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As long as this does not cause an exodus from the App Store and I am forced to start paying for apps directly, I am fine with this. But a strong benefit to the

• notyourwork 5y ago
  Where is Apples incentive to leave it centralized if they cannot siphon as much money from the pipe?
  • nerdjon 5y ago
    I mean I would argue that the very reason I have subscribed to several of the apps I have is because I was able to do it through the App Store and I knew I could easily cancel. Had that not been the case I would have never subscribed which gives the developers and apple that money. Basically apple is getting more money from me because I took more of a risk on something.
  • andrewjl 5y ago
    Highly profitable hardware sales? There are also many others.
    • notyourwork 5y ago
      I buy my iPhone for the hardware, not the app store.
• javajosh 5y ago
  You are in luck! Another way to manage subscriptions client side is to use PayPal. In the same way you have control over all your subscriptions in one place, and can cancel without the interference of the counterparty - a great benefit indeed. And paypal can work with anything, any entity that has a PayPal account. PP is, of course, not without its own horror stories, however a lot of that is around p2p selling-gone-wrong. I have not experienced or even heard of problems around subscriptions, so I think this is a sweet spot.
  • nerdjon 5y ago
    Your assuming everyone will use PayPal for subscriptions. When with this there are no rules forcing them to do anything since they can just ship outside the store. This doesn't address my issue (also I don't want another one I want to keep everything in a single place in settings on my phone). Considering I have never used PayPal for any of my subscriptions on the web I don't see this catching on for mobile either. If a company wants to put me through hoops to make unsubscribing hard, there is zero chance they will opt to use something that makes it easy if they have the choice.
    • javajosh 5y ago
      I'm letting you know of an alternative that has worked well for me. If you want to respond to that assistance with silly assertions and general whingeing, well, that's your choice. But you are not coming off as very...impressive, shall I say.
  • ralston3 5y ago
    How I read this: You're in luck! Another way to [solve problem] is to [introduce another problem]. XD
    • fomine3 5y ago
      xkcd standards!
  • dodobirdlord 5y ago
    This doesn’t actually help, because ending payment for a subscription doesn’t absolve you of legal responsibility, and you might at some point end up getting sent to collections over something stupid. Importantly, Apple can force companies as part of their terms of service to recognize an App Store subscription cancellation as an actual cancellation of obligation to pay.
    • javajosh 5y ago
      I suppose that's possible, but it would at least put the onus on them to begin legal proceedings. I would also argue that they'd be putting their PP relationship at risk by taking such an anti-consumer attitude. Certainly this is something I want to look out for, but so far (knock on wood) it hasn't bitten me.
• dskloet 5y ago
  Just curious, would you pay 40% more for the convenience of being able to cancel in one place?
  • nerdjon 5y ago
    As it stands all of the apps I have subscribed too are only available to subscribe too this way. So I assume given the price that the extra 30 (or 15) is calculated into the price. So my answer would be yes, if they said I could lower it by going through their website I would continue to do it through the app. If they removed the option completely I would stop using it and find an alternative. I will not support shady business practices and hurdles to unsubscribe is one of the worst in my opinion.
    • nerdjon 5y ago
      I just decided to do some quick number crunching to see how much this actually would impact me. Not including Apple One, I spend $432 a year on subscriptions on the App Store. All of those are not available via any other means. So if I saved 30% I would be paying $302 a year... Yeah I would happily continue paying $432 to be able to easily drop something if they start a behavior I don't like and feel like I am in control of my own money.
      • dskloet 5y ago
        Thanks for your answer. I agree making it difficult to unsubscribe is bad, but I honestly cannot imagine myself paying extra recurringly for saving myself 10 minutes once at the end. So it's interesting to see people making different trade-offs.
        • nerdjon 5y ago
          TBH for me it is the principle than the time savings. If I have to call and cancel, that is basically a guarantee I will never use you again and will warn everyone to not use you. If I have to jump through a bunch of screens, I will be mildly upset but will probably forget about it. I just don't want to support that behavior, so these companies basically being forced to do so on "my" (really apple's but I am making a choice to use them) terms is worth some financial cost to me. If I had thousands of subscriptions, maybe I would be saying something different. But the yearly additional cost in this theoretical situation is minimal and to me it sends a signal. If I actually was given that choice then the company can see those metrics and hopefully see why.
• slaymaker1907 5y ago
  While it doesn't offer easy cancellation, Truebill is really nice for keeping track of subscriptions. That's always been the hardest part for me as someone with ADHD who has multiple bank accounts. The only account it doesn't work with is my Apple Card because it is still in the stone age of connectivity.
  • nerdjon 5y ago
    Relevant to this post: I pay for Copilot on my iPhone to keep track of finances.
• clusterfish 5y ago
  Pretty much all Apple has to do to keep apps in App Store in the face of competition is drop their fees to less than 10% for all apps and drop bullshit like "you can't even link to your website if it lets users pay from there", and almost everyone except the most brazen will stay on App Store. We'll see what actually happens but I personally I doubt that Apple values user experience more than it values gouging developers for profit. The Apple that would, is long gone.
  • Nbox9 5y ago
    > all Apple has to do is give a >60% discount to their current prices.
    • jshen 5y ago
      Yes, because it’s an exploitative tax that only exists because of their monopoly on the App Store that houses nearly everyone with disposable income.
    • Arcsech 5y ago
      If being forced to compete fairly requires them to drop their prices by 60%, I think that’s a pretty good argument that they’re not competing fairly at the moment.
      • LexGray 5y ago
        When you are competing against stores that require you to use their ad-tech framework to make up the difference it is a different equation. The idea of billions of devices out there with constantly running background ad-tech frameworks horrifying to me. It would make the AirTags stalking seem like a joke if every phone secretly tracked every Bluetooth. Right now Apple is in the stream to say no to that. The argument seems to be Apple should just lock down things even further to prevent it from happening…
        • Mindwipe 5y ago
          Apple literally has an ad tech network that it would literally force on all apps in the store if it didn't know it would get an anti-trust slapdown.
• mdoms 5y ago
  > But a strong benefit to the App Store for me is being able to manage and cancel my subscriptions from a central place. No going through 5 screens, no being forced to call, no any of that crap. If it's as strong a benefit as you believe then developers will keep offering it.
  • no_wizard 5y ago
    its a strong benefit for the end user. There is prior to this little to no incentive for companies to do this, and arguably most don't want friction-less cancellation, or they would have built it from day one in the first place. I don't bet on this sticking around if it can at all be broken.
    • Kbelicius 5y ago
      > There is prior to this little to no incentive for companies to do this There are huge incentives to do this in California and EU. They have the legislation that says that if one can subscribe to a service with one click of a button then one must be able to unsubscribe with one click of a button.
• Zak 5y ago
  Android offers sideloading and third-party app stores (with minor limitations), yet the vast majority of users do not sideload Android apps. I remember reading it's about 1 in 200 who does, which I found surprisingly small. Commercial apps that aren't in Google's store usually want to do something against Google's rules - sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not. I don't think you'll find many apps jumping ship entirely. They might offer lower prices elsewhere.
  • donmcronald 5y ago
    I bet part of the reason for that is because of how it's presented. Google puts up several warnings that you have to click through and they're all along the lines of "this will ruin you phone!" IMO having sideloading isn't anything more than a well thought out, long term plan to deflect accusations of anti-competitive behavior. In reality they do everything they can to discourage users from sideloading. The biggest issue for me personally is that it's not clear how, or if, sideloaded apps are sandboxed and how they're granted permissions. The warnings seem intentionally designed to play on those fears. If they're sandboxed the same as other apps and have fine grained permission controls I'd do a lot more sideloading.
    • idle_zealot 5y ago
      > If they're sandboxed the same as other apps and have fine grained permission controls I'd do a lot more sideloading. They are subject to the same permission request/granting system as apps installed through a store. That system is OS-level and applies to all non-system apps.
      • hparadiz 5y ago
        This is actually exactly the same as how MacOS does it except for, ironically, terminal based tools (like homebrew).
        • idle_zealot 5y ago
          > except for, ironically, terminal based tools Are you sure? I've had to go into Accessibility Settings and grant command line tools permissions there.
• toast0 5y ago
  Having worked on an app that took payments (although I only ever personally did work adjacent to the payments), customers from the Apple App Store seemed to be more likely to have the ability to make payments; they were likely to have a working payment method on file with Apple. We were a low priced subscription though, 30% seems like a lot, but straight credit card, card not present processing isn't much better when you add the fixed fee to the discount rate. It's better if you can get a micropayments rate, but we couldn't. Lower friction often means more payments, so we would certainly not leave platform app stores to get more control of payment (although, the direct downloaded apps might include more payment methods)