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Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

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Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#21

Post by httpsterio »

threeseed wrote: post #9
g_p wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly). Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite i…

It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…

Hey, if I could use anything else apart from the App Store, I'd do it in a jiffy. But as it currently stands, you cannot distribute your app at all unless you have a developer license and you either publish it on the app store or buy a separate business deployment certificate (which only works on in-house devices and let's you MITM the devices basically)

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#22

Post by edgyquant »

threeseed wrote: post #10
seba_dos1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that they backed down only when it became a popular news story at exactly the worst time for them to have it (because of Epic).

No evidence that it's tied to publicity. We've seen dozens of situations like this over the years and often we find out that Apple and the developers were discussing behind the scenes way before it was public.

There's little point the anti-apple hive mind is too strong on HN

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#23

Post by threeseed »

devit wrote: post #14
threeseed wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…

How so? The only "help" that an app store can give you is that your app can show up in search result in the app store. But that's only a problem because customers are used to searching in that app store (and that's because it's the only one on the platform). If there was no app store, customers would search on the web, and it turns out that Google Web Search and Bing don't refuse to link to sites that don't give them…

How do you think search works ?

Because it doesn't work by you creating a web page and then it instantly appearing in the 1st SERP. It requires significant amounts of capital in content marketing and SEO. And for competitive categories e.g. most apps you would need tens to hundreds of thousands of investment to rank.

And Apple and Google publicise a lot of the well made apps either via their promotional articles or via app groups. And their search is just for apps so you aren't competing with all of the non-mobile apps like you do with Google.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#24

Post by kergonath »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #7
bostonvaulter2 wrote: post #3

I'm glad that Apple backed down this time. > What’s more, Mullenwag told us that he had previously offered to strip other mentions of the paid plans out of the app (even workarounds like when a user views a preview of their own WordPress webpage and then navigates to WordPress.com), only to have those suggestions rejected by Apple. Having to remove those kinds of work-arounds is part of what bugs me about apples cont…

Consider that they backed down only when it became a popular news story at exactly the worst time for them to have it (because of Epic).

Well, we’ll never know if it would have turned out differently at another time. They can be stubborn, but they can also recognise mistakes and correct them.

That said, there is no comparison: forcing a developer to add features to an app is nothing like enforcing the TOS the developer agreed with and is trying to subvert.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#25

Post by slow_donkey »

An issue I haven't seen previously discussed is Apple's enforcement of their "Business" guideline (3.2) which effectively prevents certain b2b apps from making it onto the App Store because the app is supposedly not available to a wide enough consumer audience.

This is a very subjective policy because popular b2b apps such as Slack, Zendesk, etc which have a wide reach are allowed, but more industry specific b2b apps are rejected even if our theoretical user base spans 10s of thousands of people simply because only clients of the business are able to use the app.

And btw this policy is not actually encoded in their rules[1] but 3.2 is the code they cite when rejecting your app. The rejection wording is as follows [2]:

"During our review, we found that this app was designed for a specific business or organization and not for general distribution on the App Store. Business apps available on the App Store are meant for use by a wide variety of external customers around the world.

As this app is not intended for general distribution, it cannot be made available on the App Store. We encourage you to review the other ways to distribute your business app and choose one that better meets your business needs."

[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

[2] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/122473 (not actually my thread but same rejection copy)

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#26

Post by save_ferris »

jonplackett wrote: post #18
g_p wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest issues with Google play store review is they won't actually tell developers which rule they're breaking, as you point out. This is so incredibly developer-hostile that the fact developers keep using the play store pretty much helps make the case they're acting in an anticompetitive manner. It certainly is interesting to note Google removed the title "Non-competition" from clause 4.5 of their develo…

This is really shoddy behaviour. Is it just laziness on their part or is there a benefit to them to keep developers guessing?

Just a WAG but I think it allows them to maintain total control over the playing field. They get to choose which apps best suit their interests in their market and apply the rules inconsistently to apps that somehow don't align with their interests.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#27

Post by vageli »

threeseed wrote: post #9
g_p wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly). Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite i…

It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…

> It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market.

> If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax.

How can you distribute an app for iPhone on your own website?

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#28

Post by stale2002 »

threeseed wrote: post #20
mchusma wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tax if you bring the customer and do all the work. Which most app developers do. It they charged 3% for customers you bring and 30% for customers they bring, your point would be more valid.

Please provide evidence of this. There are millions of app developers and you are saying that most of them are doing customer acquisition external to the App Store ? Because I just did various searches for note taking and productivity apps on my phone and no one is buying ads. From my experience only the larger app developers invest in their own customer acquisition whilst the rest all rely on app discovery.

> There are millions of app developers and you are saying that most of them are doing customer acquisition external to the App Store ?

They can't do customer aquisition external to the App store because Apple prevents them from doing so.

Thats the very problem. Apple won't allow other app stores to compete, and you can't just download an app from someone's website, and install it.

Apple prevents you from doing so. They don't even offer some hidden setting which says "Allow 3rd party apps, warning, warning, warning, this could make your device less secure".

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#29

Post by save_ferris »

threeseed wrote: post #9
g_p wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly). Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite i…

It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…

> Apple and Google hand you customers on a silver platter for the bargain, consistent price of 30%.

30% is not a bargain, particularly when you're a small developer. And just because your app is approved doesn't mean that they're handing you customers on a silver platter either. There have been complaints for years over Apple's App Store search functionality, which they also have complete control over. It's wild to see someone cast so many passionate developers as naive and ignorant to the reality that 30% doesn't leave much room for any kind of profit. And all Apple did was give you as a developer permission to run your code on their devices. They're not guaranteeing you customers. They're just playing gatekeeper and adding little value beyond access to the market.

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