Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

previously:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23569065" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23569065</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23568095" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23568095</a>

&gt; We understand that Basecamp has developed a number of apps and many subsequent versions for the App Store for many years, and that the App Store has distributed millions of these apps to iOS users. These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years.<p>They literally have paid 8 years of Developer Program fees for supporting the AppStore.

&quot;These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years.&quot;<p>This is pretty grotesque coming from a trillion-dollar company that anyway already charges developers a yearly fee.

It seems like we soon see movement on this issue given the EU antitrust and other social unrest. People are tired of things being not only unfair but not even remotely reasonable. It is laughable that Apple Music on Android doesn&#x27;t use the built in IAP but forces you to pay via Apple. This will come back to haunt them. It doesn&#x27;t matter that the ToS don&#x27;t forbid this but in civil suits, it doesn&#x27;t give them a leg to stand on. They are doing the exact thing they argue would prevent them from making any revenue if they changed their policy. If Apple was smart they would lower their percentage and move on. Better to pick the number than have it forced on you.

Apple demands that taxes are paid and laws are adhered to in their kingdom of apps. Meanwhile, they are tax evaders themselves.

Apple forces Hey&#x27;s app in front of unsuspecting users with App Store promotions. If the app doesn&#x27;t provide any value to a random person who comes across it in the App Store, that doesn&#x27;t mean it should be banned from the App Store. That means it should be banned from promotion in the App Store.<p>Hey should still be able to link its users directly to the App Store entry and otherwise make it unlisted in the App Store.<p>Apple can find a creative way to tax this if they wanted, but what is the yearly developer fee for if not a fee for distribution and security&#x2F;compliance certifications?<p>Apple needs to stop conflating distribution on their platform with promotion on their platform. Not every app needs both. 30% cut only makes sense in a publishing deal where Apple promotes the product in the storefront.

&gt; The HEY Email app is marketed as an email app on the App Store, but when users download your app, it does not work. Users cannot use the app to access email or perform any useful function until after they go to the Basecamp website for Hey Email and purchase a license to use the HEY Email app.<p>The Fastmail email app works exactly the same way and is available on the app store without issue. Seems like a pretty arbitrary decision here.

I’m on Apple’s side on this one. They’ve made Hey’s choice simple: change it so it’s compatible for people to use their mainstream email services (no $ involved), or make it subscription out of the box. Currently you need some dumb invite-only code.<p>I actually feel misled by Hey’s comments pointing out that Netflix, etc. require a subscription to make the app useful. It wasn’t until I little additional digging revealed that the main difference you can order it straight away, and Apple still charges them the 30% fee. To get around this, Netflix charges for in-app or you can order cheaper directly from their site. I don’t believe Apple’s store T&amp;C’s indicate Netflix is violating anything through this model.<p>Really this is about how much is too much for Apple’s fee structure. I suspect regulators may try to force Apple to allow other App Stores (like Android) but then the usual problems will surface re: security, etc.

A curious thought experiment here is: what would the situation be in the case of a hypothetical third-party app that provided access to your Hey email?<p>(I mean via some API that Hey offered - I think they don&#x27;t actually offer one, but it&#x27;s a hypothetical.)<p>You would obviously still need a paid Hey account to use such an app, but there would be no way for the app&#x27;s providers to enable you to sign up for one using Apple IAP. What then?

I&#x27;m probably missing something, but can&#x27;t Hey just make subscriptions in their page and let the App from free in the App Store?<p>Is the same as gmail, I can pay for a Google Suite, but the app is freely distributed in stores.<p>Basecamp should have great products (I&#x27;ve never used them), but it seems they are using this as a marketing strategy.

Would it be allowed under the App Store guidelines to offer IAP, but then give customers who purchase the service through the website 30% cashback? The price would be the same in both places, you&#x27;d be purchasing the exact same service. But a certain group of customers would get a &#x27;loyalty bonus&#x27;…

Finally a great breakdown of the issue and a fair look into what both sides, namely Apple, are trying to do here.<p>&gt; That, Apple said, is not what Hey is. Hey is a consumer app, paid for by users. And Apple takes issue with the idea that when one of those prospective users downloads the app, there&#x27;s nothing they can do with it — they can&#x27;t sign up, they can&#x27;t pay, they have to go somewhere else before they can use the app. Apple doesn&#x27;t like apps like that, at least when it feels they should be more accessible to their intended audience.

It seems any company becomes evil when it gets large enough.

While obviously what Apple is doing is crap, why not just increase their in-app prices only on iOS? That&#x27;s what Marvel have been doing with their comics. A comic that through their website costs £3, on the Android reader costs £3.29 and on their iOS reader costs £3.49. I always just buy them online and immediately download to my ipad without paying the Apple premium.<p>Yes, it sucks - but it seems like a relatively easy way out.

Maybe the pandemic finally offers enough motivation for EU and US to make a strong decision about this. The (smart)phone market, for many people the only computing device they own, is utterly dominated by 2 monopolies under Apple and Google.<p>The CEOs should get a medal and all the honours for providing society this good platforms then promptly forced to allow separate AppStores on equal footing.

Would it be more fair that<p>- developers paid a hosting subscription for their app<p>- pay for bandwidth used by the app downloads<p>- pay for each update review<p>- optional pay for promotion<p>- Apple would not block legal content, just put it under a new category of stuff Apple disaproves but is legal.<p>This would fix a part for the issues with stores, Apple can&#x27;t say that they are hosting your app for free anymore or that they provide you bandwidth.<p>The disadvantage I see is that small apps will have to pay a the yearly subscriptions but if the price is fair I see it similar as you pay for a domain and webhosting.<p>Apple will have to find a new way to make money though, like maybe have better services instead of crippling competition, have better dev tools and hardware.<p>Imagine there are only 2 companies that offer web hosting , and they will take 30% of your money (not profit but total) and on top of that they can reject your content if they don&#x27;t like it.

I can offer some opinion as developer in a small indie game company (shameless self-promotion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23565739" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23565739</a>).<p>Supporting iOS is super hard for us. The Apple market is heavily controlled and supervised. We have had apps rejected because we included links to the Android equivalent in the description (same price, so no big reason to switch platforms when you are already on our iTunes page, and no way anyone can install an Android app on an iPhone anyway). Apple used to offer a more or less standard set of phones, resolutions, and architecture. But that has diversified more in the last years. For Android and Linux, we have it much easier to build tools, to handle dependencies, and generally to deploy. Actually, all development happens on Linux, simply because it&#x27;s a much better and more comfortable platform. When we need to deploy for iOS, we boot the mac computer (which we had to pay for), re-compile the game, try it on the iPhone (which we also had to pay for), upload, and turn it off. Additionally, and I don&#x27;t have all the details on this myself, Google apparently has also made it much easier for us than Apple to operate when it comes to taxes and banking.<p>We normally have to sell thousands of units per month to &quot;make it&quot; (and we don&#x27;t). For Android, the fees are low enough to justify keeping things open even if we don&#x27;t sell much one month.<p>In a wider perspective, we operate in a market with lots of apps and games being offered for free, really high fees and standards set by the major stores, and continuous pressure from the community, our competitors (of course!) and ourselves to release more of our work as open source. Essentially, the combination is crushing, and Apple&#x27;s move does not help :(<p>For what is worth, we recently launched &quot;safe2play&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keera.co.uk&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;safe2play-caring-for-privacy-in-an-interconnected-world&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keera.co.uk&#x2F;2020&#x2F;06&#x2F;17&#x2F;safe2play-caring-for-privacy-...</a>), which is an idea meant to make both people safer and the pricing model more transparent. It would probably align with Apple&#x27;s desires better too, although that&#x27;s an unintended side-effect.

Generically speaking, I thought that the promise of the Internet was to have more (and more direct) access to resources.<p>When it comes to e-commerce or e-subscriptions that should have meant the end of the middlemen, the products or contents&#x2F;whatever are delivered directly from the author&#x2F;producer&#x2F;supplier to the end user, cutting costs.

If the app was like $1 or $2 on the app store just to avoid this headache, I would pay it.

Honestly, Apple&#x27;s response is actually pretty reasonable, all things considered. Read the full letter — it was clear, fair, and professional — despite coming off the back of a lot of bad press.<p>I see plenty of comments are focussing on this quote, re their Basecamp apps:<p>&gt; These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years<p>Apple have (freely) provided Basecamp a platform to grow their business via the App Store, whilst giving Apple (effectively) nothing in return.<p>Now that Basecamp want to grow their revenue further (at Apple&#x27;s expense), AND they are breaching the rules (whether you agree with them or not) — I don&#x27;t blame Apple for pressing the brakes. Especially not after all the negative press this whole debacle has brought them.

Maybe they should follow what Netflix is doing, since they don&#x27;t have in-app purchases in iOS which is why they don&#x27;t allow registrations at all and force you to sign up on the web.<p>Not sure about Netflix&#x27;s Android app though, but Google has sort of done this to Epic Games but only allowing logins and no registrations + card checks might bypass the Apple 30% tax.

Apple’s policy really degrades the experience of apps on their platform, such as Kindle.

Basecamp obviously knew this would go down like this.<p>The cynic in me thinks this controversy was planned from the beginning as a PR &#x2F; marketing exercise.

Apple should just offer Hey the option of providing the Hey app without the 30% cut, but negotiate how much Hey wants to pay for use of Apple&#x27;s SDKs.

Do they also ban apps that show public transport schedules, because you can&#x27;t buy tickets through them?

I&#x27;m probably in the minority with this view, but I do think that Apple&#x27;s response makes 100% sense and is fair and reasonable.<p>- I don&#x27;t like how everyone claims they want a 30% cut. That is factually not quite true. It is 30% for non subs, which I think is fair. If I want to sell a product on a specific distribution channel then the cut should represent the possible reach and sales opportunity. In the case of subs it&#x27;s only 15%. This is quite different than 30%. 30% is only for the first 12 months and for a sub which is paid annually this is nothing. Given that the first 12 months are very crucial in gaining critical mass I think 30% is fair and later it is really only 15%.<p>- I have huge respect for DHH, but he criticises that Apple has published their response to journalists, which is a bit rich given that he started this &quot;dog fight&quot; in the public<p>- The apps to which DHH compares Hey with are very different in nature and all the mail apps he constantly mentions are also different in nature. They all implement the suggestions which Apple has suggested in their response, so it&#x27;s really Hey who wants to be treated with different rules because DHH thinks his online status can bully Apple into giving in? Not sure if that is right<p>- Also I think it is possible to do both. You can disagree with the rules and fight them in a civil way in court, whilst also temporarily comply with the rules like everyone else to get your app public. This approach of not wanting to play by the rules, put them on fire and still publish an app whilst everything is burning seems like a weird strategy to me. Slightly unnecessarily aggressive in tone.

Apple’s position is clear and legal, and it’s how the economy works <i>including the proposed hey.com business model</i>. There’s no antitrust violation here, so pay your fees or go somewhere else. Apple don’t owe hey.com a place in the App store, just like hey.com doesn’t owe me a free email address @hey.com.