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Well, I think Apple is alienating some publications right now, but it is trying to develop an entirely new ecosystem with its "Daily Newsstand" model. Right now, digital publishing is very weak, newspapers and magazines are wracking their brains on how to penetrate the digital realm and actually make money, only a handful of newspapers have managed to make any kind of money online, i think the NY Times and WSJ are the only ones.
Apple knows it has a ton of iPads out there, and with the App store on iphones and now Mac computers, it has a very strong reach in being able to deliver online content to all things Mac.
I think we can all agree that digital publishing online in the form of Magazines/Newspapers etc is weak, and mostly overprices. In the original article cited they said a hard copy version of wired delivered to your door is 10.00 a year, the ipad version is around 50.00 dollars, which is insane.
There needs to be a happy medium of one stop shop to subscribe to online publications and Apple is trying very hard to develop it. Also, don't discount Google, they are also developing an Android Alternative to the Daily, which will give all android users a place to get dedicated apps and pay subscriptions, and they are taking WAY less then the 30% cut that apple is demanding, so there are alternatives, the sad thing is, none have launched yet. But it looks like soon they will.
Right now if you want newspapers and magazines, you can download the standalone app, but finding them on the app store or itunes is a trial and tribulation to find new things you might not know about, but if you do know what you are looking for, its a bit easier.
Basically Conde Nast, News Corp and the other big players need to all get behind something in order to develop an online strategy for successful media delivery. Apple has News Corp wrapped up and Google is courting Conde Nast. So we'll see.
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