[HN Gopher] Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit b...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple agrees to settle potential class action suit by U.S.
developers
Author : throwaway888abc
Score : 639 points
Date : 2021-08-27 00:41 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| liquidise wrote:
| > Developers can communicate directly with customers about
| alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be
| given the right to opt-out.
|
| This is a huge step forward (though it falls well short of the
| ideal case) for iOS development. Having the ability to tell
| customers about other, often cheaper, payment methods removes a
| substantial barrier for some apps that have high-priced
| subscriptions.
|
| Positive as this change is, there is still a lot of ground to be
| won here. I'm fearful concessions like this will work as legal
| currency in the Epic case, instead of momentum pushing ongoing
| shifts in app store policy. Can someone with more legal
| understanding weigh in on that?
| Aissen wrote:
| Do you know that there can be _different pricing_ with
| alternative payment options ? This is suspiciously absent from
| the article.
| jsnell wrote:
| What do you think the step forward is here?
|
| The developers are still not allowed to communicate about
| alternate purchase options in the app, they would need to have
| some other form of communication with the user. Such
| advertising via side-channels was never forbidden, it's just
| that it's impractical for most developers to establish that
| side-channel.
|
| I really have to congratulate whoever wrote that press release.
| They gave away nothing, and even stated that the policy did not
| change, but still appear to have convinced a ton of people that
| there was some kind of a concession here.
| phantom784 wrote:
| Shouldn't be too hard. Collect email when they register, give
| them a free trial, email them instructions to purchase
| through your website.
| tdeck wrote:
| Someone should set up a payment service for apps that's
| cheaper for the consumer and developer, then advertise it
| heavily. "Check if your favorite app is on FOO to save
| money". Every app using such a system could benefit from the
| direct advertising done once by the payment provider. They
| could even offer a service that checks your bill from Apple
| and helps you switch the payment for eligible apps, thereby
| saving money.
| manmal wrote:
| Revenuecat is perfectly positioned to do that, but probably
| won't dare anger Apple in this way.
| xuki wrote:
| Why? Apple is not paying them, the developers are.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Apple could ban the SDK.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| That would be a beautiful piece of anti-competitive
| behaviour for the Epic case.
| xuki wrote:
| I would like to see Apple try. Free PR for revenuecat.
| taurath wrote:
| Developers are also not allowed to link to account management
| on a webpage if they signed up via a website, which
| contributes to lots of user confusion when it comes to
| cancellation of a subscription for instance.
| noway421 wrote:
| I think this is exactly what is being changed here? Now you
| can link away to a web portal with your account and
| alternative payment options.
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong.
| taurath wrote:
| > Developers can communicate directly with customers
| about alternative payment options. Customers have to
| consent and be given the right to opt-out.
|
| This is the only statement that might be construed as
| such from the article, but it doesn't say anything about
| management, and I'm really not sure what consent means -
| is it a popup that says "do you want to be informed about
| non-apple payment methods?". Maybe it is what is being
| changed, but I can't really tell.
|
| I can say that customer confusion is often built into app
| store policies, and the amount of backend and customer
| service work to clean up users who sign up with multiple
| payment methods accidently is not a trivial cost.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Moreover, communication about alternate payment options
| is not the same as ALLOWING alternate payment options.
| tommymachine wrote:
| you can't link directly from the app. however you can ask
| for email and send the link via email. the settlement
| hasn't been approved yet (filed yesterday) so the exact
| terms haven't been updated.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Agreed. This is just about the very least Apple could do.
| Strom wrote:
| This Apple press release and term changes are super
| confusing. Probably designed to be confusing. Let's look into
| them.
|
| First, let's take the old terms. App Store guidlines point
| 3.1.3 from 2020-11-28: [1]
|
| _Apps in this section cannot, either within the app or
| through communications sent to points of contact obtained
| from account registration within the app (like email or
| text), encourage users to use a purchasing method other than
| in-app purchase._
|
| The old rules seem pretty straightforward. You're not allowed
| to contact users about other payment options if you acquired
| the contact info through the app.
|
| Now, the press release from 2021-08-26 says: [2]
|
| _Apple is also clarifying that developers can use
| communications, such as email, to share information about
| payment methods outside of their iOS app. [..] Users must
| consent to the communication and have the right to opt out._
|
| This seems like it's purposely vague. The press release
| doesn't talk about the source of the contact information at
| all.
|
| So let's take a look at the updated terms. App Store
| guidelines point 3.1.3 from 2021-08-25: [3]
|
| _Apps in this section cannot, within the app, encourage
| users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase.
| Developers cannot use information obtained within the app to
| target individual users outside of the app to use purchasing
| methods other than in-app purchase (such as sending an
| individual user an email about other purchasing methods after
| that individual signs up for an account within the app).
| Developers can send communications outside of the app to
| their user base about purchasing methods other than in-app
| purchase._
|
| What a bizarre paragraph. First it explicitly makes it clear
| that it's forbidden to send the payment information using
| contact information obtained via the app. However the last
| sentence is a generic statement that seems to contradict
| that. Does Apple mean that you can only use contact
| information obtained elsewhere? That would then match the
| previous terms. So it's probably that. However it is worded
| in such a horrible way that I can't be sure.
|
| --
|
| After looking more into it, I think some actual changes might
| still be coming. Here's the key paragraph from the actual
| court document: [4]
|
| _Apple has agreed to revise its App Store Guidelines to
| permit developers of all app categories to communicate with
| consenting customers outside their app, including via email
| and other communication services, about purchasing methods
| other than in-app purchase. See Berman Decl., Ex. A at SS
| 5.1.3. Under the App's Store existing Guidelines, developers
| may not use contact information (emails, phone numbers, etc.)
| obtained within an app to contact their user base outside the
| app. As a practical matter, this prevents developers from
| alerting their customers to alternative payment options. The
| proposed Settlement lifts this restriction, and it does so
| for all app categories._
|
| --
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20201128030647/https://develo
| per...
|
| [2] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-us-
| developers-a...
|
| [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20210825162013/https://develo
| per...
|
| [4] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21049923/apple_pro
| pos...
| jsnell wrote:
| > the actual court document
|
| That's a nice find!
|
| I still find the language in the filing to be odd,
| specifically "all app categories". What good does allowing
| the communication changes for all app categories do, when
| most of them are not permitted to use non-IAP methods for
| payments in the first place? On the other hand, if they
| were changing the rules around when non-IAP payments are
| allowed, it seems like something that would be called out
| explicitly.
|
| _Maybe_ it could affect 3.1.3(f) and 3.1.4?
| koolba wrote:
| > What a bizarre paragraph. First it explicitly makes it
| clear that it's forbidden to send the payment information
| using contact information obtained via the app. However the
| last sentence is a generic statement that seems to
| contradict that. Does Apple mean that you can only use
| contact information obtained elsewhere? That would then
| match the previous terms. So it's probably that. However it
| is worded in such a horrible way that I can't be sure.
|
| That sounds like you can't use contact info you received as
| part of a paid signup to contact to switch to an out of
| band payment method.
|
| In contrast to contacting a free tier user who's email
| you've received as part of their signup flow. That
| situation would be allowed.
|
| Indeed it's bizarre as depending on when the contact data
| was gathered decides what you can do with it.
| tommymachine wrote:
| It seems to me that paragraph hasn't been updated to
| reflect the settlement terms yet, since the settlement
| was filed today?
| Strom wrote:
| That seems to be the case yes. The settlement hasn't been
| approved yet either.
| riversflow wrote:
| The way I interpret it is that you can email all your
| free users at the same time, with the below email, but
| you can't target individuals users and email them one at
| a time. My guess is what they are trying to avoid is a
| flow of: user signs up for free account with email => you
| inbox them saying: Subject: save 30% over
| in-app prices! Body: "don't pay through the
| app, use this link to our website"
| sfifs wrote:
| > The developers are still not allowed to communicate about
| alternate purchase options in the app, they would need to
| have some other form of communication with the user.
|
| I'm pretty sure this "anti-steering" restriction in-app will
| go away with the Epic vs. Apple ruling. It's classic "tying"
| in anti-trust. Nothing else in that case might go Epic's way,
| but this likely will.
|
| I'm also pretty sure every major player generating in-app
| revenue already has already developed their cheaper payment
| alternative to rollout the minute the ruling drops, so Apple
| will have to hustle to get a stay order.
| phire wrote:
| Does the settlement allow for alternative payment methods to be
| cheaper?
| saagarjha wrote:
| They are already allowed to be cheaper. This is just saying
| you can email people about it outside of the app.
| codazoda wrote:
| It seems like nothing in this prevents a new rule, however,
| that says you can't sell it cheaper on your own website.
| Amazon has been doing this with Kindle indy authors for a
| long time.
| alkonaut wrote:
| So Spotify still can't say front and center in the app "Buy
| subscription in app: $12/mo or click here to purchase on
| Spotify dot com for $10"?
|
| They have to show only the $12 in the app?
| realityking wrote:
| That's my understanding, yes.
|
| What they can now do is, if you sign-up for a free
| Spotify account using their app they can send you an
| email advertising the $10 subscription. In the past they
| could've only sent an email advertising the $12 one.
| [deleted]
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I have the same concern as well. Apple won't change a damn
| thing unless a US Court backs anyone but them. If you have
| legal precedence of a loss on Apples part, they won't be able
| to pull this BS in the future.
| speg wrote:
| So you can now tell users that you can pay/subscribe on your
| website but you can't offer alternative payment in-app (or can
| you if it's a webview?)
|
| But can you do that instead of offering in app payment? Or will
| you be required to have both.
|
| Personably I really don't want to see alternative payment methods
| in app unless they follow the same policies and APIs as the
| existing ones. I hate that Adobe will stop giving my access as
| soon as I cancel my subscription. I love that I can cancel my
| Lightroom subscription from Apple's subscription list with no
| fuss and have it expire when it's due.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The wording makes it so you can send email blasts to free-tier
| users about signing up via an avenue that's not the App. Within
| the app itself, for digital items, you still cannot use other
| payment processors or even Apple Pay, and cannot allude to that
| fact.
| saurik wrote:
| I don't understand... did anything even really change? Like,
| "more price points"... but that seems like a non-sequitur :/. A
| big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how
| to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release
| only says via e-mail... which I guess they insist wasn't allowed
| before?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I don't think the list of price points was the problem as much
| as it would be nice to have versioned upgrades. (I.e. FileMaker
| 2, FileMaker 3, FileMaker 4, and so on under the same listing
| and with access to old versions). Or, you know, a lower
| developer cut. Or competitive app stores.
|
| I'm just in the same boat... how did you make _that_ your issue
| worth agreeing over? That 's something Apple might have fixed
| on a Friday afternoon.
| alanlammiman wrote:
| I believe one of the arguments used in the suit was along the
| lines of "Apple, by making the minimum price (other than
| 'free') for apps and IAPs 99c, prevents us from charging,
| say, 37c and this harms consumers and is anticompetitive". I
| believe it was just to provide a clear, verifiable argument
| that customers were being charged more than they would be in
| a free market (whereas other things Apple does are infinitely
| more serious, but also harder to prove and quantify). I'd
| guess the agreement addresses that to be consistent, even
| though I don't think anybody truly cares about the
| granularity of the price tiers.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| _> A big change would be letting developers make it clear to
| users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple 's
| press release only says via e-mail_
|
| It really says something that "allowing" businesses to
| communicate certain information _with their own customers via
| an independent channel_ was considered a concession in this
| settlement. I 'm still wrapping my head around it.
| cgearhart wrote:
| I can feel your frustration, but it also strikes me as tone-
| deaf to those very same customers. The most common kind of
| email I send these days--by orders of magnitude--is
| "unsubscribe". I don't want your emails unless I actively
| asked for them. (And, no, passively being opted in or being
| forced to opt in by a user agreement or whatever doesn't
| count.) I would happily pay middle men a lot extra to get
| fewer unwanted emails, phone calls, or just generally more
| privacy.
|
| There was an article earlier today on HN about how user-
| hostile software has become, and I think that explains my
| problem. Until developers as a whole become not just less
| hostile, but actively prioritize my needs over their own, I
| don't think I'll change my mind.
|
| My real problem is that I don't have any leverage as an
| individual customer against hostile developers. So I'm stuck
| paying mega corps like Apple or Google to be the middle man
| for me because they _can_ leverage my interests against
| developers. So I just don't feel any sympathy when developers
| complain that they are having a hard time abusing me.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _I would happily pay middle men a lot extra to get fewer
| unwanted emails, phone calls, or just generally more
| privacy._
|
| My life has changed significantly for the better ever since
| I signed up for this: http://33mail.com/AQwZJR3
|
| The real trick is using a custom domain so
|
| A) They're very unlikely to add it to their disposable
| email list (and thus block it)
|
| B) If this service ever goes under you can still get the
| emails you want because you own the domain they're being
| sent to.
|
| Yes you could theoretically implement this yourself in
| gWorkspace or O365 but that sounds like a ton of work and
| $12/yr is 1000x worth it.
|
| (Disclaimer: that's my referral link, if enough ppl sign up
| with it I get a free year of service)
|
| I've been using it since March of this year and it's been
| wonderful, there was like 30 min of downtime once where the
| dashboard didn't work but emails were still getting
| delivered, and I they answered any questions I had when I
| reached out to them. So I highly recommend it and tell
| everyone about it.
| Jcowell wrote:
| On the flip side for Apple users we get up 100 Hide My
| Emails in iOS 15 with the same functionality.
| yunohn wrote:
| How does Apple's service handle the main functionality
| described above?
|
| > B) If this service ever goes under you can still get
| the emails you want because you own the domain they're
| being sent to.
| vxNsr wrote:
| They actually also allow you to set up your own domain,
| after reading his reply and writing my own I thought I'd
| research it some more. They apparently released the doc
| for it yesterday, I just followed it and while it's
| impressive that apple is allowing this level of technical
| expertise to be handed over to their users (modifying DNS
| records), their doc itself could use a little work. I
| have it working now for another domain I own.
|
| I still don't like the UX though compared to 33mail, I
| still need to go into the UI, add the email I want to use
| and then it'll deliver.
|
| I'm guessing the same is true for removal, only way to
| turn off the address is through the portal.
|
| If you use gWorkspace or O365, you already have this,
| it's called aliases, and at least O365 gives you
| seemingly unlimited aliases. My big pet peeve with that
| was needing to go into the O365 portal and manage the
| aliases.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I like the UI of 33mail more. It's easier to click a link
| at the top of an email in w/e client you're using vs
| digging through apple's portal and ever changing menus to
| toggle the right thing off.
|
| Unless it's gotten easier in iOS15... right now on my
| iPhone it's not possible to turn off forwarding.
|
| I need to go to appleid.apple.com,
|
| login, 2FA,
|
| find the menu,
|
| wait for it to load (bec it always seems to take like 5
| seconds, even if I just opened it),
|
| figure out which service is the one attached to the email
| I chose (names of company that makes the app and is thus
| associated with that ID may not always align with the
| name I know it as),
|
| turn it off.
|
| Also I don't get to choose the email address, instead
| apple makes it a random mix of letters and numbers: which
| means I must save it to a password manager and hope I
| never need to manually type it in for some reason (say on
| a public PC).
|
| With 33mail, the link to disable forwarding is in the
| header, like any unsubscribe link. You can still manage
| everything from their portal. You choose the domain and
| then they set it up as a catch all, to receive
| everything, except that which you say to deny. So you can
| have creative names for each service.
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| By all means use vxNsr's service (though I wish they
| mentioned their financial incentive before hand, props for
| mentioning it in the first place).
|
| I second their approach. By using a unique email per
| service you maintain a bit more control by being able to
| filter via "to" address or deregister the email via the
| service provider. It's not perfect but it's at least some
| bit of control where trust is not required.
|
| Personally I am using simplelogin.com. And full disclosure
| I wish it had smoother UX in many cases but overall the
| price vs feature set cannot, as far as I am aware, be beat.
|
| In general: I agree. Demanding attention, whether that be
| in person such as via mail, txt, or phone call or digital
| such as via email, should be opt in and NOT opt out.
| Incentive wise it simply does not make any sense for it to
| be opt out when the cost of contact is close to 0.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Once I'd already signed up for 33mail I found
| simplelogin.io it looks great too, especially feature-
| wise for the price. It's 2.5x more expensive vs 33mail
| (at the base plans) but you get a slicker looking UI and
| a lot more features.
|
| I was excited about 33mail bec the founder hangs out here
| sometimes.
|
| You're right I should have kept the disclaimer closer to
| the link, I'm on mobile and kept adding stuff and lost
| track of how it looked, it's too late to edit now.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I think it's important to wait for the final language from
| the settlement. After all, the original PR Post from Apple
| doesn't actually mention the $100 million fund that Axios
| does.
| saagarjha wrote:
| It's mentioned:
|
| > Apple will also establish a fund to assist small US
| developers, particularly as the world continues to suffer
| from the effects of COVID-19. Eligible developers must have
| earned $1 million or less through the US storefront for all
| of their apps in every calendar year in which the
| developers had an account between June 4, 2015, and April
| 26, 2021 -- encompassing 99 percent of developers in the
| US. Details will be available at a later date.
| noway421 wrote:
| Even though not enforceable in practice, you could've been
| booted off App Store for sending notifications/other means of
| communication about a cheaper way to pay.
| cube00 wrote:
| They're not your customers, they're Apple's customers and
| they're granting you a limited audience with them as long as
| you follow the house rules.
|
| Of course if something goes wrong and the customer gets
| litigious they'll be your customer then.
| manmal wrote:
| I wonder if that means app developers can now send emails to
| freshly subscribed users (who are still in the trial period) to
| cancel their App Store subscription and instead subscribe via
| an alternative payment provider. Eg. customer could pay 10%
| less, developer gets up to 24% more, win-win. Maybe the
| developer could throw in some goodies, like auto-cancellation
| after the first year.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > did anything even really change?
|
| Nope, that's the point of coming out in front like this and
| donating 100 million dollars towards keeping the status quo in
| place. To me, it reads as an insult to anyone who thinks their
| processes are democratic.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Apple is willing to spend $100 million because their
| executives are in an echo chamber.
|
| There are investigations (and some proposed laws) in the US,
| EU, Australia, UK, South Korea, and others. If Apple were a
| regular business, it should be obvious at this point that
| losing the App Store is _inevitable_ by now. A question of
| _when_ , not _if_.
|
| And yet Apple thinks that maybe, just maybe, they can buy
| their way out and have a chance to keep the status quo still.
| I think it's way too late for that now. We just need to sit
| back and wait for the lawmakers to finish the job.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it should be obvious at this point that losing the App
| Store is inevitable by now_
|
| This is a radical reading of current facts. It is
| plausible. But we're very far from inevitability. If you
| aren't seeing the broad opposition to and limited, focussed
| support for opening up iOS to competing App Stores, you may
| be in an echo chamber.
| jsnell wrote:
| > which I guess they insist wasn't allowed before?
|
| I think they'd actually claim that it _was_ allowed before. The
| press release is after all saying that all that 's happening is
| that they're clarifying the policy, not that they are changing
| it.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| how come Apple/Google is not consider a monopoly on smart phone?
| digitalsushi wrote:
| Probably because they are more than one company
| stevespang wrote:
| Apple get's to keep it's same commission ?
|
| Smells like a "sell out" by plantiffs attorney so he doesn't have
| to go to trial . . . attorney's get millions - - devs get little,
| as usual.
| routerl wrote:
| Let's be clear about this: this settlement means that Apple is
| offering developers _less_ than what they believe they would be
| forced to provide by law. There is never any other business logic
| behind these settlements.
|
| This is just another brick on the "benevolent monopoly" road.
| microtherion wrote:
| Applying the same logic to the plaintiffs, you would conclude
| that Apple is offering developers MORE than what the developers
| could hope to obtain through the legal process.
|
| In reality, for both sides there is a benefit in reducing the
| risk of an uncertain outcome and avoiding protracted
| litigation.
| [deleted]
| routerl wrote:
| Your reasoning is only sensible if both parties were on equal
| footing. They are not. The settlers will offer as little as
| they can get away with, and the settled will take whatever
| they can get.
|
| This situation is not symmetrical.
| adrr wrote:
| Greatest risk is alternative app stores which provides apple
| with no revenue.
| foota wrote:
| Not necessarily, it could be they believe a lawsuit would
| inflict PR damage and depress their stock price, or that they
| feel the risk of an extremely negative outcome is too high,
| even if still unlikely.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| The App Store is under investigation by at least a half dozen
| countries right now.
|
| To me, Apple losing the App Store appears completely
| inevitable; and Apple is willing to throw $100 million at a
| last-ditch effort to keep the status quo.
|
| And if we're lucky and devs are smart, we'll have developers
| publicly mock those checks from Apple's fund because that was
| money that Apple took from them with the revenue split and is
| giving back a fraction of, how generous.
|
| It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from the
| IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess money
| taken from you to begin with.
| LegitShady wrote:
| It's not that apple is going to lose the app store, it's that
| some of apple's more egregious policies (such as banning
| pointing users to other payment methods to monopolize
| payments completely unrelated to apple provided services) are
| being challenged and apple doesn't want to set any precedents
| or get any judgements against them on this civil suit.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > It's like when people get excited about tax refunds from
| the IRS. Super exciting, until you realize it was excess
| money taken from you to begin with.
|
| Not the best analogy. You can't necessarily know ahead of
| time exactly what your tax burden is and you define the
| withholdings to give to the IRS.
|
| You could specify no withholdings and have a big tax bill
| each year or be too aggressive and get a refund, or somewhere
| in between. Most people over estimate their obligation
| because it's easier to overpay than to come up with a large
| sum every year, especially when living paycheck to paycheck.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > Let's be clear about this: this settlement means that Apple
| is offering developers less than what they believe they would
| be forced to provide by law.
|
| Not necessarily. You haven't taken account of costs, or the
| possibility that the parties both felt this was the best
| outcome regardless of what (unpredictable) quantum a court may
| have awarded.
|
| Litigation is a poor use of time for both parties and is best
| avoided for the good of both parties.
|
| Whether the settlement is "fair", "reasonable", "agreeable", or
| "forced" is another matter. The point is, you can't assess or
| deduce it without more information.
| JimTheMan wrote:
| Completely agree, especially due to the incredible expenses
| involved with going to court.
| [deleted]
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > There is never any other business logic behind these
| settlements.
|
| Never? That assumes hostility or bad faith by at least one of
| the parties.
|
| On the contrary, when both parties negotiate in good faith,
| there is often other business logic to be discovered.
|
| By talking through points of difference, the parties have the
| opportunity to learn about each others strengths and
| weaknesses, which are the necessary ingredients for better
| design.
|
| You never know with this. Apple might learn something from
| smaller devs that their executives didn't know before. The
| art is in translating that knowledge into a business
| advantage for both parties that doesn't cost Apple something
| in its business relationship with bigger shops, such as Epic.
|
| How? The devil is in the details.
|
| Apple executives naturally have more exposure to big shops
| than small devs. This exercise at least gets small devs on
| their radar, and vice versa.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| If you can assume one side thought a settlement is better than
| an outcome via trial, can you also assume the other side
| thought so too?
|
| > Let's be clear about this: this settlement means that the
| developers got more than they believe Apple would be forced to
| provide by law. There is never any other business logic behind
| these settlements.
|
| Im inclined to agree without other commenters that this line of
| thinking doesn't help.
| routerl wrote:
| > If you can assume one side thought a settlement is better
| than an outcome via trial, can you also assume the other side
| thought so too?
|
| No. The cost factor has higher weight on one side of that
| equation. Apple is one of the largest companies on earth,
| with an expert and carefully curated legal team. The other
| side is a loose association of individual interests.
|
| Unless you believe that the legal process is absolutely fair,
| and that its outcomes are in no way related to the opposing
| parties' "legal burn rate". In that case, your reasoning is
| correct.
|
| But that is not the case.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I don't understand why the App Store, this small "side business"
| in the grand scheme of things, is something Apple is worth
| fighting and dying over.
|
| It's literally, a small fraction of their revenue, and yet it
| grabs 80% of the bad PR and is now under investigation and
| proposed legislation in the US, UK, EU, Korea, and I think
| Australia.
|
| If I'm Apple, shouldn't it be obvious at this point that losing
| the App Store monopoly is _inevitable_ , a _when_ instead of an
| _if_? And yet...
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > If I'm Apple, shouldn't it be obvious at this point that
| losing the App Store monopoly is inevitable?
|
| I think Apple believes their own PR story here. They really do
| believe that the App Store is great for everyone, not just
| them. They really do believe that they're entitled to a
| generous cut of all transactions that happen on their devices.
|
| Objectively, you're right -- although I think I'd go farther
| and suggest that it actually _wasn 't_ inevitable from the
| start. If Apple had dropped their cut from 30% to 20% five
| years ago, had looser restrictions on third-party in-app
| purchases (say, allowing them for "cross-platform digital
| media" like ebooks), and treated streaming game apps the way
| they treat other streaming media, those alone might have been
| enough. Sure, they'd have lost _some_ money that way, but
| objectively, probably not enough to be worth the risk of going
| through what they 're facing now.
| bogwog wrote:
| > probably not enough to be worth the risk of going through
| what they're facing now.
|
| Easing restrictions over the years wouldn't prevent the
| inevitable. Doing it this way lets them face the inevitable
| lawsuits from a position of power, rather than a weaker
| position after years of slowly easing restrictions.
|
| It's like ripping off a bandaid.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| At this point, I don't think it's an economic calculation
| anymore, if it ever was. I think it's moreso that Apple
| genuinely believes that third parties shouldn't have access to
| their platforms without prior review. Everything else has an
| explanation from that:
|
| - We need to monopolize control over who can publish software
| for our platforms, so we can enforce our security guidelines.
|
| (This includes banning third-party app stores, emulators,
| virtualization, alternative browser engines, and all the other
| fun things Android users chuckle at iPhone users about.)
|
| - Hiring reviewers to check all the apps we ship for problems
| costs money, so we need to get paid for that review.
|
| - However, we can't just charge developers money for review, as
| it would be prohibitively expensive and encourage developers to
| not fix broken software.
|
| (At this point we need to review what Apple's competition was
| in this space at the time of the App Store launch. That is,
| game consoles, which have been universally locked down and
| monopolized since 1985. The companies that owned those
| platforms generally charged per software build submitted for
| review. The cost per submission was somewhere in the 5 figure
| range and could take up to a month to approve. Nintendo was
| extra spiteful, and would actually refuse to pay you after you
| updated your game, until you sold another 1000 units. Steam
| didn't really bother reviewing software submissions, not
| because it was a free-for-all, but because partnering with them
| used to be a legitimate challenge involving bugging several
| different Valve employees.)
|
| - Therefore, we need to bundle how we get paid for reviewing
| software into the cost structure of apps. That way, we get paid
| when developers get paid.
|
| - Thus, we can't have third-party billing, because that would
| let developers evade payment for our software review.
| yyyk wrote:
| >- Thus, we can't have third-party billing, because that
| would let developers evade payment for our software review.
|
| Except for having to buy a Mac to do development in the first
| place. And the developer registration yearly fee.
| collaborative wrote:
| And also, the value developers add to Apple's ecosystem
| snuser wrote:
| It's not fair to be called a side project at this point, it's
| used to mediate all software on a computing device used by over
| a billion people
| bpicolo wrote:
| Side business? $64 billion in revenue in 2020. That's like a
| quarter of their overall revenue?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Revenue, but that's before devs get their cut.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-
| apples-a...
|
| In total... more like $22 billion of profit? Not trivial, but
| compared to Apple's other profitable businesses...
| jsnell wrote:
| Apple's entire profit in 2020 was $57 billion. $22 billion
| is highly non-trivial even when compared to all of their
| other businesses combined.
| jimhi wrote:
| Some quick googling told me a lot of things
|
| Apple hides how much it makes in the app store by combining it
| into their iPhone product segment.
|
| "Apple doesn't disclose how much revenue its App Store makes
| per year. Instead, since 2013, it has released data points in
| January that include the total that Apple has paid to
| developers since the beginning of the App Store in 2008."
|
| The low estimates for the app store are $64 billion last year
| and 70%+ margins. It is entirely possible Apple makes most of
| its money from the app store.
| TheTon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the App Store is accounted under "Services"
| not "iPhone." $64B sounds about right, but even if services
| had a 70% margin and hardware had only a 30% margin, hardware
| would still be the more profitable side of the business at
| the moment.
|
| https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/04/apples-record-second-
| quar...
| manquer wrote:
| Maybe so, however if they drop their take to 15% from 30%
| it will drop their annual profit by 30Billion , which will
| influence the stock price massively.
|
| Senior management who have a large chunk of their salary in
| stock arent going to do it easily.
|
| Apple can survive without this money yes, but no one at
| apple is likely to let it go without fighting for it.
| zarzavat wrote:
| It's a corollary to Apple's mantra "The best way to make
| software to make your own hardware". Apple believes in total
| end-to-end control over the experience.
|
| Yes to a certain extent they are motivated by money, but they
| are far more motivated by maintaining control. Allowing users
| to install third party software via another route means that
| Apple is no longer in control. Apple wants to be the singular
| provider of everything on their platform.
|
| You can see this in action on macOS. Apple makes almost no
| money from macOS, yet their grip over it is ever tightening.
| yarsanich wrote:
| Good to know.
|
| Suddenly Apple rejected my last app release because of link to
| app Patreon page(it was there in all previous releases).
|
| Hope now I will be able to back this link to the app.
| m0zg wrote:
| LOL. Apple's revenue is about 140 million per hour. $100M won't
| deter a damn thing.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| _The same federal judge is hearing the Apple-Epic case and a
| ruling could come at any time._
|
| I suppose this is not unusual, but is it ever considered to not
| have a judge hear more than one case by a party?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Well, there's only a limited number of federal district judges
| in a given jurisdiction, so the odds are that a bunch of tech
| companies going at each other in California will get in front
| of the same federal judge.
|
| However, I'd argue it's also beneficial: Having two different
| judges rule radically differently on very similar cases (this
| one and Epic) would only create more confusion, as to what the
| ruling is, or should be. If either party doesn't think the
| judge is going to make the right ruling, there's jury trials,
| and of course, they can always appeal.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > If either party doesn't think the judge is going to make
| the right ruling, there's jury trials,
|
| Apple and Epic both opted out of a jury trial, probably would
| have needlessly extended the process and neither of them
| think a jury would be able to take in all of the nuances of
| the case to make an informed decision.
|
| Unless, can either party still demand a jury trial a month
| before/a week before the ruling?
|
| https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-09-30-epic-
| and-a...
| kevmo wrote:
| Apple was terrified of what might happen in trial.
|
| Edit: downvote away. I'm a former federal law clerk and cofounder
| of Upsolve. This is how and why settlements happen -- they
| resolve the uncertainty of trial.
|
| This is how power works in the legal system.
| jrockway wrote:
| > Apple will offer more price points for apps. Today there are
| less than 100, but the company is committing to increase that to
| more than 500 options.
|
| I really hope they implemented this as an enum, so someone has to
| wade through: enum PricePoint {
| UNKNOWN = 0; NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 1;
| ONE_DOLLAR = 2; TWENTY_DOLLARS = 3;
| NINETEY_EIGHT_CENTS = 4; DEPRECATED_NINETY_SEVEN_CENTS
| = 5; TEN_DOLLARS_PER_MONTH = 6;
| PORTUGAL_NATIONAL_BALLOON_DAY_2019_SPECIAL_NINTEY_NINE_CENTS = 7;
| // 500 lines follow. }
| TheNewAndy wrote:
| There is some evidence of this - if you can log in to app store
| connect (need a developer account) there is this page:
|
| https://appstoreconnect.apple.com/apps/pricingmatrix/1539646...
|
| It shows the tiers from 0 (free) to 87 (USD 999).
|
| Then come the party tiers: 510, 530, 550, 560, 570, 580, 590
| which are just repeats of the other tiers, probably for some
| good historical reason which I'm not aware of.
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| Huh, so $999 is the max -- and here I was all this time
| thinking the I Am Rich [0] dev had generously chosen an
| affordable price point.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
| objclxt wrote:
| > which are just repeats of the other tiers
|
| Those are the price adjusted tiers. They look like repeats in
| USD, but if you look at other currencies you'll see they're
| different. They're designed to allow you to offer price
| points that are scaled according to the market (i.e, 99c in
| the US, but considerably cheaper than that in India or
| China).
| TheNewAndy wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks.
| tl wrote:
| Just note, that link only works for you; if you have a
| developer account, you'll have to substitute the ten-digit
| number for one from your apps.
| mynegation wrote:
| Lol, few things trigger my OCD more than misspelled words in
| identifiers. I legit missed important use case while amending
| legacy system just because someone decided to have "priveleges"
| in the variable name. I hope all those ways to spell number 90
| are part of the joke.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Oh yeah it's especially wonderful if it's too late to fix the
| spelling mistake lol.
| monocasa wrote:
| As a dev with dyslexia, I apologize. I've for sure committed
| some sins there in places that are nasty to fix.
| hurflmurfl wrote:
| Well, pasting the enum example into IntelliJ highlighted
| the spelling mistakes and suggested replacing NINTEY and
| NINETEY with NINETY. I think this is how my dyslexic
| colleague works too - copy pasting instead of writing and
| looking for various wiggly lines in code editor.
| monocasa wrote:
| Yeah, spell check in editor is killer, and I work in
| strongly typed languages so it's a compiler error if I
| misspell a variable name is another big one.
|
| It doesn't catch everything however.
| mikey_p wrote:
| I once fat-fingered a `rails new APPNAME` command and didn't
| catch it for several months. Not impossible to change, but
| also not really critical either.
| gambiting wrote:
| In a triple A game I worked on, the PlayStation button enums
| were CROSS, SQUARE, TRIANGLE, and...... CRIRCLE.
|
| Would drive me absolutely livid. But of course no one was
| allowed to fix is since it was already in a few different
| games, countless script files, network-controlled configs
| etc.....
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| Dumb, they should've just added a CIRCLE = CRIRCLE option
| indigochill wrote:
| CROSS = 1
|
| CRIRCLE = 2
|
| CIRCLE = CRIRCLE
| bluedino wrote:
| A very long time ago we outsourced our Wordpress
| development and customization to a developer we found on a
| website who was from Moldova. He did pretty decent work and
| we got a great deal, but the HTML/CSS was a bane to work
| with. Almost half the DIV id's and such were spelled
| slightly wrong. Didn't affect the operation of the site but
| was very annoying to work with.
| bluedino wrote:
| I remember Allegro used to have double functions for
| Palette and Pallet. You may notice that a
| lot of the code in Allegro spells 'palette' as 'pallete'.
| This is because the headers from my old Mark Williams
| compiler on the Atari spelt it with two l's, so that is
| what I'm used to.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I feel your pain. A company I work for has a weird name
| that doesn't follow the rules of English spelling correctly
| (I can't say more without giving away the company name).
| This was an intentional decision and poses enough of a
| problem for guests visiting the company. But the absurd
| thing is this company decides to double down on it's
| troubles by naming all of it's projects using the same
| broken rule as the company title. Often these projects will
| be common English words re-spelt in the style of the
| company name. So now I'm often finding myself misspelling
| common words because of this stupid company name. And all
| of this is intentional too! Drives me nuts.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Googol?
| ballenf wrote:
| At this point most students learning about that number
| assume it's misspelled when first introduced and
| incorrect the teacher.
| ffhhj wrote:
| That's so discorrect.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Reminds me of the occasional encounter with "deinstall"
| versus "uninstall."
| dkersten wrote:
| unpossible!
| gota wrote:
| postposterous!
| ant6n wrote:
| I think we're way beyond postposterous. Think
| postpostposterous.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>incorrect the teacher.
|
| Did you just use incorrect as a verb?
| allwein wrote:
| Reminds me of this comic.
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy/2003/04/27
| majormajor wrote:
| Verbing weirds language.
|
| Beaten by ten years:
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25 :)
| bombcar wrote:
| A favorite pastime of HN is users incorrecting each other
| on topics they know nothing about. ;)
| ndonnellan wrote:
| You mean like Optimizely? I thought most startups these
| days had absurd adjectiverbnoun names.
| mastazi wrote:
| I see what you did here...
|
| > it's troubles
|
| > it's projects
|
| > So now I'm often finding myself misspelling common
| words
|
| > And all of this is intentional too!
|
| :-D
| bradleyankrom wrote:
| In an old code base I worked in, someone misspelled "params"
| as "parms." Always made me want a sandwich.
| maxwell wrote:
| Sounds like a lisper.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Apaulgraham.com+parms
| simlevesque wrote:
| I feel like being proactive about these things is one of the
| most important parts of my job.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Even worse than misspelled is when it's inverted polarity!
| Like uninitialized=true means that it IS initialized. I've
| seen something similar to that in multiple jobs.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| You're going to love this: U+FE18 [?] PRESENTATION FORM FOR
| VERTICAL RIGHT WHITE LENTICULAR BRAKCET: bracket is spelled
| incorrectly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode#Anomalies
| hashkb wrote:
| And everyone saying "backslash" is on the inside of an
| awesome joke too.
| aroman wrote:
| do you actually have OCD or are you just using this as a
| figure of speech?
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I'll just leave this here for you:
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7231#section-5.5.2
| dhosek wrote:
| Lets not forget the misspelling of guillemet as guillemot
| that is now firmly embedded into PostScript and Adobe
| software with no chance of ever being fixed.
|
| Unicode sidestepped the issue by naming the characters
| RIGHT/LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK.
| Someone wrote:
| Unicode also documents its mistakes in technote 27 "Known
| Anomalies in Unicode Character Names"
| (https://unicode.org/notes/tn27/), with remarks such as
|
| _"U+034F COMBINING GRAPHEME JOINER
|
| The name does not describe the function of this
| character. Despite its name, it does not join graphemes"_
|
| _"The use of the spelling lamda derives from ISO 10646.
| This does not mean that it is more correct than lambda,
| merely that the spelling without the 'b' is the one used
| in the formal character names"_
|
| _"A spelling error: "brakcet" should be "bracket". A
| formal alias correcting this error has been defined"_
| asddubs wrote:
| Why can't unicode change the names of the glyphs?
| jfk13 wrote:
| Just a note in passing: Unicode doesn't name glyphs; it
| names characters.
| Someone wrote:
| From that page:
|
| _"Because Unicode Standard is a character encoding
| standard and not the Universal Encyclopedia of Writing
| Systems and Character Identity, the stability and
| uniqueness of published character names is far more
| important than the correctness of the name. The published
| character names are normative for the purposes of the
| Unicode standard and the large number of other IT
| standards that reference it. These standards require
| stable identifiers and character names must therefore be
| immutable -- any change of character names is almost as
| disruptive of the standards as changing code points for
| characters would be. Accordingly, the Unicode Consortium
| has adopted the Name Stability Policy, preventing changes
| in character names. As a result, errors in character
| names cannot be corrected. Instead, important character
| name anomalies anomalies (SIC) are documented with
| annotations in the Unicode Character Code Charts."_
|
| Also because somebody, somewhere, might have used those
| names to look up Unicode code points.
|
| Part of each Unicode release is a file named
| "UnicodeData.txt"
| (https://unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/UnicodeData.txt),
| so those strings are public information.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| I've heard Greeks insist that _lamda_ is indeed correct
| (as a non-misleading approximation of something like
| [lamda], not necessarily as an English spelling), so that
| part might have been a deliberate result of the ISO
| process.
|
| (There's also the name _caron_ for the hacek, apparently
| not used by anyone before the 80s; per the official FAQ:
|
| _Q: Why is the hacek accent called "caron" in Unicode?
|
| A: Nobody knows._)
| Someone wrote:
| Not for lack of trying:
| https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2009/08/antedating-
| caron.h...
| jrockway wrote:
| That's a good one. Since legacy code is less likely to
| change than the English language, I just call it a
| "referer" in writing unrelated to HTTP. That way, I'm never
| confused. (Everyone else? Good luck.)
| dhosek wrote:
| I used to do technical writing and for some software that
| I wrote the manual and help system for, one of the menu
| items was misspelled. I spelled the word correctly in the
| text describing its functionality, but whenever I
| referred (so to speak) to it directly as the menu item to
| be selected, I kept the misspelling (this was the early
| 90s, the days of people saying non-ironically that they
| couldn't find the "any" key on their computer).
| grenoire wrote:
| Pretty sure people still can't find the any key, we just
| stopped asking them to!
| curryst wrote:
| Yep, I get some prompts now that say "Press the $X key"
| (often space), but will actually proceed if you hit any
| key. It always give me a touch of chuckles when I think
| about why they named a specific key then.
| [deleted]
| inopinatus wrote:
| I once saw this implemented as a regex. Unfortunately the
| regex was refer*er.
|
| "Tests pass, ship it"
| dqv wrote:
| I don't know enough about overflows, but that could
| theoretically be exploited, right?
| referrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrer
| zeusk wrote:
| inb4 refeer (should've used referr?er)
| xmprt wrote:
| I also feel like this is a buffer overflow waiting to
| happen. If somehow someone makes the header length way
| longer than expected (eg. referrrrrrrrrrrrrrer).
| jsjohnst wrote:
| _?_ is _0_ or _1_ instances of the preceding character,
| so _referrrrrrrrrrrrrrer_ wouldn't match _/ referr?er/_,
| only _referer_ or _referrer_.
|
| Proof: https://regex101.com/r/s56ebD/1
| xmprt wrote:
| I'm replying to the grandparent comment. I said "Also"
| meaning I was adding onto your comment.
| exikyut wrote:
| The tests clearly did not include spinning up an HTTP
| server and actually using the correctly-spelled header
| (as per correct English), then.
| wiether wrote:
| That's what code reviews are for :)
| croddin wrote:
| I was just trying to debug something today and noticed how
| the referer HTTP header is spelled wrong and that is the spec
| while there are several other headers that spell it referrer.
| Crazy!
| [deleted]
| jrockway wrote:
| The key is to write out the enums to long-term storage as the
| names instead of the numbers, that way nobody can ever fix
| your spelling mistakes.
| dhosek wrote:
| There are lots of ways for spelling errors to get reified.
| They can also end up in a data interchange XML schema (I
| bumped into that one at a previous job where it seemed like
| an obvious and trivial fix to correct the spelling of a
| class name and discovered that it had ended up in a
| company-wide data interchange schema which could not be
| practically fixed).
| btilly wrote:
| The most important example of that class of error is
| REFERER. It should have been spelled REFERRER. But nobody
| caught it, and you really can't change something that is
| part of the HTTP standard...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Early header compression.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Took a leaf out of the UNIX creat/umount handbook,
| clearly.
| int_19h wrote:
| umount() is actually legit - early C limited extern
| identifiers to 6 chars (or rather it would allow more
| than that, but the rest would be silently ignored for
| linking purposes), hence why we also have strlen() etc.
|
| creat() is weird because create() would fit that
| constraint just fine, so there's no obvious reason as to
| why it had to be shortened. The 1978 K&R C book actually
| notes it with [sic].
| mike_hock wrote:
| When you're dumping loads of short, generic, common words
| into the global namespace (well ... the only namespace in
| C), it's nice to have them misspelled so user code is
| still free to use the real word.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > well ... the only namespace in C
|
| Technically there are several namespaces since you can,
| for example, name a struct the name as its type.
| dhosek wrote:
| After many years in Javaworld, seeing this sort of thing
| in C++ really freaked me out.
| ant6n wrote:
| > The most important example of that class of error is
| REFERER. It should have been spelled REFERRER.
|
| I thought it was supposed to be REEFERER.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Tangent: this reminds me of the _aptly_ named
| "mod_speling" module.
| Razengan wrote:
| At this point I think it may be question whether the
| problem lies with English itself. Such an error prone
| language.
| dhosek wrote:
| You don't know the half of it. Many contemporary and
| common words are the results of misspellings.
|
| "a nickname" was originally "an ekename" (eke being an
| old English word meaning also)
|
| conversely, "an apron" was originally "a napron."
|
| English is a weird agglomeration of different languages,
| with things like the application of French-style plurals
| (-s) to Anglo-Saxon words (but not always, cf. ox ->
| oxen) and a generally Germanic syntax with a large
| fraction of Romance root words.
|
| As part of my Dewey Decimal Project1
| https://www.dahosek.com/category/dewey-decimal-project/ I
| ended up reading some interesting books on English
| linguistics (scroll down to the 500s for those).
|
| ------
|
| 1. I'm not quite done. I have two read books to blog
| about before I read the last book in the series which
| will be the book my local library has at its highest
| Dewey Decimal call number. Alas, it's not a 999
| Extraterrestial Worlds book, but I think it's either
| Antarctica or Australia (I looked when I first started on
| this seven years ago, but I've since forgotten).
| diggernet wrote:
| Also, "a narang" -> "an orange".
| sls wrote:
| It's not really misspellings, it's reanalysis, and it's
| not at all particular to English.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| Or get your typo into a spec like "referer"
| [deleted]
| UglyToad wrote:
| This reminds me when I was learning to code I was working
| through the Project Euler problems in python, one of them has
| you write code to do something with the English words for
| numbers.
|
| I wrote my code and was fairly confident it was correct,
| submit the answer and it is rejected, spend the next few
| hours trying to find the logic error. Of course it's because
| English is ridiculous and it's "forty" instead of "fourty".
| layer8 wrote:
| What about twoty, threety, fivety and eightty?
| UglyToad wrote:
| I think it's the amount of prefix that gets me with
| forty. Plus fifth / fourth versus fifty / forty
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I worked with a (home-rolled at the company, but long before
| my time with no compilation documentation) comms library that
| had functions named "receive" and functions named "recieve".
|
| Even better, the library was called into as a COM object by a
| Visual Basic Script script, and the misspelled corner case
| only got hit rarely. Figuring out that the problem was the
| correctly spelled function call was a joy.
| chopin wrote:
| I rarely work with Excel. A couple of days ago I had the
| joy to need to apply a function with multiple parameters.
| The formula parser complained with an error message which
| meant nothing to me. I finally figured out that I needed to
| use semicolons as separator for the function arguments (I
| am from Germany). Who in his right mind does THIS? I tried
| to change the separator in Windows setting, to no avail.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Have fun naming the variable you use for referer.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Magento 1.9X used to have a typo in the database that lasted
| for years because so much stuff already relied on it and it
| wasn't user facing. I do not miss those days.
| ianlevesque wrote:
| You kid but they are a list of "tiers" that get localized.
| jrockway wrote:
| I kind of assumed. You can't just take the price in dollars
| and convert it with the exchange rate, because customers
| don't want to buy a "89.398723 yen" app. It has to be $0.99,
| PS0.89, Y=99, etc.
|
| It is interesting that things are not priced in "buying
| power", but in numbers that aim to most deceive. ("It's not
| even a dollar!")
| nicolas_t wrote:
| Steam is very often priced in buying power. Depending on
| the country you live in, prices can be half as high as in
| other countries.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Why don't more digital platforms take this approach? Are
| they worried people from higher relative income countries
| will log in with a VPN and buy it cheaper?
| slumdev wrote:
| Complete with spelling errors, semicolons in place of commas,
| shouting snake case, and unnecessary explicit numbering.
| Definitely enterprise-grade.
| cyral wrote:
| Not complete until it has a poorly documented API with some
| name like PriceKit, maybe hidden behind an entitlement as
| well.
| jrockway wrote:
| The explicit numbering is so that you can reorder them to be
| more "readable" later. I didn't have the heart to do that
| here, but in the real world, anything goes!
| happytoexplain wrote:
| When somebody comes along and inserts a new case next to an
| existing case because they're closely related, you'll be glad
| the numbers are explicit.
| slumdev wrote:
| Negative - if these are going to be treated like keys where
| the integer value needs to retain the same meaning between
| builds, then an enum is the wrong abstraction to use.
| inopinatus wrote:
| The real enterprise case is when additions are made for
| things that aren't even pricing
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's also less enterprisy and more "1990s engineering"
| variant of this: enum PricePoint {
| //all the 500+ price points defined above...
| REGULAR_PRICE = 1023; PROMO1_PRICE = 1047552;
| PROMO2_PRICE = 1072693248; AUTOHINT_ROUND_99 =
| 1073741824; AUTOHINT_BUYING_POWER = 2147483648;
| }
|
| Little bit twiddling, and you can encode 3 prices + some
| flags in an uint32.
| winrid wrote:
| BLUE_BANANA_CONCESSION = 9001
| postsantum wrote:
| THREE_FIDDY
| RobRivera wrote:
| getOut.gif
| tuatoru wrote:
| * TREE_FIDDY
| mike_hock wrote:
| Supports lookup in O(fiddy).
| collaborative wrote:
| >Developers can communicate directly with customers about
| alternative payment options. Customers have to consent and be
| given the right to opt-out.
|
| >Apple ceded some ground on issues of interest to developers but
| gets to keep (at least for now) key structures of its App Store,
| including the overall commission structure of the store as well
| as its prohibition against using rival app stores or in-app
| payment mechanisms
|
| So are alternative payment methods going to work? Or is it that
| this is only allowed after you direct a user to an external URL?
| Would embedded browsers be ok to process the IAPs?
| Daedren wrote:
| It'll be as it has always been. Apps can't show or hint at
| alternative payment options.
|
| This is in regards to letting users know about such options
| outside the iPhone's scope (email for instance)
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| I was hoping Apple was ceding some ground in this, it's what
| puts the dirtiest taste in my mouth. If you go to even
| Walmart (a company very strict on their suppliers) and pick
| up some object, on the back of the packaging will be
| www.exampleproduct dot com. And on that website you could
| theoretically sell your product directly.
|
| What does Apple do? "Oh on that privacy policy we mandated
| you could click here and then here and then pay online -
| REJECT"
|
| So now people only know that Netflix can be paid online, but
| few think to sign up for DuoLingo or the like online :/
| iNate2000 wrote:
| But Walmart wouldn't let a vendor set up a kiosk in the
| middle of the store and accept payments with a Square
| reader on a phone, would they?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Walmart has already purchased the items they're selling
| in their stores - in most situations.
|
| That's how distributers work - They purchase an order of
| items up front and then sell them at a price point of
| their choosing.
|
| Not to mention - In the walmart case, the user is free to
| go shop at safeway/publix/kroger/target/etc if they want.
| Where as with Apple you can only shop at the company
| store.
| collaborative wrote:
| Seems like a massive PR trick then. The only difference is
| that they will set up $100M for US devs. Probably the ones
| that brought the court case?
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I don't understand, what is a potential class action lawsuit?
|
| In any case, as a game dev, this deal seems bad.
|
| This is status quo.
|
| I vote no.
| whatevrrjsa wrote:
| A bunch of people sue together and a lawyer represents them.
| Instead of taking it to court where apple could lose /riskier
| they took money from apple and small concessions that arent
| significant
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's funny, apple's share price dropped today, presumable based
| on this. But I think this is net positive for apple. They are
| being helped out here by the legal system - forced to make the
| developer experience and customer experience much better. In the
| long run this will be good for them.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Some more information I got from reading the Preliminary Approval
| Order
|
| Every iOS app developer is automatically included in the class
| unless she objects to being included, i.e., requests to be
| excluded.^1 The entire class is represented by two representative
| members.^2 They in turn are represented by legal counsel selected
| by a judge.
|
| The settlement approval is still preliminary. It will remain
| preliminary for several months and still needs to be finally
| approved by the court. Any app developer can object to the
| agreement in the meantime.^3
|
| Unless an app developer requests to be excluded from the class,
| then if no developers object to the settlement agreement and it
| is approved, she will be bound by the terms of the agreement.
|
| Unless I am mistaken, it is possible the agreement could, e.g.,
| limit her right to take part in lawsuits against Apple in the
| future, among other things. Question for the reader: Should an
| iOS developer/Apple read that agreement. A copy will be published
| online within the next 45 days.^4
|
| App developers have the next 105 days to request to be excluded
| from the class and/or object to the agreement as well to the fees
| to be paid to the lawyers representing the class.
|
| 1. "Any person who desires to request exclusion from the
| Settlement Class must do so by 105 days from the entry of this
| Preliminary Approval Order, and such request for exclusion shall
| be in the form of a letter mailed or otherwise delivered to the
| Settlement Administrator stating that the person wants to be
| excluded from the Cameron et al. v. Apple Inc., Case No.
| 4:19-cv-03074-YGR (N.D. Cal.) settlement, and the letter must
| include the persons name and address,and identify all of the
| persons Apple Developer Accounts. All persons who submit valid
| and timely requests for exclusion shall have no rights under the
| Settlement Agreement, shall not share in the distribution of the
| settlement funds, and shall not be bound by the final judgments
| relating to Defendant Apple Inc. entered in the litigation"
|
| "All written objections and supporting papers must (a) clearly
| identify the case name and number (Donald R. Cameron, et al. v.
| Apple Inc., Case No. 4:19-cv-03074-YGR), (b) be submitted to the
| Court either by mailing them to the Class Action Clerk, United
| States District Court for the Northern District of California,
| 1301 Clay St, Oakland, CA 94612, or by filing it in person at any
| location of the United States District Court for the Northern
| District of California; and (c) be filed or postmarked on or
| before 105 days from the entry of this Preliminary Approval
| Order"
|
| 2. The two app developers who are acting as class representatives
| for all iOS app developers are: David R Cameron and Pure Sweat
| Basketball, Inc.
|
| 3. See #1
|
| 4. It will be published at this address:
| https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com
| [deleted]
| ksec wrote:
| >Apple agrees to make sure the search results in the App Store
| are based on objective criteria.
|
| I cant help but laughed when I was reading it. What were they
| doing before that?
|
| I thought the most important part was the next bit,
|
| >The settlement, which must be approved by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez
| Rogers, comes as Apple is awaiting a ruling in a separate
| lawsuit, brought by Fortnite developer Epic Games, which seeks to
| force Apple to allow rival in-app payment and store options.
|
| >The same federal judge is hearing the Apple-Epic case and a
| ruling could come at any time.
|
| My guess is that the way things are going in these cases are not
| in Apple's flavour. And for all the court case I followed over
| years Apple tends to be the favourite in court. Rightfully or
| not. ( Some of the Judge are very clearly biased ) But Judge
| Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers was clearly trying to get to the bottom of
| things. And asking some very hard questions.
|
| Is this enough? I am not sure if Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is
| easy to please either. And let's not forget this is US only. EU
| are grinding their teeth. Then there are South Korea and Japan.
| And China is surpassingly quiet in all of these.
|
| Phil Schiller was right, if Apple were to ever change its fee
| structure, that it should do so "from a position of strength
| rather than weakness". It was unfortunate Steve passed away soon
| after that email.
| markdown wrote:
| > It was unfortunate Steve passed away soon after that email.
|
| I'm sure Steve sent a lot of emails. Which one are you
| referring to?
| unclekev wrote:
| > Which one are you referring to?
|
| This one:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-
| store-c...
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| What is Apple's rationale for saying that apps can not charge
| within themselves? The intention is to make more money, but
| what is the stated reason? Couldn't Apple make plenty by
| charging up-front to install things, for the "utility" of it's
| marketplace and userbase? I struggle understanding why Apple
| should get every right to money exchanged within apps they
| didn't program or administer.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _And let 's not forget this is US only. EU are grinding their
| teeth._
|
| Either I am misreading this part of your comment, or you may
| have overlooked this paragraph:
|
| > _With the exception of the fund for small developers, the
| rest of the changes are being made globally._
| londons_explore wrote:
| But the main complaint is "Apple has a monopoly on app
| distribution for iPhone users", not "Apple won't let me set
| the price to $1.05"
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| "My guess is that the way things are going in these cases are
| not in Apple's flavour. "
|
| 1. I feel this went in Apple's favor.
|
| 2. I'm not sure if I got my facts right, but Appe is required
| to pay developers out of a 100 million fund? 100 million is
| what they spend on office parties?
|
| 3. Offer companies whom are under 1 million in sales, a 15%
| fee. Biggercompanies are still at 30%.
|
| 4. Companies can pay directly. (Yea--I care enough about Epic
| Games enough to pay them directly? Epic--treat your low level
| employees better, and I might care? )
|
| Apple seems to have won?
| whatevrrjsa wrote:
| 30% of that fund is going to lawyers
| saagarjha wrote:
| I can't but hope that this means that Search Ads will be going
| away. But that seems quite unlikely if they say they were doing
| it before...
| crazygringo wrote:
| >> Apple agrees to make sure the search results in the App
| Store are based on objective criteria.
|
| > I cant help but laughed when I was reading it. What were they
| doing before that?
|
| I assume that's referring to the fact that previously, they
| occasionally hard-coded certain search terms to show Apple app
| results before third-party apps, even if the search term was an
| exact match. [1]
|
| And that "objective" search results means no more hard-coding
| of exceptions like this to give "partiality" to a particular
| company or app.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27476206
| x0x0 wrote:
| The value that objectively pays Apple the most per click.
|
| Separately... I remain astounded at the risks of quasi-
| arbitrary government action (lawsuit here, Senators here,
| regulators in EU) that Apple is running to protect their app
| store vig. Just amazing.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Here's another possible entry for a class action suit, I had a
| arachnoid type game on Appstore under 'Arcade' category for
| couple of years and one night I received an email telling Apple
| is moving my game from 'Arcade' category to some X category
| because it's naming it's new game subscription as 'Apple
| Arcade'.
|
| I'm sure every other game in the Arcade category was bolted out
| unless it could be part of their subscription service. I'm in
| that part of the world where I can do nothing about it, But was
| hoping those in U.S. or EU sued the Apple for this.
| [deleted]
| balozi wrote:
| I guess you can look forward to a check for $2.12 in the mail.
| Feels like Apple's highfalutin way of mocking devs.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| yep. Class action lawsuits are almost always a scam. I remember
| when I was a kid my parents bought a Kodak instant film camera.
| Polaroid sued them. As part of the settlement Kodak gave
| customers... coupons for a discount on Kodak branded batteries
| and a specific model of camera my parents could never find in
| stock.
| skybrian wrote:
| From the article, minimum payment is $250.
| kar1181 wrote:
| Hopefully that actually hits someone's bank account unlike
| the Equifax settlement which only really hit the laywers'
| [deleted]
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| I don't understand the fund. Who would receive the funds, and
| how?
|
| Is this a one time check to all developers who gross less than $
| 1 million?
| whatevrrjsa wrote:
| 30% goes to lawyers
| johnrbent wrote:
| I was wondering about this too... From the actual press
| release:
|
| "Apple will also establish a fund to assist small US
| developers, particularly as the world continues to suffer from
| the effects of COVID-19. Eligible developers must have earned
| $1 million or less through the US storefront for all of their
| apps in every calendar year in which the developers had an
| account between June 4, 2015, and April 26, 2021 --
| encompassing 99 percent of developers in the US. Details will
| be available at a later date."
| finickydesert wrote:
| Not bad
| [deleted]
| yyyk wrote:
| A more suitable headline for the original article would have
| been: "US developers' lawyers agree to settle potential class
| action suit". I wish they didn't. There are important and rather
| easy wins to be attained (e.g. I don't see how the Apple Payment
| requirement could survive a trial).
|
| Developers could still object to the settlement[0]. That way,
| Apple will still be bound by its concessions, while the suit goes
| forward.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28323992
| BarryMilo wrote:
| I also wish companies would put justice above profits, but this
| is so far removed from our current reality it's hard to
| imagine.
| 8eye wrote:
| gonna go ahead and collect my 2.77 from a future class action,
| who else is in? lol
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I would rather risk the class action tbh. This is Apple, the
| company that changes major things on a whim and doesn't care if
| it's bad. 10-20 years down the road we'll be in the same spot.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Meanwhile, as long as you understand that you are allowed to sell
| your wares to _Apples_ customers - and not yours - you may
| proceed. This is the key element, that Apple continues to own the
| customer relationship, rather than that your customers make use
| of their eco-system and hardware.
| Razengan wrote:
| Yes, because iOS users will ask Apple for refunds if your app
| screws them over.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Suggestion: push for another lawsuit and demand being able to
| push the information about any price and payment method right in
| the app.
|
| This seems like a non-concession from Apple.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is the same judge that is doing the Apple vs Epic ruling. I
| would expect the final ruling on Apple vs Epic to, ultimately,
| have very similar results to this settlement (or would have).
|
| If you've been following Hoeg Law's _hours long_ legal commentary
| on Apple vs Epic, they believed the most likely resolution would
| be Apple being forced to remove the "anti-steering rule" which
| gags developers from talking about alternative payment options.
| This settlement has that already. It looks like, unless there is
| a major upset, the Apple vs Epic ruling will be virtually moot
| (in terms of legal consequences that benefit developers) unless
| it gets appealed.
| commoner wrote:
| > This settlement has that already.
|
| This settlement is not good enough for many developers, since
| developers are still subject to Apple's anti-steering rule in
| their iOS apps. Having to establish another communication
| channel with the customer is an unnecessary hurdle to let the
| customer know that they could avoid the (up to) 42.8% price
| hike on their subscription and future app-related purchases if
| they pay outside the app.
| wvenable wrote:
| > This settlement has that already.
|
| It sounds like an extremely limited version of that. Email? How
| magnanimous of them. I'm surprised it was registered mail or
| carrier pigeon.
| syspec wrote:
| Link?
| bogwog wrote:
| Is this enough to open a competing store?
|
| * Put your app for free on the appstore, but with a paywall
|
| * In order to activate the app, you must buy it on an external
| site
|
| * A web-based store allows users to browse and purchase apps, and
| "download" links send them to the appstore
|
| * Customers can link their Apple IDs (or another account) so that
| purchases can be confirmed without having to sign in to every app
| individually
|
| Or is there still something in the developer contract that
| prevents this?
| 58x14 wrote:
| One of my first thoughts. The purchase of a license would need
| to occur on the web-based store, where presumably you'd create
| an account, download the free (with in app purchases, because
| you don't want to restrict sales even if they're at a lower
| margin) app from the App store, and sign in with your account
| to activate.
|
| Seems like entities wishing to operate a secondary app
| marketplace would continually be balancing tradeoffs in UI/UX
| (v. native Apple experience) and cost of acquisition for a
| relatively small reduction in fees.
| post_break wrote:
| I love how in their press release they say: "The terms of the
| agreement will help make the App Store an even better business
| opportunity for developers, while maintaining the safe and
| trusted marketplace users love."
|
| This is going to make the App Store even better! You're going to
| love it! (not because we did this on our own, but because we saw
| the writing on the wall and were forced to).
|
| I can't stand how they are burning so much good faith with
| developers to keep the rent of the app store.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| As a developer - I don't understand how _any_ developer still
| holds Apple in good faith.
|
| Literally every step they have taken over the last 8 years has
| been miserable for independent developers trying to release
| products on Apple devices.
|
| - Random API shutoff and access changes
|
| - Documentation used to be okayish, is now mostly trash
|
| - Absolutely hostile to virtualization for device testing and
| deployment pipelines
|
| - Forced payments, tied hands for external payments
|
| - Forced integration of Apple specific features (sign-ups as an
| example)
|
| - A clear habit of copying successful apps, recreating a
| mediocre in-house version, then bumping you WAY down below the
| "Apple" version of your app in the store
|
| And I'm not even talking about the store fees, which in my
| opinion amount to extortion since they prohibit any other
| installation method.
|
| I can vaguely understand why some _users_ like Apple, since
| they market very well.
|
| But as a dev - Apple is literally the fucking devil. They will
| screw you over at every turn, often with nothing but automated
| responses, and have a complete disregard for you, your users,
| and your products.
|
| I wish them a _FUCKING HARD_ fall from grace here. Apple is not
| a nice company. Apple is a fucking mob extortionist with a
| great PR story.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Well, what else are they going to do, not release a statement?
| If you release a statement about a legal ruling you lost, it's
| obviously going to be spun from whoever published it.
| jcrites wrote:
| This is something of a nitpick but:
|
| Apple did not lose a legal ruling. Some companies initiated a
| lawsuit against them, and Apple and those parties mutually
| agreed to resolve their dispute, presumably with concessions
| from both sides. The agreement needs to be approved by a
| judge, but the parties in the case are saying that they are
| no longer in dispute under the proposed terms.
|
| Companies that get sued agree to settlements all the time,
| even if they believe they are fully in the right, because
| going to trial has a large potential risk; and the legal
| expected fees for litigating a trial and possible appeals
| might exceed the cost of the proposed settlement.
|
| If the party suing you is willing to settle for known terms,
| then it might be preferable to accept the (undesirable to you
| but fixed and known ahead of time) costs/downsides by
| settling, than roll the dice by allowing the case to proceed
| to a judge or jury trial where you might indeed lose the case
| and suffer a much worse outcome. Companies might settle if
| they think there is some chance that they plaintiff might
| prevail, even if that chance is low, when there could be a
| large (potentially unbounded) downside to losing the case --
| as could be the case for a class action.
|
| This is the same risk management reasoning that allows patent
| trolls to get away with their bullshit. If you don't think
| their patent is valid and would survive scrutiny in court,
| and even know of prior art, or you don't think you are
| infringing it, the legal costs to litigate an fight that
| battle in court might be higher (and take years of time and
| energy from senior staff members of the company - a
| distraction) than settling with the patent troll for what
| they're asking for to "license" their patent.
|
| It was a travesty that trolls got away with it for so long,
| but computers and software historically were new whereas most
| judges & juries consisted of older individuals, and know
| little to nothing about the internals of computers &
| software. Meanwhile both sides could bring in so-called
| expert witnesses to claim whatever they want.
|
| This asymmetry resulted in some tech companies agreeing to
| pool their patents, and formally or informally agree not to
| sue each other over patents, and form mutual defense
| coalitions. The Supreme Court also tightened up what
| inventions are patentable in the software space considerably,
| as I recall, to eliminate the "pure abstract idea implemented
| in software and running on a computer" category of patents.
|
| Judges are also starting to become more tech savvy and
| specialized court circuits are developing to focus on the
| area. Take a look at how Google versus Oracle was handled:
| the judge assigned to the case learned introductory
| programming (!) so as to assess whether Oracle's claim about
| their code snippet being copyrightable was true, vs. being
| obvious and something any practitioner of the art would
| necessarily write when building compatibility with the Java
| API (which he did end up concluding as I recall; definitely
| correct decision IMO, if you recall what that function was -
| something like checking whether a given index was within the
| bounds of an array or something similar; any function to do
| that will look about the same). The case was appealed and I
| haven't kept up-to-date on it since then.
|
| As the holder of several patents myself, I personally think
| only substantial research breakthroughs should be patentable
| (where it comes to software patents that are essentially pure
| algorithms). The MP3 algorithm was a complete game changer
| for music & audio distribution, for example, drastically
| reducing its data size and making it feasible to economically
| transmit over the Internet. Breakthroughs of this magnitude
| ought to be the minimum bar in my mind, that I would want the
| patent office to hold for software patents personally. A
| novel way to organize your CRM database should not be
| patentable.
|
| A secondary problem is that the patent office has no
| incentives to be strict (after all, they can just issue the
| patents and let people litigate in court if they think it's
| wrong), and I doubt their competence in their ability to
| evaluate whether a claimed invention is worthy. they also
| make income from the patent submission process so their
| incentives are to allow companies to submit a lot of patents;
| and if they made those patents too difficult to get,
| companies would not bother, relying on keeping inventions as
| trade secrets instead, which companies by and large are doing
| anyway.
|
| A final travesty is how many patents don't disclose any
| useful information for someone to replicate the invention
| when the patent expires. As compared to patents for
| mechanical devices that must include diagrams of functional
| machines, software patents have hand wavy abstract
| architectures that would help you little if at all in your
| efforts to duplicate the "invention" after the patent
| expires.
|
| All right, it looks like I've gone off on a rant. Suffice it
| to say that the legal system has lots of complicated
| incentives and motivations influencing parties involved in
| it. There may be numerous reasons for a company to take any
| particular course of action in a legal dispute.
| rambambram wrote:
| > Apple and those parties mutually agreed to resolve their
| dispute
|
| Indeed, but only after those parties took legal action.
| It's not that Apple at the first sign of disagreement said:
| "oh well, you were right all along".
|
| Like somebody else said: Apple should just sh*t up about
| this. Don't spin it.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Apple should just sh*t up about this.
|
| They did. They released a generic press release and said
| nothing else.
| okamiueru wrote:
| Not releasing a statement sounds like a good option to me.
| Even better would be simply not "spinning" it. I don't see
| what's obvious about it. Companies don't _have_ to behave
| dishonestly.
| mbreese wrote:
| It was a known court case that had the potential to have a
| major impact on Apple's bottom line. Not releasing a
| statement about the settlement was not an option. Neither
| party is 100% happy with the agreement, but realistically
| -- both parties got what they wanted (and they wanted what
| they got).
| wmf wrote:
| Official announcement thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322638
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