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Comment by widowlark | Hacker News Reader

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widowlark·

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

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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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