> The blog post was written in the context of the widely reported story of Apple threatening to terminate the developer account of Epic Games, which would prevent them from signing and notarizing their Mac software.
This part is key. It shows that Apple's signing and notarising requirement isn't about money, nor is it about security. Epic broke the rules of the iOS store, and now they'll be forbidden from developing on a completely different platform, just because Apple doesn't like them.
I suspect they will fix their app before this deadline. I very much doubt a judge will rule in Epic's favor for an injunction to removal when they have so obviously orchestrated this problem themselves.
Apple has a single developer program for all platforms. Epic has been given a deadline to stop breaking the contract terms - submit a new version of the application which reverts the remotely activated payment logic.
> Apple has a single developer program for all platforms.
This is the fundamental problem, in my opinion.
When Developer ID was introduced, it was supposed to be a mere formality, a cryptographic guarantee that an app was signed by a particular developer, to be used only for security purposes. At the time, nobody knew it would be used as leverage in an App Store dispute.
Epic didn't simply implement their own in-app purchase plan; they also remotely updated Fortnite to include it after it had passed app review (because Apple wouldn't have approved it, obviously). The whole point of app review is that Apple can assure its customers that apps are safe to run. Having apps that bypass the review by updating themselves subverts the whole process. You may not agree with the app review process, but it's clearly a feature that Apple regards as an important selling point.
Given that Epic has demonstrated a willingness to subvert the app review process, why should Apple allow such an untrustworthy developer to place its apps on any Apple platform?
(To be clear, Apple has said that they will gladly allow Epic back onto the App Store if they remove the private in-app purchase mechanism, so apparently Apple has not fully adopted this viewpoint -- at least, not yet...)
I would request that we please not rehash this debate here. It's been debated at length already elsewhere on HN. This is why I didn't mention Epic in my blog post, even though it's clearly the subtext.
The point of my blog post wasn't to defend Epic, but rather to explain how difficult it would be for a developer to continue distributing software on the Mac without a code signature approved by macOS. The frequent suggestion is that users could "just right click", but it's not that simple.
This part is key. It shows that Apple's signing and notarising requirement isn't about money, nor is it about security. Epic broke the rules of the iOS store, and now they'll be forbidden from developing on a completely different platform, just because Apple doesn't like them.