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%.
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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%.