I’ve had apps get rejected because 4 levels deep inside the app, in the support section, it launched an external browser to a support page that incidentally had the generic website nav on it with a link to a pricing page.
Apple claimed that IaP was being circumvented.
This is just absurd. No serious SaaS company is going to run their users through some crazy 12-tap flow that sends people through their support pages to “cheat” Apple and signup for a paid plan. What would the conversion rate be for a flow like that? 0.00000000002%?
If a developer flagrantly violates the policy by implementing their own signup and payment collection on the first screens, we could all empathize a bit more with Apple’s position. Instead Apple chooses to throw the book at people for immaterial “violations”, without any regard to developers who are trying to participate in good faith.
On top of that, it seems to happen at random because years of App Store reviews could go by before a reviewer stumbles into the support link that’s been buried deep in the app for 3 years. Boom, there’s your conversion event that gets you to 0.00000000002%.
Basically Apple is enforcing the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.
I get the feeling we're only seeing half the story here. Apple allows a lot of apps which have outside subscriptions, Basecamp is a perfect example. Also, Netflix and Amazon Prime for a long time. The outside subscription requirement is probably not the issue here.
I'm not advocating for Apple here, this particular post just strikes me as being an odd exception.
Just a wild guess here, but it's likely they have some language like "Click here to subscribe" which sends users to an outside link. That is expressly forbidden.
Maybe their odd "Help Me" page is shooting them in the foot. by comparison, Fastmail has a simple "Can't Log In" button which takes you to the Fastmail support page on lost passwords.
We got a really similar issue.
Apple rules are that every app with subscription should use apple pay. They added an exception for content streaming app though (so netflix, spotify, etc...)
In our case (a small companion app to a web app which is the core of the service) they started rejecting everything saying we had to change our business model to have our customers using apple pay from now on. After finally being able to have more information other than "change your business model", they finally told us that, unless the user of the ios app is not the person who's supposed to pay, you have to go through apple pay and pay the apple tax.
In our case we had several plans, the cheapest being mono-user. In this case the user is always the customer as well indeed. The solution was in our case to prevent users on our cheapest plan to use the ios app. Not that it's a great solution... Another one we thought was to always offer at least 2 user accounts but the impact on our plans was too problematic.
>they finally told us that, unless the user of the ios app is not the person who's supposed to pay, you have to go through apple pay and pay the apple tax.
Somewhere in the past 2 years I knew their push towards services revenue is going to take things too far. And this is it.
Unless there is something Basecamp not telling us or Apple has a better explanation this is very wrong in my book. And I have previously always sided with Apple on App Store policy.
Someone needs to explain why Fastmail, and Gmail were allowed without IAP but Hey is not.
Edit: Other mail clients under the same condition without IAP were allowed and Hey is not. And yet people still sided with Apple. Someone need to explain the downvoting.
Could you also increase the iOS subscription price by 30 percent? Then people who want it on iOS primarily will use the in app subscription. However, those who know about the web version will buy on the website and still be able to log into iOS.
Here’s where bathing s get annoying though; companies do this all the time. Microsoft Office , for example, has over 5 different pricing tiers for Office. They have a consumer pricing tier that matches Apple IaP pricing, then a set of a bunch of business, education, and enterprise plans. You’d have to do something like that and then negotiate with them that one of your tiers is the same price as IaP.
The point isn’t that there’s workarounds; what’s problematic is how Apple tries to tell you how to price your product and run your business, even if you try to give them a cut.
Yeah, I think the sticking point in the different prices is that you cannot in any way indicate to the user that they can get the same service for cheaper or that there's an included Apple tax. This means that Hey would need to be charging $142 on iOS without a mention that $43 is an Apple tax that is not present when signing up on Hey.com.
I think it's what Spotify does (or did at least at some point).
I wouldn't go this way though since there's more chances for customers to blame this on you than apple.
We would also have had to implement apple pay which would have involved a good amount of work. All this just to get an app approved.
But I mean, more people would probably pay for it if it's only marked up 30 percent rather than a higher amount. You make the same amount from the web subscription or the in app subscription either way if you just adjusted the prices.
I can vouch for the fact that Apple does this sort of thing on a regular basis. When we were submitting an app update, they rejected it on the grounds that we didn't offer in-app purchases. This is apparently a problem because we offer a subscription on our website, even though we had done the same thing for years with no issue. Also, we had numerous competitors who were doing the exact same thing with no ramifications and had recent updates approved. Apple had no good answers and refused to talk about other apps. We also had no mention or links to our website or subscriptions anywhere in our app. I could go on and on about how ridiculous the whole situation was.
We had to give in to their strong-arm tactics and provide in-app purchases. We had no choice. And it wasn't just the 30% cut we have to give them that stung. We also had to divert resources from our tiny company to build a whole in-app purchase system, which couldn't be justified by the tiny amount of revenue that mobile brings in for us.
> I have now heard from multiple developers, both big and small, that over the last few months Apple has been refusing to update their app unless their SaaS service adds in-app purchase. If this has happened to you please email me blog @ my site domain. 100% off the record.
Protocol just updated their story with this paragraph:
>Apple told me that its actual mistake was approving the app in the first place, when it didn't conform to its guidelines. Apple allows these kinds of client apps — where you can't sign up, only sign in — for business services but not consumer products. That's why Basecamp, which companies typically pay for, is allowed on the App Store when Hey, which users pay for, isn't. Anyone who purchased Hey from elsewhere could access it on iOS as usual, the company said, but the app must have a way for users to sign up and pay through Apple's infrastructure. That's how Apple supports and pays for its work on the platform.
> That's how Apple supports and pays for its work on the platform.
Oh, really? Then what's the justification for not charging a single cent for free apps? It costs Apple just as much to host the Facebook app on the App Store as it does Hey (or any other paid app). This has always been such a disingenuous argument, and there's no justification for Apple's tax to be a percentage of the app price anyway. All this does is punish developers of high quality apps. Why should a developer of a $30 app pay $10 to Apple, but a 99 cent app pays only 30 cents, and a free app pays nothing? That's an insane pricing policy.
>>3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.
These categories seem arbitrary at best. Feels like they're more to justify letting big companies do X and force little guys to do Y (since audio/music/video subscriptions aren't really accessible to smaller companies).
VoIP apps? How is an email app any different? And Outlook for iOS has an Exchange client (and is aimed at people using Outlook online), but you can’t spin up Exchange in there. (I guess you could hook up Gmail to it too, but that’s not what they advertise it for).
I have the Hay app and an account, there is no references anywhere in the app to signing up, paying or billing. Both before and after signing in.
If works exactly the same as other subscription services that only offer a subscription outside of the app.
There is no manufactured controversy here, they have not purposely done something to violate the rules just to get coverage. Their other app, Basecamp, works exactly the same.
Not a fan of this policy I just thought it was odd that they applied it this way. I think there are a lot of legitimate services which Apple is excluding this way.
Also, not trying to defend/ advocate here, just pointing it out. IMO Apple should allow companies to sell services where the bulk of expenses aren't part of the App Store experience.
This whole thing is really odd, Fastmail offers their own email service with an iOS app and they haven't had these issues. I wonder if Fastmail offers in app purchases?
I think the issue is that you can't sell in-app content. So you can sell a subscription but if you sell a 'book' or 'podcast' in-app it has to use their in-app purchasing API which can take up to 30%.
Yes, but there are quite a few other subscription services which don't offer an IAP as well. This just feels strange that they would suddenly single out this app.
They don't single out any app. They do inconsistent reviews, humans are doing it, and sometimes they'll flag you - and you're more likely to be flagged if you aren't a multi-billion dollar app they are familiar with.
> And just like Best Buy wouldn't tolerate you bypassing their cut
The difference is that Best Buy doesn't decide which appliances I can plug into my home outlet. I can buy a toaster from Walmart if I don't like Best Buy's setup, but I can't buy products from another store and put them on my iPhone.
That's not to say Apple is wrong, just that Best Buy isn't a good comparison to use. Apple is a distribution channel and a platform. Some better analogies would be Nintendo's requirement that any software running on the Switch go through their specific approval process, or maybe a printer requiring you to only buy official ink cartridges.
Also Best Buy sells "As seen on TV" products, which clearly indicate they can be purchased elsewhere. Apple wants their cut, and they're not taking no for an answer.
seems to me that once apps get big enough they're able to sidestep the apple tax completely. I wonder why they don't try some kind of graduated model that starts at 30% and drops to 10% once there are enough subscriptions.
I feel there is a number that Netflix and others would be happy to pay to help onboard customers.
I'm inclined to agree with you. Apple's terms aren't exactly new. While I don't like Apple's App Store model, Hey had to know what it was getting into. This is an uphill fight that even Amazon ultimately ended up capitulating to.
E-commerce apps have always been allowed, but the video app did not allow purchasing on iOS at all (if I recall they even blocked it in mobile Safari) until very recently. But my point was this isn't exactly a new policy for Apple, and if you're building an app in 2020, it's just how the model works. Hail laissez-faire capitalism.
App store rules state “ You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase.”
I’m pretty sure that means you’re not allowed to let the user know in any way, even on your site, that they can get a better deal than the IAP.
Besides, apple clearly intends to get a cut of hey’s business. If they find a loophole, it will be closed soon enough.
They can't show "Apple Fees" in the app, as per Apple's rules. They would only be able to show the total.
In many cases it's not a great idea because it makes it look like your product is a lot more expensive than it is, and the customer has no idea there's a way to get a better price. It happened to me with Youtube Premium, I thought it was expensive at €16 (instead of €12 in reality), and only found out by chance it was the iOS pricing.
>and the customer has no idea there's a way to get a better price.
Wouldn't you look for more information outside the appstore before you buy into a subscription? I mean if you do that you should stumble upon the actual price and maybe an explanation for the higher price in the appstore.
It's less a problem for Basecamp than for Spotify, who have a more mainstream product and audience.
Unclear to me, but this might disallow a higher price for Apple in-app purchases:
> 3.1.3(b) [...] You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase.
Well if the app tells me it costs $X, I have no reason to doubt it and double-check on the web. Unless I know about that Apple policy, but most consumers don't.
Distribution isn't free in any business. Spotify and the like might not be as profitable paying the 30/15%, but that's a Spotify problem not an Apple problem.
This would be a more compelling case if there was a market to set a competitive price for distribution instead of a monopoly. This looks more like rent seeking than a fair cost of distribution. After all, why does it cost any more on Apple's end to distribute Spotify to a paying customer than a non-paying one?
Apple has a monopoly on distribution on their platform. There is no second competing distributor which "Spotify and likes" could do business with, neither they can do distributing themselves (as desktop software producers have been doing since forever).
Given that, these guys are on point when calling Apple's demands "a ransom". It certainly looks like one.
They have a monopoly on their platform? It’s their platform they can do whatever they want and if you don’t like it you can take your toys elsewhere. I don’t get how a lot of HN is all about freedom of X but then when you can’t do whatever you want in Apple’s App Store it’s all about “they’re not playing fair”.
Once a user buys Apple device, it is no longer 'their platform', it's a user's platform. And he should be able to do anything he wants with is, including capability to sideload apps and install third party app stores.
Refusing this right is evil and should pe punished. Also, this very much helps oppressive states like Russia or China to block their citizens from accessing certain apps.
I think there may be a valid line of reasoning here but I’m not quite feeling it. Seems like MS vs was about stifling competition via market share which isn’t the issue here, the issue here is people not waiting to pay Apple the cost of distribution on their platform.
iOS is literally the only major consumer OS which does not allow its users to install arbitrary software. I guess Hey would be happy not to use "services" of App Store and offer their users an installer to download or a link to some alternative store instead. But they can't: they have to pay Apple a ransom.
> It’s their platform they can do whatever they want
Yes, unfortunately. That's good for Apple, but not good for us, so it's in our best interests if this situation changes somehow.
I mean yea, you hit the nail on the head, Apple doesn’t offer the option to side load apps which is a huge reason why I happily suggest people use the ecosystem. If you want to side load apps there is a super available alternative, nobody is forcing your hand.
> "Spotify and the like might not be as profitable paying the 30/15%, but that's a Spotify problem not an Apple problem."
It's an Apple problem because Apple competes directly with Spotify.
Apple's own competitor (Apple Music) can avoid those overheads while offering users the convenience of in-app subscriptions. You could argue that Apple is abusing its market power in one sector to gain dominance in another, which is monopolistic and - in many countries - illegal.
At a certain market share anti-trust kicks in. The market share does not have to be at 100%, it can even be lower than 50% if your "niche share" in this market is large enough.
That assumes that Walmart is the franchisee of the McDonalds located in their store. I cannot find any evidence to support that. I found a WSJ article[0] that indicates that Subway locations inside Walmarts are run by individual franchisees. So it would probably be fair to say that yes, restaurants located inside of Walmart stores probably pay rent.
This is such a neat idea. I think if all app developers start doing it, it will force big companies to maybe lower their cut. Like how we add VAT to final price it should say Apple/Google tax and add 30% to total.
At least it will make the non dev users aware of the app store tax bs.
I wonder if it would satisfy Apple if they offered an in-app subscription price at something like 10,000% markup? Eg, something nobody would sign up for. But the option would indeed be there...
People would realize that an email app could not cost that much, and so would look to sign up on the website.
If they host their own ad server couldnt they just advertise their own application, linking to the website where the user would be able to find the real price?
Would apple be able to tell what content they are serving? Is that still against the ToS?
A potential effect is that iPhone (iOS) users see that they pay far more than people on other platforms. Which may reflect bad on either HEY or on Apple, depending on how the story is spun.
While I agree that Apple's app store extortion policies are abhorrent, I don't know if I agree that legal action is the answer. Isn't it Apple's right to set whatever policies they want on their own platform? Isn't the answer to this problem just to stop using Apple products and move to platforms that are more open and not as hostile to consumers and developers? By using iPhones and Macs you're implicitly agreeing to and giving financial credence to Apple's practices. There are plenty of alternatives to Apple out there, and if Apple somehow provides enough value to you to make them more appealing despite their App Store strangleholds and anti-consumer policies, then haven't they earned that right?
Anti-trust laws are built exactly for the cases where it is not easy or feasibly possible to move to a different platform because the platform itself is too large of a market for others to sideline it if they get abusive. It's exactly designed and thought of to protect people (and smaller companies) from the power that a single entity might have over them.
How can you say that, realistically, the way forward for a company is to just drop one of the largest computing environments (iOS/App Store), even if a company would prefer to do that they can't because that would hurt their shareholders. If a smaller company then you are ostracised to a smaller market because of a bully company.
Yeah, Apple may start to bleed developers the more they start to be bullish but that doesn't mean they will lose users, and users attract developers. It's the same case as Uber: you encroach the base your business model depends on (driver/developer) into your influence while holding the bag that are their customers (riders/app users) and start to bleed them out slowly, upping the fees, adding more requirements for them to be allowed inside your walls, etc., until the breaking point, then recede a bit. Rinse and repeat.
Anti-trust exists to tame this, it's time for Apple to be challenged on their free reign.
There's basically nothing new here that couldn't have also been said on day one of the App Store in 2008. It's just the standard App Store grievance regurgitated to market their new product.
It appears that before you could have a subscription outside the store. Now you cannot, and Apple picks and chooses favorites (e.g. Basecamp and Netflix can have out-of-store subscriptions, but this new app cannot).
> Netflix is no longer allowing new customers on iOS to pay for the streaming service directly through an in-app subscription. It’s the latest example of a company with a high-profile, essential mobile app ditching Apple’s payment system to retain more profits for itself and stop handing the iPhone and iPad maker a cut of every subscription activated within the Netflix app. VentureBeat first reported the change, which Netflix confirmed with a short “we no longer support iTunes as a method of payment for new members” statement.
My Netflix's "account" section has nothing but a notice that says "Please go to Netflix on the web to manage your account."
This is what I'm wondering too. I can't imagine Apple just deciding as a one-off case to do a secret, arbitrary shakedown. It sounds more like a dispute over their written rules, which can still be questionable, but much less so.
If this goes outside of their official rules, it's a big deal. If it's in line with them, it's par for the course. I think some important details are missing from the source.
We had an app rejected for this yesterday (June 16). We've skirted the guidelines in the past by carefully not mentioning any type of external payment system or subscription offering at all within the app. Users had to subscribe on a website for app content. Previously this was fine.
AFAIK you weren't required to implement in-app purchases for each subscription offering available outside of the app. That seems to be the change to the guideline or something that is now being enforced that was always there. This is a non-trivial integration to build and maintain. Not only will this have a real cost in engineering hours but the 30% fee is absurd - made more so by the fact that you cannot even inform your customers of the option to subscribe out of the app. I'd happily enable in-app purchases and increase the price 30% with help text that says "Want to save 30% - subscribe on the website HERE"
Netflix removed their in-app purchase options years ago. When you open the app it says you have to sign up on the website and provides no content or other utility without signing in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
unsurprising. But the main problem, IMHO, is that there is a company that has complete control of what apps can be installed on their phones. And those phones are not used just by a few fanatics in very special contexts, they are used by millions of (mostly unaware) people. This is the root issue, and it's completely unacceptable.
I’m not convinced this is the problem. The problem is that there is a conflict of interest between trying to ensure that only “high quality” apps are available and trying to tax the value people get from the apps. If I imagine a world where eg Apple get none of the in app purchase but some government get 30% as VAT then it still seems fine for Apple to curate their store but they wouldn’t be incentivised to try to force apps to offer in-app purchases
I think that the high fees are shameful by themselves, but it's a different matter. The problem I am discussing is about control, freedom and anti-competitive behaviours.
I'll give an example I have lived myself: I developed a free app that was requested by some doctors to help them cope with the pandemic. The app was first rejected because "too simple". I appealed and they accepted it. Happy ending.
Now, the episode in itself doesn't tell anything, but it made me think: what if they kept rejecting it? What power did I have? Why should patients be denied that piece of software on THEIR phones, because a company decides that it's not cool enough? The problem lies with Google as well but, at least, it is possible to distribute apps through other channels on their phones.
I really think that there is no excuse for Apple: their devices are locked, their users are stuck with what the company decides to do with them and treated like idiots. They are a threat to business and innovation (unless it's theirs of course). Reminds me of Microsoft in the 90s...
They already have a web client which is all server rendered with Rails and uses Turbolinks. If I'm not mistaken they also use this approach for the Basecamp iOS app [1].
Apple has not exactly been friendly to PWA architecture, and their incentives against improving that feature-set are pretty obvious. While web sites/apps can be saved to the home screen, have some data persisted [0], etc, iOS PWA capabilities aren't comparable to Android. And of course, there are all the standard objections to web apps / hybrid apps, re: performance, design language, etc.
I was wondering... Can there be a native app on iOS that sets up notifications for all participating PWAs and then when a notification comes in, when the user views it - the native app simply launches the URL of the PWA?
It could be called "Web Events Notifier" or something. Perhaps it could include a UI for managing which PWAs you want to receive notifications for and maybe even a catalog of publicly participating PWAs.
Technically yes, it’s a great idea- but Apple will just block it at some point. Or at least the threat of it being blocked is enough to make it a non starter.
Any feed reader can be set up like this. Publish the notifications to an rss feed on a unique url, with each entry containing a link back to the pwa, have the feed reader app subscribe to it and use the notifications of the feed reader app.
it wasn't clear to me trying to skim the video, but is this the strategy where you add an app from safari to the home screen? That was always clunky and I don't think you can get notifications that way
The video is about turbolinks, which basically makes a request with JS to the server and then replaces the HTML in the body of the page. This results in a performance increase. Turbolinks is heavily used in Rails sites like Github for example.
It also showcases a Turbolinks version for iOS which works differently as it connects with the native app for changing views etc.
The guy in the video still works at Basecamp and worked on HEY too so I assume they used Turbolinks for iOS.
I think I'm missing something. It's still in the App Store, right? Seems to me that they'd still happily reject it even if the rendering is done server-side.
My initial point was that since they are already using web technology they could probably move it to a web app for mobile outside the AppStore.
But, as paulgb pointed out in another comment, Safari for iOS hasn't implemented push notifications from web apps which is probably a deal breaker for most users of an email app.
I can understand dhh's frustrations. Apple should really only deserve the 30% if they referred users to HEY via the App Store. Outside of that is just unfair and predatory.
This is similar to what Wix requires when you develop for their platform. Wix requires developers to profit share 20% of your revenue for any customers that just so happen to use the part of your app that communicates with Wix. Why do platforms continue to think they're entitled to such a thing? And why would any developer want to integrate with Wix with such a clause?
> Apple should really only deserve the 30% if they referred users to HEY via the App Store
Might be true that they deserve a cut if the app store wasn’t a monopoly. You’re not opting into a relationship with apple, they’re holding everybody with an iPhone hostage for 30% of your revenue.
If I thought that android was an equivalent product, I would switch. I would also withdraw my complaint about apple having a monopoly - since there is a roughly equivalent alternative with no downsides. But I don’t think that’s the case. Android is far too privacy-hostile, google has their hooks too deep in the ecosystem so I’d essentially be trading one monopoly for another, and (personal beef) the audio stack is not good enough for music production.
All that, and my feeling that we need real antitrust in most realms of commerce, means i would much prefer to be able to vote with my vote for representatives with teeth
I mean the situation is similar, but I don’t really feel strongly because:
1. I don’t game
2. consequently games seem less important to quality-of-life than phones do to me
3. The ecosystem of “things i can play a game on” is pretty diverse. Xbox and ps are big players but pc gaming is WIDE open and then there’s mobile gaming as well.
AFAIK XBox and Playstation partially fund exclusive game development and for non-exclusive games the risk is somewhat smaller.
I heard few stories about the devs bouncing off the Oculus store though. There aren't many games, so it's a honeypot for many developers but then they find out their game won't be released because of some reason (game like this exists, we don't like experience, experience is subpar) and so on.
But they also don’t allow you to sign-up for a free tier in the app, which as far as I know, is also against the rules. My understanding is that if someone downloads the app from the store and can’t do anything but see a login page, it is a violation.
That's always been a rule but apps like Netflix count as "Reader" apps that are allowed to do that.
>3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.
Sure, you can give them an account but it is in fact against the Apple TOS and users shouldn't be able to see and download apps on the store they can't use. They don't catch all the caws but they're still in breach. Apple has other ways of distributing apps if they're internal apps or if the business manages the users somewhere else and the app store shouldn't be used then.
I can 100% assure you these apps were not in breach and it was no fluke. Apple questioned us multiple times about where and how would users pay for the service.
I think this was allowed because as someone else mentioned there are some exceptions to this rule. This was an education app which gave access to some digital books.
I just checked the Netflix app's App Store page and apparently you can now subscribe via in-app purchase. I suspect this is a recent development forced by a change in Apple's TOS.
Just sign out on your netflix app to see for yourself -- the splash screen literally says "You can't sign up for netflix in the app. We know it's a hassle."
> “Trying to join Netflix?” it reads. “You can’t sign up for Netflix in the app. We know it’s a hassle. After you’re a member, you can start watching in the app.” Bizarrely, it gives no further instructions on how or where to go if you want to sign up for Netflix: no URL, no QR code, not even a hint of how to join. If you aren’t already a member, it’s a complete dead end.
That’s not a bug. It’s a function of Apple policy. With some exceptions, the company doesn’t let users pay app makers directly for their apps or digital services. They can only pay Apple, which takes a 30% cut of all revenue and then passes 70% to the developer. (For subscription services, which account for the majority of App Store revenues, that 30% cut drops to 15% after the first year.) To tighten its grip, Apple prohibits the affected apps from even telling users how they can pay their creators directly.
> When he tweeted about the app's initial rejection last week, he got a number of responses from developers who would privately rail against Apple's policies but publicly make excuses for the company. "You listen to some of these app developers, and they sound like hostages," Heinemeier Hansson said. "They sound like they're reading a prepared statement, because otherwise Apple could hurt their business. Which is true!"
I'd love to see these kinds of comments eventually start evolving into more substantive discussion on HN. Sometimes its nice to see select quotes form the article which helps me decide whether to click through and read it. But a lot of the time, like this one, it doesn't add any clarity and I have no idea what 'latexr is actually thinking regarding the topic.
Personally, I've always felt that 30% was far, far too high for an app store. It's clearly a case of captive markets. I remember being just as annoyed 17 years ago in high school; upperclassmen were allowed to leave school during lunch and go to Little Caesars and get a whole pepperoni pizza for $5. Lowerclassmen were not allowed to leave school for lunch and had to buy food in the cafeteria where a single slice of pizza was $4.50 --- it was clearly predatory pricing. I personally went out, got a $5 large pizza with 8 slices, sold 4 slices at $1 each to classmates and enjoyed my half pizza for $1 every day. But it was a pretty infuriating situation to me, as the students themselves had no choice or control over the market, despite deploying a huge amount of economic purchasing power every day.
I don't think the app store itself is adding that much value (30%). I believe Apple's practices are probably currently legal (at least according to my lay interpretation of monopoly practices) - Apple simply doesn't have a monopoly on the market of phone apps when you consider that consumers can choose to switch to Android. Hey! can access 120 million Americans through android and/or 100 million Americans through iOS. If apple cuts them out of 45% of the market, they still have 55% remaining to access. They can even still just have their users go to their website to read email via the Safari browser.
Obviously the U.S. Government (various branches) occasionally change how they feel about things even without any substantive changes in statutory or constitutional law. So I make no predictions at all as to what happens in the next 5 years.
However, I can say what I'd like to see to improve innovation in Silicon Valley (and I would LOVE feedback on this idea, to improve it and help to make the idea better)
Primarily I'd like to see any internal API's that are used between business segments to be granted the same access at the same cost to third parties. For example:
- Google's "Popular Times" feature comes from Google Places (I think) and is used by Google Maps. However, third parties still have no access to this.
- iOS messaging could be accessible by XMPP or similar open protocols, same with Discord, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, etc.
- Instagram live broadcasts could be searched and accessed by API
etc etc.
I don't personally think there's a legal basis for compelling this right now, but statutory changes that promote something LIKE it would really be amazing for innovation. Letting _small companies_ compete with _small pieces_ of large companies would give consumers access to high quality alternatives for every service they need. I think it would also make the web more "hackable" (extensible) by teens and hobbyists, and likely propel our field forward immensely.
The walled gardens can be great options for convenient security (Apple's doing fairly well here honestly, even if not fantastically). But I'd like consumers to be able to access the data however is most convenient for them.
I haven’t read your post in full. To your first paragraph, check my history and you’ll be hard pressed to find another example of this. The quote was posted to another HN thread that has since been merged into this one where the conversation was already underway. In the other thread I hoped to have gotten some commentary to start a discussion; in this one I wouldn’t have made it in the first place because by the the time it was moved it added nothing.
I completely understand, I first replied to you when we were the only comments before the move, I was also hoping to start discussion.
I've made extremely similar comments as this one of yours, very recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23179393 and much to my (chagrin/horror/disgust), it's my highest rated comment ever. I wish upvotes were more correlated to effort and quality, but I always remember Wynton Marsalis saying in an interview: .
> In high school, I learned a breathing technique so I
could play a continuous trumpet solo for 10 minutes
without stopping for a breath. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, thatʼs all they get.”
If you read about the history of anti-trust, the way we define it now is NOT how it was defined in the past. There is no reason that we (the people) could not recognize that a duopoly or an oligopoly is just as harmful as a monopoly - and bust them all.
For Apple the math is simple. We should take "apple-tax" as much as we can, for as long as we can.
It's a lot of money and it doesn't make sense for them to give it away until they have to. Nobody knows if they will remain dominant 10 years from now. So there is no point to be nice today when you have a monopoly.
Then there are some services with enough leverage that it makes sense for Apple not ask them for Apple Tax. It also saves more time for Apple to keep taking this tax from others that don't have leverage to fight back.
It's really disheartening that when you don't even have any twitter/blog following, stuff like this happens to thousands of people and nobody ever hears about them.
I've been following the tweets about hey.com from their founder for some time. The text about how they bought the domain is beautiful. I understand the proposal they offer about the service, and the reason for charging for a service that nobody has paid for a long time. It even seems obvious to me this trend of new opportunities to pay for email services. A trend, that this time, appears to be here to stay.
But it is a product that have a very aggressive marketing strategy. Arrogant.
The only thing I read from this episode is: The product is like this, the billing service is like that. We won't change anything and if you don't like it, you're wrong. Unfortunately, there is no chance that I will ever use this product. The price is stratospheric for me and probably for 98% of those who use gmail. Prontonmail, for example, offers several options, including a free one.
Well, apple also offers a service. What they are asking is for them to make a concession. But they don't seem willing to concede anything to that negotiation.
I imagine that this could be circumvented with other exclusive plans to subscribe using apple pay, or a free and very reduced version. It doesn't seem like a radical position from apple, which was the impression I got from reading the tweets alone.
This is the potential market where all other paid email providers will compete. A reduced market. And yet, they chose Elon Musk's strategy. Create a premium product first to serve as a cash cow and financier, then perhaps offer other products with lower or even higher margins.
But my point is, they offer a premium service and have the possibility to get around this problem by negotiating since the mistake was theirs in not interpreting apple rules correctly.
I think it's the same business model as 1Password costing $36/year as opposed to KeePass being free, or paying for Dropbox vs setting up your own FTP server, or even paying for an iPhone/Mac when Android/PC is cheaper, but the UX or specific features work better for you. For some people that's worth paying for.
I agree. But I was not discussing their business model. I believe that they will be successful, as I said, I believe that there is this market for paid emails. What I was talking about is the first attitude of protesting instead of negotiating.
And I wasn't wrong, that's what Phil Schiller suggested:
“One way that HEY could have gone...is to offer a free or paid version of the app with basic email reading features on the App Store, then separately offered an upgraded email service that worked with the Hey app on iOS on its own website.”
And that is exactly what they did to get approved.
"So now we offer this new free option, and the multi-user HEY for Work — all in the same iOS app. "
They are doing exactly the same as many other apps (Netflix, Spotify and other Email apps like Spark), even their other app (Basecamp) which has been on the store for 7 years!
You can't make in-app purchases in Spotify. Netflix got rid of in-app purchases for a while, but then renegotiated a new deal with Apple. You can't buy books in Kindle.
It's interesting that despite the fact that walled-garden platforms are concrete examples of companies using their marketshare to rent seek and stifle competition, the recent anti-trust investigations have been going after more nebulously defined cases like Alphabet and Amazon.
EDIT: Of all the things that HN would consider controversial, I did not expect an inane comment on walled gardens to be it.
As a single brand they have the largest share at about 40%. But in terms of platform they are on par, or slightly behind, Android. On mobile devices overall they are ahead but not that much.
This is in contrast to Alphabet and Amazon which have much stronger dominant positions and don't have comparable competitors.
It would be hard to argue--given this presentation of Basecamp's plight--that Apple's behavior here is not rent-seeking. Combined with Apple's massive earnings and cash holdings, this is not a good look for Apple.
its kindof hilarious that apple happened to pick this app to make a stand on. It was only a few months ago that DHH (the Hey founder) got apple to change (or at least clarify and apologize for ) their Apple Card application process because his wife got a smaller limit than him.
As much as I despise Apple’s arbitrary distinctions between apps and the subscription purchase mechanisms (as well as the comparatively stricter control it has on apps on the App Store), the Twitter thread is deviating from the key points and making comparisons (and using ad hominems) that sound very nasty. I get that DHH is fuming, and feels rightfully so, but this is a crude business transaction disagreement. He’s no common person on the streets, and it would help for him to rethink some of the words and comparisons he uses in public.
On the whole, I’m kinda glad on the timing of this one. One can only hope that this brings in some positive changes from Apple within a few months. It’s long due.
Maybe because Hey/Basecamp decided to target Apple's email platform on Hey's home page as the cause of all Inbox woes?
Maybe before you go griping about technical details in Apple's App Store rules, Hey/Basecamp should have considered not blaspheming (unfairly) Apple's Email platform (among others) on their home page:
> "You started getting stuff you didn’t want from people you didn’t know. You lost control over who could reach you. An avalanche of automated emails cluttered everything up.
And Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple just let it happen."
Pretty snarky of Jason Fried & Co. to accuse Apple of being the reason I lost control of my Inbox, and then beg and cajole Apple to let them have their Hey App on iOS without allowing a signup option via Apple's massive eco-system.
Typical Small Dev Thinking. "Hey is different and Apple is Evil and We have Single-handedly solved all the problems that Apple created! Oh, by the way, can we please be in the App Store so we can have access to Apple's bajillions of customers and $$$ so we can make a few $100k because the economy is tanking?".
Worse of all? Hey lied. Through the teeth.
Nearly all of their Top 20 "features" have been available via Apple's Email service for years, and in some cases decades, and most are also available via other email services like Gmail.
This is probably the lowest skullduggery that Fried & Co have attempted to foist on the unsuspecting public. I'm personally surprised and have always been a fan of their work. Don't know what's going on under the covers over there, but it can't be good.
It’s not “justified”. I’m merely pointing out (a) hypocrisy by BaseCamp (and subsequent marketing lies), and (b) the old adage that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
It might be nice to believe you can snip at a company’s products (and in this case, using false claims), and believe it won’t affect at all a separate issue (App Store submissions), but that’s not the real world.
Sometimes, you attract attention by antics. Maybe Fried and Co. are learning a small lesson about the real world.
Aside from all that, this whining about how Apple is keeping them from profits is a bit nauseating. Their sad product (Hey) is keeping them from profits.
Yes. I know. He has literally articulated the fact that is straight out of Jobs’ playbook to. It’s ironic that Apple find themselves on the receiving end! And just too.
I don't get the anti-Apple here. The email from Apple posted on Twitter says quite clearly that people can acquire content and subscriptions elsewhere as long as the app continues to offer an in-app purchase option. I don't see the problem here, give people the choice.
The anti-apple thing here is, you can't link out to your website for payment.
You literally cannot even inform the user that there is another way for them to pay.
This is shitty. Apple benefits from developers making great apps on their platform, just as developers benefit from being on their platform. It's a symbiotic relationship, but Apple takes up to 30% of your profit which does not feel respectful of what developers are bringing to the table, which is often Apple first, quality apps.
It's worse. Hey doesn't take payment and only allows users to log in from the app, not sign up. Many apps already do this, including Netflix, Fastmail, and many more.
Apple is saying that because Hey offers a subscription elsewhere, Hey should provide an in-app purchase as well, despite other apps not being forced to do this.
I mean yes, that's been the case since in-app purchases on the Apple store. What's new? You can complain, tweet and seek regulatory relief but at the end of the day you built that app knowing perfectly well Apple will ask for 30% of your iOS revenue.
They take 30% of your gross revenue. If you spent $x on development and marketing of your app, and generated $1.5x from iOS, they take away $0.45x and you're left with $1.05x which is actually a lot worse than if they only took 30% of your profit, which would be $0.15x.
I don't get this argument. Apple built the platform, so they can set a price. Any price. Their platform, their decision. Companies like Basecamp can decide to distribute on that platform or not. It's Apple's prerogative to find the optimal fee, to pair with what companies are willing and able to pay.
Letting apps link out to websites for paywalls circumvents all of this. If I was in Apple's position I'd limit that as well.
If you're using, say, Stripe for your payment processing then you can offer the user a choice if they'd pay through Stripe or Apple pay. If you do not have your own payment processor for mobile payments, then you use only Apple pay. If you do, then you have to include Apple as an option.
I've been releasing apps with this in the past few years, it's been a requirement all along.
It is totally true for the context of this conversation... Which is, software subscriptions.
No, you cannot use Stripe for software subscriptions. Stripe (non-Apple pay) can only be used for physical goods, or sale of services rendered outside of iOS/MacOS.
In other words, can only be used for non-digital sales. The context of this conversation is the Hey app, which is a software subscription, so no... there is no other way to pay.
That's not totally true, either. You can only use Stripe as an option if the service being paid for is delivered outside of the app (I.e. Uber, Ecommerce, etc). Any purely digital content must be paid for via in-app purchase and take the 30% revenue cut. That's why you can't get an Audible or Spotify subscription from within the app.
That was the case in all the apps I've been involved with ("the service being paid for is delivered outside of the app"), so I probably did not pay much attention to the small letters.
This is inconsistent with Apple's past policy. There was never a requirement (and still isn't, by my reading) that you must offer any paid services / subscriptions within the app. Only that if you do offer them in the app, you must use Apple's payment service and give Apple their cut.
Spotify and Netflix have never offered subscriptions within their app - you can use the app to access those services, but you must subscribe on the web first.
"We noticed that your app allows customers to access content, subscriptions, or features they have purchased elsewhere, but those items were not available as in-app purchases within the app."
"Since the email services offered in your app are not the type listed under guideline 3.1.3(a) for 'Reader' apps, customers must be able to purchase access to features or functionality in your app using in-app purchase."
This would ban Gmail, Netflix, and many others that handle payment entirely off-app. I can't pay for my GSuite via IAP, but I'm still allowed to use the Gmail app for it.
But Gmail, Netflix, and others have enough weight to “convince” Apple to give them a free pass. I would not be surprised if legal threats are common in these conversations.
Recently I was looking at iOS hacks that turn the volume buttons into application controls, you know how both Snapchat and the native Camera app work. This is explicitly prohibited, but I would bet that Snapchat has threatened to sue over it, which is why it still works for them.
>I would not be surprised if legal threats are common in these conversations.
Is that even needed? Imagine iOS without Gmail (or perhaps all Google apps) and Netflix. That would significantly affect the value of an iPhone to an individual consumer. And in Netflix's case, it's not like Apple can just roll their own version and push that to users (since Apple TV+ is quite sad).
Yes, because there is no legal ground from which Snapchat can sue on this issue. And what are they going to threaten with? Pulling their app from the Apple App store only to hurt their own business?
Apps like Facebook, Netflix, and Snapchat are going to be on a first-name basis with their peers at Apple/Google and are going to have relationships and cards to pull that most others do not. Same is true for any b2b relationship, whether it's auto manufacturers/dealers or advertisers/publishers. Big customers get perks.
A lawsuit! That’s the theory, there is at least enough legal ground to cause damage (even if they can’t win in court). But maybe you are right and most cases like this are handled smoothly without conflict.
As far as I can tell, you can't. Those IAPs listed don't appear to be purchasable any more; they're likely still listed because some existing subscriptions are still grandfathered in.
Maybe they deliberately provoked Apple, so they'd get rejected, so they could write about their outrage, so it'd get picked up by news sites, and they did this for marketing purposes?
Or maybe it really was just accidental, who knows. But it is certainly having that effect, intended or not.
If you can come up with a credible theory on how spending two years developing a full email app, only to get it banned on launch day, isn't obviously a dumb idea, I will eat durian.
I don’t think its that strange of an “accusation”. In fact I’d call it a “hypothesis”.
DHH is a popular person. He gets people to change their behaviors when he calls them out (see his prior Twitter rants, I can’t recall any examples other than Zoom, etc). DHH even admits that he is popular and may be able to get the rules changed for himself, which is probably a big reason he is being vocal - small developers do not have the same platform as a Formula 1 hundred-millionaire who also created RoR.
He might be a vocal person online, but I think accusing him of purposefully sabotaging his app's approval process without supporting it with evidence is reaching a bit.
"I don't think people understand. We did everything we were supposed to with the iOS app. Try downloading it (while you can?). You can't sign up, because Apple says no. We don't mention subscriptions. You can't upgrade. You can't access billing. We did all of it! Wasn't enough."
I think people underestimate how poorly Apple have conducted themselves throughout their app store's history. The iOS developer guidelines used to officially state:
If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
What prompted such a bizarre official policy? Hundreds of cases of Apple unfairly, inconsistently and even stupidly rejecting apps, rejecting appeals, rejecting their own rules, stonewalling developers. All of this is apart from the platform abuse that caused their anti-trust cases.
One of Apple's diligent prudes discovered that the Kama Sutra was among the books Eucalyptus could access
Apple approves tens/hundreds of millions of changes each year.
They are going to make mistakes and there are going to be inconsistencies in how they approach certain apps. Especially since the policies have evolved over the last decade or so.
Also the AppleInsider one is just wrong. I remember that one and it was approved shortly after that article.
> Apple approves tens/hundreds of millions of changes each year.
> They are going to make mistakes and there are going to be inconsistencies in how they approach certain apps. Especially since the policies have evolved over the last decade or so.
Apple's the one who made it a walled-garden. They're the ones that made the rules. They're the ones that made the escalation procedures. They're the ones who have managed to not be consistent.
If you make literally all the rules and the rules ABOUT the rules and you still have bad outcomes there's nobody to blame but you. Which is exactly what people are complaining about.
Nobody put a gun to Apple's head for any of these things. One might argue that with YouTube the whole ContentID fiasco wasn't really their idea insofar as YouTube was going to get sued into oblivion by the music/movie industry if they didn't provide some tools.
This is categorically Apple's domain and they're the ones who made all the problems. People's expectations aren't unreasonable in my opinion. It's pretty common to want rules to be enforced fairly and impartially.
I think part of the problem is the difficulty of challenging these inconsistent decisions -- and not just Apple; Google Play is probably just as bad at dealing with escalations. If developers and major companies have to resort to complaining publicly to get a decision revisited, there's a problem with the process that isn't simply due to getting a bad reviewer.
DHH is very good at marketing and the theatrics are part of their roll-out strategy. It's also coordinated with this story [1]. The screenshot he posted from Apple actually undermines the whole thread because it makes it clear why it was rejected. If you download their app it just takes you to a login screen with no ability to do anything else in the app. Apple has a section in their developer guidelines for these kinds of "Reader" apps, but there are only specific categories of apps that fall under it [2]:
>3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.
If the basecamp app has a link you can click that says "go to this website to pay for basecamp", it's not allowed.
You can sign in and purchase elsewhere, then get the credentials and login on the app. It's fine, countless apps are like that. But if you do offer purchases with the app, Apple requires that you use the in-app purchase mechanism.
Thank you for clarifying the exact rule Hey broke. The easiest way to get around it is to provide an in-app purchase option for Apple users, and charge a higher price.
Hey could easily offer a $15/mo plan through Apple, and still clear more money than the $99/yr external offering.
Instead of quietly using this tactic, they are utilizing Apple to stoke outrage and garner attention. May be brash but it is not a terrible strategy. I have no sympathy for Apple- this is the exact position they have put themselves in.
It is not uncommon to have a different price for monthly vs yearly billing. IAP customers will pay more, but they can afford that anyways, and the bright ones will subscribe online.
Hey currently charges $99/yr. If they added an IAP tier of $15/mo, and Apple takes 30%, that leaves $126/yr. (Clearly more money, in my humble calculation)
I still don't understand why people like Apple products so much.
I was forced to use a MacBook at my last job for 2 years because the CEO was a Steve Jobs fan. It's a terrible machine.
If I had to summarize Apple with just one word, it would be "restrictive".
It's like you need a license to do anything, run any program, write any program. It's like you don't even own the damn machine, it owns you.
I understand why some developers may want to stay away from Windows but Apple is not the answer.
Linux distros are really quite good these days. I highly recommend the new version of Kubuntu v20.
The defaults are kind of ugly (no idea why they would do that to themselves) but you can customize the theme and it can look amazing.
Ubuntu is not bad but Kubuntu was an eye-opener for me in terms of usability and customizability.
> I still don't understand why people like Apple products so much.
That’s very simple. Most of users aren’t professionals and want platform that works out-of-the-box. They don’t customize. They don’t change anything. They don’t want or know how to side-load an app... they are just normal users which are majority of Apple clients. :)
Why so many people have a problem with understanding that professional users (developers, designers, etc) aren’t most important, or even better, the only one using Apple hardware?
BTW. And with those users in mind I would love to have more walled gardens everywhere. As they don’t care about their tech-savvy part of life, approach like this can minimize their lost from stupid actions.
I don't have much of a Mac experience but Linux distro's nowadays are far, far more "just working" than windows, even and specially on their default setups.
Same experience here with an iPhone. Nice hardware (the product part) but when it comes to software and features it’s like a wasteland. For example all day events will be alerted at 9:00 am. No way to change that. What?! What is this, communism again?
To publish an app so that real Apple users can run it on their machines, you need to buy a $100 developer license. This applies for both desktop and mobile apps.
For a recent open source project, I had to take down the OSX version of our pre-built client because it would not let users run the app without giving them a warning and force them to change their settings.
It's extremely restrictive. Especially to a developer. Even after 2 years, I could not get over having to push the Cmd button with the side of my thumb.
I'm at least 2x faster and more productive on a Dell or HP machine with Ubuntu or Kubuntu installed. The workspaces feature and customizability on Kubuntu is mind-blowing.
Apple claimed that IaP was being circumvented.
This is just absurd. No serious SaaS company is going to run their users through some crazy 12-tap flow that sends people through their support pages to “cheat” Apple and signup for a paid plan. What would the conversion rate be for a flow like that? 0.00000000002%?
If a developer flagrantly violates the policy by implementing their own signup and payment collection on the first screens, we could all empathize a bit more with Apple’s position. Instead Apple chooses to throw the book at people for immaterial “violations”, without any regard to developers who are trying to participate in good faith.
On top of that, it seems to happen at random because years of App Store reviews could go by before a reviewer stumbles into the support link that’s been buried deep in the app for 3 years. Boom, there’s your conversion event that gets you to 0.00000000002%.
Basically Apple is enforcing the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.