Your interpretation indeed sounds stupid to me.

I think you parsed it as:

We created subscriptions for publishing (the following): apps, not SaaS apps.

Whereas the rest of us see it as:

We created subscriptions for [publishing apps] (apps by content publishers), not [SaaS apps].

Yes, that was the problem. Thanks for the clarification. It indeed sounded very strange to me, since I am not familiar with the topic.

This isn't the first instance of Apple as the Thought Police -- what will the yarrow sticks show today in the iChing?

You pay tax for driving a road car, not a remote control car.