Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

protocol.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 227 posts

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#121

Post by mirchibajji »

threeseed wrote: post #66
kjakm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away those apps and those iPhone's become useless bricks. Apps + developers add huge value to the platform.

I think you are vastly overstating the importance of apps. Apple could easily remove the App Store tomorrow, sign deals with a dozen or so companies e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Snap, Google, Microsoft etc and they would still sell devices.

Isn't this part of the problem though? Apple _could_ remove the app store, and consumers would lose the apps that have existed so far, with no alternative.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#122

Post by gambiting »

While obviously what Apple is doing is crap, why not just increase their in-app prices only on iOS? That's what Marvel have been doing with their comics. A comic that through their website costs £3, on the Android reader costs £3.29 and on their iOS reader costs £3.49. I always just buy them online and immediately download to my ipad without paying the Apple premium.

Yes, it sucks - but it seems like a relatively easy way out.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#123

Post by IncRnd »

Traster wrote: post #69

Apple should just offer Hey the option of providing the Hey app without the 30% cut, but negotiate how much Hey wants to pay for use of Apple's SDKs.

Apple should negotiate with all developers as to how much they want to pay developers for offering content on their devices.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#125

Post by oauea »

kristianc wrote: post #62
m463 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers? What if I bought an iphone, I am ONLY allowed to install apple apps on it, and I want the basecamp app?

> Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers? Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver the binary of its app. Basecamp can’t be said to be ‘freeloading’ on Comcast. Basecamp would come back and say ‘well, we pay our developer fees’ but developer fees don’t differentiate whether Apple has to maintain app updates for hundreds of downl…

Comcast also doesn't restrict all its users to exclusively acquire software from the Comcast Store™. Apple does.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#126

Post by hanselot »

detaro wrote: post #95
Uhrheber wrote: post #71

Do they also ban apps that show public transport schedules, because you can't buy tickets through them?

That's really a nonsensical example. An app not having a feature to pay for something is very different from an app requiring to buy something elsewhere.

So requiring an app to have a feature would then be necessary for all those other applications.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#127

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

fierarul wrote: post #13

Maybe the pandemic finally offers enough motivation for EU and US to make a strong decision about this. The (smart)phone market, for many people the only computing device they own, is utterly dominated by 2 monopolies under Apple and Google. The CEOs should get a medal and all the honours for providing society this good platforms then promptly forced to allow separate AppStores on equal footing.

The PC market, for many people the only computing device for a long time, is utterly dominated by Microsoft. But no one has ever done anything about that.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#128

Post by selykg »

jbrooksuk wrote: post #75
jw1224 wrote: post #60

Honestly, Apple's response is actually pretty reasonable, all things considered. Read the full letter — it was clear, fair, and professional — despite coming off the back of a lot of bad press. I see plenty of comments are focussing on this quote, re their Basecamp apps: > These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years Apple hav…

> Apple have (freely) provided Basecamp a platform to grow their business via the App Store, whilst giving Apple (effectively) nothing in return. It's not free though, is it? You have to pay $99 a year, and purchase Apple hardware to develop and test software for their platforms. Basecamp, who hire 50+ people most likely all run Apple hardware, so that's tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars to Apple over th…

How far do you think $99/yr goes in the grand scheme of things?

Cost of servers, cost of bandwidth, cost of maintenance of the App Store backend services and development of future features, technical support for developers, Xcode development, App Store review time, etc

I would hazard a guess they make nothing on that $99 at the end of the day. The cost is merely to be a gate to prevent anyone from submitting terrible apps for review. Having some monetary requirement there is just a deterrent for the lower quality stuff (obviously not all of it, but probably a rather significant amount).

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#129

Post by _iwgf »

dustinmoris wrote: post #22

I'm probably in the minority with this view, but I do think that Apple's response makes 100% sense and is fair and reasonable. - I don't like how everyone claims they want a 30% cut. That is factually not quite true. It is 30% for non subs, which I think is fair. If I want to sell a product on a specific distribution channel then the cut should represent the possible reach and sales opportunity. In the case of subs i…

> The apps to which DHH compares Hey with are very different in nature and all the mail apps he constantly mentions are also different in nature. They all implement the suggestions which Apple has suggested in their response.

I can only speak to the app I'm most familiar with that DHH has compared it to multiple times. Fastmail. Fastmail's app lets you access Fastmail's email accounts, but not POP/IMAP accounts more generally. It doesn't provide a way of subscribing, and just loads to a login page when the app starts. It doesn't follow the suggestions they included in the letter, and I've seen DHH reference it multiple times.

For what it's worth, I've enjoyed Fastmail a great deal, and having an email client directly tied to the service provider has been great for me. I'm mainly concerned about this whole issue because of it's implications for new updates to Fastmail's app.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#130

Post by empath75 »

slhck wrote: post #4

"These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years." This is pretty grotesque coming from a trillion-dollar company that anyway already charges developers a yearly fee.

If I were basecamp I’d be tempted to pull my apps over that passive aggressive bullshit.
Post reply on HN