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March 29, 2024

Apps have become a huge economy, but the rules governing them are almost incomprehensible.

Apple and Google have twisted their decade-old App Store rules like a pretzel to the point where it may no longer make sense. This complicates purchasing digital products within the app.

An example: In theory, although not yet implemented, you could use your Amazon account to buy e-books from the Kindle’s iPhone app. You cannot purchase eBooks in the Android version of the app. Until recently, Kindle purchases were practically prohibited under Apple’s rules, but fine under Google’s. The opposite is now the case.

Confusing? Yes. Apple and Google have written lengthy and complex guidelines for apps and often revise those rules to protect their own interests. (I noticed earlier that Apple’s app rules are much longer than the U.S. Constitution.)

Want more craziness? Today, it’s easy to subscribe to podcasts in Patreon’s iPhone app. Apple stepped aside and allowed Patreon to access your personal information and credit card details.

But buying other types of digital subscriptions can be quite different. If you buy a platinum membership to dating service Tinder in the iPhone app, you’re essentially signing up with Apple and Tinder is on the sidelines.

Apple takes most of the membership fee forever. If you want to quit, you tell Apple, not Tinder.

A six-month membership through the Tinder app costs $14.99 per month, but $13.50 if purchased from the website. (The price difference is Tinder’s way of partially recoupling the whopping 30% it pays Apple for every app purchase.) Oh, and paying to use dating apps may soon be more like paying for things in Patreon—but only in the Netherlands.

Currently, paying for Tinder through its Android app is more like how Patreon works. But that’s only because Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, has sued Google to stop the company from changing its rules.

{Take a deep breath. }

I can elaborate on why Apple differentiates between buying a subscription from Patreon and buying a subscription from Tinder. It’s logical why you can buy the paperback version of 1984 from Amazon’s Android app instead of the e-book version, and why new Netflix subscribers used to be able to sign up from its Android app but not now. Or, a little bit can’t. Here’s another pretzel.

It took me hours of phone calls and sleuthing to figure out all the details in the paragraph you just read. If app purchases in 2022 require so many rules, exceptions, and explanations, perhaps the logic of the app economy is illogical.

For years, some companies developing apps have complained about how Google, and Apple in particular, control many aspects of the economy. They both dictate which apps we can easily download through their app stores, and when they handle our purchases through apps directly.

If we use an app to buy something that exists in the real world, like an Uber ride or a package subscription, those purchases bypass Apple and Google. At issue is buying things we use digitally, like trinkets used in smartphone app games or dating app subscriptions.

The problem is that when Apple created the App Store in 2008, what seemed like a reasonable distinction didn’t necessarily fit into the modern digital economy.

I’ve written before about YouTube video creators who don’t understand why Apple or Google are entitled to a large sum of money — probably forever — that their fans pay them through the app.

In the age of Zoom-everything, does it make sense to have different rules, like what Apple is trying to have, like buying gym classes for in-person versus virtual at-home classes? Why don’t apps that make money from ads like Facebook hand over a chunk of their revenue to Apple and Google, while those that sell digital subscriptions do?

And application rules change frequently, adding to the complexity.

This month, Google implemented tougher restrictions, so it has to deal with buying more digital products in the app and getting a cut of it.

Again, there is some meaning behind all these pretzel twists. Apple and Google want to avoid letting major smartphone video games — the biggest money-maker in apps — bypass their regulation and fees. They said they were trying to respond to complaints that they had too much control or burdened small businesses.

But the more concessions Apple or Google make to appease angry governments and some angry developers and not others, the more arbitrary their app store logic appears.


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