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Since the beginning of the App Store there have been complaints about Apple’s 30% cut, it’s app review rules and the enforcement of them. It’s an impossible task to create rules that will please everyone, but is it possible to create ones that are more clear, leave fewer gray areas and can endure over time?
When In-App Purchases were launched in 2009 it was initially targeted at selling digital content like books and magazines; I worked on the Zinio magazine reader and the Iceberg book reader apps at the time. Steve Jobs made the argument that when Apple brought a paying customer to a publisher Apple deserved to be paid 30% for it, and when existing subscribers paid they could do so outside of the App Store and Apple would not receive any commission.
In order to preserve this division of who brought the customer, Apple decreed that you could not link to your website or encourage customers to leave the app and sign up to your service outside the app. We’ve probably all had app rejections where app review finds a link or a mention deep inside the app that could be followed back to your website. Never mind that it does not take a genius to type in “Netflix” or “Salesforce” into a search engine to figure out how to sign up for their service. (Ironically, “H
My Share Of Tech
iOS Development Links
About » The App Business Blog