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I understand your view, but the hilarious (or sad?) thing here is we are applauding a multi-trillion dollar company for the most basic functionality. This is like saying “this restaurant sucks, but hey, I am glad that I got at least something to eat!”

The bar has been set so low, that allowing customers to cancel easily is worthy of praise! This is a shitty situation for ordinary people to be in.

Another thing to think about - if Apple were a bit more nicer to developers, they can have the developer loyalty for ever and ever. But they are so big and their competition is so bad that they don’t think developers have a choice. Short term profits is apparently more important than long term goodwill. Of course, they aren’t alone in this.

The saddest part is - after all their shenanigans, they are still better than other companies:(

The issue is the policy makers / department of justices entire focus seems to be on fighting so that companies can make more money and/or scam users by getting outside of app store polices.

Why this level of DOJ involvement against apple (with very little CONSUMER harm) when your grandma is LITERALLY getting scammed by fake tech support etc and they do jake crap over any of that.

Millions of consumers get screwed over, in big ways and small, day in and day out. Crickets.

Apple creates a small ecosystem that is completely optional for consumers to use that does a few things right (little tracking, fights all these companies on everything from tracking to trial periods to cancellations and more). And now that is a crime. The App store is the LEAST of my consumer protection worries.

Most of the "alliance" of folks fighting apple run scammy business. Loot boxes for kids (Epic/Fornighte type folks) / Zynga / Facebook data exploiters / Match.com fake profile type players / NY Times impossible to cancel people.

Yes, all the players you mentioned suck, and they suck more than Apple probably. But that doesn’t mean we should not call out Apple’s bad behavior.

Also - Apple has infinite resources. They can be nice to everyone if they want. They choose to be arrogant, just because they can.

None of the companies you listed have a cult following, Apple does. Nobody gives Facebook or Zynga a tenth of the respect they give Apple (I think it is justified, those companies suck real bad).

Is it unfair to expect Apple to behave better than others? In my opinion, no. Others might disagree.

Here's the thing though.

What (businesses) say is "sucky" behavior I like.

CVS blocked apple pay forever. So did Walmart. They said Apple sucks for wanting control (and providing privacy etc). They launched their competitor CurrentC I think which was of course totally hacked:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/29/retailer-backed-apple-pay-...

The reality is that a lot of these startups have almost NO controls over user data relative to inside actor threats. So I'd much rather sign up and have all my details / home address etc on apple's servers. Is this walmart alliance designed with privacy in mind or to exploit my data? I'm serious?

Ny Times is a good example. My subscription let me use their app, but I couldn't cancel it inside the app. Instead its the phone call BS (maybe they've stopped that).

So as a user, I actually kind of want apple to have a ton of market power, because the folks like DOJ / SEC etc are toothless in these areas. The only thing these agencies seem good at is stupid cookie banners (which are pointless).

Apple pay is great!

Apple pay has a tiny fee.

Maybe they should let apps use Apple pay?

Apple doesn't have infinite resources.

> Is it unfair to expect Apple to behave better than others? In my opinion, no. Others might disagree.

Culturally, expect what every you want to expect. But legally, they should all have the same requirements.

The Apple ecosystem isn't "optional for consumers to use"; if you want iOS then you absolutely have to participate in the ecosystem. Same reason why the "buy an Android if you want to sideload" argument doesn't work for me: the platforms aren't interchangeable.

A lot of what you're describing here are things that absolutely should be illegal, and a properly-funded government should be investigating and prosecuting. What Apple has done is turn iOS into their own sovereign territory, written their own laws, and levied their own taxes. In other words, they are a digital warlord. If we are going to ban loot boxes or data exploitation, we should be passing actual laws in actual Congresses and Parliaments to ban loot boxes or data exploitation.

Yes, the consumer harm might be minimal, but the consumer is not the end-all, be-all of the economy[0]. Apple bossing developers around creates compliance costs and higher barriers to entry for smaller businesses. This is inherent to monopolies of any kind, pro-consumer or otherwise. Yes, I can absolutely point to scams that Apple has judiciously removed from the App Store; but for every one of those I can also find stories where Apple just absolutely dicked around with a smaller developer and held up their app for no reason. In contrast, large companies like Zynga, Facebook, or Match Group have dedicated staff for making the Apple warlords happy, and know exactly what they can get away with. This isn't an open and vibrant marketplace; it's a group of warlords negotiating who owns what.

[0] More generally, the "consumer welfare" standard that modern antitrust enforcement has adopted is effectively a tacit agreement to not prosecute antitrust violations.

+1 re: “”What Apple has done is turn iOS into their own sovereign territory, written their own laws, and levied their own taxes.””: a few of my friends think I am off the rails on this one, but I think a plausible future is similar to the cyber punk world of William Gibson novels that describe a future maintained and ruled by corporate interests that provide corporate enclaves for people to work and live - sort of replacing countries.

> What Apple has done is turn iOS into their own sovereign territory, written their own laws, and levied their own taxes.

Ah. You mean they did exactly what is expected of a business? And exactly what all businesses have been doing since the dawn of time?

DoJ goes after smaller fish too, but you don't hear much about that.

> I understand your view, but the hilarious (or sad?) thing here is we are applauding a multi-trillion dollar company for the most basic functionality. This is like saying “this restaurant sucks, but hey, I am glad that I got at least something to eat!”

It's not so much as applauding Apple for providing basic features to their users, but as saying that unlike a lot of other companies, they do provide those features. If things were _okay_ elsewhere, we wouldn't need Apple's ecosystem and they couldn't make billions with it.

Yes, they take as much advantage as possible of their position, but if they're where they are, its partly because nobody is providing what they do.

>So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack.

Sorry, but its easy to say that if they're not grabbing 30% of sales from YOUR small business. If you think this fight is about Facebook or Match or NY, you're missing the whole point. Those big guys can take care of themselves just fine.

> its easy to say that if they're not grabbing 30% of sales from YOUR small business.

They're not grabbing 30% of the sales from ANY small business. They lowered their fees to 15% for the first million dollars (I think both per year and per app).

It's actually worse than that. The vast majority of IAP revenue comes from the bigger mobile game publishers.

Not only do Apple take 30% of this, they screwed over all those developers by removing their (ad platforms mostly) ability to track users, thus breaking the developers monetisation model.

I honestly find it hard to believe that they didn't realise that this was going to hit them hard with IAP revenue, but then I've always been surprised at the lack of joined up thinking in large companies.

Apple's motto is screwing over developers in the name of customer satisfaction and decency. Usually they're in the right, including in this situation.

Yeah, but this one actually hits their revenues. It's disguised for now because their ad platform is way up, but over the longer term this will absolutely crater their app store revenue.

Therefore, I suspect that this will be substantially weakened/rolled back over the next few years (this process has already started, btw).

There are plenty of small businesses that have $1 million in yearly revenue or more. A single restaurant can easily make that or more a year.

If you go with SBA definitions, they use a $1 million to about $40 million range for revenue, and a maximum of 100 to 1,500 employees depending on the industry[1].

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/01/what-is-a-sma...

I mean, I would imagine a single restaurant would have to make more revenue in a single year to no longer be a small business - their costs of goods are far higher.

Meanwhile, when someone says "small businesses" cannot afford something, and that small business is a 1,500 person software company with $40 million in revenue, I think more "that is no longer a small business" than "poor small business". And if it turns out I'm technically wrong about a legal definition of small business, that's not going to change how concerned I am about that 1,500 person company - it's going to make me specify my concern is around supersmall businesses or whatever. That is, me being wrong about terminology is primarily going to make me change the terms I use.

They did not do this out of generosity or good will to small businesses. They did this for the PR, knowing that they're still rolling in the cash like Scrooge McDuck from all the years they've been milking it, and will continue to milk it, whilst looking like they're giving a handout. And it honestly looked like it worked from the comments of people defending their stance.

> They did not do this out of generosity or good will to small businesses. They did this for the PR

I doubt they did it for generosity or for PR. I do think there was some amount of goodwill. I think it's Apple's way of ensuring that more apps get made. That is, they are "subsidizing(ish)" the creation of many small apps they make almost no money off of anyway in the hopes more small apps will be created which might contain a breakout success. If lowering the revenue on all small apps leads someone to try to make an app and fall into viral like Candy Crush, well Apple is probably going to make more on that one app than they "lost" on all the small apps they charged 15% on combined.

> I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing).

I had that issue several years ago with Sonic (the broadband provider).

However, if you're in California, it should be possible to cancel a subscription by the same means that one subscribed to the service in the first place. For example, if one signed up online for a newspaper, they should be able to cancel online as well. This has been in place since July of 2018 I believe.

New restrictions coming into effect in July 2022 require having a link or button to cancel a subscription as part of a customer's profile page, as well as notifying customers of an impending renewal for trials that have an extended free trial period.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for NYT to receive a big fine.

Don't get me wrong, I hate all that, but it's not worth a 30% tax on every recurring purchase to me. As Apple admits in the linked emails, this is a cost passed on to the customers.

The idea that these companies can't make 30% more per user on the app store is what is insane to me. On the app store customers have trust. My app store spend is many multiples of what I would spend otherwise.

For most business if you said, hey, I'll take 30% for marketing but get you 100% more revenue they would do that right away. Are Apple app store customers really that cheap relative to android? Androids marketshare is FAR FAR bigger, but apple has just sorted out the give us money safely story.

My own glance is that iOS users spend easily 4x as much as google play users AND are much less likely to steal apps. If that's not worth it to devs apple should be able to unlock and really give users freedom (including to download from anywhere online and install). I wonder if android has a bigger app piracy problem then iOS (which devs apparently don't care about).

> Androids marketshare is FAR FAR bigger

Not in the US. Apple has 60% of the mobile market compared to Google's 40%[1], and Apple's App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store.

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...

> I had to fight NY Times like crazy (it was sign up online, call to cancel kind of thing).

This is same with The Times. I would not expect such scammy practice from these companies.

I used to pay 7.50 then 8 bucks for the Times. But each year I had to call and threaten to cancel. One year they charged me 15-16 and I was pissed off and their phone guy not very helpful so instead of the retention route I just told him cancel no deal. Nothing.

Next day or week after expiry they offered me 4 bucks. I was happily paying 8 but they made me figure 4 was possible so now that's my bar.

You're missing the period of time. Per month?

> So until these folks clean things up where they ALREADY have full control (on the web) I'm willing to cut apple a ton of slack.

I spent years working at a place where apple wouldn't allow us to even link to a website to manage your account if the signup wasn't sourced by apple, so I feel like any marketing they have around being customer focused is really just window dressing.

This is a "class gets punished because of a few bad students" kinda thing. Without this rule everyone would and did just play the game of using their iOS app to drive people to their website to sign up to avoid paying Apple.

Apple, who charges for exposure and access to their users, I think is reasonably annoyed that people are trying to get that for free.

So let the apps opt out of "exposure", which tends to be very minimal. And "access" doesn't belong to them, they owe their users access to apps.

You can opt-out though. Just don't sell digital goods on your app and don't use your app as a funnel to direct people to your website where you sell them. Audible takes this approach and it seems to work fine enough for them. Boom! Apple will take 0% of your revenue.

That's a useful workaround when Apple allows it, which they haven't done consistently.

But that's not at all what I meant by opting out. I meant "If this is the price for 'exposure', just stop giving me 'exposure' and let me sell digital goods in my app."

Also it's not just 'digital goods', it applies to services too. You can currently manage a netflix subscription in the app, I think, but it's been unavailable a lot and netflix seems to have a special exception that doesn't apply to video services in general.

Audible and Netflix have exceptions given they are “reader” apps. For something like Roblox, they must have in app payments if they accept payment via the web, so the publisher would have to opt out of the platform completely to avoid the 30% surcharge for one of these types of apps.

No one is trying to get it for free. They are trying to get it for [significantly] less than 30%.

If it's so great to use Apple Pay (one click, easy to revoke payment -- sounds great!), why would a customer not use it over browsing to a random page, entering CC details, and worrying if it will be hard to cancel?

I'd guess the convenience is not worth 10%, much less 30%, to most users.

> No one is trying to get it for free. They are trying to get it for [significantly] less than 30%.

And Apple charges 30% for sales of digital goods on their platform. You're trying to get what Apple is selling without paying for it. Don't sell on their platform them -- do what Amazon does with Audible or what Netflix does.

> If it's so great to use Apple Pay (one click, easy to revoke payment -- sounds great!)

Because that isn't what Apple is charging for, users don't pay this fee -- publishers do. They're charging publishers for the privilege to sell to Apple customers. I'm sure users like the convenience, I do, but the fee isn't for me. You're absolutely right that it's not worth 30% to me. But it's absolutely worth 30% to you when the alternative is not being able to sell on iOS and Apple knows it.

It's nuts that in threads like this that people begrudgingly pay Apple's 30% fee while in the same breath saying that they're overcharging. Well clearly not since you're paying it. If they were actually overcharging then you wouldn't be complaining because you just wouldn't have an iOS app.

> Because that isn't what Apple is charging for, users don't pay this fee -- publishers do. They're charging publishers for the privilege to sell to Apple customers. I'm sure users like the convenience, I do, but the fee isn't for me.

Do you seriously believe you're not, in the end, paying that?

I find it hard to believe that you do. Seems far more likey you're gaslighting for your idol, as Apple fanbois so often do.

> They are trying to get it for [significantly] less than 30%.

So what is the right fee for access to iOS users, and in turn, paying for iOS development itself? This isn't just a transactional payment system, it's an end-to-end payment platform designed to take high-value customers and turn them into sales with minimal friction. iOS is that system, not just IAP.

No one who has an app on the App Store is getting free publicity. There's a $99 fee per year per developer. For that much money, if someone uses their app to drive people to their websites, so what? Don't you think it's hypocritical of Apple to use iTunes as a gateway to Apple Music and iCloud without paying Microsoft a cut?

It's one thing to say Apple has the right to do what it wants with its own platform, but it's another thing entirely to set up a straw man in order to justify those rights.

Exposure in this context means “the right to set up your stall in Apple’s market and sell to their customers.” It might have been more precise to say “reach” but at the end it’s semantics.

You not paying for “publicity” in a marketing sense you’re paying for high-value shelf space in a store that brings in a lot of customers — iOS devices.

If MS wants to charge publishers 30% for all sales done on Windows then power to them.

Do virtualized credit card numbers address this problem? I have a free browser extension from my credit card company that generates virtual account numbers and when I pay for a service I create a new number for it. If it’s difficult to cancel the service I just delete the number instead.

It doesn't. That's for fraud protection, not just-on-the-right-side-of-the-law subscription sketchiness.

Legally it doesn't, but for practical purposes most recurring subscriptions probably won't pursue you over a declined payment and will just suspend your account. I don't advocate this, but I've heard that it works.

This shouldn't be on-the-right-side-of-the-law. You should be able to have your credit card send a "cancel" signal and that should be it. Further charges are theft.

In part.

Apple allows you to block the company from doing tracking of you and connecting that to other info. These things are hard to block technically sometimes.

I had a company threaten collections action over an unpaid subscription because they continued to provide the service (that I didn't want) and I hadn't paid. It doesn't matter that I had an email saying please cancel. You have to dial XXX.

On the business side we are seeing more deals where you have to provide written notice 60 days BEFORE the end of the 5 year term but not more than 90 days (check your copier lease agreements). All these are essentially tricks to force renewals in my view (and are totally allowed).

Absolutely not. That's the equivalent of just ignoring an invoice.

It addresses the problem in the same way that shoplifting addresses the problem of not having enough money for what you want. Technically, you're in the wrong. You're failing to pay a bill you signed up to pay. And no one will go after you for $4 (unless they really want to lose money, I guess.) But if you try the same thing on tens of thousands of dollars of subscriptions (say, as a business you make a decision to do that) you'll probably get sued.

Even with virtual credit cards, companies can still charge you and anything unpaid can just go to collections.

And yet subscription scams abound on the App Store. Apple makes it INSANELY easy to start subscribing to a $7.99 per week subscription that there is a load of scummy apps that try to trick you into starting one and people would be a lot more cautious if they had to manually enter their billing info.

I think there's a better middle ground somewhere.