Hacker News Reader

Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

I feel like someone at Apple either lost the script or made a mistake around getting in the middle of these services. Why try to force the WP app to add IAP or your app? It can't be for the money. Let's be real, unless Netflix or some other huge service provider comes back, Apple is ruining their reputation over literal couch change (last I checked 1/3 of services money came from Google paying to be the default browser...). So is there some other reason? Does Apple really think it offers a better consumer experience?

View on HN

> It can't be for the money.

That's right. Huge multinational corporations famously don't like money.

Don't underestimate the power of immoral mazes. With a corporation the size of Apple, the middlepeople are all very far removed from the specifics of what does and doesn't generate profit and instead are following their interpretation of directives and attempting to appease their superiors -- which may or may not be quantified in monthly revenue. I imagine in the case of app review, their performance metrics can't be expressed in revenue, so their must be using something else to grade themselves.

Probably how many apps get reviewed/rejected/approved/escalated in a certain cycle.

My suspicion is the focus is more on the first than on the last of those statistics.

If the focus was on the last we’d hopefully not see so many spurious rejections.

> That's right. Huge multinational corporations famously don't like money.

In some cases yes. The whole concept of 'Innovators Dilemma' is built on this fact. Squeezing an extra million here or there is a waste of Apple's time at their scale. It doesn't move the Apple revenue needle. Getting WP or some fitness app, even in aggregate to give 30% of a subset of customer subscription does nothing for Apple except hurt their brand. It probably actually costs them money from losing brand value.

Google OTOH pays Apple billions to be the default and/or first position on the search list. That's why we're unlikely to see an Apple search engine anytime soon.

You are right. It is like meeting guidelines have become more important than any thing else.

And in our case adding IAP will surely make for a poor user experience. How a fitness business can serve users that sign up for an in-app purchase from anywhere in the world. A personal trainer can't help everyone. They have a specific niche and specific type of people they can and want to serve.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com