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Comment by jrnkntl | Hacker News Reader

Where this would be the most important part for the content-providers:

"“when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app...”"

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I am glad Apple put this in here. After the issue with the ambiguous working on purchases made outside the App Store, this is something more consumer friendly as well as publisher friendly.

This is less friendly in the sense that it explicitly forbids the 43% Apple-racket-cancellation markup.

How is that a racket? Seems pretty reasonable to me, at least as a user.. I don't want to have to log in to a different website just to get the normal price.

It's like if store-owner X said, "If you want us to sell your goods in our store, you need to guarantee that you won't undercut us in another store, otherwise we don't want to stock your goods or your shelves."

It's standard practice in the physical product market.

I'm not sure why everyone is so quick to side with Amazon in this. Amazon have squeezed their own suppliers a million ways to Sunday, driven numerous bookshops out of business, and generally fucked about with everyone they could when they could. They even sued people with their ridiculous one-click patents. I won't cry for them getting squeezed a bit by Apple.

I understand what you're saying, and I'm not going to adapt the analogy to suit my view of the situation because that invariably becomes kind of silly.

I think that as long as Apple allows publishers to make content viewable inside the app store purchasable outside the app store only, this policy is fair and as you've described it.

If Apple requires publishers to make content viewable in the app store purchasable in the app store, the publisher is forced to choose between losing 30% of revenue on a chunk of their transactions or having a vastly inferior product for entirely artificial reasons. Apple would essentially be holding the publisher's product quality ransom.

I'm also not a fan of this because I think that people who have costs forced on them for a specific subset of their transactions should be able to transparently pass on those costs to the customers who make those transactions, rather than spreading it out across all customers. I think that publishers should be able to charge 43% more for purchases and state in the app that it costs more because Apple is taking a 30% cut. I think that retailers should be able to charge 1-2% more to customers who use Visa and MasterCard than to those who use cash, and a couple percent more for Discover or AmEx. Instead, the cost is concealed and the users who don't have CCs with excellent rewards programs are paying for the rewards programs of those who do. With this policy, non-iDevice-users will pay a premium to allow iDevice users to buy the content more easily, and that doesn't strike me as particularly fair.

I think that retailers should be able to charge 1-2% more to customers who use Visa and MasterCard than to those who use cash, and a couple percent more for Discover or AmEx.

Retailers are free to do this, they just can't except VISA anymore. I've been in a few stores that accept AMEX,Discover, and Mastercard with a reasonable markup (and some unreasonable markup, like the DMV). VISA shoppers, once they realize the policy, just walk out the store and go to a store that has what they want and does accept Visa. Some even come back cash in hand.

In that regard Apple's policy mirrors visa. You are free to put your subscriptions in marketplace, amazon, etc. But if you want to be in the App Store you have to abide by their agreement.

Retailers like Amazon already take a cut of all transactions. The only reason why Apple's cut stands out is because it is the same as Amazon's. In effect, Apple is saying, "if you sell stuff on iTunes, you should be the producer, not the middleman, or, if you are a middleman, you better be damn thin."

Again, seems fair enough. Booksellers won't give a toss about whether it's Amazon or iBooks that takes the 30%, so long as users buy it. And Amazon doesn't deserve 30% just for syncing books between the kindle and the iPad (unless they're the one making the sale).

I think was was somewhat mistaken on the premise of this change. I don't like it as much as I initially did, but as long as Apple doesn't force publishers that have subscriptions outside of their app (and don't offer in app subs) to do in app subs as a result, I think the change is somewhat acceptable.

But "inside the app" means Apple In-App Purchase, right? I'm sure Amazon and Sony are capable of storing a user's credentials in an app, and then making the appropriate network requests when you click Buy or Subscribe. But from my understanding that wouldn't qualify since it doesn't go through Apple.

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