I suppose a large share of the potential Hey customers work in tech and might have a better understanding of what the app store tax actually means. And the EU anti trust investigations probably play role too?
I tend to think Spotify is too big for the media and other pundits to consider to be the little guy.
Remember Hey isn't free. People on waiting list already knew this from day one. With 70K invite, that is $7M annual revenue already.
DHH also went on about making sure no mention of Sign up in Webpages as well as many other commonly known App Stores rules before the App was submitted. And many thought it would pass, and it did for 1.0. It is the bug fix 1.01 update that was blocked Due to IAP reason. For most if not all iOS developers. This is new. So new that Fastmail didn't get their treatment until now. [1]
This new IAP rule force 30% on new sign up, as you could not even allow the App to be on App Store without IAP ( hence this website ). Along with the threat from Apple about pulling Hey from App Store, and finally their tone, which was like adding even more fuel to outrage, and I quote
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.
Is not exactly helping and got even more outrage from developers who dont even use Hey. To me that is about the most polite way from Apple saying fuck you. ( If the webpage author is reading this I suggest you include this quote on the webpage, or make a new site with all the popular useful free Apps that helped users but contributed noting to Apple. )
I know there are many who hate DHH and Ruby Rails, but seriously I cant see how he could have orchestra the whole thing as marketing. As if he knew about the IAP rule changes before hand.
There are regularly stories about iOS apps getting removed for odd reasons on the HN tops, but the Hey story blew up pretty quickly.
> I know there are many who hate DHH and Ruby Rails
I also I also heard that a lot of people hate DHH and his Twitter comment bubble doesn't seem to like HN. Either way, he is certainly not wrong about the issue. I also don't see how Hey would profit from marketing around that. First of all, Hey is pretty expensive and has a pretty narrow target audience as of now. Most people are perfectly happy with their free mail, people who aren't are probably already aware that those alternatives exist. Even more importantly, I don't see how they are going to profit by putting their App Store listing at risk. I doubt an E-Mail service is able so succeed if it doesn't offer native applications or at least a integration with third party clients. Since they chose to not support IMAP etc, Hey's iOS app is integral to the buisness. No app in the store, no profit.