Walter Isaacson’s official Steve Jobs biography is a hefty old thing, which is probably why the ebook costs an eye-watering £12.99. If that seems too steep, however, you can now buy it digitally from the App Store for £4.99 …If you speak Russian.
The Russian translation has appeared on its native app store for £4.99 as a standalone app, for reasons we’re not quite sure of. If it’s a mistake, whoever approved it is probably going to find themselves thrust out and into the arms of a waiting vodka bottle by the end of the day.
Read the very best bits from the Steve Jobs biography
But there are signs that this is a move by Apple itself. If you search for the iTunes link to the Steve Jobs biography and then change the ‘US’ or ‘GB’ part of the URL to ‘RU’, it’ll try to take you to the Russian page before prompting you to open iTunes.
Do that and it’ll say that you need to change to the Russian iTunes store. Agree to that and, finally, it’ll say that the book isn’t available in the Russian store.
We’re not all that au fait with international publishing laws, but this smacks of a high-up licensing problem to us. Especially as iMobilco, the company behind the app, seem to be a fairly legit business, who also publish TimeOut in Russia.
Whatever the case, if you do speak the mother tongue and want to read up on Steve Jobs’ momentous life, you can now do so for a lot cheaper than the rest of us.
Via AppShopper
