The guy at the local newsstand makes exactly jack-shit when you subscribe to a magazine he sells. That's how much Apple should be making from subscriptions. Exactly 0. Unless they take on the full burden of hosting all the data, which would, for some apps, cripple them. Or a tiny percentage if they handle the billing/transaction only.

Apple's 30% cut on app sales and in-app purchases is also far far too rich, but that's a whole other argument. We're talking about subscriptions here, for a majority of apps that are not iOS-exclusive.

Antitrust: Apple is changing the terms for apps that are already in the store now, some of which have been in the app store since the beginning, most of which spent their own dime becoming popular and building their customer base. Now Apple wants to come in and eat 30% of their revenues.

Let's get a few things straight though. Amazon is nothing to Apple. Amazon might as well be an indy developer with a staff of 2 as far as Apple in concerned. The Kindle app does nothing to boost iDevice sales and I'm sure Apple would love to see it gone from the store if they're not going to get a cut of Amazon's take. Currently this subscription deal doesn't apply to book purchases.

Now back to subs... How about this. Vogue (or whatever other magazine you'd like to think of) creates an app to add value to their magazine. It's either exclusively for their subscribers or contains some content that's only for their subscribers. They include a subscribe link in the app to send people to their web page where they can subscribe - to the print edition and they of course get access to this special app and content while they remain subscribers.

By Apple's rules, they're going to want to take a cut of those subscriptions. They're going to make it mandatory for Vogue to offer the subscription from within the App, they're going to prevent them from linking out to their website.

Even if Vogue agreed simply to remove the link to the website, Apple would still require in-app subscription at a 30% cut, simply because the app is tied to their subscription system.

Then we of course have the problem of requiring actual user shipping information to be able to fulfill a mailable subscription like a magazine.

This whole thing is a powder keg. I don't have any vested interest in subscriptions at this time as a developer or user. Even if I weren't a developer, I'd still think this move was a total dick thing for Apple to do. It's 30% off the top for doing jack shit.

Apple should collect a maximum of about 2% for in-app billing of content they don't host. They'd still be making a BUNDLE on that, since they must have credit card contracts that are lower than 1%. PayPal makes a ton of cash charging businesses 2.5% (US/Canada). Apple isn't paying more to VISA/MC than PayPal is.