Instead, the magazine pushed users to read its app in just the horizontal “landscape” mode, and essentially disabled the vertical “portrait” mode.

At the time, Time Inc. editor Josh Quittner said the publisher was doing so because:

• Viewing the app horizontally was better for users;
• Producing just one version of the app saved money;
• And since Apple wasn’t cooperating with Sports Illustrated‘s effort to sell subscriptions to the app, it didn’t make sense to throw more resources at the project.

That was back in September, and since then Time Inc. (like just about every other big publisher) has yet to reach an agreement with Apple about how to handle subscriptions in iTunes. But in the meantime, Sports Illustrated has apparently thought things over, because readers can once again view the app in landscape and portrait modes. Behold!

I only noticed the change today, but it turns out it has been in place since the magazine’s October 18 issue. What gives? Or what gave?

A statement from a Sports Illustrated rep doesn’t shed much light: “We are constantly exploring the iPad’s numerous functionalities for innovative ways to present Sports Illustrated to consumers. Each issue delivers something unique either in its design, functionality or content.”

So in the absence of better information, I’ll make a couple of guesses that aren’t mutually exclusive:

• I think app users complained quite a bit about the change, because conventional wisdom is that people like access to both modes, and they particularly enjoy reading magazine apps in the vertical mode, because that’s the way they read the paper-and-ink versions.
• Someone at Time Inc., or its parent company Time Warner, rethought the notion of negotiating with Apple by making its product look less attractive.

That said, it’s worth noting that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes himself has been quite vocal, in a corporatespeak sort of way, about his company’s eagerness to work with tablet makers beyond Apple. (This mirrors what the magazine industry’s Next Issue Media joint venture is saying, too, by launching with Google’s Android platform first.)

Bewkes made noises about it during his company’s earnings call earlier this month. And he got more forceful about it–again, by his standards–yesterday during an onstage interview with the New York Times’ David Carr.

If somebody that makes a tablet–you can nominate who it is–wants to not have app support for what we’re going to put over the internet, they will degrade the capability of the tablet that you bought.

So if you’ve got a tablet that whoever gave it to you, they don’t want it work well, that will be their actions not ours…

You’re the customer, you bought the device. Are you going to tolerate a device, that doesn’t let its app support give you the full range of capability that is offered by the publisher or the network?

Because we’re going to be very public about what we offer, and it’s going to be all free, for anybody who buys the magazine. And if some tech company stands between you and that experience, they should answer to you.

In fact, it’s worth watching Bewkes deliver this speech in real time, and it’s a hoot to watch him onstage with Carr. If you’re in a rush, the magazine/tablet stuff kicks in around the 26-minute mark.

Next Issue‘s initial incarnation will only work for devices running Google’s Android software, CEO Morgan Guenther tells me.

It’s not a technical issue, Guenther says, because “we’re ready to support Apple as well,” and he says he’s confident that will happen. But “Android is a very important tablet platform, and a very important platform for smartphones.” (Read Walt Mossberg’s review of Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab.)

Guenther wouldn’t disclose other details about his launch, but you don’t have to squint to read between the lines here. The takeaway is that Google has been flexible on the business issues that are important to the publishers that own his company. And that Apple’s not there yet.

The key split, still: Publishers want the ability to sell their tablet magazines directly to consumers, or at least to be able to access the data that iTunes collects when it sells them.

Some publishers tell me that Apple’s stance has softened somewhat since this summer, when the company refused to let Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated sell subscriptions for its app. But that hasn’t led to any real concessions so far.

If you buy a subscription to Newsweek’s iPad app, for instance, the publisher has no idea who you are or how to reach you: Apple keeps all the data, as well as 30 percent of every dollar.

Presumably Guenther and his publishers are hoping sales of their magazines take off on Android tablets and phones, giving them leverage in discussions with Apple. And that seems to be what Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes was getting at it with his oblique but pointed comments last week.

But all of this wrangling may be non-issues if publishers can’t figure out how to come up with digital magazines that people are interested in, at a price they’ll pay. Aside from a few outliers like Condé Nast’s Wired, early sales numbers from iPad magazines haven’t blown anyone away.

[Image credit: Hard seat sleeper]

That’s the word from developers who are building apps for Google’s new store-to-be, which is supposed to work like iTunes, but for Web-based applications instead of ones designed for mobile handsets.

Then again, Chrome app developers I’ve talked to don’t feel confident about any date they’re hearing from Google at this point. That’s because the store, which Google previewed back in May, has missed several launch dates already.

But for now, at least, most developers expect to see a public beta launch on the week of December 6, though a few are holding out hope for a mid-November launch.

Google, for its part, will say only that it promised to have the app store up by the end of the year, and that it’s still on schedule.

Why should you care? If you’re an average consumer, you probably won’t: The app store will work on any Web browser, but it is optimized for Google’s Chrome browser, which has a relatively small market share. But the bigger issue is convincing consumers  to purchase a Web-based app, period.

But the notion of a browser-based store does appeal to some developers, who are interested in melding the performance of mobile phone apps with the connected nature and flexibility of the Web. And some content companies are interested in the idea of selling their stuff in a store that everyone can access, but which isn’t controlled by Apple.

Which is the pitch that Google is making as it reaches out to TV networks and big magazine and newspaper publishers, and tries to persuade them to build for the store. It’s saying, for instance, that it got Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated to demo a version of its magazine when it previewed the app store last spring.

In some cases, I’m told, Google is offering up substantial technical resources to help content makers get apps ready for a launch. And I know that some small developers have received cash, as well–one developer I talked to cashed a $15,000 check–to persuade them to build apps. Should be interesting to see who has built what when the store finally opens.

Here’s that SI demo, with a voiceover from editor Terry McDonell:

And here’s Google’s general introduction to the app store concept:

ESPN.com is hanging on to star columnist Bill Simmons, whose contract was set to expire this year. Disney’s sports site has yet to announce the deal, but sources tell me it was finalized more than a month ago–but not as far back as May 15, when Deadspin reported that a deal was essentially done.

How’s that for precision?

In that same vein, you can hear Simmons acknowledge the new deal, tacitly, in his pal Adam Carolla’s podcast today. During the show, taped yesterday, Carolla tells Simmons that “I know you signed a new contract with ESPN,” and then the two go on to talk about future podcast plans, including the potential for video podcasts (this kicks in around the 17:30 mark, if you’ve got the time).

Simmons more or less grew up on the Web, and while Disney’s (DIS) sports unit gives him an opportunity to do things off the Internet, he’s best known for his Sports Guy columns and podcasts on ESPN’s very big site.

Deadspin says Simmons is now working on a “top secret” project for ESPN; rival sports gossip blog The Big Lead says he’ll be building a new standalone site under the ESPN.com umbrella.

No word on length of the new deal, or its value, though I’m hoping it’s for a boatload of money.

That’s what Simmons’s colleague Rick Reilly got when he came aboard from Time Warner’s (TWX) Sports Illustrated back in 2007–a 5-year, $17 million deal, I’m told–and even though Reilly’s deal was done before the economy tanked, it’d be nice to think a Web wonder can command the same kind of cash in 2010.

Even something in the same ballpark would be nice. Right?

ESPN declined to comment; I’m waiting to hear back from Simmons.

[Image credit: Steven Barry via ESPN Books]

Hearst is the latest publisher to show up on the iPad, with a tabletized version of Esquire.* As always, you’re better off checking it out yourself then reading about it.

Still here? Okay:

• As promised, Hearst is selling the app at the same price as the paper-and-ink version: $4.99. Squawk all you want, but “we have to reshape expectations” for digital pricing, says Esquire publisher Kevin O’Malley.
• Hearst has talked about offering subscriptions to its iPad titles, but you can’t get one right now. And O’Malley doesn’t sound hopeful that he’ll be offering one through Apple’s (AAPL) store anytime soon. Join the club.
• Like every one of its peers, Esquire on the iPad looks like the print magazine, with some multimedia bells and whistles. Unlike many apps, Esquire doesn’t provide a literal translation of the print copy. So it can’t count app sales as newsstand sales, but O’Malley seems fine with that. The upside for the reader is that Esquire doesn’t need to include every ad from the print edition, and instead features just two ads from a single sponsor–Lexus.
• Many of the multimedia features are low-key grace notes, but that’s okay: You buy Esquire on the iPad because you want to read Esquire on the iPad, right?
• But there are plenty of clever touches, like animated illustrations and a clip of Javier Bardem reciting poetry in Spanish. And, pretty much for giggles, a copy of Ivan Turgenev’s “First Love,” a 76,000-word novella published in 1860 (I didn’t know, either).
• Some apps let you read their magazine in horizontal and vertical modes, while Time Warner’s (TWX) Sports Illustrated only works in horizontal mode (for now). But Esquire only works in vertical mode, and that feels just fine.

*This is Hearst’s first full-fledged iPad magazine, but if you want to be a stickler you can: The publisher has some of its titles available through Zinio’s PDF-reader service, and earlier this year it put out a partial version of a Popular Mechanics issue.

That is: Unlike much bigger rival Sports Illustrated, and almost all of the other big magazine titles that have moved to the iPad so far, Sporting News has a subscription model.

The app itself, which limited dollop of preview content, is free. But if you want to read the sports tabloid, you can pay $0.99 for a single issue or $2.99 to get an update sent to your app every day of the month.

How’d they do that when the big guys couldn’t? By letting digital newsstand operator Zinio handle the transaction.

The magazine industry is currently in an uneasy standoff with Steve Jobs and Apple (AAPL): Publishers like Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. want to sell iPad subscriptions through their apps, and keep the money and consumer data the transaction generates. Apple, for the time being, won’t let that happen.

The apparent loophole: Publishers with existing digital e-commerce options, like Amazon (AMZN) and the Wall Street Journal (owned by News Corp., as is this Web site), have been allowed to sell app subscriptions without going through Apple.

And Zinio, which ran a digital “newsstand” prior to the iPad’s launch, has also been selling subscriptions to magazines like Sporting News, Esquire and Cosmopolitan from its iPad reader for months.

But not many Cosmopolitan readers–or anyone else–would know to search for “Zinio” in iTunes to get their favorite magazine, so Zinio is launching a line of magazine-branded apps. Today you can get subscriptions to Sporting News and National Geographic apps, and more are on the way.

The caveat: If you’re one of those people who complain that most iPad magazine apps are simply replicas of their print editions, then you’re going to really grumble about Sporting News, and presumably most of the other Zinio-powered apps as well.

Zinio started out publishing digital magazines via PDF files, and that’s more or less what its iPad titles look like today, brightened up with a video here and there and an injection of updated news. That’s presumably why some of the publishers that sell digital magazines through Zinio will end up putting out their own apps, as Hearst plans to do with Esquire.

But for smaller outfits like Sporting News (which is actually owned by American City Business Journals, which in turn is owned by Condé Nast owner Advance Publications), a no-frills app is better than none–especially if they can convince you to pay for it on a monthly basis. Anyone interested?

But they don’t have to be that way. Case in point: The newest edition of Sports Illustrated. Print readers get a cover featuring LeBron James and his new teammates. But anyone who buys the iPad version will see a cover story on Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who died this week.

News of Steinbrenner’s death broke early Tuesday morning, a half-day after Sports Illustrated’s conventional issue had gone to the printers. After a relatively quick conversation, says editor Terry McDonell, the magazine staff decided to give the iPad edition a new cover, along with a story by Tom Verducci.

“We all sort of looked at other, and said, ‘you know, this is an opportunity to do this,’ and why wouldn’t we?” McDonell says.

IPad owners will still get the LeBron story, and can even toggle back and forth between the two covers if they want. For the time being, the only place to get Verducci’s story is on the iPad, but McDonell says the magazine will put it up on its free SI.com site later this week, so that print buyers and subscribers won’t be disadvantaged.

If the update seems like a non-decision–flexibility being one of the chief advantages of a digital edition, after all–know that Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine doesn’t plan on making a habit out of it. If you want up-to-date sports news, SI doesn’t expect you to rely on the iPad, though it does provide a stream of SI.com stories within the app itself.

But for certain really big stories, it will try this out again, McDonell says.

“We thought, this is a chance for us to show off what we can do, and what is special abut the iPad in certain situations.”

We’ve said for awhile that increasingly we’ll move content from the print (and now iPad) versions of our titles off of the web. With People, we haven’t had hardly any content from the magazine on the web for a long time. Our strategy is to use the web for breaking news and ‘commodity’ type of news; (news events of any type, stock prices, sports scores) and keep (most of) the features and longer analysis for the print publication and iPad versions.

So there you go.

Two quick notes:

• For now, you can still get all of Sports Illustrated, Time Warner’s (TWX) other iPad title to date, for free on the Web. But you’re going to have to work very hard to find it. (Give up? Over here. UPDATE: Time Inc. folks tell me, through clenched teeth, that you weren’t supposed to get this week’s issue of SI on the Web for free yet. The publisher puts only back issues up on the Web, via SI’s “Vault” feature; someone put the wrong link up. They’ve since taken down the July 12 issue, and replaced it with an iTunes link to the SI app.
• As Apple (AAPL) notes, Time’s free Web site works really well on the iPad’s Safari browser. So do almost all print publisher’s sites. Which means getting consumers to shell out for a paid app instead of the free Web will require more than exclusive content–you’re going to have to offer them a radically different product. We’re not close yet.

We’ve said for awhile that increasingly we’ll move content from the print (and now iPad) versions of our titles off of the web. With People, we haven’t had hardly any content from the magazine on the web for a long time. Our strategy is to use the web for breaking news and ‘commodity’ type of news; (news events of any type, stock prices, sports scores) and keep (most of) the features and longer analysis for the print publication and iPad versions.

So there you go.

Two quick notes:

• For now, you can still get all of Sports Illustrated, Time Warner’s (TWX) other iPad title to date, for free on the Web. But you’re going to have to work very hard to find it. (Give up? Over here. UPDATE: Time Inc. folks tell me, through clenched teeth, that you weren’t supposed to get this week’s issue of SI on the Web for free yet. The publisher puts only back issues up on the Web, via SI’s “Vault” feature; someone put the wrong link up. They’ve since taken down the July 12 issue, and replaced it with an iTunes link to the SI app.
• As Apple (AAPL) notes, Time’s free Web site works really well on the iPad’s Safari browser. So do almost all print publisher’s sites. Which means getting consumers to shell out for a paid app instead of the free Web will require more than exclusive content–you’re going to have to offer them a radically different product. We’re not close yet.

No point in going into detail about it when you can see it for yourself.

But it’s basically what editor Terry McDonell promised last fall and what the magazine’s peers are also delivering on Apple’s (AAPL) platform: All of the weekly magazine is there, plus some bells and whistles, like additional photos, an extra story and some videos. (The ads, though, are not the same as those in the magazine, which is different from rival Condé Nast’s strategy.)

In this case, the app it also looks and functions quite a bit like Time magazine’s iPad app, with good reason: Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. unit is using the same outside collaborators, The Wonder Factory and WoodWing Software, for all its magazine apps.

So if you liked the Time app, you may like this one. The price is the same, too: $4.99 an issue, though a subscription plan in the works will end up shaving the per-issue price down a bit.

But here’s the thing: The “magazine plus” app concept, which works nicely for titles like Wired, feels like a liability with Sports Illustrated. Because much of the magazine’s content is dated as soon as hits the page, and SI is happy to let it stay that way on the iPad.

Every mag app grapples with this, of course. And so far all of them are trying to steer away from the Web model, where they’re expected to provide timely updates, but don’t make much money doing so. Better to resell the magazine they’ve already made without having to create much in the way of new stuff.

When you hold a print version of SI, timeliness doesn’t feel like a problem. Presumably because you don’t have any other expectations. But when you’re reading it in digital form, on a device connected to the Web…

Case in point: Today’s issue has a feature story on the U.S. World Cup team’s exploits. But it was written before the thrilling Algeria game. So there’s no mention of that result.

And while the app does have some links into SI’s Web site and the ability to provide updated scores, it does so in a limited way: Right now, it’s only offering up baseball scores. So when the SI team was demoing the app for me this morning, I heard oohs and aahs from a nearby office, where people were watching the Italy-Slovakia game. But the app couldn’t give me the score of that match: If I had wanted to check it out, I’d have had to head out of the app and into Apple’s Safari browser.

The SI guys say this is a very deliberate design choice. McDonell says the app provides readers with a “curated experience” instead of the “firehose” of data flooding from the Web. I’d buy that for some titles, even for a news magazine like Time.

But not here: If Sports Illustrated really wants me to pay up for this one, it needs to plug in, too.

Chris Hercik, the SI creative director, who listened to all of my gripes yet remained good-natured about it, sat down for a quick interview this morning. Apologies for the poor lighting — one thing you get on the SI app that you don’t get here is video made by people who know what they’re doing:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100624/sports-illustrateds-ipad-app-think-print-not-web/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100519/video-sports-illustrated-shows-off-a-google-ready-magazine/ http://allthingsd.com/20100519/video-sports-illustrated-shows-off-a-google-ready-magazine/#comments Wed, 19 May 2010 18:12:18 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=19692 Sports Illustrated hasn’t come to Apple’s iPad yet, but the magazine is already showing off a new version of its future: A digital version designed with Google in mind.

This one, which Editor Terry McDonell showed off at Google’s I/O developer conference today, looks a whole lot like the one the publisher says it is bringing to Apple’s gadget soon. The real difference here is the way readers/buyers get their hands on the thing: Rather than buying it from Apple’s App Store and downloading it to your iPad, you would access it via your Web browser, after purchasing it from an app store Google manages.

For most users, this may not matter very much. Regardless of which store you buy it from, the magazine should function the same way. (Don’t get hung up on the fact that it’s a Web-based app.)

But for publishers like Time Inc., the Time Warner (TWX) unit that puts out Sports Illustrated and titles like Time and People, it’s potentially a big deal: It opens up a much wider audience for the company’s publications, since they should work on any device that supports Google’s Chrome browser. Just as important, it gives Time Inc. another vendor to work with, one that might be willing to grant it concessions Apple (AAPL) won’t–like control over subscriber information, perhaps.

But all of this is a little speculative, as neither Time Inc. nor Google (GOOG) has released concrete details about the app store or the magazine. But the hope is that both will be ready in the fall.

Meantime, here’s McDonell’s presentation. He’s introduced at the event by Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management.

And here’s cleaner version of a similar demo, which McDonell taped in advance:

This doesn’t look remarkably different from the tabletized magazine demos Time Inc. and Sports Illustrated have shown off before. That is, SI (and mag publishers in general) are still primarily concerned with porting their printed product to digital form, adding some audio and video, as well as selected links to the Web. This makes sense given that both demos were produced with the Wonder Factory design shop.

See for yourself: Compare and contrast today’s demo with the one SI showed off last fall:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100519/video-sports-illustrated-shows-off-a-google-ready-magazine/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/ http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:40:10 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=18035 Many Web publishers are scrambling to make some or all of their sites “iPad ready,” which basically means stripping their homepages of Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash. Some, but not all, are being rewarded with a shout-out from Apple, via a page that identifies “iPad Ready” sites.

Here’s the list of publishers Apple (AAPL) says “deliver content that looks and functions beautifully on iPad”:

CNN
Reuters
New York Times
Vimeo
Time
Major League Baseball
The White House
Virgin America
Sports Illustrated
Flickr
People
TED

Apple acknowledges that this isn’t a complete list of iPad-compatible sites–both NPR and The Wall Street Journal, for instance, are overhauling their pages for the gadget–and it’s unclear whether Apple has any criteria for calling out these sites in particular. (For the record, I’m told that All Things Digital should work just fine, too).

But for whatever reason, the list appears to be particularly heavy on sites owned by Time Warner (TWX). CNN makes the cut, as do Time Inc. magazines Time, People and Sports Illustrated.

One other note: Check out the description Apple uses for each of the sites it calls out and you’ll see that “iPad-compatible” doesn’t mean “completely free of Flash.”

In many cases, Apple can’t say that all of the sites’ videos will play on the gadget. Just “most” videos, or “recently published” ones.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100401/time-warner-gets-the-ipad-seal-of-approval/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100315/yahoo-is-teed-up-to-buy-a-sports-site-boomtown-is-betting-on-citizen-sports-for-the-score/ http://allthingsd.com/20100315/yahoo-is-teed-up-to-buy-a-sports-site-boomtown-is-betting-on-citizen-sports-for-the-score/#comments Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:48:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=25653

According to numerous sources inside and outside the company, Yahoo is poised to slam dunk–I apologize, but sports puns are so easy–an acquisition of an online sports site this week.

And, predicted several of those sources, it is most likely to be San Francisco-based Citizen Sports, a maker of popular apps and games that allow fans to interact on the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and Facebook.

Interestingly, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz is the keynote speaker at the high-profile sports business conference IMG World Sports Congress Wednesday morning in Los Angeles.

There is a plethora of interesting Web sports sites for Yahoo to choose from, including Yardbarker, SB Nation and Rotowire.

With Yahoo’s strong sports content business, especially in fantasy sports and news, and Bartz’s recent statements about making smaller talent and tech acquisitions–as well as the company’s recent focus on social networking and mobile integration–Citizen Sports is a perfect choice.

Citizen Sports started off in 2005 as ProTrade, an “athlete stock market entertainment company,” with $10 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partners Kevin Compton and Doug Mackenzie through Radar Ventures.

Other investors included Kleiner Perkins partner Will Hearst, said the Citizen Sports Web site, “as well as major sports figures, including former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and three-time Super Bowl champ Troy Aikman; Arizona Diamondbacks General Partner Jeff Moorad; legendary NFL Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh; and Northgate Capital Venture founder Brent Jones, the former all-pro San Francisco 49ers tight end.”

But the site has morphed into an innovative digital enabler of interaction among fans of all kinds of sports, via its fantasy sports games and Sportacular iPhone app, as well as numerous apps on Facebook.

It also has tight relationships with Sports Illustrated magazine and other sports partners.

Most interesting is that one of its co-founders, Jeff Ma, was one of the members of the infamous MIT blackjack team, made famous in the book, “Bringing Down the House” and the film, “21.”

It is unclear how much Citizen Sports would sell for, but estimates put its price at about $40 to $50 million.

Both Citizen Sports and Yahoo declined to comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100315/yahoo-is-teed-up-to-buy-a-sports-site-boomtown-is-betting-on-citizen-sports-for-the-score/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100308/barnes-noble-gets-a-time-inc-vet-to-run-its-newsstand/ http://allthingsd.com/20100308/barnes-noble-gets-a-time-inc-vet-to-run-its-newsstand/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:10:57 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17125 Barnes & Noble wants to catch up to Amazon (AMZN)–and suddenly, Apple (AAPL)–in the e-reader race. This means the company needs its own digital newsstand.

So the bookseller has nabbed a magazine guy to run it. Barnes & Noble (BKS) has hired Jonathan Shar, a 15-year veteran of Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. to lead what it is calling its “Digital Newsstand and Emerging Content, Barnes & Noble.com” unit.

Bad name, good idea. Shar has handled print duties–he ran consumer marketing for Sports Illustrated–and digital for Time Inc. Most recently, he was GM for CNNMoney.com, the publisher’s joint venture with Turner.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100308/barnes-noble-gets-a-time-inc-vet-to-run-its-newsstand/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100223/who-cares-if-apple-bans-some-porn-in-apps-store-overheated-bloggers-thats-who/ http://allthingsd.com/20100223/who-cares-if-apple-bans-some-porn-in-apps-store-overheated-bloggers-thats-who/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:51:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24711

Big deal.

Apple is banning some “sexy” apps in its App Store and not others. So, “Sports Illustrated” swimsuit models are in and some others, such as one called “Dirty Fingers,” get nixed.

Apple’s Phil Schiller, who runs product marketing for the company, told the New York Times yesterday that some sexually suggestive material would be banned, after complaints by App Store users.

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” Schiller said to the Times.

On keeping the “Sports Illustrated” app in, Schiller pretty much admitted it was a subjective choice on Apple’s part.

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said.

Of course, it was yet another subjective choice–in a long line of them–by Apple (AAPL).

The company always engenders a lot of controversy, since it does whatever it likes on a wide range of issues, such not using Flash technology in its upcoming iPad.

And what with the introduction of that tablet device soon and its obvious focus on selling it into the mainstream rather than to the sweaty-handed demo, Apple not getting its sexy back and dumping some of the naughtier developers just like that seems to be pretty much expected.

There has been an explosion in the number of sexy apps for the iPod and iPhone, of course, as the platform has grown. They are–no surprise–often among the most popular. And while Apple has parental controls, we all know where sexually suggestive material is allowed to thrive on the Internet, it takes off like kudzu.

That might be fine for a while and for some other app sellers, such as Google (GOOG) and its Android mobile offerings.

But what Apple is doing is not unlike any big retailer, like Walmart (WMT), banning porn sales in stores.

Still, in what can only be described as a really awesome attempt at feigning (traffic-generating) indignation, some bloggers are acting as if Apple just took the the First Amendment and stomped all over it.

And although Apple does do that from time to time, as do many other Web companies, this is business, plain and simple.

Making specious arguments that Apple’s Safari browser lets you surf right over to porn is a dopey comparison of the severely juvenile.

A browser does not approve or recommend, as the App Store does, but it simply a vehicle to get you there, much as a car drives you to a mall.

Once you get to those stores, it is most certainly up to the retailer to decide what it is willing to sell and not sell.

As to the “hypocrisy” of Apple changing its mind on these things, for anyone with even a passing knowledge of Web history, this practice has been all too common.

AOL (AOL), which I dubbed “The House Sex Chat Built” in my first book about the once-popular service, drastically cut back on its sexually controversial stuff as it moved to the mainstream.

In fact, AOL even considered starting a separate gated business that dealt with racier online fare.

Perhaps Apple will do this, creating an area of the App Store that is much more clearly blocked and less accessible.

And perhaps not. After all, it is Apple’s App Store and not subject to collective decision-making by those who think it a basic right to swipe clothes off a lady on the iPhone.

Thus, Apple will–even if it does need to be less opaque about how decisions are made–do as it pleases.

And to those critics who cannot seem to accept this, I predict you won’t ever find the satisfaction you seek.

Perhaps, then, it’s time to get back to contemplating the skin-deep mysteries of Chatroulette.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100223/who-cares-if-apple-bans-some-porn-in-apps-store-overheated-bloggers-thats-who/feed/ 48 http://allthingsd.com/20100120/no-time-inc-for-the-tablet-next-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20100120/no-time-inc-for-the-tablet-next-week/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:34:57 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=15242 Here’s someone else you won’t see onstage with Steve Jobs next week: Anyone from Time Inc. With good reason–the magazine company doesn’t have any tablet-ready stuff to show off yet.

Time Warner’s (TWX) publishing unit is intensely interested in the device that Apple (AAPL) is scheduled to unveil next Wednesday.

But it doesn’t know a whole lot more about it than anyone else reading this story, because Apple has only recently started sharing minimal information about the device with the publisher, sources tell me. And most of that came in the past few weeks.

So what about that concept version of a tabletized Sports Illustrated the publisher showed off in December? It’s still a concept version. And there are lots of basic questions still unresolved.

Such as:

• What kind of content will show up in the final version?
• What kind of interface will it have?
• How will ads work?
• How will people pay for it?

Time Inc. has plenty of ideas about what it would like to do, of course. For instance, it hopes to sell subscriptions to a tabletized magazine directly, without involving Apple in the transaction at all. You can see a video that shows off other potential features of a digital magazine at the bottom of this post.

But for now, Time Inc. executives are thinking about this stuff in a bit of a vacuum, because they don’t know exactly what Steve Jobs has up his sleeve. Tease that out a bit and you can tell the story of most media companies: They’re excited to start taking advantage of the tablet–as soon as they find out what it is, exactly.

Meanwhile, Sports Illustrated has always said that its digital demo is a work in progress and that it is aiming to have a finished product ready by the middle of this year. Other Time Inc. titles are supposed to follow.

So if Apple meets its reported March shipping date, the tablet’s first wave of buyers will initially have to find other ways to read their favorite Time Inc. magazines.

On paper, perhaps.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100120/no-time-inc-for-the-tablet-next-week/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091202/game-on-time-inc-shows-off-a-tabletized-sports-illustrated/ http://allthingsd.com/20091202/game-on-time-inc-shows-off-a-tabletized-sports-illustrated/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:24:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13427 Last month, Condé Nast played show-and-tell with its concept of a digitized magazine. Today it’s Time Inc.’s turn: The publisher is demoing a concept version of Sports Illustrated it says will be able to run on whatever tablet Apple (AAPL) or any else has up their sleeves. Eventually, the publisher imagines that it will port all its titles into the new format, which it says will be ready for primetime by the middle of next year or sooner.

The show part will work better than the tell, and the Time Warner (TWX) unit will be releasing some photos and videos that I can embed later in the day. But for what it’s worth, the demo looks as nifty as, and quite similar to, what Condé showed off. Except that in this case, I actually got to play with it for a couple minutes, and it was quite a bit of fun.

UPDATE Here it is:

Both publishers are thinking along the same lines. They imagine that their digital magazines will replicate the print version, including advertising, and will include add-ons like multimedia and links to the Web.

But they’re supposed to be distinct–and more valuable–than simple Web versions of magazines, and both publishers expect consumers to pay for them.

“Nobody reads the magazine on the Website,” says Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell. “That’s a firehose. This is the opposite of a firehose.”

One distinction between the publishers is that Condé has aligned itself with Adobe (ADBE), which is working on software to create e-editions and reader software to consume them. Time Inc.’s take is more conceptual: It worked with design shop The Wonder Factory to build a prototype, but isn’t committed to any particular platform.

This may mean Time Inc. will need more time to get the magazine ready for consumption next year or it may mean the publisher has more flexibility than Condé and Adobe. Given that magazine-friendly e-readers don’t exist yet, this is all sort of vaporware for now.

On a related note, the “Hulu for Magazines” joint venture I’ve been telling you about for a couple of months may finally be ready to step out in public next week. Though as I’ve noted, I’ve been hearing that for many weeks.

Still, the broad strokes seem set: Time Inc., Condé Nast, Meredith and Hearst–and perhaps News Corp. (NWS)–are creating a separate company designed to let them sell and distribute their digital editions, regardless of platform.

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