iPad Getting a Subscription Infrastructure? 94
itwbennett writes "Peter Smith is blogging about an article in the San Jose Mercury News leaking news that Apple is 'almost ready to take the wraps off a new system to support subscriptions. The terms, if the leaks are accurate, sound less than ideal for publishers though. Apple will take 40% of advertising revenue, and 30% of subscription fees from participating publishers. In return, Apple will offer consumers the ability to opt-in to sharing their data with the publishers.' Apple isn't commenting on the speculation. 'In somewhat related news, Apple has released iOS 4.2 to developers. This is the version of iOS that will let iPads, iPhones and iPad Touches print to a WiFi-enabled or shared printer on a local network, via the new AirPrint service. It sounds like you'll be able to print articles from your digitally delivered newspaper before too long,' says Smith."
Pricing for services rendered? (Score:5, Funny)
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
Re:Pricing for services rendered? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
They still have competition. You can get other devices that use other platforms. That's true for iPhones and it's also true for iPads, especially if the tasks for which you would use a tablet can be done on a netbook. In any case, there is a market here that they could price themselves out of. They don't wish to shoot themselves in the foot, that's all. At this point it's not evidence of some kind of benevolence, though it doesn't rule that out either. It's merely consistent with the business practices that have gotten them to where they are today.
The equation doesn't change until and unless they obtain a monopoly on such a market that is comparable to the dominance of Windows on the desktop.
Additionally I'm not sure if it would be "price gouging" when it's a luxury item and the customers knew or could easily have informed themselves that they were investing in a platform that is not open and is under the control of a single vendor. Those who really care about this possibility tend to insist on open platforms that are not subject to vendorlock.
Re:Pricing for services rendered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also it's worth noting that this might not be a horrible deal. I don't know the market well enough to gauge it, but if Apple is providing all of the storage, bandwidth, ad deals and ad placement, etc. then it might be that all the content owners need to bring is the content.
40% of ad revenue sounds like a lot, but does Google kick >60% of their ad revenue back to the websites that place ads? 30% of subscription fees, again, sounds like a lot, but that means you get 70% without needing to pay any of the costs associated with distribution.
Re:Pricing for services rendered? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect newspapers pay more than 30-40% for printing and distribution right now. Possibly a very good deal for them.
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40% of advertising revenue implies revenue for clicks on in-app adds will be down substantially. Apple is going to start milking the App Developers.
30% Subscription revenue says they are planning to continue to milk the subscription content sellers.
It sounds to me like apple has decided its easier to fleece the flock of developers than actually charge the end user for what their services cost.
Boy, I wonder why Google hasn't thought about that.....
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30% Subscription revenue says they are planning to continue to milk the subscription content sellers.
It sounds to me like apple has decided its easier to fleece the flock of developers than actually charge the end user for what their services cost.
Boy, I wonder why Google hasn't thought about that.....
30% is the same cut google takes on android market applications.
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Swooosh!
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It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee
Why is that marked funny? Last I checked Google is making huge profits even despite massive spending, so they're basically doing the same thing. If anything Google is taking significantly more profit percentage-wise from actual content producers than Apple is.
Just who do you see as customers? (Score:2)
It's nice to see that Apple is charging a reasonable fee in proportion with the cost of the services they're actually rendering instead of taking advantage of their control over the platform and price gouging the hell out of their customers.
That's only funny or insightful if you think of the "customers" as the PUBLISHERS.
What about us, the users? Apple isn't charging us anything.
Who is the real customer here? I know who I prefer to think of as the customer when I am one...
30-40% is not that bad - compared to premium SMS (Score:2)
The company that I work for runs an online game called TibiaME for mobile phones. Naturally it makes sense to use premium SMS for payments. The downside:
- You need to have agreements with each an every provider separately, world wide!
- Most provider charge an arm and a leg for their service, partly more than 50%
Now compare that to Apple's offer where you have exactly 1 company to talk to and that's charging 30-40%. It's still a lot of money - but far better than what the others charge you.
(I know this artic
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Obviously talking to the experts (Score:2, Interesting)
From the article:
"If you can put animation and multimedia into ads, that will greatly enhance reader views. I am certain of that."
hmm...
Re:Obviously talking to the experts (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing is more annoying than sites like CNN.com (in before sheeple), in which compelling-looking links to stories direct the viewer to just a video(usually along with a mandatory ad that can do tricky stuff like pause automatically when the window loses focus).
Yeah, I know they started putting the "TV" icon next to the links. It's still infuriating that the text versions are not offered or are so hidden that you might as well just google it and go somewhere else.
Gadgets and the internet are all about instant gratification. Many of us can read much faster than we can sit through a video and an ad.
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If there are enough newspapers, and at least some of them realize that making blinking purple crap move around the screen while the user is trying to focus to read the content (you know, the thing the user is paying the subscription for) then I guess the market will give them credit.
If not, newspapers will die.
Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you advocating more regulation?
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages
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Are you advocating more regulation?
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages
I was merely responding to what appeared to be a call for regulation because the OP did not like the idea of a particular company being successful rather than there being an immediate need for regulation.
Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I always shake my head in sadness whenever I see people getting in a fight over 'more' or 'less' regulation. It isn't the quantity of regulation that matters, it's the quality. You can't throw random regulation at a problem and expect things to get better. You can't randomly remove regulation and expect the world to be more beautiful. Finely crafted regulation can keep the economy humming, but poorly written regulations can choke it.
Whenever anyone proposes a change in regulation, don't ask, "is it more or less?" ask "what changes?" People who do that spend less of their time looking like idiots.
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This is going off-topic, but you're right; people have oversimplified.
It's the same basic problem as taxes and spending. It's not just an issue of whether the government is taxing too much or too little, but an even bigger issue is, who are they taxing and for what behavior? Similarly, there's not a simple dollar amount that the government should spend, and if they spend that amount everything will be good. The question is, what are they spending that money on?
Really these are all complicated issues, b
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"US fared worse because we had regulations that encouraged sub-prime mortgages."
Not really. US had a bubble because a shadow banking system was allowed to appear. And even that was not a hard requirement, there was a bubble in commercial real estate as well. Paul Krugman (as usual) has a nice article with citations and sources: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/sep/30/slump-goes-why/ [nybooks.com]
US also doesn't have any regulations that _require_ banks to give out subprime loans. And yes, I know about the CR
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Worth pointing out that he said regulations _encouraged_ sub-prime mortgages. He never said that sub-prime mortgages were _required_ by regulation.
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That's not really true as well.
CRA does not encourage subprime lending, it just requires banks to use the same criteria for (the same) loans from different neighborhoods.
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Canada is also in the midst of a housing bubble that is in the process of popping right now.
I would say one of the other biggest differences is that in Canada you can't deduct mortgage interest. Something I wish we would change in the US...
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I would say one of the other biggest differences is that in Canada you can't deduct mortgage interest. Something I wish we would change in the US
However, profits from the sale of our principle residences do not count as capital gains.
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US rules have changed fairly recently as well. Married couples don't have to worry about 500k of profit (single 250k) if they've lived in a house 2 out of the last 5 years. Given average house costs, maintenance costs or money spent on improvements, etc, VERY few people get 500k in profit in a sale. Most houses nationwide don't even cost near 500, though obviously in many areas they do (or did)
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While regulatory capture actually was a big part of the problem, those scary-sounding loans made under the low-income provisions weren't really an issue at all. It was mostly Joe Six-Pack and Jane Boxwine, stereotypical stalwarts of the middle class, trying to get into the McMansion-flipping business.
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those were not regulations. Those were laws passed by congress. Dont confuse people who have expertise with those trying to get elected.
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Just wondering.
Are you advocating more regulation? Wasn't the sub prime meltdown the result of too much regulation in the wrong area? Instead of regulating prudence, the government basically forced banks to support untenable inner city mortgages which should have never been approved in the first place.
Canada fared better because we had regulations that discouraged sub-prime mortgages and did not force banks to give out loans to people who were high risk.
It's more a question of what kind of regulation is in place.
The subprime deal was the wrong kind. It was based on some abstract idea of "fairness". That idea wasn't even self-consistent because no one is born with a poor credit history. They had the chance to be responsible with their money and to punctually repay any debts they incurred and have demonstrated a track record of overextending themselves and failing to do so. "Fair" would mean let them sleep in the bed they have made for themselves and,
Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.
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A significant part of the subprime problem came from the bond rating agencies, like Moody's. They rated bonds based on mortgages that were almost certain to default as AAA, or investment grade. This made is possible for pension funds and others that demand fixed-income financial instruments with virtually a guarantee of stability to invest in this sort of bond.
Other folks then took out insurance on the bonds for little or no money at all because obviously these were "investment grade" bonds. So the insurance paid off handsomely when the loans default and the investors lose everything - since they aren't the ones holding the insurance.
Once it got around that it was possible to package up a passle of these soon-to-default loans and pass them off on unsuspecting folks as being quality bonds virtually everyone wanted to get into the act. It was easy money. At that point "mortgage brokers" could get money from many different sources based on the ease of getting the mortgage-backed bonds sold. They had no liability if the mortgage went bad, because it was sold off to someone else. The brokers got a hefty commission for loan origination and there was no control on this - nor should there really be at that level.
This is what everyone seems to be missing. What new regulations are there on the bond rating agencies? None. What will prevent another round of this taking place next week? Nothing. What is going to happen when the mortgage defaults percolate up to the bonds that pension funds invested in? The funds will go bankrupt, as will states and municipalities that invested in these bonds. Nothing has been done about the bonds themselves.
We have introduced a bunch of nearly irrelevant regulations that affect banks and some large financial institutions but none of this addresses the origin of the problem. If someone is standing on a street corner passing out checks for $1000 people will take them, no matter what. This is basically what happened in 2003-2006 and while the guy has gone to lunch there is nothing to keep him from coming back. And when the money starts flowing again, we will be right back where we were before when this "crisis" started.
It's all too rare that I get a reply that is so useful, relevant, and informative. I was aware of most of these practices (in fact I consider the crisis to be engineered in the style of the Hegelian dialectic -- one must engage in both "follow the money" and "follow the cronyism/power") but nowhere have I seen it summed up so succinctly. Thank you for that sir.
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No regulation whatsoever mandated that loan brokers should knowingly offer loans whose payments would balloon to more than the borrower's income. Certainly they were not advised to mislead financially naive borrowers into believing nothing could go wrong. No regulation called upon them to falsify the documents to give the borrowers a higher "official" income. Nothing suggested they should try talking starter home candidates into McMansions. Certainly no regulation suggested that they should then package it
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The assertion that the Community Reinvestment Act caused the housing bubble and ensuing recession is a disproven canard [harvard.edu].
Thus:
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FEC FTC WTF ... sorry, all those TLAs get mixed up.
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Maybe the FTC (Federal Trade Commission). But I certainly don't want the government meddling into how newspaper subscriptions are paid for. They've got their work cut out for themselves doing important things like not doing anything about chronic Salmonella contamination of egg farms and approving Environmental Impact Statements concerning the potential harming of walruses in the Gulf of Mexico after an oil spill.
Printers? (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't had one of those in 5+ years.
Ink always dried out from lack of use.
Re:Printers? (Score:4, Informative)
Try a laser printer. You can get those from $50 (B&W) to $150 these days, don't come with empty cartridges and the cartridges last anywhere from 2000-6000 pages (for some this will last ~5 years). The ink doesn't dry out and can be used practically forever. I have HP LaserJet II cartridges that expired in 2004 which still work.
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The ink doesn't dry out and can be used practically forever.
Toner wouldn't work too well if it wasn't dried out ;}
Kidding aside, my HP 4mv is still going like a champ, and it was made back in 1995.
When I first got it, it was used to print billing invoices, somewhere around 6000 sheets a month.
This ate through about 2-3 toner cartridges a year.
In it's later life as my personal printer, seeing very low page counts, a toner cartridge easily lasted 5+ years.
Most printers of this type either have built in or can
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> I could never recommend an inkjet to anyone, period.
No kidding. And Brother inkjets are worse than any other inkjets due to actively abusive software.
Seriously.
My brother MFC-5440-CNZ lies in pieces on my floor, and deserves it for the behaviour it most recently exhibited: refusing to send a fax because I was out of yellow ink!
To make matters worse, if you don't use it often enough, you have to "purge" the ink, sometimes several times, to get it going again. Of course, this uses vast quantities of in
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Printing wirelessly (Score:2)
Printing from these things is fine and dandy, but I really need to send a fax from one. That's a technology we just can't live without.
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Here in france you just have to send an email to your telephone provider (properly formatted) and the PDF attached gets sent to the fax number in the subject of your mail. Can't get any simpler than that. You then receive an ACK mail when the fax is sent out (or not).
Let's face it, fax is a horrendous way of doing things, and gateways exist to do it in a much less annoying way, mostly for free.
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I need a current loop serial interface. The new-fangled RS-232c thing won't do.
Three words (Score:5, Interesting)
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Palmpilot wasn't from MSFT. It was from Palm.
Thus the AC said it "sounds like" a Microsoft practice. That means this practice by Palm reminded him/her of another practice by Microsoft.
Insert sarcastic remark like "reading comprehension is your friend" here.
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Reading comprehension? or perhaps it required writing clarity. If you want to insert sarcastic remarks, how about i insert a remark on good manners. When complaining about what Palm did, why link in MSFT? Or is it just a goal to take a free kick at MSFT whenever some other company does something he thinks is stupid.
"Sounds like" means "reminds me of [this other thing]" or "is analogous to". The failure to understand that is indeed a matter of reading comprehension.
Now, I said that tongue-in-cheek, another thing you apparently did not comprehend. That's why I said "insert sarcastic remark here" instead of actually making a sarcastic remark. If you are that easily offended and your skin is that thin, you may want to reconsider participating in open Internet forums.
And for what it's worth, Microsoft is no angel.
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I had a Palm Pilot too. I'd gladly give up printing for a far more powerful and flexible device, which the iPad and iPhone are.
Apple doesn't add every feature under the sun at first launch, but over time they do add them. So what if some features come a little later? I'd rather have the features delivered well thought out from an application developer perspective rather than having to support multiple iterations of an API because they had to rush it out the door to please people who complained the could
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they do however REQUIRE you to purchase a new device to utilize MANY of these new features they benevolently add......
Not really... (Score:2)
they do however REQUIRE you to purchase a new device to utilize MANY of these new features they benevolently add......
All of the features in iOS4.2 are supported back to the iPhone 3G, EXCEPT for multitasking. How does this equate to "REQUIRE MANY" as you posit?
Simple fact: It does not, and like all Apple Haters you transpose the unusual with the common.
SPAMers think this too. (Score:3, Insightful)
interrestingly enough "About Fucking Time" is exactly what all the SPAMers and virus writers are thinking. Un-like your PalmPilot which used a highly directionnal IrDA beam to print (or the short ranged Bluetooth that modern wireless printers offer), this uses wireless *networking*. And in a standard fashion.
so this opens up a whole new world of SPAM possibilities and exploits. *Paper*-SPAM possibilities. It's the SPAM-over-Fax era all-over again !
40% and 30% for Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:40% and 30% for Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember this is wild speculation from a supposed leak. It's not an Apple press release.
Apple know they have the market controlled (on their device) but they're not stupid. Consider the revenue sharing on the app store itself - it's not set up to gouge the developers. I wouldn't imagine this one will be either - but that's just my opinion. YMMV.
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Interesting)
iPod owning retards will finally be able to do yet another thing they could have done better all along had they bought a laptop in the first place.
Did you pull your laptop out of your pocket to post that?
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Since this is about iPads...
You said iPod.
Its the same size as a netbook...
No, it's not.
...just a lot less functional...
That door swings both ways.
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Oops he used the wrong vowel that makes his point invalid.
Oops, he used the wrong product name and invalidated his own point.
FTFY. :)
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OK, I'm not the OP, but I'll bite.
I did pull my laptop out of my coat pocket to browse /., and thus indirectly to post this. And your precious iPad won't fit in my coat pocket, either.
My laptop, as it happens, is a Fujitsu U820 -- 1280x800 (yeah, I can actually watch HD videos in HD, not downscaled to 1024x576 for 16:9), 5.6" touchscreen (not capacitive, the good kind where you can actually use a stylus effectively), full HW keyboard, finger-print reader, real USB port, SD slot, webcam, a/b/g/n GPS, the wor
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And finally, we can see you go for short ass-posts.
I would have written more if the replies had anything to do with what I said. :D
Robbery (Score:1)
This is it, isn't it? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how Jobs and Murdoch start to get money for previously free new info. Murdoch just needs to come up with a newspaper delivery metaphor for iPad owners and they'll walk right in, subscribe to the app and start what uncle rupert has been fantasising about - the return to paid news.
It won't matter that we on /. won't participate. It'll just be another area that the general public perceive us geeks to be weird or even cheap about, as they go around paying for shit we get fro free, at the same time taking their ad-driven revenue generation stats away from non-Steve approved media, killing it.
Yeah, that's probably paranoid.
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It'll just be another area that the general public perceive us geeks to be weird or even cheap about, as they go around paying for shit we get fro free, at the same time taking their ad-driven revenue generation stats away from non-Steve approved media, killing it.
Doesn't help matters that we all use Ad-Block Pro (or similar), does it?
(FYI, "all" is a synecdoche derived from prevailing opinions posted on /. and other places (y'know, mainly the condescending "what ads? do people still not use ABP? It's not '96 anymore..." sort; does that make it a synecdouche?), though I myself don't use it. I don't consider it theft to block ads as some do, but if I can help support the sites I frequent by burning a little bandwidth, why the hell not?)
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I feel similarly about the ads - I have adblock installed but I only use it in a manual fashion to block really annoying stuff. It's not so much of a moral thing as a "ok, you went to far, I can't even use your site now" reaction.
But no, it probably doesn't help!
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yeah,
the WSJ is bar far the worst business newspaper in print.....
oh wait.
Huh... (Score:1)
So, does this mean that you'll have to replace an iPad every month or so?
Printing? (Score:2)
Yet another feature that I've been able to do on my BlackBerry for several years now. Thanks for catching up Apple!
The future is now! (Score:3, Insightful)
Printing!?? From a digital source??!??!?!?!? HOLY FUCKING SHIT BOSS, I've had a computer since I was a tyke, and now I get to live in the new modern world in which we can print! YES!
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So I understand you mock the iPad because it cannot print.
Well, given the success of the damn thing as of today, I guess it has several other qualities that appeal to the general public. Imagine what it will become with printing !!
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i guess the GP is mocking the fact that some people (especially the people in TFA) think printing news articles from an ipad is usefull in any way.
I agree that printing news articles from an ipad for personal use it pretty ridiculous (pretty much like zeroxing your actual news paper, and reading the copy), but for quick sharing/duplication with people who dont actually have an i/e-gadget, it might serve some purpose.
anyway, personal opinion time, apple is completely ridiculous only adding printing NOW, and
Digital will be same price as print (Score:1)