Apple makes its subscription rules more friendly to news organizations; but were they really the target?

NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Interesting news on the Apple/news-biz front: Apple appears to have backed away from its requirement that subscriptions to content (such as a newspaper or magazine) be offered at the same price as in-app purchases as when they’re offered externally. In fact, Apple seems to have ended the requirement that such subscriptions be offered as in-app purchases at all. Kudos to MacRumors for spotting the change.
Confused? Here’s a hypothetical. Let’s say we decided to start charging a subscription for the Nieman Journalism Lab iPhone app — $19.99 a year. Under Apple’s previous rules, we would have been required to offer that subscription through Apple’s payment system — under which Apple gets a 30 percent cut of the revenue. Which means we’d end up with only $13.99. And those rules would have prevented us from offering differentiated pricing to make up the difference — say, $28.99 if you buy it through Apple, $19.99 if you buy through niemanlab.org.
Now, under these new rules, we could choose to differentiate our pricing if we wanted — or we could even only sell subscriptions through niemanlab.org and cut out Apple altogether.
This is, at least on the surface, a significant win for the news business (and other content industries).
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/06/apple-makes-its-subscription-rules-more-friendly-to-news-organizations-but-were-they-really-the-target/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=9d8c1f5b71-DAILY_EMAIL&utm_medium=email