71–80 of 109 posts
The next day my apps disappeared from the store with no notice or explanation.
I will never invest in a platform with this kind of arbitrary, totalitarian control again. Goodbye & good riddance Apple & good luck with your silly joke of an IDE.
Well, I am just glad that Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 store apps don't have this stupid restriction if you don't use their payment systems. Walled garden and 30% forced cut of app sales is one thing, but a forced 30% cut of every in-app sale is like erecting a toll booth on all apps. Gruber's explanation of "Apple does it because it can, and the people complaining are just jealous that Apple can and they can…
"Well, I am just glad that Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 store apps don't have this stupid restriction if you don't use their payment systems." The Android Developer TOS says that any other in-app payment system isn't legal, and grounds for your app being removed from the app store. I haven't studied it, but I suspect Microsoft's ToS will say something similar too. Edit: Android's DDA section 3.3 and 4.5 disal…
The key distinction is that this doesn't apply to products not distributed by the Market, like eBooks and mp3 hosted and sold externally (see: Amazon, B&N, Kobo, ...). Hell, you can even buy physical goods via the Amazon Mobile app (and others I'm sure).
" The rejection states that "if the purchasable content, functionality, or services are intended to be used within the app, they must be purchased through IAP, within the app" - This is absolutely not the case. Pay Pad for Stripe allows USERS to accept payments from their customers with their iPhone & iPad. Nothing that the user is accepting payments for would be used within the app.
Pay Pad for Stripe is companion app to the Stripe API (http://www.stripe.com).
I am not selling anything inside of the app. There are no subscriptions inside of the app. There is no exchange of a fee or subscription money between myself and a Pay Pad for Stripe user. They cannot buy any content, products, or services from my while inside the app.
The most straight-forward way I can describe how someone might use Pay Pad for Stripe is this: My wife has a Stripe account which allows her to accept credit card payments. She downloads Pay Pad for Stripe so that she can manage her Stripe account and accept mobile payments. She takes our daughters to the local grocery store to sell girl-scout cookies. A customer of hers want's to buy a box of thin-mints. She uses Pay Pad for Stripe to take a credit card payment from the customer for those thin-min cookies.
That's it. The feature is identical to what you will find in the popular Square and Pay Pal apps. This is not in-app purchasing. This in enabling B2C business transactions. There is no money exchanged between myself and the Pay Pad for Stripe users. "
I changed the summary text of my apps to say that I disagreed with Apple's patent lawsuits and that I would be removing them from the app store once I'd had a chance to distribute updates to existing users for any issues with iOS 6. The next day my apps disappeared from the store with no notice or explanation. I will never invest in a platform with this kind of arbitrary, totalitarian control again. Goodbye & good ri…
Well, I am just glad that Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 store apps don't have this stupid restriction if you don't use their payment systems. Walled garden and 30% forced cut of app sales is one thing, but a forced 30% cut of every in-app sale is like erecting a toll booth on all apps. Gruber's explanation of "Apple does it because it can, and the people complaining are just jealous that Apple can and they can…
Well, 99.99% of the millions of people queuing up for iPhone 5 don't know about stuff like this and some don't care even if they do. If the Kindle app lacks the ability to buy books, they will blame Amazon the for lack of that feature and not even linking to the Amazon.com page to buy. This is losing battle regardless of a few HN'ers switching to alternate platforms because of this. Same as with the patent case again…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't the Kindle Android app allow you to buy ebooks and subscriptions? Also,while Microsoft does support in-app purchases in their store, they don't restrict other payment methods like Apple does. From Microsoft's Store guidelines: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/maki... Using your own billing system Your app and service may already depend on a particular transaction provider or benefit fro…
Google's Play Store ecosystem disallows you to use any other provider but the Android in-app billing via ToS. Likewise, Kindle disallows you from using any other in-app payment mechanism besides their custom in-app SDK. FYI, Kindle apps need approval, unlike apps in the Google Play store. So this is no different (in fact worse, because you now have to maintain two code bases and accounting systems). Good to know abou…
The Google Books lawsuit is primarily a dispute with authors and publishers about fair use. The DoJ's involvement in that is tangential (and AFAIK was limited to commenting on and investigating the proposed and now rejected settlement).
Well, I am just glad that Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 store apps don't have this stupid restriction if you don't use their payment systems. Walled garden and 30% forced cut of app sales is one thing, but a forced 30% cut of every in-app sale is like erecting a toll booth on all apps. Gruber's explanation of "Apple does it because it can, and the people complaining are just jealous that Apple can and they can…
Well, 99.99% of the millions of people queuing up for iPhone 5 don't know about stuff like this and some don't care even if they do. If the Kindle app lacks the ability to buy books, they will blame Amazon the for lack of that feature and not even linking to the Amazon.com page to buy. This is losing battle regardless of a few HN'ers switching to alternate platforms because of this. Same as with the patent case again…
I have been bashing Apple for all of this on my blog (I have some regular readers) and I have carefully explained the "Apple problem" to 15+ people in non-Internet space.
It is OK with me if most people don't get the problems that Apple's new butt asshole behavior is causing. Personally, I will spread the message as I am able, and move on. (As I have previously mentioned here, I wrote the simple Chess program distributed with the early Apple II and I had fairly good luck with an app I wrote for the Mac in 1984 - but that is history for me now.)
Well, I am just glad that Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8 store apps don't have this stupid restriction if you don't use their payment systems. Walled garden and 30% forced cut of app sales is one thing, but a forced 30% cut of every in-app sale is like erecting a toll booth on all apps. Gruber's explanation of "Apple does it because it can, and the people complaining are just jealous that Apple can and they can…
As someone who's spent the better part of the last two years building a framework for mobile applications (jQuery Mobile) with the primary purpose of supporting as many platforms as possible I can tell you that mobile safari is hands down the best mobile browser out there today. You could make the case that Apple's patent threats around the touch event spec are holding things back (not having a standard here is makin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience the appeal board are just as stupid as the reviewer cited in the post. It was like my app was evaluated by a random different reviewer. Something is strange about the whole app review process. It's been problematic for years. Apple could fix it if they had the incentive. IMO they do have an incentive (more developers, more sales etc) but something else is preventing the process from improving. Lately…
Are you actually complaining that the reviewer was performing some QA-like functionality? That's surprising. You may also be misinterpreting. Quickly going through an entire app (which is what I'd expect a reviewer [who's actually testing the app] to do) is necessarily going to involve lots of really quick pushes and pops of VCs and swipes and whatnot. So no, I don't think the reviewer was trying to find some pretext…
Maybe the app's use of Google maps was frowned upon because of some tense relationship between the two companies. So instead of rejecting the app for "using Google maps because we don't feel comfortable with that" the reviewer tried to find a crash. When they couldn't they gave me the hilarious BS reasons. Hence a pretense to reject the app could make the reviewer's life easier.
The REALLY weird thing is that "cross platform exemption." This guy was NOT doing what that section of the ToS was meant to prohibit. But let's say someone else had an app that really was, that was doing in-app purchases without giving apple their 30% vigorish.... all you have to do is make it for Android too, and Apple will let you? Really? Does this really work?