★ February 23, 2011
Here’s how I see it as good for users:
In-app subscriptions are easy to sign up for.
In-app subscriptions are easy to unsubscribe from. This is where things start getting way better than the old days. It’s always been in magazines’ and newspapers’ interests to make it easy to sign up for a new subscription. They couldn’t replicate iTunes-style one-click-and-a-password ease, but they could get close. But they never made it easy to unsubscribe later on, because it wasn’t in their interests.
Privacy protection. Publishers only get your personal information if you opt-in. They want that information so they can sell it to junk-mail companies. This is a big deal to publishers, and most subscribers don’t even know it’s happening. It’s a dirtbag deal, and Apple isn’t allowing it.
The price protection rule — which prohibits publishers from charging iOS App Store users more for in-app subscriptions than they would pay from outside the store — might be a bad deal for publishers, but it’s good for users, because they know they’re getting the best price.
Again, if this subscription policy knocks a bunch of good apps out of the store, sure, that’ll be bad for iOS users. But that hasn’t happened, and clearly, Apple thinks it isn’t going to happen.
3 and 4 are only good if you do not mind that prices will likely go up to compensate for the loss of revenues caused by the practices. And 3 presumes Apple won't itself market the data to others. Actually, ✪ writes as though the only purpose for 3 is to sell to "junk mail companies", when this information could be easily be sold to any advertiser - people who may not send junk mail, but will wish to buy ad space with the magazine (maybe via a sponsored issue -- that's not prohibited by Apple, is it)? 3 could just as easily be seen as Apple preventing competition for advertising dollars if publishers try an end-run around iAds. And any time competition is restricted, prices eventually go up. Generally, higher prices are not good for consumers.
4 is particularly troublesome as it punishes folks beyond the sphere of Apple. It'd be akin to Apple forcing the minimum price of all notebook computers to be $1000. (That's the current minimum price for a Mac notebook in $USD -- the Macbook and the Air.) Or akin to grocery prices nationwide being tied to that of stores in New York City, never mind that rent, transport, wages, etc. are lower almost everywhere else in America. Or even rents nationwide being set because of conditions in NYC. And without "iOS price protection", it would be simple to know if you're getting the best price. If you subscribed through iOS, it's not the best price. (I wonder if publishers won't try to get around Caesar by introducing secret semi-permanent 40% off codes valid for use through checkouts outside iOS and quietly seeding them at Retail-Me-Not or various other coupon publicizing websites. Will Apple vigilantly patrol for coupons? If this occurs, then iOS users still won't be sure if they're getting the best price.)
