<story><title>ProtonMail CEO calls Apple&apos;s forced in-app purchases &apos;Mafia extortion&apos;</title><url>https://www.techspot.com/news/87043-protonmail-ceo-calls-apple-forced-app-purchases-mafia.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsg75</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m actually happier to pay a small premium for IAP based subscriptions because of the cancellation options.&lt;p&gt;Having been subjected to asinine &amp;quot;retention&amp;quot; policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive UX benefit.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not debating if a 30% cut is reasonable, but in the drive to move everything to a subscription model, I have started avoiding services without an IAP option.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheRealPomax</author><text>This is the opposite argument to what the problem is right now. It&amp;#x27;s not that IAP is bad, or that it shouldn&amp;#x27;t be available. It&amp;#x27;s that there&amp;#x27;s no alternative permitted &lt;i&gt;in addition to&lt;/i&gt; Apple&amp;#x27;s IAP model. You&amp;#x27;re not even allowed to HINT at the fact that you might have alternative ways to pay for the things you want to pay for. Even if your name is hugeservicethateveryoneknows, you can&amp;#x27;t tell people that you have a website where they can manage their account.&lt;p&gt;IAP is great, and setting rules such that if apps offer IAP, they have to at least offer the platform&amp;#x27;s own payment service as initial and preferred choice, is perfectly reasonable. But it&amp;#x27;s extortion if you own the entire ecosystem and promise to ban anyone who wants to offer additional, alternative means of account&amp;#x2F;service management for a product&amp;#x2F;service that you have no business ownership of.</text></comment>
<story><title>ProtonMail CEO calls Apple&apos;s forced in-app purchases &apos;Mafia extortion&apos;</title><url>https://www.techspot.com/news/87043-protonmail-ceo-calls-apple-forced-app-purchases-mafia.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bsg75</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m actually happier to pay a small premium for IAP based subscriptions because of the cancellation options.&lt;p&gt;Having been subjected to asinine &amp;quot;retention&amp;quot; policies that make ending a subscription service an onerous and time consuming process (ex: NYT), and having seen first hand how a company purposefully makes subscription cancellations difficult, being able to open a single interface and click `Cancel` is a massive UX benefit.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not debating if a 30% cut is reasonable, but in the drive to move everything to a subscription model, I have started avoiding services without an IAP option.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>And honestly, I have no problem with Apple even insisting there be an Apple IAP model (like they require &amp;quot;Sign in with Apple&amp;quot; offered alongside alternatives). Because choosing to pay the Apple tax is perfectly fine, especially if you feel it provides you benefits.&lt;p&gt;The issue is Apple&amp;#x27;s requirement that you can only use IAP, cannot offer alternative, cheaper, prices, cannot direct people to your website to sign up for things, and cannot even disclose what portion of the bill goes to Apple.&lt;p&gt;Your post &lt;i&gt;proves&lt;/i&gt; Apple could still make money with offering it as an &lt;i&gt;option&lt;/i&gt; for informed users. But Apple is being a bully and a thug by disallowing alternatives, and actively preventing app developers from telling people about them.&lt;p&gt;What Epic did with Fortnite should be the gold standard: Buy direct or pay through Apple. The latter providing potentially better privacy&amp;#x2F;security and user experience at a price premium.</text></comment>