People expect snappy as hell execution on the iOS, the actual flow of the app is often more important than the looks. And in my experience the web apps just aren't there yet.
Apple make no money on the app store it more or less goes to operations. You can call it a tax or you can be honest and call it what it is. The price of keeping a well structured market place.
Do people buy the iPad because of the magazines or the magazines because of the iPad?
In other words. Does it really make a difference if they leave? Is that really anything to worry about? Will that really mean the end of native apps?
Again apple is not depending on the subscription apps to make money. It's the other way around.
This seems like opinion presented as fact. I've used iOS and currently own an Android phone, and there's no doubt in my mind that the Android UX is miles ahead of the iOS UX. Of course, I include things like a browser with sync to desktop (Firefox) in my definition of UX, since things like that affect the experience I have while using the product quite a bit.
It amazes me that the current (iOS5 SDK Simulator) browser still is unable to do reflow of text.
At least it can open links in the background now. Thank god!
At one point in time, iOS was prettier than Android. Too few HNers have actually used Froyo or Gingerbread to understand the UI improvements that have occurred and too many use Android as a dev platform or played with a phone in a store to understand the power of actual multitasking or the power of the back button.
Let them go after Netflix and Kindle with the shakedown (June 30th is the deadline).
What happens to the big boys will be telling. I don't think 30% across the board is going to stay. For a small developer the 30% is probably worth it to get into the store, a small amount of visibility, payment processing, and quick customer access.
For the big content providers like NF, HBOGO, WSJ, NYT, Kindle, etc... who already spend huge amounts of money on payment systems, advertising and support the 30% is an additional middle man that provides little actual value. I think at least for the big content providers Apple will blink because at the end of the day Apple needs content more than the content needs them.
