Apple, iPad and magazine subscriptions - he’s just not that into you.
You know the "media" has it out for you when even blogs that were founded to pretty much celebrate you and kiss your ass start to cast you as the evil overlord making poor old magazine publishers jump through hoops just to make a living. Witness this clip from The Apple Blog - it attributes Time Inc's recent iPad subscription woes to some kind of policy that Apple held and has now reluctantly rescinded. Horse-shit.
The truth is, the celebrated feature in the recent launch of People on the iPad - the ability of print subscribers to access its contents for free - was always possible. All that needs to be done is to have readers authenticate against a publisher owned database - the Netflix app serves as a good example. My guess - call it an educated guess - is that the static around the issue wasn't stemming from an Apple policy as much as it was from Time and the rest of the magazine industry trying to turn Apple into a fulfillment operation.
That's a fine point that's lost on a lot of the tech blogs and media like the Apple Blog - media who are just so used to Apple manhandling small developer outfits. The sticking point for companies like Time has less to do with Apple not letting them do something and everything to do with Apple not wanting to do something that magazines want them to do - namely collect, manage, and make available publication specific user data. It seems to me that Apple wants manage transactions - not lists.
Publishers love lists. It's their stock in trade. Yet, what they love even more than lists is having a vendor manage those lists for them. It's so easy just to break off a percentage and be done with it. The problem is that the vendors they have used to do that in print are simply not up to the task of dealing with real time digital fulfillment. As a result many print companies have either had to cobble together a homegrown digital fulfillment operation and manage it themselves (yuck) or hack together workarounds for their vendor's underperforming systems.
With the birth of the iPad came the hope that Apple - with their awesome iTunes interface and understanding of these computer things - might be able to be the digital fulfillment vendor of their dreams. Too bad for them Apple just wants to fool around - Steve's not really into a serious relationship right now.
Don't cry too hard for the publishers though... they still have pretty deep pockets and are sure to stumble into a real relationship at some point. They just need to let go of the good looking, popular guy that only wants to have fun.
Time Inc. is the publisher that finally convinced Apple to bypass the pay-per-issue model and allow existing subscribers to reap the benefits of their iPads. As of Thursday, People magazine allows existing subscribers to download and view current content on their iPads for free. Subscribers forced into paying twice for the same content had previously contributed to extremely negative reviews for apps like Sports Illustrated and others.Read more at theappleblog.com
