581–590 of 593 posts
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I’m wondering if native mobile apps are doomed to disappear as the web and mobile Browsers meet in the middle, the same way everything was a native app for quite some time in desktop land and now everything is a webapp.
Apple doesn't allow third party web browsers on iOS so native apps are the only viable solution until that changes.
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OnlyFans has no app because of the nature of the content.
They have no app because of the censorship in the app store, not the nature of their content.
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Patreon probably gets by because a lot of Patreon rewards are physical items, or other services performed by the creator where Patreon (and by extension Apple) cannot guarantee will be received. Meanwhile an app whose subscription model is “you get access to digital content” falls square within Apple’s IAP rules. I’m rather shocked Fanhouse got approved in the first place.
The fact that Fanhouse got approved means Apple's rules are arbitrary.
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Has Apple added support for web apps yet? They were around for years now, that would be a prerequisite for switching to web.
Apple added support for iPhone web apps in 2007, including native-style widgets and touch navigation support in mobile Safari. This was enough to support many early games and apps, and Apple even had a curated directory for them. At the time, developers complained bitterly that Apple didn't provide a native SDK, nor did they support Flash or Java web apps. In 2021, mobile Safari is good enough to run Amazon Luna game…
I understand the critique about their app store policy. But if you don‘t like their policy, don‘t build a „business“ depending on it. Or find a way around it. But stop crying in public and play the victim. Be creative, just like the people who invented the things our businesses rely on.
The Netflix exemption should be available to all apps - that point is what the Epic lawsuit should be about (they've confused the issue too by talking about having their own app store). Apple could then fight for developers to use Apple Pay on its merits in the marketplace.
In the case of Fanhouse, the rules were well known (and disliked) when they started. They should have created their product as a web app - their particular use case is one where the technical limitations of a web app wouldn't have been much of an issue.
If they felt so strongly that their product had to be in the Apple App store to succeed, they are justifying Apple's 30% cut.
Serious question, why does everything require an app? Why can't the same thing be accomplished via the mobile web? I get so tired of being prompted to install apps when you could just *show me the damned web page*. Anything that requires speed can be done via webassembly, and sure, anything like games can ship a native app.
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onlyfans is doing just fine in this space. They didn't want to worry about app store TOS or % cuts and decided to be web only.
While a good example of a web app that could've been a native app, there's a strong argument that they didn't decide to be web only as much as forced due to the nature of their content never being allowed in the app stores.
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Apple draws a pretty clear line, it's the difference between buying a book and an ebook. An ebook is delivered and consumed on your iPhone or iPad, a book is not.
Don't let Apple PR fool you into thinking commercial decisions like this are anything like principle based :-) If Amazon, Uber and Lyft drop iPhone support, people will atop using iPhones and that's pretty much the only reason Apple doesn't charge them a commission.
Ever wonder what would happen to Uber and Lyft lost iPhone customers as a user base?
Per https://fanhouse.app/ , "Fanhouse is the place where creators can monetize their social media personalities by posting freely about their lives, like a finsta, close friends story, or private alt, while connecting and engaging with their top fans." So they built a platform, where they take some cut for themselves, while allowing other people to sell some digital contents on their platform. Apple built a platform,…