ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'
techspot.com
techspot.com
Having been subjected to asinine "retention" policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive UX benefit.
I'm not debating if a 30% cut is reasonable, but in the drive to move everything to a subscription model, I have started avoiding services without an IAP option.
When I was in college I interned at a company that negotiated retail placements for stuff like software. The 30% slice is a much better model than the terms our customers were stuck with.
In some cases, software people lose more in the channel for commercial software as well — companies like SHI skim the cream for doing almost nothing. I can say as someone running a big enterprise org that there is no chance in hell that I’m wasting time negotiating terms with little companies, but Apple’s App Store model makes it possible to buy stuff.
I see more of an issue with Apple telling Telegram how to moderate their platform than with the high fees for distribution on the platform.
When I was in middle school a computer costed as much as a small car. Times change. Physical distribution of most software is dead and the associated costs are completely different now.
This applies to checking accounts as well. I pay no fees on my account with no minimum balance or usage restrictions and still have free unlimited ATM use worldwide (i.e. my bank doesn't charge a fee for the use or currency conversion and they actually refund me the foreign ATM's fees) and fee-free overdrafting on my account (paying a very nominal margin trading interest rate). I actually still use it even though I don't live in the US because it's cheaper to use here than my domestic bank account...
I’m in the same boat re: Apple/Google subscription options. They don’t have a vested interest in keeping you attached to a single subscription, so they’ll keep the cancellation option easy in favor of keeping you in their ecosystem.
It means the company has to make an effort to get money flowing again, though. Many will know that’s not worth it and stop the service instead.
(Corrections welcome)
Regulatory practices can be abused or coopted (leading to regulatory capture) but that shouldn't mean we shouldn't keep pushing.
Would you frequent a completely unmoderated online forum? We all know how chatroulette turned out...
Turns out a lot of them, such as the NYT, aren't that smart.
NYT is a great example of this. It took me multiple attempts over a span of 2 days to cancel my NYT subscription. There have been a few times since then when I've been tempted to re-subscribe (their election results tools are great), but remembering how hard it was to unsubscribe, I don't think I'll go back.
Whenever I subscribe to any service on Apple I will immediately unsubscribe. If I find myself wanting to use the service again after it expires it's a simple tap to resubscribe. I think I actually end up with more subscriptions this way, but at least I know I'm getting use out of all of them. I wish I could a similar setup for all subscription services.
If you subscribed with a credit card, did the option of chargebacks ever come up? (Asking because these sorts of situations seem perfectly in line for disputing with your credit card provider.)
The most recent time was with a company that wouldn't honor their refund policy. They were awfully rude over email so I made sure to take screenshots of the policy on their website in case they disputed the chargeback and/or changed the wording on their site. Turns out, there wasn't even an option to upload that information when I filed with my credit card, and I won the case without doing anything further.
It was more difficult for me to get reimbursed when I tried depositing $300 in a Chase ATM and then it crashed halfway through. But that just involved a 2 minute phone call to resolve
It took EIGHT MONTHS and SEVEN phone calls with my bank to get them to charge back. And haul fought me every step of the process when they're the ones that told me to go to my bank. U-haul went as far as to straight up lie to my bank. I'm surprised they didn't forge documents with all the shit they were trying
I had an Amazon subscription charge I could not track down for a year. Every month I would call Amazon, who's CSR couldn't find it, and then my bank to reverse the charge.
Found out I had Amazon Premier still signed up on Amazon IT. The card worked globally but subscriptions displayed locally.
The online subscription could only be cancelled by telephone, on a phone line with small and inconvenient windows of opportunity, with long waits. When you get through, you have the normal retention/upsell attempts, and then are told that it will take at least two months to process your cancellation, and that you will continue to be charged in the meantime.
It was easier to cancel my card, at which point they somehow managed to withdraw access as soon as the first billing failed.
If you change your address to an address in California you're given the option to cancel online.
In several cities where I've lived, your library card would grant you online access to dozens or hundreds of newspapers from around the world. Some you could even download to your iPad to read later.
He cancelled the newspaper subscription, and then told me that I was mistaken about no longer getting 1/2 off on the crossword puzzle subscription. I'd only go back to full price on that if I let it expire and then re-ordered. As long as I have the subscription on auto-renew and those payments go through, it will stay at 1/2 price.
I've had to cancel the Times a couple of times over the years. Telling them that I lost my job only got one offer to extend at a discounted rate. But what really worked well was this:
NYT: "Can I ask why you want to cancel your subscription?"
Me: "No."
It's not on their script, so the operator just took care of it immediately.
On the plus side, at least you can speak to a human being at the Times pretty quickly. Good luck getting through to anyone at the Albuquerque Journal in under three days ("It looks like you're calling from a cell phone. Let's continue this conversation by text!").
The issue is Apple's requirement that you can only use IAP, cannot offer alternative, cheaper, prices, cannot direct people to your website to sign up for things, and cannot even disclose what portion of the bill goes to Apple.
Your post proves Apple could still make money with offering it as an option for informed users. But Apple is being a bully and a thug by disallowing alternatives, and actively preventing app developers from telling people about them.
What Epic did with Fortnite should be the gold standard: Buy direct or pay through Apple. The latter providing potentially better privacy/security and user experience at a price premium.
I can't seem to find a rule that says pricing must be the same for IAP as elsewhere in current guidelines:
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sub...
That seems like the best of both worlds in the sense that as a user you can choose to purchase in iOS for convenience or go to Fortnite elsewhere and purchase there for cheaper. This move just seems like Epic wanted to pick a fight, they weren't actually interested in offsetting the Apple cut.
I've taken to using Privacy/temp card numbers for all subscriptions. They have strict spending limits set and if needed, I'll deactivate the number.
Sure, someone probably could send your "debt" to collections, but will they?
I'm all for mandating an IAP option. But forcing apps to keep customers in the dark about other, cheaper options borders on deception.
Do they? I heard it before, but when I tried to search the developer guidelines, I couldn’t spot anything specific about this.
IAP is great, and setting rules such that if apps offer IAP, they have to at least offer the platform's own payment service as initial and preferred choice, is perfectly reasonable. But it's extortion if you own the entire ecosystem and promise to ban anyone who wants to offer additional, alternative means of account/service management for a product/service that you have no business ownership of.
Yes, the most disagreeable thing about Apple's IAP policies is where they forbid links to alternative purchase pages. But it is also the smallest of the current complaints.
It's not "additional" means of purchases many companies are pushing for. They want to be able to avoid offering Apple's IAP whatsoever.
I mean, ProtonMail did not have IAP in their app at all, but offered options to pay for their service on their website. Apple insisted, as you suggest, that they "at least offer the platform's own payment service as initial and preferred choice," and now ProtonMail is saying that is "Mafia extortion."
Obviously it's not a 1-1 comparison, but Apple is giving the apps a similar platform to sell their product.
It's the fact that not only are Apple providing a platform to sell the product, they're also the only distribution method for the product and are slowly clamping down on the loophole of providing a "free" app that requires a subscription bought elsewhere.
To continue the flawed analogy, the Best Buy houses are clearly the best houses in most other respects in the opinion of a lot of people and it's hard for the market to apply pressure about this one specific limitation. Whether that's fine or not is basically the philosophical argument being had.
Not really. For Epic, you can buy things in Fortnite on other platforms and you get them in the iOS account. Same goes for ProtonMail I assume. The issue is that you can't advertise in the app that users can purchase the things elsewhere.
The problem and complain is much more complex once all these additional factors comes into play. It isn't so much a problem if we look at it in isolation. As in your Best Buy example, which I agree is perfectly valid.
> "Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP. There's nothing you can say to that. They are judge, jury, and executioner on their platform, and you can take it or leave it. You can't get any sort of fair hearing to determine whether it's justifiable or not justifiable, anything they say goes. We simply complied in order to save our business."
Yes, as I said, ideally Apple would allow other forms of payment alongside IAP, but that's not even the issue here. The issue here, as I said, was that ProtonMail was trying to avoid implementing IAP at all.
I am sorry if fanboy will hurt someone feeling, but if for example: Google (or Apple) would have a new rule that if you want your website to be opened in Chrome(or Safari) and not marked as malware you have to include Google Pay(or Apple Pay) and remove the Visa/PayPal and all the other payment options and some person would say "this is exactly what we wanted, no more choices - force everyone to a Google(or Apple ) tax , this choices are overwhelming my poor brain then tell me the correct adjective to describe this person that thinks removing choice and forcing the big coorporation way is the best thing.
Extortion (or blackmail) has a legal definition and this isn't it. In California (where Apple is incorporated and headquartered), the statute states:
Extortion is the obtaining of property or other consideration from another, with his or her consent, or the obtaining of an official act of a public officer, induced by a wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of official right.
You have described a different objection, which is not "bigger". It's a different problem people have.
> they are forcing you not to inform the customer about alternatives
That is part of what's going on but you're missing the main issues. They are forcing an app owner to add a purchase that gives Apple revenue if Apple can find ANY other way that the owner is offering to be paid for app features. There was no advertisement or inform within the app at all. Also, you cannot inform the use about WHY the alternative exists (apple gets part of it).
That's how it's worse than even you think.
If Apple thinks people are paying for something, they force you to add something that is preferred that pays them. It's extortion (via a protection racket, "i heard you got an inheritance, be a real same if something happened to your app") or racketeering, depending on how broadly you want to define things.
I also don't like Apple's insistence of "only IAP or nothing at all (not even a mention)" but how do you suggest they make profit from the developer side? Or they should not do that at all?
It should be 10%? 20? 5%? What will be an acceptable %? Who decides that? What's the framework for deciding that?
I see one solution, and it's far fetched, developers/companies should fund and push for an alternative open platform, along with phone/device makers. Something that's not tightly controlled like iOS and Android. But then they will be losing on iOS. I think they will have a choice to make, consumers as well. Also, it's not an easy and short term solution.
We gleefully buy Macs, but imagine you buy a Lenovo/etc laptop and you are told you can't install Linux on this, only Windows. I won't be comfortable with that, but I am comfortable with the Mac buy where I Windows can be installed only via Mac (and Linux isn't even supported) - of course there could be work around with lots of circus and you cna live with a broken system.
Problem is not the cost. Problem is mono/duopoly of walled gardens.
As much as I wish there is third option ( I cant believe Microsoft is something I considered, giving what I went though in the 90s ) the Smartphone moat make it pretty much indestructible.
I still remember thinking, we could make something better than Microsoft with tens of billions dollars, decent management and strategy in the 90s. Despite my disagreement with Apple's App Store, I am not sure I can make something better than Apple. It is so well run, with so many loyal customers, that when they were doing good ( Under Steve Jobs ) I was very happy. Now under Tim Cook, it is damn right scary.
The framework is called competition. If Apple's IAP billing or the whole app store in general faced any competition on iOS they wouldn't be able to charge anywhere close to 30%.
But Apple designed their platform specifically to prevent that, to retain a tight grip over app distribution and billing.
> I see one solution, and it's far fetched, developers/companies should fund and push for an alternative open platform, along with phone/device makers.
Good solution, but we won't get to it. The moat of Apple-Google mobile duopoly is way too massive to overcome naturally at this point. We need some regulation to reign this in. Mobile computing is just as essential as telephony and internet access. We can't have two companies dictating the rules of the game for the whole economy.
My main point about he number x% tax is that the number itself is irrelevant, a judge should not decide that if the number is 30 then Apple is fine but if is 31 or 29 then is not fine, so people looking at the number are looking at the wrong thing.
It's also possible for 2 people to read the same thing and come to different conclusions so please don't imply others must have misread something to have disagreed with you. Not only does it not move the conversation forward any it's needlessly insulting.
It would be one thing if they were selling phone and skipping Apple that way. But if their are no phone payments, and only non-obvious links, it should not be required (or maybe I am misinterpreting this)
https://venturebeat.com/2011/06/09/apple-backtracks-on-in-ap...
Apple is going to force all apps that offer messaging as a feature to integrate with iMessage!
Apple is going to force companies with an iOS app to turn over 30% of their total gross revenue! And it's additive!
If you don't buy an iCloud subscription Apple is going to randomly delete some of your alarms!
Look, Apple does all kinds of terrible things, and I definitely think the government ought to take action against them.
But Apple one time, in 2011, announced that they were going to put in a rule that you couldn't charge a different amount outside the App Store than inside, and when furor erupted, they never implemented the policy. That's it. One time, never actually in practice.
They are still 100% terrible with this nonsense about not being allowed to link to or even mention alternative forms of payment, but let's focus on what they actually do that's bad, rather than what we imagine they might like to do in alternate realities.
If you want to be a payment gateway, compete with other payment gateways. If the app has any other payment method integration, there should be IAP as well.
But the problem is: if IAP is available, at least I am never going to opt for custom payment methods ever unless there's a clear cost benefit. Just like the OP I've had nightmares dealing with cancellation and automatic reactivations (of course that means automatic billing as well).
But the question is will Apple allow apps to show, or does it even make sense to do this:
Pay With Apple: $13
Pay with CC: $10.03
Pay with X: $11
This doesn't look like a solution at all now.
> I'm actually happier to pay a small premium
Think about it this way - if Apple was not in the middle, the developer would have received $100. So it is 30% less than what they would have received without Apple cut.
The customer paid $100. That is by definition the price. All costs are relative to the price. For example, sales tax or transaction fees.
You are never going to get 100% because of payment processing, license management, and content hosting costs. If not Apple, then somebody else. You can have a payment processor and manage the licensing and hosting yourself. Or, you could use an all-in-one vendor, but you will still be paying 10-20%.
In terms of the argument here, it feels like Proton Mail is trying to mirror Spotify's argument. The only problem is that, Spotify was a direct competitor to Apple Music. This is entirely different. Apple is providing a marketplace for apps, and many companies like Proton Mail are actually exploiting the system.
The only fault here is Apple's approach to the issue. But in this specific case, I don't think there's any mafia action going on unlike the whole Spotify drama.
I agree, but the case I directly observed was when the only focus was on the current period. What happened in the current month or quarter was the only concern. Long term effects were "too complex to worry about". This form of business myopia is all too common.
I think Apple's 30% can be debated but a vanishingly small slice of users know this and care about it, millions of users just want to do their thing with beautiful ease and experience.
The only way I can make it work in my mind is that from the users’ perspective there are no alternatives. IE: They don’t know it’s 30% off at the store down the road.
Note that things might have changed since I worked on this stuff.
In the most recent case I tried to request a refund immediately after buying an app, only to get a vague and unhelpful error message. After a little Googling I learned that you have to wait a period of a few hours before requesting a refund. Of course I forgot to go back and request the refund later so I ended up paying for an app that didn't do what I expected it to.
That's pretty much the definition of lock-in - there's no way to cut Apple out. Apple on the other hand could remove the user out by banning all its subscriptions - which is far more damaging than any one merchant deciding to do so. The power imbalance is utterly on Apple's side.
How can users escape Apple? You are not the first person to complain about getting locked in because they used an Apple account.
I don't have a good solution, but maybe this will be a good lesson you can carry on for the rest of your life.
Saying that a company "just" has to fire most of its staff if Apple ever detrimentally change their App Store rules is more obviously unreasonable than telling a user to buy a new phone.
We (in this case the EU) should give it the same treatment we gave credit card companies. Cap their rates at 1% or whatever so they can cover the operational costs of their stores, stop them from banning apps from their stores that aren't breaking any laws, and that's that. If they want to make more money for their shareholders they should actually build things rather than abuse their gatekeeper position.
Just imagine if Microsoft had taken a 30% cut from every developer who ever compiled software for windows, or told them what software stack to use to develop their software. We'd have gone on the barricades immediately. Microsoft had to face scrutiny for bundling a browser, compared to what smartphone companies have done to their devices that was a joke
The iPhone, iOS and the Apple Store exist because someone had the idea, will and spent tons of money building it. They aren't natural resources that Apple acquired and imposed on people so now everyone else has no choice but to pay the Apple tax.
So I don't see how that analogy applies here.
That idea went out the window a long time ago. Now we are all beholden to each-other and society on some level, so best we deal with it and solve these anti-competative issues and predatory platforms, otherwise let's agree that it's completely immoral and stop cherry-picking "moral rules" based on what we find useful at the time.
I don't know where you live but where I do the government determines laws, on my property or otherwise. i can't just do what i want on my property just because it's my property. Neither my actual land or the digital land of the app store are some sort of extraterritorial space, we're not living in the Shadowrun universe
Microsoft has the whole code-signing racket going on for Windows, but that's at least a flat fee in fairness.
And while we're at it, implement a Georgist tax scheme on landlords.
If manufacturers lose their substantial licensing fees, they would be forced to charge more upfront for the consoles which is objectively worse for consumers.
Smart phones and tablets have gotten to the point where they are expected to be able to do hundreds of different things, with some peoples livelihood dependent on it.
Nor is it realistically possible to create legal guidelines based on profit margins. I don’t see how it makes sense to apply a different set of rules on devices that are sold as a loss and make up for it in software sales vs the inverse or even both being profitable.
Microsoft also appears to have solved that issue with their game pass opening and many game studio acquisitions.
> The European Commission has fined Qualcomm €242 million for abusing its market dominance in 3G baseband chipsets. Qualcomm sold below cost, with the aim of forcing its competitor Icera out of the market. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_...
If you're a developer --- don't build for Apple.
Problem solved.
Apple is doing everything it can to stop the customer from being informed. As a developer, you are not allowed to tell your customers how much of a cut Apple gets.
This has to change.
How does this relate to this discussion?
Just inserting "30%" into ANY financial transaction and drawing a comparison is a false equivalency.
If I could, I would downvote this.
I say Cisco should charge for every packet that goes through their router that is involved in a Financial transaction. If you don't pay, they add you to a blacklist. It's feasible, router has a blacklist, Cisco checks if you make money, if you do, they shake you down, if you don't pay, they add you to the blacklist and router downloads and refuses to route your IP addresses. Sounds ridiculous, but it's doable. After all they are facilitating the transaction.
In 1997, then CEO of Sybase Mitchell Kertzman said in an interview with the French trade magazine 01 Informatique:
"Q: When you launched Jaguar CTS, a middleware tool competing with a Microsoft product, you received a rather explicit phone call... A: It was the Mafia! When I hung up, I realized that I had just received a phone call from the godfather who forbade me to sell drugs on his territory. And you know, Microsoft people behave like the Mafia: they don't have to break your leg, they just have to threaten you."
Source (in French): http://bat8.inria.fr/~lang/hotlist/free/abuse/mafia/kertzman...
The legend went that if Microsoft liked you and decided to acquire you, they would give you a binary choice between a low-ball offer and a lawsuit based on their patent portfolio.
And buying what instead?
That seems like classic rent-seeking.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/technology/google-play-st...
IIRC Google offered Epic more favorable rates after it released Fortnite through side loading. Presumably this indicates that sideloading was a success and Google didn't want Epic to set a precedence that bypassing the Play store is feasible.
What's important is relative difficulty. If 99% of all apps the consumer can get are on the app store, but they have to go through a new and somewhat foreign side-loading process to get this one app, then they probably will just go for that app's competitor on the App store.
I'd be curious what percentage of Android users, outside of China, sideload apps. My guess is that it would be sub 3%.
The problem of rent-seeking by monopolists will just go away by itself.
https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraService https://gitlab.com/fdroid/privileged-extension
No chance in hell the average consumer is doing this, so they are effectively locked in.
Autoupdating is the way to go for most users IMO.
-- Apple, surprised pikachu face, probably
It has been over 5 years since Chrome for Android added support for push notifications.
Apple needs to stop dragging their heels here, since they are clearly using every excuse in the book not to let users receive notification from apps outside the app store purely because it benefits them financially to do this, in a manner that is very anti-consumer and anti-developer.
Users don't have to be assaulted with drive-by notification requests. Safari can require that PWAs only be given the chance to receive push notification permission after being added to the home screen. It's not rocket science. SpaceX landed a rocket booster almost 5 years ago, and they've gone through the certification process to send astronauts to the space station, and they're well on their way to making their next-gen Starship platform orbital. But Apple can't figure out a way to support APNS for PWAs. It's just too hard! Apparently.
If PWAs supported APNS, Apple would have a significantly more defensible anti-trust position, but Apple has shown that they just have no interest in making things easier for themselves -- let alone their users or developers.
Apple also supports PWAs so poorly that the new App Library feature doesn't even properly support them. PWAs have no option to be removed from the home screen and left in the App Library, unlike all other apps, and iOS 14 is the first time that there has been any distinction between PWAs and regular apps as far as the home screen is concerned. This is without even discussing the lack of widget support for PWAs, which would legitimately be challenging for Apple to support well, unlike APNS.
I say all of this as someone who really likes iPhone, and is frustrated that Apple seems to be doing everything possible this year to push me back to Android.
Just add APNS support to PWAs that have been added to the home screen, Apple! And please don't wait another 5 years to do it.
I've been wondering about this for the past couple of weeks.
Is Apple really so blind that they don't see they are digging themselves into a hole?
If iOS had first-class support for PWAs they could probably keep running the AppStore in any way they wish.
When companies use the same logic of spreading fear to manipulate and ultimately control as the war on terror/war on drugs from Bush/Nixon, you know something is really wrong.
I know of a person who just clicked the "allow notifications" in order to not get bothered by the popup, and then they started getting notifications with sex offers and stuff like that. The website which triggered them was https://open4u.co.uk, which was prominently recommended by Google due to its positioning in the search results.
This is not a question of safety at all - Apple has control over how many people get tricked via their control over the permission prompt.
What determines what is too high here? If it's about the cost of it (it costs Google/Apple much less money to build and maintain an ecosystem so they can "afford" to do it) wouldn't that imply that there is a huge market opportunity for someone else to build their own ecosystem and charge less? But maybe because that doesn't happen is proof that it may not be "too high".
Hmmm. Let's see what one would need to do at a bare minimum:
- start manufacturing phones
- build own OS (or fork Android)
- develop own SDK
- develop own online store infrastructure
- manufacture other devices (e.g. Apple) and/or develop other services (e.g. Google) to complete "ecosystem"
The barrier to entry in developing a mobile (and beyond) ecosystem is astronomical when competing with either Apple or Google. It's practically impossible to break into a multi-trillion dollar market when it's siloed to two multi-trillion dollar corporations.
So....
Protonmail has a free tier, subject to resource limits:
https://protonmail.com/pricing
What should the app do when those limits are hit that Apple could not choose to call a "notification"?
Apple has not spelled out clearly that this is okay for them to do, which means that it is a risk.
The user would be receiving a literal iOS notification from this app that talks about upgrades available outside the app.
Requiring no app generated notification has a clear line.
Requiring no email, which is a general mean of communication, has too big an implication. What about sending a text? Or a mail? Or to a secondary email?
I’m not a lawyer, but such a clause in contract would be deemed rather unjust, wouldn’t it?
It feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Lawsuits against Apple's App Store policy enforcement are already in progress, but Apple has the best lawyers money can buy, and rulings are years away.
If a substantial part of your business risked being terminated at the click of a button by some unelected person that you have never met, with no proper way to appeal such an unjust decision, you'd probably think twice about doing something that could be misconstrued as intentionally violating App Store Guidelines too.
I blame Apple for the lack of clarity both in their rules and their enforcement. I don't blame ProtonMail for trying to adhere to Apple's arbitrary rules that often make little sense.
Apple wasn't crazy enough to go after Amazon Kindle app for asking the user to buy ebooks on Amazon.com, which bypassed Apple's system.
Probably---hopefully---they aren't crazy enough to fight a email client for sending emails regarding upgrade plans.
They already supposedly went after apps that linked to a privacy policy on their main website because the main website itself had premium options for sale. If you can't link to legal policy etc. because it might be a level or two of indirection from offering a premium service for sale through the site you have to do something like a special site just for Apple users. I can totally see them going after email and arguing Proton mail could hide those notification emails from iOS users if they contain links to premium.
However, I don't see how that can be solved. An email provider has every right to send an email to a customer informing them about anything, including a trial expiration and if that email contains a link, it is handled like a link from any other email in the app. It would be really silly for Apple to ask the provider to censor their user's inbox and hide a particular email they received.
I agree completely. If Apple agrees, they should spell this out clearly in their terms.
As it is, Apple gets to selectively enforce this whenever they want, which is unfair to both app developers and users.
One likely danger of spelling this out from Apple's point of view is that someone might say the same thing about other messaging services besides email. Take Facebook Messenger, for example. Imagine that Facebook started offering a paid upgrade to Messenger. Why should Facebook Messenger care on which platform you're receiving an internally-generated call to action to upgrade to some hypothetical paid plan? It's not like they were intentionally targeting Apple users in this hypothetical scenario, and it should be their right to not have to censor messages they decide to send to their users just based on the platform being used. It's (hypothetically) just a regular Facebook Messenger message, after all, generated by some marketing system completely disconnected from both the app and the messaging platform!
One thing that confounds the issue for ProtonMail specifically is that the app only works with ProtonMail, and ProtonMail is operating both the frontend and the backend. It's not like the Gmail app that also lets you use other email accounts with it as a general purpose email client. This is why I chose Facebook Messenger as an example -- it is a messaging platform, but both the frontend and backend are operated by Facebook.
I really hope this means fastmail won't be forced to start billing through IAP. Apple gets enough of my money already, and I don't want it eating up fastmails profit margins, as I think they offer a stellar product.
> Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP.
It's apparently not just "no notifications". Below is the actual Apple guidelines. Notice that it is not "notifications", but "call to action". In practice, it may be "slightest hint".
> Free apps acting as a stand-alone companion to a paid web based tool (eg. VOIP, Cloud Storage, Email Services, Web Hosting) do not need to use in-app purchase, provided there is no purchasing inside the app, or calls to action for purchase outside of the app
If so, why doesn't Fastmail (from what I can tell) offer IAP? Isn't this the same idea?
Don’t want to have IAPs? Don’t mention the premium service you have for sale elsewhere. That’s the option picked by many companies.
So, in reality Apple doesn’t force developers to adopt in-app purchases. They make them follow the rule I outlined here.
When I see "This app has IAP" or whatever the copy is I just scroll down and see if the IAP looks like:
* 1 month subscription
* 1 year subscription
* Lifetime subscription
OR
* Full Unlock
OR
* Level pack 1
* Level pack 2
* Level pack 3
OR
* 10 gems
* 20 gems
* 30 gems
...
If it's one of the first 3 then I'm more than happy to get the app. I don't mind paying through IAP to unlock the full app, pay for a subscription (within reason), or get more content. I am completely uninterested in using a fake digital currency inside your app. Doing that tells me everything I need to know about the app and the developer(s) behind it.
In my book every "free-to-play" game that monetizes like this (even if they try to say they aren't "pay-to-win"/"pay-to-play") is trash. I don't want to hear "It's a fun game and you don't have to pay to enjoy it/play it", that's bullshit. I've yet to play an example of such a game that didn't (eventually) make the game unplayable/unbeatable without paying.
I do think they have gone too far with some of their practices though. This sort of shake down of free apps is over-reach and I'm glad they have revised the App Store guidelines. I hope this sort of arm-twisting doesn't happen in future.
It is a tricky issue. As I said it's their product their rules, but those rules do need to be clear, be fair and be impartially applied. I really don't want to see heavy handed regulation in this area, which could be incredibly damaging.
Apple's woes on this matter are largely Apple's creation. However, if developers want to accept payment outside of Apple's App store, then they should be prepared to pay elsewhere. The argument that the hardware purchase pays for the app store is bunk in my opinion, the hardware purchase pays for the hardware and the OS.
It's absolutely not a privacy or security issue.
Native apps can schedule background tasks, among other things that would impact your battery life and privacy.
So... disagree entirely. Please provide concrete examples of how a native app is less capable of invading your privacy than a web app that has been added to your home screen.
(Please keep in mind that home screen PWAs don't even have the same level of access to your Safari sessions that random websites have, which is why you have to log into PWAs a second time, even if you are already logged in using Safari.)
Yeah, that’s the perfect web app, and we already have these in iPhone. I added HN home page as a “web app” on my Home Screen, works perfectly. Another “web app” I use this way is a Grafana dashboard, and it even hides web browser GUI, so I’d say it looks and feel “native” enough, and very useful for quickly reviewing charts.
What I wouldn’t like for battery and privacy is if a web app could have _background_ activity — sending data to its servers, having access to mic/camera/sensors, running JavaScript spaghetti non-stop when I am not having the thing in the foreground.
You could reasonably say that it’s exactly what a native app would do, but:
1) native apps are reviewed by an authority I trust, upon every app update — and developers are responsible with their money and ability to make future apps, which makes the apps better for privacy, more conformant with the current OS best practices and UI/accessibility guidelines,
2) native apps are also mostly native code, so they are easier on the battery without sacrificing responsiveness.
> [...]
> What I wouldn’t like for battery and privacy is if a web app could have _background_ activity — sending data to its servers, having access to mic/camera/sensors, running JavaScript spaghetti non-stop when I am not having the thing in the foreground.
This doesn’t make any sense. It’s just fear mongering at this point. It’s not “the perfect web app” that doesn’t do these things. Apple rigidly enforces privacy on web apps.
First, Apple allows you to control which sensors a web app has access to exactly the same as any app. They don’t just get to steal camera access for fun. This is the same privacy-first approach that applies to native apps.
Second, Apple doesn’t allow these web apps to run in the background period. They run when you have them open, and that’s it.
If Apple allowed PWAs to run in the background, you would certainly be given options to control that behavior. The way Apple does things, any background behaviors would likely be severely restricted in how much CPU time they get to avoid impacting battery life. But for now, the impact is zero, unlike native apps.
> native apps are reviewed by an authority I trust, upon every app update
It has been shown repeatedly over the years that native apps will often get App Store guideline violations past review by simply feature flagging such unapproved behaviors until after review. Apple seemingly can’t catch every example of this, especially among smaller apps, as they simply don’t have the resources.
Safari is built around a model of extreme distrust, since you’re browsing websites that haven’t ever been reviewed, and PWAs are isolated to another level. Native apps are built on a trust model that is slowly being reclaimed for minimal trust, which just means they’re slowly catching up to PWAs. Safari isn’t leaning on some human app review process to determine how trustworthy code is.
PWAs are more private than native apps. That’s just the reality of it, but Apple has nothing to gain financially from emphasizing that to their customers.
> native apps are also mostly native code, so they are easier on the battery without sacrificing responsiveness.
Swift and Objective C are surprisingly slow languages in most benchmarks, and mainstream JavaScript interpreters are mind-blowingly good. I disagree with your point here, this is really just a coin toss. Developers can write bad code for either platform, period, and a JIT language like JavaScript can often figure out which code is performing poorly as it is running and optimize it into better code. If people were commonly writing their iOS apps in Rust, I would probably find this to be a more compelling point.
In summary, I don’t think you provided any concrete examples of things that currently make PWAs worse than native apps. You’re just afraid of how bad things could be if Apple decided to stop caring and remove privacy and behavioral restrictions from web apps entirely, which is something they have shown no interest in doing.
No one is asking for web apps to just run amok. Apple should give the user the option to let web apps added to the Home Screen send notifications, exactly the same as any native app. I think it would be great if Apple could devise a limited background permission that PWAs could request, instead of zero background ability. Native apps have lots of legitimate excuses to run in the background far more than you might expect, and it annoys me how even turning off Background App Refresh doesn’t stop native apps from running in the background. Native apps that choose to violate App Store guidelines can run without limit in the background, and you’re expecting Apple to find and discover every violation by hand.
Also, HN isn’t a PWA. It’s just a Safari bookmark on the home screen, if you add it there. I don’t know if Grafana offers a proper PWA experience or not. Twitter offers a real PWA, as an example.
<<Context>> former Apple executive says the Cupertino tech giant uses its "arbitrary" App Store policies "as a weapon" to restrict competition.
[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/87038-former-app-store-exec-te...
The US is also making rumblings and I had high hopes when I started reading the senate report [2]that began
"Nearly a century ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” Those words speak to us with great urgency today."
However the conclusions (page 375 for the impatient) left me underwhelmed although their comparison to the early heydays of the railroad empire made me chuckle.
[2] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7222836/Investiga...
I'm not sure whether Swiss companies can apply to this grant, but it does seem like ProtonMail have some sort of relationship with the EU.
IMHO, they are the only entity that has the guts to do something substantial. I'm in the States. It's clear that DC doesn't care but some activists are trying to shift the public perception. It would be better served to focus on the EU's public perception as well (primarily).
Apple has been rejecting app updates for lesser reasons.
After: You can subscribe in-app (in addition to online) and Apple takes a cut of that purchase. You aren't allowed to mention anywhere in the App that there are alternate (perhaps cheaper) purchase methods.
If you read carefully, you may reconstruct the actual issue and the store policy:
Either Proton mail removes mention of their premium service from the app (and the app can still provide this service to anyone paying outside of App Store) or they keep it and then provide in-app purchases.
They clearly decided to use IAPs. If you ask me, this is a smart move, as many customers won’t be bothering with other payment options.
...and the mafia.
I'm taking private property to mean any property that you don't actively use, so for example intellectual property, stocks, and capital writ large.
This is why the State has the right to seize property, because they are guarantor of the concept for property to begin with.
Ultimately, it is very valid to disagree with State enforcement of property and for the monopoly of violence, but the only logical conclusion for that is anarchism, in a sense that makes capitalism impossible.
So in essence yes, they built the society by providing a predictable and stable order. Follow the rules and you'll be fine and will be safe from arbitrary crime. A form of societal curation, one might say.
And they need paid to keep maintaining this service, and 30% doesn't seem too high does it? For the benefits they provide? Just don't try to fiddle your accounts to hide any other income you have, or try any other tricks; you might find your contract terminated.
It's not far fetched, it's moronic, immature and quotable clickbait trash. The CEO is trying to get attention by saying something blatantly extreme. It's perfectly representative of the age we live in, where people lack self-control and routinely throw outrage tantrums like they're children and desperate for attention at all times.
He might as well have declared that Tim Cook is a murderous despot, just go ahead and leap to the finish line for that mental train of stupidity.
Voilà. If you're treated like shit in a store, don't use the bloody store.
You know that, contrary to Google, Apple does not offer end-to-end encryption of backups so govs can access it right?
https://www.androidcentral.com/apple-may-have-ditched-encryp...
A mafia engages in racketeering/extortion. They take a game that’s fair, and make it unfair. Instead of creating value, they steal it. Without the mafia, people would retain more value for themselves.
Apple, on the other hand, created and maintains an enormous platform. Without Apple, the App Store would not exist. The rules are posted to a webpage and are applied more or less equally to everyone. All the transactions that occur in this App Store are value they enable to exist. Without Apple, instead of creating an app you would have to create an app and the platform and distribution mechanism etc. The cut they take, in light of this, seems more than reasonable to me.
The hate Apple gets here and other places seems really misplaced to me. They’re not a common carrier. They’re not a monopoly. They’re not even close to being a monopoly. They’re a huge company, but there is plenty of competition out there. I don’t understand why people act like they can’t make the rules of their platform. Much less why people would say they are a mafia.
Concretely about this post: it seems really naive!
> "Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP.
This sounds like a child making up a story for the principal. Come on... really? Proton mail is a huge thing. Apple’s rules are public and easy to understand. How is it that I can understand the App Store rules but Proton Mail cannot? Apple want their cut! They don’t want a mechanism to side step or encourage users to side step that cut. It’s so simple.
The App Store is not necessarily linked to the hardware (just as IE isn’t linked to Windows, to show a similar antitrust issue), so Apple forcing the exclusive App Store platform contracts on users and value creating content companies looks a hell of a lot like a racket.
And? As Brent Simmons of NetNewsWire et al observed:
> We started selling over the web in the mid ’90s.
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/robpegoraro/2020/07/29/what-tim...
He says they'd give up 5% to a payment processor, not 30%. John Gruber:
> To omit the fact that there was — dating back to the mid-’90s, well over a decade before the iPhone App Store — a thriving market for software sold directly over a thing called “The Internet” is sophistry. Most Mac software is still sold and distributed this way today. If App Stores are so great why is most Mac software sold outside the Mac App Store?
* https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/parsing_cooks_opening_sta...
And you don't have to build it yourself, as there is now SaaS for all of this, and I'd hazard to guess that they'd be less that 30%. For example the Carbon Copy Cloner folks redirect to a third-party:
And even if they took 30%, you'd still have the freedom to write apps the way you want and not be beholden to Apple's guidelines.
The market for apps on phones was a disaster before the app store. Both for users and producers. 30% was absurdly low compared to other options (again - on mobile, not web).
Because of the fragmentation of the phone market, specifically with-in even a single manufacturer's sphere.
There was so much variation in screen size, CPU power, memory, keyboard layout even for (say) Nokia's own line of products that Nokia's own app store had to ask "which phone do you have?". It was a non-uniform mess because the phones available pre-iPhone were a a non-uniform mess.
Apple's iOS App Store was able to have a simple design because the iPhone(s) available had a simple design, and developers could write to a known quantity. When Apple changed screen size/resolution/density they ensured that scaling from older non-updated apps occurred in a reasonable manner.
To a certain extent this is still true with Android, as third-party manufacturers have spotty updates once hardware is released. Google used to have a public dashboard with the market share of each version, but now you have to go into the Android Studio to look at the minimum SDK cumulative market share:
* https://www.xda-developers.com/android-version-distribution-...
Their current dashboard has some data on screen capabilities, OpenGL, and Vulkan:
* https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards
Meanwhile with iOS if you target iOS 12 you'll get 94% of that market:
* https://developer.apple.com/support/app-store/
If you need to worry about hardware capabilities, iOS 14 supports the iPhone 6S (released 2015) so that can be used a minimum (at least for 'low-intensity' stuff, i.e., not-games).
What's the competition for iOS app distribution? There might be competition on the customer side, but as far as I know there are none for the software/app vendors, which is why they can dictate their rules and choose the price (and it's not like customers have each a bunch of smartphones with different OSes, and you could say "Apple sucks so I'll make an Android app instead")
Apple's customers have willingly chosen this, it wasn't forced upon them.
There's a tentative (probably weak) argument to be made that the people who have bought Apple's hardware chose this. This is was simply inflicted on the developers, however. Regardless of the degree to which developers voluntarily develop for iOS, the rules by which they play are 100% dictated -- and they have no say in them at all (no free market) if they want access to Apple's 1 billion customers.
Proton Mail is not just an app. It's going to be up to the courts to re-affirm that a private party cannot force another party to give them profits of an unrelated product.
These kinds of "deals" are partially what got the Teamsters in trouble and are characteristic of the criminal mobs (which included the mafia). "I heard you have a second job selling stocks, be a real same if something happened to your app" - classic protection racket.
Calling others naive does not make your stance compelling.
Apple is giving Proton Mail the opportunity to come on to their platform and make more revenue. They are not forcing them on to their platform. If Apple didn’t exist, PM would simply not even have this opportunity. Mobs come into your business and demand revenue. Here proton mail is coming into Apple’s business and demanding revenue. Who’s the mob here?
And yeah, word choice matters if you want to be credible and taken seriously. I called the tone of this post naive because “stumbled into some plans” all innocent-like is comically naive from a large company that openly sells plans, wants access to a third party market place, and acts like they’re entitled to that marketplace for free. Instead of projecting competence and offering a compelling legal argument, the post plays dumb, which is sad when coming from a company that sells global security. You’re a company selling me encrypted messaging and you’re confused by Apple’s highly readable store rules?
Compelling via contractual agreement. This is typically referred to as "forcing" a conditiobn. Classic enforcement of a clause.
> Apple is giving Proton Mail the opportunity to come on to their platform and make more revenue.
No. That is not what Apple is granting PM. Me putting up a hello world app does not grant me an opportunity to make more (any) revenue. There are additional concerns and limitations.
> They are not forcing them on to their platform.
Correct.
> If Apple didn’t exist, PM would simply not even have this opportunity.
Incorrect. If Apple and Apple USERS didn't exist, PM would not be able to be utilized by those users from an Apple device (since nothing else is special about the platform). This is a matter of perspective which we fundamentally disagree on.
> Mobs come into your business and demand revenue.
That is one of many tactics.
> Here proton mail is coming into Apple’s business and demanding revenue.
Incorrect.
This is tiresome.
It's not really worth picking apart your statements when you are disingenuously starting from :
> if you want to be credible and taken seriously
Name calling and no-true-scotsman is all heresay or noise. The courts can (and eventually will) decide what is acceptable. Things are not looking good when a business starts squeezing blood from the stone (Apple's own market).
Good luck with whatever.
> Compelling via contractual agreement. This is typically referred to as "forcing" a conditiobn. Classic enforcement of a clause.
What does this mean? Classic enforcement of a clause? What is wrong with enforcing a clause?
> No. That is not what Apple is granting PM. Me putting up a hello world app does not grant me an opportunity to make more (any) revenue. There are additional concerns and limitations.
What does a hello world app have to do with this? We're talking about apps that have plans for sale and provide value. If you read App Store Guidelines, there is a specific term that says apps must provide users some specific, ongoing value. Hello world would be rejected from the App Store on this ground alone.
> Incorrect. If Apple and Apple USERS didn't exist, PM would not be able to be utilized by those users from an Apple device (since nothing else is special about the platform).
I don't understand this at all. Why add the users into the mix? How is nothing else special about the platform? Everything about the platform is totally special.
> Name calling and no-true-scotsman is all heresay or noise.
Could be possible, for sure. I'm prone to that type of thinking, but I'm not sure this is it. There's something pretty unsettling to me about a grown person, operating a very serious business, writing like they didn't understand the rules of something actually very simple. Is that an "ad-hominem", no-true-scotsman maneuver? Maybe? But it seems very relevant that here we are hashing out the merits of legalese arguments; whereas OP is just like "hey we were, like, selling some plans over there on the side and out of nowhere Apple just comes and demands money!!?" Does this person, who runs Proton Mail, live under a rock? Do they not read tech news? More importantly, do they not review the terms of the agreements they enter? Do they expect Apple not to enforce their contracts? Do they enforce contracts? It just seems fake and disingenuous. That's very significant, in my opinion, because fake and disingenuous people are, by and large, fundamentally bad. But that's just what I think.
Will definitely evaluate your analysis carefully, though.
Thanks a lot.
From what I can see, you can only purchase an annual plan on iOS for $60/mo. They also have fine print that states that Apple takes a 30% fee.
Because whenever I zoom out and look at more that just Google/Apple the more I see examples of this happening everywhere and I wonder why there isn't similar outrage. Like with the whole "FB mad that Apple wouldn't let them call out the 30% cut" thing, I mean Kroger isn't going to let a company print on their box "Kroger takes 30% of this sale"...
Consider that the profit margin for a train line might be something like a few percent, and that's for a capital intensive industry, these companies charge 30% for what?
This is why they should regulate so that no product, where it can be reasonably applied, should have a single app store. If you want to pay more for a better service that's fine, but with no competition it's just a racket.
Yes.
> How about the cut stores get to put products on their shelves?
No.
A digital store has an essentially unlimited capacity and carrying a new product involves doing a review and adding a new record in a database. Kroger, on the other hand, has to do this and manage limited shelf space.
The limited resource in an app store is the slot in some promotion carousel. Go ahead and charge whatever you want for that.
Apple has 50% of the entire US smart phone market.
This is a significant larger amount of market power then those other situations.
Protonmail brings up a 2018 incident that has already been addressed by the new policy. What point does this article serve? I think it's just free and easy publicity for ProtonMail.
If they had spoken up earlier, maybe they could have been the reason for change instead of WordPress.
Apple apologised that the language of App Store guidelines wasn’t clear enough. The policy in question hasn’t been changed.
The changes to App Store guidelines were announced in June, before the situation with Wordpress. Those changes were published in August.
Wordpress changed their app to follow the policy by removing the mention of their premium service.
Sadly, the Verge doesn’t make any of it clear.
I seriously doubt Apple would have listened to ProtonMail. Look what happened to HEY.
I trust it I know the billing is simple I know apple stand by the transaction
In the age of click bait and the information wars it is refreshing to trust the computer in my pocket.
Edit: I was wrong; misread.
"Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. "
The experience was full of dark patterns. There is simply no way to terminate at the end of your billing period (and I had an annual subscription). If you have custom domains, you lose them immediately upon clicking the unsubscribe button, as do you lose your only way to properly move data off the service (as they have still no export feature)
I recently started submitted apps to the iOS store and I found it very much fair. I don't have to worry about scailing servers to host my .ipas, users are ensured I'm not going to try and hack their phones.
I do think Apple should allow apps to clearly state they charge more due to Apple policies. But it's like if you come into Apple's house , you need to respect Apple's rules.
I guarantee you within days of allowing 3rd party App stores users would be getting their IDs stolen and blaming Apple
I guess people "expect" stuff like this from Apple which is the reason we are not allowed to criticize them, yet if Microsoft came out and said Steam breaks their "arbitrary rules" (well they are Microsoft rules, you need to respect them duuh) and kicked Steam off the whole Windows platform, all hell would break loose, people would be screaming for heads to fall..
It must feel quite strange to be asked to adjudicate over such complaints when you yourself actually love the products of the company you're supposed to make a ruling on.
If you want your arguments to be effective, it may be best to stick to analogies that you have personal experience with unless you've read deeply enough to understand the cultural context.
And Apple is not universally loved also, no matter how much you adore them, there are people who don't.
This youtube parody was also not unpopular:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyTA33HQZLA
And there are plenty of videos similar like this. We can both cherry-pick like this, and my point still stands, I am not arguing which monopoly is loved more, I am arguing what is FAIR before the court of law, not how much developers enjoy WWDC and their Macs.
However, do not confuse defending Apple's right to impose their rules with "liking" or "approving" what they do. Just because I believe Apple is in full rights to do all of this I do not like it so as I consumer I vote with my wallet, which is my right to do so just as is their right to impose rules on their platform.
A lot of the people riling up against Apple seem to want to have the cake and eat it too. They want partake in the value of the Apple digital platform (both as consumers and developers) but then they want to force Apple to play by their own rules, not Apple's rules. That doesn't seem right to me plus it's just contradictory as it's very likely that Apple being able to enforce their own rules is what created the value of their platform anyway.
. See Hayden Publ'g Co., Inc. v. Cox Broad. Corp., 730 F.2d 64, 69 n.7 (2d Cir. 1984) ("[A] party may have monopoly power in a particular market, even though its market share is less than 50%."); Broadway Delivery Corp. v. UPS, 651 F.2d 122, 129 (2d Cir. 1981) ("[W]hen the evidence presents a fair jury issue of monopoly power, the jury should not be told that it must find monopoly power lacking below a specified share."); Yoder Bros., Inc. v. Cal.-Fla. Plant Corp., 537 F.2d, 1347, 1367 n.19 (5th Cir. 1976) (rejecting "a rigid rule requiring 50% of the market for a monopolization offense without regard to any other factors").
And even IF Apple has not the dominant market share (which it does), it can still be engaged in anti-competitive practices, which it is currently being trialed for.
And last but not least, we (be it me as a consumer, Epic as a company, or Spotify) are not asking Apple to play by our own rules, but by the rules of LAW.
I feel like a lot of people are missing this point, this is the reason Epic is taking Apple to court, not because it won't play to Epic's rules but because of free market rules on which this country has been built.
I stopped there. I have seen a lot of articles like this misleading the public about the issue. Apple didn't force them to monetize anything. It was monetized. Apple told them to use IAP or don't direct to your own payment system in the app.
Either these journalists aren't capable of doing some basic research to understand the issue or are outright trying to deceive the public. Either way is saddening.
Another deceiving post: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/8/21506995/apple-forced-in-...
Edit: I see a lot of downvotes. Don't downvote! explain how is this "forcing to monetize". Webster dictionary: monetize - to utilize as a source of profit. Forcing to monetize means the app wasn't selling anything and Apple forced them to sell something. This is not the case! Apple forced them to choose between using IAP for payment system instead of their own system OR don't direct users to external payment system from within the app.
I think you are missing the point. They didn't have "in app" purchase ever. The email account being paid really isn't about the app in my opinion.
I can use the same account on any device I want to. But now they must have IAP on Apple devices, for which they raise prices.
Imagine Gmail personal now being mandatorily paid because they have optional pricing tiers on their website, that's linked in the free email client somewhere.
It's boring the customer at the least.
Secondly: My main issue is that the article is misleading the public to think Apple forced them to monetize a plan that was free. That is the farthest thing from the truth it can be. You are allowed to sell free apps and services on iOS.
Whether the app is free/paid or a service on top of the app is paid is not really Apple's concern. The concern is directing users to an external payment system.
This goes way back. Take this from the old jargon file:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/point-and-drool-inter...
From the earliest days of computing, hacker types have regarded ease of use and simplicity as indicative of stupidity and as a "dumbing down" of computing. This mentality survives to this day in the fetish that so many have for complexity and the fact that UI/UX is often the last thing to get attention in designs led by programmers.
Apple meanwhile took the opposite stance. Computers should be easy to use. Complexity is bad, especially at the UI level. Things should "just work."
Calling bullshit on the sentiment in that Jargon file entry above made Apple for a time the most valuable company on Earth.
The tax we now have to pay to them is a dumb tax for the cult of complexity and "real men do it manually" bullshit. To break the App Store and Apple semi-monopoly, start not by criticizing but by asking why it is so successful. Only by answering that question will any challenger including FOSS be able to successfully compete with it.