4 ms·
Steve's very short reply is: "We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps."
by Maro 16y ago
Steve'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.