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Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

“No in app purchases”

I absolutely love this! The App Store has become a wasteland of subscriptions and in-app purchases.

I just tried to use a tape measure app. They wanted me to sign up for a $14.99 a week subscription! How did it get this bad?!

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I use Apple Arcade and have no in-apps for games (on arcade of course). I guess this is the netflix equivalent of Arcade.

> Available exclusively for Netflix members.

I accidentally clicked buy premium inside a guitar tuner app the other day, so I quickly pressed the home button. As I pressed it the fingerprint reader started for processing the payment, and bam, I had a $15 monthly subscription to a guitar tuner app.

Luckily the first month was free so I could simply cancel my subscription, but I still don't understand how Apple allows such expensive subscriptions for such silly things. You can buy a real life guitar tuner for less than $15

I've held a grudge against the Android app "DaTuner" for literal years now, because at one point I paid what was then a one-time fee to remove ads from the app. I used it for years as a very handy and useful tuner. And then, they added a subscription.

YOU ALREADY GOT MY MONEY!

Since then, I have just used the built in tuner in the Ultimate Guitar app - which is inferior, but I'm not paying a subscription for a single-purpose app like a guitar tuner.

This happened like 8 years ago and I'm still annoyed by it.

It always was this bad. Google has no interest in a 'Show only apps without Ads and IAP' filterbutton on the Appstore. It would be implemented in a heartbeat and greatly improve the UX, but hurt sales. But hey, on Android you should know that you are the product (grass in iOS Land is not much greener though)

They do, but it is well hidden.

You need to have Play Games installed. On the home page, scroll all the way down until "Dive deeper" section (or do a search), then you have choice between:

- Trending/New

- Premium/Free install

- Ads/No ads

- In-app purchases/No in-app purchases

and other categories

On Android you can side load whatever you want at any time including exclusively FOSS if you want, so no, you're not necessarily the product there. On Google's store specifically, sure

The problem is that you can't easily find nice apps that you even want to install. E.g. if you want to install a Sudoku game, good luck finding one that isn't filled with ads and popups. But the sad thing is that there are some, you just can't find them!

Simon Tatham's Puzzles include Sudoku.

You have to load a custom ROM if you don't want to be tracked without your consent. You have a crumb more freedom on Android, that's all.

You can simply not sign into a Google account, and Android lets you turn off more tracking than iOS, which won't even let you get your location without telling Apple. No need to install a custom ROM.

And then you won’t have maps, Gmail, …

On iOS you can have the above without giving them your location 24/7

If you want to use an inferior Gmail client similar to the iOS Mail app, you can simply access Gmail using a third party mail client on Android exactly the same way.

The difference is you don't have to give your location to anybody on Android, while Apple makes you give them your location. You don't have to tell anybody that you installed an app on Android, while Apple knows every app you've installed and when you used each one.

FYI, Google maps works without you needing to sign in (iirc it doesn't even need Play services, so it works with de-googled custom ROMs). Though this is an exception rather than the norm.

True, but the topic was Appstore user experience. If you know what App you want it becomes hundred times easier.

$14.99 a week? I can't tell if you are serious or joking. If you are serious can you send which app that is? I'd love a good laugh.

I'd rather pay a single fee once than be subjected to the barrage of ads that normally occur instead.

I just can't stand in app ads, to the point that if I can't pay for them to go away I have to remove the app.

Worse than ads in games, are those special menus and special points system and try to seduce you into buying in-game items. At least with an ad I just know "Oh now I simply have to wait for 10 seconds"...

This is why I've subscribed to Pay Pass. The games available don't have microtransactions and are usually more than plain android cash makers.

"Pay Pass" is actually a great descriptive name, but I assume you're talking about "Play Pass"[0].

[0] https://play.google.com/about/play-pass/

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