Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever.
You'll get no argument from me that Apple's system is pretty good from a consumer standpoint — that's the primary reason why I predicted that it'd remain popular. It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a subscription without getting some dark patterns trying to talk you out of it.
On the other hand, it's really easy to imagine that you'd see something like “$9.99 IAP; $7.99 direct from Epic/Amazon/Google/Netflix/et al.”, especially when it's a company they already deal with and don't have a negative impression of.
The big question I'd have is whether that's possible or the other terms require price parity — and whether they'd be able to do something like offer bonus content, rewards clubs, etc. to nudge people toward their own store. I'd be somewhat surprised if, for example, Epic couldn't entice a fair number of people with some kind of in-game skin or other loot which they could argue has a resale value of $0.
I had a WSJ subscription which I couldn’t cancel online. You have to call them, wait in line and then let them talk you into another free month and stuff. A bad experience.
It was so annoying I just gave up until my CC was locked.
This experience was definitely more expensive than using Apple’s services.
Seems like the right strategy. A chargeback request automatically implies a $25 fee for the merchant if I remember correctly (read this on Braintree long ago). I'd expect any merchant will want to avoid disputes/chargeback requests like the plague.
Take this with a grain of salt, it seems excessive, I should probably have looked it up again :) But there definitely is some kind of strong incentive for merchants to avoid these, not just because it wastes time for them.
It's not just the direct chargeback fee - too many chargebacks and the credit card companies will start actively penalizing you with higher fees overall and more declines and more 3DS verification requests.
As someone in the fintech field, a $25 fee doesn't sound unlikely. The credit card companies love their fees, and every time I see them I'm amazed at just how high those fees get.
Ah, it seems we are back to dark magic times, where you have to find the right magic words, to actually have an effect and not default to bots. To achieve complicated things, like cancel a subscription.
I literally cannot speak to a human at my ISP unless I tell the robocall system that I want to cancel. As in, I'll call and say I need to return some equipment, be on hold for an hour, leave a callback number, and not get called back in the same week. Versus calling and saying I need to cancel, then getting connected to a service rep in 15 seconds and asking them about returning equipment.
I recently had the same issues you did with my ISP. I started mentioning firing middle management for tolerating such poor customer service. I received a call from a person within a couple minutes.
If only there was meaningful ISP competition in my area.
I don't understand how this works in favour of Apple. Imagine you had paid with any other third-party payment provider, e.g. Paypal. Wouldn't you have been able to cancel the recurring payment just as easily? Even with a CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel the recurring payment by going through the account options on your bank website?
> Even with a CC payment, wouldn't you be able to cancel the recurring payment by going through the account options on your bank website?
No? I don't know where you're located, but I'm not aware of any North American banks that offer anything of the sort. Typically the only thing you could do through your bank is dispute a charge after the fact and request a chargeback. The end of that process may or may not see the company in question left unable to charge you again, but it's not a "cancellation of recurring payment" process in any normal sense, and it's going to require some phone calls and form-filling.
Companies will famously decline to offer subscription cancellation options on their website, leaving consumers with the only option of calling them on the phone and facing a hard sell when attempting to cancel. Apple's subscription cancellation options are night-and-day better than the status quo.
Here in UK if a company wants to charge you regularly for anything they have to start something called a "direct debit" on your bank account - then they can withdraw money from your account whenever they see fit. The thing about direct debits though is that you can cancel them for any reason within few clicks on your account website, and all charges are reversible without having to provide a reason - I just call my bank and say I want to reverse a direct debit charge X, done.
I know the American system is bad, but it's not like the only system in the world. There are other ways of doing this, without going through Apple's closed ecosystem.
I may not understand properly what you are saying but here in the UK you can have regular payment on your credit/debit card. Except for Utilities, basically all my recurring payments just happen like that. Netflix does not require a Direct Debit, neither does a variety of service, including Apple iCloud.
Although you can chargeback those payment, that's not really a cancellation. It's a last recourse type of stuff. I'm still subscribed and liable for whatever charge I have incurred. If I want to cancel Netflix or iCloud, I need to go there. So sure, if the payment fails your account will eventually be suspended but not necessarily cancelled.
Even Direct Debit are like that. I cancelled my Electricity DD by accident, but I still received the bill in the mail (at the time) and the electricity wasn't just cut.
Also in the UK, Paypal will allow to setting up subscription. Similarly you can cancel the subscription, but it is not a cancellation of the service. You need to go to whatever setup the subscription and unsubscribe there.
Apple system is a centralised cancellation of the service first, the fact that the payment are stopped is a consequence of cancelling the service. Not the other way around as with all the systems I listed.
> Here in UK if a company wants to charge you regularly for anything they have to start something called a "direct debit" on your bank account - then they can withdraw money from your account whenever they see fit
Here in Czechia most periodic payments are paid through either direct debit or standing order. Direct debit payments require apriori permission (enabled for each recipient max sum per period), which could be revoked at any time.
The infuriating thing is that some american users think that since they have to endure crappy banking then everybody else on the planet must also be enduring the same thing, and that's not the case.
I must explicitly approve any direct debit subscription before it can withdraw money from my balance and I can kill a subscription from my home banking (I'm an Unicredit customer btw).
That's actually how I made sure my gym subscription was terminated for good.
There are also 720 euro/month gym subscriptions in Europe, and probably everything in between.
Just a 30 euro/month subscription would quickly add up to amounts worth collecting, although I've even had a debt collector call me over a debt of 2 something euros.
Precisely this. And I realize it's not the same around the world, but recurring payments get really bad in large parts of the world.
If you, the customer, want to cancel a recurring payment and you're using ApplePay, it's one button and done.
If you're using 3rd party billing from $randomcompany, it usually works by you, the customer, trying to find who to call and spending a substantial portion of your time being badgered by customer retention people. They're set up to make it as difficult as possible because they know that they can make people give in if the effort is too high.
This is a huge part of the reason why companies want the second option - they want to own the customer, and for you to have to get permission from them to stop belonging to them.
I've had to deal with this type of thing in the past. Not often. What has worked for me was saying something like the following right off the bat when they try to keep me (but I guess it only works if not all of us do it :):
I get it. You are doing your job. You have a script. You have to try and keep me. It's not gonna work on me. Skip to the part of the script where you begrudgingly give in and cancel the service for me and you can take your next call quickly.
Usually the easiest way to solve this is to send a written letter, registered mail for like $1.50 or whatever it is now.
Then you dispute the charge each time. It's a pain, but it's a bigger pain for them and costs them more than it does you. Especially once you've documented with that receipt of a registered letter.
From the same page, micropayments on PayPal have an alternative fee structure of 4.99% + $0.09. PayPal is less expensive than Apple's 30% fee in every scenario.
This is why I use privacy.com. Each company or subscription gets their own personal dedicated credit card number, and if I don’t like their service, I can pause or cancel the card.
And if someone else tries to charge that card, then I know who leaked it.
Which is strange considering that both Mastercard and Visa require banks to offer this feature, and provide services to make it easy to implement.
I suspect if you called up your bank and asked to block recurring payments from a specific merchant, they could do it. It’s just not advertised very well, and the implementation aren’t always granular enough (block a merchant using Stripe for example, can result in all Stripe payments being blocked).
I guess that's because they cancel the payment, not the subscription.
If you cancel Netflix that way, Netflix isn't told. They will just realise the payment failed and block your account until you upgrade your payment details.
Apple system cancel the subscription, just like if you go on Netflix account and cancel. The blocking of the payment just happen as a consequence of the subscription to the service being cancelled.
Of course maybe time changed. Like shop returns 20 years ago, it was badly seen to pick load of stuff and bring most of the stuff back. Nowadays shops expect it and during Sales period they will ask you to do it that way rather than jam the few fitting rooms.
At least with my European CC I need to fill out a PDF, put a signature on it and upload. Not the level
of convenience I am used to. Maybe it’s different elsewhere.
I believe it just covers automatic renewals, which are illegial.
The WSJ needs to clean up their act. Offer better info to subscribers? The rest of us arn't going to pay. And I know it's difficult business. Figure out something newsboys besides trickery?
We just got an email notice that $locl_newspaper was doubling its monthly subscription rate effective immediately. When we called to cancel they permanently us in at the old subscription rate.
Pretty clearly a cash grab against those subscribers who aren't watching the notices + auto-billing closely...
If a smooth cancelation is so important to users that it justifies a 30% upcharge, other payment processors will compete. They can even advertise the easy cancelation during checkout next to the payment method (“install the stripe subscriptions app or go to stripe.com for one-click, prorated cancellations!”). I think once one of them does it, they all will. If the injunction goes into effect in 90 days, it will be a gold rush for everyone who gets to finally compete with Apple Pay. This will induce a bunch of rapid innovation in the iOS payment space.
The thing that I think you're perhaps missing is that Stripe etc. will be competing with Apple for developers. Letting developers make it harder for consumers to cancel something is a feature, not a bug.
Stripe etc. do not care about competing for consumer favor. Apple does. As far as any large company is on the consumer's side, Apple is, because they need me to buy another iPhone more than they need me to buy a subscription to somebody else's app, even at a 30% vig.
This is a deeply threaded discussion, but if you look up there, you’ll find that people are arguing that users will choose Apple Pay over other payment processors or refuse to use apps that don’t offer Apple Pay. That’s the context in which my comment is written. If it’s true, then app developers and payment processors will need to respond to that market demand. If users don’t care, then of course developers and payment processors don’t need to care either (absent regulation).
It’s very wholesome (or, naive) of you to think that developers will give users the choice for a less predatory payment gateway out of the goodness of their hearts, but that’s not going to happen.
Making it harder for users to cancel their recurring payment is a feature, it’s customer retention, the only choice you’ll have is whether a given site or payment processor is so egregious that you will forego use of the service entirely rather than take the risk.
If not being robbed is so important that it justifies buying locks we might actually decide that robbing should be illegal and punishable by jailtime....
My mother can trump that. Her VOLUNTARY subscription donation to the guardian was messed up and again could only be cancelled by phone despite signing up online. Dialing through the phone tree eventually connected cancellations to the NHS blood delivery service, really, I kid you not. They were very polite but equally bemused. Eventually sorted but way to drive away a donor.
How does this work for deaf or hearing impaired users? Surely even in the US there must be a way to cancel a subscription without having to speak to someone on the phone?
Generally in the US, if a company is large enough they will provide a TTS number, otherwise you can call via a TTS “gateway”, many of which are provided free of charge by various government entities or by the phone company.
When you call via a TTS gateway, a certified transcriptionist for the deaf or (now) a computer program that does speech recognition will transcribe what is said by the other party to text so you can read it and speak out loud what you type exactly. There’s quite a few regulations around this service, although I’m sure it’s developed since I last looked into it.
There are also special phones or phone apps many deaf people have that do live captioning. CaptionCall is one common brand.
The other part is, what do the Apple subscription cover in terms of platforms?
e.g.: If I can pay for say Guardian subscription either:
1. via their website/app and use it on iPhone, android, PC, etc; or
2. Pay for same subscription via Apple subscription and ONLY have it on my iPhone
- that's a HUGE diff, and one that I have been extremely peeved off to discover in the past :-/. It only took one such experience to permanently sour me on Apply subscriptions.
That's not a shortcoming of Apple's system - every subscription I have using IAP has a way to tie to to an existing or new account for use on other devices. If the Guardian decided not to do that, that's kinda crappy and 100% on them.
I would consider going through HBO directly. I used to subscribe through Apple but once HBO offered a promo that I didn't qualify for because I was billed through Apple.
The Guardian allows you to sign in from a browser with your AppleID - does that not give you access to your subscription? https://profile.theguardian.com/signin
I ended up canceling a magazine subscription I’d done with Apple, because there was no way to use my Apple credentials on the web site. It was app-only, and the app was crap compared to the web version. I might resubscribe but… friction…
> It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a subscription without getting some dark patterns trying to talk you out of it.
Tim Cook said at the trial they could integrate a separate payment API into Apple's subscriptions. Alternatively, Apple could check the cancel method during app review - so that's not a reason to allow Apple's payment monopoly.
I suppose that would only happen if Apple were very uncompetitive in price. In the example above, the options would be equivalent to the company if Apple only dropped their cut to 25% and the competition was free.
Assume Apple dropped to 15% and the competition was 10% - then it would be 9.99 IAP, 9.63 on Amaozon/Stripe/Netflix, which probably wouldn't be worth the consumer confusion.
A micropayment is 5% + $0.09. For a $0.99 purchase, this is about 15%.
I would expect other payment processors to be similar.
This also leads to the question of "how do you maintain the in app purchases?" Is it an account on a website that has 100% uptime? Does it work for solo games when there's no network connectivity?
This works for Epic (big company, lots of payment processing already). It doesn't work for SmallGamerInc that would find that they'd need to do a bunch of other stuff to get it working that incurs more costs than what Apple offers.
I’m very curious if that clause would be challenged by this judge or another one — because that’s the linchpin.
That decision changes register my Netflix account, that I don‘t remember doing, nor do I remember what interface I used to do it ––it was three computers and two phones ago–– but if another decision says I could save 20% every month, I’d munster the energy to get off the couch.
The question I’d have is whether they can hedge around that with freebies. It’d be an interesting lawsuit if, say, Epic started including some in-game rewards rather than direct monetary discounts and Apple sued claiming that those should count as a violation of the contract.
A fair amount of companies makes their subscription cancellation actively hostile in an effort to not get people to do it. To give an example, though you can subscribe online, the NYT requires you to call during only certain hours to a customer service line where you get badgered and questioned like you’re trying to cancel a cable subscription.
If the US mandated that you need to provide equivalent means of subscription and unsubscription with equal ease of use that would be one thing, but we do not live in that world.
This is exactly the example that's been on my mind. Had I known how horrible NYT's unsubscription process is, I would have never subscribed in the first place. I'm sure they extracted an extra month or two out of me because of the friction they introduce, so in management's eyes that's probably a win. I will never use NYT again in the future, but I think a big label letting users know an app isn't using iCloud payments could go a long way to cautioning users about a user-hostile experience.
Even if a developer makes subscriptions easy to manage today, without tie-in to Apple's infrastructure, they could change that process on a whim.
Similar opinion for XM... Would never sign up again without a generated card number that is only good for a single charge. I only wanted to cancel one radio of 3 I had at the time. By the third 40+m wait after mysteriously "disconnected" after they couldn't talk me out of it, I cancelled the whole thing.
Don't get me started on XM. Starting the second year after I bought a car they were calling me several times a week. It took a few years of "No" and blocking any number in my area code that isn't in my contacts (my phone number is not local) for it to stop.
Then I brought my car to the dealership to have some recall handled, and the calls have started again....
That sounds like it would primarily impact the low-paid worker on the other end of the line rather than alter company policy.
Instead I suggest playing back a pre-recorded sales pitch for a relevant trade union: The workers won’t suffer from bleeding ears and the bosses might actually care.
Just tried this. I had to talk to a support staff on the website, and they made one attempt to offer me a lower rate for a year (which I declined).
In my opinion, it should be as easy to unsubscribe as it is to subscribe. I interpret anything else as consumer-hostile. It's very strange coming from NY Times ... I know they find it hard to finance journalism nowadays, but dark patterns are never the answer.
This used to be the case with NYTimes, several years ago. But, I think it has improved. Same horrible experience, a few years ago. Then, I resubbed after a couple years. A few months ago, NYTimes ran an article on "dark patterns." So, I attempted to unsub -- it was much easier.
But, that is only the NYTimes. My guess is that the original hypothesis holds true for others; I doubt JFax has improved.
This makes the practice even more egregious as you know the website has the ability to allow cancellations they just choose not to enable it for people living in other states.
Huh, I was just able to cancel my digital introductory subscription ($4/month) w/o talking to anyone. This must be a recent change. I've canceled several times in the past and had to talk with someone, either voice or via online chat.
It's a law in california at least. If you log onto NYT in california you can cancel online I believe. Outside of california if you have no issue burning a bridge, you can issue a chargeback and most services will ban your account.
It seems theoretically possible for Apple to reject an app with a hostile cancellation policy without requiring that they use Apple as a payment processor.
This 100%. As an Android user if I have the option to pay for a subscription with Google Pay (even for extra) I will do it to avoid the dreaded "You can only call to cancel" interaction where someone will spend the next 10 minutes trying to talk me out of it.
Third-party payment providers who I don't select, not being answerable to me as a platform holder, are incentivized to make it hard for me to cancel. Apple doesn't do that. I have better things to worry about than to track this stuff down and I desperately want to think about fewer stupid things in my life. Subscription management is solved and stupid.
Perhaps look at it this way: I'm pretty OK with paying 30% to not pay 200% and, kinda more importantly, not to feel upset and angry later for forgetting a dark-patterned subscription dinging me again. If that's an edge case, y'all are wrong.
Maybe Apple can straitjacket them properly. "You must use XYZ API in iOS/MacOS and you must support one-click cancellation via a standard process." But I think the dark-pattern farmers who are angry about this would be angry about that, too.
I don't want to pay an extra 30%, and have that 30% taken away from the devs who actually deserve the money, because _some_ might make it hard to cancel.
Most would likely just have a Paypal button same as 90% of websites if that makes you feel better.
Apple can still enforce in their rules the ability to cancel from one place
If that's all they'd done from the beginning this ruling would not have happened.
Apple wants to control the access to a very significant portion of the user base?
Fine, but then they'll act like a lawmaker-light and in many (western) societies that means you get some burdens and responsibilities piled upon you by the original lawmakers.
> Maybe Apple can straitjacket them properly. "You must use XYZ API in iOS/MacOS and you must support one-click cancellation via a standard process." But I think the dark-pattern farmers who are angry about this would be angry about that, too.
Im not sure Apple want's to do that. By not restricting the 3rd party payments there is more of a case for using Apple's payment processor so you can cancel easier.
This is my hope as well. This ruling explicitly pushed back against the attacks on App Store review and other Store policies - and as such they can still leverage that into a requirement to implement some API that allows one click control of recurring subscriptions.
Another edge case here. For now I trust apple with my credit cards (a lot) more than a bunch of smarmy payment processors (somehow I magically get subscribed to a bunch of things when I use the latter)
Two separate things at play here. Parent is saying they trust Apple to manage their payment options, and since third parties have to go through Apple they don't have to trust a bunch of individual companies to do things right.
Apple Pay is one of those payment options, but if you have to trust a bunch of third parties to properly manage your information the specific form of payment doesn't matter much.
I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.
Most likely Apple subs will increase in price. This was the case for Netflix/Spotify for a while until Apple banned the practice (7.99 direct, 9.99 via IAP.)
> If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.
The mobile app payment market hasn't been competitive for a decade, so Apple has never had to compete with companies that are more efficient than they are, and can offer the same or better service for less than a 30% cut.
No the problem here is that a business wants X money, to sell thru Apple (and similar) they have to add 30% to what they want, whereas other payment platforms offer a much lower cut.
However Apple does vet apps and focus on security somewhat (altho Google's project 0 seems to do a better job at finding bugs for Apple), however 30% is far too much even for what Apple are offering their customers.
In an ideal world, Apple customers need to be told: "you will be charged extra buying through Apple to help pay for the protections/quality that our platform offers you".
However, Apple explicitly disallows both telling users that they're being charged more and why, and that they could get it cheaper elsewhere.
Regardless of whether Apple are still allowed to charge x%, the first step it to get Apple to allow developers to tell the customer about other payment options and for Apple to explain to their customers why it costs more, then customers can make the decision for themselves.
Do you really think that the digital purchase cost would be 30% lower if you bought it directly through the vendor? The edge case would be that buying directly though the vendor would actually be 30% less.
What makes you so sure it would be 30%? Somewhere a middleman gets their cut.
Why wouldn't bigCorp just make you use their payment system at the same price without allowing purchases via Apple at all?
You think that you’ll get a 30% discount by subscribing via an external website? More likely they’ll give you a small discount to entice you and pocket the difference.
Wouldn't it be better if that money went to the actual creator instead of a greedy middleman though? Apple will be fine. They have more money than they know what to do with. Literally. Steve Jobs even asked Warren Buffett WTF to do with their hoard, and that was over 10 years ago now.
Truthfully, aren’t the only developers who are really affected by this decision mega-corporations anyways? Epic had $5B in revenues in 2020. Should I feel indignant which greedy mega corp gets more money? Apple already lowered the commission to 15% for small developers (under $1M annually) where the additional income really matters.
Apple's refusal to allow alternative payment methods is (and has been) the issue. They can take 99% for all I care, but their smug refusal to allow alternative payment methods all but confirms that it's a ripoff.
You think the people who move to their own payment systems are going to drop their prices by 30%, when instead they could keep them the same and make 30% more revenue?
I assume by that you mean the developer tools to create apps in the first place.
Apple is free to not make developer tools anymore, that's their choice. Nobody is forcing them to. They do it b/c apps make the iPhone better. In fact an iPhone without apps is pretty useless.
You're assuming that the Epics of the world will actually lower their rates the 30%. Epic could just as easily keep the same prices, but now make that extra. That's the issue I have with Epic's arguments. They might lower the rates by a percent to entice people over to their system, but over time pull the cable company routine and just up the rates each time it renews or new version.
It’s almost impossible to analyze Epic’s rates “objectively”. Fortnite is free, but you can pay for in-game currency (V-Bucks) with which you buy cosmetics. You can buy V-Bucks directly (discounted in large amounts), get them through a monthly subscription slightly cheaper, or get a limited amount by playing (more if you buy a season pass which also includes cosmetics).
BTW: Cosmetics are EXTREMELY overpriced, because you pay for “exclusivity” (think like USD 20+ for a fully accessorized skin with no effects beyond cosmetic).
Even though Epic can claim it lowered the cost of V-Bucks in its store, you can only used them to pay for a small daily selection of arbitrarily overpriced cosmetics that Epic puts in its in-game store… so how much is a V-Buck worth? Nobody knows, and Epic can tweak it by making skins more or less detailed, or by giving away more or less V-Bucks to players and subscribers.
One drawback of the current situation is that for example you can’t purchase ebooks through the iOS Kindle app (because Amazon can’t/won’t let Apple take their 30% cut there), and the app can’t even link to the corresponding product page on Amazon. If the new ruling enables such purchases and linking, then as a consumer I’m very much in favor of it.
I used to love buying comic books in Comixology—it was so quick and easy to try new titles. And then Amazon bought Comixology, and almost immediately removed in-app purchases. I haven't purchased many comics since.
But yet you can by directly from Amazon in their app without using Apple. How can Apple say that they cannot sell eBooks directly on Kindle app, but allow direct sells from the retail store?
You can’t buy Kindle books with the iOS Amazon app. It only allows to download a free sample.
Amusingly, when you tap on an Amazon link to a Kindle book in iOS Safari, it redirects to the app (because of the Amazon URL), but then the app notices that it’s a Kindle book page and redirects back to Safari.
It's because then Apple Books would have to compete with the Kindle app on fair terms. IE Apple is being anti-competitive and giving their own app an advantage. This is basically a part of what the original lawsuit was about.
Apple doesn’t ban sales of eBook, but claims that those are software and would apply a 30% processing fee to them like on all virtual goods. They also demand the price to be comparable to other sources, so Amazon has to decide between
1. taking a 30% hit on its iOS sales,
2. forgoing them, or
3. raise its prices of eBook by 30% on its main app.
There are enough few enough iOS sales, and free sample downloads lead to enough conversion on the website later to go for 2.
Apple doesn’t make the same claim on physical goods.
> Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever.
So then we have two possibilities.
One, you're an outlier and nobody else cares.
Two, many users care about this enough to refuse payment systems that don't have it. In that case there will be a market for another payment system that has easy cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%.
* Two, many users care about this enough to refuse payment systems that don't have it. In that case there will be a market for another payment system that has easy cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%.*
That line of reasoning holds when all else is equal, which it almost never is when it comes to apps. No matter how passionate anyone is about payment systems, it’s still extremely unlikely to rise to become the determining factor when deciding to install an app. If a person wants to play Fortnite with their friends, but doesn’t like the payment system, they don’t magically get to choose a Fortnite clone with a payment system that’s more to their liking.
> a market for another payment system that has easy cancellations but charges ~5% instead of 30%.
I’d happily pay for such a system if I could *trust* them to continue acting in my interest by not leaking my details or interest and actually cancelling subscriptions without pushback from the provider (say, will the free version still grant access to my files).
I don’t know many players that I would trust with that and that are big enough to not be intimidated by providers.
That trust can be misplaced: God knows I trusted the NYTimes for being a nice company, but their unsubscription process was horrific, demanding to call from a US phone number (guess what: it’s really hard when you are not based in the US) and then refusing to cancel a non-US subscription if you do…
After dealing with that too much, I genuinely only trust Apple to do it consistently. I might trust Google too; I’m hoping that data scientist at Facebook know to model the brand impact on retention to argue it’s financially preferable to let people cancel… Even companies where I lead the analytics team and where I made the case passionate for instant cancellations, it was such an uphill battle. And it was lost again as soon as they thought I turned my back, because of some middle-manager obsessed with their short-term number.
> Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will.
Is Amazon was allowed to run a store on iOS, Android, and Fire devices, and if you bought an app you were guaranteed the equivalent version on other devices if it existed, I think there would be a lot of incentive for people to use it. I wouldn't necessarily prefer Amazon be the entity running it in the end, but they're probably best poised to do so with customer trust.
> Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge.
If there was actual competition between stores, this could be an item of competition, and a minimum acceptable level of support for this might emerge in the front runners. Amazon is already pretty good at making customers happy, this might be something they'd happily take on (and don't they already do subscriptions for magazines?).
The whole problem is that people keep looking at this as "Apple may be bad at X, but they do Y really well and I don't want to lose that" when they should be looking at it as "Apple is bad at X, maybe if they get some competition they'll do better at X, and Y will still be done well by them".
I can't understand why anyone would assume Apple having competition on their platform would make them worse. They would actually have to address problems for once otherwise worry about losing people to other stores, not entire phone ecosystems which require multiple hundreds of dollars and losing access to all your purchases.
If some company is really trying to get out of the Apple controlled system not because of costs but because they really want access to your personal info or to make it hard to stop paying them, maybe they should be allowed to leave and they can get less customers and hopefully change or die. Chances are they're trying to figure out the info using other methods right now anyways.
You’re using the term “competition” here like this is something that will be exposed to consumers, but it isn’t. Companies aren’t going to offer a “light pattern” option out of the goodness of their heart, the choice will be dark pattern or don’t use the app.
Which is fine for flashlight apps but as someone else put it heee, you don’t have the option of choosing another fortnite clone with a better payment provider - all your friends are on fortnite and you can either play with them or not.
Sijilaely, had the court forced Apple to open up “third party app stores” via sideloading, you would have Facebook and others immediately block web access via safari and Force all iOS users to install a full-permissions rootkit like they already got busted for. And sure you would have the choice to not talk with your friends via Facebook ever again, but network effect is a real thing.
> Companies aren’t going to offer a “light pattern” option out of the goodness of their heart, the choice will be dark pattern or don’t use the app.
That might be the case with a market that doesn't already have a competitor offering it, but Apple has already positioned themselves as pro consumer with fairly well known differences. Any competitor store on iOS will compared and contrasted to the App Store. I have no idea why you think any dark patterns that Apple specifically has rules and procedures to combat won't be obvious points of comparison, and won't be something competed over.
> Which is fine for flashlight apps but as someone else put it heee, you don’t have the option of choosing another fortnite clone with a better payment provider - all your friends are on fortnite and you can either play with them or not.
Or, Apple is forced to compete on price, and their cut goes down, and Fortnite is available through the App Store at a slight markup (that is, not 30%) or through the Epic Store without that markup. And if Epic chooses not to list on the App Store, well maybe they lose customers for that choice, but it's the customers choice.
If you actually care about combating bad behavior of companies with regard to private data, put your efforts behind legislation or regulation. Markets can't completely deal with that, and a single market definitely isn't doing so. All you're supporting is a system where those with more money get to pay for the rights we all have. There's no reason someone should have to opt into the expensive Apple ecosystem when a $50 whatever phone should have the same safeguards. Letting Apple prevent competition doesn't help that situation at all. I would argue it makes it worse (with competition, we might see better options arise).
> Force all iOS users to install a full-permissions rootkit
Allowing a separate store does not mean allowing rootkits. A sane permissions system where the store is not the only defense over what is actually allowed would be better for everyone involved, even iOS App Store users.
If Apple wants to say certain permissions just plain aren't supported, even for App Store apps, there's nothing wrong with that, and it would keep the whole phone more secure.
In the end, if Facebook really wants to pull something like that, let them try, and let them face the backlash for it. Ultimately, Apple is not a good steward for your interests, because your interests only matter to them as much as they align with their profit motives, and there are places where they definitely do not align, such as App Store pricing. Just because you're happy with what Apple says they're doing right now, and perhaps you actually are coming out ahead (but it's important to consider that Apple advertises where they help you, but they hardly advertise where they hurt you, so there may be harms you're not yet aware of), but there's no guarantee that the balance will stay that way or that you can even accurately assess it.
> I can't understand why anyone would assume Apple having competition on their platform would make them worse.
Apple having competition isn't a problem. That competition selling me to that competition's actual customers--enabling difficulties and dark patterns that Apple does not--is a problem.
I like Stripe as an app developer because I pick them as a seller; they're not there to serve my customer and are there to serve me. I am reasonably confident that Apple's there to serve me at least as much as an app developer because I as a buyer picked Apple. For B2C interactions where I'm the C, I want the platform on my side.
Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform on my side? Why should I want this as a consumer? The money's already a rounding error, the time and stress aren't. If the end result here is "you must use Apple's subscription system, must honor one-click cancellations through a centralized clearinghouse, and sure you can use your payment provider on the other hand", then that's great. Anything else is worse than the status quo ante.
> Apple having competition isn't a problem. That competition selling me to that competition's actual customers--enabling difficulties and dark patterns that Apple does not--is a problem.
Then don't use that competition? It's not like Apple is special here. They've developed a reputation for not doing that, which is what you're relying on for them to not do it. Any other competitor could develop a similar reputation if they chose to compete on that level.
> For B2C interactions where I'm the C, I want the platform on my side.
And in what way is any of that untrue or different if a different store is allowed to compete on iOS.
> Why would your selection of Stripe ever put the platform on my side?
Why is the options Apple pay or Stripe? Why isn't it App Store + Apple pay or Some other store + stripe or some other service that attempts to put the same constraints in place?
For whatever reason, people only seem to see this issue in terms of straw man arguments. There is nothing unique about any one aspect of Apple or the services they run that some other service couldn't attempt to do the same or better, and maybe that might actually make Apple's version evolve to be better than it is, so I'm confused why people are so against this.
The unique aspect of Apple is that they are uniquely invested in getting me to buy the next iPhone.
Stripe doesn't care about having me do anything. The business using Stripe is their customer. I am an incidental aspect of their arrangement with that business and if that business decides to be an asshole, Stripe just shrugs.
Apple doesn't.
I mean this as politely as I can: that you're writing this off as a strawman argument sounds like deliberate misunderstanding.
That I considered it a strawman seems to be because we're making different points, and talking past each other, and you might be forgiven in thinking I was doing what I accused you of.
I've been very clear that I'm talking about a separate store on the platform, while you're talking specifically about payment processing. Both are somewhat related to the discussion (with payment processing be more directly relevant to this ruling). To be clear, I don't mind a store getting between me and who I'm paying, but only if there's a level of choice involved that means people have a way to opt out of a third party being involved if they want. If that's at a store level and Apple requires all payments go through Apple pay and a different store does not, I'm fine with that. I feel confident that very quickly what we'd see is that the premium on payments like that, whether for an app or a recurring service/subscription, would quickly drop to a more representative cost of what it takes to offer that feature, just like the store cut would likely change to something more competitive with other stores, based on what it offers.
That you like this feature now and see it as a benefit is not surprising. Because of Apple's position, they're able to fold it into their store fees, which traditionally developers and publishers have not felt they could charge additional for to make up the cost. But that is not something that can be relied on, especially for services and subscriptions, which are generally more cost aligned than application pricing. Epic, for example, is/was charging App Store users that additional amount over the base cost, and Apple's rules were such that they weren't even necessarily allowed to tell people that Apple was causing them to be overcharged.
Consider a world where the status quo shifts, and for services and subscriptions it's more the norm to see things charged extra when bought through App Stores that charge quite a bit over market rate for payment processing. If you had to for example pay an additional 25% for services and subscriptions, would you think it was quite as good a deal? For small things, probably. For large things, maybe that's less likely? If you pay $100/mo for some service, maybe $30/mo to protect your name is a bit steep?
All I can say is that I think we're far more likely to have one or more good providers that will offer this service one multiple platform years from now if we actually open this up and let people put their money where they care. I don't think Apple can be trusted to be stewards of what's best for us overall. Like any public company they are beholden to their board and the stockholders, and the mandate for increased profits. That right now you benefit from their interests does not mean you are guaranteed to do so in the future. Relying on corporate interests to align with our own instead of promoting a system where what we want could be provided by any competitor that wants to provide is seems a poor way forward, to me.
The issue of subscriptions gets worse --not better-- if there are more companies competing for subscription revenue. Having to use more than one service to manage all your subscriptions would make things even more of a headache, so I don't see how consumers would benefit.
Ex. if a 3rd party makes their own subscription management that somehow allows you to cancel subscriptions faster than Apple does, maybe that is more convenient, but now you have to figure out which of your services work with that provider and likely would have to use both as neither could offer you everything you wanted. I understand how the idea of competition for revenue could incentivize better management from the likes of Apple and others but I just don't think the market for this will be competitive at all.
I know I'm in the minority but Apple does a shitty job on subscriptions. I frequent 2 countries. As such I need apps that are only available in one country's store (banking apps). In order to download needed updates have to switch stores. Switching stores cancels all subscriptions.
Another example of place Apple is failing (though I know of no alternatives), I went to a restaurant, the waiter told me I could pay by scanning the QR code in the receipt. This took me to a webpage that allowed me to pay via Apple Pay, but there was a message "Your email will be share and used to send ads". No way to opt out. I hadn't entered any email address, Apple was just going to give it to them. I closed the page and paid cash but was frustrated that Apple gives out email addresses.
I would blame the developper who built the payment system — although, I’m sure if they don’t include that, they loose the sale of their solutions to restaurants.
I’m surprised that Apple didn‘t mandate the hashed email solution that they advertised when introducing Apple Pay. That felt an effective solution to your concern. It’s likely that the developper had to include that copy (honestly, that cantor is almost fresh these days) but forgot to mention that this could be hashed if you chose to do so in your Apple Pay settings.
Shopify's "Shop Pay" has already introduced a seamless payment interaction across many sites without a need for a separate account or to trust so many people with payment info - the idea that something similar wouldn't be created and get adoption for subscriptions on mobile seems highly unlikely.
I have subscriptions and accounts all over the web, and I have never have had an issue canceling anything via a website - the only exception being the NYTimes and all its dark patterns.
Out of probably 10+ subscriptions we use (Netflix, Spotify, HBO, Hulu, etc), I have only ever had one through the Apple system, and it's not even active anymore.
Just using a password manager and having a separate email for junk/mail from various accounts keeps me in the loop on what accounts I still have laying around. The Apple subscription section is the absolute last place I look when I don't know where a charge came from.
Im sure every random app wont be rolling their own payment system. Paypal’s transaction fees for example are significantly lower than Apple (less than 4% vs Apple’s 30%), and millions of users already have a Paypal account, so they could buy your product without having to create an account or enter payment info.
Idk if Paypal lets you cancel subscriptions directly through them, but they could certainly implement that if there’s demand. The same goes for any other payment company that wants a piece of this new and enormous opportunity.
If you're going through PayPal ( https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees ), a $0.99 micro transaction is $5% + 0.09. That's $0.14 which is about 15%. It also means you get things like PayPal deciding to not release the money it holds for some reason.
At that point, for the small developer, it appears to be a wash for how much you're making. Yea, this goes down if you've got bigger IAPs. It also goes up if its an international transaction.
Furthermore, it means that you (the developer) needs to manage your own IAP system. Website with 100% uptime? User accounts and passwords (more friction to creating the account to purchase the IAP)? Network connectivity issues (can a solo game be played off network)?
Is there any doubt but that this is _the_ motivating factor for these companies? They employ all sorts of dark patterns to charge customers on the sly and make cancelling recurring payments as difficult and painful as possible, but at least if they want to sell on the lucrative iOS market they can't do this at the moment.
This is their business model, they've already shown they'll stop at nothing to put these practices in place, obviously this is just the next step in pushing it further.
It doesn’t really matter what customers want. If companies have an option to offer a lesser user experience but keep more revenue, they’ll nearly always take it. The only exception would be if “underdog apps” start seeing “we still use Apple IAP” as a selling point.
>. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever.
Managing subscriptions is separate from payment processing. Apple could still have a central hub letting the user know what is going on. Apple grabbing 30% of sales for a digital only product is not something most people support.
Worse still, is having to re-install a removed application when the renewal hit in order to then kill your account that was created during first run of said app.
If I'm buying a subscription/app from a sketchy dev, sure, I'll happily to default to use Apple, as it's providing me real value in terms of protection.
But for buying stuff from trustworthy providers, like Netflix or Amazon, etc, then why should I give Apple their cut? They give me 0 extra benefits, as I don't need protection from those companies. They're as likely to mess with me as Apple.
But that already happens. Apple did not invent online payment and subscription. Consumers do not have a problem buying things online outside the walled garden, and most could not tell you when they’re actually using a Stripe form in a WKWebView or whatever; those that can don’t care much either.
The most powerful force in play here is consumer indifference, which Apple have been relying upon.
Apple would not allow you to open that Stripe form in a web view before, so we don’t really know what consumers prefer.
I think you’re also underestimating the degree to which normal people hesitate before putting in credit card details on a web form - almost everyone has heard stories about difficult cancellation processes, stolen card databases, etc. Services like ApplePay offer assurances that almost certainly result in sales which otherwise would not happen, so I’d expect this to consolidate on a few companies (Amazon, Stripe, Google if they can stay on message for more than a promotion cycle) which are relatively trusted as intermediaries.
There’s no need to try reasoning things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows most consumers are indifferent and clueless.
If you don’t believe me, ask a non-tech-sector family member what they think Apple Pay is.
> You can stop trying to work things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows consumers are indifferent and clueless.
Who said anything about first principles? I’m describing real problems which are well known in the industry – and having been involved since the mid-90s I wouldn’t say that “indifferent and clueless” is remotely accurate. I know more than a few people who’ve had to replace cards because a small vendor was compromised and, unsurprisingly, they favor Apple/Google/Amazon now.
Most of the non-tech sector people I know think Apple Pay is what they use to buy coffee, lunch, groceries, etc. It’s not just tech sector people using it — if you look at their usage numbers, the tech sector just isn’t that big.
People/apps that use alternate payment SDKs aren't going to care how difficult it is to unsubscribe, and very few people (citation needed) care enough to look into an app's cancellation flow before buying in.
It’s worse than that. Developers will actually seek out alternate payment providers that allow dark patterns. The whole reason dark patterns exist in the first place is because they’re more profitable for businesses than light patterns.
Apple doesn't need to monopolize payment to centralize subscription cancellation. More importantly, Apple's fee structure prefers cheaper trashy apps over expansive to produce quality apps. I hope users will feel the difference with an overall better app selection.
Example: Apple takes a flat 30% fee while Stripe takes (IIRC) 0.3 + Y% (when Y much lower than 30). So a cheap app will pay the same or less with Apple, but an expensive one will lose a lot with Apple. I know not all expensive apps are quality ones, but at least this model will be economical now.
After using Apple Pay, centralising my subscriptions, and things like Apple-managed IAP’s I’ve little desire to go back to handing my card details over to n different apps, with varying and unknown degrees of payment security. Centralising the subscriptions is worth it alone.
> Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will.
Explain to the user that a $10 / month in-app transaction is $13 or $15 because Apple wants 30-50% of every transaction, and I am pretty sure most Apple users will recognize this as plain extortion and not appreciate it.
You’re not wrong but it might not apply universally for everyone with every subscription anyway. I’m not really all that frugal but I’ll happily sign up with a credit card through a browser if I see a 30% price difference.
Apple’s decision to force subscription services to use their payment system and charge exactly the same cut as they did for a single transaction app purchase was obnoxious. Sure, charge a fee for allowing access into the walled garden-but 30%? That’s 30% of $10-$15. Every month. They had the right to do that of course but that’s such an infuriating move.
Some companies didn’t play ball at all and just hoped users would connect the dots between the app’s home screen that was featureless except for a two form fields and seeking out the service in a browser. Even a link to a support portal would need to land on a version of your portal that you created to strip out any links that could, eventually, lead (indirectly) to a page where your customers could sign up for your service.
Some other companies just accepted it and then charged 30% more in-app for a subscription.
It’s probably fair to say some if not all of this is outdated. They may not charge as much and relaxed the requirements. But Apple is still Apple. I’m glad governments are moving the needle on this. Despite loving many of their products the way they behave and communicate is so conceited and nearly devoid of any humility or capability to deal constructively with mistakes or errors.
