Apple had set a June 30th deadline for all apps to meet compliance, which was to allow purchases and third-party subscriptions outside of the App Store to be offered at a lower price, according to AppleInsider.

Financial Times says that their biggest gripe with Apple is its control over subscriber data, not the 30 percent cut that Apple claims as their own.

An iTunes spokesperson stated:

“The FT iPad and iPhone apps will no longer be available to new users through iTunes … We are directing readers to the FT‘s new web app available at app.ft.com. iTunes will remain an important channel for new and existing advertising based apps.”

Taking matters a step further, FT launched a HTML-5 web app back in June as a workaround to Apple’s in-app subscription stance. The app can be loaded via Safari on iOS devices.

Other apps such as The Wall Street Journal, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon have all complied with Apple’s new rules. Do you think the Financial Times will ever comply with Apple?

The FT has declared Apple CEO Steve Jobs person of the year, as the "visionary who put Apple on Top". It’s fair. Jobs has made a pretty big impact in 2010, most notably with the iPad. The publication writes:

Critics often talk disparagingly of the “reality distortion field” generated by the Apple boss: his ability to convince onlookers that technologies that would seem unformed in other hands have reached a peak of perfection at Apple. Generating this suspension of disbelief is essential to stirring up demand for gadgets most consumers had no idea they needed, and is an art form of which Mr Jobs has long been the acknowledged master.

Speculation had been building in the tech world for months about what was rumoured to be Apple’s latest ground-breaking product. A touch-screen computer without a keyboard, it might even rival the impact of the iPod, introduced in 2001, and the iPhone, in 2007. In the event, the iPad that Mr Jobs carried on to the stage with him that day did not disappoint.

Of course the iPad hasn’t been the only release from Apple this year, but it has been the most talked about by a long shot. 

Speaking of the iPad, there is a photo (whether or not its real is as of yet unconfirmed) of an iPad Mini, said to be coming in early 2011. 

If making Person of the Year wasn’t enough for Jobs, President Obama also cited him as an example of the American Dream. 

The Financial Times posted a somewhat controversial article on Monday talking about Google phasing out the internal use of Microsoft Windows due to security concerns. This information came from "several Google employees", the publication said, through apparently not through any official confirmation from the company itself. "In early January, some new hires were still being allowed to install Windows on their laptops, but it was not an option for their desktop computers," reported the Financial Times. "Google would not comment on its current policy."

Well, a lot of other people had comments. For one, Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc had this (and more) to say on the Windows Blog (via PC World):

When it comes to security, even hackers admit we’re doing a better job making our products more secure than anyone else. And it’s not just the hackers; third party influentials and industry leaders like Cisco tell us regularly that our focus and investment continues to surpass others.

Symantec tells WebProNews that trying to improve security by getting rid of a particular platform is a misconception for 2 reasons:

- Firstly, the main security risks are not rooted in the underlying platform; most attack activity is aimed at web browsers, plug-ins or humans making bad security choices

- One platform is no less vulnerable than another; it is often not a matter of whether an application is vulnerable, but whether someone spends time finding the vulnerabilities and fixing them – however the more popular applications are most likely to be attacked

Trusteer CEO Mickey Boodaei says, "Enterprises that are considering shifting to an operating system like Mac or Linux should realize that although there are less malware programs available against these platforms, the shift will not solve the targeted attacks problem and may even make it worse."

"Mac and Linux are not more secure than Windows," he adds. "They’re less targeted. There is a big difference. If you choose a less targeted platform then there is less of a chance of getting infected with standard viruses and Trojans that are not targeting you specifically. This could be an effective way of reducing infection rates for companies that suffer frequent infections."

Trusteer tells us that reports that Google is planning to drop Windows for security reasons may lead other enterprises to follow this practice.

The Financial Times is ready to find out. They currently use a hybrid paid-free model, where users can access up to 20 stories a month for free, but they’re looking to a pay-per-story or possibly subject or time period model.

The New York Times has long used a micropayments system—for much of their archive, full stories are available as PDF scans at about $4 for one story, or a package of 10 for $16. However, two years ago the NYT outlined just why micropayments don’t work.

Consumers “expect to pay for music and movies, but not so much for the printed word,” said [Mercator Advisory Group analyst] George Peabody. . .

For sellers of the lowest-priced content — anything under 75 cents — micropayments have been made irrelevant by the easy availability of online advertising, Mr. Peabody said. Programs like AdSense from Google, which allows even the smallest Web publishers to have relevant ads placed on their sites, make micropayments unnecessary. The program pays Web publishers what are often very small amounts each time a reader clicks on an ad. . . .

However, two years of experience and a downturn in the economy have shown that advertising doesn’t always work. paidContent says Financial Times execs firmly believe that micropayments can work for editorial content:

“There are a lot of questions around pricing. We would look to test it around different price points.” [MD Rob] Grimshaw admits “there are differences between music and editorial content” but he’s convinced that people will pay, so long as they don’t have to fill out “three pages of forms” every time they want to know what what’s happening in petrochemicals.

. . . FT CEO John Ridding—currently on a PR offensive to boost the case for charging for news—adds his weight to idea in an interview with the Indie: “Our view is that there’s significant potential for pricing per piece and per time period. The whole point about the internet is flexible consumption and reader choice.”

Like the WSJ, a competitor, FT specializes in niche news, so it’s possible that more people would be willing to pay for their specialized reporting.

What do you think? Would you pay per story on FT—or any other news sites?

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Schmidt was interviewed by the Financial Times, with whom he shared a lot more interesting thoughts and insight, but focused more on the business side of things this time. In the interview, he discussed:

- The news industry
- Fair use
- Online video
- Twitter
- Acquisitions
- The future
- The economy

The interview is quite lengthy, but certainly worth reading. Following are a few choice quotes from Schmidt:

On Paying Newspapers More for Aggregating Content…

"The real issue here is that when people are reading the news online, we’re not monetizing it in aggregate, so if we were to transfer money we would be taking money from something unrelated to newspapers and just paying them, which doesn’t seem like a good sustainable model for anybody."

On Fair Use…

"We have evolved in the United States a fair use doctrine that’s pretty broadly agreed to. And my experience with lawyers is that they’re always arguing on the corners of, you know, is it 30 seconds or is this 15 seconds? But there’s clearly a document for use that’s been around for a very long time; it’s unlikely to be changed."

On YouTube Monetization…

"We think YouTube is a huge success… It’s an audience far larger than what traditional television sees; it’s a global audience. And we will, over time, develop the advertising models and subscription models eventually that will make that a very good business for us."

On Hulu:

"We actually like the Hulu structure, we’re glad that the industry has such a structure and we think that the more players getting content online, even if it’s not something that we directly control, that’s good for the industry."

On Twitter:

"I can’t comment about buying anybody; we certainly think Twitter is very successful and people are using Twitter in the most amazing things. The most obvious use of Twitter is everybody is watching a play and are busy talking about the play while the play is underway. So this notion of real-time updates from people is very, very powerful."

He also talks about how he doesn’t intend to do anything else after his stint with Google. He says that’s it for him (and especially no politics).

There is a whole lot more from Schmidt in the Financial Times article. As usual, he has plenty of interesting things to say.

Popular opinion tends to lean toward the "we can get the info elsewhere for free" side of the fence. "You can’t copyright facts and once you’ve released them they are available to all," writes Richmond. "Anyone with an internet connection, a subscription to a couple of news sites and a telephone could take your stories, move them on and publish them to their readers free of charge."

Beyond that, stories tend to grow as more sources cover them from different angles, and often a larger and more informed version of a story becomes the product of that. And that version is more often than not going to be free. TechDirt picked up on Richmond’s article. There, Mike Masnick says:

News was going to be free online from the beginning because it’s the fundamental nature of information. When it’s abundant, it becomes free. That’s your basic economics of supply and demand at work. The whole theory that newspapers could charge is based on the false assumption that the only sources for news would be newspapers. If all newspapers charged, it would open up a huge opportunity for other news sources to make the news free online — and then why would people pay the newspapers? It’s sad, in this day and age, that so many newspaper execs still don’t understand this basic fact — because, until they do, they’ll never really be able to adopt web-aged business models. Instead, they’ll just keep (incorrectly) regretting that they didn’t charge.

Still, there are valid points to both sides of the argument. For one, although online advertising itself has been doing fine, online newspaper advertising has seen slowing growth. And when their isn’t a subscription model in place, advertising is an even bigger key to revenue. So publications that already have a solid subscriber base are not going to want to give up that money.

But, one has to wonder if these online newspapers would see better advertising revenue come in if they were not charging for their content, because advertisers know that they can reach more readers on a widely available, free site. Richmond made an interesting point about younger generations as well. "I think it will become harder and harder for the FT to maintain its audience as the internet generation climbs the corporate ladder," he says. "The current audience believe they are getting content that they can’t get anywhere else – and that certainly isn’t available free – but the audience of the future may already have found other, more accessible publishers to meet their needs."

The paid subscription model is still working for some. So far. There’s no doubt that this is going to hinder the growth of their readership. But until a publication sees the effects start to snowball downhill, it might be stubborn and protective of its content, which it feels is truly a cut above the rest and worth paying for. The Wall Street Journal seems to be enjoying revenue and a combination of free and paid content (FT has some free content as well).

What do you think about the matter? Should online newspapers continue to charge for their content or is it only a matter of time before they go free?