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Comment by knallfrosch | Hacker News Reader

Apple's guidelines are meant to be broken anyway. Bloomberg's app (Bloomberg Professional) is unusable without an account, which is 100% against iOS guidelines, but who cares?

Other big players, such as Amazon, simply negotiate the Apple tax – instead of paying the 30%.

Naturally, Apple doesn't tell you how often and for whom it breaks its rules.

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> Apple's guidelines are meant to be broken anyway. Bloomberg's app (Bloomberg Professional) is unusable without an account, which is 100% against iOS guidelines

Any app whose purpose is to allow users to access subscription content works this way.

Netflix would be another common example of an app that is used to access subscription content and is not useful without an account.

If your app is free, but a subscription to your content is not, the most common practice is to not allow users to pay the subscription fee through your app at all. If users can't pay through your app, then Apple doesn't get a dime.

Why are apps that require accounts against the guidelines? Don't lots of apps require accounts such as Google Calendar or 1Password?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, I'm genuinely interested.

> Bloomberg's app (Bloomberg Professional) is unusable without an account, which is 100% against iOS guidelines, but who cares? Other big players, such as Amazon, simply negotiate the Apple tax – instead of paying the 30%.

Both of the companies mentioned don't make money from the use of their app -- at least not directly.

Sure, you can do all of your purchasing w/ Amazon through their app, but the website remains available if that is more to your liking. For free apps like Google Calendar, this is also the model.

Bloomberg's app is a front-end to the Bloomberg Professional Service (colloquially, "The Terminal") and to read more than a few articles or access any of the data sources, you need to sign up.

Tl;dr It's not cheap

Free trials can be converted on iOS, but -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- require going to a web browser instead of it all happening inside of IAP, although, that could come along at some point...

(Based on no inside information, that might be the case this fall, check back in a few hours to see if it actually comes to pass)

Apple made the rules for their convenience and benefit. They aren’t breaking them. They are adjusting them to once again be in line with their convenience and benefit.

Blah blah, that's just word play. I am always amazed by the defense that Apple apologists come up.

I wasn’t apologizing for Apple. I actually pretty dislike Apple but that doesn’t change the fact that you can’t break the rules when you make the rules.

>you can’t break the rules when you make the rules.

This is really abusive, no wonder they are getting sued by the DOJ.

Who’s being abused by Bloomberg Professional requiring an account?

GP is surely talking about Apple changing/breaking the rules when they want to, as being unfair.

> Bloomberg's app (Bloomberg Professional) is unusable without an account, which is 100% against iOS guidelines, but who cares?

I usually disagree with Apple's restrictions, but isn't this (rather clearly) under the Enterprise application exception (App Review Guidelines 3.1.3(c), and indirectly 4.8)? This is, clearly, an enterprise product (you can't even register with this version unless you're a company). Do you actually knows the rules or are you just spewing garbage out of your mouth?

Actually, won't third-party mail applications also be in violation of the purported restriction because, by the nature of being a mail application, needs to log in before any use? You should actually point out which rule/s are being broken because despite honest attempts to find the alleged rule being broken... I simply don't see that rule/s.

I've had two little apps published in IOS store that both required accounts (paid account) that had to be created outside their universe.

They let me in, after a few hoops. This was in 2016-2019 (but now they are PWA)

Honestly, I wish they'd enforce the "require no account" rule more strictly. One of the most annoying things about using a mobile app is when they hit you with the "Sign in or GTFO" page on first run, as soon as you install the app.

At the very least, if an application absolutely requires an account to function, this should be prominently displayed, and they should explain in technical details what functionality cannot be possibly achieved without logging in. App Stores should reject apps that gate basic phone functionality (like GPS directions or camera access) behind an online account. These things obviously don't require an account to work, because they work on the default apps without accounts.

> At the very least, if an application absolutely requires an account to function, this should be prominently displayed,

This is the answer IMHO. I love that Google has been moving this direction with the Play Store, and I'd love to see them continue. Labels with "requires account" or something would be immensely helpful, and would be mandatory if I became ruler of the Play Store.

I wish Apple had never abandoned the rule that you need to be able to subscribe in the app at the same listed price as on the web.

I don’t, it’s anticompetitive. Sellers should be able to pass platform fees on to consumers, otherwise there’s no incentive for Apple to decrease those fees, there’s no feedback in the system.

Then if you don’t want to pay the Apple tax you can subscribe directly. This incentivizes Apple to keep the fees low.

Totally disagree. As a customer, I should not have to pay more or less for an application depending on what phone or computer I use to buy it. This would be like charging the customer more when they use an American Express card to buy your product, just because AMEX charges merchants more.

At some point, you have to just admit that as a business you have certain costs that you have to pay to operate. This mentality, that business costs must be borne by customers, is what's leading to all these ridiculous hidden fees and charges at other businesses.

> just because AMEX charges merchants more.

There are many places that do not even accept AmEx specifically because of their fees. Charging more based on card use has always been a thing until the card companies used their cartel like persuasion to not allow that. However, I'm starting to see stores offer different prices for cash/debit than credit. I thought I remembered this being made allowed again, but it's early still.

You as a user feel like you should be able to buy whatever whenever with whatever mode of payment. That's very convenient for you even though you're the one that has decided to use that particular mode of payment even though you know your mode of payment is an absolute pain in the arse for the merchant. Not having you as a customer is a perfectly valid point of view from the merchant.

I'm actually OK with businesses deciding to not take a certain kind of credit card or them going cash only. Fine, go ahead and lose me as a customer. Just don't nickel and dime me because you're too cheap and stubborn to accept the tiny gross margin difference between one card and an another.

Think of it as a discount in the other direction.

Hidden fees remove any consumer-side pressure on credit cards to lower their costs.

It also creates perverse incentives for cards to pass part of the merchant fees back to the consumer as rewards or even cash. Here in the US, 2-3% cash back is typical, driving consumers to prefer credit over other payment methods.

Meanwhile, merchants are forced to bake the fees into the retail price, causing the paradox that those who pay upfront end up spending more for the same goods.

If Amex started charging 30% fees you'd definitely see people charging customers more.

You absolutely will eat the extra charges, the question is will you bear the brunt directly with a behavior targetted at you uniquely or will the company just raise the cost of the product for everyone and have everybody pay more even if they get a fat pay day when they don't end up paying the platform overhead tax.

I agree up to a point. Credit card fees are pretty low, overall, so a business deciding to charge me a few percent more if I pay with AmEx vs Visa feels like they're just being petty. But with the App Store, it's a significant chunk of the purchase price -- a business wanting to pass on a 30% increase in their costs seems reasonable.

It's a ~43 % increase, not 30 %. Apple takes 30 %, so you would have to increase the price by ~43 % to cover it.

> At some point, you have to just admit that as a business you have certain costs that you have to pay to operate.

Alternatively, you could take Apple's example and charge people an arbitrary amount for the privilege of accessing your business and leave the certainty of certain costs for the shmucks.

> This would be like charging the customer more when they use an American Express card to buy your product, just because AMEX charges merchants more.

I 100% believe this should be the case. It's unfair to merchants to take away an arbitrary percentage of their profits depending on which card you want to use.

This would be fine if apple would either waive their tax, or allowed the seller to list for the (base price) + (apple tax).

As it was, sellers would earn 30% less for sales gouged by apple

Interesting that this post got flagged. Y'all are showing your biases. Nothing about this post violated any HN rules.

This has nothing to do with Apple's app store guidelines.

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