You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate, "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known companies.
When I see a independent developer complaining about Apple (or Google) being arbitrary in their app review process, I can at least understand how it's some low-paid employee trying to fulfill a daily quota. It still sucks, but I see the economic rationale of low-paid, low-skilled app reviewers there.
But it really surprises me that when it comes to apps from well-known tech companies like Coinbase, that Apple isn't doing a higher-quality review by people who actually know what they're doing and understand the industry. That there isn't a knowledgeable team inside of Apple making sure that corporate partners are treated like partners rather than niche indie developers.
I'm not saying a two-tier system would be more fair, because obviously it wouldn't be. I'm just saying it surprises me that a company like Apple shoots itself in the foot like this with bad decisions that then lead to bad press. It's such an own-goal. (Because in this case, the 30% cut doesn't even make sense conceptually, it's like trying to tax Amazon 30% on physical goods sold through its app.)
It's shocking that this isn't part of the $99/year developer program. 15-minute quarterly check-ins with an Apple developer seem fully within their means.
It sort of is. You get 2 developer technical support tickets (DTS). These are essentially at the level of having an engineer look at your code and help you figure it out. With these they’ve done things like review my build settings when I was having difficulty with a complex build. I believe App Store consultation is one of the available topics, but if not it would be worth trying anyway. These tickets are clearly worth a lot more than $50 each if used well.
Interesting, I didn't now that. Still though, my recommendation is mostly tongue-in-cheek because even spending 5 hours with an Apple engineer won't fix OP's problem. Nevertheless though, thanks for sharing!
What's OP's problem? Everyone has told them that there are multiple tiers of attention in the review department. Plus you get the support credits for specific issues (i.e. ones that aren't a business problem like the 30% cut.)
If that's what he was referring to, then agreed. There is no red telephone access to appeal broadly strategic decision-making, no matter who is the developer, sadly.
The problem isn't Apple's lack of transparency (at least for me) but the fact that they charge $99/year for features that should be a God-given right. They will always piss people off as long as they charge them for a product that should be included with their computer by-default. Until then, I may as well demand Apple include a few rocks from Mars and astronaut ice-cream every year, at least then I'd be getting my $99's worth.
Being able to develop and build an application I’ll only ever side load for myself should be available on any platform, for free. All the App Store stuff can be a billion dollars for all I care, but it’s a travesty that you need a friggin’ Mac and a hundred bucks to make software for your own damn phone.
You can sideload your own apps through Xcode without a full developer account. They only last for 7 days however, so you'll have to keep sideloading them.
Have you submitted an app to the app store? Have you dealt with their reviewers? The stupidity of these reviewers is maddening. I'm certain I do not want a phone call with them, even though they are extorting $99/year from me.
Everyone has faced this to some degree. You want to get your work or message out there and it gets shut down by the powers that be. The question is how to encourage a level playing field. You could have the government step in, however, that comes with its own issues. I wouldn't want a larger entity who has guns being the decision maker.
Apple has been the vanguard of selling software for years. People don't buy desktop software anymore, and it wasn't all that successful to begin with. They do buy software on phones, though, and Apple enables an ecosystem that might not otherwise exist. It's not clear to me that Google needs paid apps. They were happy with ads before that.
Ask yourself this - if we didn't need to pay to publish apps to the Store (or even less, if we could just publish apps that could be side-loaded), how many of us would voluntarily pay $99 per year for Apple's developer support? You could probably count them on one hand.
If the $99 also gets you Apple's 'verified' stamp of approval that guarantees the app won't mess up your phone or drain your battery like crazy, the number might go up a bit. But I agree that it would be great if we could publish apps without the app review process, for users who don't care about verification.
My experience working with a very large app is that, yea, they basically do.
Or at the very least, you get yourself in a certain relationship with Apple that it sort of is like this.
When we had a version we needed to get through quickly due to a bad bug, we'd shoot our contact an email, a few leadership members had this contact's phone number if needed. We'd make a call, and within an hour we usually had the version approved. Sometimes it did come with a caveat of "you're going to need to fix this issue before the next update" or whatever if we hadn't quite followed the rules, but they gave us a bit of leeway in emergency situations.
This does not really mean all updates went through this super fast process. We had to wait weeks at times for app approvals. So it's not really VIP reviewing, it's more like VIP treatment if you're big enough and know the right people.
Edit: and yes, we often ran into the situation of the previous version did something that we figured was fine, and approved by one reviewer but then the next update was flagged as no good by the next reviewer despite the last one approving it.
This process seems to be available to regular apps too now. When Apple rejects an update, they ask whether it's a bug fix update you need approved quickly. If yes, you can resolve the identified issues with the next update.
They started mentioning this in the past few weeks when I was updating clients' apps.
it's a little different. In our case we were circumventing requests to make changes to the app to get approval. We were effectively getting a free pass to ship the version with a possible App Store rule breakage, this one time, and getting it approved super fast.
They do. Small developers get apps rejected for now including detailed update notes whereas big companies like FB, Uber, Google routinely put out updated with generic update notes which is against Apple's developer guidelines.
Uber geofenced Apple’s Cupertino headquarters to hide that it was tracking iPhones and yet they weren't banned entirely from the App Store. They got a mere threat from Tim Cook.
> You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate, "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known companies.
I'm not sure this is true. I know years ago they had an expedited track you could get on. Once we got on it, we had very quick reviews, re-reviews, and releases. I would read about people waiting weeks while we almost always had 48h turn around. I don't think expedited exists anymore since turn around is always quick now, but I could easily see them routing big names towards a senior review team.
Echoing the other comments here, why do you think they don't? I worked on <insert_very_large_game_here> and we had dedicated contacts at apple, special agreements for (some) rules and a different SLA to what I now know is standard.
> That Apple doesn't have a separate, "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known companies.
Something tells me you've never worked on a top 20 app before then. These VIP review processes absolutely do exist, and any company with an app consistently in the top rankings usually has a contact at Apple on the review team.
Coinbase is a very, very small fry with an app which probably less than 0.1% of iPhone users have installed. I'm not at all surprised they wouldn't make the cutoff for special treatment from Apple. Why should they?
I suspect they very much do have those two separate tracks, but make it look as though it's a single track. When Coinbase get their rejection, I very much doubt that it's due to lack of consideration within Apple.
As others have said, they do. Apple also has dedicated representatives to handle communications with the top apps and partners in various App Store categories, like Games, Travel, etc.
The problem is being an established, known company doesn't mean you can be trusted to not behave badly on the platform with regard to security vulnerabilities or user privacy. See Facebook as a prime example.
The bad press doesn't really matter as long as they have such a dominant profit share on all mobile software sales.
> The practice, called fingerprinting, is prohibited by Apple. To prevent the company from discovering the practice, Uber geofenced Apple headquarters in Cupertino, changing its code so that it would be hidden from Apple Employees. Despite their efforts, Apple discovered the activity, which led to the meeting between the two CEOs, in which Cook told Kalanick to end the practice. If Uber didn’t comply, Cook told him, Uber’s app would be removed from the App Store, a move that would be a huge blow to the ride-sharing company. According to the article, “Mr. Kalanick was shaken by Mr. Cook’s scolding, according to a person who saw him after the meeting,” and ended the practice.
I get so ticked off with these other tech companies that on the one hand want me to support them in their fight to get more laisez faire access to Apple devices, and on the other actively engage in what are undoubtedly some of the most consumer hostile privacy invading practices on the planet. They actively compromise security, and then lobby and payoff senators to get better access because they are unable to compromise consumer security enough to make the profits they need.
The entire industry from Apple on down to startups needs to be nuked with a "no use of user information for any commercial purposes at all" law. Coupled with draconian fines that pierce the corporate veil and are assessed per user violation. We need something like GDPR in the US, but more strict. Apple isn't the problem. I'm starting to see that this entire industry is problematic.
You read that story and Cook is the villain? Uber deserved to get slapped down for that behavior. Should have knocked them off the store for a week just to punish them for the attempt.
Uber doesn't pay any cut to apple. The money collected by Uber is for services and clearly falls under:
> 3.1.3(e) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.
> The bad press doesn't really matter as long as they have such a dominant profit share on all mobile software sales.
It also doesn’t matter because there’s no alternative.
“Side-loading” can’t come quick enough. I have no issue with the App Store vetting apps arbitrarily, but there needs to be an alternative where developers can provide their apps direct to consumers without this BS.
> “Side-loading” can’t come quick enough. I have no issue with the App Store vetting apps arbitrarily, but there needs to be an alternative where developers can provide their apps direct to consumers without this BS.
I'd have agreed with you up until I heard about that Facebook Onavo thing and now I don't trust even that. Turns out companies whose whole business is emotional manipulation are really good at dark patterning users into doing unwise and unsafe things with their machines.
Most non-small tech companies. I work for a medium-sized non-tech company where the total resource spend on the apps for our customers doesn’t amount to tens of thousands a year.
> You know what baffles me? That Apple doesn't have a separate, "VIP" review process for apps that are from established, known companies.
That sounds elitists and what is wrong with capitalism. It gets distorted by big corporations having their way with their big elbows inhibiting growth and competition. Then you have people supporting the VIP lane are part of the problem.
Corporations should get equal treatment regardless of their size or in fact small business should get _more_ help than big corporations.
If a company is giving me millions of dollars a year which is going to my employee salaries I am answering their call first. The guy paying me $10k a year will have to wait.
What difference do you think a "higher quality review" would make? Apple is enforcing their strict policy that all purchases from within apps (with some documented exceptions) must use Apple's IAP and cough up the 30%.
This has nothing to do with Apple's kafkaesque review process and everything to do with their policies, which have been increasingly strictly enforced for the last couple of years.
I think he means the "people who actually know what they're doing and understand the industry" part. Someone who understands how crypto works would understand that the user is not making a payment to the app developer and therefore Apple has no claim to a cut of the transaction. If this is the way that Apple wants to enforce their policy, they'll have to take a cut of the transaction when I open my banking app and use that app to pay a bill.
Isn't it obvious that making crypto payments easier allows devs to circumvent Apple's cut?
I don't think people would accept any percentage taken of crypto exchanges.
Let's not beat around the bush. This is Apple protecting the way it earns money, not trying to levy fines on crypto to make more money. I'm pretty sure they understand that this decision makes them unpopular with some people. Their bet is that it preserves the model where there is still a functional review system for code that runs on your phone.
Apple doesn’t ask for or take a mandatory cut of in-app money transfer services. They also don’t take a cut of any physical goods sales (e.g. grocery shopping) or physical services (e.g. Uber car rides).
They take a 15% or 30% cut of all in-app experiences (e.g. entertainment, productivity software, content subscriptions). This is levied through the App Store and IAP.
(They take 0.15% of card payments if they are routed through Apple Pay, levied from the regular merchant fee associated with all card payments. However this is not forced on anyone and bank pays anyway, willingly, as the lower rate of fraud means the fee represents good value.)
> Apple doesn’t ask for or take a mandatory cut of in-app money transfer services.
I suppose you mean like when I use Venmo or my bank. Okay, but I can't readily use those to buy other in-app things like subscriptions, right? So it's consistent.
I’m not sure what the point you’re trying to make is.
If you want to try to use Venmo to pay for in-app content, nobody is stopping you. But if the developer accepts the payment and provides the in-app content to you, they have breached their contract with Apple.
Points/karma acquired in-game that can be exchanged off-app for crypto. Since crypto is so easy to exchange with no verification of buyer/seller needed, you can keep moving around how that works to make Apple's task of reviewing your apps more and more complex until you find a way to do it that they overlooked.
Apple’s 30% tax on IAPs is ultimately a convenience fee on impulse buys. Whereas inherent in the process of sneaking Apple-taxable-purchasable under their nose necessarily requires a very inconvenient process: buying crypto from a retail exchange, then moving it off-exchange to a tumbler, then back again to to buy something from the same (or another) retail exchange is far from convenient - and definitely not instant - so it is not in any appreciable way to circumvent Apple’s IAP tax, because it simply comes down to the fact you can’t make impulse-buys through that system - never mind the txn/gas fees in cryptocurrencies make it very wasteful for microtransactions, or really any transaction below tens-of-dollars.
I’d agree with you provided Bitcoin’s Lightning network worked the way we hoped it would back in the early-2010s, but it doesn’t. Otherwise, your argument reads like is saying Apple should tax every PayPal transaction made through PayPal’s iOS app.
When I see a independent developer complaining about Apple (or Google) being arbitrary in their app review process, I can at least understand how it's some low-paid employee trying to fulfill a daily quota. It still sucks, but I see the economic rationale of low-paid, low-skilled app reviewers there.
But it really surprises me that when it comes to apps from well-known tech companies like Coinbase, that Apple isn't doing a higher-quality review by people who actually know what they're doing and understand the industry. That there isn't a knowledgeable team inside of Apple making sure that corporate partners are treated like partners rather than niche indie developers.
I'm not saying a two-tier system would be more fair, because obviously it wouldn't be. I'm just saying it surprises me that a company like Apple shoots itself in the foot like this with bad decisions that then lead to bad press. It's such an own-goal. (Because in this case, the 30% cut doesn't even make sense conceptually, it's like trying to tax Amazon 30% on physical goods sold through its app.)