On Feb 17, 2011, at 6:05 PM, Brad Knowles quoted Josh Smift: >> Is there a way to do what I used to be able to do a week ago? Or does this >> new functionality preclude that? > > I'm not aware of any such apps that fall into the category you have > described, and I am not sure how they would be impacted.
On further reflection, I believe the answer is simple. IIRC, Apple has refused to approve any applications for the app store that used a subscription model, because they didn't have a decision or the infrastructure in place to handle that through iTunes. Yes, you could buy books or magazines through iTunes, or use the iTunes back-end to the in-app store, but when the next book or magazine in the series came out, you'd end up buying it all over again -- essentially, the news stand model. So, again it's all-new functionality. I don't think there are any apps out there that are affected, because there weren't any approved apps in the app store that implemented subscriptions. Magazines like Wired, Popular Science, or whatever had to be effectively re-bought every month. New magazines like Project and Daily were free for the first issue, and they were waiting on the subscription support before they could release the next issues -- or they had to stay free. Some publishers didn't like being forced to go exclusively through Apple's subscription handling system, so Apple came up with a compromise that allowed them to provide their own delivery system so long as they had equal availability and parity on end-user price in the Apple-provided infrastructure. But it's all green-field work -- no current apps are affected, so far as I know. To be honest, I'm much more concerned about what Rupert Murdoch/Newscorp/Fox News would do to me (and all the other customers) if they did have a guaranteed lock-in distribution channel, than I would be concerned about Apple. At least Apple only owns the primary distribution channel for the ecosystem that they have created, as opposed to Rupert Murdoch who wants to own the entire Universe and all the contents therein -- so that he can do with them whatever he chooses, whenever he chooses, and no one in the Universe can tell him differently. Oh, and God answers to Rupert Murdoch, too. -- Brad Knowles <[email protected]> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu> _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
