Apple’s Rejection of Hey from the App Store for Not Using In-App Purchases | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s Rejection of Hey from the App Store for Not Using In-App Purchases

daringfireball.net

257 pointsgustavo_f100 comments

This is a case of something being reasonable under initial conditions, but failing to evolve over time.

If you remember the first versions of the App Store, most of the apps were hosted and delivered by Apple, and the in app purchases were also hosted, secured and delivered by Apple. You just uploaded the content and had zero cost from that point on - like writing a book and giving it to a publisher. There the 30% cut made sense. If I sleep on the beach all day and receive 70% royalties for my stuff without having to do any other work, great. Sounds reasonable.

Not so if I’m running a service or a backend for the app I’m selling. If I’m selling consultations, or running perpetual servers or jobs or bandwidth for each new sale, there’s absolutely no way 30% is a sensible cut, because the value is not being provided by Apple the publisher.

Apple has failed to make this distinction, and the more they dig their heels in and refuse to, the bigger the fall is going to be.

The fixation on what Apple's costs are in operating the App Store is weird. It reminds me of the people that look at the estimates of the bill of materials for an iPhone and who use that to say Apple's charging too much. That's irrelevant. It's not meant to be run at-cost for the benefit of developers. The App Store is a business to Apple just like any of their other products. The cut that "makes sense" is whatever the market will bear.

You could kill off any discussion about any product pricing by saying "the answer is whatever the market will bear", it's not really useful for the discussion though.

What the market will bear is made up of lots of people's opinions on whether the price is justified, and the person you're replying to is giving one argument that it isn't.

"Whatever the market will bear" requires a healthy market place with a range of options.

Like residential internet in the USA, mobile app stores are not a healthy market place.

If you use iOS, Apple has a monopoly, and there is no scope for any other market places by design.

If you use Android, Google has a monopoly. There is scope for other market places, but Google has a dominant monopoly that is unlikely to go anywhere else.

There are no other mobile appstores of consequence.

There's little reason for the incumbents to reduce their prices, as there is little-to-no scope for any competition that requires it.

Beside security and delivery, there's also marketing, exposure and integration features.

I don't disagree with you, but you do have to draw a line somewhere, or every traditionally paid-for app will convert to external registration. Why wouldn't they? It's free money. Still, it's hard to ignore the hypocrisy of allowing Dropbox, Netflix, Kindle, etc without a pathway for sub-billion-dollar companies to follow in their footsteps.

How about a model where the developer pays per logged in user? You'd still have to shake out how much Apple "deserved" for its part in the transaction, eg do subscription apps and top ups get warrant more money?

Edit: Didn't expect to be downvoted, just trying to find models that work for everybody.

> How about a model where the developer pays per logged in user?

As a person who hates being forced to create an account, I'm all for this. As a person who builds stuff, I don't know that you could create a viable revenue model around this.

At any rate it'd certainly be interesting and we'd see more people thinking about PG's recent point[1] re: account-less functionality as a competitive advantage.

1. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1261976515408990208?s=20

The initial model itself started off pretty clear. Where the in app purchase is secured and delivered purely by Apple, it’s acting as a publisher. This is the unlock special functions in the calculator type purchase, or buy a book where the package is hosted in Apple infra itself. Here is the app has no backend, and Apple is a publisher. 30% is fine.

In the scenarios where a user is paying for something that is delivered or executed by the app developer’s infrastructure, digital or not, Apple is a payment gateway, not a publisher. They can either match Stripe or go to Paddle’s rate of 5% because they handle taxes and VAT etc. But either way they are and should act as payment gateway and merchant of record, not publisher.

This distinction already exists for on digital goods. No one expects to pay 30% when selling food or groceries, for example. But digital services are the same thing.

>In the scenarios where a user is paying for something that is delivered or executed by the app developer’s infrastructure, digital or not, Apple is a payment gateway, not a publisher. They can either match Stripe or go to Paddle’s rate of 5% because they handle taxes and VAT etc. But either way they are and should act as payment gateway and merchant of record, not publisher.

Your product and associated costs might have changed, but your relationship with Apple hasn't. You aren't paying them for payment processing, you're paying for access to the user base that is magnitudes bigger than when the App Store launched.

But that's your and the users' only choice for app distribution, unlike on Android where you can make your own "app store" like Epic did. Is it reasonable for all company<->user transactions to be forced through Apple's 30% cut, when the value is primarily driven by a company-hosted backend server, and the user has already paid upwards of $1500 for the device?

So that’s the crux of the issue, but I don’t see how it’ll stand because maybe Apple is paying me to make apps that make their platform popular.

And the distinction is even weirder for hardware - this is like Tesla allowing you to only carry passengers that also own Teslas or pay Musk a fee.

If a store is a enforced monopoly, then it seems like there’s a moral and ethical requirement for it to operate at cost / not for profit. If the government required you to file all your taxes on a portal with a fee, for example, this fee would have to be not for profit to be ethical and moral.

I don’t think Apple is stuck on these grounds, because Spotify and Netflix are on the App Store and don’t pay 30%. They need to formalise the rules under which these apps exist, and let others freely exist under those rules as well.

This isn't that complicated. Apple is free to operate a closed system, just like the video game consoles.

I don't understand how the comparison to government makes any sense. This is a private business and you want to sell on their marketplace. You agreed to their terms in order to do so. If those terms suck you can avoid the platform altogether, as many people do.

When you reach essential product status, this is no longer similar to video game console.

This is more like, back when Ma Bell made you pay rent to use a handset and there was no way that you could own one.

If enough people/companies don’t like the situation we can change it. If there’s no law to make things happen the way we want, we’ll make one.

This is 100% correct

You haven't said why the initial model —where you surrender 30% to Apple— is acceptable, when you pay them nothing for an app that lets you buy other things. They're both apps with potentially similar overhead costs for Apple.

I don't think we're talking about drastically different things when we're comparing the Amazon app, or some client application for SaaS. Apple doesn't force Amazon to use it as a card processor, does it? It seems the only distinguishing feature is that Amazon is massive. You could say that there's a distinguishing digital delivery divide here but Amazon gets out of that too these days.

The initial model was ok because Apple was handling promotion and marketing as well for you. There was a time where there weren't that many apps on the App store, so Apple would push and advertise apps after you submitted them. Even today, they do still feature apps, explain them and even make nice artwork about your app. This is all publisher work, and easily worth the money if you really have zero marginal cost. They can make you millions by talking about your app, that's worth a commission.

And it's a hostage/racket situation because going through App Store is the only way to presence on iOS. It's a service you can't refuse if you want your product to have any semblance of success.

Ofcourse it is reasonable Apple has to employ real developers to maintain the App Store and Data centers. Also if your app is doing good Apple promotes and advertises your app highlight them on picks etc. from time to time all of that takes time and money.

I dont have a problem with their rules or cuts. ( May be I do but I could rationally give them a pass ) I still think, to this day you could argue about it from both side. And it will still be a valid agreement to the point where we agree to disagree.

What really triggers me was with their Rules being selectively enforced. Fastmail, and a few others being exactly the same as Hey; a mail client, passed the review for years with no IAP. But not Hey.

And that is not right in my book. ( Or they could force other email client to have IAP )

The new Tim Cook's Apple has a different sort of arrogance. And very different to Steve Jobs Apple. Qualcomm's case being one. This is another.

The current internet giants got huge monopolistic like power that many dictators of many countries would envy. The set their rules, execute them, and judge them.

The platform is essentially a boundled product. E.g. Apple can hurt Spotify or bully to 30% fee, using rejections so their inferior service can be more competitive.

Once you get monopolistic network effort your platform needs to be an utility. Imagine electric or water company refusing to sell you services or increasing price way beyond the costs.

I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal. Today being rejected or having listing hijacked on Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many businesses.

It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals or $1000 by businesses and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 or $1000 is gone.

I posted a comment [0] on the duped topic that relates to this. Anti-trust is well overdue for the internet giants (Apple, Google, Facebook).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23548967

IMO this problem calls for a technical solution, not an organizational one.

It should be required, by law, for platforms this widespread to allow installing apps without platform owner involvement. Let there be many scary warnings like there actually are on Android when you install an apk file, but it has to be possible. It's the only way. Adding more bureaucracy on top of existing bureaucracy won't help much because you'll still have to play by the platform owners' arbitrary nonsense rules.

It is an organizational problem and not a technical one. These is zero technical difficulty or challenge for Apple to allow sideloading. The have done it on the mac. And google has it on android.

Apple's dictatorship program (the app store) is horrific. I strongly believe if you buy a device, you should own that device and be in control of what you put on that device. The fact Apple will not let you put anything on your phone they don't approve of really troubles me. I worry for the future if more companies take this approach.

Android is slightly better, since you can install alternative app stores, or apps from websites.

> I worry for the future if more companies take this approach.

That future is here. All macOS desktop apps must be signed with an $99 developer certificate from Apple. All Windows apps must be signed with a $300-ish developer certificate otherwise Windows scare away 99% of users from running the installer. I can't comment for Linux but I see snapcraft.io is getting some pretty big usage numbers...

I really can't put what I want on my Android phone. I briefly read I need to 'unlock' my bootloader using some procedure which implies getting approval from Xiaomi and/or doing a factory reset of my phone which means losing everything. Seems designed to be as inconvenient as possible.

> I can't comment for Linux but I see snapcraft.io is getting some pretty big usage numbers.....

This is due to Ubuntu pushing it, but the community mostly hates it. Ubuntu drives m derivates like Mint actually completely rip it out.

> All macOS desktop apps must be signed with an $99 developer certificate from Apple

Can't you just uncheck an option in the settings?

> All Windows apps must be signed with a $300-ish developer certificate otherwise Windows scare away 99% of users

The significant difference to iOS is that you can tell your user what to do to get the app running anyway. No such (reasonably expectable) way on iOS.

> Can't you just uncheck an option in the settings?

> The significant difference to iOS is that you can tell your user what to do to get the app running anyway. No such (reasonably expectable) way on iOS.

Even these aren't "reasonably expectable" for most users. Those hoops and warnings will scare away a lot of people that technically could have ran the app.

Where does your 99% number come from in "Windows scare away 99% of users from running the installer"?

From what I've seen, on the contrary most non-tech users simply click on "accept the risk" every single time there's one of those "scary" screens. They just do, just like they bypass HTTPS warnings in browsers. After all, most informed users us included do the same, maybe after a 5-10s pause in front of the screen to read the company name.

The number of people "scared away" seems way less than 50%, and I'd imagine it is probably around or even less than 15%.

In this case the "accept the risk" button is hidden. Here's what the dialog looks like in Windows 10:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/bDj59.png

Notice that "more info" in a slightly different shade is actually a link. When you click it you get the option to bypass the security block.

>They just do, just like they bypass HTTPS warnings in browsers.

How could you possibly know this, other than anecdotally?

>I really can't put what I want on my Android phone.

To be fair, that is only valid at face value. Yes, you yourself might not be able to do that technically, but it is quite easy and flat out possible compared to an iPhone.

Not on many (most?) Android phones. Samsung, Motorola, and LG devices still require many hoops to jump through if it's possible at all. Not all manufacturers are as open to rooting as OnePlus.

Being able to side load apps, including entire app stores, is much more than "slightly better".

I have been an Apple user for 34 years and was a huge advocate for Apple in the 2000s. However, when it was clear that Apple was going to tightly control the software you could run on your iPhone, I knew it couldn't be the computer I wanted in my pocket. I've been a Mac/Android user for the last 10 years. Despite the neglect of the Mac during this time, I've had a difficult time quitting it.

It will come to Android, just slowly due to the whole update story, ask Android developers how happy they are with SDK/NDK API validation, background execution, storage access,...

Is it irrational for me to not want to buy an iPhone due to Apple's extreme control of the ecosystem?

It's the only way. Companies will not choose ethical options of their own accord. The only language they speak is money. If people are willing to spend the money they will keep doing what sells. If we stop "renting" hardware from these companies, they will either go broke of have to change.

I think it's fine that Apple controls its own store. However, then consumers should be able to use a different store. Controlling the single store with an iron fist will soon lead to an antitrust, I hope.

> I strongly believe if you buy a device, you should own that device and be in control of what you put on that device.

Then don't buy Apple?

The fact is that it costs money to develop and maintain the OS on the phone, and that money has to come from somewhere. Apple pays for this maintenance by charging a tax on app developers that use their ecosystem; Google pays for it by spying on you.

Right now, we can both choose: You can buy a phone that pays for the software by spying on you, I can buy a phone that pays for the software by charging a toll for applications.

You haven't explicitly advocated using monopoly sanctions to make Apple's business model illegal, but lots of people have. If those efforts are successful, that will remove my choice to pay more for no spying.

Apple spies too. Their core business model just isn't based on selling that data. Apple knows every single app you've installed on your phone, the version, the time you installed it, every update you've ever had, how often you check for updates, the apps you removed, and probably much more. You MUST login to an Apple account to have an anyway usable iPhone.

Android, if you don't login to Google, and use a more ethical app store, get's much less data.

Obvious disclaimer: The entire of iOS, and parts of Android factory builds are closed source (e.g. the bootloaders), so we can't really know for sure what more they collect.

Interesting that this rejection came out in the same week, maybe the same day, as the EU opened its anti-trust investigations into the company. Obviously there’s some smoke somewhere. I say this as someone who has exclusively used Apple for over one decade. I am very very bothered by this monopolistic evolution of the company.

> exclusively used Apple for over one decade ... monopolistic evolution of the company.

Apple have been pulling this kind of thing for the entire lifetime of iOS at least, which is now at ~15 years. So it's less of an evolution and more of a constant.

Nothing has changed, nothing will change. Apple will make arbitrary and unfair rules that suit it, and people will complain but ultimately stick with Apple, and the cycle will repeat.

It has definitely been gradually getting worse. There’s no question about that. Maybe some tendencies have always been there, but they’re being manifested at a much more aggressive rate in very recent years.

So this exact rule, that to charge money for your app or from your app you must give Apple a cut, has been there since 2011. This is not new, and apps getting caught in this seem to bubble up every few months.

The only way it can change is if the EU forces Apple to do so.

> Interesting that this rejection came out in the same week, maybe the same day, as the EU opened its anti-trust investigations into the company.

Day of reckoning is coming. Monopolistic per se or not I think it's their greed and hubris that will be their downfall (on the matter).

While I don’t care about evolution of the company, I’m really pissed that I can’t buy Kindle book on a $1000 dollar device I’ve paid for.

You are a fashion victim to pay 1000 bucks for an Apple phone.

For 200-400 bucks you could have a great Android phone.

... that gets security updates for 2 years.

You can probably buy 3 different androids over for the same cost and have support for the same period. Hmm.

the problem is this is simply not true.

i've been using android phones for the better part of the decade. last year (2019) i've inherited an iphone 6s and the reason i've upgraded this year (to an inherited 8) is that i managed to crack the screen. show me an android phone that has 5 years of support.

I have always bought cheap androids and power is never a problem, js heavy sites die under flagship phones I've owned too. You most certainly don't have to pay 1000 for a phone, it's insane amount of money for a device.

The problem with a $200-400 Android phone is that it runs Android. I don’t want to use Android, so it looks like that won’t work for me?

Not sure where fashion enters into it?

why don't you want to use android?

I don’t like it as much as iOS. The interface paradigms it uses I don’t enjoy. It’s a little too Linux on the Desktop for me.

An iPhone's performance will completely smoke any cheap Android phone, and iPhone performance is often better than some new laptops [0]!

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23539845

Real life performance and experience differs a lot. A cpu is part of the reason for speed but so are many other factors. It depends on your use case too.

That actually sounds, verbatim, like what Macintosh users used to say to PC folk back when they were on 68000 or PPC.

I've got a three year old OnePlus 5 and I've yet to encounter a single app that has been slow, so I'm not sure what value a faster phone would have for me. The only reason I'm considering upgrading is to have a better camera.

One overlooked consequence of a faster chip is less strain on a battery and thus longer battery life. While it may not necessarily affect the perceived speed of apps, it has this significant benefit to the user.

I know almost nothing about Kindles, but can't you log in to amazon.com in Safari and buy that way?

Also, buying a Kindle seems like a surefire way to be vendor locked-in, because Amazon is so big, it can afford to not care about anything.

This is exactly what I have to do, but why am I forced to?

While Kindle is locked in, it seems to be a love child of Amazon and works extremely well. The difference between Kindle and iPhone is that Kindle is a single-purpose device, and iPhone is a general computing platform.

Apple says it's an exclusive experience, which is obviously sold to absolutely anyone who can cough up the dough.

(Snark aside, the Apple is rightfully famous for their tight integration, high-quality user experience, and that basically requires a walled garden. And it's easy to find edge cases.)

And you're forced to because they are not a charity and because they can get away with it. (Both in a legal and market forces aspect.)

I am not going to quit using Apple but I would fully support heavy regulations against it. These would obviously come from the EU as US regulators are toothless.

I don't really understand the monopoly accusation. The EU investigation is related to Apple Pay, iOS market share is less than 30% there.

There are two EU investigations. One for Apple Pay (NFC) and the other is about Apple Store policies.

In 2007 Walt Mossberg wrote an article titled "Free My Phone" about cell carriers' stranglehold over phone hardware and software. It's incredible how many of the complaints in the article are relevant again today, with Apple replacing the role of the carriers. I recommend giving it a read: http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/20071021/free-my-phone/

It is crazy that cell phone manufactures can dictate what run on user's phones. It seems like some large percentage of business models and tactics is to shake down the producers and the consumers.

Apple shouldn't be able to get away with doing this. Full stop.

But from a pure business perspective, if they're charging on an annual basis, if the average subscription length is say, 4 years, after the first year the rate is 15% not 30%. Additionally, Apple pays all the transaction costs, which on a $99 charge would be ~3.3%. That means if they go with Apple's system they'll effectively pay 18.75% versus 3.3%. Do they really think they won't achieve 19% [1] more subscriptions with a native signup flow and payment option compared to only recruiting customers outside Apple's ecosystem? That's what they need to break even on Apple's cut here. If they do think that, I'd be tempted to claim they don't really understand the power of App Store distribution.

[1] 96.7% revenue cut / 81.25% revenue cut

What if their profit margin is only 30%?

In a software business? Presumably the margins per additional customer is 90%+, although with fixed costs it could obviously be much lower overall. But the marginal profit per user is the primary concern here I think with regards to payment provider cuts? As the fixed costs of development are already relatively set whether they have one user or one million.

It’s true, though, if they have a lot of manual support that could certainly hurt that, though. Or if they have a high customer acquisition cost. Excluding fixed costs if they are spending 50% per marginal user on marginal Dev/server costs, support, and customer acquisition, the numbers do start to get pretty uncomfortable. Would have to gain 50% more users to break even relative to the 3.3% cut.

37Signals has always done it their way and have made a fuck ton of money doing so.

Does apple allow different pricing on a service sold both on the app store and outside of it? That way people could choose convenience or a better price.

No you can't. If you do that then Apple review hammer will be wielded and you will end up in the same place.

If you look at it Hey did not use in App Purchase, which is important from the perspective of the user. If I purchase a subscription then I should be able to unsubscribe the purchase of subscription from the app, also it is to make sure the app doesn't continue to bill the user even if the subscription is disabled. The app could be some remote offshore rogue company which continues to charge you even when you disabled the subscription. Also it could go ahead a charge for 12 month subscription when you only asked for 1. In app purchases have to be controlled for better user experience and consumer protection. There is a reason why there are tons of scam apps on Android but not on iOS.

This is seriously a very big point. Lot of companies (esp news sites) are luring you in with free trials and hoping you forget and keep paying the subscription costs. They make it hard for you to unsubscribe. Apple's approach is very good and very consumer friendly.

Btw I researched the Hey App, it is such a scam app. Its basically a dumbified e-mail service, that they are charging $99 per year, trying to create this buzz from this marketing and having "exclusive beta keys" and then having lots of fake reviews on their website and YouTube.

Absolutely.

Been there.

I worked for a music streaming company.

We never had any problem with Google (admittedly, Google does not care about Google Music and does not know what to do with it, which is a shame) but oh boy, getting an update to come out on iOS was a pretty big challenge.

We were sometimes even months without being able to push an update.

Boycott the WWDC 2020

Apple if it continues with the decision to be a rent seeking company, needs to be investigated for anti trust AND criminal behavior. Including the executives at Apple for making decisions in bad faith that stifle innovation just so Apple can continue to be a rent seeker, hurting the development and progress of the software ecosystem and wasting valuable time of the populace.

In the name of Jian Yang - Apple is a sad man. He is very fat.

Why hasn't there been any resistance to Apple and the way they treat developers? I see so many people complaining about very unfair treatment by Apple on HN, but never anyone doing anything about it. I know it's likely impossible to influence a company like Apple, but why don't people show their disdain somehow?

The platform is completely locked down and the users are on the platform. Unless you want to loose a big part of the market after Apple banned you for dissenting, you keep quiet, look the other way and praise Apple and his holiness the Jobs for your daily bread from the Apple kitchen.

In times past when a platform didn't offer sufficient tools for developers to reach users, the web stepped in to save the day & drive growth.

But... no accounting for Apple's practices here is complete without an evaluation of how they have kept their thumb on the web on iOS - no other engines, meaning they alone get to control what APIs are available to web developers for a huge chunk of mobile computing.

Remember the same issue raised by Spotify?

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/03/14/spotify-sues-apple-...

https://www.apple.com/in/newsroom/2019/03/addressing-spotify...

Previous discussions on topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23542937

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23545211

I really think this is just a special case of the generally growing trend of censorship being wielded by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and others.

It doesn’t matter if the censorship platforms have fair rules. The rules, one day, will change. The one constant is that they can censor you at will.

It’s “their platform”, so even breaking their own rules, or applying them inconsistently, is legal and permissible.

We as a society must build tools that do not support centralized censorship control.

Imagine if cars came with gas cap DRM that only allowed fuel purchased from one vendor...

I'm amazed Apple allows the Steam app, considering that too allows you to access products and services that weren't purchased through Apple's walled garden.

Steam is more important for gamers than iCloud. Not having that means losing many of those gamers to Android. Perhaps they hope that those gamers will buy some games from Apple Store eventually.

Actually, Apple blocked the Steam remote play app because it just acted as a remote desktop for Steam's Big Picture mode, which also allowed using the store for making purchases. This was a thorn in Apple's eyes so Valve had to ensure the shop was inaccessible when opening Big Picture mode through the iOS / iPadOS app.

Source:

- https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17392470/apple-rejects-va...

- https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17430532/apple-app-store-r...

I am amazed the EU hasn't jumped all over apple for that kind of shit.

I met the same problems when trying to publish an app with purchasable subscriptions on the store. Rejected at first, then I removed all mentions of the subscription in the app and after pointing this out to the review team, it got approved. The whole experience left me very frustrated.

Recently I pulled the app off the store altogether because I can't be asked to deal with this things on every update.

I feel like a viable alternative would be to push for, and educate the end users about progressive web apps. But then again, that might just be about moving the monopoly from the app stores to the browser vendors, as in the end it's them who have the last word about PWA compatibility. If I'm not wrong lately Safari already made some changes to the storage policy that undermines PWA capabilities.

To heck with Apple.

How hard is it really to allow flutter apps to run on the Linux phone? If Flutter could officially support WebAssembly, then all we'd need to do is provide bindings into the hardware. This can't be so hard.

I once saw an iOS app hit by this same IAP shakedown quite recently. The developer, a friend of mine, had called me in an emergency to help expand his backend for Apple payments. It almost felt like a protection racket run by your friendly neighborhood Mobster.

The most egregious thing is that they don't inform you about this beforehand, event when they could easily stop this on the first review. They will let you on the store, get users, and then sneak up on you and hang your users over your head to get you to comply.

I really hope dhh sticks to his guns and starts up a revolution against Apple.

Sounds like your friend should have read the App Store Review Guidelines, the rules are all clearly stated and have been for so many years now that it should come as a surprise to nobody doing business on iOS.

I think this saga proves the rules are not clearly stated. The rules do not make clear at any point that “reader” apps (however Apple chooses it will define them today) and business focussed apps do not need to offer IAP. Apple didn’t even make that clear in their rejection. It took a statement from them to a blog to make it clear.

The rules state they don't apply on initial submission?

Actually they don't. If you go look at dhh's twitter thread, he has a table of direct competitors to Hey that don't have iap. Yet they are on the store

they change the IAP rules every couple of years and they make them more restrictive and more convoluted with each change.

did he end up implementing IAP?

Yes. He had to because Apple threatened to ban him if he did not comply. Since he was a small indie dev, he couldn't exactly create a twitter/media firestorm and get away with it.

This has confused me for a long time: Isn't Apple deeply and illegally anti-competitive? How many lawsuits have there been and why did they not succeeded in opening them up? What can the EU do to fix it?

Probably because in the EU, Android has a dominant 70% market share, so the typical anti-trust rulings don't apply.

The EU is investigating it now though https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/16/eu-opens-investigations...

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