Apple Response to Hey | Hacker News Reader

Apple Response to Hey

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16 pointsdustinmoris4 comments

Thank you for being an iOS app developer. We understand that Basecamp has developed a number of apps and many subsequent versions for the App Store for many years, and that the App Store has distributed millions of these apps to iOS users. These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years.

I dont know about others. To me that is very rude.

Edit: It turns out Fastmail is getting the same treatment [1], so Apple isn't selectively enforcing their rules. That is at least one good tick in my book. But that sentence above still reeks of foul smells to me.

[1] https://twitter.com/Fastmail/status/1273782718053187589

"Thank you for being an iOS app developer. We understand that Basecamp has developed a number of apps and many subsequent versions for the App Store for many years, and that the App Store has distributed millions of these apps to iOS users. These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years."

To me it is very very rude. And free apps do contribute to app store. And they do charge 99$ so APPLE should stop saying they have not contributed to revenue for 8 years they do have paid 99$.

Apple continues to pretend that it applies these rules to all developers when it does not:

https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1273720080291950593?s=20

I respect DHH a lot, but I think he's got it completely wrong here, drawing false similarities between other apps which are clearly very different in their nature and I also don't think his slightly aggressive approach to "fight" with so much bad language and accusations in the public before trying a more civil and less inflammatory approach in private. It comes across that he thinks using his online clout can help him to be treated differently and pressuring Apple to his will, rather than play by the same rules than everyone else.

I think both is possible, play by the rules to get your app approved AND at the same time challenge the existence of those rules in parallel via a legal and civil way. What he's doing instead though is playing the stroppy revolutionary kid who doesn't want to play by the rules and wants to put everything on fire and at the same time get their toy out whilst shit is burning. Not the best approach from my limited life experience.

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