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Originally Posted by
Jetz 
Oh please. You think Apple is doing it for the good of its customers? Yeah right. They will leverage the data themselves and offer up iAds as an advertising platform for the content providers. At the end of the day Apple is no less interested in money than Google. They just go about getting it a different way.
Did I say that Apple wasn't interested in making money? The "going about it in a different way" just happens to mean making the most appealing customer experience possible, so you'll buy more Apple product. The Google way happens to be to sell your information to advertisers, being Google's actual customers. I know which one works better for me.
When you say "they're both in it for money" as if that levels every aspect of the business into indistinguishable sameness, it suggests to me you either don't care about or don't understand that "going about it different ways" can have enormous repercussions for the user.
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And I'd say the demographics data is probably worth more to publishers (and is a bigger hit) than that 30% cut. Right now, they get that when you sign up, you give that information to the publisher anyway (so this argument that Google is doing something nefarious or giving up new information is bogus). They won't have that information from iOS customers. Yet, that information is the lifeblood of their advertising income (which is often more significant than their subscriber income).
I think it's touching that your'e such a powerful advocate for the business interests of a moribund publishing industry that is clearly facing huge challenges to change their ways or perish. Damn you Apple, with your lack of sensitivity as to how these enormous corporations desire to keep making money the way they always have! Do as they say, or risk my scorn! How can I use your devices and sleep at night, knowing that your cut of some elaborate pie exceeds what by my reckoning is reasonable and just?!
It reminds me of the folks that railed against the greedy music industry, bragging about their preference for simply stealing over that industry's onerous terms, right up until the point Apple became a big player in the market-- at which point those same people become the music industry's biggest supporters, weeping tears of betrayal over how Apple was ruining their beloved media conglomerates.
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The problem isn't the delivery system. Or even the size of Apple's cut. DED missed the point. The problem is the demand that prices be the same across all of the publisher's distribution channels. This means they can't make up for Apple's cut by raising prices on iOS users. Thats' the issue. And to top it off, Apple imposes restrictions which essentially work to redirect business from other distribution channels to the App Store.
Yep. But what your'e not mentioning is that for a lot of vendors the App Store is a godsend. It provides visibility and ease of use that drive adoption beyond what they've seen when relying on their own store front. It's not as if digital subscriptions are a particularly lucrative market, at the moment. What happens if some early adopters (and they exist, doom sayers notwithstanding) see big wins? Think the industry is going to be unduly concerned that they use the App Store as their primary outlet? And if they use the App Store as their primary outlet, what do they care what they do or do not charge elsewhere? If Apple required music to be priced no higher than when sold at individual label sites, do you think that would drive music off iTunes? Of course not, because iTunes
is the store. It's what made digital music legitimate and work economically. And it did that buy making discovery and purchase dead simple. Do not disregard the possibility that the App Store will do the same for digital subscription services.
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I am curious to see how all this plays out. It's quite a hit to lose 30% of revenue AND lose subscriber data AND have your entire pricing model constricted by Apple. That's quite an advantage that the App Store must deliver to overcome all that.
Yep. We'll see. The only other game in town is Android, and Android users are famous for not really liking to pay for things. Perhaps they enjoy ad laden subscriptions. At any rate, if it seems to be hurting the platform, I imagine Apple will reconsider. On the other hand, there were plenty of people who were glad to bray about how Apple's 30% cut in the original App Store was going to doom that to irrelevancy as well.
