ReallyReallyGoodMeat

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/bjarke-...ade-center-wtc

Can anyone care to explain to me how this is anything but regressive for humankind?

JackClark

I fail to see a problem. Good article by the way, if you want to read it in the UK change your region to the US. Oh and own an iPad or iPhone.

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

You fail to see a problem with news content (okay, not this one specifically which is more like a lifestyle article) on an open web platform being restricted to particular users/devices?

It wouldn't be so bad if it was only visible on Apple devices - but it's not, it's a clickable article on the wired homepage which is effectively blocked for non-iOS users.

dpb

Are they making poor saps pay twice? Seems normal

JackClark

It's great for publishers, they earn 100% of the revenue from ads they sell, and 70% when iAd sells ads for you.

Look, people produce content for iOS or Android exclusively all the time, I'm sure Samsung News will be along shortly.

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

Can you show me an example of this? (that is, content published openly on the web but only viewable on Android/iOS)

Possibly true, and would be equally terrible.

We should be standardising the web, not making lots of silos and bespoke APIs to the benefit of a handful of corporations.

JackClark

That article isn't published openly on the web, it's an advert, that's all. There are adverts for Android news apps that I can't use on iOS, that's one up from a single article.

If you haven't noticed the move is away from the web for news and magazines, it's a horrible place to read.

Tidgy

I hate apple, but given this is the sort of thing that all online newspapers do when they charge people who read papers online kinda think your getting a bit upatty for the sake of it hahaha

JackClark

Hate's an ugly word. I really don't understand how you could hate something like a technology company, I dislike runner beans but I don't feel the need to talk about them all the time I just don't eat them.

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

I disagree - You mean it's a horrible place to monetise?

It's nothing to do with user-experience and everything to do with ads. This is not Apple-specific. However this is the first time I've seen an link to an article from the front page of a well-respected news website (that is openly published to the web) demanding you can only read it via a certain device/app.

JackClark

Apple News is new, they're promoting it, that's all. The web is a horrible place to monetise, install a content blocker and you'll find a much nicer place to browse.

I should add that I run a website with 1.5 million page views a year, pretty good numbers, it's sole income is Adsense, we've been planning alternative revenue streams for almost a year. Any similar or larger site is hopefully doing the same or they'll suffer.

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

Which is fine, sites need to find a way to operate and that is fine. You no doubt know more about this than me but I know there are several ways of doing this.

But doing what Wired/Apple are doing here is creating a two-tier version of their own website, and creating yet another Apple walled-garden. Time will tell but IMO all it will do is drive people away from Wired.com - I don't envisage many people will buy an iOS device just to read that architecture story on Wired.

JackClark

Download Flipboard, web sites have been formatting their content for more than web pages for a long time.

https://about.flipboard.com/page-markup-and-formatting/