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Comment by baron816 | Hacker News Reader

It should just be like on Mac—you can go through the App Store, or you can download directly, but with a warning.

I think that would be killer argument for Epic—Apple already allows you to download apps onto their devices that don’t go through their store and everything is fine.

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This argument was made and their response yesterday was that there is an unacceptable level of malware on macs because they are not locked down the same way.

So the subscription scams in the iOS app store are an acceptable level of malware. Got it.

You open up 'general', you go to 'subscriptions', and select that. Any subscription on the iPhone can be canceled right there. As this is done through Apple's payment processing, Apple/iPhone knows about every subscription and can cancel it easily.

However, if the subscription is processed through a third party, then you may have more difficulty with canceling it... but it wasn't bought through the app on the phone.

Additionally, by default, renewal receipts are sent for each subscription and are visible under the purchase history.

If Epic wins and you've got subscriptions set up using payment processors other than Apple, this will make it harder to manage these subscriptions.

It also makes it harder to subscribe. You can accidentally tap the fingerprint scanner on the home button, and there were apps that made use of that, but you can't accidentally enter your credit card and then accidentally confirm the transaction with a 2fa code. The payment form alone is a huge deterrent IMO, even if it says "you won't be charged, free trial, cancel anytime".

Apple also makes a 30% cut of every scam app, so they're not in a hurry to shut them down.

On one hand we've got people saying "apple is too much of a nanny - I want app stores from anyone."

On the other hand, here, we have "apple isn't nanny enough because there's a financial incentive for them."

To what extent are we expecting Apple to audit the terms of subscriptions? And if someone wants to pay $10 a week to get a horoscope reading... ok... they did it with 1-900 numbers yesteryear.

And... apple is doing things about IAP subscriptions from scammy apps. https://www.imore.com/apple-getting-tough-scam-apps-extortio...

You start from one specific type of scan and jump to a conclusion about a platform. Without providing any evidence whatsoever regarding the “level of malware” on either macOS or iOS, or what level you’d find acceptable. This is fallacious and not helpful.

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