I don't think that's true? I had to get a DUNS number to apply to the app store. And it had to be an LLC (I think?) and not a sole proprietorship. I initially just wanted to use a "DBA" (doing business as) but they don't allow those anymore, they used to in the early days but no longer.
According to this: https://developer.apple.com/support/enrollment/ A DUNS number is only required for organizations, not individuals.
ah fair enough, yea I wanted an LLC because everyone told me to be smart and not use my real name and have no legal protections.
> I am glad that websites cannot play audio without the user first interacting with the page. I am also glad that websites can't play audio in the background > These are higher-level permissions and should not be free for the taking. While they shouldn't be available to every site, these higher level permissions should be request-able by a PWA with the option to grant that permission indefinately. Apple is deciding t…
How are you going to stop every website requesting all the permissions upfront?
Why would you?
If they want that permission before loading the page/app, they should ask. If they don't want to annoy their customers, they should wait until they need each permission.
Lemme get this straight: you're mad that a company you don't want to pay $99/yr to won't build APIs so you can make money on their platform. So sad, lemme find my tiny violin.
Author here. I'm not making any money on their platform. I'm a non-profit, building a free app; this isn't about money. I mentioned money in the post as a list of all barriers to moving a PWA to app store. $99/year + 33% in-app purchases (plus a $1000+ Mac to build, and probably one or more Mac minis for CI) is a barrier. The bigger concern is Apple is lagging behind on web standards. I suspect the reason for that is…
> Apple is lagging behind on web standards.
Google’s bright ideas aren’t necessarily standards. Service workers are only a working draft, and only implemented in 2 of the major browsers.
Obviously Google and Apple have different priorities, and clearly service workers benefit Google more than the other vendors.
How are you going to stop every website requesting all the permissions upfront?
The same way we stop native apps from doing that? It used to be fairly common in Android for developers to just request everything. Developers still request too much, but it's gotten a bit better because in newer versions of Android you have to actually start using the API before the permission will be requested - so as a user if you request microphone access, I know it's because right now you intend to record sound.…
Yeah, exactly. This works pretty well with location tracking -- few people request it, you can deny the request, and things almost always work fine when you do. (I've had one site lock me out for blocking location data, and some things work poorly on Facebook's mobile site without location tracking on, but I haven't noticed any other problems.)
Author here. I'm not making any money on their platform. I'm a non-profit, building a free app; this isn't about money. I mentioned money in the post as a list of all barriers to moving a PWA to app store. $99/year + 33% in-app purchases (plus a $1000+ Mac to build, and probably one or more Mac minis for CI) is a barrier. The bigger concern is Apple is lagging behind on web standards. I suspect the reason for that is…
> I'm a non-profit So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac. Since you're a nonprofit, Apple will waive your developer fee, and you wouldn't need in-app purchases anyways. Also, IIRC the cut Apple takes is 30%, not 33%, in line with the rest of their App Store policies.
>So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac.
"So the only thing that applies to you is not wanting to pay upwards of a thousand US dollars for yet another development machine."
> I'm a non-profit So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac. Since you're a nonprofit, Apple will waive your developer fee, and you wouldn't need in-app purchases anyways. Also, IIRC the cut Apple takes is 30%, not 33%, in line with the rest of their App Store policies.
>So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac. "So the only thing that applies to you is not wanting to pay upwards of a thousand US dollars for yet another development machine."
As the article mentioned, they went with a $25 online Mac solution instead.
> I'm a non-profit So the only thing that applies to you is the price to have access to a Mac. Since you're a nonprofit, Apple will waive your developer fee, and you wouldn't need in-app purchases anyways. Also, IIRC the cut Apple takes is 30%, not 33%, in line with the rest of their App Store policies.
"non-profit" doesn't mean "not selling things"
And it certainly doesn't mean it's not about money. Depends on the business, of course, but I've seen non-profits that pay million dollar salaries to employees and put millions in the bank as reserves. Fine with me but business is often about money; non-profit or otherwise.
Why are you generating apps? Sounds like you need a website. Do your apps use the camera, accelerometer, AR, ML GPS or any other parts of a device? Or is it just a website with the cachet of being “an app.” Most people releasing apps shouldn’t.
You are technically correct. However: > You might wonder, “Why even put your app in the app stores? Just live on the opened web!” > The answer, in a nutshell, is because that’s where the users are. We’ve trained a generation of users to find apps in proprietary app stores, not on the free and open web.
however in that case there is no "free and open web."
It is google's walled garden.
And again that's the free market at work. There are enough people who have a different set of priorities to make Apple a very successful company.
The ”free” market is not a sentient being.
And nowhere did I say it was. The fact is every company hopefully has a business plan to be profitable the numbers show that Apple has one of the best business plans to do so.