[HN Gopher] App Review process updates
___________________________________________________________________
App Review process updates
Author : BigBalli
Score : 392 points
Date : 2020-08-31 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.apple.com)
| craigmcnamara wrote:
| Two weeks ago I had an update rejected because we decided to
| remove Login with Facebook from our app. The plugin that provides
| that support to Cordova is a dependency nightmare and not many
| people used it anyways so we removed it during a bugfix and
| dependency update. We got flagged for only supporting Google as a
| 3rd party login and basically forced to implement Apple ID sign
| in to release our fixes. Since adding support we've been further
| held up from releases because we require an existing account for
| Apple ID sign in to work and they rejected us for not allowing
| the QA account to sign in, while completely disregarding the use
| of the QA user account and password that we've always provided
| for the review process.
|
| tl;dr Because of the broken App Store review process we've just
| removed 3rd party auth support from our app, which is a shame
| because it's a really slick sign in experience, but we don't want
| to deal with bugfix releases being held up in review.
| klambda wrote:
| I would like the current state to improve so thought of
| submitting feedback on Apple's program page.
|
| Unfortunately the "Provide Feedback"
| (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/tell-us/) page reads:
|
| "We'll be back soon."
|
| No more comments...
| GhostVII wrote:
| Apple should make a two tiered app review process - one which
| checks if the app meets their guidelines around
| UI/advertising/etc and one which just checks if it is malware or
| not. Then in the app store they can downrank anything that
| doesn't meet their guidelines, keeping the quality apps more
| visible, without entirely removing apps for dumb things like not
| having a minimize button.
| slg wrote:
| How does Apple determine if an update is a bug fix or a new
| submission?
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Probably by what you write in the release notes during
| submission.
| dmix wrote:
| No new features, it just fixes bugs? Bugs being broken existing
| code.
|
| This was a big complaint that DHH was making for the Hey email
| app.
|
| Hey couldn't push a new bug fix update in the timeframe it took
| to mitigate an existing complaint regarding outside
| subscriptions. So they had to keep a buggy app in the App Store
| in the meantime.
| jmull wrote:
| I'm guessing the way this is going to work in practice is an
| update would be allowed if it contains a violation but the
| violating behavior is substantially the same as the existing
| version but had not previously been flagged.
|
| New violating behaviors and existing violations behaviors that
| had previously been flagged would prevent the update from being
| approved.
| anticensor wrote:
| Automatically by edit distance?
| munawwar wrote:
| I have deprecated my apps on Apple Store. I cant even put a
| message saying I am going to remove my app in couple months to my
| current users without another app review.
|
| Anyway, after reading the comments here, I am glad I am not
| supporting this mess.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| > For apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no
| longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those
| related to legal issues. You'll instead be able to address
| guideline violations in your next submission.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| So we just slip in our third party app stores in "bug fixes" now?
|
| Or what exactly _is_ a legal issue?
| foobarding wrote:
| My question exactly.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| Presumably both those guidelines issues that stem from a
| guideline based on legislation (apps that support criminality,
| etc) and those that stem from active or pending court cases.
| Despegar wrote:
| Bad faith actors probably aren't going to get away with rules
| lawyering.
| Gaelan wrote:
| What used to happen is this:
|
| You release version v1.0, with something that's borderline
| under Apple's policies. Apple approves it.
|
| You release version v1.1, with just bug fixes. Apple decides
| what you did in 1.0 wasn't OK after all, so you can't release
| your bug fix until you're removed whatever apple thinks is
| noncompliant.
|
| This happened with Hey, for example.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Happened all the time at my old job.
|
| I will never, ever, work on apple software again.
| cptskippy wrote:
| That happened 3 years after our app launched, a reviewer
| decided we were violating a guidelines and held up all our
| App releases until the WWDC when they announced changes to
| the guidelines that would permit what we were doing. We still
| had to an an executive involved for them to re-review the app
| and approve our backlog of bug fixes.
| fooey wrote:
| This happens to us _constantly_
|
| We sell a business tool, once the business account is
| upgraded, the rest of it just pay per seat linked to that
| org. All our sales are done over the phone, so we don't need
| to accept payments in app. We never ever tell you in the app
| how you can upgrade to the premium version. We never even
| link to our own damn website out of fear of Apple's wrath.
|
| About 1/4 of the times we submit big fixes or feature updates
| we lose the game of Apple Review Roulette, and get denied. So
| we have to do an appeal and explain it all, again, and so far
| at least, the 2nd tier always approves it.
|
| Practically, it just means that everything we do with Apple,
| you have to plan for it to take 2 weeks
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Practically, it just means that everything we do with
| Apple, you have to plan for it to take 2 weeks_
|
| Not only that, there is always the chance that 2nd tier
| support will stop approving your app and then your users
| will be stuck with a version of the app that needs bug
| fixes that Apple won't allow to ship.
| valuearb wrote:
| You kids have it easy. My first App was held up for 6 weeks
| due to its name! Back then even standard App Review with no
| problems took a week minimum.
|
| It is so much faster now.
| virgilp wrote:
| > Or what exactly is a legal issue?
|
| A bugfix to Fortnite.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| > And now, in addition to appealing decisions about whether an
| app violates guidelines, you can suggest changes to the
| guidelines.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| And this has already been used successfully by GuardianVPN
|
| https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1299777657744142336
| IshKebab wrote:
| Maybe. Their app already wasn't violating the guidelines. I
| suspect an Apple reviewer misunderstood and Apple's "we'll
| update the guidelines" is just "we'll clarify the existing
| policy without changing it".
| benologist wrote:
| This story keeps floating around but the reality is Apple saw
| a $0.99 in-app purchase for a one-day pass, interpreted that
| as a one-day non-recurring subscription, which they don't
| support, but they demanded subscription billing be used
| instead of in app purchases.
|
| They conceded this utterly pointless problem they invented
| for the developer. Developers have been arguing against these
| for years, stupid rejections were once so common that Apple
| threatened against revealing them to the press in the
| official guidelines [1].
|
| It's yet to be seen if they will cave on any issues like
| emulators, or apps mocking President Xi, or Xbox streaming,
| or external billing, full web browsers, transparency about
| their transaction fees, porn etc.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20141226094343/https://develo
| per...
| fuu_dev wrote:
| I am not very knowledgeable of the US law but a law websiste2
| does point out that anti competitive behavior is punishable, a
| monopoly position is not. I personally would label a lot of
| things apple does (like e.g. not allowing game streaming from 3rd
| parties, not allowing the use of other browsers, not allow people
| to use existing payment infrastructure, ...) as anti competitive.
|
| A layer on youtube3 however says throughout multiple videos that
| epic has a (if even)very weak case and apple is in the right.
|
| I would be interested to have someone break it down to understand
| the case.
|
| [2]https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/
|
| [3]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5RTzzeCFurWTPLm8usDkQ
| jariel wrote:
| Someone, including a few very big names like Netrlix, Wikipedia
| etc. need to coordinate an 'app store strike' and pull their apps
| for a week.
|
| Big brands won't have to worry as their downloads will pick up
| the week after, though it will piss off some of their customers.
|
| It will however create a massive, international PR storm over the
| issue, and every press outlet in the world will be talking about
| it widely.
|
| If the PR is well messaged and coordinated, it can be made into
| an anti-trust populist issue, which will hit the vein of some
| Democratic lawmakers who may in a couple of months be empowered
| to move on it.
| pier25 wrote:
| I have a feeling these suggestions will basically be a black
| hole, much like all feedback mechanisms Apple provides.
|
| I would like to be proved wrong though.
| Dahoon wrote:
| It is hilarious to read threads about Apple's app reviews. Every
| single time there's something about Google Play lots of
| commenters praise Apple but in reality it is at least just as
| bad.
| jordansmithnz wrote:
| Like other commenters here, I've also experienced app rejections
| that seem arbitrary and fail to look at the bigger picture.
|
| I don't have any proof of this, but I have a suspicion that app
| reviewers may need to meet some sort of rejection quota. It would
| certainly explain some of the frivolous rejections I've seen.
| Reviewers must be evaluated and held to account by some
| standards, so it doesn't seem too far fetched to think that some
| sort of rejection ratio may be applied, or at least tracked
| somewhere.
|
| If this is the case, it's not necessarily an easy problem to
| solve. How you you enforce a consistent quality bar without using
| some reviewer KPI/metric that's inherently flawed? This being
| said: rejecting apps for menial reasons does not seem like the
| right compromise to make.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| My update, which has a new feature but no bug fixes, is currently
| in limbo because the reviewer is getting mysterious proxy
| connection errors that no customer of mine has ever reported.
|
| I saw another developer today say their app was "rejected"
| because the reviewer asked "How does the app utilize Touch Bar
| and where can we locate these features?"
|
| This kind of crap happens all the time, and I don't see anything
| in this announcement that will help. App review is just plain
| incompetent and terrible.
| xiaolingxiao wrote:
| Apple test everything on a VPN. This issue took me 2 weeks to
| resolve, and they had to whitelist the IP addresses for the
| provider I used :(
| [deleted]
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Oh no! App review found a bug in your app that none of your
| customers ran into before and now you have to fix it before
| your app is accepted!
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Wait, there are actual people reviewing every app update on the
| app store? Doesn't that require crazy amounts of manpower? Are
| they code reviewing or testing the app or what?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Wait, there are actual people reviewing every app update
| on the app store?_
|
| Apple's made themselves the sole arbiter when it comes what
| software is allowed to run millions of people's phones, so
| I'd hope so!
|
| Imagine the bureaucratic nightmare that would erupt from
| automating that process, and the businesses that will live
| and die based off of an automated filter deciding whether or
| not their products can be sold to users who want them.
| viro wrote:
| Yea... Thats what that 30% pays for.
| donarb wrote:
| No, that's what the $99 a year pays for. You can create and
| upload a free app to the App Store and Apple gets nothing.
| viro wrote:
| You realize both things can pay those salaries right?
| Paying customers subsidizing non-paying customers is
| rather common. Also you know free apps have in-app
| purchases right?
| donarb wrote:
| Not every free app has in-app purchases. My city,
| Seattle, has an app called Find-it, Fix-it where I can
| report potholes or abandoned cars. One Bus Away is an app
| that shows bus arrival times. I have grocery apps that
| show me what's on sale and give me digital coupons. None
| of these apps have in-app purchases.
| 8note wrote:
| If no apps had in-app purchases, there's no guarantee
| that Apple could still pay those salaries.
| ksec wrote:
| By Apple's definition, these Apps have not contributed
| anything to the App Store and Apple.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Your app helps Apple sell devices and their margins are
| large.
| namiller2 wrote:
| No code review since you only upload a build. The reviewer
| usually runs the app and pokes around a bit. You can provide
| them with test logins if it is an authenticated app. They
| have certain things they look for (errors, payments not
| through Apple, etc.)
| ehsankia wrote:
| I believe they run a bunch of automated test on an internal
| test server, maybe some parts get flagged and re-tested
| manually if I had to guess.
| shagie wrote:
| They verify that the app preforms what it is supposed to be
| doing and doesn't negatively impact the device.
|
| A code scanner will be run that examines the system calls and
| makes sure that it isn't using internal/undocumented APIs
| that may cause the app to fail when the operating system is
| updated.
|
| And yes, this is done for every app and every update. Free
| and paid. Yes, it requires a crazy amount of manpower.
|
| This is also something that introduces a human component to
| the review process - it is possible to get someone who
| misinterprets how the app is working or how a particular rule
| is applied to the review of the app and _human_ mistakes can
| be made.
| w0mbat wrote:
| The Apple code scanner is buggy. I had an app rejected for
| an alleged call to an internal API that the app does not
| actually call. I had to appeal to the app review board, who
| approved my build, but it delayed a critical bug fix.
|
| Friends have seen the same problem, with different bogus
| API violations reported.
| namiller2 wrote:
| We once got rejected and they sent a screenshot back of an
| error. The screenshot wasn't even our app.
| Diederich wrote:
| May I ask: if it was, how was that situation resolved?
| hobofan wrote:
| It's been a few years since I developed for iOS, but I
| guess via the "escalate this issue" button in the review
| dialogue.
|
| So many of our updates were first rejected by a reviewer in
| the first round for bogus reasons and after escalating them
| were quickly approved. With both of those steps taking a
| few days each, this made updates on iOS such an annoyance
| that we put it on a slower release cycle than Android.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I have had an app rejected because it described the ingredients
| necessary to cast a spell that could cause damage to others.
|
| This was in an app for managing a Dungeons and Dragons
| campaign.
|
| I made some trivial change and resubmitted without issue. I'm
| still annoyed by that.
| jmull wrote:
| That's almost a free bug report. That's a good thing.
| Investigate.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > the reviewer asked "How does the app utilize Touch Bar and
| where can we locate these features?"
|
| This kind of arrogant behavior really makes me mad.
| donarb wrote:
| Why is this arrogant? If they are asking about the Touch Bar,
| it's most likely because the developer mentioned adding some
| feature to the Touch Bar in the release notes and it is not
| apparent what that feature is. You can't advertise something
| that doesn't exist.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| No, the developer did not mention Touch Bar in the release
| notes, and the app has no specific Touch Bar features.
|
| Nothing about Touch Bar is required in the App Store
| guidelines.
| dsl wrote:
| You either referenced NSTouchBar or included a library
| that did so. Sometimes it is as simple as a error
| reporting library or ad network client trying to
| enumerate the device hardware.
|
| The Human Interface Guidelines explicitly lay out what is
| allowed and not allowed with the Touch Bar. For example,
| you can't turn it in to an extended display.
| https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
| guideline...
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| > You either referenced NSTouchBar or included a library
| that did so.
|
| Who are you talking to?
| dsl wrote:
| You were speaking authoritatively about the underlying
| code of an app that had a review issue related to Touch
| Bar, and made an incorrect statement that there are no
| design requirements for that feature. I was giving you
| guidance on why that item gets flagged for review.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| > You were speaking authoritatively about the underlying
| code of an app
|
| I know the developer, who was talking about the
| rejection.
|
| > that had a review issue related to Touch Bar,
|
| Several other developers chimed in and said they randomly
| got the same exact question. It's not a "review issue"
| per se, although it does prevent the app from getting
| approved. It may be some weird kind of obnoxious poll
| Apple is running. (Apple really wants devs to support
| Touch Bar.)
|
| > and made an incorrect statement that there are no
| design requirements for that feature. I was giving you
| guidance on why that item gets flagged for review.
|
| No, this is an incorrect interpretation of what I said.
| What I meant was that the App Store Review Guidelines
| don't require you to support the Touch Bar. You can have
| a Mac App Store app with no Touch Bar customization. None
| of my apps have any.
| hobofan wrote:
| Yup, sounds very much on par with our experience. On the
| first version of our app, we especially mentioned in the
| review comments (and configured in the release build)
| that we do not support iPads, as that wasn't a priority
| for our initial release and would have required
| additional testing work. Review came back as rejected
| with a comment along the lines of "Hey, why don't you
| support iPads?".
| xuki wrote:
| It's the inconsistency that makes me worried every time app
| review takes longer than a day. And then that dreaded message
| "New Message from App Store Review Regarding xxx" arrives, for
| something that has been in the app since 1.0.
| Humdeee wrote:
| I've honestly been successful just retrying, uploading and
| submitting the same build. Got it through the 3rd time.
| duxup wrote:
| Stuff makes me wonder ... what does it take to be an apple app
| reviewer? Could I do a better job?
| Zak wrote:
| I suspect the problem is not primarily one of individual
| skill. It's one of volume/workload and incentives that don't
| prioritize fairness to developers.
|
| It's probably exacerbated by the lack of sideloading and
| alternate app stores on the platform.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I did some googling and it seemed to indicate the
| reviewers are actually at Apple... with the scale of work I
| would expect they were not / be someplace cheaper.
| carstenhag wrote:
| Could sti be hired at Apple directly, but at another
| city/country with cheap wage costs. No clue though where
| they have their employees.
| owaislone wrote:
| I wonder if that is because of the technical skill required to
| do app reviews. If you are "too competent" as a coder,
| obviously you'd go and be developer somewhere else instead so I
| suppose it is kind of a requirement for people who reviews app
| submissions to not be as competent as developers as those
| people submitting the apps?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Then Apple should pay their reviewers enough that they're
| able to do their job without having to jump ship to another
| employer. It seems like Apple doesn't care enough to do so,
| though.
|
| It's too bad that there isn't real competition on iOS app
| distribution.
| gcheong wrote:
| I doubt you have to be a full on developer. Probably along
| the lines of a QA tester. Some overlap for sure with
| developers but a different skillset mostly. I think it would
| be interesting to work as one for a while just to see how the
| sausage is made though.
| drampelt wrote:
| I've been having similar issues with one of our apps, the
| reviewer can't seem to log in and keeps getting network error
| messages. No customers have had any issues, I've tried logging
| in to multiple accounts including the apple reviewer account on
| multiple networks and I have no issues whatsoever. It's really
| frustrating.
| kevinob11 wrote:
| I had the same issue once and was convinced that I must have
| pointed the reviewer account to the wrong server. I spent 2
| days debugging before I finally asked the reviewer to check
| their network connection, I was approved the next day. They
| did send a nice response admitting the issue was on their
| end, lesson learned.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| > lesson learned
|
| Did they learn a lesson, or just you?
| kevinob11 wrote:
| Just me, spend ~15 minutes sanity checking then just ask
| them to test again.
| foobarbazetc wrote:
| Is this for macOS?
|
| We have the same issue and have never been able to get our
| macOS app approved (not a big deal but... annoying).
| drampelt wrote:
| iOS, we don't have macOS apps so haven't run into it there
| but could be a similar problem.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Yep, I've been hearing a lot of issues like this for the past
| week. It's definitely an issue with their internal test
| servers, and even though hundreds of different apps are
| having the exact same issue, they keep insisting it's the
| devs fault...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apple takes 30% of all sales and yet can't even hire
| skilled quality assurance workers to run the approval
| process for their App Store?
|
| There needs to be real competition in the mobile app
| distribution space because this is absurd.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| Apple said they review 100,000 apps per week.
|
| I don't think anyone can do that sanely at scale.
|
| Which is why nobody should try.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 1,000 - 2,000 dedicated quality assurances workers could
| review between 1 to 2.5 app per hour each week. Adding
| more personnel cuts this number down drastically.
|
| It certainly can be done. Besides, this is a problem
| Apple has decided it can handle, since it decided that
| its customers can't benefit from competition between app
| stores with different approval processes.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| > 1,000 - 2,000 dedicated quality assurances workers
| could review between 1 to 2.5 app per hour each week.
|
| Are those people even out there and available?
|
| I mean, maybe there are right now because of Great
| Depression II, but were they available from 2008 to 2019?
|
| As a company, Apple is generally against remote work,
| with only grudging exceptions, so that's another issue in
| hiring.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Are those people even out there and available?_
|
| There are over 4 million of software engineers in the
| United States alone, and I'd wager that many of them are
| capable of doing QA. Apple is a company that is able to
| pay competitive wages for their talent.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| I'm a software engineer, and I would never want this job.
| It's got to be incredibly boring and tedious.
|
| Most reviews are for minor app updates. "Bug fixes and
| performance improvements." Ho hum. Twitter and many other
| companies release app updates every week, just because
| they can.
|
| I suspect the job of app reviewer has a pretty high
| turnover.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'm a software engineer, and I would never want this
| job. It's got to be incredibly boring and tedious._
|
| That's cool, but testing roles exist throughout the
| industry and some people choose QA as a career.
|
| I wouldn't want to be an IT support specialist, it sounds
| like a boring job to me, but that doesn't mean that there
| aren't a million career support specialists employed by
| trillion dollar companies like Apple.
|
| I'm sure people would line up to be paid well to work on
| Apple's QA even if you wouldn't.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't think the problem here is with the QA workers.
| This is clearly a bug in the underlying internal test
| framework, which the QA workers have very little info
| about. And the likelihood of a given worker seeing enough
| of these errors for them to realize it's an issue with
| the system and not the app is fairly low.
|
| The real issue is that the engineering team who maintains
| the internal app checking system 1. needs to have
| infrastructure to detect abnormal amount of a given error
| and 2. need to notify the QA team so the QA team can
| communicate it with the devs, rather than just blaming
| the apps.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Latency issues? Perhaps the reviewer is on the other side of
| the globe?
| jliptzin wrote:
| I worked on a dating app that would almost always get rejected
| because the reviewer would find a profile that had partial
| nudity or someone in a sexy pose and would just reject the
| whole binary for that reason. Even for major bug fixes. Even
| for a feature we had added that would make it _easier_ for
| users to report inappropriate photos on our app. They were
| holding back that feature because they found an inappropriate
| photo in the app. Updates would take on average 4 weeks to get
| approved. Very infuriating.
| cnst wrote:
| Touch Bar sucks. I cannot wait until they start offering the
| option to not have the Touch Bar; it's such a gimmick; I bet
| I'm not the only one who'd pay more to NOT have Touch Bar, but
| have the physical function keys instead.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| I literally camped out the refurbished macs section until I
| found the specs I wanted without the Touch Bar. Took like 4
| months, but I got it cheaper than new so it was worth it IMO
| anfilt wrote:
| Till they allow users to side load any changes are just
| platitudes.
| valuearb wrote:
| If iOS is ever forced to allow side-loading, it becomes far
| less attractive to its core market.
| jjcon wrote:
| You can already sideload on iOS (with no jailbreak) - it is
| admittedly janky though.
|
| I sideload a YouTube Vanced - like app on all my devices
| anfilt wrote:
| You basically need to build the program yourself and it
| only works for 7 days.
|
| Also good luck loading anything like an alternative OS.
| judge2020 wrote:
| To clarify, side-loaded apps are only signed with a
| certificate valid for 7 days if you're on a regular, non-
| developer Apple account. If you pay $99/yr for the
| developer account, that is increased to 1 year.
|
| There are workarounds being worked on for this - one being
| AltStore [1] (does not allow arbitrary IPAs yet).
|
| You can also sideload on Windows/Linux with Cydia
| Impactor[0] - on Mac you can use either impactor or
| xcode/CLI tools to sign IPAs.
|
| 0: http://www.cydiaimpactor.com/
|
| 1: https://altstore.io/
| valuearb wrote:
| You can also use the enterprise program to distribute up
| to 10,000 copies duectly (might actually be more now).
| tech234a wrote:
| A few minor corrections: AltStore does allow sideloading
| arbitrary IPAs, even on the non-Patreon version, and IIRC
| Cydia Impactor is currently broken for free accounts.
| Rotten194 wrote:
| You don't have to sideload if you don't want to. Why is this
| so hard for people to understand?
| valuearb wrote:
| A mass of insecure side-loads damages platform security.
|
| 99.9% of users have no clue how their phone works, they
| won't know how their iPhone got hacked, and they will blame
| Apple.
|
| It will reduce a big differentiator between iPhone and
| Android costing sales.
|
| For developers bad publicity from these events will make
| their customers more gun shy about buying and installing
| apps.
| anfilt wrote:
| If that was case people would quit buying apple devices
| because people who jail break their device downloaded
| malware... However, that is not the case. If anything
| those jail breaks lead to an increase of users.
| [deleted]
| cheeze wrote:
| Uhh... what? How?
|
| My mother doesn't care that I can install a 3rd party app on
| Android, why would my grandma on iOS?
| augustt wrote:
| Its core market does not even know what side-loading refers
| to.
| MBCook wrote:
| For those thinking 'they already announced this', you're right.
|
| The change, as I understand it, is that today the policy goes
| into effect.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I wonder how intentional it is that Apple chose to terminate
| Epic Games' developer account one business day prior to this
| going into effect. Epic Games presumably can't access the form
| since it can't log in. (And obviously they don't want to screw
| with the Unreal Engine's Apple account on this fight.)
| OzzyB wrote:
| I would say it's pretty unrelated.
|
| There have been a slew of high-profile App Store
| "altercations" over the past weeks/months, and Apple is an
| ongoing concern with it's own roadmaps and release schedules;
| who already announced policy changes were coming WWDC2020.
|
| If this announcement was a month ago ppl might think it was
| Hey.com related, for example.
| mythz wrote:
| This was announced before Epic violated the ToS whose account
| was terminated after the 14 days to comply with the App Store
| rules had elapsed.
|
| This has an exception that still wouldn't allow Epic's games
| to remain in store:
|
| > bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline
| violations except for those related to legal issues
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _This was announced before Epic violated the ToS whose
| account was terminated after the 14 days to comply with the
| App Store rules had elapsed._
|
| This is false; the new policy dates from _today_ and Epic
| 's ToS violation was several weeks ago. This policy is
| clearly in response to the negative publicity and the
| judge's ruling barring Apple from ending Unreal Engine
| access on iOS.
| mythz wrote:
| > _This is false; the new policy dates from today and
| Epic 's ToS violation was several weeks ago. This policy
| is clearly in response to the negative publicity and the
| judge's ruling barring Apple from ending Unreal Engine
| access on iOS._
|
| Strange to see someone so quick to denounce a statement
| as false & professes to know exactly why they announced
| it yet couldn't be bothered to do even the most
| rudimentary research? Why?
|
| This change was well known in advance to anyone following
| the news cycle around the Hey saga & WWDC. Apple
| announced exactly this in a press release in _June_ with
| this upcoming change [1]:
|
| > First, developers will not only be able to appeal
| decisions about whether an app violates a given guideline
| of the App Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a
| mechanism to challenge the guideline itself. Second, for
| apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no
| longer be delayed over guideline violations except for
| those related to legal issues.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reveals-
| new-dev...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I agree this was indeed announced prior to the Epic Games
| event, but Apple chose when to remove their developer
| account. Apple absolutely had the leeway to remove an app
| violating their terms (which at that point, the account is
| no longer violating the policy), but not close out the
| entire account. The choice to do that was punitive, because
| they really want Epic to roll back the change for revenue
| reasons.
|
| I am not sure "they sued Apple" counts as a "legal reason"
| for blocking the app. Not giving Apple a cut of sales isn't
| illegal.
|
| (Note the judge during the TRO hearing felt both companies
| were being stubborn here, as whether Epic removed the
| payment method or Apple allowed the app, the winning
| company to get back their monetary impact upon the
| conclusion of the case. Keeping the app off the store is
| "making a point" more than actually protecting any revenue
| on either side.)
| valuearb wrote:
| It's simple contract violation, Epic violated terms and
| conditions they agreed to in exchange for being on the
| Store.
|
| Leaving the app up allows Epic to continue to break rules
| and Apple has consistently said if Epic submitted a
| version of Fortnite without the alternate purchase
| options and the dynamic updating that allowed Epic to
| modify it without App Review they'd put it back up.
| Instead Epic submitted three versions with those same
| features.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Apple's policy on terminating entire developer accounts
| is consistent in that malicious violations of the
| guidelines will be considered breach of contract and
| warrant deletion of the account within 14 days.
|
| Apple did indeed have to keep their Unreal Engine
| developer account open though thanks to a court order, so
| Epic can still develop UE -
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/24/apple-ordered-to-not-
| block...
| ehsankia wrote:
| If anything, I could actually see them wanting to release
| this earlier, and the whole Epic stuff delaying this
| release because it would've looked a lot worse if it had
| come up a lot closer to the incident. But either way, the
| release may have moved forward or back a little, but the
| intention was definitely there before the Epic incident.
| trainerfu wrote:
| We've been making white-label apps for fitness businesses for a
| few years now. Our white label app allows fitness businesses to
| deliver better personal training experience to their clients.
| Personal trainers and their clients can use the app to plan and
| track workouts, track progress, chat with each other etc.
|
| Recently, Apple started rejecting our white-label app because
| allegedly we are breaking their "3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services"
| guideline. As per the guideline, if a business is selling digital
| content on other platforms that's accessible inside the iOS app
| then those items should also be available as an in-app purchase
| on the iOS app too.
|
| This was very surprising because we always thought personal
| training services to fall under the category of "goods and
| services" and not digital content. And as per guideline "3.1.5(a)
| Goods and Services Outside of the App" we aren't even allowed to
| use in-app purchase selling services.
|
| But Apple reviewers disagree that our app falls under the
| "services" category. According to reviewers, since clients are
| getting "digital value" from the app we therefore must add an in-
| app purchase to the app.
|
| We are ready to add a free tier to the app. But that is a no-go
| solution. We must add in-app purchases of some kind to get the
| apps approved.
|
| The "3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services" guideline does not make
| sense. You can use the same guideline to force any for-profit
| business that offers anything useful inside an iOS app to add an
| in-app purchase. How is this even allowed?
|
| By the same reasoning apps built for physical therapists, doctors
| should add in-app purchases too?
|
| And why is Uber not giving a 30% cut? Their customers do get
| digital-value inside the app.
|
| Not sure if this new change can actually help us.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is a blatant attempt by Apple to extra their 30% rent on
| business that happens outside of their App Store. It's shocking
| that one of the wealthiest companies in the world acts this way
| towards small developers and companies.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding this rule. If I made a phone
| game where there was a "store" where I could buy physical
| stickers but each sticker pack came with a code for 10,000
| in-game coins Apple would see that as just a way to get
| around paying 30% for something digital.
|
| And if the _only_ way to get in-game coins was by buying
| stickers off-app Apple would say you have to offer buying
| them in-app too as an IAP.
| sixo wrote:
| Yeah, when a rule has all these bizarre apparent loopholes
| and where the rule-setter needs to examine the implied
| intent of the action... it might be a bad rule.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think any system of rules is going to look weird and
| organic when they have millions of people trying to rule
| lawyer the system.
|
| Like the basic tenant of "we take a 30% cut of the sale
| of all digital goods on our platform" is pretty
| straightforward, you only run into weird rules when you
| try find ways around it.
| trainerfu wrote:
| How are we trying to find way around it? We don't want to
| sell anything via IAP because it does not make sense in
| our app. But somehow we are forced to do it.
| Spivak wrote:
| Look, I don't at all think you're trying to get away with
| something -- I think you're caught up in weird rule that
| was intended to plug the loophole of "selling a stick of
| gum that comes with a free bottle of water." From the
| reviewer's perspective they see that when personal
| trainers sell their services to clients they're also
| selling your/their white-label app. To Apple that's a
| sale of digital goods and they want their pound of flesh.
| The fact that it's bundled with an IRL service doesn't
| seem to matter to them.
|
| You might be able to get away with skirting this rule if
| your white-label app is just a client to a fitness
| tracking service. Then it should fall under the same
| rules as Netflix and other "reader" apps.
| kevingadd wrote:
| fwiw, multiple big games I can think of do exactly what you
| described and are still on the iOS store. At least one of
| them brings in millions USD a month AND the out-of-app-only
| purchase flow is a huge money maker. Google lets them get
| away with it too, though, so it might just be a "big
| companies obey a different set of rules" situation.
| ksec wrote:
| I have been thinking of using this loophole for ages but
| have never seen it done. Mind sharing the name of the
| game?
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| > It's shocking that one of the wealthiest companies in the
| world acts this way towards small developers and companies.
|
| It's not shocking at all. Corporations pull this kind of shit
| constantly.
| heisenbit wrote:
| This is corporate strategy running amok. Clearly the whole
| app review has been scaled up and is now using less than
| stellar resources quite possibly unfamiliar with the OS and
| basics of business beyond the training they received.
| Spivak wrote:
| So if I'm understanding this right, you sell "app as a service"
| to personal trainers who then direct their clients to download
| the app you made them and track workouts.
|
| I think the "digital service" is the app itself because you
| only get access to the app if you're paying for a personal
| trainer. So I guess they want you to support buying the app
| directly not as part of a personal trainer package even though
| I'm guessing nobody would actually do that.
|
| It definitely seems like you're running up against the rule
| meant to prevent "buy a coffee and get in-game coins free as as
| way to get around the 30% cut."
| trainerfu wrote:
| Yes, we build apps for gym and personal training businesses.
| Most of the value is delivered in-person or Skype
| (assessment, workout design, taking client through a workout
| etc). I feel like the guideline is not clear cut.
|
| The personal training business has a high marginal cost and
| unlike games or other digital services, the value can be
| unlocked immediately after in-app purchase.
|
| I feel the marginal cost of a product should determine what
| qualifies for this guideline. But for now we are in limbo.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I believe Automattic ran into this one recently. Check that
| none of the link to the internet allow you to open to a "plans"
| page.
| trainerfu wrote:
| We don't have any links inside the app that direct the users
| to the fitness business website. We even had a call with the
| app reviewer and this thing never came up. We would be happy
| to remove any links if they find. But I don't think that is
| the case.
| qppo wrote:
| > By the same reasoning apps built for physical therapists,
| doctors should add in-app purchases too?
|
| It would be really useful for me to pay my copays with Apple
| Pay for telemedicine, for what its worth. I'd love this as a
| feature.
| trainerfu wrote:
| An app developer can implement copay feature on iOS using
| Apple pay without any issues right now.
|
| But that is not the issue..
|
| See I go to physical therapist for my shoulder pain and get
| home workout on my app. Apple is saying that you can't
| deliver home workout unless you add those home workouts are
| also available as an in-app purchase.
| technics256 wrote:
| Is the copay due still subject to the 30% Apple tax in this
| instance?
| trainerfu wrote:
| Most probably not.
| jlokier wrote:
| Would you still love it if the price has to be raised 30% to
| cover the IAP fee?
| himinlomax wrote:
| He would love it because he would not be allowed to be
| informed about the existence of that surcharge.
| qppo wrote:
| Well thankfully that's against Apples ToS and my insurance
| plan
| koverda wrote:
| Is it really against apple's ToS to increase in-app
| prices to make up for the 30% fee?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It was part of a set of changes that were meant to go
| into effect in July but that Apple rolled back. You're
| allowed to charge a different price but you can't tell
| the user that they can get it cheaper elsewhere or that
| you're paying 30% to Apple.
| etimberg wrote:
| Not if they raise it everywhere to cover it. This is
| exactly how Apple's policy can raise prices for end
| users.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Competitors without apps will not raise their prices,
| though.
| sneak wrote:
| 30% fees are only for digital goods/services. Real-world
| goods and services don't incur them.
| joncrane wrote:
| Wouldn't a telemedicine appointment using the app for
| voice/video be indeed a "digital" good?
| sneak wrote:
| That's a good question. Personally I'd think no, as it's
| a real-world service (healthcare) that just happens to
| use a video call, but Apple's now-infamous hunger for
| services revenue growth may feel differently.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The Apple/Facebook dispute over the 30% for digital
| events (Apple demands 30%, Facebook thinks _nobody_ -
| Facebook included - should be taking a cut) seems to make
| clear that Apple believes you owe them a cut no matter
| what as long as it 's digital.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| I don't think Apple Pay integration would incur the 30%
| fee. It would be closer to a CC transaction fee. ~3% (based
| on Stripe).
| Dahoon wrote:
| All IAP for digital is added a 30% fee in iOS (unless you
| are a big company that might make a backroom deal like
| Amazon).
| throw03172019 wrote:
| But Apple Pay isn't IAP.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Shill: If it's in your market I highly suggest Kaiser! they
| have video telemedicine to actual doctors that's super useful
| for things like Flu, small maladies, follow ups. Plus I can
| email any of my doctors or anyone on my care team. Save a
| visit just send an email - even get a scripts for simple
| things.
| qppo wrote:
| This is literally the only reason I have a chromium browser
| installed on my personal machine. It's a great idea, but
| their implementation is quite bad.
| throwayws wrote:
| I can imagine reviewers getting bonuses for each app they force
| to offer IAP. Just speculation though.
| matwood wrote:
| I feel like someone at Apple either lost the script or made a
| mistake around getting in the middle of these services. Why try
| to force the WP app to add IAP or your app? It can't be for the
| money. Let's be real, unless Netflix or some other huge service
| provider comes back, Apple is ruining their reputation over
| literal couch change (last I checked 1/3 of services money came
| from Google paying to be the default browser...). So is there
| some other reason? Does Apple really think it offers a better
| consumer experience?
| trainerfu wrote:
| You are right. It is like meeting guidelines have become more
| important than any thing else.
|
| And in our case adding IAP will surely make for a poor user
| experience. How a fitness business can serve users that sign
| up for an in-app purchase from anywhere in the world. A
| personal trainer can't help everyone. They have a specific
| niche and specific type of people they can and want to serve.
| mdoms wrote:
| > It can't be for the money.
|
| That's right. Huge multinational corporations famously don't
| like money.
| musingsole wrote:
| Don't underestimate the power of immoral mazes. With a
| corporation the size of Apple, the middlepeople are all
| very far removed from the specifics of what does and
| doesn't generate profit and instead are following their
| interpretation of directives and attempting to appease
| their superiors -- which may or may not be quantified in
| monthly revenue. I imagine in the case of app review, their
| performance metrics _can 't_ be expressed in revenue, so
| their must be using something else to grade themselves.
| matwood wrote:
| > That's right. Huge multinational corporations famously
| don't like money.
|
| In some cases yes. The whole concept of 'Innovators
| Dilemma' is built on this fact. Squeezing an extra million
| here or there is a waste of Apple's time at their scale. It
| doesn't move the Apple revenue needle. Getting WP or some
| fitness app, even in aggregate to give 30% of a subset of
| customer subscription does nothing for Apple except hurt
| their brand. It probably actually costs them money from
| losing brand value.
|
| Google OTOH pays Apple billions to be the default and/or
| first position on the search list. That's why we're
| unlikely to see an Apple search engine anytime soon.
| pier25 wrote:
| So much is open to interpretation and Apple is not even
| consistently applying their own rules, ah sorry, guidelines.
| holoduke wrote:
| They are consistent. Bigger publishers get away with much
| less bullshit than smaller ones. Once you are big enough you
| get your own apple account manager which makes business a lot
| easier.
| Dahoon wrote:
| Then how is Amazon's Apple Fee 15% and not 30% like
| everyone elses? The bigger you are the less "Rule" and more
| "Guideline" they are.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Original announcement for reference:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reveals-new-dev...
|
| _> Additionally, two changes are coming to the app review
| process and will be implemented this summer. First, developers
| will not only be able to appeal decisions about whether an app
| violates a given guideline of the App Store Review Guidelines,
| but will also have a mechanism to challenge the guideline itself.
| Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes
| will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for
| those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to
| address the issue in their next submission._
| croes wrote:
| >First, developers will not only be able to appeal decisions
| about whether an app violates a given guideline of the App
| Store Review Guidelines, but will also have a mechanism to
| challenge the guideline itself.
|
| Sounds good, but Apple still can just simply say no.
| mmastrac wrote:
| The supreme court of Apple's review process will still be the
| press and bad publicity, I see.
| croes wrote:
| That only works for big players like Epic. As a single
| developer doesn't get this kind of attention.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Oh yes, I totally agree and this is one of the reasons I
| think that Apple has abused their iOS AppStore monopoly.
| Only players with similar clout have the ability to fight
| back.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| That's true but there is already at least one case of Apple
| saying yes, so this doesn't seem to be a fake initiative to
| deflect criticism while not changing anything:
| https://twitter.com/chronic/status/1299777657744142336
| dathinab wrote:
| I believe there are two ways of friction/problem:
|
| - such created by accident weather it's because of
| suboptimal rules, vague formulation or reviewers give mad
| with power
|
| - such created intentionally to control the platform in all
| reasonable and unreasonable ways
|
| I believe Apple does try to fix or lesson the burden of the
| first for the benefit of everyone including them.
|
| But they won't do so for the second reason where you most
| likely still get a no even if they are acting unreasonable.
|
| At the same time they now can point to this and say "see we
| are all fair" even if they are not.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Agreed, Apple isn't going to say "Well since you asked
| nicely, I guess you can implement your own in-app
| purchase processing." But having an official recourse on
| their arbitrary app store bans from minor rule
| interpretations is still a great improvement. Probably
| driven by the antitrust attention they're getting, since
| otherwise they've been able to get away with whatever
| they want and small developers can't do anything about
| it.
|
| The remaining big question is whether Apple will rule in
| someone's favor on their own, or if in practice the
| result is still "Things will get fixed if and only if
| they get enough attention on twitter."
| gcheong wrote:
| "so this doesn't seem to be a fake initiative to deflect
| criticism". It is along the lines of "what is the smallest
| change we can make that will satisfy the monopoly
| challenges". It may even be in good faith, but it is very
| low risk for them as they are still ultimately the decider
| of what changes they will make and the entire onus is on
| the developer to argue the case that a certain guideline
| should be changed. If developer feedback on guidelines is
| so important to them why they don't open new guidelines to
| developer feedback before implementing them?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That should be interesting. Most of my bounces are guideline
| issues.
|
| I just released four apps over the weekend, and one of them was
| like "guideline ping-pong," until I got it right.
|
| Usually, I am forced to agree with them, but every now and then,
| I get a true Whiskey Tango Foxtrot one.
| arkokoley wrote:
| We think we are creating a softer and kinder world, but the
| opposite is true. If a guideline is actually an order, what's an
| order?
| makecheck wrote:
| I was once rejected because my one-window app didn't have a
| Minimize button...for a game...that primarily runs in Full
| Screen. Other rejections were at least as pointless, every time
| leaving a bad taste in my mouth and making me wonder why they
| wasted as much time as they did.
|
| The breaking point for me was when the reviewer _refused_ to
| allow my minor update in because it "crashed" in _an unreleased
| minor OS update_ that I literally _could not acquire at the
| time_. I removed my app from the Mac App Store the same day and
| haven't been back.
|
| It is a petty, pointless, and infuriating experience, which
| wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't abundantly clear how much
| trash still makes it into the store and how inconsistent they
| are. I recommend that everyone use the "suggestion" box to
| suggest removing App Review entirely.
| mleonhard wrote:
| You could have asked the reviewer for the crash report, looked
| for access to the OS update, looked for someone with the OS
| update who could test your app, waited until the OS update was
| released, or simply submitted your app update again in hopes of
| getting a more lenient or helpful reviewer.
|
| Why didn't you do those things? I've been in similar situations
| many times and made poor decisions. In my case, I made those
| poor choices because of poor mental habits and low emotional
| awareness.
|
| About 5 years ago, I started spending effort to increase my EQ
| and mental habits. I consulted a therapist regularly for
| several years, read Marshall Rosenberg's Non-violent
| Communication, learned meditation at a free 10-day silent
| retreat, and talked with people close to me about my emotions
| and mental habits. I occasionally ask people close to me for
| feedback on my attitude and behavior. All of this effort as
| paid off. Compared to 5 years ago, I have more stable
| relationships, fewer and shorter arguments, fewer days lost to
| playing unhappy mind-movies, and more work productivity.
|
| I urge you to invest more effort in your EQ skills.
|
| EDIT: s/same situation/similar situations/
| mleonhard wrote:
| If you think my comment doesn't contribute to the discussion,
| please tell me why.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Probably because the app was tested on a prerelease version
| of macOS and you're digging into the developer for having
| poor EQ.
| jaywalk wrote:
| If your game supports a windowed mode (which it certainly
| sounds like it does) then I'd agree that a minimize button
| would be expected.
| addicted wrote:
| Sure it should. I think that's good UI.
|
| Is it the App Review process's role to be the arbiter of what
| is and isn't good UI?
|
| Should it be the App Review process's goal today do this?
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > Is it the App Review process's role to be the arbiter of
| what is and isn't good UI?
|
| When it comes to standard OS conventions, like the minimize
| button, yes. I hope they would also reject a missing "Quit"
| menu item. Hurts accessibility to not follow standard
| conventions.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > When it comes to standard OS conventions, like the
| minimize button, yes. I hope they would also reject a
| missing "Quit" menu item. Hurts accessibility to not
| follow standard conventions.
|
| Although Chrome's nonsense with [?]Q, and Adobe's messing
| with ... everything ... indicates that you can misbehave
| on a fundamental level as long as you're a sufficiently
| powerful actor.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| Chrome is not in the Mac App Store so does not go through
| review.
| Closi wrote:
| > Is it the App Review process's role to be the arbiter of
| what is and isn't good UI?
|
| Apple certainly sees their role as being some sort of QA
| gate, and this would fall under that to some extent.
| EpicEng wrote:
| >Is it the App Review process's role to be the arbiter of
| what is and isn't good UI?
|
| Yes, obviously it is. If you're asking "should it be?",
| that's debatable, but I have no problem with that either.
| danudey wrote:
| > Is it the App Review process's role to be the arbiter of
| what is and isn't good UI?
|
| No, it should be the Human Interface Guidelines' role to be
| the arbiter of what is and is not good UI.
|
| > Should it be the App Review process's goal today do this?
|
| Yes. Who else is going to do it? Apple doesn't want half-
| assed, misbehaving apps on their store, so they enforce it
| at that level. It's unfortunate that such a small detail
| hung up an update, but a deliberate change was made to the
| app to remove fundamental functionality that should exist,
| for no reason that I can tell. Sounds like this is exactly
| what the process is for, and it sounds like it worked.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Is it an HIG requirement now? AFAIK it isn't.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It is a selectively enforced requirement.
| addicted wrote:
| The HIG that Apple has never followed and has published
| apps and promoted UX that is actively against?
| cnst wrote:
| > I recommend that everyone use the "suggestion" box to suggest
| removing App Review entirely.
|
| Probably not worth paying 99 USD/year just to make such a
| suggestion.
|
| Just for those folks who aren't aware that you actually have to
| pay Apple every year for the "privilege" of having your app
| submissions rejected for such random reasons -- even if your
| app is entirely free and non-commercial.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I think the first reason is a legitimate criteria. Any app that
| has a window is definitely expected to have a minimise button -
| it's very strange behaviour if it doesn't, and even games that
| normally run full screen should have this button when placed in
| windowed mode.
|
| The second reason certainly sounds infuriating, but it's odd
| that the reviewer had access to an OS update that you didn't.
| In general, a crash on the latest OS update is a good reason
| for rejection because you're going to have to fix it sooner or
| later anyway. Better to fix it now rather than have to come
| back to it later.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Well they should dogfood their own rules and add such a
| button to Safari. Every time I end up mistakenly tapping Open
| in New Window (which I NEVER want) instead of New Tab, I have
| a very frustrating time figuring out how to gesture that new
| window TF off my screen.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Safari does have a minimize button. It's the yellow one
| that sends it down to the dock, and is present on every
| single window on macOS that I can find. Even the mini-UI
| palette windows like "Safari User Guide" have a mini
| version of the same three window controls.
|
| But if you're trying to _close_ a window that you didn 't
| want to open, you probably want the red button not the
| yellow one.
|
| If what you're trying to do is move a page from its own
| window to another window, you can drag its tab. But that's
| not possible if you have "Show tab bar" disabled in the
| view menu, the tab bar will be hidden for windows with a
| single tab.
|
| Alternate workaround if you find yourself accidentally
| opening things in a new window by accident frequently:
| instead of right clicking and picking from the menu,
| command-click on the link to open it in a new tab. If you
| have a 3-button mouse, middle click will do this as well.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| How do you reverse the effects of "Cmd+H" without
| resorting to the mouse or trackpad?
| adanto6840 wrote:
| "CMD + Tab" seems to reverse it just fine for me
| regardless of which app (ie I just tested it in Chrome).
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Cmd+Tab and select the program you hid.
|
| Hold cmd and keep hitting tab if you need to cycle
| through multiple things, but if you've just done it the
| hidden app should be the first one.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Yep that works for macOS. Not iPadOS.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Ah, yes, iPad Safari has the same problem but no option
| to show the tab bar with a single tab. If you hit the
| "show tabs" button in the corner you can drag it back
| from one Safari instance to the other, but it'll open up
| a new empty tab to replace it. You have to take the other
| copy of Safari back to full screen (to separate it from
| the new copy) and then use the app switcher to kill the
| accidental one.
|
| I don't love this either, it's my biggest complaint about
| iPad's multitasking system.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Cmd-M or Cmd-W to close it. Or click that little orange
| button in the top left corner to minimise it or the red one
| to close it.
| Chlorus wrote:
| He's referring to the mobile version of Safari, which for
| some reason labels 'open in new tab' as 'open in
| background'. If you hit 'open in new window' by mistake
| you end up with a split screen view that can't be swiped
| away with a gesture; you have to long-press the tab icon
| to tell it to merge the tabs in the new window together
| with the old one.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I hate "open in new window" on iOS so much, I turned off
| multiwindowing because every way to close the window felt
| incredibly awkward.
|
| I still have the "open in new window" item there when I
| long-press a link. It now does absolutely nothing if I hit
| it by accident. Which feels inelegant but is a lot better
| than "oh fuck I just made another goddamn new window when I
| wanted a new tab".
| makecheck wrote:
| Well the worst part was, their own Human Interface Guidelines
| even say:
|
| "These options are usually visible, but can be hidden as a
| group, such as......, or _individually disabled_ , such as
| when a full-screen app can't be minimized. ...... A title bar
| should be visible, but _can be hidden in an immersive app
| like a game_."
|
| Either way, this wouldn't be in the top 1000 reasons for
| someone to request a refund for a game on the store so why is
| Apple even concerning itself?
| chuckdries wrote:
| Yeah, why provide an API to disable the minimize button if
| they're going to reject your app for using it
| mlyle wrote:
| Because you might have an occasional transient window
| where it's legitimate to disable minimization but you
| shouldn't do this for main app windows.
| oneplane wrote:
| Because you might use it in an app that you are not going
| to distribute via the public application stores. It's
| also possible that the reviewer made a mistake.
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't buy this - if you add a feature to software you
| know it's going to get used - if they needed it for
| internal stuff they could add it in some private library.
|
| And, if it's something people want so bad that you'd
| allow it for non-published applications then you clearly
| need to solve it by enabling or offering some sort of
| replacement for published applications.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| > In general, a crash on the latest OS update is a good
| reason for rejection because you're going to have to fix it
| sooner or later anyway. Better to fix it now rather than have
| to come back to it later.
|
| That's true, but how do you fix a bug you can't reproduce
| with an unreleased patch you can't acquire, which is probably
| the same for the general public?
|
| There has to be some flexibility here.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Of course, but this situation should not happen. Reviewers
| should be using the latest OS update that is available to
| developers. That has always been my experience, but my
| experience is mostly on iOS not macOS.
| RonanTheGrey wrote:
| In particular because Apple's stated position is
| "Developers should always be developing against the
| latest released version of the platform" (being iOS or
| macOS).
|
| Throwing a rejection because of a bug that can only be
| reproduced on an unobtainable minor patch release doesn't
| seem to fit with that guideline.
| norswap wrote:
| You will never make any friends making this kind of comments.
| Nitpicking is bad enough, calling the OP mistaken without
| evidence is worse. It's just rude.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > I removed my app from the Mac App Store the same day and
| haven't been back.
|
| This is the only winning move.
| mypalmike wrote:
| How about a nice game of chess?
| wolco wrote:
| Along with a charge back for a recent developer subscription.
| lilyball wrote:
| Which Apple will presumably appeal and and win, because the
| charge was legitimate.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Even if they don't, say goodbye to being able to purchase
| anything from Apple ever again.
| wp381640 wrote:
| If it's ever revealed that app reviewers have rejection quotas
| or some other bullshit internal metric that is driving this I
| would be the least surprised
| krspykrm wrote:
| Internal metrics, yes. If another reviewer finds an issue in
| an app that you reviewed, then you get your score docked, so
| reviewers have an incentive to whine about everything, since
| there's no penalty for bringing up issues that aren't
| actually issues and wasting everyone's time.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| Is this speculation, or do you have insider knowledge?
| pier25 wrote:
| An update to a Mac app I was working on was rejected because it
| used some permissions. The reviewer claimed those were not needed
| but, not only those permissions were needed, previous versions of
| the app had those same permissions.
|
| We sent our comments to the reviewer and never got an answer
| back. A couple of days later we appealed to the review board and
| the update was accepted in a matter of hours. Not sure what
| happened there. Our guess was that maybe Apple was testing some
| kind of automated process that failed.
|
| I don't remember the details, but we were using UDP features in
| the app and the permissions were related to being able to receive
| and send UDP packets.
| xxpor wrote:
| I'm shocked they have permissions that are that granular. I can
| understand "network access" in general, but having to ask
| specifically for UDP?
| pier25 wrote:
| Not so much required for UDP specifically, but for being able
| to open a socket and receive packets.
| [deleted]
| szundi wrote:
| I submitted the same stuff with different comments 3 times. 3rd
| time it was accepted. lol
| ehvatum wrote:
| It's all become too much. I'm deprecating Apple support at my
| company. Current company-owned Apple devices may continue to be
| used, and any BYOD is fine if it doesn't run an Oracle DB
| instance, but we will no longer pay for repairs to Apple devices
| and we will not pay to replace them with Apple devices. We have
| about $45k original MSRP of Apple equipment, so it's not a big
| deal, except to us. The trend of Apple hardware and software
| problems soaking up an increasing amount of time would reach the
| ultimate limit of complete 24/7 time consumption by the year
| 2031, if the current trend were allowed to continue.
|
| We are in the robotic manufacturing sector, and also we have a
| lumber mill for some reason.
| ksec wrote:
| I wish this gets more upvote and be shared among other
| business.
| reaperducer wrote:
| What does anything in your comment have to do with App Store
| review process changes?
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| As a developer of a couple of open source macOS apps, I
| couldn't have said it better myself.
| grishka wrote:
| I don't quite understand people complaining about macOS apps.
| You aren't forced to publish in the app store. You can still
| disable Gatekeeper. You can disable code signature and
| entitlement enforcement altogether, although the process is
| messy. There's still nothing technically stopping you from
| avoiding Apple policies.
| pier25 wrote:
| Technically, yes.
|
| In practice you can't really expect to distribute free or
| commercial macOS software without paying the $99 anual fee.
| Even outside the MAS.
|
| Non tech users don't even understand what Gatekeeper is or
| how to disable it. Most will think an unsigned app is a
| virus or whatnot.
|
| Even in Catalina you need to open the terminal to enable
| the "everywhere" option and disable gatekeeper. I'm sure
| this is only going to get worse from now on.
| grishka wrote:
| > In practice you can't really expect to distribute free
| or commercial macOS software without paying the $99 anual
| fee. Even outside the MAS.
|
| I have a small free app (month calendar widget for the
| notification center) and it's self-signed. No one has had
| any problems running it -- none that I'm aware of,
| anyway.
|
| > Non tech users don't even understand what Gatekeeper is
| or how to disable it.
|
| It feels like non-tech users at this point are used to
| computers acting up and being unreliable and thinking
| that everything is a virus. Windows users that installed
| an antivirus have had that same experience since about
| forever.
|
| > Even in Catalina you need to open the terminal to
| enable the "everywhere" option and disable gatekeeper.
|
| They've had this going on for a while. On Mojave too.
| Also it sometimes automatically reverts the setting to
| "only known developers" and you have to use another
| `defaults write` command to prevent that from happening
| in the future. This doesn't help with security, this is
| just plain annoying.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| You can try to understand why macOS developers are
| frustrated with Apple by reading some of these[1] comments
| on HN.
|
| > _You aren 't forced to publish in the app store._
|
| If you don't pay $100 each year to Apple, macOS will treat
| your app as if it is radioactive. If your users don't know
| the magic security ritual to run un-notarized apps is, the
| app will just appear to be broken.
|
| > _You can still disable Gatekeeper._
|
| Yes, if you're a power user. Apple is removing the ability
| to easily run un-notarized software in future macOS
| releases.
|
| > _There 's still nothing technically stopping you from
| avoiding Apple policies._
|
| Apple's literal technical limitations for distribution and
| execution of applications for apps that can't make it
| through Apple's approval process for notarization prevents
| users from using the applications they downloaded but Apple
| doesn't approve of.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24276406
| grishka wrote:
| > Apple is removing the ability to easily run un-
| notarized software in future macOS releases
|
| Actually I'm now thinking that I'd make a launcher. The
| only thing that you have to grant scary permissions to,
| and then run whatever the hell you want on the device you
| bought.
| grishka wrote:
| It does say right there that Big Sur will be requiring
| signatures on all binaries, but it does actually
| specifically say that a self-signed certificate would be
| enough.
|
| If someone wants to distribute apps without notarizing
| them, it's just a matter of adding instructions on how to
| bypass the notarization check.
|
| And again -- there's shouldn't be a party more trusted
| than the device owner. Otherwise I'd characterize such an
| OS as malware.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _If someone wants to distribute apps without notarizing
| them, it 's just a matter of adding instructions on how
| to bypass the notarization check._
|
| In the future, that will require disabling SIP. Good luck
| explaining to a non-power users how to do that.
|
| Your analysis ignores the anticompetitive behavior Apple
| is engaging in. By making unapproved software second-
| class citizens on macOS, only apps that get Apple's
| approval through the Notarization or App Store process
| can be run easily by users.
| grishka wrote:
| > In the future, that will require disabling SIP.
|
| Are you sure about that? Catalina has this "developer
| tools" permission that allows running unsigned/non-
| notarized binaries. Xcode grants that to itself, but you
| could as well grant it to things like Terminal and run
| your app from there. Bonus points for including a shell
| script with your app so the user doesn't have to run
| "scary" commands manually.
|
| Yes, there are going to be (one-time) UX compromises, but
| I think it's possible to make it feel more or less okay
| for the average user.
| clusterfish wrote:
| Jeez, have some empathy for regular people. The whole
| damn point of those measures on Apple's side is to
| introduce friction and make it excessively hard to
| install non-notarized apps. It's already bad and unusable
| by most average people, and that's exactly the goal.
| grishka wrote:
| > The whole damn point of those measures on Apple's side
| is to introduce friction and make it excessively hard to
| install non-notarized apps.
|
| I understand that. And that's why I'm trying to come up
| with a good enough, UX-wise, way to bypass this
| malicious, hostile behavior.
| pier25 wrote:
| > In the future, that will require disabling SIP. Good
| luck explaining to a non-power users how to do that.
|
| Indeed.
|
| Also good luck telling that to your customers.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| A while ago, I developed an Apple Watch app that detected when
| you raised your hand and touched your face and notified you so
| that you could build a habit avoiding doing so
| (https://www.facealert.app).
|
| Apple stretched out the review process before rejecting the app,
| and after I escalated to tcook's email address, I received a call
| from their team telling me my app took "measurements the Apple
| Watch was not designed to support".
|
| This, of course, is complete BS since the _whole_ point of
| generalizable sensors and Apple 's ML tools is to build apps to
| add new capabilities to the device, otherwise all we'd have are
| map and messaging apps. And it's slightly comical that they added
| the feature to detect hand washing in the newest WatchOS,
| something the Apple Watch "was not originally designed to
| support". I'm fairly certain they didn't want to have any part or
| apparent liability for the app if it "didn't work correctly",
| nevermind the app did not mention COVID, disease, or anything
| else controversial.
|
| There was always a way to "escalate" or "appeal" a review, so any
| new processes are smoke and mirrors. Apple will always reject
| whatever they want to reject until they're forced otherwise by a
| regulatory body.
| digi59404 wrote:
| I too was confused by this. What they're talking about in terms
| of escalate or appeal - Is to escalate or appeal the rule
| directly. I.e. Say "hey I'm blocked because I violate this
| rule. The rule needs to be changed."
|
| Previously it was "hey, I'm blocked because you said I violate
| this rule. But I don't really because X"
|
| One is saying a reviewer messed up, another is saying the
| guidelines are wrong.
| [deleted]
| ur-whale wrote:
| To paraphrase a famous line:
|
| We don't care, we don't have to, we're Apple.
| js4ever wrote:
| This one also works pretty well if you replace Apple by
| Google
| sheeshkebab wrote:
| The whole iOS app ecosystem seems to be drifting lately to
| random social, shopping and games peddling IAPs rather than
| being anything actually useful. All the rest brings no value to
| Apple and just liabilities.
|
| And so their review "guidelines" (how smart of the apple to
| rename terms of use that apple can change for any company to
| nonsense) are all slanted to that. All their marketing lingo
| about fairness is all just plain bull shit.
| Jonovono wrote:
| Whoa whoa whoa, what about this tipping app[1] I made that
| tells you what to tip so that your bill total ends in .69 (or
| some other childish ending) that got rejected by apple at
| least 10 times before I finally got it approved.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/app/id1460610078
| Chlorus wrote:
| "You missed a trick by not naming it 'Just the Tip' or
| something to really convey the true spirit of the app" -->
| Rejected
| Jonovono wrote:
| So, it's actually supposed to be called tip.69. But,
| after rejecting my app 7 times for other random things,
| apple finally pulled this one out and was like, ya, you
| have to rename your app and change the app icon :p
|
| But note, I kept my freedoms on Android: https://play.goo
| gle.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tip69&hl=e...
| simonklitj wrote:
| Just bought you a coffee. I love this app!
| Jonovono wrote:
| haha amazing, I think you might actually be the first!
| Thanks :)
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean is it really that weird that after Apple reviewed the
| app they came to the conclusion that "while neat we don't think
| the sensors handle this use-case well enough and we don't want
| to support/guarantee that all/future models will even be able
| to take measurements like this."
|
| I'm really not surprised that Apple is wary of an app that with
| the current sensors can at absolute best guess when you're
| touching your face. Because if/when it doesn't really work it
| just makes the watch look bad.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Is it any different than the apps that don't detect 100% of
| the jumping jacks you do? What about the native Watch OS
| feature that doesn't, based on my personal observations,
| track the correct amount of time you're washing your hands
| for? Or the fact that the step counter isn't 100% spot on?
|
| The sensors will _never_ be 100% accurate for anything, and
| my app was never portrayed as a way to _prevent_ you from
| touching your face. If it worked 50% of the time and helped
| you notice when you touched your face and helped build that
| awareness, then it fulfilled it 's goal.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > "while neat we don't think the sensors handle this use-case
| well enough and we don't want to support/guarantee that
| all/future models will even be able to take measurements like
| this."
|
| Is that what they said?
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't really know how else to read "measurements the
| watch wasn't designed to support" as "we can't guarantee
| the measurements you're taking are or will be accurate
| enough for what you're trying to do."
|
| I mean this whole story is heresay. How do you know that
| the OPs interaction even happened?
| j45 wrote:
| There's a possibility Apple is implementing this functionality
| themselves.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| That crossed my mind, but seems like a bad (and anti-
| competitive) reason to reject the app by itself
| j45 wrote:
| I hope so too. Still I'm reminded of:
|
| Apple has copied the features of the best apps to compete
| with them [1]
|
| Apple is accused of ranking their identical apps higher
| than the competition [2]
|
| Apple appears to have no shortage of healthtech related
| patents [3][4][5]
|
| Given the propensity to compete with existing apps and
| features, it might not be a stretch to prevent them too.
|
| [1]
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/05/how-
| app...
|
| [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/23/20707323/apple-app-
| store-...
|
| [3] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-
| apple/2020/04/apple-w...
|
| [4] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-
| apple/biometrics/
|
| [5] https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-
| apple/2019/12/apple-w...
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If you don't want them to do that you should patent the
| technology.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Sadly, the process of applying for a patent is incredibly
| expensive and work-intensive for an individual person,
| and this was something I was developing in my spare time
| to hopefully provide some benefit to others.
|
| Regardless whether there is prior art of if Apple intends
| to do something similar in the future, it's not my goal
| to patent anything related to the app or the way it
| works.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Don't they have this policy to not allow competitors to
| their own functionality?
| valuearb wrote:
| How accurate was your app?
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| Anecdotally, it caught a good 80-90%+ of instances where
| users touched their face. No, it's absolutely not perfect,
| but it was an app I built over a weekend and I never billed
| it as a medical app. On their request, I even removed all
| references to health. It was always meant to help nudge
| people towards awareness of touching their face and didn't
| need to be 100% accurate.
|
| By the end (and the website doesn't show the latest
| screenshots since I gave up updating it after getting the run
| around for weeks), it was even so neutral it didn't make a
| claim that touching your face was even good or bad. You could
| have interpreted it as a trainer to touch your face more if
| you wanted.
| askafriend wrote:
| > No, it's absolutely not perfect, but it was an app I
| built over a weekend and I never billed it as a medical
| app.
|
| As a consumer, I'm glad Apple rejected your app. I don't
| want these kinds of amateur operations in the App Store
| when it has anything to do with health. I'd much rather
| Apple have an iron grip when it comes to this even if it
| pisses off developers.
| 9HZZRfNlpR wrote:
| May I ask why are the vast majority of your comments
| about Apple? I'm not calling you a paid shill but I don't
| understand what it takes to defend a company on anonymous
| internet forum so much. Do you work for them?
| valuearb wrote:
| Anyone who disagrees with you can only be a shill?
|
| I'm an iOS developer who frequently defends Apple on
| these forums because the walked garden is hugely
| lucrative for me and other developers. I don't want it to
| be permanently damaged by poorly thought through
| regulation or restrictions, just because Apple
| occasionally screws up in App Review or a wealthy game
| developer thinks revenue share is only for poor
| developers.
| valuearb wrote:
| No, because I'm not paid to defend Apple. I can say
| whatever I want, and nothing I say will add or subtract a
| single penny from my pocket.
|
| What it gives me is a different perspective, than the
| average developer who hasn't thought through why the App
| Store is so lucrative fir developers.
| bootloop wrote:
| > Anyone who disagrees with you can only be a shill?
|
| > I'm an iOS developer who frequently defends Apple on
| these forums because the walked garden is hugely
| lucrative for me and other developers.
|
| If this is your only motivation isn't that the (exact)
| definition of a paid shill?
| Chlorus wrote:
| ...That is not, in fact, the (exact) definition of a paid
| shill. Apple would have to be paying him conditionally,
| with the sole intent of him advertising / defending /
| whatever, regardless of his actual personal opinion.
|
| He just has a clear vested interest in the platform as
| is. Would we all be FOSS shills for making our living
| with OSS software & continuing to advocate for the
| conditions that make that possible?
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| So rather than let consumers make educated choices, you'd
| rather Apple apply arbitrary guidelines to each app
| differently? Because that's what they've been doing.
|
| The app itself never was designed as a medical app, and
| is no different than any other "health" app that counted
| your jumping jacks. It doesn't make any health claims,
| and increases your awareness of a hand motion you make.
| It does nothing more.
| askafriend wrote:
| > So rather than let consumers make educated choices
|
| I'm a consumer. I've decided I want Apple to arbitrate
| relationships for me - so yes. I pay a premium to enter
| their ecosystem because they make decisions that I've
| been happy with for decades. They've also made decisions
| that I'm not happy about but on balance, over the multi-
| decade relationship - I cede control to them and am
| _happy_ to. I explicitly want them to.
|
| This is the same reason I stuck with HomeKit - I trusted
| Apple despite HomeKit having far fewer compatible devices
| than other smart home ecosystem due to more stringent and
| more expensive certification required of 3rd parties. A
| couple years later, HomeKit still isn't perfect but now
| people are dealing with the explosion of insecure, shoddy
| 3rd party smart home / IOT devices. Turns out HomeKit is
| more secure against those kind of vulnerabilities and
| Apple does things like force 3rd parties to adopt secure
| streaming APIs before allowing any streaming video
| products onto the platform (like video doorbells, as an
| example). It's a very different approach and I explicitly
| appreciate it at the cost of 3rd parties.
|
| The choice I've made as a consumer is that I want a
| platform that is closed off and top down. If I didn't
| like it, I would have gone to Android to enjoy the
| benefits of a platform with a different perspective.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| That's a totally valid opinion and I can respect that,
| and I have benefited from the "walled garden" approach
| myself.
|
| But as a developer, Apple seems to be going in a bad
| direction in terms of quality control. We clearly do not
| see a lot of the junk and malware they do reject, and I
| am 100% certain that their review process has screen many
| of this stuff out. But, there's numerous examples in the
| broader comment thread (and anti-trust investigations,
| etc.), that indicate they are being too heavy handed.
|
| That's entirely my opinion, though.
| benologist wrote:
| Why do you think GitHub does not have this problem? There
| are actual "hello world" apps on GitHub but literally
| nobody is adversely affected by it even when they
| download popular software by other developers.
| graeme wrote:
| This is a thin argument: the app seems genuinely useful.
| What harm are you envisioning? Please spell out what
| could go wrong with the app.
|
| If the app is terrible users can leave bad reviews and
| point out shortfalls.
| valuearb wrote:
| I was just wondering if they had some reasonable basis for
| not wanting an inaccurate app doing this. But I can't
| really see one.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| I cannot be 100% certain whether they tested the accuracy
| of the app, but it was never mentioned to me that it
| didn't perform to expectations, just that the app concept
| itself was in violation of their guidelines. In fact, the
| rejection in iTunes Connect shows a "Metadata Rejection".
| pier25 wrote:
| What is so messed up about all this system is that you don't
| have any certainty your app will pass the reviewing process.
|
| If you hit a wall with the reviewing process all your
| iOS/WatchOS code now becomes worthless. It doesn't matter how
| much dev time you're invested into the project.
| tobylane wrote:
| It wouldn't be a good reviewing process from the users side
| if you can't have certainty that the apps in the store have
| passed the process successfully. The users should have this
| certainty, not the devs.
| pier25 wrote:
| You're assuming the review process is infalible which I
| know for a fact is not always the case.
|
| There's also a lot of interpretation involved. An app might
| pass the review and another very similar one might not.
|
| See this comment for example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333426
| strbean wrote:
| Gotta have that good reviewing process:
| https://fnd.io/#/us/ios-universal-app/1528248331-fall-
| guys-k...
|
| Obviously Jpseph Rader is a subsidiary of Mediatonic, not
| some random guy flagrantly stealing Mediatonic's IP!
| donmcronald wrote:
| Wow.
|
| #7 in trivia (#8 when I looked on my iPad). 4.3k stars
| with an average rating of 4/5 with the first release 13
| days ago. My very rough estimate (by scrolling) is about
| 60 reviews, mostly 1 star. Some of the reviews are...
| something.
|
| > #WorstGameEverBigRipoff, T E R R I B L E GAME, 5 stars
|
| Haha.
|
| That game sums up my impression of the app store
| perfectly. It's a bunch of bad actors buying ratings and
| lying and cheating to get to the top of the charts where
| they can exploit addictive behavior to extract money from
| vulnerable people and children.
|
| I see tons of garbage like that on the app store. It's
| easy to see too. Play some kids games and click the ads
| for other games. It trash, trash, trash, and more trash.
| benologist wrote:
| Apple has been sued for games defrauding children
| thousands of dollars, but what's really ridiculous and
| amazing is they are not alone. All of the tech giants
| have gotten in trouble for defrauding children with
| deceptive in-app purchases.
|
| So far we know Facebook recognized it as fraud and
| referred to it as fraud internally so it's a bit hard to
| believe it is innocently occurring again and again
| wherever platforms permit games to bill unlimited amounts
| and players to perform unlimited transactions and
| developers to obfuscate transactions with layers of cash
| substitutes like gems and virtual currencies.
|
| Apple: https://money.cnn.com/2014/01/15/technology/apple-
| ftc-settle...
|
| Amazon: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ftc-sues-
| amazon-app-pur...
|
| Facebook: https://phys.org/news/2016-07-facebook-refunds-
| in-app-minors...
|
| Google: https://lifehacker.com/get-a-refund-for-your-
| kids-unauthoriz...
|
| Microsoft: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
| us/xbox/forum/all/child-spe...
| rowanG077 wrote:
| What passes review is negatively correlated with quality
| I'd wager. The app store is literally filled with malware
| and it apparently easily passed review. While I hear horror
| stories from almost all devs that actually try to make
| something legitimate.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Never build a product on top of a platform. The owners can and
| will pull the rug under you, and sell a "better" version.
|
| Build on open protocols.
| [deleted]
| rriepe wrote:
| Consumers are the discerning ones. Developers will put up with
| anything.
| alex_c wrote:
| >Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes
| will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for
| those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to
| address the issue in their next submission.
|
| This is good news. We've had instances in the past where a
| critical bug fix was delayed because of a completely unrelated
| and minor issue with the update (for example: issues with the
| store listing content that was approved in previous updates but
| now rejected).
|
| This was a bad experience for everyone involved. Obviously for
| developers, but I'm still not sure how much Apple cares about
| that. But more importantly for users, who may be stuck with a
| broken or unsafe app for another day or more for relatively
| trivial reasons.
|
| I think this change is made in good faith by Apple. Of course
| there are always bad actors who may try to game it, but overall
| it should improve the process for developers and users.
| root_axis wrote:
| I work on an e-commerce app, we were rejected because one of our
| screeenshots depicts a Microsoft surface. Only Apple products are
| allowed to be shown...
| panpanna wrote:
| What happened to "Think Different(tm)"?
| domador wrote:
| Think different from others... as long as you think the same
| as us.
| dathinab wrote:
| Oh they _do_ thing different, in a abusive controlling
| egocentric way.
|
| (At least sometimes, sometimes they do good. Through always
| in a way which is especially profitable in one way or another
| for then.)
| dathinab wrote:
| Remember the people watch, as far as I remember apps where not
| allowed to state that they are compatible with it in the app
| store.
| grishka wrote:
| That's interesting -- as an Android user, I see apps with
| iPhones on their screenshots all the time. Sometimes they are
| iPhones with Android UI photoshopped into them.
| lscotte wrote:
| You have to remember that in the Apple reality distortion
| field there is only Apple. I think you get thrown out of the
| cult if you acknowledge other things exist.
| grishka wrote:
| I'm well aware of that because my computer runs macOS.
| Interestingly, it syncs with my Google account just fine.
| But of course I don't enjoy the level of integration I'd
| have with an iPhone.
| cwhiz wrote:
| Those guidelines are absolutely crystal clear. You aren't even
| supposed to show the device at all, just screens of the
| required sizes.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| Except approximately a million App Store screenshots
| blatantly violate these guidelines.
| Semaphor wrote:
| You misunderstood. The screenshot shows a store selling the
| MS surface.
| mns wrote:
| We had some promotional illustrations on our platform with a
| guy holding a phone that resembles an iPhone and had Microsoft
| as a client. We had to take the phone out of the promotional
| images as it was not ok for them...
|
| There are a lot of overly zealous people in all companies.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I was going to say, _this_ particular nonsense is not
| peculiar to Apple. I had a Kindle ebook rejected because it
| mentioned other ebook stores by name.
| carstenhag wrote:
| Car companies are always nervous if you have any icon, asset
| or Placeholder containing 4 wheels. Might be the competitors
| car model... Totally.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| It brings to mind all sorts of positive things they could do
| only as the final arbiter of the only marketplace.
|
| As Tim Cook said it's not all about the bloody ROI.
|
| For example, they could require that the models depicted in app
| store screenshots are visibly diverse in all locales.
|
| They could require a certain level of screen reader or even
| color blindness affordances.
|
| They could require that the ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) of
| the software be listed on the app store page.
|
| Disclose which companies' telemetry software ships in the SDKs
| of the apps. List their UBOs.
|
| Require apps to disclose their in-app marketing budget. I
| guarantee you this would correlate strongly negatively with app
| quality.
|
| Many radical ideas.
| tspike wrote:
| > For example, they could require that the models depicted in
| app store screenshots are visibly diverse in all locales.
|
| This is satire, right?
| artursapek wrote:
| No, I don't think it is.
|
| _pours another glass of whiskey_
| benologist wrote:
| They could have a Screentime-type system just for being
| transparent about what you or your family spent in the last
| week on subscriptions, apps and in-app purchases, what free
| trials are ending, what apps have active subscriptions but no
| usage etc.
|
| They could make virtual currencies show the real price if
| they were bought with real money. They could require 'free'
| transactions with virtual currencies to go through the same
| payment authentication.
|
| They could make subscription apps require an ongoing service
| or value being added, aside from fixing their own bugs or
| trying to improve their software to attract new customers.
| Macha wrote:
| > For example, they could require that the models depicted in
| app store screenshots are visibly diverse in all locales.
|
| Doesn't this disadvantage smaller developers from countries
| less diverse than the United States?
| whatshisface wrote:
| The irony of the US exporting its own ethnic mix as a
| mandatory global culture hegimonic thing would be too much
| to bear. ;)
| danudey wrote:
| How irate would people be if a developer from Nairobi got
| their app update rejected because they couldn't find an
| Asian woman to pose for one of their screenshots for the
| App Store?
|
| I agree that diversity is a good thing, but it's important
| to remember that not every developer can afford to hire
| models to show diversity that doesn't exist in their
| country.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The developer from Nairobi wouldn't have an issue,
| because when such rules are interpreted in practice,
| "diverse" means "not white".
| aembleton wrote:
| Then we can have a screenshots as a service, where you
| send in a bunch of screen shots, and the SAAS returns a
| suitably diverse range of models holding devices with the
| screenshots showing.
|
| It could even be generated with a neural network so that
| you don't need to find or pay models, and you can
| configure what physical disabilities they might have.
| [deleted]
| thesimon wrote:
| > Require apps to disclose their in-app marketing budget+
|
| Require apps to disclose the average amount of in-app
| purchases per user.
| thewhitetulip wrote:
| UBO the way you said it brings back painful memories when it
| took me 2 weeks to understand all the Ownership hierarchies !
| _jal wrote:
| More interestingly, Apple, arrogating themselves to this
| role, is directly responsible for all the things that are not
| done, in that list and not in it.
|
| Queue up the lobbyists.
| numair wrote:
| Well, this actually makes sense, because you can't use the app
| you download on the App Store on a Microsoft Surface. Maybe
| that's obvious to you and I, but the App Store is used by
| hundreds of millions of people of varying levels of technical
| knowledge...
|
| The worrying position would be if Apple demanded special
| features for the iOS version of the app, or if they asked you
| to get rid of the Microsoft version altogether. If we got to a
| point where stories/rumors like that started to emerge, that's
| when everyone would be in trouble.
| [deleted]
| tspike wrote:
| You can certainly use the app you download on the App Store
| to purchase a Microsoft Surface. They object to any depiction
| whatsoever of any other platform.
| Daishiman wrote:
| > Well, this actually makes sense, because you can't use the
| app you download on the App Store on a Microsoft Surface.
|
| Come on....
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| It's getting pretty absurd how people excuse Apple for these
| things. Of course an _e-commerce app_ might show a product
| they sell on one of their screenshots...
| fastball wrote:
| I think you misunderstand.
|
| It wasn't a picture of the app running on a Surface. It was a
| Surface _depicted within the app itself_.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| That sucks, but at least you got a clear statement of their
| issue and its relatively quick to resolve.
|
| How long did it take them to approve you after you properly
| communicated your enthusiasm for Apple products?
| matwood wrote:
| App store review and release is normally counted as hours
| now. The rules around showing other products are very clear.
|
| I know everyone reads the problem stories, but for the large
| majority of cases the App store rejection/fix cycle is
| detailed and easy. For us, it's usually a doh! on our part,
| fix and resend.
| benrbray wrote:
| If this isn't an abusive monopoly position, I don't know what
| is.
| matwood wrote:
| This is common in any store, and has been this way on the
| Apple's app store since the beginning. No store is going to
| carry product marketing which actively advertises a
| competitor. It's best just to make device free screenshots to
| avoid this issue, and not have them become dated by showing a
| device.
|
| Out of all the issues with the app stores, this is not one
| IMO.
| smolder wrote:
| I don't think this is accurate. We have another poster here
| saying they see Apple devices in marketing for Android
| apps, and my experience publishing to the play store says
| this is likely only something apple cares to police.
| matwood wrote:
| I was saying stores in general. Not just app stores. I
| don't see Amazon letting you link out to Walmart (or show
| Walmart ads) and vice versa. Maybe there are ones that
| slip through, but it's the exception.
| dangus wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't know all it took was a 22.85%
| marketshare to become a monopoly.
|
| I wonder if Sony will let me put a picture of an Xbox One on
| my PS4 game.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Antitrust laws are about anticompetitive behavior, not just
| monopolies.
|
| Companies with a combined <50% of the marketplace have been
| found to violate antitrust laws as a result of price fixing
| (including Apple itself).
|
| And yes, you are allowed to put pictures of competing
| consoles _in_ your game and even refer to the fact that
| they exist. They just don 't want them in the digital
| listing. (In contrast: Apple forbids this, and in the past
| has rejected apps for even mentioning that Android versions
| exist.)
| newbie578 wrote:
| I wonder if people will stop spreading missinformation
| while defending Apple. Apple's marketshare in U.S. is
| around 52%, and no, worldwide marketshare does not matter
| to U.S. courts.
| qmarchi wrote:
| Market share in this case is only one piece of the puzzle.
| Even if they make up 22% of market share (globally, it's
| 60% in the US), iOS usually makes it up in number of paying
| users.
| dangus wrote:
| The fact that iOS users are willing to pay seems
| irrelevant to me.
|
| It's almost like calling Tesla a monopoly power in the
| automotive industry because they have >90% of the luxury
| EV market: you've already sub-divided the market so many
| times that the idea is weakened.
|
| In reality, most people use Android, and even in the US
| about half of them still use Android.
|
| If iOS is a monopoly then so is Sony, Microsoft, and
| Nintendo. The dynamics of that market are quite similar.
|
| Microsoft had well over a 95% marketshare during their
| antitrust saga.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > The fact that iOS users are willing to pay seems
| irrelevant to me.
|
| The main point is not that Apple is a monopoly on the
| smartphone market, the issue is the monopoly Apple has on
| distributing apps for the iOS platform.
|
| When building an app access to _all_ users is key to
| success. Apple artificially limits access to the users of
| their platform by having you jump through a dozen of
| hoops and an intransparent review process.
|
| Although iOS only has a market share of around 20%
| (globally? more in the US), the iOS platform has a large
| enough audience and market size to be very relevant for
| investigations.
|
| > It's almost like calling Tesla a monopoly power in the
| automotive industry because they have >90% of the luxury
| EV market
|
| It's really not. I can't think of a general comparison
| off the top of my head, but lets use Spotify and the
| Apple dispute as an example.
|
| To keep the Tesla example, the situation would be more
| comparable if, let's say Volkswagen, would have to sell
| their EVs through Tesla for the north american market.
| strbean wrote:
| Consoles are a pretty terrible counter-example. An entire
| industry driven by "exclusive titles" is incredibly anti-
| consumer.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's almost like calling Tesla a monopoly power in the
| automotive industry because they have >90% of the luxury
| EV market: you've already sub-divided the market so many
| times that the idea is weakened.
|
| The thing to notice about this is that you're talking
| about the wrong market.
|
| Suppose I want to use an unnecessarily specific product,
| like the 2015 Ford Focus SE Flex Fuel with 5-Speed manual
| transmission, and talk about the market for fuel for that
| vehicle. Well actually it can take regular 87 octane
| gasoline, which you can get at any gas station anywhere,
| so nobody has a monopoly on fuel for that vehicle, no
| matter how specific we get about the vehicle. It's
| totally irrelevant whether it has power windows or cruise
| control because they don't affect what kind of fuel you
| can put in it. We can specify any of those things and it
| doesn't help anybody to show a fuel monopoly unless the
| thing being specified is _relevant_ , which most of those
| kind of details aren't.
|
| Now we want to talk about apps and phones. If you have a
| "phone" -- the broad product definition you want to use
| -- then do you have competition for app stores? Now
| you've got a problem. You can't actually answer the
| question, because the answer actually does depend on what
| kind of phone you have. The details are _relevant_. That
| 's how you know "phones" is too broad of a product
| definition -- it doesn't actually allow you to answer the
| question about app stores without being more specific
| about what kind of phone it is, because different phones
| use different app stores.
|
| When we're talking about app stores, the relevant market
| is the set of customers that can use the same set of app
| stores as one another. And then you know it's a monopoly
| if the set has only one entry.
|
| > If iOS is a monopoly then so is Sony, Microsoft, and
| Nintendo. The dynamics of that market are quite similar.
|
| The strongest argument that this isn't the case is that
| it's common for people to buy multiple different consoles
| at once, so if the customer can't get a game on one
| console, they could still get the same game on another
| one because they actually own multiple consoles at the
| same time. I'm not sure if I actually buy this, because a
| lot of people don't actually own multiple consoles, and
| to that extent they _do_ have a monopoly.
|
| But for sure hardly anybody carries multiple brands of
| phone in their pocket.
| danudey wrote:
| > Now we want to talk about apps and phones. If you have
| a "phone" -- the broad product definition you want to use
| -- then do you have competition for app stores?
|
| Apple's argument, which I tend to agree with, is that the
| user does have a choice of app store, which they make by
| buying an iPhone instead of an Android phone (or a Xiaomi
| phone, or a Kindle, or whatever).
|
| The reason I agree with this is that, for me, the App
| Store and how it's handled is one of the big draws of the
| iPhone; I've heard a lot fewer stories about malicious
| software, re-uploaded software with malware installed,
| software that walks you through the process of enabling
| sideloading or enabling adb connections so that you can
| install this one thing one time, all of which users might
| have to deal with without necessarily understanding the
| repercussions of what they're doing.
|
| So once you've purchased an iPhone you don't have a
| choice of App Store, but you do make that choice,
| arguably, when you purchase your phone. The biggest
| argument against this is that if you've already invested
| a lot into apps on the App Store, then there's not a lot
| of option to _switch_ app stores, but there is still a
| choice that users can make.
|
| > The strongest argument that this isn't the case is that
| it's common for people to buy multiple different consoles
| at once, so if the customer can't get a game on one
| console, they could still get the same game on another
| one because they actually own multiple consoles at the
| same time.
|
| I'm not sure this is actually the case for _most_ people.
| I don 't think the typical person is going to spend, for
| example, $600 on a Playstation 5, and then decide that
| they don't like how Sony handles their store so they go
| and buy an XBox Series X for another $600 so that they
| can get the best of both worlds, or get access to a
| different store with different policies.
| treis wrote:
| >Apple's argument, which I tend to agree with, is that
| the user does have a choice of app store, which they make
| by buying an iPhone instead of an Android phone
|
| "We're a Duopoly, not a Monopoly" isn't a winning
| argument.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Apple's argument, which I tend to agree with, is that
| the user does have a choice of app store, which they make
| by buying an iPhone instead of an Android phone (or a
| Xiaomi phone, or a Kindle, or whatever).
|
| The problem with this is that then you have to make the
| choice of app store together with the choice of the
| entire platform including the hardware and operating
| system and everything. Moreover, once you make the
| choice, it's hard to change because there are significant
| transition costs, even if the apps available in the
| stores change.
|
| Suppose I bought an iPhone two months ago and today I
| want to install Fortnite. When I bought the iPhone it was
| available, but how does that help me now?
|
| Or suppose I want an iPhone exclusively so that I'm not
| giving my data to Google and for no other reason. Then my
| choice of app store is being constrained by my choice of
| platforms -- basically the definition of an anti-
| competitive restraint.
|
| > I'm not sure this is actually the case for _most_
| people.
|
| So then you're making the case that they do have a
| monopoly.
| Someone wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy that, too, but if it is true that it
| is common and that gamers buy multiple consoles and we
| think that's an acceptable state of affairs, and also
| true that users don't buy multiple smartphones (that, I
| wholeheartedly buy), one could argue the latter is
| because they can get all the apps they want on either
| brand, and that would be an argument against one of the
| brands having monopoly power.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > one could argue the latter is because they can get all
| the apps they want on either brand, and that would be an
| argument against one of the brands having monopoly power.
|
| But that isn't true if they reject apps for arbitrary
| reasons, because then there are apps you can't get.
| Moreover, even if all the apps _were_ available on both,
| the fact that they don 't have to compete after device
| purchase means they can each charge a higher percentage
| as a fee, which in some cases will be passed on to the
| customer as higher prices and in other cases reduce the
| quality or quantity of available apps by starving
| developers of resources.
| Someone wrote:
| But Android allows side-loading and hence cannot reject
| apps. So, consumers can get all the apps they want
| (insofar as they exist) by buying Android devices.
|
| I guess Apple would argue that their policy to reject
| apps doesn't hurt consumers, because, if it did increase
| prices and/or decrease quality and/or decrease
| availability of apps on iOS, why do so many consumers
| still buy iPhones? Maybe because having only one, vetted,
| store has value to them, too?
|
| (Just to make sure: I'm not sure whether I would buy that
| argument, but I also don't think it is a slam-dunk that
| Apple's behavior hurts consumers, and that consumers have
| no choice to accept that (there's nothing against
| companies giving their customers a bad deal, as long as
| they're free to walk away))
| Dahoon wrote:
| >If iOS is a monopoly then so is Sony, Microsoft, and
| Nintendo
|
| I see this excuse all the time. So what if X, Y and Z are
| a monopoly? The problem isn't monopolies. You are stuck
| on a word that makes no difference. It is abusing your
| market position that is the problem. That is what got
| Microsoft punished and it is what Apple is doing now.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The thing is, rather than absolute market share, the way
| you use your position is more important. If you have a
| powerful market position but just compete normally,
| you're usually ok. If you have a powerful market position
| and use it to corner other markets or stifle competition
| in other ways, you start having problems.
| valuearb wrote:
| The App Store pays developers 50% more than the Google
| Play Store, despite Androids 6-1 lead in device sales.
|
| Apparently the walled garden is hugely attractive to the
| best customers.
| liability wrote:
| You know Apple has fallen far when _' Apple isn't worse
| than Sony or Microsoft'_ becomes a popular refrain.
| [deleted]
| viridian wrote:
| You realize when standard oil was ruled a monopoly and
| trust busted, it only had 19% of the US oil market share,
| right?
| nodamage wrote:
| Huh?
|
| _In 1904, Standard controlled 91 percent of production
| and 85 percent of final sales._
|
| _Because of competition from other firms, their market
| share had gradually eroded to 70 percent by 1906 which
| was the year when the antitrust case was filed against
| Standard, and down to 64 percent by 1911 when Standard
| was ordered broken up._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
| benologist wrote:
| The congresspeople who investigated them for a year and a
| half also think they are abusive.
|
| > the investigation has confirmed that Apple, Google, Amazon,
| and Facebook are all abusing their market power to the
| detriment of consumers
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/26/antitrust-
| investigation...
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| But not Microsoft who still own 95% of the desktop market.
| I guess the others need to start funding more politicians.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Monopoly power is not a prerequisite for abuse of market
| power. And abuse of market power is not a necessary
| result of monopoly power.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Common misconception. A monopoly itself is not illegal.
| What is illegal is using that monopoly/market power to
| keep out competitors.
|
| Windows, as a desktop OS, generally allows you to do
| whatever you want with it, and does not "abuse" its
| position to prevent competitors from being install on the
| computer, for example.
|
| If windows only allowed you to buy from certain app
| stores, that would be illegal.
| danudey wrote:
| > Windows, as a desktop OS, generally allows you to do
| whatever you want with it, and does not "abuse" its
| position to prevent competitors from being install on the
| computer, for example.
|
| Microsoft got nailed for bundling Internet Explorer in
| with Windows and not allowing licensees (OEMs) to
| preinstall Netscape, even though nothing prevented users
| from installing the software after the fact.
|
| > If windows only allowed you to buy from certain app
| stores, that would be illegal.
|
| Isn't this the case for Windows RT, or is that dead
| already?
| boogies wrote:
| > Isn't this the case for Windows RT, or is that dead
| already?
|
| IDK about RT but IIRC this is the main distinguishing
| factor of 10S
| xmprt wrote:
| Could be the case for Windows RT but I'm not sure if
| that's relevant in this case because RT has a small
| market share.
| nicoburns wrote:
| To be fair to microsoft, they really seem to hav gotten
| their act together in the aftermath of that event.
| Admittedly they seem to be slipping back into some bad
| habits recently. But they seem to be a good deal better
| behaves than Apple and other big tech companies for now.
| And I suspect a lot of that is to do with the lawsuit.
| IMO the world would be a better place if anti-trust laws
| were enforced stronger than they currently are.
| nodamage wrote:
| > Microsoft got nailed for bundling Internet Explorer in
| with Windows
|
| This was actually overturned during the appeal. Whether
| the act of bundling IE with Windows would have been
| itself an antitrust violation was ultimately never
| decided by the courts. (The OEM stuff and other actions
| by Microsoft _were_ ruled to be antitrust violations,
| however.)
| [deleted]
| tinus_hn wrote:
| How is it a monopoly if you can afford to leave the Mac App
| Store?
| moooo99 wrote:
| Its not for the Mac, but the issue is mainly focused around
| the iOS platform and the App Store which features a
| similarly if not more broken app review process. And the
| AppStore is the only store for iOS
| breakfastduck wrote:
| How on earth can it be a monopoly when it has the market
| share it does?
|
| I wish people would stop conflating Apple as a monopoly -
| their have their own platform (one of many widely available)
| and many people choose to use it.
|
| Do I agree with all their App Store behaviours? Obviously
| not, but it doesn't make them a monopoly. They're not
| 'abusing' their power - the App Store has always been this
| way. It's a way of delivering sand boxed apps that fit
| guidelines.
|
| Apple aren't going to stop you downloading an app off the
| internet and running it on your mac anytime soon.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _How on earth can it be a monopoly when it has the market
| share it does?_
|
| It's not a monopoly, it's an abuse of market power, which
| does not require monopoly status but which is still
| forbidden by antitrust laws. It doesn't matter that they've
| always done it this way, because the antitrust laws have
| existed for longer than Apple has.
|
| And many of Apple's arbitrary decisions have no basis in
| security or ensuring family-friendly products. They exist
| simply to maintain or bolster Apple's market position.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| See, this is where I disagree - but not entirely.
|
| Of course these decisions are made to bolster Apples
| market position - however, the important point here is
| that they do it through making great products. That's
| always been the Apple priority. They've been making top
| of the line products consistently for two decades. These
| decisions bolster the products and ergo bolster market
| conditions.
|
| Making products the consumer is satisfied with is not
| anti consumer behaviour. What else can you ask for from a
| purchase?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| If Apple wants to control its developers, it should hire
| them and pay them wages and benefits.
|
| The app store is just another version of the gig economy,
| and Apple is stomping around it like a typical tyrannical
| boss.
|
| _Of course_ that is anti-consumer behaviour. It means
| Apple lacks a professional and credible relationship with
| its developers, and that clearly lowers the quality, the
| variety, and the accessibility of the apps for sale in
| the store.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Making products the consumer is satisfied with is not
| anti consumer behaviour. What else can you ask for from a
| purchase?_
|
| ??? That 's some powerful kool-aid. The issue is not that
| Apple makes shiny-looking products that many people like,
| and the quality of Apple's physical products is not a
| defense to their actions in other markets.
|
| The issue is that Apple is abusing it's market position
| derived from the sale of those shiny products to bolster
| its market position _in other markets_ like mobile apps,
| SaaS (see, e.g., Spotify vs Apple Music). _That_ is what
| is illegal.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| See - this an issue I always have with this conversation.
| You equate me saying good products to a shiny box.
|
| Apple make the best in class devices within its markets,
| the iPod, then the iPhone & iPad and of course the Mac.
|
| Yes - the Mac is subjective & anyone who uses anything
| else - props to you, I don't have any beef with people
| who choose Linux or Windows.
|
| But the reason I choose Apple is because their product
| and software ecosystem the one I love the most out of any
| big player.
|
| BSD foundation, unix terminal, fantastic video, photo and
| especially audio drivers on macOS, and I like the iOS
| ecosystem.
|
| You can sync the first ever iPod to the same music
| library, using the same interface on either a 2007 iMac
| or a brand new MacBook as a brand new iPod touch.
| Supporting a product for that long, at such quality is
| not anti consumer. Try that with a zune on windows 10.
| Apple cares about the quality of its products (hardware
| and software) in so many ways that benefit an end user.
|
| Let's not forget (in terms of Spotify vs Apple) that
| Apple revolutionised the music industry with iPod and
| iTunes - I believe that Apple wants to release software,
| devices and services that benefit the consumer.
|
| You may disagree, but that's ok. Telling me I'm drinking
| kook-aid isn't constructive. And to be honest, we'd
| probably agree on 90% of your pain with Apple. But this
| trend of other major and super dubious companies trying
| to paint them as a 'bag guy' in the industry is
| absolutely ridiculous. Microsoft? Google? Facebook? Epic?
|
| That's three hefty anti consumer companies there;
| tracking, ads, micro transactions, pc exclusives - I
| wonder why they'd be challenging a super profitable
| competitor that's about to start shipping it's own CPUs
| on the Mac, essentially challenging the PCs hardware
| ecosystem on performance as well as the software.
| Especially one who is implementing user opt-out for data
| harvesting on its next mobile OS.
| sjy wrote:
| > the reason I choose Apple is because their product and
| software ecosystem the one I love the most out of any big
| player ... we'd probably agree on 90% of your pain with
| Apple
|
| Sounds like you're a bit conflicted. I also chose an
| Apple phone and tablet because they seemed like the best
| choice available at the time, _despite_ being part of the
| Apple "ecosystem" which prevents these devices from
| interoperating with my non-Apple devices.
| newbie578 wrote:
| A marketshare above >50% is a literal definition of
| monopoly...
|
| I wish people would stop trying to defend Apple without
| getting the facts right. If something "has always been this
| way" that doesn't make it right, especially if you are
| engaging in anti-competitive behaviour which the App Store
| is a perfect example (Apple is the Judge, Jury and
| Executioner).
|
| We are lucky Apple was near bankruptcy (although my
| personal belief is that we were not lucky enough since it
| still exists) when the Internet was growing, otherwise I
| have no doubt we would today have "select" websites which
| Apple approves and takes it's mafia tax. Want to show your
| blog over Safari to iOS users? Give us 30% or otherwise
| GTFO.
| benrbray wrote:
| In terms of market share, I'd say it's akin to a regional
| monopoly. But that's not entirely what I meant.
|
| In my view, phones are general purpose computers. Apple
| also takes this view, which is the reason they have opened
| up a software marketplace on their devices.
|
| Just like with Amazon, there are thousands of companies
| whose revenue depends almost exclusively on their ability
| to compete in the marketplace set up by Apple. In this
| scenario, both Apple and Amazon are notorious for abusing
| their control of the marketplace to disadvantage third-
| party sellers in favor of first-party products / hardware /
| software.
|
| If a phone is NOT a general purpose computer, then Apple
| should disband the app store and only allow first-party
| apps to run. If a phone IS a general purpose computer, then
| Apple has an obligation to treat participants in the
| marketplace fairly, either by relaxing the app review
| process, or by allowing third-party marketplaces. They
| cannot have it both ways.
|
| Legally speaking, Apple may not need to change anything.
| However, I'm talking about how things SHOULD be, not how
| they ARE.
| valuearb wrote:
| Opening up the platform ruins it. The walled garden is
| exactly why iPhones are so popular and iOS developers so
| successful.
| lapcatsoftware wrote:
| iOS developers are not successful in general. The top 1%
| of App Store developers make the vast majority of the App
| Store revenue.
|
| Apple doesn't seem to care, because they get their 30%
| regardless of how the other 70% of the revenue is
| distributed.
| valuearb wrote:
| iOS App Developers make around $35B a year. I don't
| directly get paid much by it anymore because I shut down
| my App company.
|
| But I have made a very good contracting rate and very
| high salaries for iOS development directly because of
| that $35B. Your own app company doesn't have to be a
| winner, when the winners need a massive number of
| developers and have such a fountain of cash to pay them
| with.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| I disagree. The iPhone is a niche in terms of computing
| access. I wouldn't want it to be first party apps only.
|
| The App Store being only open to apples approval is what
| makes the platform what it is.
|
| In an ideal world we'd be able to side load apps
| natively, but it's not a dealbreaker for me - I can
| always jailbreak.
|
| App Stores on phones should be held to different
| standards to those on PCs, I feel.
| Axsuul wrote:
| I can see where you're coming from but I don't see how this
| is monopolistic. Apple wants a consistent brand and doesn't
| want to confuse the consumer. Would it make sense to have a
| Huawei device plastered over screenshots?
| framecowbird wrote:
| Of course it's what Apple wants, that's not the question.
| The question is whether they are suppressing competition in
| such a way that it eventually becomes detrimental to the
| whole market.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _Would it make sense to have a Huawei device plastered
| over screenshots?_
|
| Why not?
|
| An app might be crossplatform and the screenshot might be
| featuring these capabilities with Android or Windows.
| mytherin wrote:
| It isn't an abusive monopoly position basically by
| definition: Apple is not a monopoly in any market that they
| participate in. There is tons of competition in smartphones,
| laptops, etc.
|
| The problem is not one of monopolies - the problem is that a
| set of private companies - including Apple - control
| _critical digital infrastructure_. This digital
| infrastructure is required by almost all other companies and
| people to function, yet it is in private hands, and they can
| do with it as they please.
|
| Imagine if all roads were owned by a small number of private
| companies, and you would need their permission to use the
| roads. That is what is happening in the digital world right
| now.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| From the government itself[1]:
|
| > _Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying
| rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as
| shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market
| power -- that is, the long term ability to raise price or
| exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a
| "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market
| power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but
| typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a
| group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent
| of the sales of a particular product or service within a
| certain geographic area._
|
| [1]: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-
| guidance/guide-a...
| damnyou wrote:
| It is not a monopoly, sure, but it _is_ an abuse of market
| power. Apple and Google form an _oligopoly_ and both firms
| abuse their market power as part of it.
|
| A firm being a "monopoly" is not a requirement under US
| antitrust law. A concentration of market power is, and
| Apple + Google absolutely have it.
| kbenson wrote:
| We need to stop looking at whether they are a monopoly and
| start looking at what their anti-competitive behavior means
| and how it affects the market and consumers.
|
| Anti-competitive behavior is to assault as a monopoly is to
| murder. One often leads to the other, but they are both
| harmful. We don't generally let people run around
| assaulting people and say "well they aren't murdering
| people, so let's leave them alone".
|
| Apple is clearly exhibiting Anti-competitive behavior, and
| in a way that distorts the market. The whole reason we have
| laws about monopolies is because we identified the Anti-
| competitive behavior and labeled that specific type as a
| monopoly. A monopoly is only a problem in that it can
| easily affect the market as a whole through Anti-
| competitive actions. Apple can do so even though they
| aren't a monopoly as we've defined it. Why shouldn't we
| legislate to reduce the harms they are committing as well?
| valuearb wrote:
| The iOS Apps market would be much smaller if not for App
| Review.
| vidarh wrote:
| That some aspects of it may positive does not mean some
| aspects of it can't also be anti-competitive.
| valuearb wrote:
| Assume you get in early in a rapidly growing city and
| secure the best possible location for your mall. You
| build the worlds best mall, with great parking and mass
| transit options, very high security, constant maintenance
| and high quality construction, so that customers feel
| very comfortable shopping there.
|
| And you don't even charge monthly rent, instead you ask
| for a 30% share of sales. That never stopped any
| retailer, all the best sign up in droves. Your
| location/strategy is so successful you become the highest
| grossing mall in the country, and your retailers make
| substantially more in your mall than any other. Retailers
| grumble about the 30%, but still spend more building
| their stores in your mall than anywhere else and you have
| more tenants than any other mall. They very rarely leave
| because it's so profitable being your tenant.
|
| But after over a decade of being the best place in retail
| for retailers, you discover some of your retailers are
| taking customer orders in the mall, but delivering to
| their homes and billing online, so they don't have to pay
| you 30%, or contribute anything for maintenance,
| security, or the value of being in your mall.
|
| So you shut down anyone you catch, and kick them out. Now
| they claim that being held to their leases is "anti-
| competitive", and demand a portion of the mall be set
| aside for direct sales with no revenue share to give
| customers a choice. Those direct sales will benefit from
| the experience you built, but again will contribute zero
| to maintain it. In fact they will bring in retailers that
| will actively undercut its security and make the
| purchasing experience worse.
|
| So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive?
| kbenson wrote:
| Apple can do whatever they want in their store. That's
| not anti-competitive. Restricting people from using other
| stores is anti-competitive. They are, quire literally,
| preventing competition.
|
| > But after over a decade of being the best place in
| retail for retailers, you discover some of your retailers
| are taking customer orders in the mall, but delivering to
| their homes and billing online, so they don't have to pay
| you 30%, or contribute anything for maintenance,
| security, or the value of being in your mall.
|
| Apple can do whatever they want in their mall. This is
| about them preventing people from going to other malls.
| Let them enforce whatever they want for the retailers
| thatn want in their mall, _as long as the same customers
| cane be served elsewhere._
|
| Apple's doing the whole company store in the company town
| trick, except they've figured out that if the town is
| also separated by a hundred miles of _company road_ that
| they can control, that makes it even harder for people to
| get out of the trap. You can argue all you want that it
| 's okay that Apple takes 30% of the profit on any picks
| sold, and that the benefits they provide to keep their
| people safe is just that worth it, and that they've
| worked hard to provide a save environment by keeping
| everyone else a hundred miles away through their private
| roads, but we've seen this story before.
|
| What makes Apple different in this case? Because people
| can just move to Android? Company town workers could have
| just left for different companies too.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive?
|
| The aspects of Apple's behavior are that they use their
| control of a large percentage of the US market to take
| actions against competitors.
|
| Your example that you gave, would not be illegally anti-
| competitive, because a single mall is a small market.
|
| If, instead, in the example you gave, the mall owner,
| owned half of all retail space, within a 100 mile radius
| (and a singular other competitor controlled the other
| half of all retail space within 100 miles), then the
| courts would absolutely call the behavior anti-
| competitive.
|
| And before you say it, yes Apple is not a literal
| monopoly, but that does not matter. Apple is 1 half of a
| duopoly in the US, and that is bad enough, that their
| anti-competitive behavior should be regulated.
|
| In the US, if a company has a large amount of market
| power, even if they are not a literal monopoly, then
| certain anti-competitive behavior becomes illegal.
| valuearb wrote:
| Your analogy is false on it's face. It's not
| anticompetitive at all to get 50% of a market through
| excellence. No way a successful mall is ever bothered
| with an antitrust claim merely for being successful.
|
| And Google doesn't control 100% of Android, there are
| alternate app stores available. So your analogy fails at
| multiple levels.
|
| The Apple Mall succeeded because it's a better customer
| experience, why should that be illegal, and why shouldn't
| Apple benefit from their foresight and efforts?
|
| The App Store is so big because Apple made it the best
| App Store. Every attribute of their walled garden
| contributes to its value, not just for Apple, but for
| developers and customers.
|
| Apple has about 15% of phone sales. It's developers make
| more than half the entire mobile app market revenues. How
| is Apples behavior hurting them?
| [deleted]
| stale2002 wrote:
| > It's not anticompetitive at all to get 50% of a market
|
| I never said that getting 50% of the market, on its own,
| is anti-competitive.
|
| Instead, what is anti-competive, is once you have a large
| amount of market power, such as 50%, it now becomes
| illegal to use anti-competitive practices to keep out
| competitors.
|
| > No way a successful mall ..... merely for being
| successful.
|
| I never said this. Instead, what I am saying is that
| using large amounts of market power, to keep out
| competitors, is anti-competitive.
|
| > The App Store is so big because Apple made it the best
| App Store.
|
| It doesn't matter if you got to 50% of the market through
| being good. It is still illegal to use large amounts of
| market power to keep out competitors.
|
| > Apple has about 15% of phone sales.
|
| Apple has 50% of the market in the USA. And the lawsuits
| are happening in the USA, so thats all that matters.
|
| > How is Apples behavior hurting them?
|
| It is hurting competing app stores from entering the
| market, because of Apple's actions that make it very
| difficult for competing app stores to be installed.
|
| > why shouldn't Apple benefit from their foresight and
| efforts?
|
| They can benefit. They just shouldn't be allowed to use
| their large amount of market power to keep out
| competitors, because that is anti-competitive.
| valuearb wrote:
| Apple has zero obligation to allow competitive app stores
| in iOS. It's never been a feature they promised
| customers, and it's not wanted by most app developers.
| It's not anticompetitive to refuse to build access to
| your property for new competitors.
|
| In this case it's clearly not anticompetitive when
| forcing them to allow alternate app stores would be both
| anti-consumer and anti-developer.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Apple has zero obligation to allow competitive app
| stores in iOS.
|
| Well, that is a pretty anti-competitive practice. So,
| actually, it seems like they might have an obligation to
| do this.
|
| > It's never been a feature they promised customer
|
| It doesn't matter. It is still anti-competitive. And in
| the USA anti-competitive practices are illegal in the US,
| if a company with a large amount of market share is
| engaging in them.
|
| > It's not anticompetitive to refuse to build access to
| your property for new competitors.
|
| It actually is! The courts have already proved this to be
| the case. Microsoft lost their court case because of a
| very similar situation.
|
| I would really recommend that you go read up on similar
| anti competitive case, such as the Microsoft one, to
| learn the court justifications for this stuff. It is
| pretty enlightening.
|
| > it's not wanted by most app developers.
|
| "Customers don't want competition" is not an argument
| that any court would accept. It is assumed to be true,
| automatically, that competition is a good thing.
|
| And the judge residing over this case, actually made
| similar statements, in the preliminary hearing that I
| listened to, where she talked about how competition is a
| good thing, as a justification that the courts use.
| valuearb wrote:
| Not allowing competitors to build a store on your
| property isn't anti-competitive. And you clearly don't
| understand the Microsoft case, where it had 90% of the
| operating system market.
|
| Customers want the best possible products, forcing Apple
| to make their product worse, with worse security, a worse
| purchase experience, robs customers of an important
| choice.
|
| Judges do make terrible rulings all the time. Like the
| Apple e-books case, where trying to ensure a level
| playing field was deemed "anti-competitive", leading to
| Amazon to significantly grow market share and
| establishing an unassailable monopoly position since the
| ruling.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I have read up on the Microsoft case, and I think I
| disagree -- it's hard to draw direct comparisons here.
|
| Microsoft Windows had over 90% of the entire personal
| computer operating system market, which was clearly a de
| facto monopoly position. The antitrust element was them
| leveraging that monopoly to give them an ostensibly
| unfair advantage in the browser market. There was no
| "gatekeeping" aspect involved; it was about whether
| bundling application software with the OS to undermine
| commercial competition was fair.
|
| Apple's case is very different. They have much less than
| 90% of the mobile phone operating system market, but they
| control access to 100% of the application market for iOS
| devices. This isn't about bundling, like Microsoft's case
| was, nor did Microsoft act as a gatekeeper for Windows.
| The closest precedents are game consoles, but those don't
| seem to offer a lot of guidance here in terms of case law
| -- although Apple's very likely to draw the comparison,
| e.g., Sony has a "monopoly" on downloadable applications
| for all PlayStations. Consumers know that limitation when
| they buy either a PlayStation or an iPhone, and see it as
| a _feature,_ not a bug. In a lot of ways, the ultimate
| argument here is whether a device manufacturer can or
| should be legally forced to treat their devices more like
| general purpose computing devices than like consoles. And
| that 's not like Microsoft at all. This is a
| fundamentally different question.
|
| (The sort of ironic footnote in drawing a comparison to
| the Microsoft case is that while bundling IE with Windows
| killed Netscape's commercial prospects and it was
| certainly done with malice aforethought, it was also
| fundamentally the right call. Applications that achieve
| such amazing runaway success that their functionality
| quickly becomes essential to everyone are almost certain
| to be bundled into either the operating system or a suite
| that everyone has.)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The piece you're missing is that if the app store is a
| mall then an iPhone is your house. So you have all of
| these people who live in an Apple house, which they may
| do for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with
| the mall.
|
| Then the Apple mall is taking 30% and someone says they
| want to set up their own mall somewhere else. It's a
| completely separate "mall" -- apps hosted on different
| servers with different payment processing etc. But then
| Apple says not only that nobody who shops in their mall
| can go shop in any other mall too, but also that nobody
| who lives in a house they built can either. How is that
| _not_ anti-competitive?
| valuearb wrote:
| You want to buy a house in Apple Village. It's the best
| place for your needs, safe, secure, beautiful. Apple is
| constantly working at improving your security as well.
|
| And it has a great mall that helps Apple keep the village
| secure. The merchants make a great deal of money, which
| ensures you don't lack for choice and quality. And you
| are happy to shop there because Apple vets the merchants,
| and handles the purchase system, so it's easy for you to
| get refunds and deal with subscriptions.
|
| There are other malls, but not on Apple Village
| property,they are really hard to get to and Apple doesn't
| help you get there. But you knew this because it hadn't
| changed for 13 years.
|
| So why should Apple be forced to build an expressway on
| their property to make it easy for you to shop at these
| other malls? They never promised you that yet you moved
| to Apple Village all the same.
|
| And they have good reasons not to. Not only does it
| reduce safety and security for Apple Village residents,
| they just got easier to scam. Potential new Apple Village
| residents will be less likely to move in. Apples best
| merchant partners will lose customers and money.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Apple Village sounds quaint. We're talking about a
| company whose customer base would make it the third
| largest country in the world, ahead of the United States.
| This is a corporation that has declared its own national
| borders and instituted an unelected customs enforcement
| agency.
|
| "If you don't like it then leave." Is that supposed to be
| a real solution? What if you have just as many issues
| with the other remaining superpower?
|
| Competition is supposed to be constraining abuse. That
| doesn't work if to compete on apps you have to be able to
| develop your own phone platform and convince your entire
| app customer base to switch to it.
| valuearb wrote:
| It's not a country. It hasn't declared anything, and
| follows all laws its subject to.
|
| If you don't like it, buy something else. Don't expect
| the platform to be made worse to fit your specific needs,
| when they clearly don't match up to the overwhelming
| choices of customers.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You keep saying "overwhelming choices of customers" when
| the entire point is that customers are being deprived of
| choices by being required to make them all together at
| once.
|
| If you want Apple hardware or iOS but not their app
| store, it's not available. If your whole family uses
| iMessage then you need an iPhone even if you don't want
| any of the rest of it. The fact that many people then buy
| an iPhone and use the App Store regardless is not
| evidence that they want it this way, it's the harm that
| forcing it to be this way is inflicting on them.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >So what aspects of this are truly anticompetitive?
|
| None of what you said is anti-competitive since you left
| out the anti-competitive part of the story.
|
| The only mall that is allowed is that one single mall.
| You are not allowed to start your own mall and since
| there are no other malls you cannot move to another one.
| You are basically stuck putting your store in that mall
| or not having a store at all.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| We need to stop looking at what the courts decide and
| start listening to the anti Apple crowd on HackerNews!
| ksm1717 wrote:
| You're right, people forget courts are the singular
| arbiters of truth. Discussion is unnecessary
| kbenson wrote:
| >> Why shouldn't we legislate to reduce the harms they
| are committing as well?
|
| What do you think a call to write legislation is for?
|
| > We need to stop looking at what the courts decide
|
| The purpose of courts is to interpret the legislation
| passed by our representatives. The purpose of legislation
| is to enact the will of the people as interpreted by
| their representatives and the existing constitution.
|
| If we didn't didn't follow this path, there would be no
| such thing as anti-trust law - it didn't come from the
| founders, the harm of anti-competitive behavior was
| identified and legislated against in the late 1800's - so
| why shouldn't we identify new forms of anti-competitive
| behavior that causes harm and do the same?
| mdoms wrote:
| American regulators have been asleep at the wheel for
| decades.
| mytherin wrote:
| Perhaps I didn't make myself entirely clear - I
| completely agree that they should be regulated. I would
| even suggest going _further_ than that. Neither Apple nor
| Google should gate-keep these market places in the first
| place. No private company should.
|
| I see this desire here to apply existing terms to the
| situation - but I feel they are not applicable. Apple and
| Google are not exhibiting anti-competitive behavior when
| they moderate the marketplace. They are not competing.
| What Apple product is competing with a random app they
| reject on the marketplace for a random reason?
|
| It is not a question of competition. The problem is that
| Apple and Google __are in control and gatekeep the
| marketplace __in the first place. They control the
| _critical digital infrastructure_ that other companies
| build their products on, and if they decide that they don
| 't like you you are out of luck and might as well give up
| your business. That is where the harm comes from.
|
| Private companies should not control critical digital
| infrastructure, just like private companies should not
| control critical physical infrastructure.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Apple and Google are not exhibiting anti-competitive
| behavior when they moderate the marketplace.
|
| It's not the moderation, it's the moderation combined
| with effectively gating the ability to run a competing
| marketplace.
|
| Apple does this through linking all the components of the
| stack, their store requires their OS which requires their
| hardware, and their hardware requires their OS which
| requires their store. You can't compete on any single
| level because the whole paltform is a monolith.
|
| Google does it slightly differently, but almost as
| effectively. They don't really care about the hardware,
| but they've moved portions of the OS to things that are
| distributed through their store. You can't completely
| remove the Play store without crippling a lot of OS
| features.
|
| > They are not competing. What Apple product is competing
| with a random app they reject on the marketplace for a
| random reason?
|
| Anti0copetitive behavior doesn't require they compete
| specifically, just that they prevent competition. But if
| you want a simple example, a web browser. You can't ship
| a competitive web browser because you're forced to use
| their core, for multiple reasons (can't JIT because of
| memory restrictions, but at a more fundamental level
| because you can't release an interpreter, which
| JavaScript engines are).
|
| > It is not a question of competition. ... if they decide
| that they don't like you you are out of luck and might as
| well give up your business. That is where the harm comes
| from.
|
| That's preventing others from competing. That's exactly
| the problem. Competition is a core attribute of our
| economic model, and preventing it causes that model to
| not work correctly. Monopolies aren't inherently bad,
| they're bad because they allow anti-competitive behavior
| to be exerted easily. Anti-trust laws exist not because
| we don't like companies making deals with each other, but
| because when those deals are anti-competitive, it goes
| against the economic model we have in place, and the
| public is harmed.
|
| > Private companies should not control critical digital
| infrastructure, just like private companies should not
| control critical physical infrastructure.
|
| That's true, and that doesn't require a monopoly to have
| happen. I think it's a weaker case though, since I don't
| think Apple or Android are really providing critical
| digital infrastructure, and if you do think of a mobile
| device (and software delivery on it) as critical
| infrastructure, then there is choice (that is, the
| complete failure of one allows a different systems to be
| used). I think of consumer harm a bit differently when
| considering critical paths, as that assumes a whole new
| platform/stack might be required depending on where the
| break is. That's not a strong conviction though, so maybe
| you're convince me otherwise.
| plankers wrote:
| You're right in your core point, I just wanted to say
| that eliminating competition or throwing up silly hoops
| for competition to jump through by abusing your power
| over the market is totally anti-competitive behavior.
| They don't even have to compete, they've structured their
| businesses such that competition is impossible.
| rurp wrote:
| That's an awfully bold claim. Got a cite to back that up?
|
| Apple does not have a monopoly on smart phone apps but does
| have a monopoly on iPhone apps. From what I understand it's
| debatable which market should apply here. You seem awfully
| sure about your position so maybe there's a court or
| legislative decision you know of that makes this a settled
| point.
| manigandham wrote:
| The marketshare definition of a monopoly is poor and
| obsolete. How much control they have over your devices and
| your life is much more descriptive, and in that case Apple
| has significant power with control over roughly half of the
| mobile ecosystem.
| [deleted]
| babypuncher wrote:
| But it's not very hard for me to just go buy a different
| phone if I'm unhappy with what Apple is doing with the
| iPhone.
| manigandham wrote:
| You only have 2 choices, iOS or Android. How about we
| have more accountability for the 2 trillion dollar
| company instead of telling consumers to just deal with
| it?
| smabie wrote:
| Okay, but what does that have to do with Apples supposed
| monopoly? The fact remains that it is extremely easy to
| ditch all Apple products.
|
| The same can't be said about Google or Amazon.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It's a per se antitrust violation, which does not actually
| require monopoly status.
| nodamage wrote:
| What, specifically, are you alleging is a _per se_
| antitrust violation?
| cwhiz wrote:
| Why would Apple want screenshots in the iOS or Mac App Store
| that show devices that cannot run iOS or macOS? Would Sony or
| Microsoft allow PS4 or Xbox devices in their respective
| digital store listings? No way. You should either provide
| screenshots without a device or show a device that the
| application will actually run on.
|
| Honestly I would say it's pretty lazy to provide screenshots
| depicting a device where the app can't even run.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| The visuals of a video game don't run on the literal
| console, they run on a television.
|
| It's like if in the PlayStation store, your game could only
| be shown running on a Sony TV and if you showed any other
| brand of TV they would deny your game to be published
| there.
| marcinzm wrote:
| You misunderstand, they were selling a PHYSICAL Microsoft
| device in their e-commerce store that sells physical items.
| Nonetheless, showing a product you can buy in the app that
| is not Apple branded was not allowed.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Nonetheless, showing a product you can buy in the app
|
| That would be extremely bad, but that's not the scenario
| the original poster described. They had a Microsoft
| product _in their App Store screenshots._
|
| There are countless e-commerce apps (Amazon, eBay etc)
| available for iOS that will happily let you purchase
| competitors' products.
|
| Also worth noting that you can get Microsoft apps in the
| iOS App Store and that some of these apps compete with
| Apple's own apps.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| So how does that work for Amazon, Rakuten, Alibaba,
| Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, et al. ?
| erklik wrote:
| Once you are big enough, you do not follow the same
| rules.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Presumably if any of them used a screenshot that showed a
| product competing with Apple they would not be approved.
| greatgib wrote:
| There is so much corporate bullshit and hypocrisy in so few
| words, that if feel like vomiting when I read they announcement.
|
| Am I the only one?
| bambax wrote:
| > _guideline violations_
|
| What a language! How could "guidelines" ever be "violated"?
| Rules? Injunctions? Yes. Guidelines? No.
|
| Rules is too harsh certainly, so let's use guidelines instead.
| But since the underlying meaning does not change, words lose
| connection to reality.
|
| We think we are creating a softer and kinder world, but the
| opposite is true. If a guideline is actually an order, what's an
| order?
| dathinab wrote:
| It would be fun to try to sue Apple for misleading their
| customers (devs are customers, they pay yearly) and try to
| force them (and Google) to change the wording to correctly use
| rules.
|
| That's if you have a lot of throwaway money and you don't like
| charity.
| baddox wrote:
| Which customers do you think Apple cares more about, app
| developers or their actual iPhone customers?
| hellisothers wrote:
| Good call out, and something I'm not seeing a lot of
| discussion on here. I am an iOS developer but I want Apple
| to care about me as an iOS user first and foremost.
|
| A lot of the discussion around this sounds almost exactly
| like "we need pro-business anti-regulation, it'll trickle
| down!", ie "high taxes on business hurts consumers". Just
| like in real life, these arguments would be easier to
| swallow if they weren't coming from the businesses
| themselves who just want a larger slice of the pie.
| baddox wrote:
| That's where I am too. I actually mostly agree (at least
| in principle) with a lot of the arguments about Apple's
| anticompetitive behavior and hostility towards their app
| developers, but I can't help but think that if app
| developers had their way, iPhones would be much worse
| products for the average iPhone customer and iPhone would
| have essentially no product differentiation from Android.
|
| Too often these discussions on HN center on the power
| dynamics between Apple and app developers, and
| occasionally mention in passing something like ("choice
| is good for the iPhone owner too; if they don't want X
| then they can just choose to not install X"), but the
| discussion rarely tackles the nuance of the power
| dynamics between app developers and smartphone owners.
| valuearb wrote:
| App Review is both a burden and a hugely valuable service
| for App developers.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Apple needs to hire Steve Ballmer.
|
| https://youtu.be/KMU0tzLwhbE
| boogies wrote:
| The lowest quality of comments and the highest quality
| comment. Take my upvote now and I might come back when I
| earn downvote.
| PakG1 wrote:
| Well, I suppose I'd have to see the growth rate of how much
| that 30% cut adds to their bottom line to decide that. But
| even if it were huge, probably the actual iPhones still
| make way more money.
| harry8 wrote:
| The correct question is "which do you think Apple cares
| about least?"
|
| They care about market power very deeply so they don't have
| to care. Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact
| same thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for
| the Nokia N900, right?
| boogies wrote:
| > Where are you going to go? Google? Doing the exact same
| thing. Neither? Cabin in the woods territory. Oh for the
| Nokia N900, right?
|
| The Pinephone is on the frontpage at the moment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24329900, and the
| Librem 5 has been several times recently. Maybe not
| grandma friendly ATM but I wouldn't call it "cabin in the
| woods territory."
| harry8 wrote:
| I look forward to the day I agree with you and hope it
| comes soon.
|
| The point is we had it. The N900 was it. 10+ years ago.
| Maybe pine or librem or open moko or whatever will get us
| back to where we were more than a decade ago. I really
| hope so.
| boogies wrote:
| I think there's good reason to hope, there's a variety of
| implementation:
|
| + 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of
| phones - Pinephones in various
| community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the
| convergence package - Librem 5s for $750 now
| that the crowdfunding campaign's over, and a $2000 Made
| in the US version
|
| + Several GUI environments:
| boogies wrote:
| I think there's good reason to hope, there's a variety of
| implementations:
|
| + 2 companies, Pine64 and Purism, making 2 lines of
| phones - Pinephones in various
| community editions, $150 and $200 with and without the
| convergence package - Librem 5s for $750 now
| that the crowdfunding campaign's over, and a $2000 Made
| in the US version
|
| + Several GUI environments: - Phosh,
| based on GNOME and GTK+, developed by Purism as the
| default shell for the Librem 5 - The KDE
| equivalent of that, that Purism has wanted as an option
| for the Librem 5 from early on - Ubiports'
| community maintained Ubuntu Touch - Sxmo, a
| bundle of mobile adaptations of dwm, dmenu, etc. with a
| nice modular (Unixy/KISS/suckless) design eg. a gesture
| daemon made by the same developer with it but not
| exclusively for it
|
| This seems significantly better than the N900's single
| (though great sounding) thing that couldn't thrive
| independently after Microsoft bought Nokia out.
| emteycz wrote:
| Customer protections in most countries do not apply to
| business deals.
| [deleted]
| damnyou wrote:
| Would that also be true if you are an independent
| developer? Why should individual developers releasing apps
| not get full customer protections?
|
| Treating all developers as businesses is part of the
| problem here I think. There should be more bespoke apps by
| individuals for small audiences -- more of a community feel
| to things.
| emteycz wrote:
| Apple does not have to cater to independent developers -
| and it doesn't, per the Developer Agreement contract.
| Initially you weren't able to develop apps for the iPhone
| at all - that is okay too.
|
| You are not entitled to get a open computing platform if
| the thing resembles an... Actually, they defined this
| form factor!
| damnyou wrote:
| Right, I understand that's Apple's point of view. I just
| believe all of this nonsense should be totally illegal.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I develop on iOS as a hobby not for business. But I don't
| know how common that is.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Even as an individual, the agreements you sign would be
| considered business deals since both you and Apple have
| the potential to profit from the agreement.
| damnyou wrote:
| If I am an individual developer and only intend to
| release free apps, I should be entitled to full customer
| protections, period. Apple has no excuse here.
| mrkstu wrote:
| But your 'harm' in that scenario is limited to your
| developer fees and likely the venue limited to small
| claims court or local equivalent.
| bluntfang wrote:
| >We think we are creating a softer and kinder world
|
| This seems like a non sequitur...is Apple claiming this why
| their use of the word "guideline"? If so, can you show that?
| andruc wrote:
| Par for the course with Apple. Apps in macOS never crash, they
| merely exhibit unexpected behaviours.
| mmastrac wrote:
| eg: unexpectedly closing with no message.
| leeoniya wrote:
| > unexpected
|
| "off-nominal"
| tomovo wrote:
| Apps never crash. They just go on vacations. Then they
| return with their default screens, rested and ready to work
| again.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I don't care if it's not correct, I just like how "non-
| nominal" sounds.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It eventually leads to "rapid unscheduled termination".
| munificent wrote:
| Automatically engaged energy saver mode.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| unrequested state erasure
| boogies wrote:
| Eww, not "termination", that sounds harsh ... maybe
| "exit" or "closure"?
| leeoniya wrote:
| the term is "rapid unplanned disassembly"
|
| also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_
| into_terrain
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, wait... That linked name is completely reasonable and
| descriptive. It's not like the others.
| leeoniya wrote:
| has a better ring to it than "crashing into the side of a
| mountain"
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| See also: lithobraking.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It doesn't mean "crashing into the side of a mountain".
|
| It means "flying normally, into a path that ends on the
| side of a mountain". That "flying normally" part is
| really relevant.
| leeoniya wrote:
| well, yes, it also means that.
|
| nothing in that statement implies that crashing was not
| preceded by normal, controlled flight. the term "crash"
| has no innate implication besides violent impact. though,
| yes, in actual use it often implies "accidental" and/or
| "uncontrolled".
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It is a specific term that means the aircraft was flying
| normally all the way until it reached the ground.
|
| Yes, "crashing on the side of a mountain" is also a
| correct description of the same event. But those two
| phrases do not have the same meaning.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Specifically, CFIT is a subset of "crashing into a
| mountain" where the aircraft was under control all the
| way until terminal lithobraking. It's implied the last
| part is usually unexpected, otherwise it would be
| avoided.
| rvz wrote:
| That's the reality distortion spells kicking in right there
| by Apple's marketing wizards.
| throWaythxMod wrote:
| And "privacy"- meanwhile their App store is full of spyware.
|
| Not that Android is better, but at least they aren't
| marketing it.
| 1f60c wrote:
| You can't claim that, and not provide any evidence at all.
| adventured wrote:
| > And "privacy"- meanwhile their App store is full of
| spyware.
|
| If Apple tightly controls their store, Apple bad.
|
| If Apple doesn't tightly control their store, Apple bad.
|
| The unavoidable consequence of being really big - a large
| number of people will be unhappy with your decisions no
| matter what you do.
| dkersten wrote:
| If Apple claim to tightly control their store _because_
| of privacy and security, but then don 't deliver, then
| yes, Apple bad.
|
| If apple doesn't tightly control their store and doesn't
| claim to protect your privacy or security through their
| store, then no, they're not bad.
|
| Its about not meeting the expectations they, themselves,
| set based on their claims.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Was literally told this by an Apple "Genius" when I took my
| dad's MacBook in for what was obviously (and did indeed turn
| out to be) faulty ram.
| pier25 wrote:
| Apple is an expert in doublespeak.
| thecureforzits wrote:
| Apple has created for the first time in all history a walled
| garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure
| from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Apple may have broken the telescreen (as per the famous ad),
| but they didn't break the wall behind it.
| brosinante wrote:
| This website you're reading now has "guidelines", yet no-one is
| accusing hn of creating a harsher world (at least not in the
| word they use instead of rules).
| newyorker2 wrote:
| 1. I don't remember paying $99 to have my comments published
| on HN.
|
| 2. A take down of "guideline" breaking comments doesn't
| impact my income as an app developer.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _1. I don 't remember paying $99 to have my comments
| published on HN._
|
| That's because you pay with your eyeballs (for premium
| dev/business/startup traffic to YC's posts).
| bhupy wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. This isn't a
| misdirection, it's a euphemism. We use them a lot in the
| English language, especially in marketing.
|
| Whether that's a good or bad thing is a separate question.
| IMO policing tone is a mostly uninteresting exercise.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| It is not even an euphemism. It is just a way to enforce
| rules selectively.
| xyclos wrote:
| "policy violation" would probably be better language.
|
| but since one of the definitions (https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/guideline) of "guideline" is:
|
| > an indication or outline of policy or conduct
|
| imo "guideline violation" isn't too far of a stretch even if it
| is technically a "policy violation".
| lallysingh wrote:
| Indication or outline isn't a definition of policy.
| robomartin wrote:
| Booster? Go flight! Retro? Go
| flight! FIDO? Go flight! Guidance?
| Go flight! Surgeon? Go flight!
| EECOM? Go! GNC? Go!
| TELMU? Go flight! Control? Go
| flight! Procedures? Go! INCO?
| Go flight! FAO? Go flight! Network?
| Go flight! Recovery? Go flight!
| CAPCOM? Go flight! Apple App Review
| Process? <crickets> ... ...
| Launch Control this is Houston... We are f&#*d...
|
| Note: Judging from the response sor far (-4) there seems to be
| a lack of a sense of humor on this fine Monday morning. Anyone
| who has locked horns with Apple's app review process knows
| exactly just how frustrating and sometimes irrational things
| can get. You can be ready for launch only to end-up in limbo. I
| have experienced this personally. I think humor is appropriate,
| even therapeutic at times.
|
| If you need to be grumpy, well, be grumpy. I've had enough
| challenges in life to learn that you have to take things
| seriously but, at the same time, not miss the opportunity to
| laugh about it a bit when appropriate.
| bredren wrote:
| I think an order would be "it is forbidden." Which carries a
| mystic weight and dire consequences.
| usefulcat wrote:
| "Rules" would tend to imply consistent enforcement;
| "guidelines", not so much.
| pvg wrote:
| _What a language! How could "guidelines" ever be "violated"?
| Rules? Injunctions? Yes. Guidelines? No_
|
| It's a commonly used expression, there's nothing wrong or
| strange about it. An example:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175233
| dang wrote:
| Yes, I seem to use it a lot:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.
| ..
| pvg wrote:
| You are far fonder of the stout, woody, Anglo-Saxon
| 'break':
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&qu
| e...
| [deleted]
| adrianmonk wrote:
| It could be a euphemism, but a more charitable explanation is
| that they are trying to acknowledge that their rules have a lot
| of gray area. "Guidelines" could be interpreted as a rule, but
| a specific type of rule, one that requires more of a judgment
| call to determine whether it was violated.
|
| Ideally rules would be clear and objective. Maybe there are
| cases where Apple could be better about that, but it's not
| always possible. For example, one of the rules is to select the
| appropriate category. I can't imagine how you'd write a rule
| that perfectly defines proper categorization. Another example
| is that apps must "use power efficiently", but good luck
| completely defining what is too wasteful or what is/isn't a
| worthwhile use of battery power.
| EGreg wrote:
| I think the strangest thing of this sort was when Apple
| rejects your app and the reviewer replies:
|
| "It would be appropriate to {{insert fix here}}" which they
| think will solve the issue for approval.
|
| Sometimes the thing seems totally _inappropriate_ to do in
| any other context. But even if it was appropriate, that is
| still disconnected from the actual reality that it 's
| _required_ in order to be accepted.
| moogly wrote:
| That quote is rich coming from one of the most cutthroat
| companies out there.
| dathinab wrote:
| Sounds good, but we will see if it fully honest.
|
| My guess is it still work well for all accidental friction but
| won't help at all with friction Apple put in place intentionally.
|
| Through if the appeal goes through a different person then the
| reviewer it might help with unreasonable reviewers (which Apple
| isn't probably to happy with either as they are prone to create
| bad PR)
| ehsankia wrote:
| I'm curious to see too, because my instinct is that accidental
| frictions are actually a very large chunk of the problems
| people have. At the scale that Apple works, even a 0.1% of
| updates being wrongly flagged probably meant dozens per day,
| and it's really annoying for a dev to have to deal with the
| inconsistency of randomly getting flagged for something that
| was fine a week ago.
| yarsanich wrote:
| Hmm...I have huge delays in reviewing my app to TestFlight from
| yesterday (previously it was maximum half day). Maybe that's the
| reason?
| staysaasy wrote:
| It's interesting to observe the difference between Apple's great
| treatment of consumers and their actions towards businesses that
| they interact with, as the App Store is fundamentally a b2b
| experience. It really highlights the difference between consumer
| and enterprise DNA.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Apple does not have great treatment of consumers. It's very
| inconsistent, so it sometimes feels great. But if you've ever
| had an idiot at a store totally misdiagnose an issue with a
| MacBook and force you to pay for repairs to faulty hardware
| that's under warranty, you'll realize there is actually no
| official escalation process.
| valuearb wrote:
| Apples customer satisfaction has been the highest in the
| industry for decades, and it's never even been close.
|
| The occasional genius mistake doesn't the undo the many, many
| interactions they get right, go the extra mile, and help
| customers beyond specific warranty limitations.
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