Readability: Apple's new subscription policy 'smacks of greed'

Apple's new subscription policy has already drawn plenty of criticism -- not to mention the eye of the FTC and DOJ - but that doesn't make the missive issued by Readability today any less pointed. As you may be aware, Readability's technology uses the Reader feature recently added to Safari, and the company also provides a subscription-based service of its own that allows you to pay for the convenience of reading articles that have been stripped down to nothing but text -- something they're able to get away with because they pay 70 percent of that subscription fee back to the publishers. Not surprisingly, Readability recently decided to expand with an iOS app, and that's where things got dicey. Apple rejected the app on the grounds that it relies on a separate subscription -- one where Apple doesn't get a 30 percent cut.

In a post on its blog, the company says that 30 percent "drastically undermines a key premise of how Readability works," and that, frankly, Apple's new subscription policy as a whole "smacks of greed." Obviously, that leaves Readability in something of a bind at the moment, as the nature of its business doesn't give it the leeway to agree to Apple's terms, but it does have a suggestion. It says it'll gladly deliver a Readability app for iOS with in-app purchasing if Apple agrees to pay 70 percent of the 30 percent fee it collects to writers and publishers, just like it does. Hit up the source link below for the company's complete letter.