back to article FT sticks it to Apple

The Financial Times is bypassing iTunes with the launch of its new iPad and iPhone application. The pink paper said readers should switch immediately to the browser application. There is also a version for Samsung's Galaxy. Other devices will get support shortly and can already use the paper's mobile web page. Although …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. EddieD

    Good.

    'Nuff said.

  2. Patrick O'Reilly

    Don't you mean on Apple?

    Shouldn't the title read "FT sticks it on Apple", because the site sniff's UA's and only displays on Jobsian fondle slabs.

    A quick switch of a UA and it works perfectly on Android.

    Fair play to them, its quite impressive, very slick. However it'd be nicer if they were device agnostic and stuck to standards rather than browsers.

    1. Station Grey

      Platforms

      If you read the blurb on their site, they say that other platforms are coming soon.

      It's all very well to say that a site/web app should be device-agnostic, but they still have to be tweaked and tested for each one. Makes complete sense to provide for the biggest player first.

    2. Ilgaz

      way much smaller company, fierce markets

      There is a good J2ME (yes, java,eww) app of Fierce Markets website and millions heard their name first time because of that application.

      If FT and others had full feature apps on all platforms like that, e.g. Bloomberg offers a commercial web runtime widget for Nokia, Apple would never come up with this monopolistic idea at first space.

      They are the ones spoiling Apple by offering the best (without any reason) for iPhone/iPad and treating almost a billion (with a B) possible devices as secondary class citizen. Trendy developers still poo poo Snaptu J2ME app even after it was sold for $70 million to Facebook for example. They never learn.

      I wouldn't act different if I was Apple, seriously.

      While posting this via Opera Mobile on Nokia E71. Tested ft.com with it right now, said "an error occured". It will say the same to 100 million Opera mobile/Mini users. Do they even have Blackberry support?

      1. a_been
        Thumb Down

        Yawn

        The Ft isn't treating "almost a billion (with a B)" possible users as "secondary class citizen", it's just not wasting money on consumers it thinks it wont make money from.

        As to your "an error occured", you got the wrong phone. Deal with that, it is clear that Android/Iphone are the ones getting support, Symbia, Rim and MS "whatever" are dead. Here's a clue, 100 million users is a "cost" unless you can get those users to pay you.

        1. Ilgaz

          Symbian and RIM dead?

          Seriously, if you think RIM is dead especially in enterprise environment and every business person uses an iPhone, you should really follow couple of enterprise news sites.

  3. RichyS
    Facepalm

    Really?

    "Not much use for tailoring your publication to readers."

    You mean: "not much use for selling on subscribers' details to marketing companies."

    I think I'd prefer to have this optional.

    1. ThomH

      Pros and cons though

      While I'd prefer to keep myself insulated from News International, The Telegraph Group, etc, and Apple already have my details, I'm quite against Apple for imposing the price match condition. Fair enough if they want to impose a 30% charge on subscriptions, if that's what they've calculated the market will tolerate then good luck to them, but to then say that even if the iOS App Store isn't the most cost effective way to deliver to consumers then the extra costs can't be passed on puts far too much of a burden on producers.

  4. Thomas 18
    Unhappy

    Fed up of website apps

    Why do I need an application when a bookmark to the mobile site would do.

    1. Station Grey

      Your choice

      You don't 'need' a web app. Nothing stopping you accessing the full or mobile ft sites. But if you want to download the entire edition to read offline, or just want a site optimised for touch screens then a web app is better.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    30%

    Not surprised they opted out of that particular "opportunity". At the FT, they're probbly quite good at sums'n'that.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Bandwidth issues (on O2 at least)

    Yep, got the email this morning urging me to switch from the app to the mobile site ASAP.

    Tried the link to the mobile site. On O2 (with full 5 bars of 3G) it tries loading for a couple of minutes then apparently finishes, leaving a page full of plain text and placeholders, a button saying "cannot play audio file" and a message saying "Loading...If you are not on Wi-Fi this may take a while".

    Marvellous. Meanwhile the App still loads up and displays the text of all of the articles formatted nicely without a problem.

    Admittedly this is probably down to O2's terrible mobile "broadband" performance but I don't think it's going to take off anytime soon. If I was at home or work with a Wi-Fi connection, I wouldn't be trying to squint at my iPhone screen (or indeed an iPad, preferring an 11" MacBook Air, but that's another issue).

  7. Ian Yates
    Go

    "which has since taken the world by storm"

    I assume this is my irony fail, since I've heard nothing about it since about a week after its launch.

    I can't say I've noticed any amount of iDevice users reading it on the tube or at work either.

    1. Eddy Ito

      Tick up another

      I'm going with humor since I'm left wondering if it is the daily nuisance, the daily trip to the privy, that comedy news show with that Stewart fellow, etc

  8. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    might be offtopic

    a question:

    isn't it somewhat illegal to tell the application developer that they can't sale _their_ product else where at a better rate?

    example, if Android offer a better deal for the developer and, therefore, the developer decided to reflect that to the customers shopping from Android, what right does Amazon and Apple have to say that the developer can't offer a better deal on Android? Shouldn't the developer be able to tell both Amazon and Apple that they _could_ give him/her a deal that match what they are getting from Android.

    the way it looks like right now, the developer can't even ask for a better deal from Apple, since they can't change the rates they offer on different platforms!

    1. Giles Jones Gold badge

      Nope

      A registered developer digitally signs a licence agreement and pays a fee. They have agreed to the terms and conditions of that licence.

      Producing software for a games console means you sign similar agreements.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nope

        Doesn't mean the agreement, or parts thereof, are legally enforceable though.

  9. Stretch

    background?

    that should be "usual backbone"

  10. Mage Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Appetising

    many sites are producing apps for iPhone and Andriod. It's WAP and walled garden with fancier technology and more lock to vendor instead of carrier.

    Hello!

    These things have WEB browsers... So have many non iTune and non-Andriod marketplace etc gadgets..

    Publishers: Code for Web browsers. maybe even with USER menu for screen size. Don't rely on user agents.

    A plague on sites with:

    No usability at all without Flash (can be bad even on flash enabled stuff or people may not be able to install "latest" flash) or Silverlight.

    No usability at all without Javascript

    Any requirement to use Java, except for special applications.

    Any requirement to use .Net or Active X at all.

    Fixed screen width, if must have, then no worse than 720 wide

  11. Buzzword
    WTF?

    Why don't they use HTML5 ?

    HTML5 ought to be sufficient for paywall news sites. Content can be cached offline and authorisation can be handled with cookies etc. Both iOS and Android support HTML5 to varying degrees. I'm surprised more news sites haven't gone down that route. Most newspapers contain only text & images, nothing fancy.

    1. thesykes

      simple really...

      it's not down to technical reasons, and the IT departments of these companies have probably told their marketing colleagues to do just that... but... where's the marketing buzzwords?

      "We've got a website you can view on every device there is"

      doesn't have the marketing execs salivating..

      "New! iPhone and iPad app now available for download in the App Store"

      there, that's better.

  12. mrh2

    Seriously....

    > It also makes the handing over of ID information an "option" for subscribers, meaning publishers face being cut-off from knowing who their readers actually are <

    BLOODY APPLE, treating my data like it's mine and respecting my privacy rather than just handing it over to a publisher to spam me.

    How dare they?!

    Seriously, constantly amazed how many people lump the requirement that users agree to the data transfer in their list of anti-Apple gripes.

  13. Peter 48
    FAIL

    storm in a tea cup?

    "The "take it or leave it" deal was announced with the launch of News Corp's The Daily which has since taken the world by storm" and has shown to be so successful they have made a $10 million loss with less than 800k downloads.

  14. Big Bear
    Trollface

    IANAL

    But I always thought price-fixing behaviour wasn't allowed, and if a developer agrees to fix their price according to a single channel (Apple's App Store, as opposed to other App Stores) then doesn't that mean the price is fixed...?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like