> 3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.
> 3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.
The bit about the (formerly required in the US) entitlement is:
> Reader app developers may apply for the External Link Account Entitlement to provide an informational link in their app to a web site the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to create or manage an account.
They required you use a trackingless, generic URL that was unvarying per user, so you probably didn't run into it super often. Offhand, the Kobo app did use it.
What, why? They can complete the purchase flow in a browser instead of the app. What is lost?
Your discoverability is massively impaired, we already knew that. You also give Apple 30% of your cash.
Free app + external web purchase = maximum discoverability at 0% tax.
When things get more advanced, that web purchase link will be an authenticated URL - meaning one click to open the web browser already logged in. Register a protocol handler, remember their card information (or, ironically, use Apple Pay), and one tap in the app, a flash of the web browser, and they’re back in the app with purchase complete.
Apple needs to address this at WWDC. In the US and EU, there are zero, heck, negative advantages of selling on the App Store. All pain, all fees, no benefit of any kind. That’s a big deal.
No one but irrelevant nerds think this. And the market has demonstrated this time and time again.
Most people think of phones as being console-like entertainment devices. And aren't interested in scams, malware, virus checkers etc that are needed in a free for all model.
And on iOS there are no virus protection apps, period.
b) Buying a product through IAP is one click. Versus having to go to a signup page, provide details, enter credit card details, wait for credit card verification flows etc. The drop off in conversions during this can be often greater than 15%.
c) Apple's centralised subscription management has been extremely useful and consumer friendly. Versus having to now deal with NY Times style scam tactics for every subscription again.
I’m sure it’s substantial over the years. As for point C, I really don’t care, every monopoly has had at least some advantages. We could make this even better by giving Visa a monopoly and having them build a web portal.
I love having a single dashboard for all my subscriptions and having an easy way to cancel them.
For C, customers can choose to continue using Apple's subscription management if they think it's worth the 30% premium that Apple charges. Or Apple could reduce the price to something more reasonable (Stripe Billing offers a similar feature set and costs 0.7%).
Also, problem solved, just use Apple Pay on the checkout page. Ironic, but royalty free, and one-click to enable in Stripe.
Higher conversion rate.
Bottom line: I wouldn’t expect many discounts here.
Even if a particular list price doesn’t change, I’d expect more frequent and deeper sales.
In a less competitive market for a good or service (due to lack of antitrust enforcement) there should still be discounts, in proportion to the residual competitiveness. E.g. the mobile game market is very competitive, so I’d expect more discounts vs. the video entertainment market where there has been a lot of aggregation.
I've also heard Netflix has suspended all in app subscriptions and is only going to link to their website for sign ups. I'm unsure if that will translate into savings, but I suspect you're going to see more of this behavior as well.
The 30% / 15% tax is very real and companies that don't have to pay that will be better positioned in the long run, so I imagine even if the price is the same, they'll be able to pocket more revenue doing this as well
I suspect this won't affect games much, except for the exceedingly big ones like Fortnite, but I treat that as a whole separate sector at this point.
Plenty of them already do. Google's services (YouTube Premium and others), for example, are $5/mo more expensive if you purchase them via Apple IAP. Spotify memberships are 30% more expensive on Apple. There are countless other examples. They just weren't allowed to advertise the cheaper option on iOS until now.
By the effort developers putting into payment-flows I would say they aren't, but depending on the volume it could be purely for short-term gain.
Which, presumably, means their legal teams examine the case and think that the appeal won't succeed.
Though there is always the possibility that it was relatively inexpensive to implement, and the increased sales in the meanwhile during the legal battle will outweigh the cost of changing it.
4 years ago some people were still swallowing the security or privacy argument, and users didn't understand what they were missing. This time any of these facades will be broken to death.
If it’s about security and privacy only, demand the ability to check out in an app using Apple’s own payment platform. Watch Apple squirm.
As for the subscription convenience, I know how to make this even better. Let’s give Visa and Stripe a monopoly on all transactions, and then have them build a unified subscription portal. Awesomeness!
https://bsky.app/profile/gergely.pragmaticengineer.com/post/...
I am not shedding any tears over developers not being able to nag me about why I’m cancelling, for example.
Same goes for all the shenanigans mentioned about variable pricing for different users.
I think a lot of devs are out of touch with what customers want: transparent pricing, easy cancellation, not worrying about the store running off with my credit card. How the costs are split up between Apple and the devs is jury not something anyone cares about.
I don't recall that defense saving Microsoft back in the day.
(Admittedly, I'm now waiting for the stories of users being surprised when they paid their FartTorchPRO app subscription via paypal.ru and finding their credit card details all over the darkweb.)
For instance up until now you probably refused to register to Netflix or any other system that manages payments and subscription outside of Apple, and you can keep doing so.
Same way you probably didn't register PayPal integration that would have shifted part of the cancellation/refunds to PayPal. You of course didn't integrate PayPay either.
Basically you can keep being Apple only, as you always did. From the discovery documents, Apple didn't seem to give a damn about these and only discussed revenue regarding their policies, but you're free to see what you want in Apple's behavior.
Amazon has an incredibly generous return policy. This is a strange argument to make for the Kindle app.
I'm curious about what happened.
They will blame the app developers for raising prices.
If Apple wins appeal, they’ll happily and quickly reinstate the fees. It’ll be the app developers who then get stuck paying the fees because, as you mentioned, their users will be used to it and there’s no going back.
Unfortunately the article does not answer what the button does, which is quite relevant.
Does it send the user to the amazon website (which would be allowed under the new rule)? Or does it complete the purchase inside the app using the credit card Amazon has on file for the user without paying Apple anything (which would be quite the affront towards Apple)?
> By selecting ‘Get Book’ within the Kindle for iOS app, customers can now complete their purchase through their mobile web browser.
I'd have expected it to actually make the purchase using my card on file with my Amazon account, just like the physical Kindle does.
Per the article: "Apple can no longer collect a 27 percent commission on purchases made outside of apps or restrict how developers can direct users to alternate payment options"
This now allows folks to direct users to alternate methods. Before this the Kindle app would just say something along the lines of "you can't get a book here, please use the website".
Everyone screaming about how happy they are about this seem to be ignoring the fact that Apple is not a charity
iOS has gotten progressively worse every year since 2012. It may not be the worst idea to turn off the tap.
- Substantially poorer performance
- Keyboard is less accurate
- YouTube videos can’t be played on the lock screen without some tricks
- Apple Maps (it is basically at parity now, however).
- Translate feature doesn’t have a copy button
- The storage bug
- No option for manual cache clearing
- SMB protocol doesn’t work with Windows and doesn’t display error messages
- File transfers are substantially more complicated than they used to be because they want you to pay for iCloud (the workaround here is installing VLC which gives you a drag-and-drop folder you can use through iTunes)
- Multitasking (apps should shut down after some time spent idle, instead they have to be manually closed)
I haven’t used the most recent versions of iOS so I don’t know if some of these have been addressed.
Waiwaiwait. Hold the phone.
That’s GOOGLE’s decision, not Apple’s. This whole thread is a circle jerk about how Apple doesn’t let developers do what they want. It’s a general purpose computer and all that. This is an example of what happens when Apple doesn’t prevent developers from doing something anti-consumer.
they're lucky they're not being made to pay it all back, plus interest
Also this is an article about Kindle adding an option which wasn't there before. Apple wasn't getting the money either way.
This comes off as incredibly bought-in to Apple PR, and if you’re not on their payroll, I don’t understand why you’re carrying water for them so aggressively.
First of all, the incredibly high margin hardware more than “pays for” the development of all the parts that make that hardware useful including iOS. We all know this.
Apple makes a tremendous amount of profit, both gross and net. This will dent their top line and their bottom line a bit. It will not make the iPhone a money-losing platform. “Not making as much pure profit as your near-monopoly status might theoretically allow you to if there were no antitrust laws” does not imply “that money will have to be made up somewhere.” They may end up being only “wildly, amazingly profitable” instead of “wildly, absurdly, amazingly profitable.” They don’t “have to” make up any particular amount of money.
Whether that upsets their shareholders including their mega billionaire CEO, is just the breaks. It is quite fitting for a group of people who enjoyed all those amazing profits from Apple’s monopolistic behavior so far — money that I might point out, isn’t even being required to be paid back.
The fact that it took LEGAL ACTION to get basic functionality that existed on Kindle e-readers from day one speaks volumes about how these tech giants operate. They'll happily degrade user experience to avoid paying each other's extortionate fees while pretending it's about "ecosystem integrity" or some other corporate doublespeak.
And let's not forget Apple's brilliant solution to the court ruling - a slightly smaller 27% tax instead of 30%! How generous! This whole situation perfectly illustrates the duopoly stranglehold that's been choking app developers for years.
The most telling part? Amazon "probably isn't going to change its mind about avoiding Apple's 30 percent cut." So even with the court ruling, we're still stuck with a half-measure solution because two trillion-dollar companies can't figure out how to play nice without extracting maximum profit at users' expense.
Wake me up when either of these companies actually puts user experience ahead of their bottom line.
Now if Amazon could also fix the incredibly frustrating, long-standing bug of their iOS app where tapping the screen anywhere does not turn pages, but instead toggles through "page numbers" -> "time left in chapter" -> "time left in book" etc., I'd be happy with it.
I've never seen that bug. Now, if you tap it near the bottom on the left-hand side, it toggles through that, by design (just as it does on the Kindle tablets)...
I'm not convinced;
Planned obsolescence, repair issues, phone-home privacy issues, vendor lock-in, etc
Apple is certainly innovative which helps consumers, but that's about it. The rest is bare minimum for the price point.
It's literally a major difference in their fundamental business models.
havaloc•3h ago
goosedragons•3h ago
snkzxbs•2h ago
xp84•2h ago
Up till now, situations like Kindle were just weird quirks to most people and most people wouldn’t have been able to tell you why you can’t do this very normal-seeming thing on iOS. If/when Apple takes it away, it’ll be obvious to everyone what’s going on.
threeseed•1h ago
No one is blaming Apple for it.
goosedragons•1h ago
FireBeyond•53m ago
granzymes•2h ago
They could also implement that independent of the injunction, which applies to steering rules.
tmpz22•2h ago
sixothree•2h ago
tantalor•2h ago
The justification would be something like, "a more equitable and transparent system that aligns costs with platform usage and developer access to the user base, while also potentially fostering a more diverse and competitive app ecosystem" (generated)
HenryBemis•2h ago
geoffpado•2h ago
They actually can't, not with the latest ruling that unlocked this Kindle change. Apple annoyed the judge enough with their shenanigans that she shut this down, too. The ruling reads (emphasis mine): "Effective immediately Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users *nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases*."
what•1h ago
madeofpalk•1h ago
crooked-v•58m ago
no_wizard•1h ago
You still need that to get on the platform. They could charge based on the relative size of the business. Why not charge Netflix 50K? They won't give up the platform and the consumer - even for Netflix - likely wouldn't enjoy going to the web browser exclusively.
Perhaps that pushes more PWA's but really, I doubt the big corps would balk at this.
Their scale would need to be exceedingly reasonable to keep the smaller shops from rioting though.
cyberax•55m ago
Apple wants to mandate a review? That's fine. Charge developers for the reviewers' time with a reasonable profit margin, and Apple _already_ charges $100 a year for access to the AppStore.