I'm pretty much in agreement with everything Gruber said (first time for everything).
The one thing that really annoys me though is that Apple have decided is that if you offer a subscription-model outside of the app store, you now have to offer it at the same cost inside the app store.
Instead of paying 1-4% credit-card transaction fees with 24 hour payment terms, you now have to potentially pay a 30% app-store transaction fee with payments taking a month or more if your users decide to take up the option of paying via the app store.
Now I can see why Apple can't discount their 30% as this is the margin they seem to give to stores selling iTunes cards (yes, Apple makes nothing on apps bought with iTunes cards). But to require all apps to be forced to use the in-app subscription model is just ridiculous. What next? A native SAP client forced to sell their $100k product through the app store?
Moreover, such arguments are silly. Nobody buys an iPad and then looks through the app store for $100k apps to run on it, or even $5k apps. If you are in the market for such an app, you buy the app and then go shopping for the hardware.
Perhaps Apple has now ceded the market for mobile clients of $100k enterprise Java applications to Android. If so, I doubt they are losing much sleep in Cupertino.
Obviously Apple's pricing model makes no sense for markets that they are not actually in. What matters, however, is the competitive landscape of the market that they are in.
The one thing that really annoys me though is that Apple have decided is that if you offer a subscription-model outside of the app store, you now have to offer it at the same cost inside the app store.
Instead of paying 1-4% credit-card transaction fees with 24 hour payment terms, you now have to potentially pay a 30% app-store transaction fee with payments taking a month or more if your users decide to take up the option of paying via the app store.
Now I can see why Apple can't discount their 30% as this is the margin they seem to give to stores selling iTunes cards (yes, Apple makes nothing on apps bought with iTunes cards). But to require all apps to be forced to use the in-app subscription model is just ridiculous. What next? A native SAP client forced to sell their $100k product through the app store?