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Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

developer.apple.com

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Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#161

Post by bogwog »

InTheArena wrote: post #151
post_break wrote: post #146

This is what bad management at Apple looks like. They were now forced to cut off the spice flow that is millions of dollars of IAPs from games in their coveted services pie chart because they got cocky. Roblox alone is going to show up on their balance chart. Epic throwing water on an oil fire with their comments make me grin, they are the reason Apple lowered AppStore pricing, and now they are the reason Apple can n…

Congrats. Two of the most user-hostile companies, one of which profits by exploiting children, are going to be better off. And let's also be clear, neither of these companies wants this revenue stream to go away; they just want a judge to give that revenue stream to them. Get rid of Roblox's and Epic's anti-consumer behavior, and then I will "grin" at this.

So Apple getting a cut of Roblox's revenue is protecting children from exploitation?

I think the real situation is that Apple allowing Roblox on their store despite its safety problems shows that Apple wants to profit from that exploitation themselves instead of prevent it. They have the power to kick them off, but they don't. (Although now they might)

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#162

Post by 999900000999 »

Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP.

When I use mobile apps I like being able to do all my spending in one place. I want to be able to go to subscriptions and cancel everything I don't need at once.

Just yesterday I had to manually stop a PayPal payment renewal since the merchants cancellation process doesn't work ( 2 emails to customer service and I get the vibe this is intentional).

That's not something I want to have to keep doing.

I can imagine Epic being able to convince people to use a 3rd party payment provider, but that won't happen for smaller studios.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#163

Post by crazygringo »

caseyy wrote: post #118
crazygringo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then there are apps you were able to use previously that you will no longer be able to trust. That's the problem -- it's taking away trust. You're not free to continue using Apple's payment system as a consumer.

What do you mean? The app can use Apple's system and its own. If the developers don't want your money on terms fair to you, you don't buy. Some things are relatively easy to refund via Apple, but not all of them. It's nearly impossible to get a refund for in-app purchases, gift cards, balance top-ups, auto-renewing subscriptions, redeemed digital goods, and so on. Coming from the EU, if I paid for these things direct…

You're missing the part where app developers take away the Apple payment option because that way they can make it much harder to do refunds, cancel subscriptions, etc.

That decreases trust. Period.

You're claiming this is about adding choices, but it's not. App developers will be removing the choice for consumers to pay via Apple.

Saying it's my choice to then not use the app is disingenuous. When a good option is replaced with multiple worse options, there's no benefit to "more choices".

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#164

Post by AtlasBarfed »

deeThrow94 wrote: post #65
smallmancontrov wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is HN, the Church of the Free Market is well represented. If you haven't yet seen someone give the "free markets create competition" speech on Monday and the "my company aims to capture this space and then entrench a monopoly with economies of scale / network effects / platform effects / two sided markets / last mile dynamics" pitch on Tuesday, just hang around HN a bit more. You won't have to wait long.

I had thought the clear need for anti-trust had tickled down to the plebs on here. Unfortunate to see that people still casually refer to free markets as if it's a meaningful concept. If you really truly think that regulation is dragging down some market, it's easy to talk about in specific terms. It is only possible to employ "free markets" in bad faith.

Endstate of the game theory of free markets is cartel or Monopoly.

All it takes is a single competitor to gradually gain more and more strength and competitive advantage via dumping, regulatory capture, or other means (see: organized crime and syndicates) to win the death struggle.

What has saved us hasn't been some magical free market, it has been the markets themselves, once they achieve trust status, fundamentally undermined by science and technology creating a new market that upends the old one.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#165

Post by freedomben »

alt227 wrote: post #66
maccard wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the android ecosystem is just fine as it is, why don’t you just use it instead of trying to change one that many other people are happy with?

I do use it, and as far as I am aware I am not trying to change anything?

I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning. It basically goes like this:

1. Read the argument

2. Disregard argument and instead try to read the person's mind or guess "what they really meant" to uncover some hidden agenda that you think must exist since it's simply not possible that somebody has a good argument against your pre-supposed belief.

3. Attack what you think they must actually believe rather than what they actually said.

You can also gas it up with some emotion too, especially if it's something deeply enmeshed in your identity like religion, politics, or Apple.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#166

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

fundatus wrote: post #3

Sigh, not that I expected anything else from Apple at this point but of course they only change the rules for the US.

Why would you expect Apple to ever "do the right thing?"

They exist to seek profits.

If this was a losing strategy for them, they would've dropped it long ago without the ruling.

Other countries should implement similar laws, not hope that Apple does the right thing.

Hope is a bad strategy.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#167

Post by EcommerceFlow »

If you haven't watched Tim Sweeney's appearance on Lex Fridman (which went live two days ago ironically), he discusses this battle against Apple, which he's maintained at a furious pace for years. He goes into detail on how the previous guidelines stifle innovation, how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.

His Crusade for open platforms/services in general is very very respectable.

Fortnite, in my opinion, has been a gold standard for F2P monetization. No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc. Compare that with Counter Strike 2, and I can't imagine how much money Epic has left on the table by choosing this path. So I give Tim a lot of credit for maintaining such a principled stance.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#168

Post by behnamoh »

plufz wrote: post #152
behnamoh wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One word: greed. Apple as the company we used to know is long dead. I still buy MacBooks and iPhones but only because some remnant of the past still exists in them. The new company came up with Vision Pro, screwing Spotify over app commissions, screwing game developers users love (Epic), non-upgradeable devices, extremely difficult repairability, etc.

Steve Jobs was quite famously against upgradability since the start. That is not something new for Apple. Honestly I love the current macs, but of course I would like to be able to upgrade them as well. But yeah I also have the feeling that Apple is getting less innovative, more sloppy and more greedy, but I'm not sure I think its become a whole other company.

> Steve Jobs was quite famously against upgradability since the start. That is not something new for Apple.

And yet during his time we had upgradeable MacBooks and Macs. Heck, even iPhone battery was upgradeable while he was still in charge.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#169

Post by pjc50 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #57
dartharva wrote: post #5

In the same article: 3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, cryptocurrencies and cr…

I get where Apple is coming from, though, and it's not just the revenue stream. They want to make sure that if you spent money on something in the Apple ecosystem, you can enjoy that for as long as you got a working device with that app installed. Allowing third-party services like license keys introduce a dependency on the vendor to keep their servers up and running.

.. well, apart from Apple's own ability to vaporize apps from the store at no notice, and their own upgrade treadmill which tends to cause low-revenue apps to be dropped. No, it's just because someone other than Apple is earning money, and this will probably also end up being overturned.

Re: Apple App Store guidelines remove ban on encouraging external payments in US

#170

Post by pjmlp »

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #167

If you haven't watched Tim Sweeney's appearance on Lex Fridman (which went live two days ago ironically), he discusses this battle against Apple, which he's maintained at a furious pace for years. He goes into detail on how the previous guidelines stifle innovation, how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.…

I haven't seen any crusade of him against console vendors though.
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