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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'

#151

Post by ksec »

rockostrich wrote: post #133
pwinnski wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except in that real world, you only have two choices, Best Buy or Walmart ( iOS and Android ).

The problem and complain is much more complex once all these additional factors comes into play. It isn't so much a problem if we look at it in isolation. As in your Best Buy example, which I agree is perfectly valid.

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

#152

Post by foofoo4u »

bsg75 wrote: post #43

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…

You may be interested in https://privacy.com/. I use it for all online subscriptions. It allows me to block all transactions, which brings me back control of what I am paying for.

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

#153

Post by toiletfuneral »

bitL wrote: post #129
whimsicalism wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am proud that I pretty much cured everyone in my circle from buying any Apple products. And buying what instead?

There are luckily some options for high-end now like ASUS ProArt and similar.

lol

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

#154

Post by Semaphor »

TillE wrote: post #81
dtech wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the EU consumer protection law mandate this. You have to be able to cancel in all the same ways that you can sign up. The most common way to pay subscriptions is with SEPA direct debit, and banks have to let you revoke those authorizations even retro-actively for 90 days.

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

By now it’s law (unless I’m misremembering badly) that you need to be able to cancel the same way you signed up. So unless you signed up via a letter, you’ll be able to cancel without one, even in Germany.

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

#155

Post by stale2002 »

joshstrange wrote: post #75
croh wrote: post #27

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…

Sony/ect don't have nearly the same market dominance over a huge industry, as compared to Apple.

Apple has 50% of the entire US smart phone market.

This is a significant larger amount of market power then those other situations.

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

#156

Post by qwertox »

oscargrouch wrote: post #136
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.

To be fair, push notifications from websites can be harmful if the user doesn't understand them.

I know of a person who just clicked the "allow notifications" in order to not get bothered by the popup, and then they started getting notifications with sex offers and stuff like that. The website which triggered them was https://open4u.co.uk, which was prominently recommended by Google due to its positioning in the search results.

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

#157

Post by Barrin92 »

marcrosoft wrote: post #46
hollander wrote: post #12

I hope they will complain about this with the EU. Maybe the EU can stop this nonsense.

Ha, the same group that is responsible for accept cookie popups?

It's the companies who are responsible for the cookie popups because it's the companies who choose to shove tracking down our throats. The annoying popups are the consequence of that asinine behaviour. What on earth makes you think that the entity who merely made that privacy violation visible and explicit has done anything wrong here?

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

#159

Post by pier25 »

rockostrich wrote: post #133
pwinnski wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The huge difference is you can buy your TV from many places (BestBuy, Target, Walmart, Amazon, etc) but you can't sell your iOS app outside the AppStore.

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

#160

Post by cma »

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…

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

They already supposedly went after apps that linked to a privacy policy on their main website because the main website itself had premium options for sale. If you can't link to legal policy etc. because it might be a level or two of indirection from offering a premium service for sale through the site you have to do something like a special site just for Apple users. I can totally see them going after email and arguing Proton mail could hide those notification emails from iOS users if they contain links to premium.

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