321–330 of 559 posts
Ironic that they used to be the small guy fighting against IBM, and now they're the big guy pushing their "largest company in the world" status around.
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Getting 30% from the whales and scammers is worth too much and a bit of bad PR or the loss of good apps isn't going to change that. They need the big players like Netflix, but after that scummy, high margin, do nothing, trash apps are the best for profits.
Out of interest, what apps are you thinking of? Games with in-app purchases and thinly disguised gambling?
It's less risky to develop some skinner box slot machine because you aren't out much investment if it gets rejected. Plus, the digital goods are pulled from thin air, so anything you sell is pure profit.
Contrast that with a real app that provides a valuable service with backend costs and a subscription fee. There's a lot more investment to build an app like that, so getting rejected is a huge risk and, even at 15%, Apple's cut might be a big chunk of your margin.
Since Apple incentivizes low effort slot machines and detriments high quality apps, I feel like there's been an increasing portion of the app store is turning into what I consider garbage apps.
The subscription cut also creates the opposite scenario of what everyone is always parroting about iOS customers being profitable. They might spend more money, but they're definitely not more profitable (per customer) if you're paying 15% to a middleman.
I've been a freelance iOS app developer for almost a decade. Apple has always operated this way. They have rules that are somewhat vague, and they choose when they want to enforce them and how they should be interpreted. For example: you weren't allowed to show device bezels in app store screenshots for a long time, even though all the major apps did exactly that. If you were a small time developer though you would g…
Our now-shuttered startup Gliph brought in-app Bitcoin transfers to the App Store for the first time in 2013. Apple allowed the behavior for seven months before I got a call telling me it had to be removed.
Bitcoin was hot enough that our blog post generated a fair amount of press for our little startup. [1] and I also published the company's appeal publicly.
However, I did so with great trepidation about angering someone at Apple. [2]
Our approach did not seem to help things at all, though Apple did end up allowing the Bitcoin transfers to be brought back about 7 months later.[3]
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One thing I find notable about this site and Hey!'s behavior on this is the scorched earth approach to the response. Basecamp seems ready, to go to "thermonuclear war" (as Jobs would say) on this one. People are hearing about Hey alright.
Hey's little mini site is convincing enough and it broadly escalates things. Particularly by using John Gruber's words against Apple, ouch!
This situation opens an unnecessary and distracting attack surface for Apple, in advance the most important developer event possibly in a decade.
Apple should have just let this app do its thing.
This whole situation reminds me of how Apple tried to make Apple Store employees pay for the time they were getting their bags searched. Bad PR that should never have happened. [4]
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/12/09/how-does-apple-really-feel...
[2] https://19de10c0037730b31d67-c6cb9846d861a1213b31648a6cce64e...
[3] https://blog.gli.ph/2014/07/21/bitcoin-transfers-back-into-t...
[4] https://9to5mac.com/2015/06/11/apple-store-security-checks/
While I agree that Apple should probably relax their rules, this list of "exceptions" is not particularly compelling. The majority of them are companion apps for physical products/memberships for which the rules around in-app purchases do not apply: Tesla, Soho House, Wells Fargo, Blue Cross / Blue Shield, WeWork. Github has a free tier and doesn't require a paying membership to use. Netflix is a digital content app…
Everything I look at on my smartphone is digital content.
We just need to realize that there is only have been two viable platform for apps since smartphones exists, and as such some decisions should not be in Apple/Google hands anymore at this point, some subjects should fall in the public space. 3.5 billion people are using smartphones today, and we shouldn't being told what to do by a few exec-dudes and their shareholder friends. If Basecamp wants to do publish an email…
Good start with compiling the list .. a couple more .. AirBnb, All airline apps. Maybe they have contracts with the big guys for some lump sum deal, or maybe they are just letting them go as they have to ... We developers already pay for the subscription, WWDC, a shiny iPhone / MBP every couple of years (to test and develop the new features :(, learn a language and sdks just for the Apple world - We Devs need Apple f…
I tried to limit the list to apps where you couldn't get to _any_ functionality without logging in. AirBnB lets you browse around etc. Airlines let you look at dates / availability.
I included Wells Fargo, however, because I thought it was wild that they're able to provide straight web links to Safari to sign up for banking services, whereas Hey has to pretend like accounts are bestowed via divine intervention.
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Why should software makers share their revenue with Apple? We don’t do it on android, Windows, macOS, linux, or anything else. The only value added by Apple is some kind of vetting (they don’t do code review, they just check that the app meets their recommendations... and they are called RECOMMENDATIONS not REQUIEMENTS). My app was recently rejected because i refused to sell in-app purchases and want to keep purchase…
A store owner is not obligated to give you free placement on their shelves.
Can you imagine if Best Buy required Apple to add "Best Buy Payments" to MacOS so that Best Buy could collect a 30% fee on top of any services subscription that Apple sells to that MacBook user? All for the privilege of selling their products through the BB stores.
Apple isn't marking up a product for resale in it's retail environments. It is, in many cases, forcing its developers (who provide their valuable products to Apple for free, after paying Apple an annual fee) to completely rearrange their business models in order for Apple to collect a huge portion of their revenues, entirely on their terms.
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These things are true; and also a significant component of Apple's value proposition. An Apple customer can be sure they will: 1) Never need to learn what a "sideload" is 2) Never be exposed to Apps that havn't been vetted by a trustworthy party (in this case Apple) Apple is taking the opportunity to milk app developers, but they've done an effective job of positioning the milking process so that it is done in the us…
> 2) Never be exposed to Apps that havn't been vetted by a trustworthy party (in this case Apple) My understanding is that neither major mobile app store has done a great job of vetting.
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> An Apple customer can be sure they will: (1) Never need to learn what a "sideload" is, and (2) never be exposed to Apps that haven't been vetted by a trustworthy party. But Apple customers can be sure of that anyway--just don't sideload apps. Anything essential is going to want to be in the App Store, in order to reach customers.
> But Apple customers can be sure of that anyway--just don't sideload apps. Well, no. At some point they'd need to know what it is to decide if they wanted it or not. At some point they'd encounter an App that isn't in the App store and have to figure out sideloading. We've got a whole heap of people commenting here today who give off a distinct "I want to bypass the App Store" vibe. User hat on, I'd rather they were…
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Why should software makers share their revenue with Apple? We don’t do it on android, Windows, macOS, linux, or anything else. The only value added by Apple is some kind of vetting (they don’t do code review, they just check that the app meets their recommendations... and they are called RECOMMENDATIONS not REQUIEMENTS). My app was recently rejected because i refused to sell in-app purchases and want to keep purchase…
It’s totally optional; if you don’t want to participate, don’t. Sell your software any way you want outside their store. Take out ads in local papers or something.