There seems to be a lot of distress over the fact Apple will be taking a 30% cut for online subscription materials. I can understand why this would make me angry if I published a magazine but (then again) if I published a magazine, I’d probably be too paralyzed with fear over a failing business model to work up any anger. I get that 30% is a big cut but I also think delivering 100 million registered credit card consumers and eliminating the need for printing and shipping has some value.

As a consumer, however, I like what Apple is doing. I am (finally!) able to control how much of my personal information gets to publishers and protect a few shreds of my vanishing privacy. I can easily pay for subscriptions using my existing iTunes account and I can manage my subscriptions in one place. All of this makes sense to me. My gut reaction is, that as a consumer, I prefer this model. Either way we are venturing into uncharted waters here and it will be interesting to see how all this shakes out in a year. I suspect innovators will emerge and make a killing along the way.

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