Comment by dperfect | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dperfect | Hacker News Reader

> They are being redirected to the mobile web version of the app and asked to enter payment details with Netflix directly.

Sorry, but if Apple's policies are applied consistently (I know they often aren't), this won't fly.

I have an app with a basic email/password sign-in screen (the app represents a small part of a larger web-based SaaS product). Apple has rejected my app for including anything in the app that even remotely hints to the service existing outside of the App Store. This includes a "Sign Up" button linked to the web signup, a "Learn More" button that links to the website, or even a "Support" button that has navigation that can lead to a signup or pricing page. After a long chat with someone from the App Store review team, I learned that you can't link to any page of a site that contains other links that can indirectly lead to a signup or pricing information. It's a pretty harsh policy.

So my app was finally approved, but without any links to support documentation on my site. Congratulations, Apple - you win :)

It will be some vague "you can't do this here" message that doesn't directly link. A la current state of affairs with Spotify / Audible / Amazon

As a suggestion regarding your situation... obviously its more work but you could always open the support pages in a webView that blocks the purchase urls via [1].

1. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiwebviewdel...

IF applied consistently. This is Netflix though. I'll be interested to see how this plays out.

The big players can dictate a lot of the rules of the game.

They also often get their own rules. I've designed apps that onboard exactly like the big boys, and been rejected.

Sometimes. Apple certainly pushed back against Uber when they were skirting the rules a few years ago.

It's a lot easier and cheaper to switch from a $10 a month Netflix subscription to a $10 a month Hulu/HBO Go/Amazon Prime subscription than it is to switch from an iPhone to an Android phone.

Those all have different programming. It's even easier for loads of people to scream at Apple for removing one of their favorite apps.

I wonder if it would be possible for developers / other stake holders to launch an investment fund who's sole purpose is buy shares in Apple / Microsoft / etc with the view to influence internal policy.

Activist investor style.

Activist investors are a bit of a misnomer, unlike traditional activists these investors are squarely interested in their own investment.

And those shares would lose money specifically because of what they want to accomplish. Your “fund” would lose more from the stock loss than the gain from attempting to influence policy.

And you’d need a $100 billion fund to even get noticed. Even Warren Buffet isn’t calling the shots at Apple.

Given Apple’s current market-cap - over 1TN USD - you’ll need a lot of investors.

You’d have much better success by spending a fraction of the money to hire goons to kidnap Apple’s executives driving home from work and “convince” them to change corporate policy that way.

But why would people be signing up from your App if not by discovering about your app through the App store? Is that not marketing through the App store?

Searching for Netflix on Google, the App Store link is the second link with reviews and a button to install. Right after the main website. Which one do you think a user is likely to click? Is that App store marketing? In an App centric world there are countless other ways where users discovers apps first or even developers/businesses/website want the users to download the app first.

Yes, if you already know Netflix. For pretty much every non-Netflix level app, people are unlikely to be googling for your specific app. The little game TinyWings has made millions and they wouldn’t have made anything of it weren’t for App Store discovery. People overestimate their own importance in the marketplace — discovery matters. If you sell an app for $2 and you have an acquisition cost of $0.60 through, for example, PPC, then you have spent the same you would have paid in App Store commission and then you have to still handle billing, chargebacks, credit card fees, have a download server to handle the traffic as well as tax collection for every single country in which you sell.

Look at profitability of Android vs iOS — almost universally iOS makes a far greater profit that more than offsets the commission. I wouldn’t want to buy an app outside of the App Store because frankly, I don’t trust most developers with my personal information nor do I trust them to not engage in practices that are contrary to my privacy or enagage in sloppy coding that might subject my device to security risks. As a consumer, the App Store is great.

At the same time, there is a large contingent of apps in the app store that have 0 interest in discovery through the app store.

There are lots of b2b apps that are fully sold on the Enterprise level and the app is simply an add on. It is very frustrating to have to work within the walked garden when this is the case.

We have a couple apps and there really is no "discovery" through the App Store. You have to pay for ads, whether in the stores directly or in the many ad networks that put you in other apps or other advertising. Unless you're already at the top of the lists (because of your off-store brand), or you win the lottery in the game of getting featured, the App Store doesn't drive new users.

For the majority of apps, the App Store doesn't provide discovery. It provides a nearly frictionless delivery and purchase interface. That's worth something, but not 30% off the top. That's worth a premium on top of processing fees, like X cents per transaction and Y% of the transaction, where Y < 6, I think.

Edit: I should say, I don't think there's any way this is going to happen. It would take an anti-trust action to make any difference, but that's not likely to happen.

Amazon app already does this.

I personally wouldn't bother with ios in that case.

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