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Steve Jobs Email Suggests In-App Subscriptions Don't Apply to SaaS?
- Maro 16y agoSteve's very short reply is: "We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps."
- Ygor 16y agoDoes this statement sound stupid only to me? "We said you can drive a car, not a blue car."
- rimantas 16y agoYour interpretation indeed sounds stupid to me.
- scw 16y agoThis isn't the first instance of Apple as the Thought Police -- what will the yarrow sticks show today in the iChing?
- stuhacking 16y agoYou pay tax for driving a road car, not a remote control car.
- jmah 16y agoI think you parsed it as: We created subscriptions for publishing (the following): apps, not SaaS apps. Whereas the rest of us see it as: We created subscriptions for [publishing apps] (apps by content publishers), not [SaaS apps].
- Ygor 16y agoYes, that was the problem. Thanks for the clarification. It indeed sounded very strange to me, since I am not familiar with the topic.
- greyman 16y agoSo we should then clarify what the distinction is. I considered Readability to be a typical SaaS app, and now Apple seem to think otherwise.
- joelhaasnoot 16y agoIsn't Readability an edge case? Yes, they offer a service, but they also offer content. By paying out the content owners, they are positioning themselves as publishers / content providers. They do offer other peoples content, not their own, which would make them different from a publisher.
- amouat 16y agoBut they don't act as a "gateway" to the content, so I don't see how they can be considered a publisher. They are effectively an XSLT script run through a remote server. You say to readability "here, make this webpage better", readability doesn't publish a list of formatted webpages. (Although I appreciate they probably don't use XSLT and I don't mean to demean what they do).
- adsr 16y agoAnd ironically, they take a 30% cut themselves as well.
- dablya 16y agoLike rain on your wedding day
- brudgers 16y ago>"Isn't Readability an edge case?" Assuming it is an edge case, then Apple clearly pushed the edge further out to include more apps under the policy rather than interpreting the grey area in the developer's favor. Edge cases set precedent and the one set by Readability may raise reasonable concerns among developers.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mryall 16y agoHis reply really only covers half of the relevant changes. The other parts are where they now require in-app purchases for any "premium content" which is accessed by the app and forbid links to a website to purchase content. Subscriptions have nothing to do with the Kindle app at all and only partially relate to Netflix. The larger conflict with these apps and the new TOS relate to online purchases of content rather than subscriptions. This response also isn't very useful because it is a lot more important how the TOS are interpreted in practice by the App Store reviewers than what the original philosophy for the rule was.
- thailandstartup 16y agoThe rules and interpretations can change anytime too. The more iOS Apps and Objective C developers there are, the more entrenched Apple becomes and the worse their behaviour becomes. It's the MS playbook from two decades ago.
- iwwr 16y agoIt doesn't help the ecosystem when you're circumventing the normal fees and rules, or using non-Apple technology. Pay your dues, don't cause trouble and you too can benefit from the AppStore.
- credo 16y agoIt will be great if someone from Apple officially confirms that the IAP subscription policy will not apply to SaaS. It will also be interesting to see whether they provide clear definitions for what they consider as SaaS. In general, the mandatory subscription policy was a bad idea - for SaaS it is an even worse idea. I think that Apple will ultimately back down from this policy (not just for SaaS, but for all apps) - partly because of DOJ concerns (antitrust regulators are looking at the policy as per the NYT) and also because they will lose a lot of apps from companies ranging from Rhapsody to Netflix. Losing the "there is an app for that" slogan will be a huge loss to Apple and someone at the company is bound to realize that.
- enjo 16y agoIt all seems very subjective at this point doesn't it? What's the difference here exactly? If you're selling your content then you pay, if you're moving data around you don't? On top of that I'd be HUGELY nervous if I was a SAAS provider that Apple might change their mind... they've done it before.
- smoody 16y agoWhat about SaaS apps that serve up content as part of their service? It starts to get gray at some point.
- gojomo 16y agoIndeed... for example, what if 'premium' published content arrives via a Dropbox folder shared to the publisher?
- jessedhillon 16y agoYou know, when you can reliably expect Jon Gruber's opinions on a matter to lean pro-Apple -- when he does all sorts of mental gymnastics to make the logic come out right, no matter how absurd it sounds -- well, how is he not regarded as a shill?
- Charuru 16y agoI thought this was common knowledge. He IS regarded as a shill. His analysis is still often pretty good as long as one acknowledges the bias.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoThis is it. With so few people providing genuinely intelligent, impartial advice, often you end you going to someone like Gruber who provides intelligent, partial advice and then balance it with similar voices on the other side of the argument. I like Gruber but I know that some things are going to come with a certain spin.
- tjogin 16y agoJohn Gruber has been one of the most vocal critics of the App Store, its rules and the inconsistent application thereof.
- jessedhillon 16y agoGruber says, FTA: "Maybe I'm missing something, but these guys claiming to be surprised and disappointed by Apple's insistence on a 30 percent cut of subscriptions when their own business model is to take a 30 percent cut of subscriptions strikes me as rich. And how can they claim that Readability isn't 'serving up content'? That's exactly what Readability does." On the one hand you have Apple, who charges 30% for access to a platform. An app developer creates that value by writing something that people want, and then Apple takes 30% to deliver it. On the other hand you have Readability, who essentially creates a filter for content -- just a little bit beyond applying a stylesheet to the content, as far as the end result goes. The actual mechanics are more involved, but the end-result is the same as if someone were to apply a custom CSS to your article that made it nice and, well, readable. And for this service, they charge $5/mo and spread 70% of your $5 with the producers of the different content which gets made readable. To say then, that Readability is creating content is ridiculous. They are transforming existing content -- there is no comparison between them and, say, Amazon, who this policy is meant to target. Under Gruber's definition of 'serving up content', the mini Opera browser which delivers pre-rendered images of web pages (on some platforms) is also 'serving up content'. Hell, VNC clients can easily be construed to be content servers under this rationalization!
- Flenser 16y agoIf there's only one copy of an article stored on Readability's servers, then I'd say they're a publisher. If they store everyone's articles separately, then they're a service.
- ugh 16y agoWell, that’s a meaningless distinction. Those technical details don’t change a thing for the user or the business. (Did you know that Dropbox will upload identical files only once?) They are interesting to engineers and developers but no one else. You can define “publisher” and “service” like that but it would be meaningless and arbitrary.
- buro9 16y agoAt what level would that apply? If they're using EMC for storage, then even if their database says they have 1,000 copies they would only physically have 1 (although not quite true as then you have backup, replication, etc). It's a meaningless distinction and certainly not one that should be dreamt up by a tech company.
- statictype 16y agoSent from my iPhone How does someone like Steve Jobs - someone who presumably has an inbox that is under a constant barrage of spam - productively check mail on an iPhone? I don't get a lot of mail and still, the lack of junk control filters makes managing mail on the phone almost impossible.
- jmah 16y agoI expect his mail is heavily triaged / filtered by a secretary or assistant, so it'd be quite manageable on a phone or whatnot.
- dalore 16y agoIt's also easier to manage if you don't bother with politeness or try to be clear. One line vague replies seem to be the go.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoRealistically a CEO isn't going to have time for more so you have to ask yourself would you rather have this or nothing. How many other CEOs even engage at this level? The man has a company to run and some personal stuff to deal with. Yes I wish we got more detail but I'd rather this than nothing.
- nr0mx 16y agoWhat you say makes sense, except when this substitutes for official communication from the company, as often is the case with Apple. If the CEO is aware of this issue, and the company prefers to keep mum on this topic, then it is obviously a considered silence.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoApple haven't replied yet. That doesn't mean that they're not going to reply. Generally companies are ill advised to make knee jerk reactions to these situations. More customers and potential customers are joining the debate each day and if Apple made a statement today, it could be wrong tomorrow. This whole thing is less than a week old. If Apple haven't responded in a month then I'd agree, however right now I think this is a sensible pause for reflection.
- thought_alarm 16y agoIt's disappointing to me how quickly people lose sight of how the App Store completely changed the game for indie developers. If you depend on the App Store to market and grow your business then you're not really delivering SaaS, are you? You're delivering iPhone software that is published and marketed by Apple. In that case, you have no problem paying Apple 30% for the business you otherwise wouldn't have. It's a no-brainer. If you don't depend on the App Store to market and grow your business, then it doesn't matter much either way, does it? Either the cost/benefit of 30% vs potential new business is worth it or it isn't. Nobody owes you anything.
- tomjen3 16y agoThats not so. Lets assume that 5% of the people use your offering because there is an ios option. A lot more may use it, but they would have paid you anyway so you didn't get those as a customer and a lot of them is going to choose your ios sign-up because its a lot more convinient. Now you have to pay 30% on everybody's signup fees, even if your offering is much larger than just the ios. You also depend on electricity, computers, safety and security, a server OS, the internet, etc, etc to have a Saas business - do they also deserve 30%?
- dalore 16y agoI thought you only had to pay 30% of the iOS users that subscribed using IAP, and not 30% of everybody. So lets say those 5% all used IAP, you would have to pay 30% of 5% of your total. Now if your margin is less than 30% you could eat the loss of those 5% of users or increase your prices for the other 95% (and hopefully not lose more customers). Or somewhere in between where you up the price, but not enough to cover the loss of the iOS cut.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoThis is correct. You only pay 30% on subscriptions purchased through the IAP. Apple have expressly stated that they take nothing from subscriptions taken out through any other means. So if I take out a magazine subscription through the IAP option in the magazine app, they pay 30%. If I take out the same subscription through the magazine's website they pay nothing, even if I then access it exclusively through the app. The caveats are that I must have the choice of taking out the subscription through IAP, and must be able to get the same (or better) price through IAP. They're basically assuming that so long as there is no price difference they'll do well from the convenience of IAP for the consumer.
- toddh 16y agoDon't apply to SaaS today. What about tomorrow?
- Corrado 16y agoMan, reading this stuff is like trying to figure out the US tax code. Every time I get more information on the new app store rules I just get more confused. At first I was really liking the fact that I could purchase apps and have them available on any Mac I use. Now I'm not so sure that the App Store is a good thing at all, for developers or consumers. My personal feeling is that any contract that has this many rules and exceptions is probably going to screw me over.