

The Financial Times Tries An Apple End-Run - jsherry
http://allthingsd.com/20110607/the-financial-times-tries-an-apple-end-run/

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tedunangst
"Even more problematic for print publishers like Pearson’s FT is Apple’s
insistence on keeping subscriber data like credit card information to itself."

That's a very interesting point. Personally, as a consumer, Apple doing the
bill is a great benefit to me. Similarly, my magazine subscriptions are
through Amazon because they are so easy to manage. The magazine may be losing
whatever Amazon's cut is, but if I had to deal with each one individually,
several of them would be getting zero money.

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jsherry
Agreed on the convenience point. FT's strategy is definitely dependent upon
the consumer's loyalty to their brand/product. Enough that they'd rather see
Apple's cut stay with the publisher at the inconvenience cost of dealing with
separate bills.

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rojoca
I'm not sure about the terms of Apple's in-app purchasing (perhaps someone
could elaborate), but can a publisher add a surcharge to the native app, to
cover apple's cut, then offer the original (now discounted) price to users who
pay through the web app or via a webpage?

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tedunangst
That's not allowed, but you can charge more for the native app version and
give it more features. Charge $6 for the native app, but add offline reading.
Charge $4 for the web version.

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mapgrep
I just tried to use this web app. It took about 5 minutes to load!

I think they are actually loading the entire paper when you hit the app home
page, instead of just an index page. Either that or a truly mammoth tangle of
(cross compiled?) javascript.

There is even a dedicated "loading" splash screen and progress bar. "If you
are not on wifi this may take a while." Ugh. FT, you're doing it wrong.

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revorad
The funny thing is that there's no obvious way to use this "web app" from
anything but a mobile device. Why can't I use a web app from my laptop or
desktop?

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Adaptive
I've read the FT for years in print.

Still one of the only publications I would subscribe to (cf the economist,
nyt). They were also a client of mine about 10 years ago and at that point I
remember complaining specifically and at length in meetings with them about
the poor state of their website. Amazingly, the design of the actual content
pages has remained _unchanged_ since then. The plastered on content homepages
are like wallpaper over crumbling drywall.

Doing an end run around a popular platform can absolutely be done, but get
your house in order first. Right now this just smells like a company that
couldn't figure out the web for a decade, wants in on mobile, but hasn't
figured out that you have to execute on the table-stakes of the web first.
Otherwise you are the daily.

I still like the sloppy, porous, crazy paywall of the NYT and the mobile/web
stuff they are doing. Best in show so far.

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51Cards
To me this is just one of the early cases of what will become an inevitable
trend. Not just to avoid Apple licensing policies but also to target multiple
platforms with one app. HTML5 is rapidly hitting a tipping point that allows
for more complete user experiences in a web app and the further that
progresses the more this will become the norm. For a content delivery site/app
like this it's really a no brainer... that's what HTML was meant to do from
day one.

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msy
Compared to native apps it's a poor experience. Awkward, clunky and
unresponsive. If anything I think this strengthens Apple's hand rather than
weakening it.

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MatthewPhillips
Nah, those are browser issues. As tablet javascript performance comes closer
to that of the desktop, these issues will go away.

And frankly, those same complains can be said about The Daily.

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SoftwarePatent
The FT is an outlier... their fans (including me) are stark, raving fans who
will put up with an ugly interface to get at the content.

