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Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

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Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#71

Post by banana_giraffe »

mynegation wrote: post #54
jrockway wrote: post #48

> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NAT…

Lol, few things trigger my OCD more than misspelled words in identifiers. I legit missed important use case while amending legacy system just because someone decided to have “priveleges” in the variable name. I hope all those ways to spell number 90 are part of the joke.

I'll just leave this here for you:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231#section-5.5.2

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#72

Post by jrockway »

banana_giraffe wrote: post #71
mynegation wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, few things trigger my OCD more than misspelled words in identifiers. I legit missed important use case while amending legacy system just because someone decided to have “priveleges” in the variable name. I hope all those ways to spell number 90 are part of the joke.

I'll just leave this here for you: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231#section-5.5.2

That's a good one. Since legacy code is less likely to change than the English language, I just call it a "referer" in writing unrelated to HTTP. That way, I'm never confused. (Everyone else? Good luck.)

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#73

Post by jrockway »

slumdev wrote: post #56
jrockway wrote: post #48

> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NAT…

Complete with spelling errors, semicolons in place of commas, shouting snake case, and unnecessary explicit numbering. Definitely enterprise-grade.

The explicit numbering is so that you can reorder them to be more "readable" later. I didn't have the heart to do that here, but in the real world, anything goes!

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#74

Post by jrockway »

mynegation wrote: post #54
jrockway wrote: post #48

> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NAT…

Lol, few things trigger my OCD more than misspelled words in identifiers. I legit missed important use case while amending legacy system just because someone decided to have “priveleges” in the variable name. I hope all those ways to spell number 90 are part of the joke.

The key is to write out the enums to long-term storage as the names instead of the numbers, that way nobody can ever fix your spelling mistakes.

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#75

Post by phire »

liquidise wrote: post #39

> Developers can communicate directly with customers about alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be given the right to opt-out. This is a huge step forward (though it falls well short of the ideal case) for iOS development. Having the ability to tell customers about other, often cheaper, payment methods removes a substantial barrier for some apps that have high-priced subscriptions. Positive as t…

Does the settlement allow for alternative payment methods to be cheaper?

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#76

Post by jrockway »

ianlevesque wrote: post #55
jrockway wrote: post #48

> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NAT…

You kid but they are a list of “tiers” that get localized.

I kind of assumed. You can't just take the price in dollars and convert it with the exchange rate, because customers don't want to buy a "89.398723 yen" app. It has to be $0.99, £0.89, ¥99, etc.

It is interesting that things are not priced in "buying power", but in numbers that aim to most deceive. ("It's not even a dollar!")

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#77

Post by postsantum »

jrockway wrote: post #48

> Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to more than 500 options. I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to wade through: enum PricePoint { UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1; ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3; NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6; PORTUGAL_NAT…

THREE_FIDDY

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#78

Post by koolba »

Strom wrote: post #67
jsnell wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the step forward is here? The developers are still not allowed to communicate about alternate purchase options in the app, they would need to have some other form of communication with the user. Such advertising via side-channels was never forbidden, it's just that it's impractical for most developers to establish that side-channel. I really have to congratulate whoever wrote that press release. The…

This Apple press release and term changes are super confusing. Probably designed to be confusing. Let's look into them. First, let's take the old terms. App Store guidlines point 3.1.3 from 2020-11-28: [1] Apps in this section cannot, either within the app or through communications sent to points of contact obtained from account registration within the app (like email or text), encourage users to use a purchasing met…

> What a bizarre paragraph. First it explicitly makes it clear that it's forbidden to send the payment information using contact information obtained via the app. However the last sentence is a generic statement that seems to contradict that. Does Apple mean that you can only use contact information obtained elsewhere? That would then match the previous terms. So it's probably that. However it is worded in such a horrible way that I can't be sure.

That sounds like you can’t use contact info you received as part of a paid signup to contact to switch to an out of band payment method.

In contrast to contacting a free tier user who’s email you’ve received as part of their signup flow. That situation would be allowed.

Indeed it’s bizarre as depending on when the contact data was gathered decides what you can do with it.

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#79

Post by jsnell »

Strom wrote: post #67
jsnell wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the step forward is here? The developers are still not allowed to communicate about alternate purchase options in the app, they would need to have some other form of communication with the user. Such advertising via side-channels was never forbidden, it's just that it's impractical for most developers to establish that side-channel. I really have to congratulate whoever wrote that press release. The…

This Apple press release and term changes are super confusing. Probably designed to be confusing. Let's look into them. First, let's take the old terms. App Store guidlines point 3.1.3 from 2020-11-28: [1] Apps in this section cannot, either within the app or through communications sent to points of contact obtained from account registration within the app (like email or text), encourage users to use a purchasing met…

> the actual court document

That's a nice find!

I still find the language in the filing to be odd, specifically "all app categories". What good does allowing the communication changes for all app categories do, when most of them are not permitted to use non-IAP methods for payments in the first place? On the other hand, if they were changing the rules around when non-IAP payments are allowed, it seems like something that would be called out explicitly.

Maybe it could affect 3.1.3(f) and 3.1.4?

Re: Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S. developers

#80

Post by commoner »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

This is the same judge that is doing the Apple vs Epic ruling. I would expect the final ruling on Apple vs Epic to, ultimately, have very similar results to this settlement (or would have). If you've been following Hoeg Law's hours long legal commentary on Apple vs Epic, they believed the most likely resolution would be Apple being forced to remove the "anti-steering rule" which gags developers from talking about alt…

> This settlement has that already.

This settlement is not good enough for many developers, since developers are still subject to Apple's anti-steering rule in their iOS apps. Having to establish another communication channel with the customer is an unnecessary hurdle to let the customer know that they could avoid the (up to) 42.8% price hike on their subscription and future app-related purchases if they pay outside the app.

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