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Comment by lapcat | Hacker News Reader

> I would think making sure outside payment links aren’t scams will be more expensive than that because checking that once isn’t sufficient.

According to the ruling on page 42, "(c) Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links, and its calculation of its necessary costs for external links should not include the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP"

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> Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links

I'm not versed in legalese, so maybe I misunderstand. Isn't it reasonable that Apple receives money for a service they provide, that costs money to run?

A service to whom? Protecting users is a service to users, not to developers. This is a selling point of iPhone, and thus Apple receives money from users when they pay for the iPhone.

Think about it this way: totally free apps with no IAP get reviewed by Apple too, and there's no charge to the developer except the $99 Apple Developer Program membership fee, which Epic already pays too.

Protecting users is absolutely in the best interest of developers.

Forcing developers to go through Apple's arbitrary, capricious, slow review process is absolutely not in the best interest of developers.

> Think about it this way: totally free apps with no IAP get reviewed by Apple too, and there's no charge to the developer except the $99 Apple Developer Program membership fee

Yearly fee. And about $500 a year in hardware depreciation, because you can reasonably develop for Apple _only_ on Apple hardware.

This is _way_ more than Microsoft has ever charged, btw.

The case is really about the opposite: "what payment related services is Apple allowed to force people to use (and therefore pay for)". The court concluded that excludes both the payment service itself as well as the validation of the security of external payment services used in its place.

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