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I'm probably in the minority here but I'm at a point where I'll simply not purchase any service if I cannot use the in app form of payment. I'm just done with everything else. If I miss out on something then so be it.

Have you ever bought an Adobe subscription, ever tried to cancel a New York Times subscription? Or Audible where they say "Well, you can cancel but then we'll also take the tokens you've already paid for"? It's completely ridiculous.

I'm so sick of 14,000 variations on cancelling things, having to click through menus, five hundred different things I have to take care of and all that crap. On iOS I can cancel anything and everything - without exception - the same way and in a few clicks. I like that and it's just something I got used to.

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I 100% agree that I am not interested in establishing new relationships with payment systems other than Apple's. Absolutely true.

BUT two things:

1. I already have relationships with some payment systems other than Apple's which I trust. Not many, but some. I mean, Amazon happens to be big enough that they are immune from this requirement, even for digital purchases, but there are plenty of other companies I would happily pay directly and trust as much as Apple.

2. This messaging requirement is just petty. It makes Apple look small and childish. It should embarrass them that this ever saw the light of day.

Amazon isn't immune. You can't "buy" Kindle books through the Amazon app on iOS.

Fine, but apps should be allowed to let you pay via alternative methods and also allow you to pay via Apple and charge you the 30% extra costs which Apple wants.

I highly doubt you would pay 30% more just so you can pay via Apple.

43% more, in point of fact.

If an IAP is $15, then $4.5 of that goes to Apple. If you priced the direct payment option at $10.50, then $15 is 43% more expensive.

And this is the whole reason Apple doesn't want developers to be able to offer both IAPs and direct payment at the same time... it would make Apple look like the bad guy (a horrifying thought!), and they might feel pressured to lower their percentage to something more reasonable.

If Apple would switch to a usage based model more like AWS's where they charge for actual resource consumption (review requests, app store bandwidth, etc., maybe even with some kind of "free tier" to help very small developers who are still paying $99/year) then that would make more sense... but a 30% surcharge for every transaction is just absurd.

If credit card companies tried to charge 30%, the uproar would be so loud that no would be able to sleep for days, and you know businesses would instantly be offering steep discounts for people paying in cash. Apple has demonstrated that they want to eventually charge a 30% tax on all economic activity[0]... the App Store is more than just a place to download Angry Birds these days. Apple's 30% transaction fee is unsustainable. (I feel the same about Google's Play Store fees too, but at least Android allows sideloading and PWAs support push notifications there, giving developers and consumers some options.)

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor...

Apple's 30% charge isn't for payment methods. I hate that this meme has persisted through the Epic case and the Netherlands regulations.

Apple charges the seller 30% (well 27% but w/e) as a sales commission for being able to sell digital goods through any means on their platform. Harping for allowing alternative payment methods is the wrong angle if you don't want to pay 30%.

It's not about the payment methods! If you can force Apple to drop their commission then IAP would be a 3% charge and nobody would really care.

That's Apple's spin on this and it's as greedy and unreasonable now as it was when they just started.

The fair setup - as far as the owners of expensive devices are concerned - is to:

1. Be able to install arbitrary software capable of running on the device.

2. Be able to pay for it in whatever way that is supported by the software vendor.

This are reasonable expectations.

If Apple provides a way to install pre-approved software through their Store - excellent. As an option.

If Apple provides a way to pay using their super pro-consumer payment system - ditto, as an option. Possibly as a required option (option!) for programs distributed through the Store.

You want convenience for either aspect - you go through Apple, pay them extra, be happy. You don't want to pay them - install yourself and pay directly.

Voila. It's not very complicated.

All the arguments against this is not a "meme", it's Apple guarding its profits in ways that are explicitly and aggressively anti-consumer.

Cancellation pain is a big driver for me too. I've heard lots of people say something like "streaming services are no better than cable was, once I get Service A, Service B, Service C ... I'm paying as much as I was for cable". And that may be true for some people, sometimes. But if the streaming services are easy to cancel, then I often only keep a subscription active for a couple of months at a time. Ok, I saw the HBO-exclusive stuff I wanted, now I'll disable it and maybe check it out again in a year. And that's easy to do now! I guess HBO doesn't love hearing that part, but easy cancellation makes me much more willing to sign up for it in the first place, which they ought to be happy about.

And the inevitable cancellation dark patterns! I cancelled my prime membership the other day, and holy cow, I had to confirm my intent at least 5 times. Offers to “pause”, a page telling me what I’ll miss out on, plus more pages that boil down to “actually?!?!”

Seems like subscriptions have gotten out of hand. Since the goverment can’t regulate meaningfully, I’m at least glad that Apple has some solution to this, even if it feels a bit monopolistic.

I also learned recently that if you cancel a trial Prime membership early, the benefits end immediately instead of ending at the end of the trial period.

I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. If I end up liking the service then I’ll happily enter my payment info again at the end of the trial. Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach. But Amazon seems to want to take advantage of people forgetting to cancel their unused subscriptions.

It’s really surprising that a company as large and successful as Amazon would feel the need stoop to such levels.

Ah, that reminds me -- cancelling your (pre-paid year) subscription also very much makes it sound like you're going to lose your benefits immediately. Another scummy scare tactic to spook you into forgetting to cancel until it rolls over for another year...

> I generally like to cancel trial memberships immediately after signing up to ensure that I don’t forget about it and accidentally get charged for something I don’t want. [...] Most online services (including all App Store subscriptions) are fine with this approach.

Except for Apple's own services, which includes Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple Fitness+. All of these will instantly terminate your trial if you cancel during the trial period, rather than terminating at the end of the trial period.

This goes against the way App Store subscription trials work for everyone else. Why? Because Apple isn't bound by their own rules, and I guess Apple wants people to forget and let the trial lapse into actual payment. It is certainly a proven (if unsavory) technique for making money.

Ah yes I had forgotten that Apple does the same thing with their own services. To make matters worse, they used to annoy me to no end with full-screen popups for Apple Music trials when I was just trying to listen to my local music library. And if you're not careful and choose the option to merge your local library with your apple music library, you can accidentally end up losing all of your local music. Very annoying.

I agree 100% with you, but here's the thing:

That peace of mind has a price.

As long as Apple lets me charge you twice the price I'll play by their IAP rules.

But that's one of the things Apple is selling - peace of mind. The customer knows they will be able to cancel subscriptions, get refunds, security, etc...

And if those are conditions the customer and developer are okay with, then everyone wins.

I agree -- easy has a price. But it's one of the benefits of the walled garden. And it's one that a lot of customers are willing to pay, just to avoid the hassles involved with other systems.

(There are other benefits and downsides, but that's another thread).

Yeah, but Apple is already charging twice the price for the hardware, let me charge twice the price for the software instead of insisting that I charge the same in every platform.

Sure I agree that dark patterns which try to prevent your from canceling are awful and the iOS App store comparatively makes that easy.

But that's great argument for regulators to step in to prevent dark patterns. Cancelation should be just as easy as signing up.

Right because more laws to govern technology is the answer to bad laws with unintended consequences.

Or “why I see a cookie pop up on every damn web page I visit .”

Has the government ever made a good law regarding technology? The last one I remember is phone number portability.

> why I see a cookie pop up on every damn web page I visit

There is no regulation that requires every website to give you cookie pop-ups. If you are seeing that, it is because the websites you visit are trying to stalk you online and making the popups as painful as possible so you will dislike the regulations instead of asking them not to stalk you.

So now every website is doing some type of protest against regulation? It couldn’t possibly be that government is inept when it comes to understanding consequences of their legislation?

I don't know where you're getting "every website" from your previous reply and this one, but you can be certain that not every website is throwing cookie popups on their visitors.

The consequences of recent privacy laws is privacy-friendly services being able to compete easier because they're not subsidizing their costs by stalking their users and selling their data. If the government got such good results without even understanding the consequences, they must be very lucky.

Right because there is a privacy first open mobile operating open operating system that has become popular.

And a privacy first social network.

And a privacy first search engine that is profitable.

The government has solved what tech problem exactly?

Every website thinks they are smarter than EU.

In reality fines are already being written, Facebook is seeing the writing on the wall and is already now (this surprised me a bit) pulling the desperate "we'll take our toys and go home" card, hoping EU won't call their bluff.

Let's be clear here: most of these informed consent banners are invalid.

The rules are something like:

- default is opt out

- if a choice must be presented opting out should be the easiest choice

Besides they almost all are trying to hide sneaky stuff behind the "legitimate interest” clause, but in that case you don’t need to ask and an opt out would be meaningless.

Do you really think it takes much to ge smarter than a bunch of lawmakers when it comes to tech?

Do you really think it is easy to be much smarter than law makers and lawyers when it comes to laws?

There is an intersection here, but basically this - in my mind - isn't about bad laws but about big businesses fighting for their lives (or at least the lives of whole branches in their organizations) against these laws.

They'll do most things they'll come up with and think they can get away with: misrepresent, plead, beg, threaten to leave, willfully misunderstand even very clear laws etc as long as their lawyers and business people think the risk/reward ratio is favorable.

GDPR isn't that hard, technically.

It just gets extremely hard to comply with without letting go of abusive but highly lucrative business practices.

Most lawmakers aren’t lawyers…

From what I have seen, when the government gets away with stuff - imminent domain, police corruption, etc., it’s a lot more detrimental than my not being able to side load.

As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.

https://gdpr-info.eu/

> As far as the GDPR not being “hard”. It’s 11 chapters with 99 sections.

Yet, the guiding principles are clear as day, just like the ten commandments. (Don't collect personal data without consent, store it responsibly, allow users to introspect data about themselves and remove it and you shouldn't need to worry.[1])

And it also only becomes a real problem when someone wants to get away with breaking both the spirit and the wording of the law.

[1]: And yes, I'm aware that this is mostly incompatible with the practice of hoovering up all you can get, selling it to everyone who wants to buy and generally abusing it for fun and profit in every conceivable way, but that isn't the fault of the law but a problem that companies who habe grown addicted to now antiquated business models have to brought on themselves, isn't it?

You can get similar functionality to what Apple is offering through a disposable credit card (privacy.com and alike). Worst case you can take the matter up with your credit card company.

How many times in a year do you cancel something?

Can't companies ban such cards? I think there are some BIN code etc… that can be used to identify them.

If you do this, your account will be sent to collections (because yes, you still have a payment obligation if you do not cancel). Those are people whose job it is to be so unpleasant to you you'd rather pay them and not eat, so this is terrible advice.

I had a situation where New Yorker was able to charge me, after I used one-time credit card (and thus invalid) that was issued by Revolut.

The explanation was like this that, it was an “offline“ charge, which they let thru.

Seconding this. Apple is also the only provider that lets me consistently pay with those Visa gift cards that almost never work when charging a credit card online.

I stock up on Apple gift cards when they're 20% off at Costco. I'll buy $200-$300 and add it all into my account.

So I'm getting 20% off all purchases, effectively, until the credit runs out.

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