They want to retain control over their customers; at the same time, force the developers into relying entirely on Apple as a middle man so that they can't cut Apple out of any transactions.
This way, Apple gets their cut and user's get some level of privacy.
That they can get away with this arm-twisting as "privacy" is to give credit to their brand positioning.
I think GP's point is that Apple is doing this using lock-in, rather than having the best possible products.
If there were multiple app stores for iOS users, you could argue that Apple is behaving just like every other business. But they're not. They're stifling competition to lock their customers in.
I think there is a reason there is basically one App Store on each platform (outside desktops).
The difference is in whether other people who dislike/distrust Apple have another option, and right now they don't.
If you buy an iPhone, which is a big investment for most people, then you must either use Apple's App Store or jailbreak.
I‘m not sure that’s true for every Android phone.
Each time you use the sign in with Apple button, it becomes ever so harder to switch away from Apple products.
Each time your friends add you to an iMessage group chat (instead of, say, a WhatsApp one) it becomes ever so harder to switch away from Apple products.
Each time you buy an Apple home speaker or Apple TV or whatever else it becomes harder to switch away from Apple products.
Google's stuff works better if you're all in but works fine piecemeal. Apple's stuff works fine all in but doesn't work at all piecemeal.
Tech folks should be up in arms about all this, but all you see on this wretched forum are rationalizations involving "business models" and "paying customers".
You want to see a software maker actually care about people's privacy? See Mozilla. Oh but you can't set Firefox as your default browser on your $1200 iPhone, sorry.
Each time your friends add you to a Facebook Messenger group chat (instead of, say, an iMessage one) it becomes ever so harder to switch away from Facebook.
Each time you buy an Amazon Echo or Google Home or Chromecast or whatever else it becomes harder to switch away from Amazon/Google products.
At least iMessage is based primarily on phone number, so you can turn off iMessage and keep your contacts. Deleting your Facebook account or trying to change Gmail addresses means losing it all. Lock-in is only lock-in if you let it be. Personally, I worry more about Google than Apple, but your mileage may vary.
Since the beginning, Apple wants to justify its premium by it just works which has allowed novice users to use their Macs and then iPhones and other products. With privacy, it's another one of those "it just works" plus "you don't have to worry about it".
If Apple can tie security to its already high brand equity, it will be and continue to be in a good place in today's fear mongering world. It's always better to sell a pain killer than a vitamin and security is top of mind for consumers now more than ever. If nothing else their advertising campaigns are pushing that education onto consumers.
Comcast also wants to retain control over their customers -- they want to sell customers internet access, while also selling ISPs and websites access to the customers. This strategy doesn't make the customer better off. If Apple treats their captive customers better than Comcast it's not due to any strategy of being a "middle man".
The cynical part of me sees this as an "Oh Shit!" reaction to businesses starting to circumvent the App Store.
If Apple can make everybody on a iPhone dependent upon their single-sign-on, they can threaten businesses with access to it later.
And what do you think Google and Microsoft and Facebook don't also try to control their customers? They do just as much but they also violate privacy.
You control the customers and you pay Apple nothing. So this idea that Apple is forcing developers to do anything is nonsense.
(Edit: I know Spotify used to have an option for it but they dropped that and I never used it anyway)
But you just can't use Apple's own platform against them.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/229880/Apple_Backs_Off_In_Ap...
We are unable to release this app on the AppStore until we change our whole payment/subscription/billing stack to support Apple subscription system and agree to give them 30% / 15% of our revenues on those users (this is more than we pay for AWS, comparatively).
Keep in mind that a good chunk of of revenues comes from custom plans, so I don't even know how that would work with Apple system.
So much for not forcing developers to do anything.
We believe we fall under the exception of "business databases" which are exempted from this restriction, but the reviewer does not believe so. Guess who won.
We are not trying to use the app as an acquisition channel, we don't believe our customers would discover our service through an app store search. We want to make it more easy for our current customers to view their data on a mobile device, the app is pretty simple, coded in react native and also available on the play store.
I have apps on my phone that accept payment only on the web.
But you can, and that's what a lot of companies including Netflix do?
But this would require a significant amount of work on our side to support both web and mobile subscription. We do not expect to get any new business straight from the mobile app, we just want to offer an additional free service to our existing and future customers.
It would take us at least 2 to 3 man-month to rework our billing stack so that Apple has a chance to get 30% on some subscription. Which they won't since we really doubt B2B customers will subscribe to $2k+ yearly contracts using in-apps purchases. So it's really spending all that time/effort so that the Apple reviewer feels OK can safely check the little box on his list next to "in-app policy" :-(
I don't think that's true. Youtube premium costs $16/mo when you subscribe using their iOS app, but $12-13 when you subscribe on the web.
That can't be true, SoundCloud offers differing prices between their Go+ on their website and app store. $9.99 and $12.99. They even tell you if you sign-up through their website instead of the app store you get a "discount".
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/13/spotify-files-a-complaint-...
I worked at a SAAS company that allowed the app to be on the App Store but you had to have a contract with us to use it.
You seem very confident about your understanding of things, but you seem to have misidentified the exact cause of your rejection.
[0] https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/
--- START ---
Hello XXX team,
We are writing to let you know the results of your appeal for your app, XXX.
The App Review Board evaluated your app and determined that the original rejection feedback is valid. Your app does not comply with:
Guideline 3.1.1 - Business - Payments - In-App Purchase
We continue to find that your app offers a subscription with a mechanism other than the in-app purchase API.
While we understand that the app reads data, it does not fall into any of the categories listed in guideline 3.1.3 for reader apps:
3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase
We hope you will consider making the necessary changes to be in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines and will resubmit your revised binary.
Best regards, XXX App Review Board
--- END ---
So unless you are in one of those listed categories, it does not work. Don't know why we can't be considered to be a professional database tho.
In reality, I don't think people will go back to Cloud 1.0 but at least Apple will keep companies in check while they rot away to oblivion.
Uh, what? iCloud is the umbrella term for all their cloud services. So they offer "no real cloud offering" besides all their cloud offerings?
Examples? They are a platform vendor and have done no worse than other companies when it comes to their platform. Sure macOS has stagnated somewhat, but so have nearly all desktop platforms. Windows 10 started gaining momentum only when Microsoft realized that they had no scope in mobile space and had to save the last fort they had left. And to be honest, I do not consider Windows 10 to be massively superior to macOS. There is a reason they are building a Frankenstein's Monster by grafting a Linux kernel on top of Windows.
And iOS, despite its problem, can't be considered as worse than Android -- the later has its own problems.
At this point, OS platforms are as good as they are going to get. Barring a paradigm shift in computing, all we are going to see are incremental improvements. And IMO, that is not a bad thing. I, for one, do not want to see an interface redesign every other year.
> no real cloud offering besides iCloud.
That is like saying Google and Microsoft have no cloud offering besides Google Drive and OneDrive respectively. Or are you talking about GCP/Azure? If so, how is that relevant? Apple, unlike the other two, remains a consumer focused company with limited investment into enterprise.
> In reality, I don't think people will go back to Cloud 1.0 but at least Apple will keep companies in check while they rot away to oblivion.
What does that even mean?
> They're doubling down on what they can do which is to convince people to avoid moving their life online.
Are you suggesting iCloud is not online?
I think most EU Advertising Control Boards would verdict that Apple's privacy claims are misleading and therefore against the applicable Advertising Law.
I think not. From the horses mouth[1]:
Since the directive on unfair commercial practices (2005/29/EC) is in place, the misleading and comparative advertising directive has been applied only to business-to-business (B2B) relations concerning misleading advertising.
[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/consumers/unfair-com...
For what "misleading is", see Article 2 (b) and especially Article 3 of Directive 2006/114/EC.
[0] https://www.reclamecode.nl/uitspraken/resultaten/huishouden-...
No.