You absolutely can tell the customer via your website or any other means you use to communicate with them.
Do you expect Amazon marketplace sellers to be able to link to their items being on ebay or shopify from the actual Amazon website?
From the Amazon website? No. From the products they're selling? Yes, absolutely, and lots of them do, I get one of those business cards with "Find us on Amazon/Ebay/Shopify/whatever" in the box with almost every purchase.
Same with apps. I obviously don't expect them to link to items from other stores from their App Store description pages. But from their application? Yes, I totally expect that.
That's how marketplaces everywhere work, including IRL. Go to any farmer's market and most sellers will give you a business card with their website or phone number so you can also order from them directly, or from their Amazon/Shopify/whatever page.
Edit: not to mention that this is 2025, the distinction between "within the app" and "via your website" is pretty meaningless in a bunch of cases.
Why not?
A major detail you are ignoring here is Apple are the merchant of sale for everything via the App Store (Google at least were not for the Play Store at launch, I do not know if this has changed) so your comparisons do not make sense. The native app universe on iOS is closest to being an Apple run Costco.
I would be very surprised if a fulfilled by Amazon order for a third party seller contained any extra promo materials in the box for similar reasons.
> not to mention that this is 2025, the distinction between "within the app" and "via your website" is pretty meaningless in a bunch of cases.
To you. Not to your end users, and most definitely not to the platform owners.
This one's no better, either, as Costco's terms for its wholesale suppliers aren't anywhere close to Apple's, even though the agreement is structured more or less similarly -- but sure, let's entertain it: Costco's terms for its suppliers aren't public, but at least the ones that are on public record (via the SEC: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1940372/000149315222... ) make no restrictions on the choice of payment processors for digital products, which is what Apple got fined for.
There is a restriction on promotional material enclosed with the product (as in it needs prior written approval from Costco, not as in it's completely banned) and an explicit mention that it applies to digital products as well. But there is no requirement that digital products sold by Costco as merchant of sale for the supplier enable purchases only via Costco.
You can buy any number of in game items on iOS and then go and use those same items in the Play Store version of the games, and vice versa.
But even if it did, Apple's ToS clearly distinguish between the App Store and the licensed application, and between interactions in the App Store and interactions from within the application. You may not want to make the same distinction in order to be right about some imaginary system that you're thinking about, but this is about the actual App Store, not whatever iMcCostco-Amazon marketplace you've dreamed up.
As I pointed out:
> You can buy any number of in game items on iOS and then go and use those same items in the Play Store version of the games, and vice versa.
To be precise you can:
1. Install a game on an iPhone
2. Sign into the game with account for that developer, or even using Facebook
3. Buy in game currency in the game, using the Apple payment processing
4. Install the game on an Android phone
5. Sign into the game with that same account
6. Use the in game currency you bought on the iPhone when playing on the Android phone
7. Buy more in game currency in the Play Store using the Google payment processing
8. Go back to the iPhone and see you have the in game currency there
What is your mental model of how all that works and why?
What you've pointed out has no bearing whatsoever on what's being discussed here. This isn't about some stretched out definition of "payment system" that applies to those services that happen to have both iOS and Android client applications. It's strictly about what works in applications available on Apple's App Store. For many of them your point 4 doesn't even apply because they don't have an Android variant in the first place.
Let me know when you'd like to go back to discussing the actual issue from the linked article. Bye!
Arguably their entire position with Meta is even more unreasonable than your positions here. No wonder the EU struggles in business.
In a confused daze he goes to a store, buys a bottle of Coca Cola, and heads to a nearby McDonalds where he opens it and drinks it, wondering why all these suckers in McDonalds do not think to buy their soda elsewhere. If only Coca Cola could label the soda in McDonalds to let people know of their options! As the staff approach him to ask him to leave he wonders why the world does so consistently fail to match his preconceptions, and if only that evil Apple had not insisted on using their payments system then he would have been able to scam thousands of those foolish American idiots and go to live on Cyprus far away from such concerns as a metaphorical demon in the form of "Costco".
Thrown out on to the street he resorts to the tried and tested European strategy of claiming victimhood "Why are you persecuting me? It is the same soda! Why can I not drink it here?" but it is to no avail. Clearly the world, immune to reason, has not finished with his punishment, but OP has; he's done.
Touch some grass, mate, Apple isn't worth your energy. No company their size is, whether on this side of the Atlantic or the other.