We reached out to several of the e-book sellers for clarification on this matter. Mary Ellen Keating, Barnes & Noble's senior vice president for corporate communications and public affairs, replied via e-mail: "We have made no official comment on this." Similarly, a spokeswoman for e-book seller Kobo only told : "Business as usual, Kobo has no intention of leaving the Apple App Store." Amazon did not reply to a request for comment.

But iFlowReader is a smaller shop, and doesn't necessarily have the clout of those majors, or the ability to weather the uncertainty. Even though Apple's new policies don't kick in until the end of June, Morin is shuttering the app now. His attempts to reach out to the company and find some sort of common ground have met with little response on Apple's side.

"Their basic attitude," said Morin, "is 'we don't have time.'"

And with that, it would appear iFlowReader is out of time as well.