[bilalq]

The root problem here lies with Apple. It's so frustrating how they take a 30% cut for the privilege of being unable to actually have a relationship with your customers. Want to do a partial refund (or a refund at all)? Want to give one month free to an existing subscriber? Tough luck. Your users are Apple's customers, not yours.

[kridsdale3]

I implemented Google One integration in an iOS app. This comment chain is accurate. Users want to pay with Apple (like other app subscriptions) but then your “account” is inside their payments world. Which is super confusing since users (rightly) think they are dealing with their Google account.

[zo1]

Sounds like the analysts and product owners didn't really want to solve this problem. Instead they ticked the boxes, got the bonuses, and the devs never questioned it and just implemented it for fear of being PIPed.

I'm sure there is technically nothing that stopped you from treating this "Pay with Apple" thing as just another payment method inside the google account, except maybe additional complexity and red-tape.

Seen this many times when PMs, POs, and Devs code by features instead of trying to actually solve something. I don't even want to know what mess of a database schema is behind this monstrosity.

[Traubenfuchs]

I love Apple subscriptions.

No way for you to scam me or make it hard ro cancel. I can view them all in the apple account subscription view.

No tricks, no unexpected behaviour.

[rvnx]

Same with Stripe, minus the 30% fee. Even better, if you accidentally let the renewal happen they will instantly refund in one-click.

[mavhc]

As Long As You Never Leave Us You Wouldn't Want To Leave Us Would You Why Would You Betray Us?

[beambot]

> or make it hard ro [sic] cancel

Unless you're trying to cancel the Apple ecosystem as a whole...

[hbn]

I bought my Google Photos subscription through the iOS app because it was cheaper than through Google directly. I have no idea why, but it was when I compared prices.

[lynx97]

> Your users are Apple's customers, not yours.

At least on my side, thats fine / intended. As long as their is no useable regulations around unsub dark patterns, that type of firewall is what I want as a customer.

[jiggawatts]

Same as a shopping centre, clothing retailer, or any other non-bazaar marketplace with its own brand and transaction processing.

Apple is selling you a huge lucrative market.

Customers buy Apple’s curated marketplace.

Apple takes a cut for being in the middle and enabling all of this.

Believe me, I would never pay for most of the apps that I did pay for via Apple if it wasn’t via their marketplace and their consumer protections.

There is no counterfactual scenario where you and millions(!) of other ISVs get 100% of the same money without Apple.

What’s difficult to understand about these business relationships?

[cma]

> Apple takes a cut for being in the middle and enabling all of this.

Enabling this like Ticketmaster enables selling tickets.

In ticketmaster's case I believe they give kickbacks and lucrative exclusive contracts with large venues, to squeeze smaller ones, maybe making whole tours use it but only kicking back to the biggest or select venues on the tour I think.

Apple sometimes does special deals and special rules with important providers, among many other tactics behind their moat. All single signons must also offer apple single sign-on, for instance, and they have even disabled access to customer accounts using their single sign-on for unrelated business disputes, though they walked it back in the big public example I'm aware of, the threat is there if you go against them in any way.

[bradgessler]

The problem is that other payment processors could emerge with the same trust profiles as Apple to facilitate this transaction.

I could see Stripe doing something like this. They protect the consumer and come down hard on the merchants.

Imagine them, and maybe a few other processors, competing for this business. The fee would probably drop below 30%. To a large degree, this is the sort of arrangement credit card processors already have between their merchants and consumers and that rate is single digit percentages. Not hard to imagine Visa or MasterCard running a SaaS transaction service for a 5-10% cut.

[fennecbutt]

Lmao no.

Okay, all the app developers pull out of iOS because they're not actually useful, in fact they should be paying Apple!

How many people do you think would still buy iPhones if there are 0 apps on the app store? Lmaooo, it's almost like it's a co-operative relationship and Apple don't deserve a huge cut because it's the apps that sell their phones.