In an interview with Peter Kafka over at All Things D about the launch of their new Music Unlimited streaming music service, Sony’s Tim Schaaf — who worked at Apple for fourteen years as a senior executive in charge of Quicktime, and was intimately involved in the company’s media products — allowed himself to be drawn into comment about his former employer, specifically in regards to Apple’s new in-app subscription and purchasing policies.
“It seems a little aggressive,” Schaaf said about Apple’s new policies, which threaten to kick from the App Store any app developer who fails to offer their app’s products and subscriptions through Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism, or offers them more cheaply elsewhere.
“Sounds like a good thing for Android,” Schaaf concluded, referring to Google’s less prohibitive terms as part of their competing One Pass in-app purchase and subscription service, and implying that developers would begin to flee the App Store if his former employer did not buckle.
Ouch. Do you agree with Schaaf’s assessment?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
