{"id":276,"date":"2011-05-12T22:00:33","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T22:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/?p=276"},"modified":"2011-05-12T22:08:18","modified_gmt":"2011-05-12T22:08:18","slug":"apple-ipad-subscriptions-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/2011\/05\/apple-ipad-subscriptions-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple iPad Subscriptions \u2014 Evil?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Insight into the world of iOS developers<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>CNET <a href=\"http:\/\/news.cnet.com\/as-iflow-reader-app-closes-harsh-words-for-apple\/8301-17938_105-20061802-1.html\">ran a story<\/a> yesterday about BeamItDown Software, the start-up software developer who made the <strong>iFlow  Reader app<\/strong> for iOS. They condemn Apple for a draconian policy.<\/p>\n<p>And a <a href=\"http:\/\/cnet.co\/iFH19z\">full interview<\/a> at CNET of BeamItDown&#8217;s co-founder Dennis Morin.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Nowhere in the history of application development has there been  rules associated with it, let alone hundreds of rules like there are  now. I mean, this extends their [Apple&#8217;s] control-freak nature to a  whole new level. So yeah I can sell an app on my Web site, that&#8217;s fine.  But if I have something for sale on my Web site, I have to have a button  in the app that allows a user to purchase that item through Apple&#8217;s  In-App Purchase system for the same price that I sell it at on my Web  site.<\/p>\n<p>Now if I&#8217;m selling a book for $10 and someone clicks on that button in  the app, I lose $1.15 on the sale and Apple makes $3. Let&#8217;s face it, the  user doesn&#8217;t give a s&#8212;. They&#8217;re going to purchase it from wherever&#8217;s  easiest to purchase it.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line is that if you buy a book through iBooks, Apple makes 30  percent on the sale. And if you buy a book through iFlow, Apple makes  30 percent on the sale. And I lose money.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To clarify the outrage these developers feel:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What people don&#8217;t understand is that if you&#8217;re selling an app on iOS,  Apple hosts that app on their server. You upload it, the customer  downloads it, it gets downloaded from their servers. OK. With <strong>In-App  Purchase<\/strong> it doesn&#8217;t work that way. You host everything. You ship it  directly to the customer. All Apple does in the process is collect the  money and basically give you a token that says it was collected and you  do everything else. It&#8217;s essentially doing exactly the same thing as a  credit-card processing company for this 30 percent. Nothing more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another article: <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/ixbNAv\">http:\/\/bit.ly\/ixbNAv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Insight into the world of iOS developers CNET ran a story yesterday about BeamItDown Software, the start-up software developer who made the iFlow Reader app for iOS. They condemn Apple for a draconian policy. And a full interview at CNET of BeamItDown&#8217;s co-founder Dennis Morin. Nowhere in the history of application development has there been &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/2011\/05\/apple-ipad-subscriptions-evil\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Apple iPad Subscriptions \u2014 Evil?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,27,16,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-computers-mac","category-mobile","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p415hC-4s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulgurney.com\/whats_new_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}