Steve Jobs Email Suggests In-App Subscriptions Don't Apply to SaaS?

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/21/steve-jobs-email-suggests-in-app-subscriptions-dont-apply-to-software-as-a-service/

by siglesias • 15 years ago

78 62 15 years ago

macrumors.com

Maro• 15 years ago

Steve's very short reply is: "We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS apps."

Ygor2• 15 years ago

Does this statement sound stupid only to me?

"We said you can drive a car, not a blue car."

rimantas• 15 years ago

Your interpretation indeed sounds stupid to me.

scw• 15 years ago

This isn't the first instance of Apple as the Thought Police -- what will the yarrow sticks show today in the iChing?

stuhacking• 15 years ago

You pay tax for driving a road car, not a remote control car.

jmah2• 15 years ago

I 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].

greyman• 15 years ago

So 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• 15 years ago

Isn'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.

mryall• 15 years ago

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.

thailandstartup• 15 years ago

The 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.

credo• 15 years ago

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.

enjo• 15 years ago

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.

smoody• 15 years ago

What about SaaS apps that serve up content as part of their service? It starts to get gray at some point.

gojomo• 15 years ago

Indeed... for example, what if 'premium' published content arrives via a Dropbox folder shared to the publisher?

jessedhillon3• 15 years ago

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?

Charuru• 15 years ago

I thought this was common knowledge. He IS regarded as a shill. His analysis is still often pretty good as long as one acknowledges the bias.

Tyrannosaurs7• 15 years ago

This is it. With so few people providing genuinely intelligent, impartial advice, often you end you going to someone like Gruber who provides intelligent, partial advice and then balance it with similar voices on the other side of the argument.

I like Gruber but I know that some things are going to come with a certain spin.

tjogin4• 15 years ago

John Gruber has been one of the most vocal critics of the App Store, its rules and the inconsistent application thereof.

jessedhillon3• 15 years ago

Gruber says, FTA: "Maybe I'm missing something, but these guys claiming to be surprised and disappointed by Apple's insistence on a 30 percent cut of subscriptions when their own business model is to take a 30 percent cut of subscriptions strikes me as rich. And how can they claim that Readability isn't 'serving up content'? That's exactly what Readability does."

On the one hand you have Apple, who charges 30% for access to a platform. An app developer creates that value by writing something that people want, and then Apple takes 30% to deliver it.

On the other hand you have Readability, who essentially creates a filter for content -- just a little bit beyond applying a stylesheet to the content, as far as the end result goes. The actual mechanics are more involved, but the end-result is the same as if someone were to apply a custom CSS to your article that made it nice and, well, readable. And for this service, they charge $5/mo and spread 70% of your $5 with the producers of the different content which gets made readable.

To say then, that Readability is creating content is ridiculous. They are transforming existing content -- there is no comparison between them and, say, Amazon, who this policy is meant to target. Under Gruber's definition of 'serving up content', the mini Opera browser which delivers pre-rendered images of web pages (on some platforms) is also 'serving up content'.

Hell, VNC clients can easily be construed to be content servers under this rationalization!

jerome_bent3• 15 years ago

There is a difference between criticizing the implementation of a policy (e.g. the AppStore review process is too slow, the AppStore review process sometimes makes embarrassing mistakes) and criticizing the policy itself (e.g. Apple's control over the AppStore is a bad thing). Gruber (and Marco et al) might criticize specific tactics by Apple but the Mac pundits largely agree with the strategy and the goals—whatever the strategy or goals may be.

Flenser• 15 years ago

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.

ugh• 15 years ago

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.

buro9• 15 years ago

At what level would that apply?

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.

statictype• 15 years ago

Sent from my iPhone

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.

jmah2• 15 years ago

I expect his mail is heavily triaged / filtered by a secretary or assistant, so it'd be quite manageable on a phone or whatnot.

dalore2• 15 years ago

It's also easier to manage if you don't bother with politeness or try to be clear. One line vague replies seem to be the go.

thought_alarm• 15 years ago

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.

tomjen33• 15 years ago

Thats not so.

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%?

dalore2• 15 years ago

I thought you only had to pay 30% of the iOS users that subscribed using IAP, and not 30% of everybody. So lets say those 5% all used IAP, you would have to pay 30% of 5% of your total.

Now if your margin is less than 30% you could eat the loss of those 5% of users or increase your prices for the other 95% (and hopefully not lose more customers). Or somewhere in between where you up the price, but not enough to cover the loss of the iOS cut.

scott_s• 15 years ago

You pay an electric bill, an internet bill, pay for your servers, and probably pay people to keep them safe and secure.

bradleyland• 15 years ago

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.

saurik• 15 years ago

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.

toddh• 15 years ago

Don't apply to SaaS today. What about tomorrow?

Corrado• 15 years ago

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.

Steve Jobs Email Suggests In-App Subscriptions Don't Apply to SaaS?

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