Good question! We actually asked Apple exactly this when appealing the AppStore de-listing. How come others can require an account and we can't? What was it about our app that made us have to spend the engineering effort to add a guest login (this was a disingenuous argument that I advised against, since we deliberately spent engineering effort to require the login)?

Their response, not the exact wording since it was over a decade ago, was along the lines of: "1. We're reviewing your app, not theirs, so what they can do is irrelevant. 2. Your app core use case clearly functions without an account as evidenced by the previous versions having full functionality not requiring an account."

1. Is a standard Apple reply when you compare your app's treatment to others'. Everyone gets this when they bring another developer's app into the argument.

2. Called our bluff and is pretty hard to argue against unless we changed something core to our backend such that it now requires an account. Even if that was the case, I would expect Apple's response to be "change it back".

Throughout the whole exchange with Apple, I had to be Devil's Advocate, since I advised against the change to require an account from the start, being apparently the only person in the company who had actually read the AppStore guidelines. Nobody listened to me, of course.

Apple used COMMON SENSE? That's incredible. Google would never do that

Keep in mind GP mentioned this was over a decade ago. Common sense is way less likely to exist at scale.

> We're reviewing your app, not theirs, so what they can do is irrelevant

rules for thee but not for me

Apple has never been fair with its review, sadly.

> I would expect Apple's response to be "change it back".

Companies should not have to bend over to apple's whims just to get their software in end user hands. Hopefully upcoming EU regulation will reign apple's overreach in a bit.

You’re celebrating the possibility that EU regulation will remove Apple’s ability to enforce good user experience?

Apple doesn't get to dictate what constitutes a good user experience. Especially for me - that is my prerogative and mine alone.

So yes, I will be extremely happy with it. This opens doors to all kinds of software that can compete with one another, and if I don't like it, I can simply uninstall it myself.

Just one more bit of anecdotal evidence to support your view.

Our app was rejected after review until we updated an external support doc to which the app linked. The doc contained system requirements for both iOS and Android devices, and we were specifically rejected for even having mentioned the competing operating system.

  > The doc contained system requirements for both iOS and Android devices, and we were specifically rejected for even having mentioned the competing operating system.

same, for us we just open all links in safari now, so if mentions of android show up its not "in the app"... an arguably worsened user experience for no good reason except to keep apple happy

If open doors did a better job of UX than apple, then you would have been using Android instead of iOS in the first place

You're confusing first party apps with third party apps. Also you're forgetting that this is a forum which is heavily biased to developers. I use Android because my phone isn't a fashion piece. Some of my users sadly use iOS. They want the software on the devices they purchased and own, but Apple is preventing us from delivering this to them unless we do exactly as Apple commands.

So in the end everyone loses, except Apple.

You’re being downvoted (clearly by multiple people) for having a valid opposing opinion in a subjective debate. Hate to see that on HN. Upvoted you to balance it out.

“All sides in this UI debate are equally valid”, says local cross-platform UI toolkit salesman

This is why upvote/downvote systems are trash.

Sure, they keep some actually bad opinions out, but they also keep correct but unpopular opinions out.

The Sun revolves around the Earth! Downvote Galileo!

Let me push back against that a bit.

My phone is not a fashion piece. AFAICT the blue bubbles will show up with an old 4S just as well as with a 14 Pro Max.

I have an iPhone - which I got after many years with Android - because iMessage is an essential app for me. I live in the US, so my business partners do not have [choice of alternative messaging app] installed and they are not going to install it just for me. I'm a doctor working in a hospital that has two complete dead spots for cell reception, and whose IT department blocks WiFi calling. So I can't make phone calls on either service, and only on iOS can I get messages that are really, really important over the hospital WiFi.

I could talk until I was blue in the face about how other methods are better. Or how Apple is being a gigantic bunch of assholes by not using something other than vanilla SMS if you're not an iMessage user. But it's sitting at about 30:1, and you can either go along and be aware of important things going on, or you can be left out.

When business decisions are being made over those conversations, I'd be a fool to ignore it. I don't much like the iOS way, having gotten used to Android and LineageOS, but after my experience with the Nexus 6P that suffered the infamous "battery goes to shit overnight one day" problem that Google wouldn't fix, as well as being dropped from updates after two years, five years of security updates from model introduction sounded pretty nice.

> Or how Apple is being a gigantic bunch of assholes by not using something other than vanilla SMS if you're not an iMessage user.

What alternative would you suggest? And is that alternative as universal as SMS?

I'm a doctor, not a phone technologist!

But on Android, you can replace the default messaging app, and that app can have access to SMS as a fallback, so it's really easy to convince people to switch. "Hey, uh, plain messaging is annoying some of us, please install this app, we can all use it, but it will work even with people who don't have it over the regular text service."

Can't do that on iOS.

a system that can deliver messages through SMS or wifi is better, especially one that was a protocol, not a product, and would allow multiple platforms to access

RCS

It's still getting rolled out a lot of places. Google sees it as the successor to SMS and it's built into native messaging apps. I recently saw cross-carrier support get enabled locally and that made it universal enough that so far anyone I message that's running Android is already connected via RCS.

Apple intentionally doesn't support RCS in order to keep imessages from interoperating with android.

Yes. Of course. Apple do not enforce anything like a good user experience. They enforce a good Apple experience.

Is the user experience on Mac bad? Macs let you install non-store apps, and somehow it works out fine.

No one is forcing you to install anything you don't want to. The only thing I want is having the ability to install anything I want to. If you don't want to install those things the solution is simple: Don't. You don't need Apple to make that decision for you.

While I wish I lived in a world of perfect competition, I also realize that I don't. System-wide rules against bad behavior are a lot more efficient.

> You don't need Apple to make that decision for you.

I also don't need an app making the decision of whether I need an account. Apple preserves that choice for users. And they're not making any decisions for the user about installing. Effectively zero apps will leave the store over this rule, so the user retains full choice over installing.

> System-wide rules against bad behavior are a lot more efficient.

I don't want Apple making many system-wide rules on behavior, even on Apple's own systems (which they share with their users.)

That being said, they're very right about this. Making the distinction between, on one side, apps that are useless without accounts (like banking apps) or apps that are made to help with already existing accounts, and on the other side apps that are just forcing accounts to capture and control the users, is a smart and thoughtful move.

Or (1) is: it’s impossible to create codified rules that have no false negatives and no false positives and we’re smart enough not to act like it’s possible.

You know, this is how almost every rule system on the planet operates. Ultimately there’s an arbiter whose job is to look at the totality of the case.

This has a nice demonstration at the following link (which was on hn recently):

https://novehiclesinthepark.com/

A better response would be: "Thank you for making us aware, we will revisit their evaluation or update the guidelines" (and then they would actually do so)

This isn't what's happening though. If you're a big app you get to do whatever you want, and if you're small then you have to do as you're told.

That would not be a better solution because it would entail either “solid” rules that are actually always fluctuating and/or people having prior assessments overturned after the fact.

As opposed to… humans working through a specific situation for a specific solution?

It would at least strive for equality, instead of letting the big boys do whatever the hell they want while punishing everyone else (and making it impossible to compete).

There's also the ethical concern about how apple (or their reviewer) can bully you specifically which means there is no other way to delivery our software to your users, other than complying with a bully.

The point isn’t to strive for equality, it’s to curate a healthy ecosystem.

Sure, the world is rife with ethical concerns.

> rules for thee but not for me

"not for me" isn't what's happening in a comparison between two third party apps.

> Companies should not have to bend over to apple's whims just to get their software in end user hands. Hopefully upcoming EU regulation will reign apple's overreach in a bit.

Maybe in general, but I think a rule against requiring unnecessary accounts is a good rule. The EU should consider making that a regulation.

If you were protesting a speeding ticket, I suspect the defense of “the guy next to me was going even faster” wouldn’t go very well.

> Nobody listened to me, of course.

Being the voice of "this is never, ever going to be accepted into the AppStore, it is a perfect example of what you can't do" can be a very lonely journey.

as long as you aren't the person who will ultimately pay for said failure, it doesn't matter if nobody listened to you. You just need the cover-your-ass evidence that you presented this evidence to the stakeholder (who is ultimately responsible for said failure).

One time Apple asked us why we needed bluetooth permission for an app that had the singular purpose of using bluetooth "iBeacons".

There are many exceptions to the rule with Apple's policies. I knew a few app developers that could skirt many of the official rules, because they had friends that worked for Apple.

I cannot wait for the DMA to take effect early next year so I can install ANY other app store.

They’re lying to you then, because “friends that work for Apple” have no say in the App review process.

Perhaps the standard should be, "If you are required to have an account to use this service, on or off the app, then you can require it on the app."

For context that would mean that to browse a site like Hacker News, you couldn't require an account, but to post you could. It covers things like Banks or Steam, etc.

Would that be workable?

That seems like a great policy to me. I bought a guitar tuner app in the past and that's exactly and all it did: act as a tuner. But it then got acquired by a company that sells guitar lessons and other things, and they completely f-ed up the app and it requires an account and a subscription now if you want to tune your guitar. Fortunately there are other options in the Play Store, but I paid like $15 or $20 for it at some point. This tempts me at a side comment about why I hate automatic updates, but I'll refrain. Luckily it was Android so I was able to backup the APK before they ruined the app, and I sideload it now. Along with old Pocket Casts, Audible, and a couple of others.

Was that DaTuner? I got really annoyed by that too.

I only go to F-droid for these utility apps.

Guitar tuners, flashlights, QR scanners, etc. Open source hobby-sized projects which are done when they're done.

This is a terrific strategy! I'm going to do exactly this. Thanks for sharing.

Cythara on f-droid for guitar tuning!

For example, Gaia Maps. It's just a navigation app using publicly funded USGS or crowd sourced base maps, but by switching over to a user account requirement, they can con people into paying a monthly subscription for map "updates".

If you're going to rip people off with "software as a service" then you need to require an account.

Just because maps are based on public data doesn't mean that making them doesn't cost money.

> How could a banking app run without an account?

I use two banking apps that have a FAQ feature that's just a fancy wrapper for their respective online knowledge bases.

It's only due to laziness on their part that the entire app needs a login, even if the only thing I'd like to do is browse the knowledge base.

Similarly, you shouldn't need to be logged in to queue up an arbitrary number of transactions, to execute them sure, but every banking app I've tried makes you login from the outset for no discernable reason.

How do you nominate which account to 'queue' up those transactions against? And what benefit does not logging in have when you have to login anyway to do actually do something? I'd rather everything be kept (relatively) secret and secure

You are not creative enough. A banking app can run without an account by showing you interest rates for deposits and mortgages, and show you a map of their branch locations. An online game can run without an account by showing you a tutorial and videos of other people playing the game. The Twitter app should show you tweets without an account.

Many online games do not require an account. Ones that do not store things like level progression or inventory between play sessions.

You need an account for WoW, but not Unreal Tournament, to use 90's examples.