> The goal is to make it much easier to pay for in-app purchases. It is well known that the more steps users have to go through to verify payment information on a mobile device, the more likely they are to abandon that purchase halfway through the process.
I wonder how Apple will react to that. They're pretty keen on banning apps that don't give them 30% of in app purchases. If Apple doesn't reject this they will have some explaining to do.
Policies like that dissolve on this scale. It's not like some random auditor in a cubicle in the app store division pulls up the next app to review in their queue (hm... next is "Facebook"...) and rejects it because it has a payment option that doesn't go through Apple's process.
What happens is that Mark calls Tim, their people meet, and a bunch of lawyers write up a contract that the rest of us will never see.
I can confirm this having submitted a popular app that was borderline violating itunes T&C. While we never had the honour of Steve giving us a call, PR and product people were talking to us in the background. I expected them to be the toughest app store to deal with but they were really quite good.
Given the small amount of money Apple makes from the store I would imagine that user experience is a higher priority for them. It reflects very badly on Apple if their users are able to hand over credit cards to dodgy third parties through 'their' apps.
Apple got Amazon, Netflix, NY Times and a whole bunch of other big names to givein to their in app rules. The DOJ will have a field day if they special case Facebook.
Amazon doesn't, they had to remove the ability to purchase anything from the app. And that includes linking out to Safari for the purchase. Ditto for the Dropbox API. The NY Times definitely pays the 30%.
Square doesn't do in app purchasing of virtual goods. That's what Apple bans (see Amazon Kindle, Dropbox API, NY Times, etc). Square let's you the app user sell something, not pay for something.
Comments
> The goal is to make it much easier to pay for in-app purchases. It is well known that the more steps users have to go through to verify payment information on a mobile device, the more likely they are to abandon that purchase halfway through the process.
I wonder how Apple will react to that. They're pretty keen on banning apps that don't give them 30% of in app purchases. If Apple doesn't reject this they will have some explaining to do.
Policies like that dissolve on this scale. It's not like some random auditor in a cubicle in the app store division pulls up the next app to review in their queue (hm... next is "Facebook"...) and rejects it because it has a payment option that doesn't go through Apple's process.
What happens is that Mark calls Tim, their people meet, and a bunch of lawyers write up a contract that the rest of us will never see.
I can confirm this having submitted a popular app that was borderline violating itunes T&C. While we never had the honour of Steve giving us a call, PR and product people were talking to us in the background. I expected them to be the toughest app store to deal with but they were really quite good.
This wouldn't surprise me.
Given the small amount of money Apple makes from the store I would imagine that user experience is a higher priority for them. It reflects very badly on Apple if their users are able to hand over credit cards to dodgy third parties through 'their' apps.
Apple got Amazon, Netflix, NY Times and a whole bunch of other big names to givein to their in app rules. The DOJ will have a field day if they special case Facebook.
Do we actually know if any of those sites pay the full retail-rate of 30%?
Amazon doesn't, they had to remove the ability to purchase anything from the app. And that includes linking out to Safari for the purchase. Ditto for the Dropbox API. The NY Times definitely pays the 30%.
Square doesn't give Apple 30% too. It wouldn't be the first.
Square doesn't do in app purchasing of virtual goods. That's what Apple bans (see Amazon Kindle, Dropbox API, NY Times, etc). Square let's you the app user sell something, not pay for something.