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Apple Eases Rules For Subscription Apps
pjfontillas writes "Apple has quietly reversed their decision that required publishers who sell content and subscriptions in their iPhone and iPad apps to go through iTunes, with Apple taking a 30% cut. It's not so quiet in the workplace, however, as this news has a pretty big influence on developer workloads. Here at The New York Times our developers breathed a sigh of relief once we realized we don't have try and work around that requirement like The Financial Times did. Apple seems to have been doing much better with their community (consumers and developers alike) recently."
Reader imamac notes that Apple has also filed a motion to intervene in the Lodsys patent suit against several iOS app developers that we've been following.
I am pretty shocked at this. Apple seems to be big on money grabbing from everybody for everything lately.
They're finally realizing that their restrictive practices are a little too restrictive?
Crazy talk, I know...
In Apples see it as those apps that use Apples in app purchase will be protected from litigation by the License they have with Lodsys. Those apps that roll their own will be open for patent infringement law suit. The choice is simple. Use Apples API or get sued out of business. The choice is theirs.
How exactly does a sentence which starts with "here at The New York Times" ends up having two grammatical mistakes in it?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Google and Microsoft, where are you?
Having a strong competitor will do the most amazing things :)
I'm so glad that Google didn't let Apple achieve the >75% marketshare that they did with the iPods. Can you imagine the iPhone being the only credible smartphone in the market?
I'm a cynic. I think they decided it would be more profitable in the long run. Android is growing like a weed on phones, and at least has some nifty tablets, even if those sales stink. Windows Phone is getting all the bells and whistles in the fall (even though their sales numbers stink too), and next year Windows 8 will attempt to take on iPad and OS X at the same time with a unified platform.
Apple has made tons of money already from their mandated royalties, and I think they are just feeling worried and trying to assuage old grudges of their partners in preparation for the next waves of real competition.
It'll be a little cold in Hell today.
Note that the devil is in the details.
While Apple will
They're still bound to some rules:
In other words.. they can offer the subscription elsewhere, but they're not allowed to make it easy for users to pick up said subscription.
It's still an improvement (for publishers, for users I'm sure the proposed earlier method was already ideal) as publishers can now at least offset the Apple take through price differentiation - but it still has its idiosyncrasies.
I think you forgot to read the summary.
In any company, there's always somebody who has the "Sanity Token" and is
therefore actually *thinking* about the consequences. Apparently a party or parties
unknown in corporate finally realized that sodomizing your developer community
is a massively suboptimal long-term strategy.
Apple's gotten too big. It's got a major case of left-hand not knowing what right-hand is doing. It's almost a culture.
What's the difference between Apple and their users?
The latter use lube when they fuck you in the ass.
Let me know when an HTML5 web app running in Safari for iOS can prompt the user to turn on the microphone and camera. Has that feature been added yet?
Apple's gotten too big. It's got a major case of left-hand not knowing what right-hand is doing. It's almost a culture.
Gotten too big? By what arbitrary standard could that be decided? Because you don't like Apple?
Please give even a single instance of "left-hand not knowing what right-hand is doing" where Apple is concerned. That's about as far from reality as you can get in Apple's case. Not only is their integration working remarkably well for them, but their focus is almost terrifying in it's scope. Everything Apple does informs everything else, from the design of their hardware, software, and retail stores, to the thrust of their advertising and their carefully managed public image. That is their culture, which is diametrically opposed to your assertion. You're really describing Microsoft, with their multiple competing fiefdoms.
When Apple first announced their guidelines for subscriptions and the publishers protested in outrage, I predicted in a discussion that Apple would change them before they went into effect. I argued at the time that it seemed to me that Apple were merely floating a trial balloon to see how far they could push, and were probably well prepared in advance to exercise some flexibility. This also works for them, because they can then give the public impression that they're prepared to be reasonable, when in fact they had probably planned internally for less stringent terms. As I said, Apple manages their public image with extreme care, and I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised that they pushed their original terms knowing full well that they had no intention of implementing them. In fact I would argue that they would have been surprised if they had been widely accepted.
Motorola Atrix? Motorola Photon? HTC Sensation? HTC Pyramid?
You should probably look before asking silly questions. =P
More like Apple == Apple. Throughout their history, they've been hell-bent on proprietary hardware and proprietary software to run on it.
Now that they have some money and power, watch as they turn into the most egregious iron-fisted jerks you've ever seen.
At least with Microsoft and the PC, you generally had a little bit of flexibility with the hardware (commodity parts aplenty, at least a few different disk operating systems, Xenix, etc and Linux for the last 20 years), but it's clear that the Apple dream is complete control of an integrated hardware/software stack.
It's the freaking dark ages of computing all over again.
Thanks, Apple.
Thank you, http://exercisesto-reducetummy.com/articles/
This brings to my mind something a local comedian said. Forgive me as I paraphrase, translate and tone it down a bit all at once:
And so they shove a red-hot poker in your arsehole! And you scream and complain until they take it out and replace it with a lighter, the flame licking your arsehole. And you sigh in relief and say "Well, now that's better!"
The worst thing about MS was that people ended up buying their products whether or not that's what they actually wanted. Buy a computer and unless you choose carefully, you're another Microsoft sales statistic.
Apple doesn't have anything like this going on, from what I can tell. (Sure, their software comes preloaded on their hardware, but anyone who buys a Mac knows they're getting MacOS, and in fact very well might be buying it for that reason. Nobody buys a Dell and explains "That was the only way I could get Windows.")
(The funny thing is that Android, of all things, might end up like that: buy a phone and, by default if you don't think about what you want, you end up with Android. (But there are some differences from the Windows situation, the big one being that Android just plain isn't as unpleasant to use as Windows. And if someone says, "Au contraire, Android sucks pretty bad," I suggest you think back to what Windows was like, especially in the 1990s.))
The second worst thing about MS was lockin through lack of interoperability. Someone in the office gets MS Word, and it saved everything in a weirdo file kformat by default, so other people needed MS Word. Apple sort of has someanalogous things like that going on, but to a vastly lesser degree.
Apple is evil, but they're not infiltrating unwitting/unwilling people the way Microsoft did. Nobody's under any pressure to buy Apple products, wondering how they're going to pay their bills unless they give up and become an Apple shop, or begrudgingly starts using Apple stuff because they can't avoid it. With the exception of the patent lawsuits, Apple is mainly only evil to people who like or use their products, and they're not getting in the way of people who have other visions. (Again: except for the patent crap.) To me, that's a world of difference.
For people who have outside MS influence for the last few years, perhaps it's too easy to forget what a frustrating and destructive scourge Windows was. Apple has the hateful intensity, but barely a percentage of the breadth.
The only quiet nature of it is that the Press calls it that due to Apple not broadcasting it's policies as front page news. The Developers all know about it and it didn't sneak up on us.
Gee. It's almost like some over-controlling jerk in upper management must be out sick, or something.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
More like Apple == Apple. Throughout their history, they've been hell-bent on proprietary hardware and proprietary software to run on it.
opensource.apple.com
Apple has even initiated their own open source projects. And their hardware is based on open standards and industry standards, including standards that Apple themselves have made available to third parties.
You are right, though, that "Apple == Apple", but they are neither completely open, or completely closed. They are user-centric, with a focus on "normal" people. That's the one, main constant at Apple, and also why they are so phenomenally successful. It's also why this "Apple is super-proprietary" or evil or money grubbing, or whatever arguments are so misguided.
At least with Microsoft and the PC, you generally had a little bit of flexibility with the hardware (commodity parts aplenty, at least a few different disk operating systems, Xenix, etc and Linux for the last 20 years), but it's clear that the Apple dream is complete control of an integrated hardware/software stack.
The same Microsoft that would hose your bootloader if you installed Windows after installing Linux? And the same Apple that sells Macs with the express capability of running Windows? And which have been able to run Linux for well over a decade?
It's the freaking dark ages of computing all over again.
The "dark ages" where more people are able to do more things with their computers (especially Apple computers and devices) than ever before? Oh my, what an awful age we live in!