nick)

A lot of people say that the late Steve Jobs was ahead of his time. I will not dispute that, but I will say that this four-minute video of Apple goofing on IBM to the tune of the Ghostbusters theme song that was made in 1984 pretty much reeks of 1984. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Nope, not at all. It wasn’t a commercial, it was made for a worldwide sales staff meeting for Apple employees and features both Jobs and Steve Wozniak in cameo roles. Not visible in this video: the neon legwarmers.

(via Huffington Post)

When the Department of Justice announcing an investigation and subsequent suit against Apple and five other eBook publishers for price fixing, Amazon, the 1k pound gorilla of the eBook market and the biggest eBook publisher not named in the suit, immediately lowered its eBook pricing, by as much as a third in some cases. See, the way it works is, Amazon is using the market dominance of its Kindle (60% of the eReader market) to set prices lower than many publishers consider profitable, in an effort to collect even more of the market. Apple, alternatively, takes 30% of any eBook sales on iBooks, and requires any publisher they work with to never sell an eBook for less than the price they sell for iBooks. Are both attempts to create prices based on something other than immediate, per-book profitability? Yes. Are both of them at odds with each other and bad for physical book sellers? Yup.

Today, however, saw one of the weirder ways this fight is playing out, namely in the removal of all Amazon brand hardware from their stores.

Did you know that Apple’s Siri and Google’s Gmail (or should I say, Gmale) are an item? Well now you do. Here is the dramatic (funny) story of how it came to be,  complete with cameos from Hotmale and more! Written and directed by Emily McGregor and produced by Comediva, the video also features some slightly scary AI moments. Enjoy!

(via Comediva)

Just a month ago we were talking about the shady things Amazon.com does to use its 60% of the ebook market muscle to make smaller publishers lower prices against their better judgement. We were also talking about how the US Department of Justice had announced that it would be investigating six of Amazon’s competitors in ebook publishing (Apple, Simon and Schuster, Hachette Book Group, the Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins) for colluding to set prices in the ebook market. Well, it only took about a month for the DoJ to announce that they had indeed found, in their opinion, enough evidence to prove that the six were trying to fix prices. And it took less than a day for Amazon.com to, seemingly coincidentally, announce plans to push down pricing on its ebooks, from $15 to $10 in some cases.

Yesterday, in news that was promised to be true and not an April Fool’s prank, it was announced that Ashton Kutcher — of Ashton Kutcher fame — will be playing the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an indie biopic. Okay, so, going by only the side-by-side pictures alone (pic from Mashable, who were brainy enough to choose pictures from both men’s bearded phases), it’s not that insane of an idea. But then when you recall that Ashton Kutcher is not known for his acting, let alone playing, um, geniuses, this throws things into a different perspective. Let’s talk about this, shall we?

And we were just talking about Amazon throwing its weight around to get small publishers to lower their ebook pricing even if they think it would be financially against their interests… now the US Department of Justice has warned Apple, Simon and Schuster, Hachette Book Group, the Penguin Group, Macmillan, and HarperCollins that it will be investigating them for possible violations of Anti-Trust Law in their pricing of eBooks.

The case rests on the rules Apple set down for how publishers would be required to publish their books to the iPad, and some significant differences between their rules and the way publishers interact with physical retailers.