Apple Is Trying to Shut Down Hey
hey.com
hey.com
I am also fine with Apple collecting a modest fee for providing that service. That fee should probably be somewhere in the 2-3% range. Demanding what amounts to a 30% “introducer fee” is beyond absurd.
I also do not approve of how inconsistently Apple enforces their own rules.
Maybe it is just me but as long as I can cancel the subscription on a mobile website or a desktop website without talking or calling anyone, I really really don’t care.
Also the fact that I rarely have to do these subscribing/unsubscribing.
Apple's cut isn't for payment processing, even if developers insist that's all they do. It's for access to their marketplace and their very large user base.
Pretty ironic for a company that sells you that you're not the product being sold.
But Apple does sell paid search/advertising results.
More accurately: Checkmate.
It's for curating the marketplace and designing the OS to safeguard information, so that users can trust the apps they install.
It is for developing the features that serve as the backbone of the apps that developers create---cloud storage, augmented reality, machine learning, high performance graphics, cryptography, peer-to-peer networking.
Of course we can imagine different business models. This one certainly has negative tradeoffs. But I think developers get a great deal for the 30% tax, and the formula has undeniably been successful in producing a marketplace where users are more comfortable spending money---the App Store has nearly double the revenue of Google Play, with a fifth the market share.
(To me, the $99 developer fee seems more to do with anti-fraud than anything. With that you get two professional technical support incidents, almost guaranteed to cost Apple more than $99 in wages.)
Clearly, though, Apple's rules incentivized developers to handle payments outside the App Store, and now they're upset that they've created a situation where they're getting a 0% cut. And undoubtedly it hurts the user experience when you can't sign up on-device.
People never realized that if company is being charged transaction fee, they will always forward that to you in one way or the other.
I can’t sign up for “Microsoft 365 Home“ or “Personal” inside of Microsoft Word for iOS or any other Microsoft app, but Apple still approves them without this mandate.
I think Basecamp is in the right here.
With a new player however, there are not enough users on it to even make a dent in Apple's reputation - the masses don't even have a clue as to what "Hey" is and won't suddenly consider Android because Hey is not available on iOS.
This behavior is nasty and regulation is more than welcome here, but makes sense from a business point of view.
Game developers on other platforms (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) don't have that support burden.
It always works.
I'm also a bit surprised that a team like the one I guess hey has, did not see this coming, as it's pretty clear in the apple store terms and anybody with some iOS and app store publishing experience would have been concerned about that from day 1.
"One recent example is Spotify, whose music app was $9.99 per month if you subscribed on the web, but was $12.99 per month if you subscribed on iOS"
I do think their 30% cut is excessive but they provide a lot a value with it, not sure what number would be acceptable to developers in order to just use it, part of me thinks they should just take no cut and make all their money by dominating phone sales.
The real problem here is complicated rules that are inconsistently enforced, and changing their minds later, that really screws over developers.
You'd still get the convenience of subscribing through the app if you want it (and paying more for it), but you'd be aware of the alternative. After all, if Apple defends their policies as user protection, they shouldn't be opposed to more information being given.
Taking 30% without providing alternatives to install apps seems totally unfair
You would get 30% discount if you use our website for purchase. Here the price includes Apple payment infrastructure cost.
I'm sure there would not be anything in Apple's guideline documents about adding above kind of 'informative' content.
Same situation as hey.com but allowed.
Assuming Hey followed standard email service protocol, users of Hey could absolutely use the Apple Mail app to connect to their email servers, so it shouldn't be about that, unless they marketed too hard, or something.
I probably can't use any POP server in the GMail app, for example.
I suspect they marketed too hard and too loudly about how they're totally not email "and here, you can buy in" and that tipped someone in the review process off and then a review that doesn't hold up to greater scrutiny was made. The greater problem is probably the refusal to re-review it.
All the decrying about "going against one of Apple's businesses" seems like punching at the air. Apple probably doesn't care whether people have an iCloud email address or not.
They didn't. https://hey.com/faqs/#can-i-check-my-hey-email-with-my-exist...
That makes Apple's stance more clear, then. Do they reference paying for anything anywhere in the app? They might want to take a play out of Kindle's book here. edit: if they haven't already.
No. That's the point.
It's not just HEY: other developers are now reporting that Apple's grip is tightening and starting to enforce this change. You can no longer provide access to any service without submitting to Apple's tax, unless (1) you are a "reader" app or (2) you only sell to businesses (i.e., the user cannot pay for the app).
While I have no idea if it's a significant number, I've heard a few anecdotal accounts of how Rails was the cause for many to buy their first MacBook.
However, the pact of Basecamp's heads moving to Android and away from Apple's ecosystem would surely be insignificant. Even PR-wise, it's a fun storm, but it's still in a glass of water.
I think Apple tries to distinguish between apps that provide access to content which you subscribe to (so-called “Reader” apps) versus apps where the service is the app itself.
If the service is the app itself, then they want all apps to be sold directly through the App Store. If the app is a Reader for a content subscription, then they allow selling the content subscription separately.
I’m not sure it’s evenly enforced, but I think that’s their intent and stated policy which they are trying to enforce here.
> Apps that operate across multiple platforms may allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired in your app on other platforms or your web site, including consumable items in multiplatform games, provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app.
Basically Apple says if you're offering a multi-platform service - which this e-mail client clearly is - then you must provide the option to buy the service in the App using apple's in-app purchase system.
That's why parents had to sue them to get refunds on fraudulent in-app purchases as children were scammed and manipulated into tapping buy buttons again and again. That's why Macbook Pro owners had to sue them again and again to address product defects. That's why they're being investigated in both the EU and US for abusing their platforms. They even officially had a rule for iOS developers that threatened against talking to the press.
If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.
YMMV on that - personally, I've gotten pretty decent support for my Apple hardware. For example, in one case, they completely replaced a laptop that had gone out of repair support with a new model that was supported. I don't like the butterfly keyboard, but they replaced it twice and gave me a third-revision model that has worked fine since.
In addition to macOS, I use Linux (in a VM) and Windows (both VM and native) on my Apple hardware, and they all work fine.