ComiXology 3.7 Makes the Best of the Amazon/Apple Situation
When ComiXology was bought by Amazon last year, the company almost immediately ripped all in-app purchases out of the iOS version of its popular comic-book-reading app. Amazon wasn’t interested in paying Apple 30 percent of its in-app sales, Apple wasn’t interested in negotiating terms, and comic book readers could no longer buy and read comics with a couple of taps.
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The lack of in-app purchases is a dealbreaker for some people, though I don’t mind it too much—especially now that the ComiXology app has been redesigned, and thanks to some major improvements to the ComiXology web site. Recently ComiXology added one-click purchases to its site, which was already redesigned to work great on the iPad.
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Is this approach as good as buying issues via an in-app purchase? No, it’s not. And without in-app purchases, you lose the ability to finish an issue and tap to buy and read the next issue in the series—a dangerously expensive form of binge reading. But ComiXology has clearly put a lot of thought into making the experience as good as possible, given Amazon’s refusal to cut Apple in on sales.
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This happens to me about once a week:
"I wonder if there are any new comics coming out I'm interested in. I heard there were some good Star Wars/Indie/... comic books out right now."
I grab the iPad, open Comixology, stare at it for five seconds, remember that this is an iPad, turn it off, and go looking for my Android tablet. I don't even know how to get to Comixology's website.
Yep, adding .com to the end of a company is so difficult. :\
I'd prefer an in-app fully featured shopping cart, but the website on iOS is nearly perfect and didn't slow me down at all.
Admittedly, I only do about a quarter of my comics reading in Comixology, preferring the dead-tree editions for the titles I really care about. Likely due to that, I don’t have nearly the passionate feelings about the removal of the in-app purchasing from it. I’ve found with the redesign of the site to work well on the iPad, it’s about as good as they can make it without giving Apple the thirty percent.