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Comment by jb1991 | Hacker News Reader

jb1991

This raises one notable benefit of going through Apple for all payments -- as a customer, it buffers me from dark billing patterns of any random company. Companies like 37signals don't like it and claim it hampered their relationship with customers, and that might be true in some cases, but overall it seems like a benefit for customers to have a consistency process of buying, refunding, cancelling everything they use digitally.

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I'm not sure I see that as a benefit so much a government doing a poor job on regulations for subscription services and online payments

Yes, to both. Gov could do better, and in the meantime until if/when that happens, may be worth it to use a trusted source (Apple) to manage that for you.

Likelihood of Gov doing better seems tied to how much they can get away from Wall St. funding/defunding their re-election campaigns.

Do you think government could actually keep up with technology to regulate it? And if they did regulate it would it actually help people or the companies that are buying them?

But if the price of that benefit is 30% off the top for Apple for all payments, it's a high price to pay. Perhaps better consumer protection laws would be a better way to fight the dark patterns.

As a consumer, I have effectively no control over laws. I do have control over which payment system I use. So if you as an app developer don't want to give a 30% cut to Apple, maybe push for better consumer protection laws so IAP doesn't have that incredible benefit for me.

You can believe that dark billing patterns are bad and this change is good, while at the same time also believing Apple should charge developers less -- these are not mutually exclusive.

The judge in the Epic case did rule Apple was entitled to payment even if it didn't go through their payment system. No ruling was made about if the 30 % was too high or not.

PayPal does the same thing without taking a 30% cut.

The 30% cut is for the cost of the channel to market.

Not the cost of facilitating the transaction.

it buffers you from dark billing patterns of all companies except apple

I’d be interested to hear what dark billing patterns you are seeing rn with Apple?

Here’s one: they advertise “family” accounts: you buy an app and your purchase also covers your spouse.

But your spouse has to know you (or which family member) bought it and click on their name in “family sharing” to get it for free. Else spouse will pay for it again.

> Else spouse will pay for it again

It doesn't quite work like that. When someone in your family goes to hit the purchase button, it pops up a window saying that someone else has already purchased it. I'm not sure why you have to hit the button first, maybe for some measure of privacy from your family members?

That’s simply not true. My spouse and I buy apps all the time from the App Store and when you try to pay for it, it pops up a message that a family member already has and proceeds to the download.

When you start an app trial, and cancel right away, your trial stays active for it‘s duration. When you do the same with an Apple service like Music or Arcade, the service stops right away. This keeps you from pre cancelling a subscription while you trial in peace. I can’t imagine any technical reason for this and I‘m sure other developers would like to do the same thing.

That is bad. They should give you the trial for the remainder of the period. I use this pattern all the time. Cancelling earlier removes the burden of having to remember to cancel later. Thanks for sharing I had no idea they did this.

That's the "you have the choice to not use Apple" argument. Until apple becomes the only choice in the market I agree with the argument.

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