“I sometimes click on links that take me to the [New York] Post,” Dave Winer reports for Scripting News. “And sometimes I click on those links when I’m reading on my iPad.”
“Until today that meant getting an annoying interstitial page that tells me that they have an iPad app and I can get it now instead of reading the article that I came to read,” Winer reports. “Today I was told by the Post that I couldn’t read the article on the web at all. If I wanted to read the Post on my iPad I would have to download the app.”
“Okay this is bad. This is breaking the web. If no one used the iPad it wouldn’t matter. But lots of people use it,” Winer reports. “I wonder how Apple feels about this? I can’t imagine they like it. I can see the ads now: ‘Get an Android tablet to read the web.'”
“The iPad has a perfectly functional web browser. It isn’t a ‘mobile’ web browser. It has a full-size screen. It doesn’t need any accomodations to be readable, it is readable as-is,” Winer writes. “The solution is completely obvious. Apple could stop sending back information to the servers that identify me as an iPad user. Or give me a way to edit that information.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It doesn’t seem to be hurting sales. iTunes App Store “News” top paid apps at 8:45am EDT today:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Discrimination would be easy to prove in this case and carries heavy penalties.
Use Atomic Web Browser and set your browser as Safari desktop.
Boycott that tabloid rag!!!!
Imagine how they’d feel if NO ONE bought their stupid app AND no apple device accessed their site. They’d be BEGGING for Safari users to return.
We won’t even get into the content issues here, but suffice to say- the NY Post? Who needs it anyway?
Who needs (the New York Post) anyway? Dog walkers, but they can’t use the electronic version anyway.
Perfect Browser works well, too.
wow – bad decision re:breaking the web – terrible
they still don’t get it do they?
So does the free version of the Mercury browser. What an arrogant, short-sighted (and fortunately easily circumvented) move by Murdoch and the Post.
Go to Safari settings on your iPad. Click javascript to off. Read the garbage for free.
Exactly. On both counts 😉
“Garbage” — key word here. One of the nastiest and meaning tabloids ever, which slanders every second person and kills any rest dignity in person who reads it.
Terra web browser also works. No need to disable javascript, though that is a good point.
Pull NYPost app from app store, cited as policy violation. NYPost will beg for coming back.
……………………..um….I had a comment….but I forgot what it was waiting for the EFFING FLASH ON THIS PAGE TO LOAD!!!!!!!!
Oh here’s what i wanted to say:
This is somewhat analogous(that’s a big word for me) to seperate drinking fountains.
You can have some of our water, but YOU have to drink it from the coin-operated troth next to the outhouse.
Use Click to Flash and liberate yourself from this disease.
I will do that good sir. thank you.
I never click on known links to Murdoch’s yellow tabloid. If one is interested in news as opposed to Newz or opinion masquerading as news you should avoid NewsCrap’s properties completely. The Republican Ministry of Truth can block all it’s sites for all I care.
I won’t click on left or right wing newspaper sites.
Oh shit, there are no newspaper sites I can go to.
I live in New Zealand. When I travel, I read the International Herald-Tribune which appears to be owned these days by the NY Times. Certainly seems that their content is better than the NY Post that you people are criticizing. In fact, I get the feeling its news is reasonably well-balanced, and I’m a left-leaning lib. But I’d like to hear the opinions of some of you.
How strange that New Zealand seems to be the only country I know of, where I can’t buy the damned thing!
As an intellectual exercise, some people might care to spend 30 seconds looking at what New Zealanders do read Many of my friends are pissed off with it but it’s better than much of the shit I’ve seen in other countries.
The problem with Murdoch’s “news” is not that it is right wing. The problem is that it is bat shit crazy, plays fast and loose with the facts and has a rather selective memory. All the time claiming to be “fair & balanced” or some equivalent.
Okay this is bad. This is breaking the web.
This is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Murdoch certainly leads the pack in attempts to monetize digital distribution of his news outlets, but you all really should get used to seeing more, not less, of these actions from other publishers. Once a successful mix of pricing and delivery is finally realized, every newspaper with offices and staffs will jump to it. These folks like black ink, not red.
“MacDailyNews Take: “It doesn’t seem to be hurting sales.””
That does not make it right!
I went to the movie theatre over the weekend, and those pricks expected me to pay to watch the movie. WTF?
Yawn.
If you’re going to use an analogy it should be analogous.
If movies were free and they now wanted to charge you to see them I’m betting you would have complained. Loudly.
P.S. You don’t have to pay movie theater prices to see movies anymore. You certainly didn’t buy their popcorn did you?
It drives me crazy when I am directed to a mobile version of a web page on my iPad. The “try our iPad app” page is frustrating at best, this BS with blocking access to sites through the mobile browser is incredulous! I wish the iPad would be treated just like any other non-mobile device on the internet and not subjected to this sort of Internet iPad tax!
So?
The MDN Take is a bit limp. I guess this may be because that while they understand Dave Winer’s viewpoint, they can’t agree with the how he expresses it. The action he is upset about isn’t “breaking” the web.
It is shortsighted.
MDN’s take is limp because they are a ‘right-leaning’ bunch. They hide it better nowadays, but years ago they were much more blatant about it in their ‘takes’.
Unfortunately for them, as the site became more popular, the forums became populated by more people with above average thinking skills. The majority would rip them so bad for some of their more ridiculous stances (Net Neutrality comes first to mind, but there were other things that would come up), that soon you noticed MDN keeping a lid on it. More or less.
Here it is clear that MDN is a fan of Murdoch, and/or certainly loves the editorial slant of the NYPost. That admiration keeps them from saying what they otherwise most certainly would if it had been, say, the UTNE Reader (or whatever left-leaning publication you’d like to pick) doing this; that it is damaging to the Web, the free flow of information, and even to the iPad platform itself (and thus Apple Inc.), thus we fanbois should flame the hell out of the offending site.
Instead we get a graphic showing us how many stupid people there are in the world (counted by way of NYPost downloads), supporting Murdoch and and his (as usual) societally destructive behavior, which is ok because it’s conservatives doing the destructing and that means … everything … will … be … ok. Really!
It’s an indicator of a much larger problem we have in the US. Even when our most vital interests are clearly threatened, the brainwashing of the so-called culture warriors obscures our abilities to recognize that fact. It’s like being in a football match and doing everything to help the other team win while you’re on the field, just because you like the cut of their uniforms, or appreciate how cool they seem to be as they stomp the shit out of you and your real teammates.
Thus working class people help billionaire corporatists tear down the last vestiges of the labor movement. Individuals with almost no margin between them and financial crisis advocate eliminating Social Security, universal healthcare, & unemployment benefits. And MDN – in it’s own little corner of the world – cheers as a media conglomerate blatantly moves in a direction that would eventually hurt the company they have built a their livelihood on advocating for.
Gotta wonder what it takes to wake some people up :coolsmirk:
The Posts action is just a visible example of conservative freedoms in action. Wait ’til you see their version of Net Neutrality.
It drives me nuts that I can’t access a different Mobile Me email account from my iPhone unless I change my MM settings in the preference screen. I have a personal account and an account for my business.
Apple won’t even let you use Safari on the iPhone to log into MM from the browser – the bloody thing redirects you to change your preferences!
It hasn’t occurred to Apple that people might need to access multiple MM accounts from the one device?
Who cares? The New York Post is a “non-paper” – iPad owners, forced to read something else, might just acquire some real knowledge about what is happening in the world. It would be even better if FOX decided that they were not going to support Apple devices…
iPad-owning New Yorkers looking for their daily Post fix online will see nothing but a message directing them to download the paper’s $1.99 iPad app where after 30 days of free access they must pay for a monthly or annual subscription to read the content–$6.99 for one month, $39.99 for six months, or $74.99 for a year.