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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'

#301

Post by vinay427 »

whatatita wrote: post #52
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.

I think a biggissue in this space is how dated the US banking industry is. They trail behind in so many ways that are anti-consumer and then they're used to justify draconion mafia moves like this one from Apple.

As a consumer, I really like(d) my US bank accounts besides some technological limitations. If you can afford to pay your bill every month (worth emphasizing), credit cards have far better benefits and are more consumer-friendly than in seemingly any other country I've been to or looked into, and are even more advantageous abroad than any domestic credit card where I live.

This applies to checking accounts as well. I pay no fees on my account with no minimum balance or usage restrictions and still have free unlimited ATM use worldwide (i.e. my bank doesn't charge a fee for the use or currency conversion and they actually refund me the foreign ATM's fees) and fee-free overdrafting on my account (paying a very nominal margin trading interest rate). I actually still use it even though I don't live in the US because it's cheaper to use here than my domestic bank account...

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

#302

Post by programmarchy »

snomad wrote: post #300
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…

It sounds like they weren't taking any payments via phone. Purchase only happened on the web, and Apple reviewers found text that led to web. It would be one thing if they were selling phone and skipping Apple that way. But if their are no phone payments, and only non-obvious links, it should not be required (or maybe I am misinterpreting this)

Yep. I’m guessing the ProtonMail app opens a web view to display their terms of use, or some informational page, completely unrelated to subscriptions. However if any of those pages link to a purchase page, no matter how circuitously, it is taken as a pretext to require IAP.

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

#303

Post by karpierz »

Drew_ wrote: post #275
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 softwar…

Walmart has 100% market share of distribution inside Walmart stores, alert the DoJ.

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

#304

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

Mafia is not a bunch of criminal thugs that just take and walk away, it's a social organization with its own rules that even cares about some of its members, marginalizes some, provides protection etc. Apple doesn't protect (its developers). It provides them some tools but it has shown no interest in them as humans or as entrepreneurs. Google may get a lot of hate too, but we remember that they ve built and promoted a lot of open platforms and open source stuff that stayed with us (despite their bad habit of shutting down services). Most other companies acted similarly. Apple is singularly capricious , and their primary appeal is their rich customer base, which they are waving like a carrot in front of everyone. It's only popular in US btw.

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

#305

Post by RonanTheGrey »

kmbfjr wrote: post #292
forty wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 O…

What's the competition for clothing distribution inside a Macy's? I mean, c'mon, it is their marketplace. Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them.

> Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them.

There's a tentative (probably weak) argument to be made that the people who have bought Apple's hardware chose this. This is was simply inflicted on the developers, however. Regardless of the degree to which developers voluntarily develop for iOS, the rules by which they play are 100% dictated -- and they have no say in them at all (no free market) if they want access to Apple's 1 billion customers.

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

#306

Post by yyyk »

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…

Users who don't like Apple policies are often told to 'switch to Android'. But how one does that when the subscription cannot be managed without an Apple device/account and there's no way to 'pass' your subscription directly to the merchant?

That's pretty much the definition of lock-in - there's no way to cut Apple out. Apple on the other hand could remove the user out by banning all its subscriptions - which is far more damaging than any one merchant deciding to do so. The power imbalance is utterly on Apple's side.

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

#307

Post by johnnydoe9 »

LockAndLol wrote: post #282

No matter what Apple does, people will say they're right to do so. The biggest fuck you that app devs can show to Apple is to develop exclusively for Android. Then add a notice on their page WHY they won't develop an iOS app. Maybe even a hip hashtag like #AppleMafia Voilà. If you're treated like shit in a store, don't use the bloody store.

If only that was possible but most companies won't bother trying in such a way cause they'd be losing out on a massively popular and profitable platform

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

#308

Post by SSLy »

forty wrote: post #280
esarbe wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Side-loaded stores can't auto-update apps. You have to confirm each app every time. It's unacceptable UX for a typical user.

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

#309

Post by markawesome »

segmondy wrote: post #299
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…

I agree with you, the say I have framed is. I say Cisco should charge for every packet that goes through their router that is involved in a Financial transaction. If you don't pay, they add you to a blacklist. It's feasible, router has a blacklist, Cisco checks if you make money, if you do, they shake you down, if you don't pay, they add you to the blacklist and router downloads and refuses to route your IP addresses…

Please don't give Cisco any ideas as they'll surely be doing this soon enough

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

#310

Post by Spooky23 »

donmcronald wrote: post #231
Spooky23 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a lot of drama associated with this stuff. 100% of nothing is less than 70% of something. When I was in college I interned at a company that negotiated retail placements for stuff like software. The 30% slice is a much better model than the terms our customers were stuck with. In some cases, software people lose more in the channel for commercial software as well — companies like SHI skim the cream for doing…

> When I was in college I interned at a company that negotiated retail placements for stuff like software. The 30% slice is a much better model than the terms our customers were stuck with. When I was in middle school a computer costed as much as a small car. Times change. Physical distribution of most software is dead and the associated costs are completely different now.

Only for the tiny sliver of direct sales. There’s a whole industry of middlemen that exists for various reasons.
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