Surprised this hadn’t been discussed here already. I’ve always liked using Apple stuff while not particularly liking Apple, so I’m not exactly their biggest fan. But this just reflects terribly on them, especially only days before WWDC.
Their greed for services revenue is slowly destroying the customer experience that allows them to charge their ridiculously high prices.
That’s wierd… it was apple themselves that suggested using our existing subscription model was fine for our apps (we just had to add a static demo mode so they could test it), we just couldn’t take payment within the app without using the appstore. So it seems odd that someone basically doing exactly the same thing gets stopped.
Plus every release goes through their standard review process and there’s never been an issue.
But you don’t need the App Store to sell your app. You can sell it on the Android stores.
If the App Store was the only place to sell apps to any phone then it would be a monopoly.
The Hey founder has had a tantrum because he tried to skirt the rules and now they’ve reached a compromise. Apple can charge what they like, if you don’t want to pay them their cut, then don’t charge for anything.
For sure, they just need to convince people to pay. It is a service from scratch as opposed to software or a service built onto of your existing email. Genuinely some good stuff in it.
I was a tiny bit tempted until I realised they want $349 for a 3-letter email.
Plus really it would mean is I type my $99 email into the order box rather than my current free gmail email, I don’t remember the last time I gave my email to someone.
I have no issues with what Apple is doing to be fair. It is their App Store, they can charge whatever fees they like. Same with Steam, Epic, Amazon, Google etc.
If a developer cannot afford to survive without access to an App Store in particular, then they need to accept the fees for that Store in order to gain profit from it. Is the profit split fair? Maybe, maybe not but that is the cost of doing business.
What I do think is wrong is treating one App one way and another App from a big company (like Netflix) differently.
My email is still @me.com and I have the perfect address and alias’. I like the fact is is so short. I just missed out on the @mac.com one.