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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'

#241

Post by fakedang »

pwinnski wrote: post #214
simion314 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is bigger then that. Apple takes a 30% cut(and the fanboys will say it is legal and fair and theoretically Apple could make it 99% and should still be legal) and on top of that cut they are forcing you not to inform the customer about alternatives, YES Apple prevents you to be informed by better reals and deciding for yourself what is better, so you could say that Apple is protecting you because you are t…

Yeah, Apple's practices are far from ideal, your insults aside, but I'm not sure how much of that is relevant here. On this thread at least, nobody seems to have mentioned percentages but you.

I don't see how any of that is not relevant here.

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

#242

Post by _v7gu »

dpiers wrote: post #182
Barrin92 wrote: post #167

Apple is nothing else but the digital equivalent of a landlord extracting economic rents from everyone in the ecosystem. It's time to put an end to it, and while we're at it the same goes for all the other platform owners. We (in this case the EU) should give it the same treatment we gave credit card companies. Cap their rates at 1% or whatever so they can cover the operational costs of their stores, stop them from b…

What about video game consoles? Early in a generation, they are sold at razor-thin (or negative) margins, with the expectation that the manufacturer will recoup losses from licensing fees over the life of the console and that costs will come down in later revisions. If manufacturers lose their substantial licensing fees, they would be forced to charge more upfront for the consoles which is objectively worse for consu…

Unless they are Nintendo, where they make money on both console sales and licensing fees.

Microsoft also appears to have solved that issue with their game pass opening and many game studio acquisitions.

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

#243

Post by CamperBob2 »

gowld wrote: post #108
r00fus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blame the "no regulation" crowd for that. Well functioning regulation and consumer protection is what promotes good things by forcing bad actors to get in line.

There's no guarantee that regulation is good regulation.

Very true, which is why a smart merchant won't push their luck by abusing their customers.

Turns out a lot of them, such as the NYT, aren't that smart.

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

#244

Post by Someone »

dtech wrote: post #47
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…

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.

I don’t think stopping automatic payments automatically cancels the subscription. It just stops the money flow, but keeps you liable for the payments.

It means the company has to make an effort to get money flowing again, though. Many will know that’s not worth it and stop the service instead.

(Corrections welcome)

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

#245

Post by viktorcode »

rgbrenner wrote: post #66

In August Wordpress complained about the same thing... and Apple apologized and changed the policy: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/22/21397424/apple-wordpress-... Protonmail brings up a 2018 incident that has already been addressed by the new policy. What point does this article serve? I think it's just free and easy publicity for ProtonMail. If they had spoken up earlier, maybe they could have been the reason for c…

That is an incorrect conclusion.

Apple apologised that the language of App Store guidelines wasn’t clear enough. The policy in question hasn’t been changed.

The changes to App Store guidelines were announced in June, before the situation with Wordpress. Those changes were published in August.

Wordpress changed their app to follow the policy by removing the mention of their premium service.

Sadly, the Verge doesn’t make any of it clear.

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

#246

Post by fakedang »

forty wrote: post #238
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…

I feel it's the contrary. We are generally happy to refund customers that are not happy with our service, but the app store is the only payment system where we cannot refund them (I don't really know what the UX looks like on the customer side, but I think they have to contact Apple to ask for the refund and it's not always as easy as it should to get the refund) Note that things might have changed since I worked on…

It's the same for Android too

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

#247

Post by kuschku »

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.

I don't know when you last tried to cancel anything, but if you cite the court case from 2017 on this, pretty much every service is very quick to accept your cancellation via email ;)

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

#248

Post by viktorcode »

namanaggarwal wrote: post #49

What problem does Apple have with PWAs (apart from monetary ones ofcourse), how are they justifying not implementing features in browser for a good PWA?

They are far more interested in bringing media and privacy features to Safari. That’s part of their business. Exactly like making web apps is part of Google’s. Hence, the difference.

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

#249

Post by jwalgenbach »

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…

Kroger buys wholesale, and sets the prices in it's store independent of what it paid (presumably they want a profit, but it could also be a loss leader). And there is no lock-in for a grocery store (i.e. I can buy the identical product elsewhere). This is a false equivalency.

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

#250

Post by GloriousKoji »

manfredo wrote: post #202
dpiers wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about video game consoles? Early in a generation, they are sold at razor-thin (or negative) margins, with the expectation that the manufacturer will recoup losses from licensing fees over the life of the console and that costs will come down in later revisions. If manufacturers lose their substantial licensing fees, they would be forced to charge more upfront for the consoles which is objectively worse for consu…

Consoles are much, much narrower in use than smartphones. Most consoles have a few thousand titles, if that. By comparison the App Store had millions of applications. And as you point out, manufacturers are building these consoles at a loss. Apple builds it's phones at a profit. Getting a game approved for sale on a console is much more involved than releasing an App on the App Store, and involves significant manual…

Everyone here seems to be obsessed with the fact that a console is a "computer" in the turing machine sense but the fact is that people buy consoles with the strong primary purpose of entertainment.

Smart phones and tablets have gotten to the point where they are expected to be able to do hundreds of different things, with some peoples livelihood dependent on it.

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