Here's another possible solution. Make the "Hey" app a general e-mail client for all e-mail clients that support the "Hey" protocol, whatever that is. Publish a rough draft of the protocol and call it a day.
Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
311–320 of 338 posts
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are all very different propositions where the company brings some value - the theatre itself, the player software, the content/catalog. A good illustration of how bankrupt the Apple Walled Garden is - just a fence to extract money with zero added value.
How well did the mobile developers do before the App Store when they tried to peddle their J2ME apps on feature phones? What are the chances that game developers would entice the whales to buy loot boxes and tokens for pay to win games if not for an easy payment method? Does Amazon provide value with the Kindle? Does Valve with Steam? Amazon market place? eBay? The console makers? The theaters don’t bring too much va…
…and you know what? If Apple's payment system makes your app better, you can use it! That's how it works on Android, and it sometimes bugs me when things use their own payment systems, but that's also the point. Google's payment system brings value. Sometimes it even brings '30% per purchase' worth of value. Why does Apple have this weird inferiority complex about theirs?
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a pretty obvious straw man. They take a cut for the marketplace. Which is the service apps rely on.
Except these apps aren't really using the marketplace. Pretty much the entire service is being delivered outside of the marketplace and they purposefully don't charge for the app download so as to not use the payment processing of Apple . Apple is trying to force apps to go through the marketplace and their payment processing, however, also forcing them to take the 30% markup. The policy as followed here is "Everythi…
Apple is charging developers for the rights to distribute on their platform. You will see this model everywhere around you: theme parks, grocery stores, e-commerce websites. The fact that the world's most profitable company has to play by different rules is quite frankly ludicrous.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
It should probably be pointed out that this whole fight is about Apple not getting 30% of $99 on whatever signups the iOS application for a pre-release email platform would generate. And Apple has boasted about having over 20 million registered iOS developers. Who knows how many of them are actively paying the subscription at the same time, but it's probably still a very large number.
If you think that developer licenses are even in the same order of magnitude as the value of 30% of in-app purchases I think your intuition is way off.
30% of in app purchases where the frictionless Apple IAP approach is deemed less valuable by the developer*
There's a very important distinction here. If Apple made their own in-app purchase API optional instead of mandatory, it isn't like every single developer would ditch it overnight. Apple's system is legitimately useful in a huge number of situations, and everyone knows that. It just isn't wanted _here_, and that should be okay.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not going to touch the space about MS, Xbox, or the like because I have 0 insight into that space, but I will point out that the marginal cost of a customer in many SaaS companies is most definitely not 0.
For anyone who is doubting that assertion, it’s all about the costs that scale with the number of customers you have. Beyond the hosting and server costs, there’s support costs. There’s customer acquisition costs (eg click-throughs on ads scale with the number of people click the ads). For more expensive/enterprise SaaS, there’s the account managers and sales team. You can grow your customer base dramatically with a…
And Apple also has to host your app and your assets, provide storage through things like CloudKit, provide services through GameCenter, customer support and refunds, centralized notification system etc.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are all very different propositions where the company brings some value - the theatre itself, the player software, the content/catalog. A good illustration of how bankrupt the Apple Walled Garden is - just a fence to extract money with zero added value.
How well did the mobile developers do before the App Store when they tried to peddle their J2ME apps on feature phones? What are the chances that game developers would entice the whales to buy loot boxes and tokens for pay to win games if not for an easy payment method? Does Amazon provide value with the Kindle? Does Valve with Steam? Amazon market place? eBay? The console makers? The theaters don’t bring too much va…
Kindle: you can load books from other sources, you can also read Kindle books on other devices
Steam: you can redeem keys purchased from other stores, install apps from other stores, and they don’t mandate using their system for in app purchases
eBay: do they have any policies like this? I haven’t heard much about them or made an eBat purchase in a decade.
Amazon Marketplace: There actually is a strong argument here that they capture so much of the market that opting out is not an option. This is very similar and already under much scrutiny.
Game Console: Also very similar to this. I expect they will lobby hard on Apples side for that reason.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
How well did the mobile developers do before the App Store when they tried to peddle their J2ME apps on feature phones? What are the chances that game developers would entice the whales to buy loot boxes and tokens for pay to win games if not for an easy payment method? Does Amazon provide value with the Kindle? Does Valve with Steam? Amazon market place? eBay? The console makers? The theaters don’t bring too much va…
Kindle: you can load books from other sources, you can also read Kindle books on other devices Steam: you can redeem keys purchased from other stores, install apps from other stores, and they don’t mandate using their system for in app purchases eBay: do they have any policies like this? I haven’t heard much about them or made an eBat purchase in a decade. Amazon Marketplace: There actually is a strong argument here…
Kindle: you can load books from other sources, you can also read Kindle books on other devices
Apple participates in Movies Anywhere Sling with Amazon, Google, Vudu, and a few other vendors. If you buy a movie from any of the participating studios, you get credit for purchasing for all of the stores.
You can also purchase physical movies from other places and redeem codes to get credit as if you purchased them from iTunes.
Apple doesn’t require that you must only use their subscriptions. You can subscribe outside of the store. You can every charge more subscriptions to make up for their 30%.
Of course you can opt out of Marketplace. You can set up your own website with places like Shopify.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
How well did the mobile developers do before the App Store when they tried to peddle their J2ME apps on feature phones? What are the chances that game developers would entice the whales to buy loot boxes and tokens for pay to win games if not for an easy payment method? Does Amazon provide value with the Kindle? Does Valve with Steam? Amazon market place? eBay? The console makers? The theaters don’t bring too much va…
…and you know what? If Apple's payment system makes your app better, you can use it! That's how it works on Android, and it sometimes bugs me when things use their own payment systems, but that's also the point. Google's payment system brings value. Sometimes it even brings '30% per purchase' worth of value. Why does Apple have this weird inferiority complex about theirs?
And you can also have additional payment methods outside of the App Store and charge less if you desire.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You don't have to deliver your PC game through Steam, and many of the big publishers have opted not to. A better analogue would be that you download WoW free from Steam, then take a subscription at Blizzard. Does Steam allow that?
Yes. Just because you bought a game on Steam doesn't mean you have to purchase all additional content through them as well. Steam installs full-fledged applications directly in the OS, not locked down sandboxed apps like on iOS.
AFAIK if you bought the game from steam all subsequent micro transactions form that account/client still incur a fee to Valve.
The Steam apps are “sandboxed” as in you cant run them without Steam, they use their own executable that is tied directly into Steam.
Re: Apple rejects appeal from email app Hey
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You don't have to deliver your PC game through Steam, and many of the big publishers have opted not to. A better analogue would be that you download WoW free from Steam, then take a subscription at Blizzard. Does Steam allow that?
I've uploaded 3rd party CD keys to steam and they've allowed me to download the game (multiple times) and stored my saves etc...
That’s only if the publisher allows that, or in many cases these are “Steam Keys” which are sold in emerging markets where credit and debit cards that can be billed internationally are quite rare.