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[JimH]

Here is an example of why JRiver doesn't support Apple any more.  BeamItDown, a small e-reader developer selling e-books was pushed out of the Apple world by a new demand from Apple (30% of all proceeds).

Five of us spent nearly a year and a half of our lives and over a million dollars in cash and sweat equity developing the iFlowReader app...What sounds like a reasonable demand when packaged by Apple's extraordinary public relations department is essentially an eviction notice to all ebook sellers on iOS...We put our faith in Apple and they screwed us...It was the American dream that we all strive for. Sadly, the America that we thought we were working in turned out to be a totalitarian regime and the dictator decided that he wanted all of what we had. Our dream is now over.

Here's the full story at CNET.

[olinbg]

Not what you'd call 'developer-friendly'...

[flac.rules]

Frankly, apple as a company doesn't seem very friendly towards anyone, even though they have some nice products.

[glynor]

I do agree that this terms and policy change, if it is actually implemented the way it has been widely reported by the press, is absolutely a terrible idea.  Apple is certainly free to do it if they choose, it is their platform after all, but I think it is a bad idea for both software developers and Apple themselves.

However, I am absolutely NOT convinced that what we've been hearing about the supposed June 30th drop-dead data is all there is to the story.  First of all, any developer that IS part of the iOS developer program is covered by an NDA, so they legally can't talk about any upcoming changes to the APIs or terms.  So, no one who cares about maintaining a relationship with Apple can talk (it is unlikely that they'll actually sue NDA breakers, but you can bet your ass they'll drop you from the program).  Because of this, what leaks out early are primarily things sourced from people with an axe to grind.  Just like with the Location Tracking issue, there is almost certainly more to the story than what the initial "sources say" reports contain.  Plus, and more importantly, it is literally not possible for this change to be implemented the way the press has been reporting.

The press reports about this have generally gone something like this:  "Apple now says that if you offer in-app purchases, you have to offer them using Apple's approved in-app purchase system, and can't just end-run it by shunting people off to the web via Mobile Safari (ala Kindle), effective June 30th.  This means that, by the current terms, publishers would have to give Apple a 30% cut on anything sold in-app."

Three things about this:

1. It is not technically possible for applications like Kindle and Nook to actually use the in-app purchase system.  Amazon offers 100,000s of books on their Kindle store (and B&N while lower, still offers TONS of books).  The in-app purchase system has a per-publisher maximum limit in the 1000s (they've changed it a few times, but last I knew for sure it was 5,000).  Either way, it is NOWHERE NEAR the scale that Amazon or B&N would need.

2. Amazon and B&N would never agree to a 30% cut for Apple, they could not, and they'd quickly pull their respective apps from the App Store.  That has not happened, and neither of them are commenting when directly asked by the press.  Amazon in particular hasn't shied away from calling Apple out on their previous raw-deals, and I seriously doubt that they would be holding their tongue this long if they didn't know FOR SURE that there was more to the story.

2. June 30th is well AFTER WWDC, where iOS 5 is likely to be announced and possibly even released.  Who knows what is coming?

If it does actually turn out to be just as has been reported in the press so far (based mostly now on angry rants from two "also ran" eBook vendors who probably didn't have much of a future anyway, Sony and this guy), then I'll be the first to rant that it is a raw deal for both consumers and for developers.  I love the Kindle app on my iPhone.  It would be a VERY big deal if it got killed, and iBooks is a crappy alternative.  But I'm nowhere near alone on this, and I really doubt that Apple is that stupid.  If they were, where is the screaming from Amazon and B&N?

PS.  That, and the whining about the agency model stuff in the source article is ridiculous.  Their essential point here is: Amazon and I were happily humming along and gouging both the in-dire-straights publishing houses AND the consumers for years, and mean Apple came along and made us stop.  Before Apple introduced iBooks, Amazon's typical cut of the sales of Kindle books was 70%, AND Amazon got to set the selling price, not the publisher or author.  So, this means that Amazon could "accept" your book, set the price at $0.99, undercut your paperback/hardcover editions so thoroughly that they didn't sell at all anymore, and give you less than $0.30 per copy as your reward.  And there was literally nothing you could do about it at all, and Amazon DID act this way a lot (they sharply cut the pricing on Kindle editions to spur hardware sales and speed the adoption of their ebook platform).  To respond, as a publisher you had essentially only two choices: (1) not sell digital books at all, or (2) mark UP your price on hardcover/paperback editions to cover the losses on digital editions, and hope the terms would eventually change if you got powerful enough to dictate new terms.

When Apple introduced iBooks, it gave publishers (which includes indie publishers and self-publishing authors) a MUCH better deal.  They allowed the PUBLISHER to set the price of the book, so long as they didn't give special pricing to other vendors (commonly called the "most favored nation" clause and common in these types of contracts), and they reversed the typical Amazon split.  Is it any surprise that all of the big publishing houses reacted by demanding the same terms from other eBook vendors?  I'm sure Amazon and this guy didn't like it, since they'd been taking a much higher margin all along, but that's not unfair... That's Called Capitalism.

The publishing industry is hanging on the edge of complete collapse, and the extremely seller-tilted eBook deals could have been one last nail in the coffin as we shift more-and-more towards digital sales.  Someone NEEDED to step in and offer reasonable prices or the whole house of cards was going to come down.  Apple came in and gave them the same deal the software publishers were already getting on the App Store, and it was just a WAY better deal than they were getting elsewhere.

[glynor]

By the way:  I think the REAL reason this guy shut down his app is because of the Agency Model change in pricing.  That's what he is really pissed about (and what Sony was really pissed about).  From a PR perspective, though, explaining this to consumers is a tough sell.  "We were gouging the publishing industry, which was in-turn gouging you, and Apple made us stop."

So, they took an inkling of truth in a might-be-happening-but-almost-certainly-not-that-simple story about the in-app purchases, and used that as their whipping boy.

We'll see, but I'm betting there is more to the story.

[chicostyle]

nothing to add here, but wow! Mr. glynor, that respose was really thoughtful and illuminating.

[glynor]

Here is an example of why JRiver doesn't support Apple any more.

I thought I should add... Don't take what I wrote above to mean that I think there are not good reasons for JRiver to be very wary of diving into many of Apple's playgrounds.  I just don't think this story is a very good illustration of the real problems that dealing with Apple presents... A bit too much piling on to a story that has far too many holes.

I do agree completely with Jim that JRiver should not jump into the iOS app market.  I think in that space, the market is too closed and limited by Apple's rules for anything powerful that JRiver could put out (perhaps short of a simple "remote control" for MC).  There is a real danger of spending a ton of development time only to have Apple change the rules down the road or pull the app because it "replicates" something that they are doing or decide to do in the near future.  Apple has also shown that they're more than willing to harvest good ideas from the App Store and develop them into their own systems, occasionally locking out the existing competitors, but more often just making them irrelevant.  JRiver makes applications in a space that directly competes with one of Apple's "flagship" products (despite how they treat it development-wise, it is the front-end to their store).  It is far too close for comfort with the way Apple operates.

As a user, I wish there was some better interoperation with Apple devices.  But I can see that it may be better to just leave that to the community too.  I just wish there was some project to really connect the missing pieces.

Overall... Android is a much better fit.  Some of the news this week out of Google I/O finally looks promising to me on that front, but they really need to fix the store somehow so that developers can actually make a living there.  And, previous I/O event announcements had lots of promise, and not many of them have really worked out so well in the real world.  So, it is a wait-and-see game.  And, who knows?  Maybe Windows Phone too (though I wouldn't bet against Microsoft just copying Apple's exact game plan as far as the app store as time goes on if the platform succeeds).

I do happen to think there would be a good market for an OSX version of MC, though.  That's a very different marketplace, a very different platform, and Apple treats the developers very differently.  You can compete with Apple on the Mac.  Developers do it all the time, especially for "premium" applications that go beyond basic functionality.  And besides that, there is NOTHING out there that is even remotely comparable on the Mac.  That said, I understand how Jim feels... If nothing else, it would be a huge financial risk, and would probably require some sort of marketing push to achieve much.  None of us peanut-gallery folk can see the whole picture like you can from inside the company.

[brossmac]

Frankly, apple as a company doesn't seem very friendly towards anyone, even though they have some nice products.

This is the exact reason I gave up on Apple a long time ago.  They have become the totalitarian regime that they criticized in their famous "1984" commercial.  Sad...

[Brovig]

Could you please clarify what you mean by "not supporting Apple any more"? You've probably addressed it somewhere already so perhaps you could point me to that posting/piece?

Like does it mean you're not support syncing with Apple devices? Or not supporting their file formats?

Thanks...

[JimH]

MC supports older iPods, but not the iPhone or Touch or newer iPods.  You could read more on the iPod board here.

MC16 does support Apple formats natively, except for protected formats.

[glynor]

If it does actually turn out to be just as has been reported in the press so far (based mostly now on angry rants from two "also ran" eBook vendors who probably didn't have much of a future anyway, Sony and this guy), then I'll be the first to rant that it is a raw deal for both consumers and for developers.  I love the Kindle app on my iPhone.  It would be a VERY big deal if it got killed, and iBooks is a crappy alternative.  But I'm nowhere near alone on this, and I really doubt that Apple is that stupid.  If they were, where is the screaming from Amazon and B&N?

Told you so:

With the enforcement deadline looming, this week Apple introduced updated App Store Review Guidelines, of which MacRumors has obtained a copy. The corresponding 11.13 (now 11.14) section is significantly different:

11.14 Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content. Apple will not receive any portion of the revenues for approved content that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app
The new section 11.14 states that apps can play content "subscribed to or purchased outside of the app" as long as the app doesn't include a way for users to go directly from the app to the outside purchasing mechanism. That is, these apps can't have a "buy" button that takes users to an external subscription page.

According to these new guidelines, existing subscription services such as Netflix may continue to function without offering in-app purchases. Content providers are now also free to charge whatever price they wish. For example, they could offer in-app subscriptions with a premium to cover Apple's 30% cut for In-App Subscription payments.

So that's why.  Amazon and Netflix and whomever can now implement the In-App purchase system, if they want (assuming Apple also fixes the In-App item limits which could have been revealed in the NDA-ed sessions at WWDC this week), and mark those prices up by 30% to cover the cost to Apple.  If you're smart enough to go to their website instead, even directly from your iOS device, you'll be able to save 30% or more off of the In-App prices.  If anyone complains, the vendor just points at Apple.