91–100 of 392 posts
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Yes, Apple subscriptions are a reliable way to signup for HBO or Showtime to binge-watch a specific show. Signup and immediately cancel the subscription, that gives you 30 days to watch. No further payment management actions needed.
It is funny that if you sign up for a 7 day free trial of Apple TV+ that if you cancel immediately before the end of the 7 days your trial is up immediately as well.
I'm actually happier to pay a small premium for IAP based subscriptions because of the cancellation options. Having been subjected to asinine "retention" policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive…
The issue is Apple's requirement that you can only use IAP, cannot offer alternative, cheaper, prices, cannot direct people to your website to sign up for things, and cannot even disclose what portion of the bill goes to Apple.
Your post proves Apple could still make money with offering it as an option for informed users. But Apple is being a bully and a thug by disallowing alternatives, and actively preventing app developers from telling people about them.
What Epic did with Fortnite should be the gold standard: Buy direct or pay through Apple. The latter providing potentially better privacy/security and user experience at a price premium.
Let's just use PWA! Oh wait, no push notifications, proprietary asset properties, and other crippled feature sets on iOS? Guess that option is out too.
-- Apple, surprised pikachu face, probably
It has been over 5 years since Chrome for Android added support for push notifications.
Apple needs to stop dragging their heels here, since they are clearly using every excuse in the book not to let users receive notification from apps outside the app store purely because it benefits them financially to do this, in a manner that is very anti-consumer and anti-developer.
Users don't have to be assaulted with drive-by notification requests. Safari can require that PWAs only be given the chance to receive push notification permission after being added to the home screen. It's not rocket science. SpaceX landed a rocket booster almost 5 years ago, and they've gone through the certification process to send astronauts to the space station, and they're well on their way to making their next-gen Starship platform orbital. But Apple can't figure out a way to support APNS for PWAs. It's just too hard! Apparently.
If PWAs supported APNS, Apple would have a significantly more defensible anti-trust position, but Apple has shown that they just have no interest in making things easier for themselves -- let alone their users or developers.
Apple also supports PWAs so poorly that the new App Library feature doesn't even properly support them. PWAs have no option to be removed from the home screen and left in the App Library, unlike all other apps, and iOS 14 is the first time that there has been any distinction between PWAs and regular apps as far as the home screen is concerned. This is without even discussing the lack of widget support for PWAs, which would legitimately be challenging for Apple to support well, unlike APNS.
I say all of this as someone who really likes iPhone, and is frustrated that Apple seems to be doing everything possible this year to push me back to Android.
Just add APNS support to PWAs that have been added to the home screen, Apple! And please don't wait another 5 years to do it.
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> ex: NYT NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.
Am curious: what made it so difficult to cancel / unsubscribe? If you subscribed with a credit card, did the option of chargebacks ever come up? (Asking because these sorts of situations seem perfectly in line for disputing with your credit card provider.)
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> ex: NYT NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.
Am curious: what made it so difficult to cancel / unsubscribe? If you subscribed with a credit card, did the option of chargebacks ever come up? (Asking because these sorts of situations seem perfectly in line for disputing with your credit card provider.)
I had an Amazon subscription charge I could not track down for a year. Every month I would call Amazon, who's CSR couldn't find it, and then my bank to reverse the charge.
Found out I had Amazon Premier still signed up on Amazon IT. The card worked globally but subscriptions displayed locally.
Google/Apple should drop the percentage. 30% is too high.
Honest question, should Sony/MS/Nintendo also drop their percentage? How about the cut stores get to put products on their shelves? Because whenever I zoom out and look at more that just Google/Apple the more I see examples of this happening everywhere and I wonder why there isn't similar outrage. Like with the whole "FB mad that Apple wouldn't let them call out the 30% cut" thing, I mean Kroger isn't going to let a…
Yes.
> How about the cut stores get to put products on their shelves?
No.
A digital store has an essentially unlimited capacity and carrying a new product involves doing a review and adding a new record in a database. Kroger, on the other hand, has to do this and manage limited shelf space.
The limited resource in an app store is the slot in some promotion carousel. Go ahead and charge whatever you want for that.
I'm actually happier to pay a small premium for IAP based subscriptions because of the cancellation options. Having been subjected to asinine "retention" policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive…
> ex: NYT NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.
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Is someone making you use ProtonMail?
Is someone making ProtonMail use AppStore?
There is no realistic / reasonable way to distribute an iPhone app outside the app store.
I'm actually happier to pay a small premium for IAP based subscriptions because of the cancellation options. Having been subjected to asinine "retention" policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive…
I've taken to using Privacy/temp card numbers for all subscriptions. They have strict spending limits set and if needed, I'll deactivate the number.
Sure, someone probably could send your "debt" to collections, but will they?
Another thread where people will fly to defend Apple and explain how it's circumstances are similar to PS and Xbox and no one is coming after Sony, yet everyone conveniently decides not to compare Apple to early 2000s Microsoft which is basically a mirror situation. I guess people "expect" stuff like this from Apple which is the reason we are not allowed to criticize them, yet if Microsoft came out and said Steam bre…
The big difference is Apple products are quite literally beloved. It must feel quite strange to be asked to adjudicate over such complaints when you yourself actually love the products of the company you're supposed to make a ruling on.