I don't understand... did anything even really change? Like, "more price points"... but that seems like a non-sequitur :/. A big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release only says via e-mail... which I guess they insist wasn't allowed before?
> A big change would be letting developers make it clear to users how to use alternative payment options, but Apple's press release only says via e-mail
It really says something that "allowing" businesses to communicate certain information with their own customers via an independent channel was considered a concession in this settlement. I'm still wrapping my head around it.
I can feel your frustration, but it also strikes me as tone-deaf to those very same customers. The most common kind of email I send these days—by orders of magnitude—is “unsubscribe”. I don’t want your emails unless I actively asked for them. (And, no, passively being opted in or being forced to opt in by a user agreement or whatever doesn’t count.) I would happily pay middle men a lot extra to get fewer unwanted emails, phone calls, or just generally more privacy.
There was an article earlier today on HN about how user-hostile software has become, and I think that explains my problem. Until developers as a whole become not just less hostile, but actively prioritize my needs over their own, I don’t think I’ll change my mind.
My real problem is that I don’t have any leverage as an individual customer against hostile developers. So I’m stuck paying mega corps like Apple or Google to be the middle man for me because they _can_ leverage my interests against developers. So I just don’t feel any sympathy when developers complain that they are having a hard time abusing me.
By all means use vxNsr’s service (though I wish they mentioned their financial incentive before hand, props for mentioning it in the first place).
I second their approach. By using a unique email per service you maintain a bit more control by being able to filter via “to” address or deregister the email via the service provider. It’s not perfect but it’s at least some bit of control where trust is not required.
Personally I am using simplelogin.com. And full disclosure I wish it had smoother UX in many cases but overall the price vs feature set cannot, as far as I am aware, be beat.
In general: I agree. Demanding attention, whether that be in person such as via mail, txt, or phone call or digital such as via email, should be opt in and NOT opt out. Incentive wise it simply does not make any sense for it to be opt out when the cost of contact is close to 0.
Once I’d already signed up for 33mail I found simplelogin.io it looks great too, especially feature-wise for the price. It’s 2.5x more expensive vs 33mail (at the base plans) but you get a slicker looking UI and a lot more features.
I was excited about 33mail bec the founder hangs out here sometimes.
You’re right I should have kept the disclaimer closer to the link, I’m on mobile and kept adding stuff and lost track of how it looked, it’s too late to edit now.
> I would happily pay middle men a lot extra to get fewer unwanted emails, phone calls, or just generally more privacy.
My life has changed significantly for the better ever since I signed up for this: http://33mail.com/AQwZJR3
The real trick is using a custom domain so
A) They’re very unlikely to add it to their disposable email list (and thus block it)
B) If this service ever goes under you can still get the emails you want because you own the domain they’re being sent to.
Yes you could theoretically implement this yourself in gWorkspace or O365 but that sounds like a ton of work and $12/yr is 1000x worth it.
(Disclaimer: that’s my referral link, if enough ppl sign up with it I get a free year of service)
I’ve been using it since March of this year and it’s been wonderful, there was like 30 min of downtime once where the dashboard didn’t work but emails were still getting delivered, and I they answered any questions I had when I reached out to them. So I highly recommend it and tell everyone about it.
I like the UI of 33mail more. It’s easier to click a link at the top of an email in w/e client you’re using vs digging through apple’s portal and ever changing menus to toggle the right thing off.
Unless it’s gotten easier in iOS15… right now on my iPhone it’s not possible to turn off forwarding.
I need to go to appleid.apple.com,
login, 2FA,
find the menu,
wait for it to load (bec it always seems to take like 5 seconds, even if I just opened it),
figure out which service is the one attached to the email I chose (names of company that makes the app and is thus associated with that ID may not always align with the name I know it as),
turn it off.
Also I don’t get to choose the email address, instead apple makes it a random mix of letters and numbers: which means I must save it to a password manager and hope I never need to manually type it in for some reason (say on a public PC).
With 33mail, the link to disable forwarding is in the header, like any unsubscribe link. You can still manage everything from their portal. You choose the domain and then they set it up as a catch all, to receive everything, except that which you say to deny. So you can have creative names for each service.
They actually also allow you to set up your own domain, after reading his reply and writing my own I thought I’d research it some more. They apparently released the doc for it yesterday, I just followed it and while it’s impressive that apple is allowing this level of technical expertise to be handed over to their users (modifying DNS records), their doc itself could use a little work. I have it working now for another domain I own.
I still don’t like the UX though compared to 33mail, I still need to go into the UI, add the email I want to use and then it’ll deliver.
I’m guessing the same is true for removal, only way to turn off the address is through the portal.
If you use gWorkspace or O365, you already have this, it’s called aliases, and at least O365 gives you seemingly unlimited aliases. My big pet peeve with that was needing to go into the O365 portal and manage the aliases.
I think it's important to wait for the final language from the settlement. After all, the original PR Post from Apple doesn't actually mention the $100 million fund that Axios does.
> Apple will also establish a fund to assist small US developers, particularly as the world continues to suffer from the effects of COVID-19. Eligible developers must have earned $1 million or less through the US storefront for all of their apps in every calendar year in which the developers had an account between June 4, 2015, and April 26, 2021 — encompassing 99 percent of developers in the US. Details will be available at a later date.
Even though not enforceable in practice, you could've been booted off App Store for sending notifications/other means of communication about a cheaper way to pay.
> which I guess they insist wasn't allowed before?
I think they'd actually claim that it was allowed before. The press release is after all saying that all that's happening is that they're clarifying the policy, not that they are changing it.
I wonder if that means app developers can now send emails to freshly subscribed users (who are still in the trial period) to cancel their App Store subscription and instead subscribe via an alternative payment provider. Eg. customer could pay 10% less, developer gets up to 24% more, win-win. Maybe the developer could throw in some goodies, like auto-cancellation after the first year.
I don't think the list of price points was the problem as much as it would be nice to have versioned upgrades. (I.e. FileMaker 2, FileMaker 3, FileMaker 4, and so on under the same listing and with access to old versions). Or, you know, a lower developer cut. Or competitive app stores.
I'm just in the same boat... how did you make that your issue worth agreeing over? That's something Apple might have fixed on a Friday afternoon.
I believe one of the arguments used in the suit was along the lines of "Apple, by making the minimum price (other than 'free') for apps and IAPs 99c, prevents us from charging, say, 37c and this harms consumers and is anticompetitive". I believe it was just to provide a clear, verifiable argument that customers were being charged more than they would be in a free market (whereas other things Apple does are infinitely more serious, but also harder to prove and quantify). I'd guess the agreement addresses that to be consistent, even though I don't think anybody truly cares about the granularity of the price tiers.
Nope, that's the point of coming out in front like this and donating 100 million dollars towards keeping the status quo in place. To me, it reads as an insult to anyone who thinks their processes are democratic.
Apple is willing to spend $100 million because their executives are in an echo chamber.
There are investigations (and some proposed laws) in the US, EU, Australia, UK, South Korea, and others. If Apple were a regular business, it should be obvious at this point that losing the App Store is inevitable by now. A question of when, not if.
And yet Apple thinks that maybe, just maybe, they can buy their way out and have a chance to keep the status quo still. I think it's way too late for that now. We just need to sit back and wait for the lawmakers to finish the job.
> it should be obvious at this point that losing the App Store is inevitable by now
This is a radical reading of current facts. It is plausible. But we're very far from inevitability. If you aren't seeing the broad opposition to and limited, focussed support for opening up iOS to competing App Stores, you may be in an echo chamber.
