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This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

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Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#301

Post by skinkestek »

scarface74 wrote: post #286
skinkestek wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every website thinks they are smarter than EU. In reality fines are already being written, Facebook is seeing the writing on the wall and is already now (this surprised me a bit) pulling the desperate "we'll take our toys and go home" card, hoping EU won't call their bluff. Let's be clear here: most of these informed consent banners are invalid. The rules are something like: - default is opt out - if a choice must be…

Do you really think it takes much to ge smarter than a bunch of lawmakers when it comes to tech?

Do you really think it is easy to be much smarter than law makers and lawyers when it comes to laws?

There is an intersection here, but basically this - in my mind - isn't about bad laws but about big businesses fighting for their lives (or at least the lives of whole branches in their organizations) against these laws.

They'll do most things they'll come up with and think they can get away with: misrepresent, plead, beg, threaten to leave, willfully misunderstand even very clear laws etc as long as their lawyers and business people think the risk/reward ratio is favorable.

GDPR isn't that hard, technically.

It just gets extremely hard to comply with without letting go of abusive but highly lucrative business practices.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#302

Post by JumpCrisscross »

amcoastal wrote: post #259
tremon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're betting on Hacker News still being here in 2031? How come you're so sure this site doesn't fall under the great obsolesence plan?

I have to admit this thread is the first time Ive ever heard someone calling planned obsolescence a 'conspiracy theory'. I thought it was pretty well understood. Live and learn I guess, couldn't let the tinfoil hat folks have all the fun!

It’s a well understood phenomenon. But to claim it manifests at large across the American economy is to claim every producer is intentionally crippling their products. That’s a conspiracy theory by definition. It’s also unfounded. Yes, there are industries which promote fads to make their precious products less desirable. But that’s different from designing them from the start to fail early for the purpose of selling a replacement (versus designing cheaply for a consumer who doesn’t care for longevity).

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#303

Post by coder543 »

Grustaf wrote: post #292
coder543 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the warning is about the payment method, not how tangible the goods are. You can directly add credit cards to the Uber app on iPhone, completely outside the normal Apple payment flow. Apple doesn't require Uber to provide an obnoxious full-page modal warning that is intended to discourage people from adding a credit card to their app. This kind of double standard reveals the true nature of this warning dialog…

Physical goods have never been paid for with in-app purchases, so nobody will expect Apple to handle that, and nobody will blame them if things go wrong.

I still don't understand why the blame would be any different if something goes wrong with a dating app (as in the Netherlands) versus something going wrong with virtual events that also aren't held in the app, but require the use of Apple Pay, versus physical goods, which don't require Apple Pay.

I think most customers are happy to assign blame to Apple regardless, since the app went through Apple's hand curated App Store. That may be illogical in the case of physical goods, but I've seen people assign blame for far less. It's also still illogical in the case of virtual events, even though those use Apple's IAP system and 30% cut now.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#304

Post by coder543 »

Grustaf wrote: post #298
coder543 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously Ma Bell makes lots of money from their telephone system. What's wrong with that? There are limits to everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System unfocussed_mike's point is that Apple has obfuscated App Store P&L for years to try to keep regulators from feeling obligated to step in. There's no other obvious explanation for why they would keep it secret from both investors and the cou…

Why would it even be an issue that they're making billions from the app store? They've clearly said many times "this year have helped developers earn x billions through the appstore". Then it's easy to calculate their cut. But making money is not illegal. The app store is only a monopoly on iOS, not on phones or computers in general. I think it will be very hard to make that case.

> They've clearly said many times "this year have helped developers earn x billions through the appstore". Then it's easy to calculate their cut. But making money is not illegal.

No... it's easy to calculate their revenue, but it's not easy to calculate how much profit they made versus how much it cost them to operate the App Store. Pure revenue is largely irrelevant, from what I understand. As you say, making money isn't illegal, it's just the sign of a successful business.

> The app store is only a monopoly on iOS, not on phones or computers in general. I think it will be very hard to make that case.

I completely agree, under the way the laws were written decades ago. A lot of powerful people have been moving to update the way monopolies are understood for the digital era, and to remove Apple's monopoly over iOS. In the US, I can point to various examples of this, but these two will do for the current discussion:

https://9to5mac.com/2020/10/06/app-store-gives-apple-monopol...

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/senate-committee-advances-op...

Whether these attempts succeed or not is difficult to say, given how strongly Apple lobbies on their own behalf.

Knowing exactly what the P&L look like for the App Store would make it easier for Apple's opponents to make the case that Apple is misusing their position to take advantage of large numbers of people and businesses within the US due to a lack of competition for iOS users, which might make their government representatives push harder on the issue.

That's the political reality as I see it in the US. I could be off base, but there has been lots of discussion about Apple and their App Store again lately.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#305

Post by terafo »

koenneker wrote: post #178
causi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then use the common threshold. I'm sure Epic would happy to keep a version of their games on the App Store with all prices inflated by thirty percent.

No they wouldn't. They already pulled Rocket League from the steam store[1] after purchasing their developer. There is no reason they would treat ios any different [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/252950/Rocket_League/

Steam developer agreement forbids such practice. You can't set base price of your game any higher than in other stores. And, to be fair, situation isn't as dire as you described it, you can still download and play Rocket League with the latest update in Steam if you have it on your account.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#306

Post by coder543 »

Grustaf wrote: post #299
coder543 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWA means "progressive web app". You know, the vision Steve Jobs and Apple had for iPhone apps before they released the App Store.[0] What about virtual experiences that are sold through an app that a customer uses, but are held on a different virtual platform? We’re not talking just about virtual events held through the app or FaceTime, we’re also talking about virtual events held through Zoom calls, it’s just that…

Apart from push notifications, which I don't think a lot of people want from their web apps, in what way are they being crippled by Apple?

Regarding people not wanting push notifications, I would refer you back to this comment from a couple years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643185

There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate.

Regarding your question, there are definitely still important areas such as Background Sync: https://caniuse.com/background-sync

If you try to send a message in WhatsApp, Signal, or whatever, but you were on the elevator and your phone was offline at that moment, it would be a pretty poor user experience if the app didn't send the message as soon as your phone was connected again, even if you had switched away. This is currently problematic for PWAs on iOS. Similarly, if you get a notification, apps will often get a small allocation of background time to fetch content related to the notification so that it is cached when the user clicks on the notification. Apple wouldn't offer this to native apps if they didn't think it was useful.

Here's an article talking about the benefits of the feature: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/12/background...

"Web apps" in this context should just be thought of as "apps". The fact that they're effectively bookmarks added to your home screen and operate without the user interface of Safari is just an implementation detail. I'm not talking about spam blogs trying to send you notifications. If you were required to "install" a PWA to your home screen before it could prompt for these other permissions, that would be perfectly fine, and a great way to avoid getting spammed for requests to send you spam notifications from random websites. Safari has fallen way behind other browsers on lots of standards, not just PWAs, so it's not terribly surprising that they aren't keeping up with PWA-related standards either, but it is disappointing. And, of course, Apple still doesn't allow third party browser engines to fill in the gaps.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#307

Post by colejohnson66 »

goblin89 wrote: post #131
colejohnson66 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitpick: "We price match" is a store voluntarily taking a price cut for their customers. The other store "dictates" the price, but the first one can always end the sale if they wish.

Wouldn’t this open such a platform to scams where a friend of the seller gets discounts by pointing to seller’s site with super-low prices? I’m not saying they do not take a cut voluntarily, but they must take measures if this happens too often with a particular seller.

Usually those ads have some fine print saying that their own terms of refusing a sale for whatever reason still apply. So if Store A is taking a loss on sales to force Store B to sell for cheaper, Store B can still refuse to sell you the product. "We price match" only applies if a sale actually goes to completion.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#308

Post by Grustaf »

coder543 wrote: post #306
Grustaf wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from push notifications, which I don't think a lot of people want from their web apps, in what way are they being crippled by Apple?

Regarding people not wanting push notifications, I would refer you back to this comment from a couple years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643185 There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate. Regarding your question, there are definitely still important areas…

> "Web apps" in this context should just be thought of as "apps"

Why? Native apps aren't webapps, and do have access to push notifications.

> There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate.

Why do you keep conflating webapps and apps? I certainly use notifications in native apps, but the thought never even crossed my mind to enable them in webapps. I click "No" faster than lightning when websites prompt me on the mac, so why would I want it on my phone.

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#309

Post by coder543 »

Grustaf wrote: post #308
coder543 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding people not wanting push notifications, I would refer you back to this comment from a couple years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643185 There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate. Regarding your question, there are definitely still important areas…

> "Web apps" in this context should just be thought of as "apps" Why? Native apps aren't webapps, and do have access to push notifications. > There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate. Why do you keep conflating webapps and apps? I certainly use notifications in native…

I’m not conflating them in the way you think I am. You seem to be unaware of what a PWA actually is.

As an example, if you go to twitter.com on your iPhone in Safari, you can click the share button, click Add to Home Screen, and you will get a very app-like Twitter experience when you launch what you just added to the Home Screen. Because it is an app.

Literally the only reason I’ve seen that most people would be dissatisfied with the Twitter PWA is because it lacks notifications. In my experience, it is often faster than the native app and does fewer dumb things, like clicking on a YouTube link actually opens in the YouTube app, instead of the way the native Twitter app tries to keep you in a modal web view.

Regardless of Apple marketing, PWAs run in a more secure environment than native apps, because Safari is used to dealing with untrusted code on every single page you load. Apple leaned too much on their insufficient app review process instead of native app isolation technologies for too long. They have fortunately corrected course over the last couple of years… but native apps still present higher risk.

(PWAs also run completely isolated from the regular Safari browsing session, so you will naturally need to sign into Twitter again even if you were already signed in within Safari, but then it stays signed in exactly like the native app.)

Re: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system

#310

Post by scarface74 »

skinkestek wrote: post #301
scarface74 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it takes much to ge smarter than a bunch of lawmakers when it comes to tech?

Do you really think it is easy to be much smarter than law makers and lawyers when it comes to laws? There is an intersection here, but basically this - in my mind - isn't about bad laws but about big businesses fighting for their lives (or at least the lives of whole branches in their organizations) against these laws. They'll do most things they'll come up with and think they can get away with: misrepresent, plead,…

Most lawmakers aren’t lawyers…

From what I have seen, when the government gets away with stuff - imminent domain, police corruption, etc., it’s a lot more detrimental than my not being able to side load.

As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.

https://gdpr-info.eu/

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