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> As we have previously said, we disagree with the ACM’s original order and are appealing it. "As we have previously said, we don't want to give our users any

> As we have previously said, we disagree with the ACM’s original order and are appealing it. "As we have previously said, we don't want to give our users any freedom of choice and we won't give away a single penny from our monopoly"

n8cpdx 5y ago
Have you ever actually met or heard of a user (outside of software engineers on hacker news) that cares about this? I’d think the last 20+ years of the evolution of the internet would be clear enough evidence that: a) users don’t want choice about these kinds of things. b) even when users do get these kinds of choices, they either can’t be trusted to choose in their best interest (e.g. millions of people chose to install malware in the past 20 years) OR c) bad actors will learn to trick users into making the choices they want (e.g. Amazon changing button colors to trick people into doing things they don’t want to do) IMO trying to frame this as about “user choice” is disingenuous. There are benefits to not allowing choice in some case - I don’t know if you’ve ever had to call a company to cancel a subscription you’ve signed up for online, but that doesn’t happen to iOS IAP users.
- striking 5y ago
  When have users been allowed to choose, in the "last 20+ years of the evolution of the internet"? I think if you allowed users to choose between xx% markup and being able to cancel subscriptions from a centralized place, there would be takers of both approaches.
  - mrmanner 5y ago
    > I think if you allowed users to choose between xx% markup and being able to cancel subscriptions from a centralized place, there would be takers of both approaches. Many people choose Android phones, which kind of proves your point :)
  - viro 5y ago
    Every piece of dark pattern research kinda disagrees with you.
- silvestrov 5y ago
  Users do care: Apple does not support the by far most popular payment card that people use (like 99% of cc payments). We only use Mastercard/VISA for travel, not for domestic payments.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    The way you’re phrasing that makes me think that you think that all Apple users are American. Was that your intention?
    - silvestrov 5y ago
      No, I lost 2 words when rewriting the sentence. What I intended: Users in Denmark do care: Apple does not support the by far most popular payment card that people use (like 99% of cc payments).
- tedivm 5y ago
  The fact that it's hidden and that Apple causes problems for companies that expose how big the fee is makes it extremely consumer unfriendly. Do most users care or regularly discuss it? Probably not. Would they be happier paying 30% less for their apps though? Quite likely. Apple is also explicitly reviewing the payment providers involved in this. There's no reason to choose between "only apple" or "users will install malware". There is a huge middle ground here.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Europe used regulation to cram down interchange fees [1]. The US could (and should) do the same, again, with regulation. Users shouldn't have to care (just as they shouldn't have to understand the intricacies of core financial infra in their country), and Big Tech shouldn't be able to use monopoly power to take such a large cut. And lets not mince words: Apple in this case (and Google in theirs with their mobile ecosystem) is acting as a payment processor, and that function should be regulated as such. If that margin, once regulated down, is insufficient to operate an app store (hah), charge a flat fee per app to be listed and made available to customers. Shopify costs $30-300/month (depending on plan), which sounds like reasonable cost segmentation to adopt for providing a mobile storefront/app in their app store. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_4585 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_... (I'm aware this post is Netherlands specific; I'm speaking in broad strokes)
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      > is insufficient to operate an app store (hah), charge a flat fee per app to be listed and made available to customers No one - no one - wants that. Free apps suddenly won't be free when they have to pay to be on the App Store. Its so easy to create an app and share it, and that is a good thing. The end result of apps costing money (even though free apps have nearly a 0 marginal cost to distribute) is that you'll end up with less apps and/or more ads and data tracking (also proposed to be regulated away) and/or a subscription service that bundles free apps to cover the cost.
      - 5y ago
- car_analogy 5y ago
  > There are benefits to not allowing choice in some case - I don’t know if you’ve ever had to call a company to cancel a subscription you’ve signed up for online, but that doesn’t happen to iOS IAP users. We already have a mechanism to restrict choice - regulation. Turning to corporations to safeguard consumer rights will end in tears, especially if used as an excuse to curtail user freedom. > Have you ever actually met or heard of a user [..] that cares about this? Ordinary people don't care about a lot of things they should care about - there are only so many hours in the day to learn about issues and acquire the necessary knowledge to form an opinion. If experts in the relevant fields don't care for them, the only other ones are those that stand to profit. I bet it would be mostly mechanics speaking up if auto manufacturers started requiring only "licensed" brake pads or blinker fluid be used. Does that mean the practice isn't car-owner-hostile?
  - viro 5y ago
    It doesn't help that most devs are actively user-hostile. So yea I would rather trust Apple than some random dev that wants to make it as hard as possible to cancel that 3-day trial he just gave me. then charges $9.99 a week .... I'm looking at you plink.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dspillett 5y ago
      > than some random dev that wants to make it as hard as possible to cancel that 3-day trial That is not a dev thing. At least not a good dev thing. That is a shady business person thing, possibly holding devs to ransom with “I know you don't like it, you can always leave if you dislike it enough and I'll get someone else to implement”. Of course it is possible to be both a dev and a shady business person, but away from one-man-band entrepreneurs people don't usually have the desire not the time to excel at both.
      - spideymans 5y ago
        This is largely just a semantic argument. There are developers that are individuals (eg, you and me), and developers that are businesses (eg, EA, or Match Group). Developers that are businesses can be (and frequently are) predatory, just as businesses are frequently predatory. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of software that people interact with is coming from developers that are businesses.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  My mum wanted to sign up for Netflix on her iPad. > c) bad actors will learn to trick users into making the choices they want Bad actors have been doing this for years, abusing Apple's amazingly convenient payment APIs, like a "Heart Rate Monitor" app that prompted users to put their finger on the touch ID sensor, and then throw up an $99 IAP screen which would be immediately purchased because the user's finger was already on the touch ID https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/ https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/
  - hallway_monitor 5y ago
    Is there a name for this pattern? Changing the user interface immediately before the user interacts with it? It's not normally a dark pattern like this but as far as I know it's an unsolved problem. E.g. I go to click a button but 50 milliseconds before that the app has decided to change layouts and now I click a completely different button than I meant to.
    - rhizome 5y ago
      Bait and switch.
    - robbie-c 5y ago
      My first job was for a telecoms startup, this concept is called "glare" there. E.g. I go to touch the screen to make a call, but someone starts calling my while my finger is in motion so the UI changes and I press a button that I didn't mean to.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      This is very much a solved problem (see: coyote time), and is solved (for free!!!) by OS’s and web browsers. When you implement your own controls and do stupid stuff with JavaScript, you end up with exactly as you say.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  the real way people would care is if it made things cheaper. very unlikely that will happen
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Max 3% if the new payment provider charges 0
- m12k 5y ago
  Most consumers have no idea what profit margins are. They don't know or understand how the one chosen payment method that Apple provides takes a 30% cut, or how that means that any service with less than 30% profit margin cannot be sold to them on the App Store unless the operator sells at a loss. Just because consumers don't understand how something works doesn't mean it can't be bad for them. There are already tons of examples of this in other areas like legal contracts and biology/chemistry, where consumers need experts and regulation to be their advocates, and ensure their rights.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    They will still take a 27% cut. People fully understand that any other store takes a cut. The gov takes another 21%. It's arrogant to think that consumers don't understand. They understand once they've been told. Consumers aren't told that ATM transactions cost money. That a creditcard transaction costs the merchant even more money. etc. etc. etc.
    - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
      > They will still take a 27% cut. This will probably change. We know governments find this cut abusive, and requiring third party payments was intended in a lot of cases to address this. Google and Apple playing cheeky 27% workarounds will not fly for long. If anything, these companies aggressively refusing to stop fleecing people is going to lead to much more draconian regulations that will turn them into regulated utilities.
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    The ones that care know. This is true in any category of product or service. You have people that understand how a product's manufacturing might impact the environment and choose to make a different purchase decision. And actually, Apple correctly identified this as something their market cares about and speaks to in their marketing/comms. Do you know what market segment they don't really care about? Hacker news. We are the only ones who discuss this sort of thing and it doesn't really align with what Apple values/cares about anyway. Half the people on here are more probably more aligned with Android's values. This is not surprising.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Have you ever actually met or heard of a user (outside of software engineers on hacker news) that cares about this? Users are kept ignorant by Apple's policies. Apple punishes developers if they choose to educate users about Apple's fees or offer lower prices for purchases that Apple won't get a cut of.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    I almost never seen a normal product that advertises their retailers margin on it, and/or advertises an alternative cheaper store. Can you imagine walking into a drug store to buy OTC meds and the bottle has a "buy this 30% off online at xyz.com" sticker? No retailer would want that. I occasionally see MSRP price printed on packaging, which is sometimes mis-matched with the store I'm at - its usually convenience stores and other similar places that add extra markup for high-demand items (and usually you know what to expect).
    - pritambaral 5y ago
      Apples to oranges. Retailers don't force suppliers to give them a 30% cut of every sale. Retailers don't prevent suppliers from selling with other retailers. Retailers have competition and cannot abuse their monopoly, even if they can acquire a monopoly position.
      - vineyardmike 5y ago
        You have it backwards. Apple is the retailer. Retailers do take 30%+ of every sale. Have you seen retail markups? > Retailers don't prevent suppliers from selling with other retailers. Some do.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      I've bought plenty of products that explained their fee structure built into pricing. There are also plenty of stores that also explain their processor fees.
      - 5y ago
viro 5y ago
Apple's iap system is anti-dark pattern and because of that pro-consumer.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Stalin is anti-Hitler and because of that pro-freedom Equivalent logic
- kevincox 5y ago
  Then contrive using it. Don't use apple that don't support it.
  - mrmanner 5y ago
    The same argument can be used in favour of Apple here: If you don’t like Apple’s rules, don’t use Apple devices or don’t sell your thing to Apple users.
- aPoCoMiLogin 5y ago
  sure https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/ https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/
alimov 5y ago
Are you an iOS / iPasOS user by chance? If you are and you continue to use these products would you mind explaining why you are staying with Apple products vs switching to Android or any other alternative that might meet your needs? If you are not someone that owns and uses an iOS / iPadOS device then I was hoping you might explain why this is troubling you so much.
- t3rabytes 5y ago
  I’m more or less tied to the Apple ecosystem because all of my family and friends use iOS (I’m in the US), which means breaking out of that bubble and being the person turning the group chats green (or saying “can we move to telegram/WhatsApp/signal instead?”) or saying “sorry, I can’t FaceTime. Duo instead?” is not worth the bullshit that comes along with it. The stickiness factor of these services is far greater than zero.
  - alimov 5y ago
    While I agree with you on the topic of stickiness, I would like to mention that FaceTime now supports calls to Android devices. Regarding the bubbles, I can’t say I really understand the issue. I’ve had both android and iOS devices and the bubble bit has not been an issue that has kept me from interacting with friends and family. I think group chats between android and iOS had some issues pre-2016 but in my group chats I haven’t noticed any issues.
    - t3rabytes 5y ago
      You can't initiate them from Android devices though. :(
jbverschoor 5y ago
I don't want no stinking external payment system. First of all, it probably won't give lower prices. Second of all, I've seen way too many dark patterns regarding subscriptions.
- ThatPlayer 5y ago
  There are definitely some apps that charge more on iOS compared to paying directly. Off the top of my head YouTube and Spotify (before they removed it). And apps like Netflix doesn't even let you subscribe in the app. Or I'm unable to purchase e-books with the Amazon Kindle app. Even Twitch.tv's subscriptions costs more on iOS.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Well, they're not allowed when using external entitlements: > Consistent with the ACM’s order, dating apps that are granted an entitlement to link out or use a third-party in-app payment provider will pay Apple a commission on transactions. Apple will charge a 27% commission on the price paid by the user, net of value-added taxes. This is a reduced rate that excludes value related to payment processing and related activities. Developers will be responsible for the collection and remittance of any applicable taxes, such as the Netherlands’ value-added tax (VAT), for sales processed by a third-party payment provider. So yay for 3% saving, which they'll spend on another payment provider, do all the support, add reporting, vat etc. Seems like a lot of trouble. They simply made the wrong case, just like Epic did. If they would've said that they think 30% is too much, it'd be a whole different story. Would I want to save €0.75 on a €25/mo subscription and have to deal with dark patterns etc? Hell no. And especially no to the dating industry which is known for their tricks. Also, the 75ct saving should be split between the user and the dev. So my incentive would be 20ct? 10ct? Good luck lol
    - ThatPlayer 5y ago
      And that's why I hope the ACM will not accept this new change as enough.
  - 5y ago

n8cpdx 5y ago

Have you ever actually met or heard of a user (outside of software engineers on hacker news) that cares about this? I’d think the last 20+ years of the evolution of the internet would be clear enough evidence that: a) users don’t want choice about these kinds of things. b) even when users do get these kinds of choices, they either can’t be trusted to choose in their best interest (e.g. millions of people chose to install malware in the past 20 years) OR c) bad actors will learn to trick users into making the choices they want (e.g. Amazon changing button colors to trick people into doing things they don’t want to do) IMO trying to frame this as about “user choice” is disingenuous. There are benefits to not allowing choice in some case - I don’t know if you’ve ever had to call a company to cancel a subscription you’ve signed up for online, but that doesn’t happen to iOS IAP users.

striking 5y ago
When have users been allowed to choose, in the "last 20+ years of the evolution of the internet"? I think if you allowed users to choose between xx% markup and being able to cancel subscriptions from a centralized place, there would be takers of both approaches.
- mrmanner 5y ago
  > I think if you allowed users to choose between xx% markup and being able to cancel subscriptions from a centralized place, there would be takers of both approaches. Many people choose Android phones, which kind of proves your point :)
- viro 5y ago
  Every piece of dark pattern research kinda disagrees with you.
silvestrov 5y ago
Users do care: Apple does not support the by far most popular payment card that people use (like 99% of cc payments). We only use Mastercard/VISA for travel, not for domestic payments.
- ben_w 5y ago
  The way you’re phrasing that makes me think that you think that all Apple users are American. Was that your intention?
  - silvestrov 5y ago
    No, I lost 2 words when rewriting the sentence. What I intended: Users in Denmark do care: Apple does not support the by far most popular payment card that people use (like 99% of cc payments).
tedivm 5y ago
The fact that it's hidden and that Apple causes problems for companies that expose how big the fee is makes it extremely consumer unfriendly. Do most users care or regularly discuss it? Probably not. Would they be happier paying 30% less for their apps though? Quite likely. Apple is also explicitly reviewing the payment providers involved in this. There's no reason to choose between "only apple" or "users will install malware". There is a huge middle ground here.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Europe used regulation to cram down interchange fees [1]. The US could (and should) do the same, again, with regulation. Users shouldn't have to care (just as they shouldn't have to understand the intricacies of core financial infra in their country), and Big Tech shouldn't be able to use monopoly power to take such a large cut. And lets not mince words: Apple in this case (and Google in theirs with their mobile ecosystem) is acting as a payment processor, and that function should be regulated as such. If that margin, once regulated down, is insufficient to operate an app store (hah), charge a flat fee per app to be listed and made available to customers. Shopify costs $30-300/month (depending on plan), which sounds like reasonable cost segmentation to adopt for providing a mobile storefront/app in their app store. [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_4585 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_... (I'm aware this post is Netherlands specific; I'm speaking in broad strokes)
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > is insufficient to operate an app store (hah), charge a flat fee per app to be listed and made available to customers No one - no one - wants that. Free apps suddenly won't be free when they have to pay to be on the App Store. Its so easy to create an app and share it, and that is a good thing. The end result of apps costing money (even though free apps have nearly a 0 marginal cost to distribute) is that you'll end up with less apps and/or more ads and data tracking (also proposed to be regulated away) and/or a subscription service that bundles free apps to cover the cost.
    - 5y ago
car_analogy 5y ago
> There are benefits to not allowing choice in some case - I don’t know if you’ve ever had to call a company to cancel a subscription you’ve signed up for online, but that doesn’t happen to iOS IAP users. We already have a mechanism to restrict choice - regulation. Turning to corporations to safeguard consumer rights will end in tears, especially if used as an excuse to curtail user freedom. > Have you ever actually met or heard of a user [..] that cares about this? Ordinary people don't care about a lot of things they should care about - there are only so many hours in the day to learn about issues and acquire the necessary knowledge to form an opinion. If experts in the relevant fields don't care for them, the only other ones are those that stand to profit. I bet it would be mostly mechanics speaking up if auto manufacturers started requiring only "licensed" brake pads or blinker fluid be used. Does that mean the practice isn't car-owner-hostile?
- viro 5y ago
  It doesn't help that most devs are actively user-hostile. So yea I would rather trust Apple than some random dev that wants to make it as hard as possible to cancel that 3-day trial he just gave me. then charges $9.99 a week .... I'm looking at you plink.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dspillett 5y ago
    > than some random dev that wants to make it as hard as possible to cancel that 3-day trial That is not a dev thing. At least not a good dev thing. That is a shady business person thing, possibly holding devs to ransom with “I know you don't like it, you can always leave if you dislike it enough and I'll get someone else to implement”. Of course it is possible to be both a dev and a shady business person, but away from one-man-band entrepreneurs people don't usually have the desire not the time to excel at both.
    - spideymans 5y ago
      This is largely just a semantic argument. There are developers that are individuals (eg, you and me), and developers that are businesses (eg, EA, or Match Group). Developers that are businesses can be (and frequently are) predatory, just as businesses are frequently predatory. Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of software that people interact with is coming from developers that are businesses.
madeofpalk 5y ago
My mum wanted to sign up for Netflix on her iPad. > c) bad actors will learn to trick users into making the choices they want Bad actors have been doing this for years, abusing Apple's amazingly convenient payment APIs, like a "Heart Rate Monitor" app that prompted users to put their finger on the touch ID sensor, and then throw up an $99 IAP screen which would be immediately purchased because the user's finger was already on the touch ID https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/ https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  Is there a name for this pattern? Changing the user interface immediately before the user interacts with it? It's not normally a dark pattern like this but as far as I know it's an unsolved problem. E.g. I go to click a button but 50 milliseconds before that the app has decided to change layouts and now I click a completely different button than I meant to.
  - rhizome 5y ago
    Bait and switch.
  - robbie-c 5y ago
    My first job was for a telecoms startup, this concept is called "glare" there. E.g. I go to touch the screen to make a call, but someone starts calling my while my finger is in motion so the UI changes and I press a button that I didn't mean to.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    This is very much a solved problem (see: coyote time), and is solved (for free!!!) by OS’s and web browsers. When you implement your own controls and do stupid stuff with JavaScript, you end up with exactly as you say.
foolfoolz 5y ago
the real way people would care is if it made things cheaper. very unlikely that will happen
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  Max 3% if the new payment provider charges 0
m12k 5y ago
Most consumers have no idea what profit margins are. They don't know or understand how the one chosen payment method that Apple provides takes a 30% cut, or how that means that any service with less than 30% profit margin cannot be sold to them on the App Store unless the operator sells at a loss. Just because consumers don't understand how something works doesn't mean it can't be bad for them. There are already tons of examples of this in other areas like legal contracts and biology/chemistry, where consumers need experts and regulation to be their advocates, and ensure their rights.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  They will still take a 27% cut. People fully understand that any other store takes a cut. The gov takes another 21%. It's arrogant to think that consumers don't understand. They understand once they've been told. Consumers aren't told that ATM transactions cost money. That a creditcard transaction costs the merchant even more money. etc. etc. etc.
  - ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    > They will still take a 27% cut. This will probably change. We know governments find this cut abusive, and requiring third party payments was intended in a lot of cases to address this. Google and Apple playing cheeky 27% workarounds will not fly for long. If anything, these companies aggressively refusing to stop fleecing people is going to lead to much more draconian regulations that will turn them into regulated utilities.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  The ones that care know. This is true in any category of product or service. You have people that understand how a product's manufacturing might impact the environment and choose to make a different purchase decision. And actually, Apple correctly identified this as something their market cares about and speaks to in their marketing/comms. Do you know what market segment they don't really care about? Hacker news. We are the only ones who discuss this sort of thing and it doesn't really align with what Apple values/cares about anyway. Half the people on here are more probably more aligned with Android's values. This is not surprising.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Have you ever actually met or heard of a user (outside of software engineers on hacker news) that cares about this? Users are kept ignorant by Apple's policies. Apple punishes developers if they choose to educate users about Apple's fees or offer lower prices for purchases that Apple won't get a cut of.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I almost never seen a normal product that advertises their retailers margin on it, and/or advertises an alternative cheaper store. Can you imagine walking into a drug store to buy OTC meds and the bottle has a "buy this 30% off online at xyz.com" sticker? No retailer would want that. I occasionally see MSRP price printed on packaging, which is sometimes mis-matched with the store I'm at - its usually convenience stores and other similar places that add extra markup for high-demand items (and usually you know what to expect).
  - pritambaral 5y ago
    Apples to oranges. Retailers don't force suppliers to give them a 30% cut of every sale. Retailers don't prevent suppliers from selling with other retailers. Retailers have competition and cannot abuse their monopoly, even if they can acquire a monopoly position.
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      You have it backwards. Apple is the retailer. Retailers do take 30%+ of every sale. Have you seen retail markups? > Retailers don't prevent suppliers from selling with other retailers. Some do.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I've bought plenty of products that explained their fee structure built into pricing. There are also plenty of stores that also explain their processor fees.
    - 5y ago

viro 5y ago

Apple's iap system is anti-dark pattern and because of that pro-consumer.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Stalin is anti-Hitler and because of that pro-freedom Equivalent logic
kevincox 5y ago
Then contrive using it. Don't use apple that don't support it.
- mrmanner 5y ago
  The same argument can be used in favour of Apple here: If you don’t like Apple’s rules, don’t use Apple devices or don’t sell your thing to Apple users.
aPoCoMiLogin 5y ago
sure https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/ https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-touch-id-scam-apps/

alimov 5y ago

Are you an iOS / iPasOS user by chance? If you are and you continue to use these products would you mind explaining why you are staying with Apple products vs switching to Android or any other alternative that might meet your needs? If you are not someone that owns and uses an iOS / iPadOS device then I was hoping you might explain why this is troubling you so much.

t3rabytes 5y ago
I’m more or less tied to the Apple ecosystem because all of my family and friends use iOS (I’m in the US), which means breaking out of that bubble and being the person turning the group chats green (or saying “can we move to telegram/WhatsApp/signal instead?”) or saying “sorry, I can’t FaceTime. Duo instead?” is not worth the bullshit that comes along with it. The stickiness factor of these services is far greater than zero.
- alimov 5y ago
  While I agree with you on the topic of stickiness, I would like to mention that FaceTime now supports calls to Android devices. Regarding the bubbles, I can’t say I really understand the issue. I’ve had both android and iOS devices and the bubble bit has not been an issue that has kept me from interacting with friends and family. I think group chats between android and iOS had some issues pre-2016 but in my group chats I haven’t noticed any issues.
  - t3rabytes 5y ago
    You can't initiate them from Android devices though. :(

jbverschoor 5y ago

I don't want no stinking external payment system. First of all, it probably won't give lower prices. Second of all, I've seen way too many dark patterns regarding subscriptions.

ThatPlayer 5y ago
There are definitely some apps that charge more on iOS compared to paying directly. Off the top of my head YouTube and Spotify (before they removed it). And apps like Netflix doesn't even let you subscribe in the app. Or I'm unable to purchase e-books with the Amazon Kindle app. Even Twitch.tv's subscriptions costs more on iOS.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  Well, they're not allowed when using external entitlements: > Consistent with the ACM’s order, dating apps that are granted an entitlement to link out or use a third-party in-app payment provider will pay Apple a commission on transactions. Apple will charge a 27% commission on the price paid by the user, net of value-added taxes. This is a reduced rate that excludes value related to payment processing and related activities. Developers will be responsible for the collection and remittance of any applicable taxes, such as the Netherlands’ value-added tax (VAT), for sales processed by a third-party payment provider. So yay for 3% saving, which they'll spend on another payment provider, do all the support, add reporting, vat etc. Seems like a lot of trouble. They simply made the wrong case, just like Epic did. If they would've said that they think 30% is too much, it'd be a whole different story. Would I want to save €0.75 on a €25/mo subscription and have to deal with dark patterns etc? Hell no. And especially no to the dating industry which is known for their tricks. Also, the 75ct saving should be split between the user and the dev. So my incentive would be 20ct? 10ct? Good luck lol
  - ThatPlayer 5y ago
    And that's why I hope the ACM will not accept this new change as enough.
- 5y ago