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ahh it all makes sense now...so that's why I have to go to the web to buy stuff in Fandango/Vudu.

How come these companies don't do something similar for subscriptions? ex: HBO Now (or whatever the fuck it's called these days) could have a subscribe button that takes you out of the app to their site - completely circumventing the in-app subscription purchase. Right?

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Apple will ban them if they do that. You're not allowed to link to or even mention alternative payment methods. You can't even point out that the price is 43% higher to cover Apple's cut.

Because apps can’t link to purchase outside the App Store. Let alone link, they can’t even mention they can purchase the content elsewhere either with images, text or any form.

I think this is so silly on Apple side as they try to have a name on raising the bar for user experience. And the worse is that before I realized what was going on I thought it was Amazon fault for some reason, which is even better for Apple as people would normally blame the developers rather than the platform for this design decision.

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