gets optimised content and cached offline content. The scope for creative design and presentation here has barely begun. In turn, the publisher gets knowledge of the reader and is able to build a direct commercial relationship, in theory at least. But in practice, Apple doesn't share this information. Nor does it allow publishers to choose their own advertising services: they must use Apple's. And since Apple maintains a stranglehold over App Store distribution -- and relatively few dare to jailbreak their iGadgets -- publishers' native apps must toe the Jobsian line. The FT 's non-App Store web app. The FT 's solution was to stretch this line to breaking point -- to see what it could get away with, basically -- while building a rich website in HTML5 that had as many features of a native app as possible. This you can access from here . Apple has now expelled it from the App Store, and where the FT leads, others may follow. Why is Apple's determined to screw 30 per cent out of media companies for recurring revenue? That's easy to answer: because it can. This is a mutually agreed contract, and Apple can, right now, ask for 30 per cent because the App Store looks to publishers like the most promising source of new digital subscribers. There's a lot of enthusiasm around the iPad in (according to the utopians) a declining market, and new readers are a rare and welcome thing. All this can change quite quickly. An