Reactions to Apple’s subscription service

A week has passed since Apple announced its new subscription system and, in this time, the reactions have not been long in coming.

In the first place, it was the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission who indicated that they were going to study the conditions of this service with the intention of ensuring free competition. This does not mean that they are going to take action against Apple, at least for now, but that they are going to analyze the terms and conditions. Similarly, European organizations are also monitoring the new service.

Reactions to Apple’s subscription service

As for the publishers, who, after all, are the ones who provide the content that is sold through the App Store, the reactions have been mixed. While some, such as the Maxim and Elle publications, have “jumped on the bandwagon”, others have already announced that they do not agree with the conditions and, therefore, are left out of the service.

One of the first companies to show its rejection was rhapsodynoting that Apple’s conditions were financially unacceptable and that they were studying the legal and business responses they could take against the service.

Two other developers have positioned themselves in the same direction. One of them is Arc90, creators of readability (an application that allows you to save articles from web pages for later reading, removing ads, and that pays publishers 70% of the subscription fee it charges users) has been rejected by Apple since the subscription is not It’s done from within the app and it’s against Apple’s new policy. What is remarkable about this case is that Readability does not produce content, but rather makes it easy to access the content that publishers provide.

The other developer is Keyone Productions with their app TinyGrab (a subscription-based file sharing service). Although it is not a very widespread application, the problem in this case is that it can lay the foundations for other similar services, such as DropBox, much more popular and that would be a serious blow to Apple if you have to leave the App Store.

Of course, it is difficult for Apple to rectify a decision like this, although it is still early to see how these statements by some developers affect the App Store. And also, to find out if developers are interested in staying out of Apple’s online store. It will be necessary to be attentive to the development of events.

Via: 9to5Mac | Cult of Mac | MacStories