External Payments From the HEY App
Well, we risked everything, but also secured a four-year truce, and now near-total victory is at hand: HEY is finally for sale on the iPhone in the US!
Credit for this amazing turn of events goes to Epic Games founders Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein, who did what no small developer like us could ever dream of doing: they spent over $100 million to sue Apple in court. And while the first round yielded very little progress, Apple’s (possibly criminal) contempt of court is what ultimately delivered the resolution. Thanks to their fight for Fortnite, app developers everywhere are now allowed to link out of apps to their own web-based payment system in the US store (but, sadly, nowhere else yet).
This is all we ever wanted from Apple: to have a way to distribute our iPhone apps and keep the customer relationship by billing directly. The 30% toll gets all the attention, and it is ludicrously egregious, but to us, it’s just as much about retaining that direct customer relationship, so we can help folks with refunds, so they don’t tie their billing for a multi-platform email system to a single manufacturer.
This is a win for users, and Apple won’t lose a cent from commissions from any of these apps.
Previously:
- Critical Warning for External Purchases in App Store
- App Review Guidelines Updated for Epic Anti-Steering
- HEY Calendar Rejected From the App Store
- HEY Approved With Trial
- It Doesn’t Work
- Have You Contributed Any Revenue?
- HEY Rejected From the App Store
- Basecamp App Rejected for Including Help Link
5 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
💩posting from random commenters incoming! Who wants to do research before signing up for services rather than fill a deplorable, greedy corporation’s pockets. Get ready for “only Apple cares for user safety and privacy” BS, etc.
You nailed it: who wants to do research before signing up?!? How on earth is this a good use of my time? The strawperson of whether or not Apple "cares" is irrelevant and silly, all of my subs are three taps away, and cancelation is two more from that. I will _always_ be refunded. I have to talk with nobody, email nobody. I have as close to zero worry about information leakage as I can have.
All this clambering for "choice" is for and about devs, not consumers. We (consumers) have it good, and this won't make it better.
@random Apple will always cancel your subscription. They are not reliable at refunding, even when there’s a good reason.
DHH is a pretty horrible person.
Seeing someone horrible be happy about something makes me question the thing they’re so happy about.
