Category Archives: apple

Wired.com: Sidestepping Apple: From Amazon to Condé Nast, Companies Rethink App Strategies

Posted on by
Reply
"Condé Nast, whose holdings include Wired and The New Yorker, still sells issues of its magazines through their free iPad apps. But after big sales of early issues, the company has also made its iPad editions free for print subscribers — subscriptions it can sell and advertise easily via the web. (Wired.com is owned by a division of Condé Nast.) On Monday, Condé Nast also announced a new media and revenue partnership with social reading app Flipboard. Wired, The New Yorker, Bon Appetit give Flipboard iPad-optimized content. Flipboard provides the reading portal. American Express and Lexus sponsor the special Flipboard editions with their own advertisement. More titles and advertisers will follow. Condé Nast and Flipboard split the revenue."

WSJ.com: Kobo, WSJ Halt Direct Sales on Apple-Device Apps

Posted on by
Reply
"News Corp.'s Wall Street Journal, which has been circumventing Apple's payment system by providing links to its website from inside the iPad app, will soon remove all purchasing options in the app in response to Apple's new rules. People who download the app and want to subscribe will have to either call customer service or visit WSJ.com."

O’Reilly Radar: Got an iPhone or 3G iPad? Apple is recording your moves

Posted on by
Reply
"Today at Where 2.0 Pete Warden and I will announce the discovery that your iPhone, and your 3G iPad, is regularly recording the position of your device into a hidden file. ... All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp. ... All iPhones appear to log your location to a file called "consolidated.db." This contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp."

New York Times: Financial Times Digs Gold Out of Data

Posted on by
Reply
"John Ridding, the chief executive of The FT ... said improvements in collecting and mining customer data were a big reason digital sales accounted for 24 percent of The FT’s revenue last year, a big jump from 19 percent a year earlier and a considerably higher percentage than many other publishers can claim. ... Mr. Ridding said The FT was considering joining Google’s new One Pass subscription system, which will take a commission of 10 percent and share customer data with publishers. An iPad without The FT in its digital newsstand might be a losing proposition for both parties. Yet if Apple sticks to its position, Mr. Ridding said, “it would be a shame, not just for us, but for the broader ecosystem that has developed in recent years around these devices. It requires some thought before harm is done."

Gizmodo: Apple’s New Subscription Model Is Evil

Posted on by
Reply
"The fact is, that Apple's new subscriptions—while justifiably wrapped in the smooth, glossy coat of user-friendliness—are a major power grab that inserts the company between basically every content provider and every iPad and iPhone user. You know what? That's fine. That's how ecosystems like this work. Think of all the products and services that exist and feed off of into Twitter and Facebook. Apple should take a cut. Just not an amount so significant it might kill the people who have helped make the iPad experience so great."

WSJ.com: Apple Antitrust Issues Raised by Subscription-Service Terms

Posted on by
Reply
"Apple Inc.'s new subscription service could draw antitrust scrutiny, according to law professors. ... Publishers, for example, might claim that Apple dominates the market for consumer tablet computers and that it has allegedly used that commanding position to restrict competition. Apple, in turn, might define the market to include all digital and print media, and counter that any publisher not happy with Apple's terms is free to still reach its customers through many other print and digital outlets."