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Comment by joshwa | Hacker News Reader

This brings into focus one of the App Store's main advantages-- a micropayment platform that users have actually adopted in large numbers.

The only reason that media companies need fear cannibalizing app sales is that people have become accustomed to paying for Apps (even apps that are 99% content) but not paying for web sites.

Imagine for a second if Apple rolled out the ability to pay for anything on the web (that made it past a review process-- ha!) with your iTunes Store account?

Either Apple needs to extend their payment system out into the rest of the web, or the media companies need to band together hulu-like and establish their own payment system (or some micropayment startup needs to get some serious traction).

See also my previous comment on this topic:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304498

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I agree completely. When it comes to paying for things, there are two very important factors. I think the web as it exists todays fails at both.

First, payment should be easy. I want to click "Buy", then click "Okay", and that's it. But almost every time I make a purchase online I end up fumbling for my wallet, getting my debit card, and filling out a form.

Second, people have to get "used" to paying for something. Give something away for free long enough, and pretty soon everyone starts to believe they're entitled. If you're like me, you have to go through quite a bit of research, trial, and self-convincing to pay a few bucks for a web app. Compare that to how easy it is to make a purchase at a convenient store.

> Either Apple needs to extend their payment system out into the rest of the web, or the media companies need to band together hulu-like and establish their own payment system (or some micropayment startup needs to get some serious traction).

Amazon. I already have an Amazon account. Allow everyone else to tap into that for micropayments.

I'm not going to sign up for some new micropayment system unless I have to. And anything that resembles PayPal will send me running the other way.

Checkout by Amazon, Amazon Simple Pay, Amazon Flexible Payments Service https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/index.htm

...and yet, people don't run to it.

>Imagine for a second if Apple rolled out the ability to pay for anything on the web (that made it past a review process-- ha!) with your iTunes Store account?

I also believe this will happen quite soon. Developers will just digitally sign the web site resources and that will be enough to satisfy the review process, be secure enough and, most importantly, allow iTunes payment.

This is _extremely_ unlikely. Not only is it far more technically complex than you let on, it goes completely against the ecosystem Apple is building.

Not sure how complex it is, but combining HTML5 Offline Application support with an extension of the cache manifest to include signatures is what I have in mind. At this point Apple will have an exact version to review with their process and approve.

I don't see how this is against their ecosystem. If you will use the same developer agreement, everything else will be the same: web-apps will still have to use StoreKit to sell stuff (so no Paypal, even if you are "on the web") and Apple gets their cut.

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