Magazine trouble at the Apple App Store – subscription model may or may not be OK, Apple isn’t saying

D – All Things Digital has an article about how some magazines are really unhappy with Apple’s App Store policies – or lack thereof.

As Chris mentioned a couple of days ago, Sports Illustrated’s app was rejected at the last minute by Apple because it was a subscription version. This forced the magazine to go to a single copy version using iTunes as the middleman. According to the article Time, Inc. executives have been “going nuts” trying to get Apple to approve a subscription plan.

Evidently Time, Inc. thought its plans for a subscription model had been approved, especially since they were courted directly by Steve Jobs, but they can’t get an answer from Apple as to why it is not.

Confusing the issue is that Apple allows Amazon and the Wall Street Journal to bill customers directly.

Conde Nast wants a subscription plan, and the article says that the company is having problems as well: “One executive at the publisher offers this summar: ‘Don’t get me started’. “