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Ask HN: Is Apple Going Nuts?

16 pointsby mittermayrabout 1 year ago
Super curious to hear from other iOS devs what you&#x27;re doing to cope with this. Just today, I had yet another app (this time from a client) get rejected for the exact same reasons the Spotify&#x2F;Epic&#x2F;EU drama spiralled out of. Except, for a free app!?<p>It&#x27;s getting extortionately uncomfortable:<p>I have a free (!) app (completely 100% free) on the macOS App Store. It&#x27;s getting mostly 5-star reviews and has done so for many years. Good. I used to offer the app through my website mainly, but people asked for security (despite it being signed), so I put it on the AppStore, many years ago. I make this app for fun, no profit, it&#x27;s 100% free.<p>I recently pushed an update and Apple rejected it. The reason: They clicked on my website (which they found mentioned in the about section, last tab, bottom line on the Settings screen).<p>On my website, where I SELL NOTHING, no upgrades, no premium services, etc. — they found at a link to buymeacoffee.com&#x2F;roman — I think in the FAQ page, where I address the question of what people can do, if they insist on supporting the project.<p>Then, Apple said: because of this link, they had to reject the app; I am offering paid services, and doing so, must be done through In-App Purchases. These were third-party donations, no deal involved, the app does not even know about this, there is no advantage to anyone donating anything.<p>I tried to reason with them over course of a week, but no, if there is ANY WAY for the app user to pay me, despite the APP ITSELF CHANGING IN NO WAY, WHATSOEVER, then I must use IAPs. I was crushed and nothing made sense anymore.<p>Fast-forward to this week. I help a client update an old iOS app. Only thing the app does: serve exclusively as a companion app (to scan&#x2F;photograph documents) for an enterprise SaaS. There is no additional features, there is no purchases in the app, nothing of that sort. You scan a QR code, you scan a document, and the app uploads that scan and that&#x27;s it.<p>Apple, however, went all the way to browse the company&#x27;s website, found a mention of &quot;subscription&quot; somewhere, screenshotted that, responded to us through review that the update has been rejected. All and any subscriptions or purchases must be handled in the app and through IAPs.<p>I mean, what in the world is going on? I am not making this up!<p>In neither one of those two cases is the app meant to freeload off of Apple&#x27;s ecosystem. I get the idea of having to pay a fee to participate in a market, I have paid apps and those are all via IAPs and so forth, yada yada, but a free app?! It can&#x27;t be how this will all play out, can it?

3 comments

talldayoabout 1 year ago
Silly developer, Apple hasn&#x27;t gone nuts. They&#x27;re simply using their vertical integration to protect you from attaining any form of revenue they can&#x27;t legally demand a part of. From Apple&#x27;s perspective, it&#x27;s <i>you</i> that&#x27;s gone nuts and is trying to destroy their ecosystem with your heinous donation scheme: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;security&#x2F;complying-with-the-dma.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;security&#x2F;complying-with-the-dma....</a><p>It&#x27;s about safety; that&#x27;s iPhone. (cue the trailing list of comments a-la &quot;Exactly right, this is why <i>I</i> bought <i>my</i> iPhone.&quot;)
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bell-cotabout 1 year ago
&quot;Going Nuts&quot; does not seem like a useful descriptive for relentless greedy behavior by the corporation which is very plausibly the Reigning World Champion of relentless greedy behavior.<p>What <i>financial</i> upsides might there be for Apple, if they somehow started behaving in ways which you considered less crazy?
xenospnabout 1 year ago
I found Apple’s approval process to be hit or miss. Most of the time everything was approved without a problem, sometimes you get a nasty reviewer and all you had to do was just resubmit and it would usually go through.
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