While I agree that Apple should probably relax their rules, this list of "exceptions" is not particularly compelling.
The majority of them are companion apps for physical products/memberships for which the rules around in-app purchases do not apply: Tesla, Soho House, Wells Fargo, Blue Cross / Blue Shield, WeWork.
Github has a free tier and doesn't require a paying membership to use.
Netflix is a digital content app for which there is a specific exemption under rule 3.1.3(a).
Bloomberg and Salesforce might also fall under the 3.1.3(a) exemption for "access to professional databases", I'm not sure.
App Store Connect is their own app. Apple's apps have always been able to use private APIs and do other things the rest of us can't.
The only other app in this list that is actually similar to Hey in terms of product type and monetization is Fastmail. (And it looks like Fastmail was recently asked to add IAP to their app as well.)
The rules around in-app purchases have been well known for a long time (by iOS devs at least, clearly not by the general public or even tech people).
Releasing an app that does not follow the rules and then publicly complaining when it is inevitably rejected is starting to seem more like a guerrilla marketing tactic more than anything else. (And a clever one too, I don't think yet-another-email-app would have gotten nearly the same amount of press coverage that this has.)
Part of the whole point is the relation to the quote at the start.
In every one of those apps signing up "doesn't work" which goes against the stated goal of ensuring that users can download the app and expect it work. How can it work if you can't even sign into it because you can't sign up for it and they can't even tell you how to.
Except the app was not rejected for failing to meet the standards of the quote. It was rejected for failing to meet the App Store review guidelines.
This whole website is a strawman built against the false claim that you're not allowed to require a login to access your app, which has never actually been true.
Except the policy doesn't create the trend. The Tesla app won't work if you don't own a Tesla. The Wells Fargo app won't work if you don't have a Wells Fargo account. These apps have external requirements by their very nature, the App Store policy does not change that.
You can't sign up for a Wells Fargo online user account without first having a Wells Fargo bank account. Therefore there is an external requirement.
Update: I just double checked. The Wells Fargo Android app and Wells Fargo iOS apps behave identically. You are immediately presented with a login screen upon launch. There is no signup flow inside either app but you can click a link that opens a web browser with a link to the registration page.
Your claim that the App Store policy is responsible for this trend does not hold up, considering the Android version is not subject to the same policy but behaves the exact same way anyway.
Update 2: Checked a few more apps. The Android versions of Github and Fastmail don't allow you to sign up in the app either. You are only presented with a login screen just like the iOS versions.
Fair enough, but it's not like they couldn't provide a more direct signup option in the Android version if they wanted to. The fact that they didn't is telling, IMO.
To circle back to the original point, blaming Apple for the "trend" of not being able to sign up inside of apps is clearly nonsensical.
>While I agree that Apple should probably relax their rules, this list of "exceptions" is not particularly compelling.
Yeah, the first few items on the list were relatively convincing, but the convincing-ness takes a nosedive further down the list. I mean, who in their right mind would compare hey to a companion app for a car?
It's not about that. It's about the VP's explanation being disingenuous. Apple's issue isn't that the app doesn't work, despite their claim. It's that they can't collect money. They should just be honest.
I too think it’s a poor response from the head of the App Store but we shouldn’t pretend to think we know the “actual” reason that much better because we are given a link to the ever-changing App Store regulations webpage.
The actual reason is the app does not follow the rules for in-app purchases. This hasn't really been in question. Anyone who has been an iOS dev for more than a year or two will be familiar with the App Store review guidelines.
Are the rules overly restrictive? Yes. Due they place an unfair burden on third party developers? Probably. But let's not pretend they are a mystery.
Wow it's almost like Apple designed their rules so that most of the key businesses in this world don't pay an insane 30% of their revenue to Apple. Almost like Apple say...doesn't want to discourage important institutions from providing services Apple's customers might expect from iOS. Crazy coincidence. /s
I mean, 1) why is anyone surprised by this? 2) If you make an app that sells cat videos you would also qualify for the digital content exemption, "key business" or not.
Why would anyone be angry or frustrated that "Apple designed their rules so most of the key businesses in this world don't pay an insane 30% of their revenue to Apple"?
Because the reality is that smaller players are getting fleeced in this scheme. By design. And bigger players don't have to play the same ball game. By design. Not surprising, just more of the same seen everywhere, and very frustrating.
Sending email is distribution of “digital content”.
This old game of wobbly semantics to describe “organizing electrons in silicon” is pretty much done isn’t it?
Society has hit an information entropy. Where the masses get one message “austerity” while the elites tirelessly bike shed the rules, struggling to maintain their old epistemology as they die off from natural causes, which is extinguishing their norms instead.
Varoufakis is right: leadership of the old generation is out of net new ideas and has us nickle and diming old ones to keep up the ruse.
Their only endgame, which isn’t driven by more than an intuition, is keep the hierarchy story looking like it did decades ago.
This is just biological survival instinct. There’s absolutely no real reason to carve up “digital content” into more than electrons zipping through silicon, except for financial Machiavellianism.
Releasing an app that does not follow the rules and then publicly complaining when it is inevitably rejected is starting to seem more like a guerrilla marketing tactic more than anything else.
And be sure to do it right before WWDC. We've seen this play before.
I've been a freelance iOS app developer for almost a decade. Apple has always operated this way. They have rules that are somewhat vague, and they choose when they want to enforce them and how they should be interpreted.
For example: you weren't allowed to show device bezels in app store screenshots for a long time, even though all the major apps did exactly that. If you were a small time developer though you would get rejected, sometimes, with that cited as a reason. There's currently the same problems with asking for app reviews. Everyone wants to filter users through the "do you like the app? Yes/No" popups to try and make sure only good reviews get through. It's explicitly stated in the app store guidelines that you have to use the system provided prompt that doesn't allow for that, but it's only selectively enforced. So if your competition is filtering reviews but you aren't allowed to, you're at a huge disadvantage. And there's plenty of other ambiguous rules like that. In app purchases being a major one. You could have your app on the store for a year and then suddenly get a rejection notice on a bugfix update that they don't like your payment setup.
Point is: Apple will do absolutely whatever they want, and you have zero recourse. If you're a small developer it can kill you. Plenty of people will say "just follow the rules and you won't have a problem", but the rules are arbitrary and selectively enforced. For example, there was the Steam Link app debacle that Apple decided to reject after it's big release, and they literally just wrote new rules to exclude it[0]. And if they allowed alternative app stores I think you could excuse a lot of it. But they don't. And they never will unless they are forced to.
The press loves app developer David vs Goliath Apple stories.
Our now-shuttered startup Gliph brought in-app Bitcoin transfers to the App Store for the first time in 2013. Apple allowed the behavior for seven months before I got a call telling me it had to be removed.
Bitcoin was hot enough that our blog post generated a fair amount of press for our little startup. [1] and I also published the company's appeal publicly.
However, I did so with great trepidation about angering someone at Apple. [2]
Our approach did not seem to help things at all, though Apple did end up allowing the Bitcoin transfers to be brought back about 7 months later.[3]
--
One thing I find notable about this site and Hey!'s behavior on this is the scorched earth approach to the response. Basecamp seems ready, to go to "thermonuclear war" (as Jobs would say) on this one. People are hearing about Hey alright.
Hey's little mini site is convincing enough and it broadly escalates things. Particularly by using John Gruber's words against Apple, ouch!
This situation opens an unnecessary and distracting attack surface for Apple, in advance the most important developer event possibly in a decade.
Apple should have just let this app do its thing.
This whole situation reminds me of how Apple tried to make Apple Store employees pay for the time they were getting their bags searched. Bad PR that should never have happened. [4]
I honestly think they could turn it around and allow underdogs.
everybody roots for david vs goliath, but the story would change if goliath was actually defending the little guy.
maybe make in-app purchases cheaper for smaller apps.
or do something to take small reasonable developers under their wing. like first year 10%.
Another thing they could do, sort of the opposite, is to take 30% for smaller apps, but have a published scale as volume increases. presumably with scale apples costs would amortize, and developers would be in for the long haul.
They could also maintain 30% if a particular app has lots of chargebacks, like you would have with abusive apps.
Humans applying policy will be inconsistent. The alternative is Google where algorithms apply policy, and if they misapply a policy to you're simply screwed.
I think the inverse to "Apple employed humans make a judgement call" is "Apple is no longer allowed to control their App Store". I don't like that option, because the curated App Store is a big reason why I bought an iPhone.
This is not my argument. It is not just inconsistent, it is selective. Major players are given far more leeway than small ones. There are obvious antitrust concerns, such as Spotify being required to give Apple 30% of it's revenue for it's service that competes with Apple Music[0]. There are concerns about freedom of speech and information, such as Apple removing an app that notified the user when there was a U.S. drone strike[1], or the Hong Kong protest app that China pressured them into removing. Or blocking all VPN apps in China.
And even if the argument at the end of the day is "I don't care; I like having a curated app store", why does that imply that Apple should be able to force users into only using theirs? How do you lose anything if users are allowed to install apps from other places, in some cases where there are serious human rights issues at stake?
It’s just one data point, but on the topic of IAP and revenue share, Spotify actually pays Apple 0.075% of its total revenue. It’s a 15% fee on 680,000 out of their 100,000,000 subscribers.
The 30% fee drops to 15% after one year, and Spotify hasn’t accepted IAP in several years, so everyone paying for Spotify through Apple is paying the 15% rate.
I do think larger clients should reasonably pay lower rates, as there’s a more equal/symbiotic value proposition between the two parties.
You can still sideload or use an alternate store on Android. The experience isn't very good, but it's still an option.
I think if the fees were split out people would lose their minds on more expensive apps because they'd recognize it isn't good value. Ex:
Hey: $70 / year
App Store Fee: $30 / year
Also, did Hey get the prices wrong or are they talking about keeping the prices the same and eating the 30%? If they want $99 in their pocket, they need to charge ~43% more. Assuming Apple takes 30% of the sale price:
- 99 * 1.43 = $141.57
- 141.57 * .3 = $42.47 for Apple
- 141.57 * .7 = $99.10 for Hey
So by taking 30% of revenue, it increases prices by 43% because if someone is taking 30% of your revenue, you need to increase your prices by 43% to break even.
I may be wrong as I don't have the rules under the hand but iirc Apple's rules state that the in-app purchases prices must be set as to not push users to go pay outside the app. So raising your price may result in a takedown of your app, meaning you have to eat the 30% if you want to stay on the store.
> I don't like that option, because the curated App Store is a big reason why I bought an iPhone.
You can have a curated app store but still...not gatekeep what software the user can install. Installs via web pages, app store listings that are deprioritized or hidden from the default search view. I'd go so far as they should be legally compelled to do that at a bare minimum.
There are myriad apps that users wanted, but Apple nixed them. Whether it's shady rentseeking like the Hey instance or content they find objectionable. How many times have social media sites like Tumblr or Reddit had to deal with their pearl-clutching over nudity? Screw them, they have no right. I can't even imagine how miserable desktop computing would be if that were the paradigm over the last 30 years.
And they do, if you want play store or huawei store instead of apple app store you can just get an android phone. Nobody is forced to buy an iPhone, there is no monopoly at play here.
I think there needs to be some distinction between apps that are the main product (or close to it) and apps that support another product (like there is npo point to having the app by itself, you should already have gotten the product/account before downloading the app). I don't know too much about Apple's rules to know if they use that criteria, but it makes sense to me.
An app to manage your Tesla makes no sense unless you own a Tesla. You probably (definitely?) created an account when you ordered your car, so you don't need to sign-up in app. I suppose people that could buy a used Tesla without a Tesla account, but I'm pretty sure you need to link the used car to a new account before you can manage it through the app with the new account, so it still doesn't make sense to offer in-app signup. I see no issue with the Tesla app being approved.
Some of the other apps do seem to be legitimate complaints. Netflix being an obvious one- it's totally plausible for someone to expect to download Netflix on their iPad and then pay through Apple. Netflix could easily offer that but doesn't (probably because of the 30% cut). Apple would gladly reject a smaller app, but they approve Netflix because too many users would complain if they couldn't get Netflix on their iPad.
Edit: one other thing I haven't seen whether Basecamp could just charge $141.43 per year if someone pays through Apple, so Basecamp would get $99 per year after Apple takes their 30% cut. They are allowed to offer outside subscriptions for multiplatform products, as long as those subscriptions are also available in-app. That seems like it would follow Apple's rules. People that don't care about money could sign up in-app, but most people will sign up outside the app.
>one other thing I haven't seen whether Basecamp could just charge $141.43 per year if someone pays through Apple, so Basecamp would get $99 per year after Apple takes their 30% cut.
They could.
>People that don't care about money could sign up in-app, but most people will sign up outside the app.
The problem is that the iOS app cannot in any way or form mention that a) you can pay for the subscription outside the application b) the price of the subscription outside of the application is different than inside the application.
> The problem is that the iOS app cannot in any way or form mention that a) you can pay for the subscription outside the application b) the price of the subscription outside of the application is different than inside the application.
Thanks. Having to hide the difference from customers is worth the fight IMHO.
> Edit: one other thing I haven't seen whether Basecamp could just charge $141.43 per year if someone pays through Apple, so Basecamp would get $99 per year after Apple takes their 30% cut. They are allowed to offer outside subscriptions for multiplatform products, as long as those subscriptions are also available in-app. That seems like it would follow Apple's rules. People that don't care about money could sign up in-app, but most people will sign up outside the app.
There's been couple of times when I've eaten the markup that comes with paying through Apple simply because that means that I can go into my iTunes subscriptions page, hit the "stop" button on it, and it's done. No buried unsubscribe links, no "tell us why you're leaving" quiz, no disputing charges on my card. It's done and over and I don't ever have to think about it again.
If third-party payment services become the norm on the App Store, I expect a steep decline in quality of unsubscribe experiences across the board.
Tesla is definitely one of the easier cases to think about, the rest are in a grey area.
But even with Tesla it's not 100% crystal clear. There might be some buyers who pick Tesla specifically because of the fancy tech features like Summon mode. It's impossible to use Summon mode without the app. So for one of those buyers, the app is an essential part of the purchase, just like HEY subscribers who expect to read emails on their phone.
I don't think every app comes with a clear label attached, but I think most people could decide which apps are the product and which apps are just a feature for the product. For argument's sake, I'll claim the core distinction to be if the only realistic alternative to use a product is through an app on another platform or through a web browser, then the app is the core product and not just a supporting feature. The product can live on servers, but if it weren't for the app then the servers wouldn't matter.
I can still drive a Tesla without the app. It's clear that the core product is car, not the app. Some people may have bought it because of a defining feature, but you are not paying $80k for Summon mode. You are paying $80k for a car that has Summon mode.
Wells Fargo offers almost all of their functionality through physical branches and ATMs. Having an app is just a feature, a bank account is clearly not an app.
I cannot use Netflix without an app or browser on my TV, phone, tablet, or computer. There are movies stored on servers, but I'm not paying $15/month unless I can watch movies. That means Netflix's core product is an app and per Apple's rules they should offer in-app purchases.
WeWork is a little harder for me. They are a real estate company but I'm not sure you could call WeWork and get a workspace over the phone nor could you do it in person (you can call a landlord directly, but that is not WeWork's product). I think their core product is that you can book a space online or with an app. I think they need to have in-app signup and purchases.
Github is the most gray one for me- once setup, I use it mostly through the command line. I could claim that the core product is not an app, but I don't honestly believe that. I use a significant part of GitHub's feature set through the browser (discovering repositories, clicking through links to read about a package before cloning it).
I just don’t think the distinction is actually as clear as you describe it. Most of these apps are clients for a server-based product that you’re paying for. One could argue that the Netflix app isn’t the product, it’s just a video player that you use to connect to the server that you’re paying to have access to. If Netflix just exposed .mp4 links in a web browser, then it would work fine in Safari on an iPhone.
Or imagine a cloud-based e-book service that you can just SSH into. Should Apple allow apps marketed simply as SSH clients, but not allow an SSH client branded with that e-book service?
I addressed this. It's not a watertight mathematically provable law, but I think that with the majority of apps, a reasonable person making a good faith effort would have the same conclusion as me. I said if it's the only realistic alternative is to use an app or browser. I also said that the product might "live" on a server, but if you can only access it via app or browser then the product is an app.
Most of these products are not clients. A client is something like an RSS reader, where one company makes app but interact with services/products from other companies. Netflix does not sell you a subscription to watch movies and then allow you to watch it with third-party apps. They do not expose .mp4 files, so saying "if they did this" isn't relevant. They try their hardest to force you to watch with their app.
Overall, your arguments are silly. People have common sense and can use it. Using misdirection in your words doesn't change what the functionality of the product is. Coming up with strange corner cases that don't exist and aren't viable products aren't good examples. Until an actual commercial e-book service that functions through SSH exists then Apple doesn't need to waste their time addressing it.
I'm not disputing the fact that, barring some controversial edge cases, most people could probably agree on the classification. My point is that Apple clearly appears to be claiming that there are some very clear rules that are followed strictly without any personal judgement about any particular app or company. A lot of their PR about this stuff has been of the form "we're not making any judgments about you, we're just following the rules" (never mind that it's their rules in the first place).
But I think that's pretty clearly not the case, and moreover, I think people might be just as upset if Apple's policies said "we just use our common sense to classify apps and determine which features they can use on our platform" and then appeared to apply those determinations inconsistently.
> one other thing I haven't seen whether Basecamp could just charge $141.43 per year if someone pays through Apple, so Basecamp would get $99 per year after Apple takes their 30% cut.
This is far from ideal for two reasons:
1) Some users will be paying 30% more just because they signed up in the app. How is this a good experience that protects the user?
2) most importantly, Basecamp loses the ability to manage the financial aspects of the customer relationship. They’re unable to give discounts, credit, refunds, add time to the subscription etc. It’s a hassle for all the back office management as now some customers come through a completely different billing + subscription platform.
> 2) most importantly, Basecamp loses the ability to manage the financial aspects of the customer relationship. They’re unable to give discounts, credit, refunds, add time to the subscription etc. It’s a hassle for all the back office management as now some customers come through a completely different billing + subscription platform.
I want to start by saying I think Apple is overstepping their bounds here and has been for years. But one reason I like the app store is because companies are generally terrible stewards. For example, I took my car to the dealer and the next week I get post cards for XM Radio (I will continue to get them for months because this has happened before). A few years ago I had a reoccurring donation to a popular Public Radio show. I was changing credit cards and was trying to update the subscription. There was no way to update it on their website or contact them to update (which included canceling). I sent email with no response. I ended up cancelling the card and with it my subscription. I'm now very skeptical about services that manage reoccurring payments.
The Tesla example is unfortunate to support he point because Apple doesn’t charge 30% on physical goods.
A funny idea, maybe some apps should sell a physical card, or wearable that gives you access to premium features, but it would be ecological.
Depending on what you were selling it would be forbidden under either 3.1.1 In-App Purchase or 3.1.4 Hardware-Specific Content:
> Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, etc.
> In limited circumstances, such as when features are dependent upon specific hardware to function, the app may unlock that functionality without using in-app purchase[...] You may not, however, require users to purchase unrelated products or engage in advertising or marketing activities to unlock app functionality.
I believe you can upgrade your tesla capabilities from the tesla app, say enable autopilot for $7000 or the model 3 performance upgrade for I believe $2000 (?).
Good start with compiling the list .. a couple more .. AirBnb, All airline apps. Maybe they have contracts with the big guys for some lump sum deal, or maybe they are just letting them go as they have to ... We developers already pay for the subscription, WWDC, a shiny iPhone / MBP every couple of years (to test and develop the new features :(, learn a language and sdks just for the Apple world - We Devs need Apple for sure, but hey they need us too (!) .. high time for a push back .. Apple makes tons on the devices, they need to stop robbing from us little guy developers. Apple do the right thing and drop this 30% altogether .. you will not miss it :)
I agree with everyone else here that Apple’s weird rules and the inconsistent way they’re enforced are both bad. But I don’t think the solution is as obvious as “drop the 30% cut”.
How should Apple go about making money from the App Store? Paid apps are dwindling off. They do charge a flat fee per developer, but it can’t be too large or they’ll lose all the indie developers, and there just aren’t enough developers overall to make that a viable business on its own. They could charge a flat fee to the developer per app download -- something really small, a few cents per download -- but then what about free apps?
What they want is to take a share of the profits from developers who are making money on their platform, while also supporting free apps free of charge. The 30% fee is their attempt to do that. The problem is that it’s easy to game the system and just run your payments outside their store. Hence all the silly rules to try to prevent that.
Maybe 30% is just too much. Would people complain as much if it were 10%, or 5%?
Or maybe they should just give up on App Store revenue and focus on hardware sales. But it would be a little weird for them not to have a direct incentive to improve the store experience for users.
Those are good ideas, yeah, but nothing is perfect.
The promotions one is interesting; I think it has the same pitfall as AdWords: if my app / web page is the best result for the user for a given search, why should I have to pay money to promote it? If Apple or Google is doing their job right, taking money for promotions is actively detrimental to users. Not that that stops AdWords, of course.
Charging the users would make sense. It’s a shame that we’ve all been trained to expect this stuff to be free.
I guess subscription-based stores are a decent approach? Like Apple Arcade. But that has downsides for users too -- you potentially end up paying multiple subscriptions (like most people do now for streaming TV) so it adds barriers to entry for new (possibly better) stores. Who wants to pay for yet another subscription service?
Apple has never had a problem with physical goods not paying the 30%. So WeWork, Tesla, AirBnb, airline tickets, etc would all be fine. The 30% cut was on digital goods as I recall. My last company sold things like gym memberships and bicycle rentals and Apple never had an issue with it. Although they did question us the first time we hit the App Store and the Mac App Store. Once we explained we weren’t selling digital goods we got approved.
Getting 30% from the whales and scammers is worth too much and a bit of bad PR or the loss of good apps isn't going to change that. They need the big players like Netflix, but after that scummy, high margin, do nothing, trash apps are the best for profits.
Yeah. A huge percentage of the stuff marketed to children and teens is pretty unethical IMO. The thing is, those are cheap to produce and have huge margins, so that's what everyone tries to make.
It's less risky to develop some skinner box slot machine because you aren't out much investment if it gets rejected. Plus, the digital goods are pulled from thin air, so anything you sell is pure profit.
Contrast that with a real app that provides a valuable service with backend costs and a subscription fee. There's a lot more investment to build an app like that, so getting rejected is a huge risk and, even at 15%, Apple's cut might be a big chunk of your margin.
Since Apple incentivizes low effort slot machines and detriments high quality apps, I feel like there's been an increasing portion of the app store is turning into what I consider garbage apps.
The subscription cut also creates the opposite scenario of what everyone is always parroting about iOS customers being profitable. They might spend more money, but they're definitely not more profitable (per customer) if you're paying 15% to a middleman.
Basically every app that is used to sell goods or as an add on to a physical product doesn't have to pay Apple a cut. And it makes sense: the app is free and only the means to access a backend service or a something that was paid separately. I just don't get why it wouldn't apply to HEY: no idea of how it works, but I can imagine that for $99/year you get more than a shiny UI. That is only the means to access a backend service that is entirely independent from Apple's ecosystem (and in fact can be accessed through several channels).
I tried to limit the list to apps where you couldn't get to _any_ functionality without logging in. AirBnB lets you browse around etc. Airlines let you look at dates / availability.
I included Wells Fargo, however, because I thought it was wild that they're able to provide straight web links to Safari to sign up for banking services, whereas Hey has to pretend like accounts are bestowed via divine intervention.
Why, then, did Apple decide to gerrymander its rules to extract rent from one industry and not the other?
Perhaps there's an ethical or philosophical argument why Apple feels entitled to one industry's revenue and not the other, but I haven't heard that argument.
Yea this is probably the best year to introduce unpopular, rent-seeking rules. You'll never be forced to see any of these people in person and the government has enough on its plate to even consider thinking about anti-trust issues.
I'm confused why they don't rip the bandaid off and just charge everyone at the same time though. Charging Tesla 30% probably isn't feasible but this seems like an ideal time to introduce fees for all companies that are currently allowed exemptions (Netflix, Lyft, Airbnb, Uber, Audible, Airlines etc). Yes they could put up a fight but at least some of them would cave.
Until the government gets involved, they are totally allowed to selectively and arbitrarily enforce the rules. Banning Hey but not Netflix just makes them look like hypocrites and makes them less money. Seems like the worst of both worlds.
You think Netflix would cave to apple on this? I don't think so. Netflix would just make it extremely public that Apple have blocked user access to the app on iOS. Apple is the one that will cave, not Netflix. I mean, come on, iPhones are popular but not even majority of the market.
> Charging Tesla 30% probably isn't feasible but this seems like an ideal time to introduce fees for all companies that are currently allowed exemptions (Netflix, Lyft, Airbnb, Uber, Audible, Airlines etc).
Since cars are physical goods, Tesla COULD freely sell the car in the app using Apple Pay, Credit Card, etc in the app if they wanted, just like Amazon, Walmart and other e-commerce apps do. They wouldn't pay the 30%, just the credit card fee.
Similarly, Lyft, Airbnb, Uber and some Airlines accept ApplePay, Credit Card, etc, all without the 30%, because it's a physical service, not software or a digital product.
Netflix and Audible just don't sell their stuff on the app. It's not an exemption, it's something predicted in the App Store terms: don't link to the signup/sales page. The problem here is that Hey is claiming that they should be allowed to use that rule that Netflix and Audible use.
I am amazed how many people on HN are defending Apple. I had the naive assumption that my fellow tech savvy would denounce this. The comments here are eye-opening.
It is as if a lot of people just don’t see or don’t care about monopoly or monopolistic behavior. The product is great, Apple is has the highest market cap of any company in the world, it’s founder has god-like status. What’s the problem?
A lot of people on HN also defend anti-unionistic behaviour.
It may sound unrelated but they're both the result of the American zeitgeist's blind commitment to free markets and unfettered capitalism. To be fair, it's worked well for the US economy (e.g. Silicon Valley) albeit at the cost of increasing the wealth gap and general "late-stage capitalism"-y behaviour.
Because it's not a monopoly. Apple is roughly half of the marketshare in the US, and dramatically lower than that worldwide.
They're also not saying that Hey can't be in their store, or even needs to pay them anything. Hey could offer a free tier and wouldn't owe Apple a dime. Basecamp already does this so they know it very well.
They certainly have a monopoly on "distributing software to iPhones." I don't get why no one makes this point. One could argue it's a monopoly they've earned. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But certainly there is a market for iPhone app distribution, and Apple has a monopoly in that market.
How so? Seriously. There seem to be lots of people who don't consider Apple to have a monopoly in any market, and I just don't get it. Can you explain the argument for that position?
Because there are meaningful alternatives to the iPhone on the market.
If I claim that a gas station has a monopoly within a three block radius, that might be technically true, but only because of the constraints I applied. It's not actually a meaningful distinction if the consumer can drive down a bit further and find another gas station.
Right, but when it comes to selling software to people who have iPhones — there's a market for that, right? — Apple clearly has a monopoly in that market.
Imo it's more like saying, "Foocorp in the US doesn't have a monopoly, since you can always move to Canada and buy from BarCo or one of its competitors there!" Well, Foocorp is still the only seller in the US, so they have a monopoly in that market.
> Right, but when it comes to selling software to people who have iPhones — there's a market for that, right? — Apple clearly has a monopoly in that market.
Sure. I also have a monopoly in the market of "selling lemonade on my front lawn". Is that a meaningful distinction?
> Imo it's more like saying, "Foocorp in the US doesn't have a monopoly, since you can always move to Canada and buy from BarCo or one of its competitors there!" Well, Foocorp is still the only seller in the US, so they have a monopoly in that market.
No one would consider moving to another country a realistic alternative. So in that situation, yes, there is a monopoly because the consumer does not have a realistic alternative. If a gas station is the only gas station in the city, then it too would have a monopoly in that city, because driving to the next city every time you needed gas is not realistic.
Is it anti-competitive? Apple literally told them how they could reapply the app in a way where they would owe Apple $0.
Which again, Basecamp already does. They know this is how it is and how to work around it, but they're pitching a fit because they don't want to do it.
I'm a bit ornery about this because Basecamp is using the plight of other developers now only because it suits their bottom line. Where have they been for the past decade? They've been raking in money off the App store for years.
There are a lot of rules lawyers in threads about Hey trying to figure out "tricks" that Basecamp or others could use to avoid the rule. That is not how this works. Apple is not a court, which (usually) plays by well stated rules, and cannot remake those rules at its discretion.
No, if you find a "trick" to get around Apple's rules[0], what happens is that you get blocked when they catch you. They might update the rules to explicitly ban what you did, but they'll gladly ban you first and change the rules later.
That's if you're little. If you're big (Google, Facebook, Uber), you might get a call from Tim Cook warning you that you need to stop what you're doing or you'll have trouble soon. Or perhaps they'll ban your cafeteria app, while leaving your consumer apps in the marketplace. Maybe you'll even get to negotiate, if you have enough leverage. But what won't happen is that Tim Cook will say "Looks like the rules don't cover this situation. Awwww, shucks!"
[0] There are some rules they don't care about (like marketing using push notifications), and enforcement of rules can be mixed. This is for the rules they care about.
It’s worth noting that courts and legal systems generally don’t work like that either. There are some examples of weird loopholes due to some specific wording of a law and things like that, but in general you can’t just get the best of the legal system because you “technically” did such and such. For example, you can’t scam someone by having a contract with extremely small print that they technically signed.
My favorite example of this was the attempt, by the Hunt Brothers, to "corner" the silver market in 1979/1980:
"But on January 7, 1980, in response to the Hunts' accumulation, the exchange rules regarding leverage were changed, when COMEX adopted "Silver Rule 7" placing heavy restrictions on the purchase of commodities on margin. The Hunt brothers had borrowed heavily to finance their purchases, and, as the price began to fall again, dropping over 50% in just four days, they were unable to meet their obligations, causing panic in the markets."
Hey are trying to market an app on the app store as a 'free' app. Not offering sign up also means they don't have to add the 'offers in app purchases'.
So they're advertising the app as free. Even though its $99 a year.
Apples 30% cut is obscene and should be less. But Hey are using a 'free' label to market their app.
I am not really invested in either party but this comment is plainly wrong. They aren’t using the free label to market their service any more than Netflix, Tesla or any of the other apps in OPs link
You're catching some flak here, but I think it's a fair point. It says "free", but all you get for free is... an icon on your home page and a login screen.
Apple could solve this by allowing a "Free, account required" descriptor/category for Netflix/Dropbox/etc/etc.
So "Free" is a lie, but one many other apps have used beforehand.
I think Apple solved this issue years ago because they got flack about "Free" apps that would have in-app purchases. Apps are not marked "Free" in the App Store. Instead it simply says "Get" to download the app.
They could add a "requires account" tag like they have "in-app purchases" but I don't think that would satisfy what Apple is looking for here (money).
the app is free. it's not a hey account, it's an app that lets you access your hey account from an iphone. the account itself has no dependence on the app.
Right. Enlightenment can come from imagining the app and the service as separate companies, i.e. the app being some third-party client for the service. The app, in such a case, clearly does not cost money. It's free. It just doesn't do much if you don't have the service; just like pet toys don't do much if you don't have a pet.
Apple crafts their sales pitch around being a secure device that has a lot of restrictions (which means you can't install what you want, but it also protects non-tech savvy people from messing up their device or being hacked)
It is a pretty well established model. I don't like it sometimes either, but you know what you are getting when you buy an iPhone. It isn't like they changed policy after you bought the device.
TVs used to come with circuit diagrams so that people could repair it themselves at home using standard parts. I've not seen anything like that in many years, even for far simpler appliances.
> TVs used to come with circuit diagrams so that people could repair it themselves at home using standard parts.
Nowadays a brand new high end +2000€ Samsung TV comes with ads (!) in the menu and the apps feel like they'd be running on a potato. With that kind of Smart TVs, the hardware won't be the issue since it'll be the software that will be obsole way before the hardware. Smart TV is not a promise, its a thread.
I feel like that's a disingenuous comparison, given how complex the electronics of appliances must be nowadays (disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea, my experience is strictly at the software level) - but the general principle should still apply to be able to use products that you own in a (non-harmful) way that you choose.
Still there are components were a schematic would be useful. For example a schematic of the power supply, since 90% of the faults that TVs have are related to that. A power supply is not that complex and having a schematic would mean that repairs would be simpler.
Also nowadays it would be useful to have some sort of debug port, for example a serial port to connect and have a CLI to do diagnostic, upload a new firmware, etc. They have these interfaces in the TVs but most of the time are either disabled or protected so the end user cannot use them.
That would mean you could fix it yourself and cut out their authorized repair program. Better to just not put release the schematics, but also not go after anyone that creates the schematics either.
See dishwashers, microwaves, Apple iPhones, and washing machines. Car manufacturers still publish schematics for their circuitry (for a fee)
Well pointed out, although critics will say, "it is not a bug, it's a feature", e.g. "walled garden life".
Imagine if you bought a Microsoft Surface and you could only use the Windows Store to download apps on your device.. People would be outraged, but since it's Apple it is "expected"...
Hint, if it is expected, that doesn't mean it's still ok..
It’s their store, and they get to pick what’s in it. If you want stuff not available in that store, you need a new store. You own the phone, but you agreed to only load software on it from the one store, as it has been for the last decade.
No, they need to allow other stores with different rules and different pricing models. If not, then their store needs to drop the anti competitive practices. This is what the EU investigation is about.
Until the EU decides, they don’t need to do anything. And when the EU decides, if they decide it’s not anti-competitive, they get to go back to doing nothing. You have a choice of what device you use, and if you don’t like all of the things that come with Apple products, vote with your money and use something else.
When you bought the device, did you expect it to run “Hey”? If Apple promised that, sue them. If not, you’re just confused about what you bought and probably shouldn’t handle your own money.
And neither does Apple. You are free to offer both in app and out of app subscriptions and charge different prices. You don’t have to sell your app in the App Store, you have to distribute it.
This makes me wonder if they could charge $99/year on their website but $999/year via in-app purchase. Basically a price so high that no one would realistically buy it from within the app.
It technically fulfills the requirements specified in the review guidelines but I suspect it would be frowned upon.
It's a good thing for Apple that WWDC isn't in-person this year. I wouldn't trust the developers in the audience to stay quiet and applause at the announcements this year...
I'm surprised that Hey! managed to create such a big public outrage about that issue. Years ago Spotify complained about the very same thing and given that Spotify has a much bigger userbase I kind of expected the outrage to be bigger.
I suppose a large share of the potential Hey customers work in tech and might have a better understanding of what the app store tax actually means. And the EU anti trust investigations probably play role too?
Everyone is home on their mobile devices waiting for things to happen. I don’t think this outrage is as widespread as it seems, we just live in a tech echo chamber that is resonating pretty loudly right now. And, it’s the weekend before WWDC, so Apple headlines grab extra attention. I think if this happened six months ago, no one would be talking about Hey and they’d have acquiesced by now.
I expected that the tech-echo chamber plays a role, but I was askeby friends what this discussion is all about. Said friends don't work in the industry and aren't really tech-savy either. Sure, is obviously tech focused, but it seems more widespread than back when Spotify sued.
I doubt that was a real factor, but maybe the webpage itself is. It is really well done: clear, compelling, and responsive, even. The Spotify website was more artistic, less visually readable, and didn't have as punchy points or counterexamples, at least to my memory.
Hey was extremely hyped before the launch. At least in certain tech / developer circle. And people have been wanting something new to email. With a waiting list of over 70K, and 10K from first day alone. People saying Hey is hyped up because of Apple is getting the story backwards. The waiting list is also not just filling in an email address but actually writing an email saying you want in. That is some friction involved and I have seen lots of people while interested but didn't bother with writing one.
Remember Hey isn't free. People on waiting list already knew this from day one. With 70K invite, that is $7M annual revenue already.
DHH also went on about making sure no mention of Sign up in Webpages as well as many other commonly known App Stores rules before the App was submitted. And many thought it would pass, and it did for 1.0.
It is the bug fix 1.01 update that was blocked Due to IAP reason. For most if not all iOS developers. This is new. So new that Fastmail didn't get their treatment until now. [1]
This new IAP rule force 30% on new sign up, as you could not even allow the App to be on App Store without IAP ( hence this website ). Along with the threat from Apple about pulling Hey from App Store, and finally their tone, which was like adding even more fuel to outrage, and I quote
Thank you for being an iOS app developer. We understand that Basecamp has developed a number of apps and many subsequent versions for the App Store for many years, and that the App Store has distributed millions of these apps to iOS users. These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years.
Is not exactly helping and got even more outrage from developers who dont even use Hey. To me that is about the most polite way from Apple saying fuck you. ( If the webpage author is reading this I suggest you include this quote on the webpage, or make a new site with all the popular useful free Apps that helped users but contributed noting to Apple. )
I know there are many who hate DHH and Ruby Rails, but seriously I cant see how he could have orchestra the whole thing as marketing. As if he knew about the IAP rule changes before hand.
Hey was really hyped, it was actually crazy. I'm happy to pay for my mail service, but 99€ for an individual plan seems pretty hefty to me.
There are regularly stories about iOS apps getting removed for odd reasons on the HN tops, but the Hey story blew up pretty quickly.
> I know there are many who hate DHH and Ruby Rails
I also I also heard that a lot of people hate DHH and his Twitter comment bubble doesn't seem to like HN. Either way, he is certainly not wrong about the issue. I also don't see how Hey would profit from marketing around that. First of all, Hey is pretty expensive and has a pretty narrow target audience as of now. Most people are perfectly happy with their free mail, people who aren't are probably already aware that those alternatives exist. Even more importantly, I don't see how they are going to profit by putting their App Store listing at risk. I doubt an E-Mail service is able so succeed if it doesn't offer native applications or at least a integration with third party clients. Since they chose to not support IMAP etc, Hey's iOS app is integral to the buisness. No app in the store, no profit.
On a side note, I don't know whether it's intentional or not, but the whole story is a great marketing campaign for HEY. Clashing with Apple made everybody learn about the app in a matter of days.
> David, I’ve got to I ask you, because so many people have said this. You’re very successful. Basecamp is excellent at marketing. Did you do this on purpose? Did you time this to create this firestorm before WWDC?
> I wish I was that smart. Imagine if I was that good at 4D chess. Imagine just the mechanics of this: first, you have to plant someone within Apple that approves the application, which, and then, what, I plant someone on Monday that then disapproves it? How does any of this work? How powerful do I have to be to orchestrate this?
They couldn't have relied on it getting rejected, but they must have been keenly aware that it was a possibility. What we're seeing is probably their contingency plan playing out.
They'll eventually probably capitulate. Maybe with a higher price on the IAP? They're very much making sure that Apple are earning their 30% through this campaign, though!
I would say that if anything Hey was hoping that Apple would reject their app specifically so they could become a cause célèbre, and ride the streisand effect,
They've done a great job organizing their protest campaign. I would be extremely surprised if it wasn't planned from the beginning. They are ultimately depending on Apple caving under pressure.
This seems unlikely. They are at real risk of having their 1.0 app pulled, and even if it remains it has real bugs. Additionally, until this week I don’t think any iOS developer would have predicted this rules clarification/enforcement.
That said, they were clearly ready to loudly react to whatever trouble did emerge.
To play devil's advocate, maybe DHH hoped it would get rejected so he could launch his protest campaign, then when Apple approved the app only to turn around and reject an update, he was given an even more exploitable situation than the one he had hoped for.
Who knows? All I know is if the end result is that Apple is held accountable by regulators and is forced to stop engaging in capricious anticompetitive behavior, then whether DHH is a master astroturfer or not doesn't matter much to me. The end result will have been good for us all.
Do you have any statistics breaking down how frequently mobile users access email via a PWA versus a dedicated app? Also surveys on the difference in user experience?
If not, please refrain from disingenuously advancing obviously problematic ideas. It adds nothing to the conversation.
It's not as though a statistic about how frequently mobile users access mail via a website is a measurement of some universal value. If that's the only way for iOS users to use Hey, then would find some users who are willing to do that.
What's wrong with this being put forward? I would go so far to say that this is one of the four main things that happen when an app is rejected from an app store.
1. Change the app.
2. Don't support the platform.
3. Sideload.
4. Direct users from that platform to the web version.
No push notifications, limits of 50mb on storage whereas a good email app requires around 500mb to 1.5gb including local indexes for quick search etc. Storage cleared after a week of no interaction. No way to do photo preview. No contact picker. No picture in picture API support.
And lots of other missing API's. Look at the WebKit forms and see how many developers are begging Apple to support them for years. The ignore any request.
The web browsers that meets the PWA requirements are Chrome, Edge, Firefox (to a large extent), Brave, Vivaldi, all available on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android.
Not Safari. And all browsers including Chrome and Firefox are just Safari under the hood (on iOS) so no completion for Apple. Apple does not even allow a competing browser engine.
I wouldn't call this "PWA support".
When I talk to friends at Google that work at Chrome, and tell them to convince Apple to support many of the features, they tell me that they have given up on them, and I can go talk to Apple if I want. They told me they're gonna keep progressing the web even if Apple wants to stay behind, they won't stop.
I've talked to people at Apple about this, they don't care. They always have a far fetched excuse. I know it's not the engineers fault, they are ordered by the upper management.
Instead of giving the money to Apple, we could easily reinvest it to grow.
That's true, and it's probably for this very reason. That said, at a minimum it's very possible to have a somewhat usable website on iOS. If ever that stops being the case, hopefully consumers will finally stop buying iOS devices.
It’s obviously intentional. I’ve never heard about Hey. Then today, first they post something else and now someone defrosts this tired whine about Apple monetizing, and Hey (whatever it is) tops the list. Sigh. Good work marketers, people seem to buy it.
No, though it’s invalidated for other reasons, the enumeration of which would here seem only to cause a resounding whoosh passing overhead.
It’s child’s play to orchestrate this. It amounts to getting thrown out of a bar for not wearing pants, and then putting up ishouldbeabletovisitbarswithoutpants.com. Not something that requires a man on the inside.
They didn't change anything in their app. How could they have known that Apple would suddenly enforce a rule on them that they had not previously enforced?
“Well, let’s ask Apple for some workaround for the 30%, skirt the rules a bit”
“They’ll never go for that”
“Of course not, but while it lasts we’ll get 30% more. Then once we get rejected, sooner or later, we’ll write some blog posts and suddenly a bunch of nerds will see us as the brave underdog“
It's every independent developers benefit. The guy "DHH" - also the maker of ruby on rails said that he wants the rules to be consistent and changed for EVERYONE.
Why is Apple's revenue here even percentage-based at all?
It makes zero sense.
According to Apple they need this revenue cut because of the cost of keeping the platform running.
If I offer a subscription in my app for 1$/month vs 10$/month what marginal expense is being incurred that apple deserves an extra $2.70 for the higher price?
This is my big problem with it too. The cost of maintaining the app store and the search is the same no matter what the app is. It should be a fixed fee.
On the other hand the argument is that all the $0 apps are being subsidized by the paid apps, so they went percentage based so that the cheap apps didn't have a huge fee. It would mean the cheapest paid apps in the app store would be a lot more to absorb the fixed cost, or if they shared it evenly, then there would be no free apps.
And users are entitled to better app stores. In other words, users are entitled to chose between businesses according to their abilities in utilizing their profits to deliver more value.
If there were competing app stores available on iOS, then we could say they are really entitled to that profit. But we don't know how much of this profit reflects the value they brought versus the rent they were able to get due to gatekeeping the only bridge into iOS-land. So no, we can't for sure say they are entitled to the entirety of that profit.
You’ve seen through it, congrats: they are pricing based on value, not cost.
McDonalds, Nike and Gillette do this too. Hey, maybe you’re doing it yourself: is your salary really the cheapest way for you to produce the work you get paid for?
Do you price your subscriptions purely by the marginal expense of serving the content/service to another customer? Or do you price them according to what the market will pay for your product?
It's not different, both are price discrimination. If they cut the price for the expensive products' apps, they'll have to raise it for the inexpensive products' apps. If the inexpensive products can't afford it, they won't have an app.
I assume it’s percentage-based to allow for free apps (which are an important part of the overall ecosystem).
How do you allow free apps but still collect money? Maybe you could make a distinction between free and paid apps, and charge a flat fee to the paid apps, but then people would just make their apps free and process their payments separately anyway; essentially the same problem you hit with the 30% fee.
I have no horse in this race, but it has been interesting to watch the conversations grow over the past few days on this topic. Some people are so pro-Apple on this, clearly ignoring some of the primary complaints (like no option to not use the App Store for distribution).
As I get older, I can't help but wonder if these people are simply shareholders of Apple (or any company in a discussion like this). Is this good for society overall, to have such a strong financial incentive for so many people to willfully ignore the other side of important arguments?
> Is this good for society overall, to have such a strong financial incentive for so many people to willfully ignore the other side of important arguments?
Ironically, you're wilfully ignoring the other side of the important argument, and telling yourself the lie that anyone who disagrees with you must be being paid to do so, rather than listening to them and thinking about why they may think that way through their own reasoning.
Seems like a lot of these examples are intentionally ignoring the rules that allow them as exceptions just to build up a bigger strawman:
* Netflix: Reader app (reader is a special Apple exception for movies/tv, books, news... mass-market media)
* Github: Offers a free tier
* App store connect: I mean come on, it's an Apple dev tool
* Tesla: exception for physical goods
Basecamp/Hey knew this was going to happen. It's a wonderful marketing campaign for them.
Apple has zero incentive to change this. The buzz around it is niche and they'd lose countless dollars if they opened the door for exceptions. Basecamp knows this.
Also, where has Basecamp been for the decade prior? Funny how they're propping this as some rightgeous issue when it suddenly impacts their bottom line.
> Also, where has Basecamp been for the decade prior? Funny how they're propping this as some rightgeous issue when it suddenly impacts their bottom line.
I think they testified in the US Congress about Apple’s practices recently
I don't care about Hey and I'm not an iOS user, but I would love to see this situation, which represents something increasingly accepted as normal but that none of us quite understand, forced into a proper accommodation with reality.
One of the problems is that as a consumer, I like the features Apple implements with this.
I can just use Apple Pay instead of handing over my credit card. Don't want a subscription? No complicated process. No need to call a number. No need to email anyone. I just click to cancel and I am done.
As lousy as this is, the consumer experience is dramatically improved.
> As lousy as this is, the consumer experience is dramatically improved.
I also am a (generally) happy iPhone user. That being said, I don't think this is a strong argument in support of Apple's monopoly on the App Store.
Make it the default so that non-techy users have no difficulties, but other methods for loading/installing apps should be allowed. If Apple's experience truly is that much better for the consumer, then let it win on its merits.
I disagree about the value of the ecosystem but that's just personal taste. From an economic perspective, Apple is raking in cash and it only investing part of it back into feature development. They're 30% in-app purchase rent could just be 15 or 20% and they'd still be able to easily fund their UX teams. They're not charging what they need to operate, they're charging as much as the market can bare. And the market can bear a lot because users allow it.
Any company that wants to stay competitive. The entire point of this post is that iOS app makers are deliberately hurting their customer experience because their monopolist platform is charging unreasonable fees.
Unreasonable compared to what? Physical store markup? Other digital marketplaces like Google Play, Kindle? Spotify? Steam? If App makers in general are hurting and they are all paying the same 30% cut, wouldn’t the market have 43% markup?
You also act as if money on the store is coming from small Indy developers and not big corporations and mostly play to win games. Especially since the former big money makers have stopped allowing in app subscriptions.
Except that the developer gets 30% less money. I mean come on, it's effectively a commission on the transaction, and I think that such an high commission on the transaction would be illegal in most countries. But Apple is not a bank and can probably get around this (but isn't effecitvely acting like a bank in this situation? I wish that the EU investigates this behaviour)
Probably could be a lot less than $43/mo if Basecamp didn't feel the need to spend 7 figures on a domain.
They're not filling some massive need; it's yet another email service. If they can't justify it at $142 a year how do they justify it at $99 a year? You reap what you sow.
Unfortunately Apple's intention is that you would not hear about an alternative way to pay for the subscription and that the alternative way is cheaper.
I mean if you partnered with Target to sell your shampoo I think they would be rightfully pissed if the bottles you sent them to put down said something like "Buy it on our website instead for 30% cheaper!"
I imagine that if a consumer sees a product at Target, they have an idea that the product might be cheaper somewhere else. However, do consumers have an idea that if they seen an in-app purchase that the exact same thing might actually be on sale somewhere else and that it has a different price?
If the app says that "One year HEY subscription" is $142 and the app is from HEY itself, what reason is there to believe that it's not just the plain old price of HEY?
I think this point is worth highlighting. Although I'm not at all on Apple's side here, they are offering something of value. What galls is that they're demanding 15-30% of all revenue for it. Payment processing simply isn't that costly, and I doubt the app store is that expensive either.
They're not charging for the payment processing though. They're charging a premium because you're using their platform/store as part of your sales funnel. They know that being able to sell your stuff on iOS devices is worth a lot of money and that you'll make more money after the 30% cut than if you didn't sell in the store at all.
Apple knows that customer acquisition is extremely expensive outside the store and is charging accordingly.
I do too. But, a better middle-ground needs to be found which services both consumers and developers. It could literally be as simple as something closer to a 90/10 split.
Paying 10% of your revenue for them to usurp your customer relationship seems like a bad deal to me.
For developers I think a possible strategy would be to sell two products; standard edition and iOS optimized. Charge +30% for the iOS version since Apple users are (supposedly) willing to pay more.
Charging iPhone users more was actually one of the suggestions Phil Schiller made. I'm pretty sure Spotify charges more for people who subscribe from within the iPhone app. They made a lot of noise a year or two ago about this and ended up with this approach.
Personally, I'm very skeptical of subscription options since many companies are bad actors; making it difficult to cancel or throwing adds and promotions at you.
A lot has to do with how it is framed. I think Apple would have less pushback if they charged 50% and told developers, we're providing the devices, the user base, the app store, the promotion, the dev tools, the payment processing, you're providing the app. We each need each other so let's split revenue 50/50. Seems it would be tougher to argue that, than 70/30 which is an arbitrary declaration.
Why though? Apple is well-aware of their worth in your sales funnel and know that customer acquisition outside of their store/devices is a lot more expensive.
Nobody would be complaining if you Apple's user-base wasn't so juicy that your best option is forking over 30%. If it was easy to acquire customers outside the store it wouldn't even be an issue.
Forking over 30% isn't the best option. It's the only option.
If Apple had unlisted apps that didn't show up in the store listings and required a click through from your website to get to the app's store page, I bet some developers would opt for that if it meant they didn't have to pay the 30% tax.
Right, but the value isn't that you're listed in the app store, the value is that you can collect payment on-device. The store isn't the retail space, the whole device it.
You could not release an app in their store and ignore their existence entirely. But that's ridiculous and you can't afford to do that because their user-base is so valuable. And so Apple charges a premium because they know that.
This is the second time in less than a day that you've broken HN's guideline against accusations of shillage, astroturfing, etc. It says this:
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
That rule is in place for good reason: the overwhelming majority of such accusations are pure imagination, which makes them poison. It's also a cheap, aggressive internet tactic, which makes it ubiquitous. Cheap ubiquitous poison is an environmental hazard, especially on a site which is trying to deviate from internet default, so it needs to be regulated. This rule is how we do that here. There is plenty of past explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... for anyone who wants it.
I only repeat the argument so I get to hear a bunch of people’s takes on it. Once you’re deep in a thread it’s pretty much only you and the person you’re replying to.
I don’t think the App Store is the source of customer acquisition. I think being able to sell on iOS devices is the source of customer acquisition. Being able to upsell a user to your premium service right there on the device is the valuable thing that costs a premium.
This is a really ambiguous, unusual, and (in my opinion) inappropriate use of the term "customer acquisition".
The App Store is a marketplace that connects people developing for a platform (iOS) to customers using devices compatible with that platform. It is also the only marketplace that does this. In this way, it is best thought of as a (monopolistic) distribution channel.
But why is the “App Store” the distribution channel and not the device itself? I mean Apple would be within their right to just not allow 3rd party apps at all on their devices so why is it weird that they take a cut from anyone who wants to set up a booth on their land?
Like it feels wrong to punish a company for not closing their platform like consoles do to any only working with a few select partners.
Ordinarily I would be inclined to say that as a "private marketplace", Apple is entirely within its rights to selectively enforce rules (and whims) like this so as to maximize their profit, but surely there must be a limit when about 45% of US smartphone users (so about 36% of the population) have an iPhone [1]?
At this point this is no private dark pool, but a public market place, the transactions on which affect an unfathomable number of consumers, and Apple should and must be subject to the level of government regulation and oversight that governs other public market places like the NYSE and the CME. I suspect that this will come sooner or later, or otherwise these markets will be broken up entirely, but behavior like this from Apple only hastens this outcome.
I dislike the 30% IAP cut as much as the next developer, but what is it about perceived tech monopolies that bring out the hyperbolic comparisons?
> Apple should and must be subject to the level of government regulation and oversight that governs other public market places like the NYSE and the CME.
First it's Facebook should be treated as a Public-as-in-Government Square, and now the App Store should be governed like the stock market?
I think Apple's morally in the wrong here. But the solution isn't just going to be just pulling some lofty regulation out of thin air and trying to re-apply it.
> But the solution isn't just going to be just pulling some lofty regulation out of thin air and trying to re-apply it.
That's exactly what the solution will be. Apple will eventually be responsible for ushering in regulation that kills software distribution monopolies like the App Store. It'll be an interesting new landscape to be in for a lot of markets.
I’ve been working on a side-project SaaS (primarily the backend to this point) and a few weeks ago I’d decided I didn’t want to deal with the JavaScript front-end world (I deal with it at work) and thought I’d build mobile and desktop clients instead. At this point I’m ready to reverse my decision. Screw Apple and Google. They’ve built these App Store ecosystems to drive sales/adoption of their platforms (Apple sells more hardware and google collects more eyeballs.)
Somewhere along the way they forgot that apps are why people use their devices/platforms.
So nice for the people of Basecamp to be fighting the good fight for everyone and the small developers. It’s not like they were perfectly fine with the system as long as it didn’t affect them, being one of the “famous” companies out there, while independent developers and small start-ups had to deal with this for years and years.
I was excited about hey before, and even though I don’t agree and don’t like the way the App Store works, I find Hey and the superstars behind it so hypocritical and annoying now. It’s funny how we hate here AMP and other technologies that are killing the open web, but we’re fine with a closed email system that locks you in Basecamp’s walled garden.
I mean, they give you MBOX export and forwarding forever even if you stop paying them. What else would you want them to do? The feature stack would be impossible to implement on IMAP, and all of the features would have to be exposed in every client anyway. They are trying to change the paradigm for people who hate how email works today, and I don't think that'd work if they said "Okay, first, add this new address to Mail on your iPhone. Cool. Now if you go on our website you'll get a great email experience."
(With that being said, there's no reason they couldn't publish an API so someone else could write a client...)
> I was excited about hey before, and even though I don’t agree and don’t like the way the App Store works, I find Hey and the superstars behind it so hypocritical and annoying now.
I don't understand this sentiment. You don't like the way the App Store works and a company comes along and is willing to fight against Apple for it, and then you start disliking them? Why are they hypocritical? They are pointing out flaws and being loud about them. Yes, I am aware that it's because it aligns with their financial/strategical interests, but ultimately it's a good thing that they are pressuring Apple, no?
> It’s not like they were perfectly fine with the system as long as it didn’t affect them, being one of the “famous” companies out there, while independent developers and small start-ups had to deal with this for years and years.
What about Netflix, GitHub and all of other companies who are able to get away. They are apparently big enough that Apple cares about them to bend the rules; why aren't we annoyed that they're not willing to stand up for other developers as well? They certainly should have some way of pressuring Apple.
> It’s funny how we hate here AMP and other technologies that are killing the open web, but we’re fine with a closed email system that locks you in Basecamp’s walled garden.
How is Hey "a closed email system"? It sends and receives emails using SMTP. Closed source email clients is far from a new invention and
The client doesn't use SMTP, you send your email to their server, probably using a json payload. They then send it for you over SMTP. Since the client doesn't use SMTP or POP/IMAP, you can't use Hey with a traditional email program, you must use their client.
I think that’s the whole point though. SMTP/POP/IMAP are pretty bad protocols, especially for mobile. Also they imply that the email client/server have to work in certain ways but hey! Want it to work in different ways
Last year in front of Congress (while actively developing this new product). They never mentioned it despite Basecamp being in the app store for years and paying Apple $0.
The "oh my this is shocking and unfair" act is all a ruse. They've been well aware of this since the onset, they even copied Netflix's app text so they can feign "see we're just like them!" despite knowing they're not.
Last week, effectively every iOS developer would have looked at their implementation and predicted App Store approval. It’s important to understand that because if you just read Apple’s rejection letter (you’ve read it as you repeated a talking point from it), you might think Apple was just clarifying a rule familiar to app developers.
I suppose you’re not affected by app store policies. Otherwise you’d be extremely grateful to DHH to step up and fight publicly, instead of trying to deal with apple in private or just cave in.
It has never felt so close to actually breaking up apple tight grip on its developer community, and it’s all thanks to him.
Because they are being ridiculous already. It’s one thing to help developers and try to bring up their stories and issues with the App Store, it’s another thing to come up with ridiculous examples (Tesla, banking apps, AirBnB and so on, that have nothing to to with SaaS, subscriptions and IAP) and this insane campaign for their own product.
It should be noted that this website is not created by Basecamp, but is a personal project by someone else. Yes, they are giving Hey free marketing, but this is not an official attempt at marketing Hey.
I don’t think anything will change unless a strong class action and/or monopoly suit is brought against Apple and I often wonder why we haven’t seen one yet.
The EU's new antitrust investigation [1] might be close enough to a monopoly suit, just likely to be slower and more drawn out. It had the desired effect against Internet Explorer though last time around, I guess.
Relevant quote from investigation announcement: "The investigations concern in particular the mandatory use of Apple's own proprietary in-app purchase system and restrictions on the ability of developers to inform iPhone and iPad users of alternative cheaper purchasing possibilities outside of apps."
Apple also doesn't allow any browser technology other than their built-in WebKit so all browsers are internally the same on iOS.
They also doesn't support free VP9 video coded because they are part of competitive FFMPEG.
I didn't like Apple due to this gatekeeper/walled garden but I started to hate it more after watching "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine" documentary. Such a big company and still they did illegal option backdating, avoiding tax in Ireland, etc.
It needs more time for people to realize their mistake of supporting this company.
Google scrapes info and displays it in widgets above links to the actual content. Google charges trademark holders AdWords ransom to protect searches for their own brands.
Amazon kills OSS business models by offering managed OSS services on AWS at an unbeatable cost. Amazon picks off the best performing market place categories with Amazon Basics ‘recommended’ competitors.
The list goes on and on.
Tech is an industry defined on building scale and then collecting rents. Apple IAP is just the current outrage but the entire industry is working towards building the next ‘platform’ for others to sharecrop on.
I can use Google Chrome, and still use a non-Google search engine. I can use a Kindle, and still read DRM-Free epubs.
Yes, all the major tech companies are engaged in rent seeking. But Apple is the only one that says users must either must pay rent or throw away their hardware.
The App Store and its policies are not the problem. The App Store is Apple's store, just like Amazon.com is Amazon's store. But the App Store shouldn't be the only way to get software on my phone. And no, reinstalling apps from a computer every seven days doesn't count.
(The semi-exceptions are game consoles. I don't like that either, but since they're single-purpose devices I find it much less bad.)
These things are true; and also a significant component of Apple's value proposition. An Apple customer can be sure they will:
1) Never need to learn what a "sideload" is
2) Never be exposed to Apps that havn't been vetted by a trustworthy party (in this case Apple)
Apple is taking the opportunity to milk app developers, but they've done an effective job of positioning the milking process so that it is done in the user's interests. It is quite possible that things like this 30% App Store tax are one of the reasons why iPhones remain so prominent.
I see this a lot, and to be honest, this 'Apple products are free from malware' meme has been carried on as long as I can remember in one form or another since the early Mac days. The amount of people that used to say they used Macs because 'they didn't have viruses' is about the same as the people who say 'I use iphones because Apple makes sure I'm safe'.
It's been Apple's marketing strategy for a long time, despite being slightly exaggerated, early Macs did have viruses and yes, malware makes its way onto the app store.
But Apple's marketing strategy sure has been working a long time.
And yet, even after being vetted malware still gets in
I don't remember ever seeing Apple promise that 100% of apps will be 100% safe 100% of the time. Can you provide a link?
Apple's review process is done by people. People make mistakes. Things get through when bad people are trying to hide that they're doing bad things. But I'll take Apple's 1-in-a-million mistake environment over the anything goes Android environment.
> These things are true; and also a significant component of Apple's value proposition
You're describing the value of an app store, not the App Store. So the problem is not the value proposition, the problem is Apple's monopoly on this value proposition. It is why we can't have a Google iOS App Store, Microsoft iOS App store etc. list from which the user can pick, which would completely satisfy the convenience and peace of mind criterion, would increase competition regarding the cuts, vetting quality, curation quality etc.
> An Apple customer can be sure they will: (1) Never need to learn what a "sideload" is, and (2) never be exposed to Apps that haven't been vetted by a trustworthy party.
But Apple customers can be sure of that anyway--just don't sideload apps. Anything essential is going to want to be in the App Store, in order to reach customers.
> But Apple customers can be sure of that anyway--just don't sideload apps.
Well, no. At some point they'd need to know what it is to decide if they wanted it or not. At some point they'd encounter an App that isn't in the App store and have to figure out sideloading. We've got a whole heap of people commenting here today who give off a distinct "I want to bypass the App Store" vibe. User hat on, I'd rather they were forced to use it.
I don't think there is enough reflecting here on just how critical a phone is. At the extremes, the US government sometimes targets predator drones based on phone GPS. I suspect an enormous number of phones contain compromising pictures. Phones contain detailed logs of where I am, who I'm talking to, and potentially access to actual records of what was said.
I really don't want to be in a situation where 'Wowfunhappy' is executing arbitrary unknown code on a phone owned by me or my family. I don't want Google and Facebook browsing through and indexing this stuff either. Apple isn't even a good gatekeeper, but they are much better than nothing.
> I don't think there is enough reflecting here on just how critical a phone is.
But see, I'm think that's exactly what I'm doing--the app store gives China an easy way to take safety apps from protestors. A phone is too important for it to be out of the user's control.
I understand the security implications, but when I weigh the societal issues, Apple's model seems much more dangerous.
So the solution to not making people want to sideload is to not let anybody sideload? I hate solving problems by destroying value. It's like solving the real problem of wealth inequality by taking billions from the rich and dropping it in the ocean.
Maybe... Just putting this out there. Just maybe... Instead of having your phone double as an ad delivery platform, and actually fully embracing Open hardware/software standards, and making sure the innards of your phone's operating principles are absolutely visible to you, you wouldn't have to trust your safety to people that look at you like cattle.
Imagine a world, where your Telco or anyone else for that matter can't remotely tell your phone to turn on. A world where you and only you have ultimate control over your phone, and where instead of millions of engineer hours going into making your phone convenient for developers to utilize, it is instead made easier for the user to actually understand.
That is the world I want to see. Hell I want to be part of making. I'll be damned if I can figure out how to make it work with our Market's current optimization function.
I mean, I agree with you. I'm right there with you. But you and I both know that that model won't work for most people. They'll be in the same place they are today—having to trust when other people tell them their phone is safe.
Incidentally, to the last paragraph, you can help make it work—go work on Linux mobile UX/UI. Things like the PinePhone and the Purism Librem 5 exist, and there's a market for them, they're just missing a polished user experience.
>If they became a cultural phenomenon I'd bet that Apple would magically reinterpret their rules.
Please trust me on this but, even if your app is far and away the #1 grossing app on the app store and hundreds of media outlets have literally used the term "cultural phenomenon" to describe it, Apple is still a huge stickler on the rules and it still takes forever (and a lot of stress) to get approved, every single update.
This applies even if your CEO has Tim Cook's personal cellphone number and talked to him about the issues with app store approval a week before, in person.
Yes, but Apple would have a lot less power if developers could threaten (even theoretically) to go around the App Store.
Even now, major apps do have power. Unlike Hey, Netflix and Amazon are at least still in the App Store, and Amazon is even allowed to sell video rentals through their app without going through Apple's payment system: https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203294/amazon-prime-vide...
Edit: My posts probably read like contradictions. I see it like this: (1) The safe and vetted App Store is a part of the iPhone's appeal, which (2) Apple is currently enforcing through anti-competitive tactics. If Apple wants to maintain the App Store as a product differentiator (which of course they do), they should have to do the work to keep developers happy. Where "keep happy" means very basic things like not taking a full 30% of their revenue.
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video as digital video content providers are specifically exempted from the IAP rules according to section 3.1.3(a) of the App Store review guidelines.
It's not the developers that are being milked up, it's the consumers. The 30% tax is transferred over to you by having a higher price when buying from the IAP.
Apple should then rent their hardware out then or provide long-term leasing. If Apple is selling devices for ownership, then the device should truly be owned. I would rather they be honest, and lease the device out (even for a fixed sum for an unlimited period of time), than to claim ownership.
I don’t agree with that explanation of the gaming console exception. Modern consoles are actually quite similar to smartphones in the breadth of their functionality. To be consistent I think you’d need to include consoles, most smart TVs and media streamers, and even tech-heavy cars.
My concern with phones isn't really that they're general-purpose per se, but that they're many people's primary computer--if not their only computer. Game consoles don't have that level of importance in our lives.
Gaming consoles aren't general purpose computers. You're not going to do banking, email your boss, find a lover, or order groceries from them. They're unnecessary leisure commodities.
There are also three major consoles, PC, Steam, and a ton of other ways to distribute games. It's a highly competitive landscape. If you want a phone, you've got only two options.
DOJ, burn the Apple and Google monopolies to the ground.
> If you want a phone, you've got only two options.
That's not true at all. There's 2 primary OS choices, but on the Android side there's dozens of manufacturers, all with their take on things. Android is not a single option, it's hundreds. You even have choice of app stores. There's even options that have zero Google at all - like the Huawei P40 Pro. Or for an older take, silent cirlce's Blackphone or Amazon's Fire Phone. And even if you are in the very small minority that actually buys a Google phone, they even provide instructions on how to unlock the bootloader & flash a different OS: https://source.android.com/setup/build/running#unlocking-rec...
Android if Google as far as I am concerned, for now. Lets hope Huawei gets it's store off the ground fast. But for now: no Google Play Service, and Android is a brick.
I think gaming consoles are general purpose computers. You listed a few things that probably aren't done very often on consoles (although you likely can do them, since consoles have web browsers). But it's also easy to list things that are much better-suited to be done on a gaming console than a smartphone.
> I think gaming consoles are general purpose computers.
This is a contrived point of view, and I'm sure the product managers at Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and Google would all strongly disagree.
Remember when the PS3 used to be used for super computing? Sony quietly ended that program when they realized that wasn't the business they wanted to be in.
I don't mean that consoles are the best device to do any computing task. Of course they aren't, and of course smartphones also are not. I'm also not making some technical claim, like that they are Turing complete (of course they are, but that's not really relevant). What I mean is that I do not consider modern consoles to be "single-purpose computers." They're more like "the computer for your living room," and they can and often do handle all sorts of media/entertainment and communication/socializing (which, let's be honest, is a huge part of what smartphones do). They can also handle home automation. If you consider "anything you would want to do on your living room TV" to be a single purpose, then sure, but you could construct the same definition for a smartphone.
Consoles are very different from phones. Consoles sell at a loss and make the money back in sales. The 30% cut to the console makers goes towards paying for the lower price of hardware. Google and Apple do not sell phones below cost.
The certification process for consoles is also a lot tougher and more expensive.
Webapps, period. (I agree that resource heavy games are the exception; given that I consider music production a form of play, the difference is fleeting, incidently consoles are famous in this space, too; contrast that with your basic map, analogue to sheet music, lol).
No, I don't want to install your lousy app that's only a front-end to your web service anyway. Of course it gives you more control and opportunity for certain features. This only means that web browsers still have a long way to go. If apps were reasonably small, maybe I could install more of them, but as it is, it's just impossible.
I can’t relate to this. Some vendors sell me hardware, and I can bring my own software. Apple sells me more expensive hardware with the software only from their “partners”, which is “curated” and subject to a steep 30% distribution cut. Apple never tricked me into an iPhone believing I could run any random software. I know what I signed up for. Why should I feel entitled to anything else?
> I know what I signed up for. Why should I feel entitled to anything else?
It's interesting you'd say that because it's actually not true (I am not accusing you of lying at all - I take your statement at face value!)
What I mean is the following:
When I buy a phone - no matter the maker - I have deep within me a default assumption that if I want some app, some provider, some service, some feature, on my phone - that it will be, that it can be, and if someone thinks it up it'll be there shortly. I DO NOT assume that because Apple wants to steal people's work, some apps will never appear there.
Do you remember the early days of the app store and the saying "There's an app for that" (usually referring to things like fart generators and TV quotes).
Nowadays you'd NEVER think to say such a thing because Apple is ensuring it cannot be true - and more and more developers and platforms are choosing not to use it.
It's pretty plainly clear to me that Apple ONLY wants large, rich, well-known companies publishing apps; they grudgingly publish apps for small or individual developers, but really deep down wish they didn't have to.
Stuff like what we are seeing now with Hey is their endgame to finally get everyone except their exclusive club off the list.
Fortunately i still have an Android phone and Android tablet where such things still exist (and i use them regularly). So I kept the iPhone because I also develop for the platform now.
Apple is not tricking people into buying iPhones, believing every app is available. “There’s an app for that” doesn’t mean “every single app for that is available”. It means there are many apps, all of which found 30% to be acceptable.
If Apple had promised customers that Age of Empires runs on Macs, then they would have a hard time getting Microsoft to give them 30%. But Apple has made not such promise to consumers.
Besides, there’s an email client for the iPhone. If there wasn’t, consumers might complain. If Hey was the only game in town, I’m sure they’d be given a sweeter deal.
I never said they're tricking anyone. Although, "There's an app for that" was actually a thing, or would you rather not remember that?
The POINT that I'm making is that people their phone is theirs and they can install what they want on it. Even if that thing comes from the app store. EVEN NOW when I want to do something I go looking for an app. I don't assume my phone can't do it. And I certainly don't assume it can't do it thanks to shenanigans on Apple's part.
The reality however is far different and there are LOTS of things Apple doesn't allow and they are not above using their platform to stifle competition.
> If Apple had promised customers that Age of Empires runs on Macs, then they would have a hard time getting Microsoft to give them 30%. But Apple has made not such promise to consumers.
Given that Age of Empires has actually had Mac versions, I'm not sure this is the comparison you're looking for here. :)
Why should software makers share their revenue with Apple? We don’t do it on android, Windows, macOS, linux, or anything else.
The only value added by Apple is some kind of vetting (they don’t do code review, they just check that the app meets their recommendations... and they are called RECOMMENDATIONS not REQUIEMENTS).
My app was recently rejected because i refused to sell in-app purchases and want to keep purchases only on my website.
> Why should software makers share their revenue with Apple?
Why should Apple care what software makers want?
I get that it's a pain to develop software for the iPhone and then have to pay rent to Apple to get it to users; but that's not Apple's problem unless enough users either complain or switch hardware to cut into Apple's revenue. That doesn't seem to be happening. Sure, there are plenty of users (I'm one of them) who refuse to buy an Apple device precisely because of limitations like this, but there are plenty more users who don't seem to care; whatever they are getting through Apple's curated app store appears to satisfy their needs. As long as that remains true, Apple has no incentive to change its policies, and that's just a business reality that any software developer contemplating making an app for the iPhone is going to have to deal with.
I don't think he is defending it, I think he is correctly rationalising that this is the effect of devs and users buying into Apple's walled Garden. This is what devs and users caused by supporting the Google Apple duopoly. You bought in you play by their rules.
Personally I think devs should just pass the 30% to consumers or withdraw their apps. That is how you get leverage.
The Mafia didn't build things. It just came in and took over things others had built.
Apple built its app store. It built the iPhone. It got its users fair and square, by providing a product that users want. If you think that's the same as the Mafia, you have a very skewed view of business.
But they also prevent other stores from being built. And they prevent sideloading. It's their store or nothing. They created a marketplace and ban other marketplaces. wtf?
They do no such thing. They just prevent other stores from providing apps for their own product. Which they are within their rights to do, since it's their product.
Why does the pet store down the street from my apartment have a storefront on Amazon? Because they want access to Amazon’s customer base and are willing to pay for it.
GP asked "why software makers should share their revenue with Apple" and said "nothing else" is like that. I was just pointing examples of things that were exactly like that.
As for the why: I'm thinking from the point of view of a developer. For me it's all the same. Paying 30% to Apple is the same as paying 30% to Steam or x% to console makers. In practice it doesn't matter if the appliance the user runs my software is essential or not, or if the store is exclusive, or comes preinstalled or not. I'm still paying a percentage to someone.
Well, I don't think paying 30% to Apple is the same as paying 30% to Steam. The former is mandatory, the latter is not. If you don't want to be on Steam, you can put your game in the Windows store/etc, or sell directly from your website. If you don't want to be on Apple's app store, well, too bad, it's the only way to reach 50+% of your potential customers (in the US).
I know quite a few people on Steam who simply refuse to but any games on any platforms other than Steam. Steam isn't an exclusive choice, but there's a nontrivial number of gamers who are loyal to Steam to the point of refusing to purchase anything that isn't available on Steam.
I personally have platforms I simply will not use (or refuse to spend money on directly, like EA's Origin, where I only own/care about C&C) regardless how good of a deal it is.
Valve has the ability to set whatever rules they want within their store. A world where we didn't allow this would get very complicated very quickly. Do we also make Walmart and Target carry every brand? How much are they allowed to markup the price? Who decides?
If Steam provides such a valuable service that consumers aren't willing to shop anywhere else even when they can, then that's what it is.
And, I think that's what would largely happen on the iPhone anyway if side-loading was allowed, outside of extraordinary circumstances like when protesters can't access a critical safety app. But, in order to keep apps on their store, Apple would have to make a (slightly) greater effort to keep developers happy.
(I also think Steam zealots are ridiculous, but that is a separate discussion.)
There's another option to sideloading... permitting other marketplaces to exist. They ban that, too. Both sideloading and alternate marketplaces have an impact on android and windows (non-steam markets). Why wouldn't such things have an impact on iphone?
In theory, yes. In practice, not publishing a game on Steam will also alienate you from a large amount of potential customers. We're only starting to see change recently. But I understand your point and agree in principle. What's your opinion on consoles, though?
What stores take 30% lifetime subscription royalties for products sold on their shelves?
Can you imagine if Best Buy required Apple to add "Best Buy Payments" to MacOS so that Best Buy could collect a 30% fee on top of any services subscription that Apple sells to that MacBook user? All for the privilege of selling their products through the BB stores.
Apple isn't marking up a product for resale in it's retail environments. It is, in many cases, forcing its developers (who provide their valuable products to Apple for free, after paying Apple an annual fee) to completely rearrange their business models in order for Apple to collect a huge portion of their revenues, entirely on their terms.
It doesn’t matter. These are the terms of the store. If Walmart makes clear an expectation that you have to have an office in Arkansas in order to sell an item in their store, then you shouldn’t be surprised when your item is rejected from their store if you don’t build that office. There’s no expectation that you’d have free placement, certainly.
As for your Best Buy example, Best Buy can make that demand, but Best Buy would lose more from not having Apple’s products than Apple would from not being placed on Best Buy’s shelves.
I agree completely - Apple can have whatever terms it wants within the bounds of the law. And app developers have every right to complain about those terms, loudly and in a sustained fashion, if they wish.
The second part there is what a lot of people seem to have difficulty accepting.
Companies have certainly complained, loudly and in a sustained fashion, about dealing with certain brick-and-mortar stores over the years.
(Apple is in a frustratingly unique position compared to Walmart, Target, Best Buy, et. al., of course, in that the App Store is the way to get applications onto iPhones.)
It’s easy to accept that you have a right to complain. But after ten years of perfect clarify about how Apple intends to play this, your supposed outrage that the iPhone is still a walled garden seems willfully thick.
I’d be so impressed if one of you would just head over to Android and make a non-iPhone app that took the world by storm. Prove to us all that the 30% is a bad bargain, that Apple needs to change, that your software is valuable even without their store.
I guess it’s disheartening to see instead just another set of entitled complaints and dubious concern over end users, most of whom have no idea your $10 app exists and never thought about it when buying their $1000 phone.
Your Apple hardware is your Costco Membership Card. You aren’t able to buy Sam’s Club products using your Costco membership, and Costco’s under no expectation to make them available to you.
Nonsense. The App Store is the Store. For god's sake, it's literally called a store. This couldn't be clearer.
You don't need to muddy the waters by making a ridiculous analogy that somehow equates a computer to a membership card (of all things!).
The computer is a computer. Full stop. There is a store on the computer. There should be other stores on the computer but they're not allowed because the people that make the computer are partaking in anti-competitive, anti-consumer shenanigans.
But I can buy a fridge at Costco, buy food from Sam's Club, and still store my food in my fridge. I don't have to throw out Costco's fridge in order to buy food elsewhere.
Some things are compatible and some things are not.
Edit: “Compatible” is not about the tech in this case (the binary would theoretically run) but about the terms of your agreement with the manufacturer.
If you buy a Costco fridge and with it a contract to only store Costco-sold food in it, then you have a better analogy. 80% of the world seems to prefer the AnyFood Fridge, and for some reason 20% buy the Costco with the agreement.
Sorry, I don't understand where you're going with this. There's an updated Hey app on the developer's computer which is compatible with my iPhone, but Apple isn't letting me install it.
--
Edit response: How many people do you think read the agreement they signed with Apple? How many realize Apple is increasing the price of software by ~30%?
It’s totally optional; if you don’t want to participate, don’t. Sell your software any way you want outside their store. Take out ads in local papers or something.
So don’t sell iPhone versions. Sell software for platforms that support arbitrary software. Or pay Apple for distribution in their walled garden. It’s totally up to you.
The parameters have been clear for over a decade, and it’s really time to stop whining that the iPhone is not an open platform. Apple is the only iPhone app distribution channel and they make the rules. If you don’t want that, don’t buy an iPhone/don’t make iPhone apps. If you make iPhone apps, own it.
And the other alternative is that governments get involved to force apple to allow other markets on their phones. Ones that charge 5% or ones that are even free.
Instead of, you know, just accepting bad things because
they've been bad for a decade. Slavery was around in the
US for more than 100 years. Did that make it right? Maybe slave owners said similar things to Abolitionists, "but it's been this way for ages!!"
Implication being “there’s an app for” a number of needs, but not that “there’s every app” for every need.
When the case in point is an email client this argument seems especially facetious. Is any customer really being defrauded because “there’s not an app for email”?
>I know what I signed up for. Why should I feel entitled to anything else?
Maybe you are happy with one of the 2 shitty choices, but there might be people that would prefer to not be forced to chose what shit taste better, it is live you live in place and you have only 2 drinking water choices, both contain different poisons but you have a choice, why should people complain and try to fix a bad situation when you could chose your poison? I seen lots complaining that there is not enough competiotion in X or Y market (like mobile or ISPs ) but Apple fans don't want more competition on the iOS, you wouild thinkt he average Apple user would have been already scammed 100 times on their Macbooks because of the missing walls , this is how hard the security excuse is mentioned.
Yeah I think we can draw a bit of a line from they were a major game not on the Play Store and now they're a major game on the Play Store - my guess is barely anyone sideloaded it.
I think they've faced antitrust things around the dominance of the app store, however do they actually do the same thing as apple here? I can find a story online of tinder switching to asking users to enter their credit card details in the app.
I feel it pertinent to point out that comments like yours help keep the status quo.
Pointing out that apple is not alone in a thread trying to raise awareness about apple's practices both distracts from apple's unethical behavior and contributes to normalizing the behavior in public perception.
So my question to you is: do you want to see these unethical behaviors end? or continue?
Why is it unethical to charge a fee to developers who want to distribute their software through an app store that Apple owns?
I get that it's unpleasant for developers who don't like the policy, and at some point it might have business consequences for Apple if they don't change the policy, but why is it unethical?
>Why is it unethical to charge a fee to developers who want to distribute their software through an app store that Apple owns?
This is only part of the complaint, right? The other parts is that:
* Apple has the only keys to the hardware platform.
* This is in contrast to Google or Steam, who also charge 30%, but do not completely own access to their respective hardware platforms.
* This is also in contrast to physical stores, because if a store does not sell a product (i.e. a grocery store chain does not carry some brand of beer), the product owner can usually still put it somewhere else that the consumer can freely access (excluding transportation costs).
* The policy regarding whether Apple should be entitled to the subscription fee is inconsistent and full of exceptions, which this website illustrates. My cynical take is that these exceptions have no real philosophy behind them, other than the fact that Apple needed certain major apps to be on iOS (i.e. Netflix, Tesla, Bloomberg, etc.).
* Slightly separate point, but still relevant: if Apple is entitled to subscription fees, Apple can make competitors that undercut other subscription services like Spotify, because they don't have to pay themselves the 30% fee. This is what Spotify complained about last year, and what I believe the EU is looking at. [1]
The fourth bullet point is the most egregious to me. These policies are so overbearing that they're actually untenable, but Apple just gets around that by arbitrarily giving exceptions to companies that are big enough to affect their bottom line.
It's the part I'm interested in. I get that Apple's policy is a pain in the ass to a lot of developers, that Apple is inconsistent and arbitrary about how it applies that policy, and that all this greatly restricts developer access to users of Apple's hardware. What I don't get is how any of this is unethical. Bothersome and irritating, yes, but why unethical?
> Why is it unethical to charge a fee to developers who want to distribute their software through an app store that Apple owns?
Developer don't necessarily want to distribute their software through that app store, they are forced to do that if they want to sell their software to people who happen to use that operating system. Operating system and app store are distinct products, but app store exclusively gatekeeps the functionality the user can achieve through the operating system they bought.
If app store was a standalone offering that aimed to benefit the user, there shouldn't be any problem allowing multiple competing app stores people paid for the convenience of vetted and curated apps and letting the market forces decide the winner. That is obviously not happening.
Therefore, strongarming the ecosystem and stifling market dynamics is the unethical move here. Less competition, less innovation, less user benefit, less developer income (which translates into even less innovation) etc is the price everyone pays in aggregate in order for Apple to exact its rent, which goes to their idle pile of cash or comes back to humanity as a 0.002 grams lighter iPhone++ next year.
So you increase the price of your app by 30 to make up for Apple's cut%. It's called business. It happens all the time in every single industry.
If a business' property taxes go up, that cost is passed on to its customers. Why do people think that because something is on a phone that it should be any different?
That's also not allowed. I think Hey would be fine charging $142 a year for a subscription in their app, with a little note below saying "you can get this for $99 on our website, the difference is Apple's cut." In fact, if I understand it correctly, the price in-app has to be the same as the price anywhere else. They're literally not allowed to do what you're suggesting and pass the cost of Apple's fee on to consumers.
So Hey should boost their prices everywhere, even on their own site, to $142, so that they can make up Apple's cut? Which is what Apple demands. I don't think that's reasonable.
I think that you and I are broadly in agreement. If Hey were allowed to charge $142 in their iPhone app, and $99 on their website, I'd think that was much less ridiculous than the situation as it stands today.
> It's called business. It happens all the time in every single industry
And we call those situations market failures. Besides, in this case the market failure is due to a monopolistic mechanism, which doesn't happen "all the time in every industry". If we are going to do markets, let's do it properly.
Increasing price %30 causes a corresponding decrease in the demand, and in aggregate this can cause a decrease in the total profit. The fact that the developer is forced to set a new price point this way is a source of inefficiency for the entire app economy.
Besides forced price increase is not the only harm done by the monopoly of the App Store. As this website exemplifies, it has monopoly over ontological decisions (whether a certain type of app can exist or not), over design decisions (signups, in app purchases etc) and whatnot. These are further points of inefficiency or outright failure. Apple might or might not be doing a good enough job making the best out of these decisions, but the bottom line is we don't have a choice of another player emerging with potentially better choice-making and therefore a better app store.
To the extent that this situation is a "market failure", it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences.
> in this case the market failure is due to a monopolistic mechanism
Apple only has a "monopoly" on their own app store because they built it. Users are not being forced to use iPhones; they choose to because they believe iPhones give them better value overall than the alternatives. That's called free market competition, not monopoly.
> it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences.
By definition market failures can't be fixed by market dynamics. That is why state does tons of interventions/regulations to make it work.
> That's called free market competition, not monopoly.
No. Vertical integration means there is no free market at the integration point to begin with, which integration of a software application store with a physical phone is. We are talking about a $50bil/year market that is not free.
> By definition market failures can't be fixed by market dynamics.
That's why I put "market failure" in quotes. If you think anything fixable by users changing their preferences isn't a "market failure" by your definition, fine, then the Apple situation is not a market failure by your definition.
> That is why state does tons of interventions/regulations to make it work.
No, the government does tons of interventions/regulations to favor particular market players, under the guise of "fixing market failures". In almost all cases, these interventions/regulations actually make things worse overall, but of course they make things better for the particular market players that were favored.
> Vertical integration means there is no free market at the integration point to begin with
Throwing around buzzwords proves nothing. Apple created the iPhone and its app store. It can do whatever it wants with them because it owns them. It has the market share it has because users have freely chosen to use its products instead of those of its competitors. That's the essence of a free market. The fact that you don't like doesn't make it not a free market.
These are technical terms, not buzzwords and calling them so doesn't make much of a counter-argument.
> That's the essence of a free market
No it is not. You seem to equate free market with unregulated market which is not always true. Markets fail to self-regulate in the absence of open competition, which is what precisely the App Store on iPhone is. Nearly half of the mobile phone apps in the US comes from a closed market. Imagine instead Apple owned half of the roads in the US and stipulated what businesses could use those roads, e.g. only certain grocery store's trucks can deliver goods over them. That would be far from a free market too.
The technical definitions of these terms don't support the claims you are making using them, so you're not using them as technical terms, you're using them as buzzwords.
> You seem to equate free market with unregulated market
Not at all. A free market is regulated by the voluntary choices of market participants.
> Markets fail to self-regulate in the absence of open competition
So your definition of "open competition" is "Apple can't choose the terms on which it is going to provide products and services that it built itself". By that definition, "open competition" has nothing whatever to do with "free market", since in a free market every market participant gets to choose the terms on which it is going to provide goods and services that it built itself. Forcing market participants to provide goods and services on terms they would not choose for themselves is not a free market.
> Imagine instead Apple owned half of the roads in the US and stipulated what businesses could use those roads
Roads are not the same as smartphones or apps; roads are exclusive in a way that smartphones and apps are not.
> If app store was a standalone offering that aimed to benefit the user, there shouldn't be any problem allowing multiple competing app stores people paid for the convenience of vetted and curated apps and letting the market forces decide the winner.
And if all that would benefit users more, users would be demanding it, or switching from iPhone to something else. But they're not. Users seem overall to be quite satisfied with what they are getting from their iPhones. So your claim here appears to be empirically false.
> strongarming the ecosystem and stifling market dynamics is the unethical move here
All this depends on your factual claim above being true, which, as I have noted, it appears not to be, based on actual user behavior.
But let's put that aside and assume that your factual claim is true. If that makes what Apple is doing unethical, then probably every single large corporation on the planet is unethical. Certainly every large corporation in the tech industry is. They all do these things; they just don't all do them with an app store.
> Users seem overall to be quite satisfied with what they are getting from their iPhones. So your claim here appears to be empirically false.
A lack of reduction in observable demand doesn't imply an absence of cost.
Let's say the cost of having a singular app store for the user can be expressed as 99$, but the average utility they derive from using their iPhone is valued at 100$. It would be rational for that user to still prefer iPhone despite incurring great cost and we wouldn't see any drop in demand.
> Certainly every large corporation in the tech industry is. They all do these things; they just don't all do them with an app store.
That is appeal to tradition. Indeed, monopolistic nature of tech combined with vertical integration is a large unsolved problem of our era and it haven't completely played out yet.
> A lack of reduction in observable demand doesn't imply an absence of cost.
Waving your hands and throwing random numbers around doesn't imply a presence of cost.
> That is appeal to tradition.
It is no such thing. I'm just trying to figure out what your actual position is.
> monopolistic nature of tech combined with vertical integration is a large unsolved problem
Which makes it clearer what your position is: you think the problem with tech is "monopolistic nature combined with vertical integration".
I disagree. I think the problem with tech is that it is giving away valuable things for free, or selling them at or below cost, in order to capture users and sell their data and their eyeballs or corner markets. Apple is actually the least guilty of this of the major tech players; I'm far more worried about Google and Facebook and Amazon than I am about Apple. But at any rate, that problem is not a problem of monopoly and vertical integration. It's a problem of shortsightedness in general--putting short term gain and convenience over long term stability and trust.
> Waving your hands and throwing random numbers around doesn't imply a presence of cost.
Come on, let's not go in circles. I posited there is a cost to user in being locked into a single app store. You claimed if there was such cost, we necessarily would have seen decrease in user demand. My handwaving numbers were to demonstrate that it doesn't have to be true, there can be substantial user costs without any decrease in user demand.
> giving away valuable things for free, or selling them at or below cost, in order to capture users and sell their data and their eyeballs or corner markets
You're close but not there. Being able to give away things for free come from the giant profits accumulated through monopolistic vertical integration. Google has a compute platform that runs a search engine/youtube that sells adds that is viewed through their browser that runs on their mobile phone. Those are multiple integration points (though not all are monopolistic). If for example Google were to pay for an external compute platform that is not theirs, they would have to pay for the profit margin of the service provider, but without is all of that money stays within the company, and that is one of the factors that enable them "giving away valuable things for free".
Data integration is a completely different game. Selling data to outside is the least powerful way to make money out of it, especially if you have other data and products. It is akin to a 3rd world country selling their raw resources. What makes the most money is the integration of multiple data sources through multiple products and even 3rd party vendors. The magic of an SQL join is that joining table-a and table-b can yield more information that neither a and b had alone. When you join the data of a browser and a search engine and 3rd party information you bought to sell more clickable ads, that is when the most money is made out of the data. The more money you make, the more you can run loss leaders, buy competitors, create barriers of entry (a la app stores), and meanwhile damage the entire ICT ecosystem in the name of even more money. That is why ensuring market health is important.
> I posited there is a cost to user in being locked into a single app store.
And the person to judge that question is the user, not two people having an argument on an Internet site. And not app developers either.
> You claimed if there was such cost, we necessarily would have seen decrease in user demand.
I said that if there is no discernible change in user demand, that means the users, who are the ones in a position to judge, evidently don't see a significant enough cost to change their behavior. Any change in the cost-benefit relationship will change the behavior of some users. Sure, they won't all switch from iPhones to something else, but some percentage of them will.
> Being able to give away things for free come from the giant profits accumulated through monopolistic vertical integration.
No, it comes from having some other source of revenue besides the users of the thing that is being given away for free. "Monopolistic vertical integration" might help in getting other sources of revenue, but it's not the root problem. The root problem is that the actual users of the service are not the paying customers, someone else is, so the incentives of the provider are skewed.
Think of a flee market.
Lets say this flee market runs their own PoS system that tables can use, they require all sales happen via this PoS system "to protect customers from hacking", and they charge a percentage for providing this service, higher then normal under the guise that the transaction is being conducted on their property, they are "hosting" the "sale" under their roof, so they set the terms for it. Seems fair and good, ish
Now lets say that they also own the city bank, and they are the only one allowed to take their bank's debit card as payment. Most people don't use the other, newer bank because everybody they know is using the flee markets bank as it was first. So if you want to take credit card payments you have to sale at the flee market.
Is it still fair and good for them to continue to set all terms relating to how sales are conducted in a selfish way when they have a monopoly gained in part from first mover advantage? eh, maybe, maybe not.
Now they say that if you sale any spare parts or consumables for a product that was originally sold at the flee market, you must only do so at the flee market.
Is it still fair and good for them to use the fact that the transaction is happening on their property to set higher fees on these follow up transactions when they require these follow up transactions to happen on their property? While exploiting a first mover advantage that causes more of the initial transactions to happen on their property?
Never forget that you can't just look at each piece, the whole matters too.
Each individual piece of the macro is ethically an "eh" at most, but the whole is a bit more then "eh"
I think it would be ethical to charge a fee to distribute software. You can imagine a world where each upload to the App Store would cast say $100. But the issue people complain about is that they are forced to use Apple as a middleman for all their payments and that Apple charges exorbitant fees for this
Make it a web site. Make it an Android exclusive. Do any of the dozen other things you need to do to be a success. You don't have to be on the App Store to survive. Hundreds of thousands of developers and their programs aren't.
Making it a website is inconvenient for many reasons compared to an app. Making it Android exclusive sucks for people who have iPhones, and it's a tall order to ask anyone to switch away from an iPhone they have already purchased. The problem is categorically not solved here.
Taxes are paid by the consumer. Ideally developers should price things based on how much revenue they want per transaction, and have the 30% fee shown to the user.
If that were the case, there would be nothing unethical about a 30% tax nor a 90% tax.
Therefore, it’s not the size that’s the problem, but the fact that the tax isn’t communicated to the consumer, and also that Apple wants you to charge the same price in-app as elsewhere (though I’m not sure if that part is enforced)
So what determines how large the fee has to be for it to be unethical? I don't see any principled way to decide, which makes me doubt your argument here.
Let's assume the idea of Open Source is a network of small to medium-sized businesses and individual contributors helping each other out in a mutually beneficial way. A multi-billion dollar corp stepping in by undercutting those businesses' prices and taking without giving back anything of equal value is arguably against the spirit of the idea and a breach of trust. It's technically okay because it is just "accepting a gift" but I'd still say it's exploitation.
Distributing under a NC-license would also go against that idea. (Apart from tipping the perception of "Open Source" towards something more restrictive which is always a bit bitter.)
Open-source software has large positive externalities and if those are being captured by private entities then this will pretty much lead to a demise of open source software, or open-source software will slowly but surely being turned into software that is more and more incompatible and de-facto in-house software.
This is already happening. A lot of projects that are nominally open source are more and more influenced by the decisions of particular companies which erodes its purpose.
> A lot of projects that are nominally open source are more and more influenced by the decisions of particular companies which erodes its purpose.
I might be ignorant here, but isn’t it the “open source companies” that are actively doing this, rather than Amazon? It seems to me that these companies that represent an open source project are realizing that you don’t get it both ways: it turns out that releasing open source software means that the source code is open, which means that you don’t get automatic business just because the name of your company is the same as the name of the open source project.
Why do they need to benefit the OSS provider? The license doesn't contain anything suggesting otherwise.
If authors want credit and money, the license needs to state as much. You can't publish something saying "do whatever you want" and then complain that people aren't being fair to you.
My parents asked me for some money the other day, but I told them to pound sand--if they wanted my help they should have made me sign something before they gave me all that free room and board. Suckers!
1 point by Grimm1 8 minutes ago | edit | delete [–]
The licenses weren't conceived of with the thought of something like AWS. Now that we're in the midst of things that's changing but what is an officially supported open source license [0] is too slow so you can't use the OSS label if you've you're not using the approved licenses. Both Mongo and Elasticsearch have changed their licenses to prevent cloud players from taking advantage of their work and companies like Gitlab make a clear distinction between their FOSS parts and what they make money on by using two different licenses.
The issues are only a little over a half decade old now the OSS players are starting to figure it out.
Open source just doesn't mean anyone can use it, there's a definition to adhere to and and org managing that definition. [1]
> The licenses weren't conceived of with the thought of something like AWS.
You mean...a hosting company? I find it hard to believe that the open source movement was blindsided by the realization that there are companies that sell hosting services and that somehow this destroys the viability of their movement.
But isn't that part of the point of open source? If you want people to have to pay for it in some way, it needs to be part of the license. The license is essentially free for all.
The licenses weren't conceived of with the thought of something like AWS. Now that we're in the midst of things that's changing but what is an officially supported open source license [0] is too slow so you can't use the OSS label if you've you're not using the approved licenses. Both Mongo and Elasticsearch have changed their licenses to prevent cloud players from taking advantage of their work and companies like Gitlab make a clear distinction between their FOSS parts and what they make money on by using two different licenses.
The issues are only a little over a half decade old now the OSS players are starting to figure it out.
Open source just doesn't mean anyone can use it, there's a definition to adhere to and and org managing that definition. [1]
Legality doesn't always cover everything because that would result in a lot of problems. People operate on the spirit of the law, not the actual words or at least they are supposed to.
On a more general tone, does anti trust cover knowingly destroying communities and open source tools?
All the problems from app store racket still applies such as the tax. And I am not saying android doesn't need a lot of those changes, it's just they break things without helping. There are many examples if you look around.
Even if you search the exact name, it will bombard you with whoever is paying the most.
2. Google closed source their play billing library recently. Apps which use the library can't be put on fdroid.
3. At Google I/O 2018, Google introduced an alternative app distribution format called the Android App Bundle with the file extension .aab. This format requires giving a copy of your app’s signing key to Google. AABs are harder for users to manually sideload as they aren’t natively supported by Android’s package installer and must be unpacked and devs have to do more work to distribute on other platforms.
4. Google killing Termux with Android 10 and many others relying on the functionality by removing the perms to execute binaries.
5. Fdroid can't auto update because of restrictions by google.
6. Broke custom recoveries such as TWRP.
7. Irresponsible automated ban of anything covid. Surprisingly this doesn't or never affect popular apps. Must be because they whitelist them.
I wonder how Microsoft would do in the mobile market right now if they came in with the same developer first attitude we're seeing everywhere else.
Microsoft hardware with Android, a decent update lifecycle, MS365, alternate store, MS billing APIs, etc. would make a compelling offering IMO. The only thing I think MS would screw up would be sideloading. They seem to be all in on the current code signing / trust system and it's absolute trash.
There are so many industries that have been turned into complete garbage by rent seekers that I feel like anything that doesn't absolutely screw developers and customers would be super successful. The problem is that we only have about 5 tech companies on the planet that are big enough to compete.
> 3. At Google I/O 2018, Google introduced an alternative app distribution format called the Android App Bundle with the file extension .aab. This format requires giving a copy of your app’s signing key to Google. AABs are harder for users to manually sideload as they aren’t natively supported by Android’s package installer and must be unpacked and devs have to do more work to distribute on other platforms.
App bundle is a way to reduce hassle of uploading multiple apks for cutting down apk size on different targets. Developers can and always have to build regular apks for other distribution platforms or for users to sideload. I don't see how AAB makes devs do more work.
> Google scrapes info and displays it in widgets above links to the actual content. Google charges trademark holders AdWords ransom to protect searches for their own brands.
All search engines do this. It doesn't depend on building scale and then exploiting it. The experience is better for the user.
> Amazon kills OSS business models by offering managed OSS services on AWS at an unbeatable cost.
All cloud providers do this. It also doesn't depend on building and exploiting scale. The experience is better for the user.
The key difference is that the App store is the only way of running apps on an iDevice outside of rooting it (which for >99% of users means it's the only way of running apps).
Apple needs to be transparent that it's not selling devices, it's licensing devices. Users do not control the devices they own.
I have to wonder about the health of the industry when rent-seeking becomes the norm. Rent-seeking stifles innovation and true growth, and is a sign of a degenerate system.
>The reforms of Diocletian and Constantine made all productive activity impossible. The reason is not that there were no more large fortunes, but the foundation of their build-up was now no longer creative energy, or the discovery and bring into use new sources of wealth, or the improvement and development of husbandry, industry and commerce. It was, on the contrary, the cunning exploitation of a privileged position used to despoil people.
Could someone point out where the "you download the app and it doesn't work" [1] and the "the criteria is different for apps that are targeted at businesses instead of consumers" [2] rules are actually listed for developers to read?
The rule that business-targeted apps and consumer-targeted apps are subject to different IAP rules is not in the App Store Review Guidelines. Basecamp asked them why Hey was blocked and Basecamp was not, they were given that as a response.
I really don't understand how so many people cannot understand the simple fact that it's "Fuck you pay us 30% or you won't get on iphones".
It's not "Hey you can use our store for 30% revenue cut and other benefits or you can market/host/whatever else it yourself".
This is what they are comparing it with Google, idc what else shady stuff Google is doing but if I want my app on an android without paying Google a dime I can do so with the obvious disadvantage of not being in the store.
This just doesn't exist with Apple. At all. It's as simple as that
People can understand something and think that it’s immoral or that they don’t like it. The reason this thread has many replies is that people have strong opinions, not that they don’t understand.
But also your first sentence is merely partly true. It isn’t a simple fact because it is selectively enforced. It comes with the caveat that if you’re big then probably the rules don’t apply so much to you
I'm pretty surprised they haven't just Maliciously Complied by offering an in-app signup buried somewhere obscure in the app, with lots of big flashing warning signs saying "don't click this, it's only for compliance reasons" - and a nice discoverable easily-followable link to the browser-based sign-up.
They could be continuing to make the (justified and correct!) stink about Apple's terrible practices, while also having their app on the store (or forcing Apple to further highlight how arbitrarily-applied their standards are). Win-win.
Honestly - I don't think it would be accepted. But, in either outcome, they're better off:
* If it gets accepted - great, they're unblocked, and can keep delivering for customers
* If it doesn't get accepted, they have even more ammunition to say "look, even when we conform to Apple's rules, they _still_ block us".
This violates the App Store Review Guidelines 3.1.3(b) [1]:
> 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.
Right, and - as I said in another comment - being rejected when they are actually conforming to the rules (however asinine those rules may be) will be further ammunition to point out how inconsisently-applied those rules are.
Could they just put in a random explanatory video and say the functionality for non-users is they're able to watch the video? It seems like they just need to have any kind of non-user thing to do...
That said, I think Apple forbids you trying to redirect people out of the app by explaining that they take a cut if you sign up in it.
An alternative I’ve seen is let users register for a free account don’t indicate there’s an upgrade but drip email a few days down the road for the user to upgrade via a web workflow
Apple doesn't allow a link in the app to direct users to a website to collect payment. You can't even merely say that there's a website where you can pay outside the app. Notice how many apps in the article simply don't provide any explanation about how users are supposed to sign up?
part of the app store rules is you can't do that. you have to offer it for the same price. somehow spotify seem to have gotten away with not doing this.
Lets say this flee market runs their own PoS system that tables can use, they require all sales happen via this PoS system "to protect customers from hacking", and
they charge a percentage for providing this service, higher then normal under the guise that the transaction is being conducted on their property, they are "hosting" the "sale" under their roof, so they set the terms for it.
Seems fair and good, ish
Now lets say that they also own the city bank, and they are the only one allowed to take their bank's debit card as payment. Most people don't use the other, newer bank because everybody they know is using the flee markets bank as it was first. So if you want to take credit card payments you have to sale at the flee market.
Is it still fair and good for them to continue to set all terms relating to how sales are conducted in a selfish way when they have a monopoly gained in part from first mover advantage? eh, maybe, maybe not.
Now they say that if you sale any spare parts or consumables for a product that was originally sold at the flee market, you must only do so at the flee market.
Is it still fair and good for them to use the fact that the transaction is happening on their property to set higher fees on these follow up transactions when they require these follow up transactions to happen on their property? While exploiting a first mover advantage that causes more of the initial transactions to happen on their property?
Never forget that you can't just look at each piece, the whole matters too.
Each individual piece of the macro is ethically an "eh" at most, but the whole is a bit more then "eh"
Why doesn't this website have an introductory paragraph at the top explaining what we're looking at? Seriously, there's zero context to this information. I was able to infer an understanding from the context of the page but it's terrible to expect your readers to have to do that.
Consider the user experience of an email app that only works when you have a network connection — so you can’t even see your mail when you’re offline. Pretty lousy.
There are very few examples here which are direct comparisons.
There's a difference between an app which is an auxiliary offering to an existing service, and an app which is the product itself.
I totally understand Apple's "it should just work" policy. Its a big reason why the net spend in the App Store is as high as it is. App Store is a big reason why people are spending money on small dollar apps in the first place.
There are approximately 2 million apps in the App Store. How many of them would be trying to collect credit card information independently if Apple stepped back from their IAP policy? It was be a usability and privacy nightmare. For the average user, tap to purchase / IAP is what makes the App Store "just work".
I think the standard response should be to allow the in-app signup/purchase with a 42% marked up rate and a very clear line item that it is the "Apple platform tax, not charged via other distributors".
Worth doing the same to Google IMO.
I think the "right" amount to charge would be something like a standard credit card processor - 30 cents + 3% or so. Maybe a flat 5 or 10% for apps under a certain price. I can't imagine Apple's payment processing and app screening being much more expensive than Visa's payment processing and fraud detection.
You're not paying for the payment processing. You never have been paying for the payment processing. You're paying for the fact that iOS devices are an extremely valuable retail space and being able to sell there is worth a lot of money to your sales funnel.
Yes but I think what tomlagier is saying is that the "right" thing to charge for is the payment processing (he also mentions app screening), as opposed to charging for the privilege of being allowed to run on Apple devices. Otherwise you get into all these issues that are potentially "wrong," at least from the perspective of people who agree with the general concept of antitrust law.
It's not just whether something is extremely valuable. App store as a "retail space" wouldn't be so valuable if you could easily buy iOS apps in other app stores. From the perspective of an iOS device owner, Apple has a monopoly on the retailing of apps.
Apple isn’t just providing payment processing. The entire development environment and SDK, app hosting, install and update, services like Data Sync (whatever they call it), Push notifications, etc.
If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA.
I didn't say they were. I said Apple's role is comparable, in that it is not deserving of automatic 30% of revenue. It may be a lot of services, but it still doesn't cost a lot per user and per app, especially when compared to what a brick and mortar retail store does.
And it certainly doesn't make sense for an app like Netflix, which is comparatively expensive per month because of how much use it gets, how much bandwidth it consumes, and all the licensing and production costs. Imagine if Netflix had to pay 30% to Apple.
Netflix gets away with not paying that 30% because they have leverage. But smaller apps can't. Sounds to me like exactly what antitrust is for.
"If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA."
If they wanted to (or were forced to by antitrust action), they could allow third party services to do all those things, and for them to interoperate. They choose not to because they make ungodly amounts of money the way they do things now.
That's not what he is saying. He is saying that Apple is closer to being a credit card company than a retailer. When you buy something at Walmart, Walmart gets a cut, and the credit card company gets a cut. But Walmart's cut covers the costs of what they add to the transaction, which includes shipping and warehousing the product, providing a store, staffing the store, providing heating and air conditioning to the store, etc etc. The credit card company presumably takes a much smaller cut, because the costs of what they add is much less.
With Walmart, if the store is charging a lot over their costs, the consumer can choose another store. If the credit card company is charging too much, people can pay cash (or stores can refuse that card, etc). It isn't perfect, but at least there is some degree of competition forcing the price toward the costs of providing the various services.
Ultimately the reason Apple can charge so much is because consumers have limited alternatives. Bundling, application barrier to entry, etc.
The consumer has the same alternative as well as the app maker. The app maker can charge 43% more for an in app subscription as well as offer a cheaper subscription on their site.
Consumers can price compare just like in retail.
Why would Apple allow an app maker advertise a cheaper price in its store? Would Walmart let a manufacture advertise that they can get a cheaper price at Amazon?
Even for free apps, Apple still has to maintain the store, pay for storage, compute and bandwidth for assets, CloudKit storage, developers, reviewers, writers for their daily stories, etc.
One point that is always conspicuously absent from all of these kinds of discussions is a reflection on the actual value that Apple is providing for apps that are hosted on the AppStore. In the modern day software ecosystem, it is far too easy to take everything for granted and assume that all of these big companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon are all building software platforms for developers out of the good of their hearts. The reality is, these companies are all profit-driven, and the only reason why Apple for instance invests billions of dollars every year into the SDK is because there is a mutually beneficial relationship that exists between them and the developers.
Of course all developers want an ecosystem where they can develop their own software for the devices that they and their customers use without restrictions. However, the developer community should be careful to not become too complacent and expect that Apple and other companies are just going to give them everything that they want for free. If the technology industry wants to get serious about building free and open platforms, then we should start focusing on supporting projects like the Librem[1] smartphone which are built with open-source ideals in mind.
Our app requires users to log in and a multi-thousand-dollar membership. No IAP option as pricing requires working with a sales person and a quote. Yet to have an issue, hope it stays that way.
You download the app and it hints that you can sign up, but doesn't have a button or link to do so. How frustrating!
This is the sort of crappy user experience that Steve Jobs would have railed against. No doubt that he would accept, say, Netflix getting a discount off the standard 30%, but there's no way he would have accepted the status quo where (a) Netflix has a deliberately poor user experience on iOS to workaround Apples rules; (b) Apple gets zero revenue from Netflix.
> $99/year email service, of which Apple is rent-seeking $30
I'm wholly on Hey's side here, but I think this is a misleading way of putting it. Apple only wants 30% of in-app purchases, not purchases made outside of the app. The contention is that Hey thinks they shouldn't be required to accept in-app purchases, which given that either Hey or the user pays Apple an expensive tax on those purchases, makes sense to me.
Well, there __is__ In-App Purchase support, but it only works if your IP is in the 17.0.0.0/8 block. We put it in because we knew it was very important to Apple ;)
No, they allow you to have out-of-app sign ups as long as you also have in-app sign-ups, and you can't reference the out-of-app signups (e.g. link to them) from within the app.
However, even if apps/companies have sign up in the app I still use the web browser to sign up. I like the security of the browser more for personal info and set up than an app full of unnecessary permissions.
I personally truly do not mind, and even prefer, opening up a browser to sign up. Overall for liability reasons it might even be better to just have one endpoint for signing up, the web.
They can dictate it, they just should be consistent.
Force everyone to do it or no-one, don't pick the WORST POSSIBLE APP to deny. @dhh isn't one of the people Apple really wants to get on the bad side of (See Apple Card debacle).
I was wondering about that, because I always thought, that HN was pretty open about everything and there wouldn’t be a lot of moderation or any at all. What is this? Facebook or Reddit?
Sorry to change the conversation- but how is HEY any different from maintaining a whitelist? For example iCloud has had the VIP feature for a few years now which I use without issue. This is the 4th or 5th article on HN I have seen talking about HEY and Apple. It's almost like this is a marketing ploy.
The Tesla app comparison is just dumb, facetious even.
I had a similar app on my Volt but in the case of Tesla the app just works if you have the car whereas GM kept threatening to force you to buy into an Onstar subscription to continue using some features of the app; that would be something I could see Apple taking from.
We just need to realize that there is only have been two viable platform for apps since smartphones exists, and as such some decisions should not be in Apple/Google hands anymore at this point, some subjects should fall in the public space. 3.5 billion people are using smartphones today, and we shouldn't being told what to do by a few exec-dudes and their shareholder friends.
If Basecamp wants to do publish an email app - it's not porn, it's not racism, it's not bad - and that iOS users also want it, Apple should not be in the way.
I publish on the App Store and frankly I'm happy to benefit from the hosting / payments / search and I'm ok to pay a price for that - even if 30% is huge - but if some don't want that let them do what they want, it's not Apple to decide that anymore.
Why is porn excluded? Should people not be allowed to install apps that deal with sex? If Apple does not allow sex apps then a significant chunk of the population will be denied access entirely to something because Apple doesn't approve of "those apps". Adults have the right to choose whether they want those apps or not.
Developers that charge extraordinary amounts via subscription should be listed somewhere too, so we know who to avoid. BUDGE used to make children's games that unlocked for $5 - $15 one-time purchase, now the same size and caliber titles are each almost $100/year, just a big Apple-sponsored bet on zombie subscription fraud staying "acceptable" for a few more years till Apple fixes the problem they created that amplified their cash flow. Throughout it all we miss that the 30% isn't even getting us good custodians.
Basecamp/Hey seems to have hit upon a combination of use case, pricing, and closedness that Apple doesn’t like. Email, $99/year, no POP/IMAP? Not allowed. But there’s no policy on paper about it.
Extortion is lucrative. If you're ever trying to get super rich, you're going to have to "crack a few eggs." As in: be an extortionist. That's what "cracking eggs" means.
Any app can be split into a free client and a paid subscription. This is exactly the same as any business can move all of its profits to be made in some tax haven.
Just like in the latter, there is selective enforcement of the rules, leaving the most prominent corporations to carry on as they please while nailing the SME to the wall.
Pretty sure it will come to a point where the ingress of paid content into an app will be taxed, regardless of where the payment was made, and that this policy will be introduced by both Apple and Google.
I know this list focuses primarily on account-based apps but I would argue strongly that most pay-to-play games fall into this category.
“Buying” a game for $0.99 that has repeatable in-app purchases in the hundreds or thousands is not “working” if you ask me. I would love to return to the days where games are “complete” at the time you buy them, with essentially no option to buy gems to make it actually work reasonably.
Am I the only one to feel like the Hey people are basically having a faked marketing-driven temper tantrum?
Not to say that Apple applies their rules fairly (I wouldn’t really know, but I’m willing to trust there are issues). Just that each communication I see from Hey feels entitled and self-dramatizing. It doesn’t feel like they’re helping their own case...
I know it's not part of the principle, but is there anything in the rules that says you can't charge an additional fee to those signing up using in app payments? If this is the hill Apple chooses to die on, every Apple customer just has to pay an additional 30ish% for a service, but of course you can always sign up online for the special sale price.
Legitimate question: assume I sell a service that costs $7. If I understand Apple's current restrictions I sell it for $10 on the app and for $7 on my website, correct?
If so, can I put a banner on my app that says "hey, you can buy this on my website for $7?" (without any links to the website). Just inform the user of that fact.
iOS and the Playstore do not respect equality. low tier publishers are treated completely different than the bigger ones.
if those stores would be real shoppingmalls they would have long be brought to court. Apple and Google play the game smart. consumers are happy and are not aware of the underlying ugliness of their business activities. smaller publishers / developers have a hard time making a voice against these unfair eco system aspects.
so far nothing is changing. the top charts of both the Playstore and iOS consists of apps which are best for the business models Google and iOS have slightly different business models. but in the end of the day it's all about advertising, data collections and IAPs.
Big companies like Netflix, Google, Tesla, etc don't have to play by the same rules that smaller developers do, and that shouldn't surprise anyone. What's interesting to me is that Basecamp seems to want to join that club, or thinks it already is.
I think Apple is about to enter a multi-year anti-trust ordeal as Microsoft and other companies have before.
Ironic that they used to be the small guy fighting against IBM, and now they're the big guy pushing their "largest company in the world" status around.
Is it possible to enable in app purchase at a higher rate exposing the "Apple Tax"? In this case show $129 for in app and $99 if you go to this website... Or is that against the TOS?
Industry regulation by the FTC not self regulation. This is about markets, restraint of trade, monopoly behaviour and rent seeking. It's an FTC matter.
I don't understand why some people think they have a right to be distributed for free within the App Store. This store is something Apple created and I think it's fair that they decide who can join and how. If you are a developer and you don't like this, then develop your app for Android.
This is something similar to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo asking for $$ from developers if they want to sell their games for these platforms.
I don't see how Apple can win this one TBH. If Hey isn't offering in-app sign-up, they're in the clear IMO - the precedent for this is well established. So they'll have to either apply the same rules to everyone, or disclose the special treatment for the likes of Netflix, which does exactly what Hey does.
But I'm sure folks who defended Amazon banning Kindle books they don't like will just say that Apple is not a monopolist, and DHH is free to build his own mobile platform. /s
If you have been following these few days threads like these, there were quite a few "interesting characters" who said that if you don't like it, leave and build your own platform x)
I really don’t get the hills people choose to die on these days.
Do you want a successful business? Ok, then follow the rules, cover your ass, and do what you need to do to get your business going, even if it’s not always the ideal situation for you.
But no, I guess lashing out explosively and torpedoing everything because you’re not treated like the big players when you’re still a little guy is more satisfying, if less profitable.
> Do you want a successful business? Ok, then follow the rules, cover your ass, and do what you need to do to get your business going, even if it’s not always the ideal situation for you.
Not to pick on your bio too much, but I'm wondering if you may be having difficulty understanding the situation as a self described "ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company". But, you'll never get a new business off the ground successfully if you "follow the rules, cover your ass, ..." because the incumbents you are competing with are already doing that.
As I've ranted about before, running a startup is about taking calculated risks. You need to fight these fights if you think they have a high positive expected value. As sibling commentators explained, you do not always do this for altruistic reasons -- picking fights with a Goliath when you're a David is easy free PR for you.
Now granted, this kind of easy, free PR might be a drop in the bucket if you're a BigCo. And on the other hand, the expected risk might be high enough that the tradeoff really doesn't work out in your favor in that situation! But that is because the strategy for handling this kind of a setback is really not fungible from running a startup to running a BigCo.
It's precisely because everyone's so deeply cynical and feeling so powerless, that these rent seeking practices continue to flourish.
The way out is not to try and carve out a little niche for yourself and hope they don't come for you next. You can if you're a selfish coward but know that people don't respect selfish cowards and unless you want to live alone or with a few other cowards who agree to cling to each other for miserly comfort, it is a losing strategy.
The way out is also not to cause anarchy because 'everything is fucked anyway'.
This PR tsunami is actually one of the best weapons against monopolies, because they signal to policy makers that they can make a career out of working for a cause that the public deeply cares about. The big corps know this and try to avoid PR problems but it seems like Apple has gotten real bold as of late and I look forward to seeing what comes of this.
He took a principled stand and risked he’s whole business and I appreciate that. If apple would enforce the same rules for everyone I think people would give them some slack. But as it stands, they don’t.
2) This site is not built by the people who built Hey.
3) The rules are being asymmetrically applied. Why should people be OK with Apple bullying all the companies they think they can get away with bullying?
The majority of them are companion apps for physical products/memberships for which the rules around in-app purchases do not apply: Tesla, Soho House, Wells Fargo, Blue Cross / Blue Shield, WeWork.
Github has a free tier and doesn't require a paying membership to use.
Netflix is a digital content app for which there is a specific exemption under rule 3.1.3(a).
Bloomberg and Salesforce might also fall under the 3.1.3(a) exemption for "access to professional databases", I'm not sure.
App Store Connect is their own app. Apple's apps have always been able to use private APIs and do other things the rest of us can't.
The only other app in this list that is actually similar to Hey in terms of product type and monetization is Fastmail. (And it looks like Fastmail was recently asked to add IAP to their app as well.)
The rules around in-app purchases have been well known for a long time (by iOS devs at least, clearly not by the general public or even tech people).
Releasing an app that does not follow the rules and then publicly complaining when it is inevitably rejected is starting to seem more like a guerrilla marketing tactic more than anything else. (And a clever one too, I don't think yet-another-email-app would have gotten nearly the same amount of press coverage that this has.)