App Store Trader Status Deadline

What documents were there to be sent?

And yes, I also got an email about the trader status. I checked in Appstore Connect and I did the trader thing almost a year ago.

Folks on the Apple Books store are being hit with it as well - you have to provide your (if you're an indy working from home) home address and personal phone number to become public records.

So I'm pulling all my books from Apple's store, and closing my account. I'll do everything through FastSpring, where I only sell in my native currency, (effectively meaning I don't have an EU sales presence) and foreign buyers have to eat the conversion themselves.

Kind of makes sense: any wacko can come knife you at home because you removed his favorite feature, but only larger companies can afford security guards. In our new techno-feudal future, only the rich have the right to sell their labor. The poor should only shut up and consume.

On the same theme, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez spoke to the World Economic Forum saying that he wants Europeans to be forced to have a Digital ID to access the internet, which social media users will have to link to their profiles, so that there is no more anonymity to "prevent hate-speech, misinformation and cyber harassment". Citizens do not have any right to anonymity he says. If he knew some history, he'd know that his very position as leader of a democracy, had something to do with people hiding behind nom de plumes, to criticize the government, the Church and society. Such people obviously did not register their pseudonyms with the government which wanted to imprison them. One such person, Voltaire, had 178 pseudonyms.

Long gone are the days of the good old internet that I remember, where no one knew if the latest cool software was written by dog or human...

I’ll say it again. It’s difficult to feel much sympathy for developers still supporting the Mac App Store, and Apple’s new trader status requirement under the EU’s DSA just adds another layer to the absurdity. The arbitrary review processes, restrictive policies, and Apple’s relentless prioritization of profits over developers and users have been obvious issues since the Mac App Store’s inception. Now, they’re piling on more bureaucracy with the trader status requirement, complete with the looming threat of app removal if developers don’t meet Apple’s ever-changing demands.

As I approach my third decade as a Mac developer, I can’t help but reflect on how, when I started, I thought Mac developers were our own worst enemy. Looking at the state of things today, that feels truer than ever. What’s particularly frustrating is that Mac developers do have alternatives. For decades, we’ve successfully operated outside the Mac App Store through direct sales and independent distribution—models that give us full control over our businesses and direct access to our customers. Why willingly remain in a system that not only takes a 30% cut but also burdens us with arbitrary rules, endless paperwork, and public disclosure requirements that add no real value to you or your users?

Now, I understand that iOS developers don’t have an alternative—aside from choosing never to develop for this awful walled-off ecosystem in the first place. But for Mac developers, the situation is different. This new trader status requirement is yet another reminder that the Mac App Store isn’t designed with developers or users in mind. Participation in it perpetuates a broken system where developers are expected to comply with Apple’s whims while seeing little to no return. If we Mac developers truly value their independence and the long-term health of the Mac software community, we should leave the App Store behind and embrace the freedom and creativity that independent distribution offers. Continuing to support this flawed ecosystem only ensures its problems persist.

Cory Doctorows latest podcast had a great take on this kind of enshttification. It's driven by a desire to constrain developers. Tim Cook hates the freedom that Mac developers enjoy, just like he hates how creators on Patreon illegally rounds the 30% tax that Tim Cook is entitled to by asking their supporters to move to web payments.

The devs aren't the main culprits, it's Tim Cook the Oligarch.

@Someone Good approach.

Apple is the Merchant of Record. Apple is making the sale. FastSpring takes cares of nonsense like this, so why can't Apple?

The EU wrote a stupid law no one can interpret and Apple forwarded their problem to devs without any help, per usual. Fine. My interpretation: I don't live in the EU, EU sales do not account for most of my sales, so I'm not a trader. Done.

If an EU authority later decides my interpretation is wrong, then they can finally explain this crap. In response, I'll probably just de-list everything for sale in the EU, pull those localizations, and the EU can enjoy their bureaucratic paradise and fall further behind in tech.

I just want to make apps. I'm tired, boss.

"anyone selling apps would be considered a trader"

Yes, this seems obvious to me. The reason there are exceptions is that the EU doesn't want to classify you as a trader if you sell your old videogames on eBay or smoething like that. This is clearly not what we're talking about if you're selling an app you developed in an app store.

"The EU wrote a stupid law no one can interpret"

I found it pretty easy to interpret.