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iPad Getting a Subscription Infrastructure?
itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about an article in the San Jose Mercury News leaking news that Apple is 'almost ready to take the wraps off a new system to support subscriptions. The terms, if the leaks are accurate, sound less than ideal for publishers though. Apple will take 40% of advertising revenue, and 30% of subscription fees from participating publishers. In return, Apple will offer consumers the ability to opt-in to sharing their data with the publishers.' Apple isn't commenting on the speculation. 'In somewhat related news, Apple has released iOS 4.2 to developers. This is the version of iOS that will let iPads, iPhones and iPad Touches print to a WiFi-enabled or shared printer on a local network, via the new AirPrint service. It sounds like you'll be able to print articles from your digitally delivered newspaper before too long,' says Smith."
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
From the article:
"If you can put animation and multimedia into ads, that will greatly enhance reader views. I am certain of that."
hmm...
Huh? Printers?
I haven't had one of those in 5+ years.
Ink always dried out from lack of use.
Are you advocating more regulation?
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages
While regulatory capture actually was a big part of the problem, those scary-sounding loans made under the low-income provisions weren't really an issue at all. It was mostly Joe Six-Pack and Jane Boxwine, stereotypical stalwarts of the middle class, trying to get into the McMansion-flipping business.
Printing from these things is fine and dandy, but I really need to send a fax from one. That's a technology we just can't live without.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
FEC FTC WTF ... sorry, all those TLAs get mixed up.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
About Fucking Time. I was printing wirelessly off my Palm Pilot 15 years ago.
those were not regulations. Those were laws passed by congress. Dont confuse people who have expertise with those trying to get elected.
Are you advocating more regulation?
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages
I was merely responding to what appeared to be a call for regulation because the OP did not like the idea of a particular company being successful rather than there being an immediate need for regulation.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The FEC? Federal Election Commission. No way that Jobs is gonna let anybody vote on this.
Maybe the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). But I certainly don't want the government meddling into how newspaper subscriptions are paid for. They've got their work cut out for themselves doing important things like not doing anything about chronic Salmonella contamination of egg farms and approving Environmental Impact Statements concerning the potential harming of walruses in the Gulf of Mexico after an oil spill.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Just wondering.
Are you advocating more regulation? Wasn't the sub prime meltdown the result of too much regulation in the wrong area? Instead of regulating prudence, the government basically forced banks to support untenable inner city mortgages which should have never been approved in the first place.
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages and did not force banks to give out loans to people who were high risk.
It's more a question of what kind of regulation is in place.
The subprime deal was the wrong kind. It was based on some abstract idea of "fairness". That idea wasn't even self-consistent because no one is born with a poor credit history. They had the chance to be responsible with their money and to punctually repay any debts they incurred and have demonstrated a track record of overextending themselves and failing to do so. "Fair" would mean let them sleep in the bed they have made for themselves and, if they so choose, work towards a higher credit score until such time that they are credit-worthy for a mortgage. That would be objective fairness.
Regulation was used to enforce a subjective fairness based on some idealized fairy-tale notion of how things should be that had little contact with reality. It caused massive credit to be issued to people who were not credit-worthy. It led to failures that should have been predictable.
Regulation can also be used to clearly define business practices which are abusive or unsound based on objective criteria. I am not familiar with Canadian businesses but from your description it sounds like that's what happened there. It's not so much a matter of "more" or "less" regulation. It's a matter of "just enough" of the right kind.
I don't know if the insistence on dividing all of political thought into a one-dimensional line defined by "left" and "right" is solely responsible for encouraging and legitimizing this either-or type of thinking, but it tends towards myopia.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
US fared worse because we had regulations that encouraged sub-prime mortgages.
I always shake my head in sadness whenever I see people getting in a fight over 'more' or 'less' regulation. It isn't the quantity of regulation that matters, it's the quality. You can't throw random regulation at a problem and expect things to get better. You can't randomly remove regulation and expect the world to be more beautiful. Finely crafted regulation can keep the economy humming, but poorly written regulations can choke it.
Whenever anyone proposes a change in regulation, don't ask, "is it more or less?" ask "what changes?" People who do that spend less of their time looking like idiots.
Qxe4
Canada is also in the midst of a housing bubble that is in the process of popping right now.
I would say one of the other biggest differences is that in Canada you can't deduct mortgage interest. Something I wish we would change in the US...
Content providers somewhat have to agree on whatever pricing policy Apple forces them. Apple have been so successful for the last ten years that companies don't think they can afford losing its platform to sell their product or service. If Steve Jobs suggested something similar to music companies in 2000 for iTunes and iPod they would have kicked him out of their offices.
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
iPod owning retards will finally be able to do yet another thing they could have done better all along had they bought a laptop in the first place.
Did you pull your laptop out of your pocket to post that?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I would say one of the other biggest differences is that in Canada you can't deduct mortgage interest. Something I wish we would change in the US
However, profits from the sale of our principle residences do not count as capital gains.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I run the website for a local newspaper and the major part of our website is the subscription archive system. I got a bit excited when I first read the title because lately I've noticed that more people have been using iPads and iPhones to access the site. Then I read the article. 40% of advertising revenue and 30% of subscription fees to go to Apple? That's bloody ridiculous!
The assertion that the Community Reinvestment Act caused the housing bubble and ensuing recession is a disproven canard.
Thus:
The vast majority of subprime home mortgage lending was made by organizations not bound by the CRA. Not to mention lending for commercial real estate development.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.
A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.
It's all too rare that I get a reply that is so useful, relevant, and informative. I was aware of most of these practices (in fact I consider the crisis to be engineered in the style of the Hegelian dialectic -- one must engage in both "follow the money" and "follow the cronyism/power") but nowhere have I seen it summed up so succinctly. Thank you for that sir.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
US rules have changed fairly recently as well. Married couples don't have to worry about 500k of profit (single 250k) if they've lived in a house 2 out of the last 5 years. Given average house costs, maintenance costs or money spent on improvements, etc, VERY few people get 500k in profit in a sale. Most houses nationwide don't even cost near 500, though obviously in many areas they do (or did)
No regulation whatsoever mandated that loan brokers should knowingly offer loans whose payments would balloon to more than the borrower's income. Certainly they were not advised to mislead financially naive borrowers into believing nothing could go wrong. No regulation called upon them to falsify the documents to give the borrowers a higher "official" income. Nothing suggested they should try talking starter home candidates into McMansions. Certainly no regulation suggested that they should then package it all up into derivatives and represent them to be AAA in spite of their own quants warning them otherwise.
The actual "regulations" you speak of were voluntary with incentives and were intended to help disadvantaged 1st time buyers get in to an appropriate starter home.
I agree that appropriate regulation in the appropriate amount is what's necessary, that too much is as bad as too little or the wrong sort. Part of the difficulty is too many lies from too many people. In this case, the causes of the economic disaster all anxiously blaming those evil regulations that won't let them do just whatever they want. They then get parroted by their pet politicians.
You might want to have the koolaid you're holding analyzed before you drink it.
Since this is about iPads, I'm doubting you could have pulled your iPad out of your pocket to post that. Its the same size as a netbook, just a lot less functional.. but it is shiny...
This is how Jobs and Murdoch start to get money for previously free new info. Murdoch just needs to come up with a newspaper delivery metaphor for iPad owners and they'll walk right in, subscribe to the app and start what uncle rupert has been fantasising about - the return to paid news.
It won't matter that we on /. won't participate. It'll just be another area that the general public perceive us geeks to be weird or even cheap about, as they go around paying for shit we get fro free, at the same time taking their ad-driven revenue generation stats away from non-Steve approved media, killing it.
Yeah, that's probably paranoid.
So, does this mean that you'll have to replace an iPad every month or so?
Since this is about iPads...
You said iPod.
Its the same size as a netbook...
No, it's not.
...just a lot less functional...
That door swings both ways.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yet another feature that I've been able to do on my BlackBerry for several years now. Thanks for catching up Apple!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Printing!?? From a digital source??!??!?!?!? HOLY FUCKING SHIT BOSS, I've had a computer since I was a tyke, and now I get to live in the new modern world in which we can print! YES!
This is going off-topic, but you're right; people have oversimplified.
It's the same basic problem as taxes and spending. It's not just an issue of whether the government is taxing too much or too little, but an even bigger issue is, who are they taxing and for what behavior? Similarly, there's not a simple dollar amount that the government should spend, and if they spend that amount everything will be good. The question is, what are they spending that money on?
Really these are all complicated issues, but there are a lot of people who need it to be bring everything down to a yes-or-no answer.
OK, I'm not the OP, but I'll bite.
I did pull my laptop out of my coat pocket to browse /., and thus indirectly to post this. And your precious iPad won't fit in my coat pocket, either.
My laptop, as it happens, is a Fujitsu U820 -- 1280x800 (yeah, I can actually watch HD videos in HD, not downscaled to 1024x576 for 16:9), 5.6" touchscreen (not capacitive, the good kind where you can actually use a stylus effectively), full HW keyboard, finger-print reader, real USB port, SD slot, webcam, a/b/g/n GPS, the works. I normally use it opened flat (where it's about the size of an iPad), but if I'm willing to accept the handicap of no keyboard (like the iPad suffers all the time), I can flip the screen and fold it down to the size of a paperback -- and still fit more info on the screen than your big slate.
The only shortcoming of this device that your iPad fixes is the battery life, which is only 6-8 hours -- I hear the iPad is a little better in use, and of course all ARM devices do way better in idle. Grrrrrrr... I wish Windows would DIAF so manufacturers who aren't capable of rolling their own OS would be free to drop the stinking turd that is x86 and choose architectures based on their actual merits.
So how does this story end? Fujitsu discontinues the U820 in favor of the UH900, which goes to capacitive touch (ooh, multitouch; shiny! BUT WHERE'S MY FUCKING STYLUS!) and ditches the tablet mode, axes the volume/mute rocker, the microphone port, and the 5GHz wireless, and in the only positive change, trades the (slow, ) CF slot for a 2nd USB port. Why'd they have to ditch all those features? Because it didn't sell, had to bring it to a lower price point to get the dumb fucks to buy it.
And that's where the OP's assumption led him astray; he didn't get rule #1: People will never buy devices based on how capable they are (laptops in general, and the U820 in particular, clearly win), but based on how much they like them (which is entirely subjective). If you're a nerd with a perpetual brainboner for tech, you're likely to find device likability strongly correlated to capability, so much so that you can get by considering them one for your own purchases, but as soon as you forget they're actually two different quantities, you'll be perpetually irritated by people who bought the less capable device, because they must not know it's less capable, or must be cognitively dissonant. Of course, in reality they do know, they just like the shiny one better -- and unlike far too many nerds, they know that those quantities are different, so they don't see the presumed illogic in their position.
TL;DR: I typed all this on my laptop, not because it's more capable than the iPad (which it is), but the real reason I pulled it out of my pocket to use is because I like it better than the iPad. If you like the iPad better, that's fine, too. Find a pocket that it fits, and carry it -- this isn't a religious thing, so no need for crusades from any sides.
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
That's only funny or insightful if you think of the "customers" as the PUBLISHERS.
What about us, the users? Apple isn't charging us anything.
Who is the real customer here? I know who I prefer to think of as the customer when I am one...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The company that I work for runs an online game called TibiaME for mobile phones. Naturally it makes sense to use premium SMS for payments. The downside:
- You need to have agreements with each an every provider separately, world wide!
- Most provider charge an arm and a leg for their service, partly more than 50%
Now compare that to Apple's offer where you have exactly 1 company to talk to and that's charging 30-40%. It's still a lot of money - but far better than what the others charge you.
(I know this article was referring to newspapers and the like, but the system is pretty much the same.)
"US fared worse because we had regulations that encouraged sub-prime mortgages."
Not really. US had a bubble because a shadow banking system was allowed to appear. And even that was not a hard requirement, there was a bubble in commercial real estate as well. Paul Krugman (as usual) has a nice article with citations and sources: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/sep/30/slump-goes-why/
US also doesn't have any regulations that _require_ banks to give out subprime loans. And yes, I know about the CRA.
And soon people will be wondering why digital copys are not much cheaper than print versions of magazines. Sadly in this case they will be blaming the magazines when fault really lays with apple being greedy
interrestingly enough "About Fucking Time" is exactly what all the SPAMers and virus writers are thinking. Un-like your PalmPilot which used a highly directionnal IrDA beam to print (or the short ranged Bluetooth that modern wireless printers offer), this uses wireless *networking*. And in a standard fashion.
so this opens up a whole new world of SPAM possibilities and exploits. *Paper*-SPAM possibilities. It's the SPAM-over-Fax era all-over again !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Worth pointing out that he said regulations _encouraged_ sub-prime mortgages. He never said that sub-prime mortgages were _required_ by regulation.
That's not really true as well.
CRA does not encourage subprime lending, it just requires banks to use the same criteria for (the same) loans from different neighborhoods.
Oops he used the wrong vowel that makes his point invalid.
Oops, he used the wrong product name and invalidated his own point.
FTFY. :)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
And finally, we can see you go for short ass-posts.
I would have written more if the replies had anything to do with what I said. :D
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
they do however REQUIRE you to purchase a new device to utilize MANY of these new features they benevolently add......
All of the features in iOS4.2 are supported back to the iPhone 3G, EXCEPT for multitasking. How does this equate to "REQUIRE MANY" as you posit?
Simple fact: It does not, and like all Apple Haters you transpose the unusual with the common.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley