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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'

#271

Post by forty »

fakedang wrote: post #246
forty wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, I believe we can refund ourselves payments on the play store (or at least I'm pretty sure we at least used to)

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

#272

Post by MagnumOpus »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #270

Guessing this is a hugely unpopular opinion here: A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creating value, they steal it. Without the mafia, people would retain more value for themselves. Apple, on the other hand, created and maintains an enormous platform. Without Apple, the App Store would not exist. The rules are posted to a webpage and are applied mor…

You aggregate Apple the platform creating hardware and OS company with Apple App Store which extorts rents due to dominant market position on the Apple hardware far disproportionate to the value that it adds. (If it added that much value that 30% of revenues for every app that can be downloaded from there was fair, then they would have to prohibit other app stores.)

The App Store is not necessarily linked to the hardware (just as IE isn’t linked to Windows, to show a similar antitrust issue), so Apple forcing the exclusive App Store platform contracts on users and value creating content companies looks a hell of a lot like a racket.

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

#273

Post by throw0101a »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #270

Guessing this is a hugely unpopular opinion here: A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creating value, they steal it. Without the mafia, people would retain more value for themselves. Apple, on the other hand, created and maintains an enormous platform. Without Apple, the App Store would not exist. The rules are posted to a webpage and are applied mor…

> Without Apple, instead of creating an app you would have to create an app and the platform and distribution mechanism etc.

And? As Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire et al observed:

> We started selling over the web in the mid ’90s.

* https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/29/what-tim...

He says they'd give up 5% to a payment processor, not 30%. John Gruber:

> To omit the fact that there was — dating back to the mid-’90s, well over a decade before the iPhone App Store — a thriving market for software sold directly over a thing called “The Internet” is sophistry. Most Mac software is still sold and distributed this way today. If App Stores are so great why is most Mac software sold outside the Mac App Store?

* https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_sta...

And you don't have to build it yourself, as there is now SaaS for all of this, and I'd hazard to guess that they'd be less that 30%. For example the Carbon Copy Cloner folks redirect to a third-party:

* https://bombich.com/store

And even if they took 30%, you'd still have the freedom to write apps the way you want and not be beholden to Apple's guidelines.

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

#274

Post by mindvirus »

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 wonder if there's a startup in that. Imagine a site where you pay a small premium and they manage your subscriptions - handling payment, cancellation and so on for you. You can see all of your subs, maybe even compare deals and stuff

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

#275

Post by Drew_ »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #270

Guessing this is a hugely unpopular opinion here: A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creating value, they steal it. Without the mafia, people would retain more value for themselves. Apple, on the other hand, created and maintains an enormous platform. Without Apple, the App Store would not exist. The rules are posted to a webpage and are applied mor…

Apple has 100% market share of iOS application distribution and therefore has a monopoly on this market. In this position they can freely and arbitrarily govern what is and is not acceptable iOS software as well as how much it costs to produce and distribute iOS software with absolutely no competition that could benefit participants in this market. Allowing Apple to continue exercising absolute power over iOS software distribution does nothing but bolster Apple's revenue and hurt iOS software consumers and producers by limiting options and driving up costs.

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

#276

Post by forty »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #270

Guessing this is a hugely unpopular opinion here: A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creating value, they steal it. Without the mafia, people would retain more value for themselves. Apple, on the other hand, created and maintains an enormous platform. Without Apple, the App Store would not exist. The rules are posted to a webpage and are applied mor…

> They’re not even close to being a monopoly. They’re a huge company, but there is plenty of competition out there

What's the competition for iOS app distribution? There might be competition on the customer side, but as far as I know there are none for the software/app vendors, which is why they can dictate their rules and choose the price (and it's not like customers have each a bunch of smartphones with different OSes, and you could say "Apple sucks so I'll make an Android app instead")

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

#278

Post by anticensor »

simion314 wrote: post #170
pwinnski wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ProtonMail had no IAP in their app at all, but offered paid subscriptions on their website. Apple insisted that they offer IAP in the app, and ProtonMail is upset. Here: > "Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase…

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…

Cut >50% and it's now a extortion with no further analysis. And extortion is illegal in any civilised state, including USA.

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

#279

Post by [deleted] »

pwinnski wrote: post #211
toyg wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As your sibling comment demonstrates, Apple will try and try again to reinstate that policy. One way or the other, they’ll squeeze developers until the last ounce of profit goes to Apple. They are the supermarket chain of software now, and that’s what supermarket chains do.

I don't think this is true. Look, Apple does all kinds of terrible things, and I definitely think the government ought to take action against them. But Apple one time, in 2011, announced that they were going to put in a rule that you couldn't charge a different amount outside the App Store than inside , and when furor erupted, they never implemented the policy. That's it. One time, never actually in practice. They ar…

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by forty »

esarbe wrote: post #264
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially unpopular opinion here on HN, but Android.

Not unpopular, but it just won't work; Google has already indicated that it also is going to want a 30% cut. And side-loading is not really an option for the average consumer. The problem of rent-seeking by monopolists will just go away by itself.

You can just side load an other store, then install from there, which I think is acceptable UX since you really just have to install the store once.
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