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."
Printers? (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't had one of those in 5+ years.
Ink always dried out from lack of use.
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: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
Re:Where's the FEC to regulate when needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
40% and 30% for Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
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: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.
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.
Re:40% and 30% for Apple? (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
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!
Re:Pricing for services rendered? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is it, isn't it? (Score:1, Insightful)
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?)
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 !