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Time Inc. Signs Magazine Deal With Apple
redletterdave writes "Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the U.S., has decided to embrace digital distribution. On Thursday, Time Inc. announced that it will make all of its magazines available over the Newsstand application built by Apple. The agreement was confirmed by Time Inc. CEO Laura Lang and Apple's senior VP of Internet software development Eddy Cue. The two company executives agreed to allow Apple Newsstand users to subscribe to more than 20 magazines owned by Time Inc., including Sports Illustrated, People, and Entertainment Weekly."
Rotten fruit.
Time already offers digital subscriptions. All this does is add the ability to subscribe through Newsstand. A nice win for Apple, but it sounds like Time got the concessions they wanted in order to make the deal.
"They want you to be subscribing to them, and the last time we looked they weren't making the magazines," Bewkes said of Apple.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
when Apple stop being Mormons and you can buy Playboy!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Whoa... I didn't know that. Would we have any photos of these sweaty teenage Chines girls.? .. er... for the archives...
Yeah, but who wants to hear about sweaty mexican dudes scraping plates?
And your proof is? Mike Daisy's narratives?
And your proof that Apple is doing anything worse than its competition is? The competition's reports on their contractors' work conditions?
And your proof is? Mike Daisy's narratives?
And your proof that Apple is doing anything worse than its competition is? The competition's reports on their contractors' work conditions?
Doing no worse than one's competition is not really a defense or a moral position. It just means that you aren't the only bad person out there, but it doesn't justify what you are doing. Prisons are full of people who didn't do anything worse than somebody else.
And your proof is? Mike Daisy's narratives?
Nah, Mike Daisy wouldn't know a rosy-cheeked Chinese slave girl if she slapped him in the face.
And your proof that Apple is doing anything worse than its competition is? The competition's reports on their contractors' work conditions?
Apple's competition is much worse: they buy slaves from Apple, after they're old and tired, no longer full of energy in the bloom of youth.
No, no, no. What they are doing is not digital distribution of the same content found in the printed periodicals. What they are doing is forcing down the consumers throat some one's sick idea of what periodicals should be in the future as seen from a Harry Potter movie a decade ago. The paradigm sucks royally. Every single new issue is a discrete new application, not a document. While I find that detail bizarre, in theory its not a terrible idea. But the implementation is horrifying. Its so far from what it should be its absurd. Newsstand isn't failing because of a thin roster, Newsstand is failing because the implementation is a terrible idea. A subscription through Newsstand is nothing like a real subscription. Its not even like the web model, which at least has become familiar. The subscriber is forced to learn to operate a new application every single edition. This is anathema.
Even operating systems that function in an entirely different manner do not do this: Windows is actually very similar to Ubuntu or Macintosh from a users perspective because they are all using common functions at the desktop level, in effect while the colors and shadows may be different, its still all menus, windows, icons, clicking and dragging. What Apple and the publishers that are embracing the Newsstand model are doing is madness... new applications that are nothing like anything that has come before! And each new edition (app) has the potential, and in practice it is so, to be entirely different from the last, making anything learned about how the last edition functions worthless. I understand the frustration of users, and it is not what the article is claiming, and I can only imagine the strain on resources that each new edition of a periodical poses for publishers.... they now need a development team.
I'm not sure they are still around, but once there was an Austin based startup called "NewsStand, Inc.," whose model was exactly what publishers and subscribers would suspect, but they were ahead of their time. What you saw in their reader was exactly what you saw in the printed edition. The subscriber model was very similar, if not identical, to the traditional model. I'm not certain, but I think Zinio has a similar model to this. Originally, viewing pdf's on a screen wasn't ideal: the software and hardware was slow to respond to the users commands. But now the software is pretty good and the hardware can handle fast screen redraws and is nimble enough to keep up with the user. pdf's used to require a "pdf warning" next to the links so as not to upset the user downloading and not expecting it, which would tie up their browser and possibly crash it because of the file size. This has been mitigated by the steady progress of technology: our browsers, readers, and graphics card and network connections can now handle the graphics rich content, and it just doesn't bother anyone anymore. Many ebook readers (those reading, not necessarily the hardware) actually prefer to read a document that is identical to the printed piece.
The mistake Apple and publishers are making is to assume that the old publishing model is broken or outdated. It isn't! It is merely being encroached upon by the web model (namely, free content), but is fundamentally sound. People, for the most part, like magazines and newspapers the way they are. The idea to move from a document based model to an application based mode
The Admin and the Engineer
When Apple announced the terms for Newsstand, the 30% cut was not the major bone of contention between the magazine publishers and Apple. It was the fact that Apple refused to pass on subscriber information automatically. Instead, subscribers had to click an "Allow" button in a dialog box asking if they wanted their personal information sent along to the publishers. The publishers were outraged that Apple made the process opt-in, dramatically reducing the treasure trove of information they could sell to advertisers.
I have no idea if Apple made concessions to Time on the issue of subscriber privacy, but knowing them I think it's unlikely. As far as Apple is concerned, folks with iTunes accounts are Apple's customers, and subscriptions through Newsstand are just some of the services that they offer. I'm actually with Apple on this one. The terms for Newsstand make it clear that subscribers should have a choice about the disposition of their personal information, while the publishers treat it as something to which they are automatically entitled.
Or alcohol, depending on what process you use ;)
Although I prefer pear cider myself.
And your proof is? Mike Daisy's narratives?
And your proof that Apple is doing anything worse than its competition is? The competition's reports on their contractors' work conditions?
Doing no worse than one's competition is not really a defense or a moral position. It just means that you aren't the only bad person out there, but it doesn't justify what you are doing. Prisons are full of people who didn't do anything worse than somebody else.
That wasn't his point and you know it. The supposed "moral superiority" of Apple's competitors is frequently used as a justification for hating them or for boycotting their products (it's not difficult to find "this is why I don't buy Apple and only use XYZ's products instead" comments here on /. and elsewhere) when in reality the alternatives are no different, and sometimes worse.
This does not excuse either position of course; we've got to continue to push for elimination of worker and environmental exploitation.