{"id":29255,"date":"2020-06-19T20:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T00:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=29255"},"modified":"2020-07-09T16:01:57","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T20:01:57","slug":"it-doesnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/19\/it-doesnt-work\/","title":{"rendered":"It Doesn’t Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Panzarino<\/a> (also: MacRumors<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

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“You download the app and it doesn’t work, that’s not what we want on the store,” says Schiller. This, he says, is why Apple requires in-app purchases to offer the same purchasing functionality as they would have elsewhere.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

“We didn’t extend these exceptions to all software,” he notes about the “reader” type apps — examples of which include Netflix. “Email is not and has never been an exception included in this rule.”<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I asked Schiller if this meant Apple felt entitled to a portion of the revenue of every business that had an app, regardless of whether that business was an iOS-first.<\/p>\n

“I get why there’s a question here,” he says. “But that’s not what we’re doing.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Except that FastMail<\/a> and Superhuman have been doing the same thing for years. And there are tons of other apps<\/a> that don’t work unless you have a particular kind of account or hardware device. “Reader” apps, as Apple describes them, are not a coherent category.<\/p>\n\n

Matt Birchler<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I feel like this is recursive logic. The app does this becuse they had to bend over backwards to not tell the user how to sign up. They did that because of existing App Store rules that force them to not help the user here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Jesper<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The amount of contortion this line of logic requires is unconscionable, and is the kind of reasoning that make people believe salespeople do not trigger automatic doors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I have no idea if it will take the US or EU torching it for things to change, but it baffles me that the bundling of a web browser was considered a bigger problem than this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Siracusa<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Wow, this is extremely flimsy. Who is Apple protecting with this stance? The poor iOS user who might download the free<\/em> Hey app and be shocked to learn that it doesn’t function without an account<\/p>\n

…or maybe it’s about that 30% cut of in-app purchases? Yep, a real stumper.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The reason I emphasized<\/a> how Hey works at the top of my piece from earlier this week is because it isn’t an email client<\/em>, it’s a Hey service client<\/em> — and Apple sees those as wildly different categories. […]<\/p>\n

Zendesk is another product built on email standards that doesn’t do anything unless you sign in — there is no way to register within the app. But it’s allowed in the App Store either because it has bulk pricing options or because it offers access to a professional database. It’s also not marketed as an “email client”.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

But the App Store is worse without the Hey app for those who use Hey. I can’t imagine tacking a standard IMAP client onto the app, as Apple suggests, would improve it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You can find dozens of similar examples if you start poking around. It sure seems like a lot of apps have been approved by mistake<\/a>. If App Review can’t understand the rules about when it is okay to only show a login screen upon launch, how are developers supposed to know? Inconsistencies reflect human nature but so, too, should Apple’s responses to such inconsistencies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nicholas Van Exan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Totally not the larger \/ important \/ competition law point, but how do they arrive at the conclusion that Hey is not a “Reader” type app but cloud storage apps are? Cloud email is literally cloud storage. I’m literally paying to access my emails, stored on cloud servers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Kara Swisher<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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And how — given that access to the mobile universe is controlled by just two companies: Apple and Google. As one person intimately familiar with the mobile ecosystem noted to me, Apple and Google are the “two tollbooths” for us all.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Yet Apple has also changed rules in ways that many developers find capricious and unfair and, more to the point, scary. While complaints have been raised for a long time about what Ben Thompson of Stratechery calls Apple’s “rent-seeking” practices, many developers do not want to speak out for fear of falling afoul of Apple and, worse, getting banned from its store.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The app is only crippled on the App Store because that’s what they had to do to fit Apple’s written and unwritten rules. By the book. It’s not ‘an email app’, it’s the Hey app; Apple’s framing is BS, and it’s disappointing to see people fall for it<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Christian Selig<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Ugh, this is so painful to see from Apple.<\/p>

“You download the app and it doesn’t work without a paid account. We don’t want that kind of experience on the store. pause<\/em> … Except for Netflix.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Michael Love<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Uber seems to have adopted the legal position that they’re a service connecting passengers with drivers and don’t operate a physical business at all; from that perspective there’s not much difference between taxing their service fees and taxing Hey’s subscription fees.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Ken Kocienda<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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“Let’s make the App Store insanely great.”<\/p>\n

What if that were Apple’s philosophy? It doesn’t seem like it is.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If it were, I can’t imagine that it would come down to splitting hairs over ambiguously-worded rules or inconsistently-applied policies.<\/p>\n

The priority would be to get great apps on the platform, and to encourage developers who want to “Think Different” to invest their time and effort into making new iOS apps and services that nobody thought of before.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Simeon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Love that Apple devotes a lot of time detailing why a perfectly reasonable app can’t exist on their platform<\/p>\n

And at the same time continues to promote coloring book apps which charge $15\/week with a 3-day free trial<\/p>\n

Which one makes the App Store better?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

See also: You Download the App and it Doesn’t Work<\/a> (via David Heinemeier Hansson<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n