Earlier this week I posted about Readability and how their app had been rejected from the App Store. Today I have an update for you. The following was tweeted from the Readability account yesterday:
The Readability iOS app has been re-submitted. Coming soon: our open love letter to Apple.
I doubt that they’re paying Apple’s Vig and there hasn’t been enough time to negotiate a lower rate, so my guess is that Readability are making use of a quirk in the rules that Steve Jobs invented this week. One developer, concerned about the affect Apple’s greed would have on various services he subscribed to (such as Dropbox, SalesForce, and Evernote), asked Steve Jobs to clarify the rule. This is the email he is supposed to have received:
We created subscriptions for publishing apps, not SaaS (software as a service) apps.
Sent from my iPhone
As I see it, this is an arbitrary distinction that attempts to separate some subscription apps from the rest. This answer bothers me more than if Apple had decided to go after a cut of the subscriptions from SaaS apps, because there is only a small difference between SaaS and streaming services like Pandora, Rhapsody,and Netflix. In fact, I really don’t see how these services count as publishers when they stream content. Can someone explain?
Is it just me, or are the folks at Apple are just making this up as they go along?
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The distinction is the difference between data and content.
Data being, of course, information that is a means to an end and content being an end unto itself. Providing storage space for personal files isn’t quite the same thing as providing those files in the first place though they may use the exact same delivery mechanisms.
For example, an app that accesses a personal document via OPDS and Calibre from my PC is no longer forbidden but using that same OPDS app to get a book I bought fron BAEN is still a violation of the rules.
Ain’t life grand in the world of Godfather Jobs?
Okay, but that still reads like an artificial distinction.
Hence the sarcasm.
The difference is somebody made money off the content.
And Stevie gets cross when the somebody isn’t him.
Its all about the money.
Oh, you were being sarcastic? Now your comment makes more sense.
LOL
I need to work on my sense of humor…
Godfather might be Job’s middle name, after all.
So Readability will now need to rely on a web application and provide the content through a browser. BFD.
As for Readability, their website sucks. How am I suppose to be interested in this service if their website doesn’t speak specifically about the content I can access?