Despite the fact that the courts continue to (almost) agree with Apple, some senior executives continue to criticize the policies of the App Store by taking advantage of any opportunity. It happened a few days ago with Elon Musk and Daniel Ek, CEO of Twitter and Spotify respectively.
It all started with the announcement of news on Twitter: the possibility for users to subscribe to other accounts to receive exclusive content that other tweeters will not be able to see. But of course: there will be a difference between subscribing to these users via the Twitter site and doing so via the iOS app.
“iPhone subscriptions will take longer”
The difference, as usually happens, is that the App Store keeps 30% of the price of this subscription in the first year and 15% from the second. Twitter points this out with clear examples in your documentary sitespecifying that payments via the web can have a margin of only 3%, and Elon Musk pointed out that subscriptions via the App Store take longer to confirm because they must “be approved by Apple”:
“Note: Subscriptions take a few days longer to activate via iPhone than on the web, as all subscriptions must be approved by Apple”
Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, responded to Musk’s tweet commenting that it is something “absurd” and that it is too difficult to extend this system to all potential creators who plan to charge for exclusive content on their Twitter accounts:
App Store rules mean that all subscriptions must go through an approval process to prevent them from containing harmful content. We can talk about how these types of subscriptions (like with Twitch) don’t align too much with how the app store was built, and maybe at WWDC 2023 we’ll see some changes to that regard. But for now, the rules are what they are, and there still seems to be resentment among some companies for that.
If the entry of alternative stores is finally allowed in iOS 17, Daniel Ek and Elon Musk can have complete freedom to create their own stores or join those where they think the conditions are better. And I’m really interested in that, because then neither Twitter nor Spotify nor any other company will be forced to stay on the App Store. And that means they won’t have no excuses. At least in Europe.
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