Re:I fear App Review is getting too powerful (2015) [pdf]
by zepto on Monday August 17, 2020 @06:39PM
(#24193092)
They aren’t undocumented carve outs. Anyone can produce a reader app.
Re:I fear App Review is getting too powerful (2015) [pdf]
by DaiPlusPlus on Monday August 17, 2020 @07:29PM
(#24193521)
Anyone can make a B2C reader app, but those reader-apps must have built-in self-service sign-up, including accepting payment through Apple. There is no way around that unless you offer a free tier and never prompt your users to upgrade or tell them that they can upgrade through their web-browser. Logically this extends to free-trials-without-payment-details because when the free trial ends what are you supposed to display in the app?
Netflix, Kindle and others are exempted from the self-service sign-up requirement because Apple knows they can’t win a PR fight against them. Spotify has self-service sign-up in the app, but that’s because they’ve always had a free tier, where’s there’s no free/gratis membership tier for Netflix or Kindle.
If you try it yourself right now Apple will require you to have a self-service signup flow in your app, which is only viable if you have a free tier - otherwise you’ll have to pay the 30% rent or let your iOS users use your service for free indefinitely because you can’t put up a “your free trial has ended” message.
Sorry but no.
What mechanism was “Hey” using that could possibly be abused by a malicious app or malicious app author?
If “Hey” advertised themselves as B2B without any self-service option then Apple, by their own words, would have let the app on the store. Being B2C or having self-service (even if the self-service is outside of the app!) means Apple requires you to have a sign-up form in the app - and if you take punters’ money then that means you need to use IAP and so give Apple their 30% rent. The outrage isn’t over this requirement itself, but because Apple arbitrarily carved-out undocumented exceptions for Netflix, Amazon Kindle, and other “reader” apps even though they’re B2C and self-service - which we can tell is because Apple would get into a worse spat and lose public opinion if they tried to pull Netflix or Amazon’s apps for the same reason.