

Financial Times Won't Give Apple A Cut, Drops iOS for Web App - eljaco
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/07/financial-times-wont-give-apple-a-cut-drops-ios-for-web-app/

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dstein
I think we are close to the tipping point where a majority of developers begin
to favor webapps to iOS native apps. I've seen this coming a mile away. Apple
almost lost a big portion of its development community 2 years ago with that
whole 3rd party development platform issue. Apple relented, and they are now
turning a different crank with the big subscription tax. They are playing a
game of monopoly here. It's the same kind of game Microsoft played in the
1990's and by attrition have lost to the Linux/OSS movement.

Apple currently holds one trump card with Safari on IOS devices though. By
restricting HTML5 Audio controls, and rendering engine speed, it prevents
games and music web apps from being viable inside the browser.

~~~
Anechoic
> _I think we are close to the tipping point where a majority of developers
> begin to favor webapps to iOS native apps_

Isn't this pretty much what Apple wanted in the first place?

~~~
blinkingled
No. It just meant that they did not have the native application development
SDK and the associated App Store infrastructure ready that time. Saying "who
needs native apps when there is the Web" up until releasing the native App
Store is typical of Apple - "who wants to watch video on small screen",
"People don't read anymore" etc. come to mind.

~~~
crag
Actually you have evidence of that? Cause I don't believe that for a second. I
was a member of the ADC at that time. And I don't remember seeing ANYTHING
about a iphone (this was before it was renamed to ios) dev kit.

But my email was full of guidelines to create web apps for the phone. What I
think happened is that (at that time) Apple wanted Mac developers to make
iphone apps, badly. And mac dev's wanted to do it natively. A half a year
later, I see the beta of the dev kit.

I doubt Apple imagined the app store market at that time. And like most grand
success stories, there was a lot of luck involved.

~~~
blinkingled
Evidence of what? You seem to concur that native sdk and app store did not
exist at the time when Apple said Web Apps are good enough.

Sure they didn't wanted to lose developer attention and had to keep them
engaged with web apps etc. until they figured out the strategy on native
development and the app store.

And I can't believe that Apple had totally closed the door or hadn't thought
about native apps at all when they initially released the iPhone - there
wasn't any sensible reason not to - it wasn't a new thing, at least some of
the phone platforms had native apps and there were even App Stores before
that. It was just a matter of time.

~~~
Anechoic
Looking at the 2007 WWDC press release, it looks like Web apps _was_ they way
Apple seriously wanted to go: "Developers can create Web 2.0 applications
which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which
can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call,
sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps." If nothing else,
it gave them a much larger potential developer base than relying on native
development alone _and_ by sticking to standards it insures that the iPhone
would always have a place in the table.

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silverlight
A little OT, but I was actually thinking about the in-app subscriptions policy
the other day as it applies to SaaS. I know that there was some email floating
around that was supposedly from Steve Jobs saying it didn't apply, but I was
curious if anyone out there has had an app rejected (or accepted, for that
matter, since the policy took effect) for not accepting in-app purchases of
subscriptions. We are thinking about beginning work on a companion app to a
SaaS product. The app would be free, but step one is signing in to your
account on the SaaS, which is not. There is also no free tier. We cannot
afford to give Apple a 30% cut of our subscription price, so we are not
planning on offering an in-app subscription purchase option. We would like to
include a link that opens a page to the main site in a browser for those who
don't already have accounts, although I know that is explicitly forbidden for
apps that fall into the subscriptions category.

Any thoughts? Just curious what our chances of rejection are for something
like this in the current "climate".

~~~
phlux
Get their email when they use the app, however you can do that, send them a
thank you email and offer them a discounted upsell?

------
chernevik
If you are't into first class economic writing, and I'm talking so good it
almost explains the euro, pick up the FT Saturday edition. Tremendous coverage
of books, arts, personalities, and occasionally some truly quirky stories.
Also: A "How To Spend It" magazine that takes appalling up to the point of
irony.

I know, the HN audience doesn't care. But amid all the discussion of platform
strategy, the FT staff deserve a salute. There is a reason this paper doesn't
need Apple.

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dageshi
We all know how this will go, apple waits six months until it's pissed off the
maximum number of people and then it'll reverse its decision or make the terms
much more acceptable.

------
poutine
If this is the best you can do with an HTML5 'app' then native apps have a
long future. It's buggy, laggy, animations are wrong, graphics are low
resolution in places, and user interface widgets are odd and non standard.

~~~
petercooper
That's why I'd rather just have the regular old "Web" for stuff like this.
There seem to be a lot of experiments to 'appize' Web sites for tablets and
the like, and while most of them look better than typical Web pages at first
glance, they're usually laggy and less immediate than if you'd just seen a
regular web page in the first place (a common issue is scrolling.. if I get
the dreaded 8 frames per second effect, I'm outta there).

~~~
fungi
<http://apps.ft.com/ftwebapp/> is slow as a dog, sure flash blob isn't
helping.

but <http://m.ft.com> is clean, nice and fast. personally i often find the
mobile version of sites nicer (in a similar way to the print view is often the
best way to read a page)

edit: ugh you need to spoof your browser to access <http://m.ft.com> on the
desktop.

------
kennystone
People like to talk about black and white, native versus web, etc, but this is
simply a matter of finding the right fit for the Financial Times. Many of the
newsy apps can be done very well with the latest browsers (and other kinds of
apps, too!). It makes sense for subscriptions as well as for maintenance and
tech investment, and they won't lose much (if any) functionality. Some apps
will always be better suited for native, but as the browser technology grows,
we'll move back to web apps more. It wasn't so long ago that touch gestures
were pretty hard to do right in a web app, so the only way to do a mobile app
right was to go native.

------
ChrisLTD
For straight content delivery companies, making a web app should be the first
priority. A native app isn't going to offer much in the way of enhanced
functionality, and your effort will likely be diluted while you chase multiple
platforms.

It makes even more sense to focus on a web app when your company already has a
web site. You likely already have the expertise on staff to create a good web
app, and any new features or techniques you develop can be easily used in both
places.

------
cjboco
I think a lot of people are missing the bigger picture here, which is Apple is
unwilling to just hand over user details, which the Financial Times and the
likes want. The 30% cut "gripe" is just what they are telling the public to
try to get you on "their" side. If I recall, Amazon actually had (has) a
larger piece of the pie for subscriptions, but they are will to give out User
Information.

------
jmitcheson
The "HTML5 apps don't cut it compared to native" argument is incredibly short
sighted. The pace of development in this area is staggering. Things are moving
very quickly and in a short time, the days where HTML applications didn't
perform as well will be long forgotten - as forgotten as the days when the
internet ran at 2400 baud or when you needed a huge tape to record television.

Think of the future, not the present.

------
guelo
Apple is playing with fire, they have built an incredible platform for others
to build on top of, but a platform requires a level of trust from developers
and businesses in order for them to invest in it. Apple seems to be doing
their best to destroy that trust. What Apple's greed seems to blind them to is
that while, yes, companies gain a lot by building on Apple's platform, Apple
also accrues a lot of benefits just by those apps existing, without having to
take a 30% cut.

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jsherry
Some discussion on this earlier: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2629114>

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nicholas1987
Glad this is happening, hopefully this forces Apple to lower their cut, it's
not like they can't afford it.

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asdf333
And so it begins. The migration from 'app stores' to the web.

