Apple backs down (a bit) on iOS subscription rules

Apple has backed down from its requirement that content and subscription providers who offer their wares through the Jobsian App Store must charge the same or less for that content when it's offered from a provider's own website. Cupertino has also axed their requirement that content providers must offer the same content and …

[Anonymous Coward]

"multiple 'native' apps for various products is [...] unmanageable."

I think that was the one main reason for FT.

With iOS, Android, RIM Playbook and now WebOS to support of course a web interface makes much more sense.

Sure it's costly to develop HTML5 systems since the tools are still a bit lacking,but they'll pay that off in a couple of years of not having to support all those platforms natively.

It's not like they would benefit greatly from a native app anyway, since a newspaper doesn't need major interactivity or 3D graphics. The less gimmicks the better. Publishing information is what the Web was made for.

[ijustwantaneasylife]

Title required...

Sorry - I'm still not really clear about what benefit HTML5 (<sarcasm>whatever that is</sarcasm>) would have on a news service delivered via a web site.

Regardless of the technology, though, it still points to the simple truth that everything will become web based in due course, because it makes more sense - like the FT have stated - and there's very little that 'non-power users' (i.e. 99% of us mere mortals) need to do that requires going outside the browser.

[Tim Parker]

HTML5

"HTML5 (<sarcasm>whatever that is</sarcasm>)"

Would that the latest HTML specification, initially used by the W3C HTML working group some 4 years ago (but the origins of which started a lot earlier I believe) ? It's at least in working state in one of the groups and is not some vacuous label like "Web 2.0"... or were you just objecting to the (admittedly ridiculous) over-use of it as some place-holder for pixie dust ?

"I'm still not really clear about what benefit HTML5 .. would have on a news service delivered via a web site."

Agreed it's not obvious what extras HTML5 would give to a typed article over much simpler mark-up, but it will probably be of benefit to the developers - if nothing else than for the simplicity of needed a single type of mark-up and the potential to jettison some extra scripting in another language (+ even more mark-up).

[Anonymous Coward]

@ijustwantaneasylife

I understand your apprehension, but HTML5 does come already (even in the Draft) with several features that make mobile web use much more amenable. For example specific form controls for a range of data types so that we don't have to use terrible HTML/Javascript based date selectors and several other improvements.

As for the web replacing 99% of what we use, then I'm afraid I have to disagree with you and have more than 50 applications that can prove otherwise. Even Google sees the limitations in it and is the reason why the are developing their Native Client plugin.

For a nice recent example just look at the range of web and proprietary tools Google had to implement their latest Les Paul musical doogle: "Made using a combination of JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas, CSS, Flash and tools like the Google Font API, goo.gl and App Engine".

Now imagine the complexity required for something beyond a doodle.

[jai]

simple solution to multiple native apps on various platforms

Build it in Appcelerator Titanium.

Write the app code once (in javascript, so no need to have an Objective-C coder on your staff) and build and deploy to iOS, Android and Blackberry (soon) from the same code.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice move

I suspect that they only gave the more restrictive rules first so that the publishers could be all happy about the later change.

[Anonymous Coward]

More "news"

In another comment on MacRumours, user johntitor, claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2036, warns that if Apple wouldn't relax the regulations the Android Market would have finally overtaken the Apple App Store by then.

In a later post he mentions that both iOS and Android had stopped working due to the year 2038 bug. Previous reports to the Android team about this problem had fallen to deaf ears:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=16899

[M Gale]

Oh ouch.

Seems like a pretty major issue. Team Reg, you wanna verify this and, errr, "bug" Google into doing something about it? I think being able to bollox any Android device up by setting a date is an embarrassing enough news story!

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting bug indeed

nuff said

[John Owens]

Well done Apple. I think this is a fair.

The main reason publishers use native app and the app store is unlike the internet there's no built in payment system plus the experience is better and getting people to pay for content on the internet or Android for that matter is very hard. Apple customers are far more supportive (in terms of paying) and therefore it's entirely understandable Apple want their cut.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its any wonder

That developers still put up with Apples crap. I think we are starting to see a trend where they have got to the tipping point of saying enough is enough.

Apple is nothing more than a dictatorship. I for one will never buy an apple product, for the same reason I will never fly Ryanair. They are both run by unethical people whom I would not piss on if they were on fire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really Rik?

A forum user says? The Register hits a new low.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sensible

I'm an iPad user and apparently a collector of an alarming amount of apple kit, and am normally a happy customer - but I'm siding with the publishers on this one. Apple are royally taking the piss with the 30% thing, and I'm glad they're all looking at web-based solutions. I'm hoping the programmer put in some hidden meta data with "f* you Apple" in it too.

In the end, Apple will gain f* all extra revenue, but *everyone* in the chain, from publishers to end user will still remember what they did; it might even be enough to switch to Android next purchase, if the apps (and the added features/optimisations they can support) are present there.

Boo Apple.

[Anonymous Coward]

Suddenly Apple looks less like MS, more like AOL.

I know that it's good to learn from mistakes, but that really doesn't mean you have to repeat them verbatim. Apple have recently been going through all the mistakes that MS made with security ten years ago, now they're going to replay the mistakes AOL made in building a walled garden fifteen years ago.

Presumably their plan is to retrospectively recreate every disaster backwards in time to the dawn of computing and thereby, by having made every possible mistake, end up having learned all there is to know.

Sure hope that works out for them.

And their customers.

[mraak]

I hate to say it but...

I told you so. When that scam was introduced by Apple, fanbois defended it as yet another act of hollines, a miracle that will save the world. I was saying that nobody in his right mind could have a one size fits all, draconian 30% Apple tax, and get away with it.