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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.
Financial Times announced a web application and killed their app store subscription app.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, look at the exorbitant fees they are charging for iCloud ($0) and for Lion ($29). It's just ridiculous.
I was aware that Lodsys was also suing Android developers, but what does Microsoft have to do about this right now?
This actually might be an interesting differentiation strategy -- if Apple can show that it will go to bat for its developers, then Google is obliged to do at least as much, or else Android begins to look unsafe. It's sortof sick (or interesting) to think that a legal team and patent indemnification has now become a part of a computing platform as important as the APIs, the brand and the marketing.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Right. Because the one thing we all can agree on about Apple is that it's an unorganized mess without a strong controlling central authority.
No comment.
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.
I'd go with "interesting" over sick. If you made alternators instead of software, indemnification would be a necessary part of your business plan to begin with. Software patent litigation is actually only a small part of the field of patent litigation, and despite what you see on slashdot, it's comparatively rare. You average run-of-the-mill patent dispute is much more likely to be about components in a pea-combiner or an x-ray source than it is going to be about the use of a specific codec.
With that said, if Apple gets in the ring on this one, expect a good fight. Apple, like IBM during the SCO litigation, needs to make an example out of Lodsys. That probably means something a little more spirited than a simple "I'll cover your defense costs." Even money on "an undisclosed settlement" before Lodsys starts writing any more briefs.
Yes, because Win95>98 and 2000 > XP > Vista > 7 were all "updates" right? Not even "service patches".
What reality do you live in?
Yeah between those versions Apple added : iChat, Safari, FileVault, Exposé, Fast User Switching, Spotlight, Dashboard, Quicktime 7, Quicktime X, Automator, VoiceOver, Core Image, Core Video, Rosetta, Time Machine, Spaces, BootCamp, Grand Central, LauchPad, Mission Control, Quartz Composer, etc., etc. But you know, other than that you're right it's the same system.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I'll just link to the post that already replied to you: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2228992&cid=36405510
"What Windows has to do with it" is something called a "direct comparison".
You are saying "I am trying to say that even $30 is too expensive, when it is just an tiny update. It even looks the same as it used to." - when the "look" of Win 95 to Win 98 didn't change, for example. Not that changing the look entirely needs to happen for an OS to be considered a new version (you're seriously going with that as a legitimate reason? The 2008 and 2009 Ford Fiesta use the same body shell. This means the 2009 one should be free, right?)
While the look of OS X has remained broadly similar across the versions (ie, they have found a UI that works and don;t see the need to mess with it too much) does not mean that subsequent releases of the OS are merely "software updates". The amount of work and features that have gone into it between 10.1 and 10.6 (and now 7) just don;t bear that out.
Simply the fact that it looks the same is not a reason to say "lolz it's just a point release and should be free!"