3 ms·

Note that if you opt for the EU compliant new business terms for iPhone, you will still be obligated to pay Core Technology Fees on all Apple platforms, even if

Note that if you opt for the EU compliant new business terms for iPhone, you will still be obligated to pay Core Technology Fees on all Apple platforms, even if those platforms do not allow sideloading. So your iPad apps now have install fees and you still have to pass app review.

lxgr 3y ago
Does the iPad at least get support for alternative payments then? Edit: Seems like they will. From TFA: > Changes to App Store policy to allow alternative payments and lower commissions affect the App Store across all Apple platforms.
crazygringo 3y ago
Yeah but your App Store commission is significantly lower as a percentage. So you're still going to wind up paying less money if you're collecting amounts like €5 or €10 or more from customers. In the cases where you'd come out worse, because your app is free or extremely low-cost like €1, then you shouldn't opt for the new business terms. You should use the current ones -- which show no indication of going away since they're what the rest of the world uses.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
  > The point is that you've got a choice. Supposing I want to release a free, personal hobby project, app that uses some private APIs in iOS, to solve some long-standing usability or feature-gap within iOS, then no, I don't have a choice: I don't have an option at all: I can't release it in the Apple-run iOS App Store becuase it uses Private APIs, and I can't release it in a third-party App Store as a free app because I can't afford the "Core Technology" fee (despite paying my $99 annual fee to Apple, which they said (back in 2008) pays for the platform, SDK+DX) - that leaves me only with Cydia as my only option and a significantly reduced audience. ----- Actually, this whole debacle has me wondering - does this mean that Apple thinks they have the right to shakedown developers in the Cydia ecosystem for their "Core Technology" fees too? If so, it's going to be hilarious to watch them try to actually do that; and because they'll be unsuccessful, does that mean that other developers (using something-other-than-Cydia) can tell Apple to pound-sand as they have no moral-right to the rent they're seeking?
  - wtallis 3y ago
    What makes you think it'll be easier to get away with using private APIs by selling through a different storefront? Isn't Apple is still requiring all apps to be submitted for notarization?
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      My understanding is Apple’s notarization is about accountability than policy/approval: I’m okay with having my apps stamped with my legal identity - that’s no different to Microsoft AuthentiCode going right-back to the late-1990s.
      - kmeisthax 3y ago
        Regardless of how much review is used, Apple will still be gating what entitlements can be used by third-party apps. They already do this for dev-signed apps - i.e. you can't provision apps that ask for things like, say, task_for_pid-allow[0]. There's actually a whole host of entitlements that you either can't get as a third-party developer, or have to ask for special permission[1] for, or are only available to paid Apple Developer Program members. Whether or not this hampers your use of private APIs depends on whether or not the API requires a private entitlement in order to work. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't - notably, all of IOKit is there just sitting in the public Frameworks directory, but you won't pass App Review if you touch any of it, because that's still considered private API surface. If you want to touch private APIs that are gated behind a private entitlement, you're not getting them. Remember: most of iOS's security comes from sandboxing, not human review. In fact, there's been a lot of scams on iOS that App Review has failed to catch. So Apple is never, not in a million years, going to give an official way to break out of the sandbox. [0] In XNU, processes are part of a Mach task. The task_for_pid syscall obtains a Mach port for a given process's Mach task. If you have this port, you have full control over the process. As you can imagine, this syscall normally only works for development processes that have opted-in to debugging with the get-task-allow entitlement. task_for_pid-allow bypasses this, allowing you to debug everything on the system. Some jailbreaks will even patch this syscall to allow retrieving a task for PID 0 - i.e. the kernel. [1] Notably, there is an entitlement for using the VP9 decoder, which only Google gets to use.
extraduder_ire 3y ago
That's strange. I thought that the iPadOS appstore was one of apple's five completely separate appstores. /s

lxgr 3y ago

Does the iPad at least get support for alternative payments then? Edit: Seems like they will. From TFA: > Changes to App Store policy to allow alternative payments and lower commissions affect the App Store across all Apple platforms.

crazygringo 3y ago

Yeah but your App Store commission is significantly lower as a percentage. So you're still going to wind up paying less money if you're collecting amounts like €5 or €10 or more from customers. In the cases where you'd come out worse, because your app is free or extremely low-cost like €1, then you shouldn't opt for the new business terms. You should use the current ones -- which show no indication of going away since they're what the rest of the world uses.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
> The point is that you've got a choice. Supposing I want to release a free, personal hobby project, app that uses some private APIs in iOS, to solve some long-standing usability or feature-gap within iOS, then no, I don't have a choice: I don't have an option at all: I can't release it in the Apple-run iOS App Store becuase it uses Private APIs, and I can't release it in a third-party App Store as a free app because I can't afford the "Core Technology" fee (despite paying my $99 annual fee to Apple, which they said (back in 2008) pays for the platform, SDK+DX) - that leaves me only with Cydia as my only option and a significantly reduced audience. ----- Actually, this whole debacle has me wondering - does this mean that Apple thinks they have the right to shakedown developers in the Cydia ecosystem for their "Core Technology" fees too? If so, it's going to be hilarious to watch them try to actually do that; and because they'll be unsuccessful, does that mean that other developers (using something-other-than-Cydia) can tell Apple to pound-sand as they have no moral-right to the rent they're seeking?
- wtallis 3y ago
  What makes you think it'll be easier to get away with using private APIs by selling through a different storefront? Isn't Apple is still requiring all apps to be submitted for notarization?
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    My understanding is Apple’s notarization is about accountability than policy/approval: I’m okay with having my apps stamped with my legal identity - that’s no different to Microsoft AuthentiCode going right-back to the late-1990s.
    - kmeisthax 3y ago
      Regardless of how much review is used, Apple will still be gating what entitlements can be used by third-party apps. They already do this for dev-signed apps - i.e. you can't provision apps that ask for things like, say, task_for_pid-allow[0]. There's actually a whole host of entitlements that you either can't get as a third-party developer, or have to ask for special permission[1] for, or are only available to paid Apple Developer Program members. Whether or not this hampers your use of private APIs depends on whether or not the API requires a private entitlement in order to work. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't - notably, all of IOKit is there just sitting in the public Frameworks directory, but you won't pass App Review if you touch any of it, because that's still considered private API surface. If you want to touch private APIs that are gated behind a private entitlement, you're not getting them. Remember: most of iOS's security comes from sandboxing, not human review. In fact, there's been a lot of scams on iOS that App Review has failed to catch. So Apple is never, not in a million years, going to give an official way to break out of the sandbox. [0] In XNU, processes are part of a Mach task. The task_for_pid syscall obtains a Mach port for a given process's Mach task. If you have this port, you have full control over the process. As you can imagine, this syscall normally only works for development processes that have opted-in to debugging with the get-task-allow entitlement. task_for_pid-allow bypasses this, allowing you to debug everything on the system. Some jailbreaks will even patch this syscall to allow retrieving a task for PID 0 - i.e. the kernel. [1] Notably, there is an entitlement for using the VP9 decoder, which only Google gets to use.

extraduder_ire 3y ago

That's strange. I thought that the iPadOS appstore was one of apple's five completely separate appstores. /s