ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by manfredo on Friday October 09, 2020 @02:50PM (#24733098)

Consoles are much, much narrower in use than smartphones. Most consoles have a few thousand titles, if that. By comparison the App Store had millions of applications. And as you point out, manufacturers are building these consoles at a loss. Apple builds it's phones at a profit. Getting a game approved for sale on a console is much more involved than releasing an App on the App Store, and involves significant manual review not just of the quality of the game but also the content.

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Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by itake on Friday October 09, 2020 @03:33PM (#24733548)

Apple does a manual review of the quality of their apps as well as their content (e.g. if you own a social app that allows users to publish images, they will verify there are no adult images being published and there are systems in place for banning these images.)

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Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by ecshafer on Friday October 09, 2020 @10:02PM (#24736208)

That doesn't sound like a good thing to me. Why must we be held to some extra moral laws for the ability to allow ios users to use our software?

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Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by GloriousKoji on Friday October 09, 2020 @04:24PM (#24734070)

Everyone here seems to be obsessed with the fact that a console is a "computer" in the turing machine sense but the fact is that people buy consoles with the strong primary purpose of entertainment.

Smart phones and tablets have gotten to the point where they are expected to be able to do hundreds of different things, with some peoples livelihood dependent on it.

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Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by vlozko on Friday October 09, 2020 @05:54PM (#24734809)

There’s no legal way to define the boundary between what’s classified as a computer vs a console. Game consoles have apps that are traditional to a computer, such as streaming video and even video editing. Portability isn’t a reliable indicator as you have systems like the Switch.

Nor is it realistically possible to create legal guidelines based on profit margins. I don’t see how it makes sense to apply a different set of rules on devices that are sold as a loss and make up for it in software sales vs the inverse or even both being profitable.

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Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by inopinatus on Friday October 09, 2020 @06:20PM (#24735011)

And yet even then, console games such as MMOs are not required to actively mislead the consumer about their account management options.

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Re:ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Maf... by tedunangst on Friday October 09, 2020 @04:49PM (#24734292)

Can't wait for Apple to cut the App Store back to a thousand apps so they qualify as a console.

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