Comment by archgrove | Hacker News Reader

Comment by archgrove | Hacker News Reader

I can make no possible reading of the App Store guidelines that results in this policy - it's clearly new. I guess if Google can't make the Android App Store attractive to developers, Apple sure can. Surely, this cannot be "official" policy, or if it is, it can't be one that lasts more than a couple of weeks. It's not one of those geek-annoying App restrictions that 99% of the iOS target market wouldn't care about even if they knew it - this one affects every end user, and you can bet will be widely publicised by every non-Apple tablet maker.

Realistically, three things can happen to people with App under this policy. Take, e.g., Kindle.

1) They withdraw the Kindle application 2) The add In-App purchasing 3) The add In-App purchasing, but with a 30% price hike

Frankly, 2 is very unlikely - 30% is probably their entire profit margin on the sale. 3 is possible, but makes every Android tablet look vastly better to new purchasers ("The same apps from iOS, but with content 30% cheaper!). 1 is also quite possible - they just EOL it and say "For future Amazon purchases, please grab a Kindle or Android tablet), thus showing a huge chunk of Apples target market a big banner for the competition.

I suppose there's another alternative: that this becomes one of the annoying "Not for big player" rules that they just have a sub-rosa agreement with B & N/Amazon to never enforce. That in itself is pretty underhand.

Overall, my favoured interpretation is this is a re-run of the "Nothing but Objective C Apps in the Store" debacle. Masses of bad press, a dent in developer confidence, and a rescinded policy within a month or two. Apple really are their own worst enemy with this stuff.

Or possibility number 4: Amazon removes any mention of purchasing books from the app. The way I read the statement from Apple, they are not saying that if developers offer purchasing outside the app, then they must offer in-app purchasing. They are saying that if an app offers purchasing options, those have to go through the in-app purchasing model. It's still pretty crappy, but basically, all Amazon would have to do is remove the "buy more books" button if my read of this is correct.

Good point - with a bit of re-parsing, I can see this ready. Still, it's a stupid decision:

"Dear Amazon, Sony, Spotify etc,

Please make your Applications less useful to our users. We're sure they'll still love our devices when your apps are crippled compared to the Android version!.

Thanks, Apple".

Unless there's back-door negotiations going on, they must know no big name will ever go for this (indeed, any size name at all that sells content and can process payments for less than 30% of the price). I'm a pretty strong Apple defender (see my comment history!), but this is just user hostile, through and through - in any reading.

I doubt it. There would still be a non-Apple way to buy books (e.g., through amazon.com).

I hope there is some fair trade law under which Apple can be prosecuted or sued. Apple is, after all, in the book business itself. How does one see this any other way than stifling competition?

I'm guessing the issue is when an app initiates the 'purchasing process' for a specific product, and then transports the user to Safari where whatever payment mechanism the vendor has set up completes the transaction. (And then gives a file to download which will open the original app again.)

Therefore Kindle would be safe, because you cannot search for books inside Kindle, it just has a link to the Amazon website.

That would make a little bit more sense to me, because I can see Apple's objection to 3rd party vendors circumventing the Apple-controlled purchase system when people shop via an iApp. For instance, some users might not even understand that the app has switched them to Safari, where none of the content is approved by Apple in any way. People go from feeling safe about using the AppStore/AppEcosystem, spending money etc., to worrying whether they'll be victims of fraud when ever they make an 'in-App' purchase.

It could just be that Apple wants a piece of the pie, but anything that makes iPad less attractive than Android will hurt its bottom line at the same time.

I'm not sure that's right. Even if Kindle App has no purchasing option but accesses content bought on Amazon.com, it should still allow Apple's in-app purchase. Which essentially means, Kindle app is useless. See the excerpt below.

>> If an app lets users access content that they purchased via Amazon's website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple's own in-app purchase system. If the app developer doesn't want to use Apple's in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can't access content purchased elsewhere either.

In the extreme this would seem to impact just about any app accesses a paid service and loads content from it at run time. Eg. I know a number of apps that host the browser to avoid having to go through the Apple review process for content updates (or even for minor UI updates). If it can be interpreted as "content" and there is money involved at any point in accessing it then you could fall foul of this.

I guess Apple will play the usual game of letting 99% of people get away with this and just use it strategically for anti-competitive purposes against particular companies.

That is Ars' interpretation of Apple's position. The actual quote from Apple was (emphasis is mine):

"We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

Doesn't any app that allows you to query an arbitrary URL or web search technically provide customers the ability to purchase books through e.g. Amazon? This way lies madness.

Think about this from Apple point of view, the Kindle app is free, uses Apple infrastructure, and Apple get nothing out of it, besides the increased usefulness of their devices (which isn't tiny).

I can understand them wanting to get something for this. I am not saying that this is what they believe, because I still think it is crazy.

Apple got the $800 worth of hardware sale + ongoing monthly lock-in to ATT contract. 'nothing', hah. Apple makes a TON off it's users, without having to do anything once the phone is sold.

"Think about this from Microsoft's point of view, the [foobar] app is free, uses Microsoft's infrastructure, and Microsoft get nothing out of it, besides the increased usefulness of their devices (which isn't tiny)."

Yeah, that's right. Even fucking Microsoft is more level-headed and market friendly than Apple.

I've noticed a lot of people mentioning a 30% price increase, but it would actually require a 43% price increase to pay apple a 30% margin.

It's the difference between markup and margin. If you want to pay someone x margin, you have to markup your product by (1/1-x)

4) Make a webapp. Not perfect, but also an option.

I know for a fact that there's already a very very big content publisher working on that exact workaround as we speak.

How about option 3') add in-app purchasing with a price hike but have a bit of text suggesting the users not purchase that way but instead use their Kindles or amazon.com to get a discount!

Option 4 would be for Apple to cut them a deal

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