How Apple is bullying small developers
twitter.com
twitter.com
In most cases, there is no point asking for a phone number as 2FA if the user chooses Sign in with Apple (SIWA).
SIWA requires access to the device. App credentials are usually persisted per device, so 2FA doesn't really help if your device is stolen as the attacker would have app access anyway (if they were able to unlock the device). Even for non-Apple-device sign ins such as on Android or Windows, SIWA requires device access to generate a password, which requires 2FA on the Apple account [1].
Uber is allowed to ask for a phone number because a driver legitimately may need to contact a customer to arrange pickup. But in this case, Apple does not think that this app requires a phone number, and is thus protecting the privacy of its customers.
There are other issues I have with Apple's ecosystem/the App Store, but this is not one of them.
EDIT: After posting this comment OP has written in another comment that their app requires a phone number to arrange delivery. This information was not in the original tweet. In that case, I think this is likely a misunderstanding between the App Store reviewers and OP about how the phone number would be used, and I would need to see further discussion between those two before declaring Apple a bully in this case.
Would you recommend to make it more clear in some way?
In that sentence, "contact" can mean many different things. Will you contact me by text for non-urgent things like billing or promotions? As a user, I don't want to give up my phone number for promotions. And since the request is right after the sign-in flow, I think it's reasonable Apple thinks "contact" can also mean 2FA.
I would put more precise language, such as: "Our masters may need to contact you in order to arrange delivery of X service."
Also, the fact that Apple did approve your app already is further evidence that this is just a misunderstanding, likely because your copy is not 100% clear.
(Sidenote: This is not important, but personally, the term "master" makes me uncomfortable. I personally would not call people "masters," but I also don't know your target market, so the term may be more appropriate in that context.)
I'm only half kidding.
This is egregious and exactly what Stallman warned us about. (I know he's done some terrible things that make him no longer worthy of being our role model, but he was exactly right about this.)
Pretty soon we won't own any of our devices. We'll rent them.
We won't own our data. We'll license it.
We won't be free to conduct business. We'll be given a revocable visa.
It seems like you can sign up with a fake email or simply block the emails you don't like. This is such a non-issue. Yet what Apple has done poses an existential threat to many small operations.
Apple has a kill switch on small companies' customer lists. They're inserting themselves into every transaction as a middle man.
Do something Apple doesn't like? You just lost all of your customers. You no longer own that relationship anymore. Apple turned you into a sharecropper.
Congress and the DOJ need to do the following to counteract this obscene anticompetitive behavior:
1. Pass legislation describing "generic purpose computers" and require that they allow installation of any software by the user.
2. Break up Apple into hardware and software+services divisions and prevent them from dealing exclusively with one another.
I don’t want a relationship with every company. I don’t have a “relationship” with the company when I buy their products in a physical store.
You really trust Congress to be technical enough to describe “a general purpose computer”? Did you see the hearings two weeks ago?
Are you also proposing that Apple licenses their operating system to other vendors? Which company owns the OS? The processor division? The IDE?
> I don’t want a relationship with every company. I don’t have a “relationship” with the company when I buy their products in a physical store.
That's your prerogative. Apple doesn't need to step in and do this for everyone. They're knee capping everyone just because they can.
When Apple refuses to send marketing emails or promotions, then I'll think this is fair. But they won't subject themselves to the same punishment they dole out.
> Did you see the hearings two weeks ago?
I watched it twice. Lucy McBath is my representative. It was a highlight of 2020.
> Are you also proposing that Apple licenses their operating system to other vendors?
They'll probably have to if they're split into two companies. I don't see any problem with that. Microsoft is doing an amazing job right now doing just that.
> Which company owns the OS? The processor division? The IDE?
Software+Services, Hardware, Software+Services ... these are easy questions. If the DOJ hands down this ruling, Apple probably gets to decide for itself.
Microsoft did great with phones didn’t they? So this Apple company that is going to have to license its OS - is the government going to also tell them how to design their OS and for what hardware? Is this mythical company going to have five different licensing programs? One each for watches, phones, tablets, computers, and set top boxes? Are they going to also split up the processor division?
While the government is at it are they going to force both Google and Microsoft to divest their hardware business?
As far as your Senator. She asked why Apple removed apps that were spyware and recorded everything kids did on their phone. Yeah she’s bright.
Ballmer missed the boat, but Nadella is launching a new line of Android phones. I don't have a high degree of confidence in their venture, but time will tell. I really don't get this criticism, though. Microsoft has a market cap with the same order of magnitude as Apple. They're far from a bad tech company.
> is the government going to also tell them how to design their OS and for what hardware?
No. The government is going to split Apple into smaller companies. Apple will be told not to collude or do business exclusively with its old business units. They'll be free to do whatever they want from that point.
> While the government is at it are they going to force both Google and Microsoft to divest their hardware business?
Google will be split up as well. They're extremely anti-competitive. Every single company that went before congress is under incredible scrutiny right now, and rightly so.
Microsoft has been playing nicely and isn't behaving anti-competitively. They learned their lesson in the 00's.
You’re just not paying attention. How is this any different than what they did in 2002?
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/microsoft/azure-slaps-ta...
The government had nothing to do with the rise of the current tech giants.
No one cared about desktop operating systems anymore - not even MS.
There is no new line of Android phones. There is one monstrosity of a $1400 device they refuse to call a phone.
Just down vote and move on like everybody else ;)
They’re not inserting themselves into every transaction. Instead, they’re allowing users who don’t want to have a direct relationship with every app on their phone, to substitute their pre-existing relationship with Apple instead.
Apple is evil.
Your other option is not to have any social login and use your own sign up process.
Apple is no more your partner than the wolf is partnering with the sheep.
“Strangling them with 30%”? Did you ever try to get a physical product in retail?
I mean, yeah, it's extra work for you as a developer, but as a user, I only want to use login with Apple, and if you ask for my phone number in addition, it's a delete for you.
On the other hand, if we allow to login but only request phone number later, this will seem somewhat deceiving to the user. Like we pretended that he can use the app while keeping his info private, while in the end it ends up that he cannot.
Reviewers aren't 100% perfect. I've had apps that violated rules pass the review only to be rejected a few updates later. One app I had forced users to use their birthday (at the client's request) as the password. 1.0.0 passed the review, but 1.0.1 was rejected because birthday is not an acceptable form of a password.
Apple could absolutely do better with reviewers, but it's likely they had to lower the quality of reviews in some way to reduce the amount of time it takes to review an app (from 5-7 days to 24 hours). Regardless, I rather take the 24 hour app review time since any rejection can be quickly re-assessed again.
We did get approved eventually, only to get rejected again for the same reason on the next update.
Regardless, I don't see how this is Apple trying to "bully" small developers. They're trying to enforce guidelines. That's all.
They bully small developers, because big companies like Uber or Grab have the same functionality with zero problems. While when we try to explain that we use phone number for the same reason, Apple insists that we change how our app looks and works.
Considering 40% of all submissions in the past week (shown on Apple's website) get rejected, it's entirely possible they were rejected using phone number input and after explaining to Apple their purpose, they were finally accepted. You're bound to get 1 or 2 apps erroneously rejected considering they go through 100k submissions every week.
It also says the app store team takes 1000 calls every week to discuss the rejections. It's not just you or small devs.
Speaking of Epic, maybe you're right and it's not just small developers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they couldn’t explain to Apple why they needed the phone number.