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Comment by ogre_codes | Hacker News Reader

I get the feeling we're only seeing half the story here. Apple allows a lot of apps which have outside subscriptions, Basecamp is a perfect example. Also, Netflix and Amazon Prime for a long time. The outside subscription requirement is probably not the issue here.

I'm not advocating for Apple here, this particular post just strikes me as being an odd exception.

Just a wild guess here, but it's likely they have some language like "Click here to subscribe" which sends users to an outside link. That is expressly forbidden.

UPDATE: The MacRumors story is more coherent and perhaps has a clue to why the app got rejected: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/16/apple-threatens-to-remo...

Maybe their odd "Help Me" page is shooting them in the foot. by comparison, Fastmail has a simple "Can't Log In" button which takes you to the Fastmail support page on lost passwords.

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We got a really similar issue. Apple rules are that every app with subscription should use apple pay. They added an exception for content streaming app though (so netflix, spotify, etc...) In our case (a small companion app to a web app which is the core of the service) they started rejecting everything saying we had to change our business model to have our customers using apple pay from now on. After finally being able to have more information other than "change your business model", they finally told us that, unless the user of the ios app is not the person who's supposed to pay, you have to go through apple pay and pay the apple tax. In our case we had several plans, the cheapest being mono-user. In this case the user is always the customer as well indeed. The solution was in our case to prevent users on our cheapest plan to use the ios app. Not that it's a great solution... Another one we thought was to always offer at least 2 user accounts but the impact on our plans was too problematic.

>they finally told us that, unless the user of the ios app is not the person who's supposed to pay, you have to go through apple pay and pay the apple tax.

Somewhere in the past 2 years I knew their push towards services revenue is going to take things too far. And this is it.

Unless there is something Basecamp not telling us or Apple has a better explanation this is very wrong in my book. And I have previously always sided with Apple on App Store policy.

Someone needs to explain why Fastmail, and Gmail were allowed without IAP but Hey is not.

Edit: Other mail clients under the same condition without IAP were allowed and Hey is not. And yet people still sided with Apple. Someone need to explain the downvoting.

Did they do that before or after the anti-trust investigations were announced?

Before, it was a few months back.

Could you also increase the iOS subscription price by 30 percent? Then people who want it on iOS primarily will use the in app subscription. However, those who know about the web version will buy on the website and still be able to log into iOS.

30% isn't enough to send a message. Make the in-app purchase price $999/month so that no reasonable person would pay it.

But I mean, more people would probably pay for it if it's only marked up 30 percent rather than a higher amount. You make the same amount from the web subscription or the in app subscription either way if you just adjusted the prices.

You can’t. It’s against App Store policies.

Here’s where bathing s get annoying though; companies do this all the time. Microsoft Office , for example, has over 5 different pricing tiers for Office. They have a consumer pricing tier that matches Apple IaP pricing, then a set of a bunch of business, education, and enterprise plans. You’d have to do something like that and then negotiate with them that one of your tiers is the same price as IaP.

The point isn’t that there’s workarounds; what’s problematic is how Apple tries to tell you how to price your product and run your business, even if you try to give them a cut.

You can actually charge different prices for in app versus out of app. Apple changed this policy around 9 years ago.

Yeah, I think the sticking point in the different prices is that you cannot in any way indicate to the user that they can get the same service for cheaper or that there's an included Apple tax. This means that Hey would need to be charging $142 on iOS without a mention that $43 is an Apple tax that is not present when signing up on Hey.com.

$141.99 and $42.99. Apple won’t let you charge round numbers.

I think it's what Spotify does (or did at least at some point). I wouldn't go this way though since there's more chances for customers to blame this on you than apple. We would also have had to implement apple pay which would have involved a good amount of work. All this just to get an app approved.

I can vouch for the fact that Apple does this sort of thing on a regular basis. When we were submitting an app update, they rejected it on the grounds that we didn't offer in-app purchases. This is apparently a problem because we offer a subscription on our website, even though we had done the same thing for years with no issue. Also, we had numerous competitors who were doing the exact same thing with no ramifications and had recent updates approved. Apple had no good answers and refused to talk about other apps. We also had no mention or links to our website or subscriptions anywhere in our app. I could go on and on about how ridiculous the whole situation was.

Did you manage to resolve this in the end?

We had to give in to their strong-arm tactics and provide in-app purchases. We had no choice. And it wasn't just the 30% cut we have to give them that stung. We also had to divert resources from our tiny company to build a whole in-app purchase system, which couldn't be justified by the tiny amount of revenue that mobile brings in for us.

> I have now heard from multiple developers, both big and small, that over the last few months Apple has been refusing to update their app unless their SaaS service adds in-app purchase. If this has happened to you please email me blog @ my site domain. 100% off the record.

https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/1273079296618201093

Protocol just updated their story with this paragraph:

>Apple told me that its actual mistake was approving the app in the first place, when it didn't conform to its guidelines. Apple allows these kinds of client apps — where you can't sign up, only sign in — for business services but not consumer products. That's why Basecamp, which companies typically pay for, is allowed on the App Store when Hey, which users pay for, isn't. Anyone who purchased Hey from elsewhere could access it on iOS as usual, the company said, but the app must have a way for users to sign up and pay through Apple's infrastructure. That's how Apple supports and pays for its work on the platform.

https://www.protocol.com/hey-email-app-store-rejection

>Apple allows these kinds of client apps — where you can't sign up, only sign in — for business services but not consumer products.

How does Netflix work on iOS again?

Netflix counts as a "Reader" app.

>>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.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

These categories seem arbitrary at best. Feels like they're more to justify letting big companies do X and force little guys to do Y (since audio/music/video subscriptions aren't really accessible to smaller companies).

VoIP apps? How is an email app any different? And Outlook for iOS has an Exchange client (and is aimed at people using Outlook online), but you can’t spin up Exchange in there. (I guess you could hook up Gmail to it too, but that’s not what they advertise it for).

So magazines, newspapers, books (written words) + databases and cloud storage are fine? But that sounds like the ingredients of EMAIL. So arbitrary.

I'm pretty sure you can sign up or sign in on the Netflix app.

I just signed out of my Netflix account on iOS. This is what I get:

>Trying to join Netflix?

>You can't sign up for Netflix in the app. We know it's a hassle. After you're a member, you can start watching in the app.

And yeah, obviously you can sign in.

> the app must have a way for users to sign up and pay through Apple's infrastructure.

Fastmail offers no such options.

I suspect that's an oversight by the App Review team.

Hushmail doesn't offer IAPs either, in fact it expressly says "Requires a Hushmail Premium or Hushmail Business account" in the app description.

> That's how Apple supports and pays for its work on the platform.

Oh, really? Then what's the justification for not charging a single cent for free apps? It costs Apple just as much to host the Facebook app on the App Store as it does Hey (or any other paid app). This has always been such a disingenuous argument, and there's no justification for Apple's tax to be a percentage of the app price anyway. All this does is punish developers of high quality apps. Why should a developer of a $30 app pay $10 to Apple, but a 99 cent app pays only 30 cents, and a free app pays nothing? That's an insane pricing policy.

I have the Hay app and an account, there is no references anywhere in the app to signing up, paying or billing. Both before and after signing in.

If works exactly the same as other subscription services that only offer a subscription outside of the app.

There is no manufactured controversy here, they have not purposely done something to violate the rules just to get coverage. Their other app, Basecamp, works exactly the same.

I posted an update to the above, there is a reference to signing up on the Help Me page (it's visible in the linked MacRumors story).

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/16/apple-threatens-to-remo...

Not a fan of this policy I just thought it was odd that they applied it this way. I think there are a lot of legitimate services which Apple is excluding this way.

True, that is the only reference, but if that on its own has got them that is frankly outrageous.

>there is a reference to signing up on the Help Me page

Where in there?

See the MacRumors link above. It's subtle.

Also, not trying to defend/ advocate here, just pointing it out. IMO Apple should allow companies to sell services where the bulk of expenses aren't part of the App Store experience.

Do you mean the email link?

That doesn't look different from what Netflix is allowed to do on iOS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23545025

> That is expressly forbidden

I haven't used the HEY app, but from the DHH tweets it seems they were very careful not to include those.

Found this article which is more coherent than the twitter thread linked in the top:

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/16/apple-threatens-to-remo...

This whole thing is really odd, Fastmail offers their own email service with an iOS app and they haven't had these issues. I wonder if Fastmail offers in app purchases?

Apparently they don't:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fastmail-email-calendar/id9313...

I think the issue is that you can't sell in-app content. So you can sell a subscription but if you sell a 'book' or 'podcast' in-app it has to use their in-app purchasing API which can take up to 30%.

>I think the issue is that you can't sell in-app content.

They didm't.

The problem is that the subscription is not available as IAP

Yes, but there are quite a few other subscription services which don't offer an IAP as well. This just feels strange that they would suddenly single out this app.

They don't single out any app. They do inconsistent reviews, humans are doing it, and sometimes they'll flag you - and you're more likely to be flagged if you aren't a multi-billion dollar app they are familiar with.

The Apple note quoted in MacRumors article mentions a class of app that is a "reader", aka, subscribing to content.

Netflix and Spotify, as well as Kindle, various news sources, etc., their apps are "readers" aka consume only.

Perhaps Hey is not a reader?

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