My Thoughts on Apple's New Subscription Model
The more I think about Apple's new subscription model for content in iTunes, the more I like and agree with it. Apple's primary concern is to deliver the best user experience to its customers and to make money. Most objections lie around Apple requiring app developers, that have an application that delivers content via a subscription, to offer it as an in app subscription with Apple receiving 30% of the sale. These developers can offer users access to the same content delivered via iTunes with a sign up on their own website. In this case the content provider would give Apple 0% of the sale.
Additionally there is a discrepancy in my mind between subscriptions, memberships, and third party stores. Netflix and Rhapsody have membership services where you pay a monthly fee to access a library of content. Third party stores like Amazon Kindle and Zinio allow you to view content purchased outside the application. The Daily and Popular Science are subscriptions where you pay a monthly fee to access newly created content that is then pushed to your device. It is unclear if then new subscription policy will apply to all of the aforementioned scenarios or only some of them
Lets examine three examples of how services, users, and applications could interact with these new policies after the Apple imposed June 30th deadline.
