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Comment by sandofsky | Hacker News Reader

Halide author here. Previously, you would pay-once at the time of download, so this isn't much different than what we had before.

That said, we wish the App Store offered a better solution than what we had to settle with; we'd much rather people know up-front the business model than download the app, be surprised, and possibly leave a negative review.

As far as replacing the first party camera, it's by far our top user request. Some users have come up with interesting hacks via shortcuts or the back-tap gesture, but we'd much rather the user be able to customize it similar to how iOS now lets you set a different default browser. Hopefully someday!

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Random Halide user here. (I haven't upgraded the app because I'd rather any bugs be ironed out first.)

I think there should be more details on what customers get with either Pay-Once (which all existing purchasers get), and/or the Membership.

If I were a new user, I would think that Pay-Once means that I'm set for life(time of the product) (seeing as how it's equivalent to slightly under 3 years of membership payments), but the comments here sound like there's a basic feature set that new users would have to pay ~$30 for at first, and newer features would be restricted to people who commit additional regular annual payments.

It's very confusing.

I hate apps that you download and the first thing you have to do is to pay.

It is a dark pattern as far as I am concerned. Peple have invest a little more In an when they dowloaded it to their phones so it might possibly get a better conversion rate.

What is even more annoying in this pattern is that you have to fill out all sorts of data and configuration and once yo are done with all that and the app owner has collected all that nice data, you are prompted to pay and no other action is possible.

Further it hides the true cost of the app, unless you go to the app page on the app store scroll al the way down the page and click on the little arrow to see what the in app prices are.

I strongly prefer pricing up front. It is easy to understand, honest, and clear.

So, genuine question-- why did Apple allow Mk II into the App Store if the first screen is a "you must make a purchase", which is exactly what they rejected Hey for? Is there a trial of some sort to satisfy the requirement that your app has to "work" on download (edit: or are Apple IAP paywalls ok and I am just misunderstanding the App Store rules, which is very easy to do...)?

Apple’s issue with Hey was that you couldn’t pay for it via IAP.

The problem with Hey is that they were directing you to their website, circumventing apple's payment mechanisms. If you're using their stuff and giving them their cut you're gucci.

This article (https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/16/21293419/hey-apple-reject...) suggests that Hey was rejected because it didn't use Apple's in-app purchases?

Which could make sense, but Phil Schiller actually directly said

> “You download the app and it doesn’t work, that’s not what we want on the store,”

https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/18/interview-apples-schiller-...

Now, he does follow with (quoting the TechCrunch article):

> This, he says, is why Apple requires in-app purchases to offer the same purchasing functionality as they would have elsewhere.

So, even though I, as a user, may consider the app to "not work" if it just asks me for a purchase immediately, Apple appears to consider an IAP prompt to be ok.

Anyways, I am an Halide v1 user so I have access to Mk II and love the app, but I'm just curious about how Apple makes these decisions.

He was certainly being disingenuous about that. Whether or not an app requires a payment to do anything is entirely orthogonal to its method of accepting the payment. Hey was rejected because they didn't use in-app purchases, no question about it.

IAP increases their valuation because it is categorized as recurrent revenue? Is this some kind of accounting hack? Or is it just that they get a bigger percentage of IAP?

Scummy at any rate, Apple.

Great to see you're here.

Just so you know, I tried to open the app for 3 minutes or so before realizing I'm getting nowhere without paying. At that point I was so pissed off I uninstalled the app thinking to myself: scam attempt.

Make it clear you have to pay to even launch your app. I don't believe this dark pattern is the way forward. It's just dirty.

> That said, we wish the App Store offered a better solution than what we had to settle with; we'd much rather people know up-front the business model than download the app, be surprised, and possibly leave a negative review.

GP here. I was indeed surprised after downloading the app because the business model was not known (I didn't leave any reviews though). I haven't purchased the previous version and have no experience with the app.

My issue is not about your business model in that comment, but with the App Store description not saying that the application is usable only by an in-app purchase. I wouldn't even have downloaded it if that were clear. You should update the description to make it clear that the app is completely useless without buying an in-app purchase.

What's the backstory here? (why did you have to settle on free-with-immediate-IAP?)

I’m guessing because they want to offer both a pay upfront option _and_ a subscription option. There’s no way to do this on iOS.

I agree with other posters - the issue isn't that Apple doesn't better support your business model, it's that you aren't honest about it in the app description.

Also, even in the app you don't have a clear statement saying that you must purchase a subscription to use it. I spent 5 minutes thinking I was missing an "X" in the top corner or some kind of "dismiss" action that would let me use basic functionality before buying.

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