I'm a huge Apple fan, but I admit there's something about this which doesn't feel entirely... right, and that's concerning.<p>That said, however, there's decent and non-evil reasons for them to think like this - at least in terms of subscriptions, IMO.<p>One issue is that subscription-based apps are almost always free in the app store. Apple loses money on free apps that don't include iAds. If the subscription fee itself is also outside of Apple's control, they're hosting your app, getting you "shelf space", driving people to your app, etc. and they get nothing in return. With such an app, the content is basically replaced every month (or week or day or whatever) which makes the process a bit like a scheduled purchase of a new version of an app - hence the 30% cut.<p>On the surface, I disagree that Apple should get 30% forever for a subscription - especially if the publisher is providing all the infrastructure necessary to deliver that content. What if, though, the subscription system allowed publishers to upload the content once to Apple, and Apple hosts and distributes it to the apps and users? Now the 30% starts looking a bit more reasonable. If indeed it works this way (or will eventually work this way), you could be a very small shop and still manage to support thousands or, indeed, millions of subscriptions with virtually no support infrastructure of your own. That's <i>certainly</i> worth 30% IMO.<p>The flip side, though, is if you already have your own content delivery mechanisims in place, Apple taking 30% each billing cycle seems unfair. IMO, they should offer the subscription products in two flavors - one where they host and distribute your content, and another where you are doing that work. In the second version, Apple could easily take 30% of, say, the first billing cycle and take diminishing amounts for as long as the subscription remains in effect - perhaps even going all the way down to something like 2% just to cover the payment processing. That would seem a lot more fair to me than taking 30% forever.<p>Sadly, though, I haven't yet seen anything that suggests that either of these situations are even true. For all I know, Apple might not be offering any distribution or hosting services and might not even have an API to allow apps to easily take delivery of subscription content, and if that's the case, taking 30% forever seems excessive.