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ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

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Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#131

Post by setpatchaddress »

newbie578 wrote: post #100
skc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I bet there were people who loved using Bell System and people who enjoyed using IE over Netscape, yet we are not judging them based on how loved they are, but are they playing fair, and Apple since it's rise has been anything but.

Phone service in the US prior to 1983 certainly wasn't adored by users in the way that Apple products are. It wasn't universally reviled, but consumers didn't love it. This SNL skit was not unpopular:

https://vimeo.com/355556831

If you want your arguments to be effective, it may be best to stick to analogies that you have personal experience with unless you've read deeply enough to understand the cultural context.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#132

Post by powersnail »

coder543 wrote: post #89
powersnail wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering it's protonmail, email them the notification.

That's exactly the problem. Apple doesn't want any notification of this to be visible to the user in the app. The fact that the app handles the user's email isn't guaranteed to be a relevant distinction to the random reviewer who is tasked with reviewing the app. Apple has not spelled out clearly that this is okay for them to do, which means that it is a risk. The user would be receiving a literal iOS notification fr…

I don’t believe Apple can dictate what ProtonMail is sending to its user via email.

Requiring no app generated notification has a clear line.

Requiring no email, which is a general mean of communication, has too big an implication. What about sending a text? Or a mail? Or to a secondary email?

I’m not a lawyer, but such a clause in contract would be deemed rather unjust, wouldn’t it?

It feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#133

Post by rockostrich »

pwinnski wrote: post #121
TheRealPomax wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite argument to what the problem is right now. It's not that IAP is bad, or that it shouldn't be available. It's that there's no alternative permitted in addition to Apple's IAP model. You're not even allowed to HINT at the fact that you might have alternative ways to pay for the things you want to pay for. Even if your name is hugeservicethateveryoneknows, you can't tell people that you have a websi…

This seems like a pretty large misreading of the situation. Yes, the most disagreeable thing about Apple's IAP policies is where they forbid links to alternative purchase pages. But it is also the smallest of the current complaints. It's not "additional" means of purchases many companies are pushing for. They want to be able to avoid offering Apple's IAP whatsoever. I mean, ProtonMail did not have IAP in their app at…

Yea, I have trouble understanding how this is any different than how people purchase things in person. When you go to Best Buy and buy a TV they obviously aren't going to let the TV manufacturers advertise that you can buy the TV for cheaper directly from the manufacturer.

Obviously it's not a 1-1 comparison, but Apple is giving the apps a similar platform to sell their product.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#134

Post by zamadatix »

pwinnski wrote: post #121
TheRealPomax wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the opposite argument to what the problem is right now. It's not that IAP is bad, or that it shouldn't be available. It's that there's no alternative permitted in addition to Apple's IAP model. You're not even allowed to HINT at the fact that you might have alternative ways to pay for the things you want to pay for. Even if your name is hugeservicethateveryoneknows, you can't tell people that you have a websi…

This seems like a pretty large misreading of the situation. Yes, the most disagreeable thing about Apple's IAP policies is where they forbid links to alternative purchase pages. But it is also the smallest of the current complaints. It's not "additional" means of purchases many companies are pushing for. They want to be able to avoid offering Apple's IAP whatsoever. I mean, ProtonMail did not have IAP in their app at…

That's not what Apple insisted, if you have IAP you can't have a button below that says "or buy direct 30% cheaper". It's either IAP or no mention of payments.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#135

Post by misnome »

JonLim wrote: post #85
wycy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

Had similar problem with The Times in the UK, but it seems it's pretty common for newspapers.

The online subscription could only be cancelled by telephone, on a phone line with small and inconvenient windows of opportunity, with long waits. When you get through, you have the normal retention/upsell attempts, and then are told that it will take at least two months to process your cancellation, and that you will continue to be charged in the meantime.

It was easier to cancel my card, at which point they somehow managed to withdraw access as soon as the first billing failed.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#136

Post by oscargrouch »

toastal wrote: post #42

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.

"Its for your own safety kiddo. Those stuff are dangerous and will harm your device"

When companies use the same logic of spreading fear to manipulate and ultimately control as the war on terror/war on drugs from Bush/Nixon, you know something is really wrong.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#137

Post by coder543 »

powersnail wrote: post #132
coder543 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the problem. Apple doesn't want any notification of this to be visible to the user in the app. The fact that the app handles the user's email isn't guaranteed to be a relevant distinction to the random reviewer who is tasked with reviewing the app. Apple has not spelled out clearly that this is okay for them to do, which means that it is a risk. The user would be receiving a literal iOS notification fr…

I don’t believe Apple can dictate what ProtonMail is sending to its user via email. Requiring no app generated notification has a clear line. Requiring no email, which is a general mean of communication, has too big an implication. What about sending a text? Or a mail? Or to a secondary email? I’m not a lawyer, but such a clause in contract would be deemed rather unjust, wouldn’t it? It feels like a lawsuit waiting t…

> It feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Lawsuits against Apple's App Store policy enforcement are already in progress, but Apple has the best lawyers money can buy, and rulings are years away.

If a substantial part of your business risked being terminated at the click of a button by some unelected person that you have never met, with no proper way to appeal such an unjust decision, you'd probably think twice about doing something that could be misconstrued as intentionally violating App Store Guidelines too.

I blame Apple for the lack of clarity both in their rules and their enforcement. I don't blame ProtonMail for trying to adhere to Apple's arbitrary rules that often make little sense.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#138

Post by jm4 »

secretsatan wrote: post #20

From the article : Apple responded, saying that free companion apps to paid online services are no longer required to have in-app purchases as of September 11, 2020. As long as paid upgrades are not offered through the app and it has no notifications to customers about an external subscription service, everything is fine. So....

So... Apple has a say in how or when a company communicates with its own customers inside of an app the company developed and customer chose to use simply because that app is running on an iPhone. This is asinine.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#139

Post by pjc50 »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #125
fermigier wrote: post #117

This reminds me of a very different time... In 1997, then CEO of Sybase Mitchell Kertzman said in an interview with the French trade magazine 01 Informatique: "Q: When you launched Jaguar CTS, a middleware tool competing with a Microsoft product, you received a rather explicit phone call... A: It was the Mafia! When I hung up, I realized that I had just received a phone call from the godfather who forbade me to sell…

Does he mean that Microsoft literally called him and told him not to use Jaguar CTS? Would that be telemetry phoning back when competing products were used? I'm a bit confused by the word choice there.

He meant when he started selling it he got a phone call telling him not to do so from Microsoft.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#140

Post by misnome »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #84
TillE wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck cancelling pretty much any service in Germany without literally sending them a letter in the mail, regardless of how you signed up.

Germany is very specific in many of these things and the rest of EU is different :-).

Right, but that contradicts the parent assertion that it's outright illegal. FWIW I'm not sure I buy that - there are way too many services and companies, large and small, that don't have this symmetry of subscription.
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