Comment by car_analogy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by car_analogy | Hacker News Reader

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> There are benefits to not allowing choice in some case - I don’t know if you’ve ever had to call a company to cancel a subscription you’ve signed up for online, but that doesn’t happen to iOS IAP users.

We already have a mechanism to restrict choice - regulation. Turning to corporations to safeguard consumer rights will end in tears, especially if used as an excuse to curtail user freedom.

> Have you ever actually met or heard of a user [..] that cares about this?

Ordinary people don't care about a lot of things they should care about - there are only so many hours in the day to learn about issues and acquire the necessary knowledge to form an opinion. If experts in the relevant fields don't care for them, the only other ones are those that stand to profit.

I bet it would be mostly mechanics speaking up if auto manufacturers started requiring only "licensed" brake pads or blinker fluid be used. Does that mean the practice isn't car-owner-hostile?

It doesn't help that most devs are actively user-hostile. So yea I would rather trust Apple than some random dev that wants to make it as hard as possible to cancel that 3-day trial he just gave me. then charges $9.99 a week .... I'm looking at you plink.

> than some random dev that wants to make it as hard as possible to cancel that 3-day trial

That is not a dev thing. At least not a good dev thing. That is a shady business person thing, possibly holding devs to ransom with “I know you don't like it, you can always leave if you dislike it enough and I'll get someone else to implement”.

Of course it is possible to be both a dev and a shady business person, but away from one-man-band entrepreneurs people don't usually have the desire not the time to excel at both.

This is largely just a semantic argument. There are developers that are individuals (eg, you and me), and developers that are businesses (eg, EA, or Match Group). Developers that are businesses can be (and frequently are) predatory, just as businesses are frequently predatory.

Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of software that people interact with is coming from developers that are businesses.

But no true developer would make a hard to cancel subscription!

Then there are a LOT of fake developers apparently. Maybe I'm fake because I don't recall an ethics statement when I passed my test to be a true developer.

/s

Meanwhile...

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#cod...

> Apps should never prey on users or attempt to rip off customers, trick them into making unwanted purchases, ... or engage in any other manipulative practices within or outside of the app.

> We already have a mechanism to restrict choice - regulation.

Regulation is great is there’s a one size fits all solution, or if a single compromise is good enough for the entire population. Otherwise regulation will only provide the least common denominator, the smallest set of rules that fit everyone.

Apple can enforce rules that don’t work for everyone - there are alternatives to choose from for users who need things that are not possible in Apple world.

> I bet it would be mostly mechanics speaking up if auto manufacturers started requiring only "licensed" brake pads or blinker fluid be used. Does that mean the practice isn't car-owner-hostile?

I only noticed your username after reading your comment - well played!

> We already have a mechanism to restrict choice - regulation.

Most people don't live in a jurisdiction that will provide this anytime soon. Frankly its not the top 10 of most peoples issue list because of the App Store regulation.

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