Last week we published a news article advertising a holiday deal for our premium subscription. Of course, our app shows our news articles.
So the following day, while we were submitting a bug fix release, a reviewer rejected the app on the grounds that it advertised a premium service that was not available via Apple’s IAP subscriptions. We later found out they were talking about the news article preview tile. Their demand was that we remove all outbound links to the domain that hosts the premium content unless we implement Apple’s subscriptions. This would have included news articles, guides, account sign in and settings and other core components of the app that just happened to link to the site.
So we did the only thing we could do. The entire engineering team committed the rest of the week (including the weekend) to complying with Apple’s demand and we integrated Apple payments into our backend and app. Of course this blocked us from deploying critical bug fixes but we had no other option.
The other side of this coin are apps that blatantly show banners on opening them to go to their website and purchase a subscription for cheaper. I reported one such app a few times to Apple (using the new report an issue feature on the App Store). It’s probably been at least a couple of months, and that app still continues to do the same.
It’s very clear that the rules are arbitrary and are not enforced uniformly. Apple doesn’t even seem to have an inclination to solve issues when they’re pointed out.
Why are you supporting apple and the 30% cut they take? Why do you as a user want apple to continue this?
We are developing a system for our client where their users have to buy a one time token to use it. The tokens are bought from the client's web shop. The iphone and android apps are webviews that contain the website. This was the only sane way to develop the apps because otherwise we would have to constantly deal with the idiotic review process.
For example - we had added google sign in but zpple refused our review until we also added apple sign in. A feature that I haven't heard anyone of the customers actually use. Or we had a button going to the webshop. Had to remove this one because apple wanted a 30% cut. If apple got 30% of every token bought then our client wouldn't be in the business at all.
As a user, I want to be able to easily manage all of my subscriptions from one place in my device's Settings app and not have the experience I recently had trying to cancel my NYTimes subscription where I had to call, remain on hold for 35 minutes, and then have to:
1, submit to the rep's questioning about why I want to cancel,
2, argue with them over how sure I was about wanting to cancel,
3, refuse their discounted offers,
before I was permitted to finally cancel.
As a developer I get why other devs want more freedom regarding how they get paid for their apps/services, but as a user I have absolutely had it with these kinds of abusive practices that will surely follow if Apple allows them to happen.
So the following day, while we were submitting a bug fix release, a reviewer rejected the app on the grounds that it advertised a premium service that was not available via Apple’s IAP subscriptions. We later found out they were talking about the news article preview tile. Their demand was that we remove all outbound links to the domain that hosts the premium content unless we implement Apple’s subscriptions. This would have included news articles, guides, account sign in and settings and other core components of the app that just happened to link to the site.
So we did the only thing we could do. The entire engineering team committed the rest of the week (including the weekend) to complying with Apple’s demand and we integrated Apple payments into our backend and app. Of course this blocked us from deploying critical bug fixes but we had no other option.