It'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.
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%?
That appreciation ought to be reciprocal though. Apple can't develop all the software users demand on their own.
There hasn't been a lot of push-back on the 30% cut that Apple gets on app sales because that's easy to scope to the App Store.
This same rigid structure doesn't make sense for a lot of subscription based businesses. That's Apple's prerogative, but we (the users) just lost Readability, and you can bet there will be a long line of other great apps that won't make it to the iOS platform because of that stance. I'm having a really hard time being thankful for that.
This point would be great, were it not for the fact that it isn't possible to not depend on the App Store due to how Apple uses their ownership of the hardware to lock out alternative software deployment on their devices: even if you are large enough to market and distribute and do all of the "heavy lifting" of getting your product into the hands of end users without ever talking to Apple, Apple won't actually let you, and treats you like some random indie developer.
Right now there is an entire billions-of-dollars market (mobile applications) that happens to be almost entirely dominated by the whims of a single company (Apple) due to there not being viable competing platforms on which to operate that market (#include all of the articles posted to HN this week despite Android growing 8x faster, it isn't treated as an apps platform by its users): this is starting to look like a clear-cut monopoly situation.
It 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.
It 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.
His 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.
You 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?
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.
Man, 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.
If 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.
Well, 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.
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.
[+] [-] thought_alarm|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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%?
[+] [-] bradleyland|15 years ago|reply
There hasn't been a lot of push-back on the 30% cut that Apple gets on app sales because that's easy to scope to the App Store.
This same rigid structure doesn't make sense for a lot of subscription based businesses. That's Apple's prerogative, but we (the users) just lost Readability, and you can bet there will be a long line of other great apps that won't make it to the iOS platform because of that stance. I'm having a really hard time being thankful for that.
[+] [-] saurik|15 years ago|reply
Right now there is an entire billions-of-dollars market (mobile applications) that happens to be almost entirely dominated by the whims of a single company (Apple) due to there not being viable competing platforms on which to operate that market (#include all of the articles posted to HN this week despite Android growing 8x faster, it isn't treated as an apps platform by its users): this is starting to look like a clear-cut monopoly situation.
[+] [-] credo|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Maro|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mryall|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] greyman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ygor|15 years ago|reply
"We said you can drive a car, not a blue car."
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] smoody|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gojomo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessedhillon|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjogin|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Charuru|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] statictype|15 years ago|reply
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|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Corrado|15 years ago|reply
My personal feeling is that any contract that has this many rules and exceptions is probably going to screw me over.
[+] [-] toddh|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flenser|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ugh|15 years ago|reply
You can define “publisher” and “service” like that but it would be meaningless and arbitrary.
[+] [-] buro9|15 years ago|reply
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.