Apple is Being Sued into App Store Submission
By: M.G. Siegler
Tags: Tech, Apple, 4til40, Legal, App Store

Apple is Being Sued into App Store Submission

Photo by Lucas van Oort on Unsplash

By my count, we’re about a dozen lawsuits and/or threats of legislation away from the App Store being great again.

I’m being facetious, but I’m also not. This is actually happening. For the second week in a row, Apple is making App Store policy changes (or “clarifications”) by way of a settlement press release. It’s wild.

I’ll admit that at first I was once again thrown tonight. When the news was hitting the Bloomberg Terminals that Apple was about to reverse a major App Store policy and allow developers to link to websites (imagine that!) from their apps, survivor bias kicked in. Obviously, this was in response to the backlash Apple was facing due to their nothing burger announcement last week, right? Wrong. Well, at least not directly.

By way of another press release under the cover of night — this one far more excusable, as it’s the morning in Japan — Apple announced they were settling a matter with Japan’s Fair Trade Commission, bringing their App Store investigation to a close:

Apple today announced an update coming to the App Store that closes an investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC). The update will allow developers of “reader” apps to include an in-app link to their website for users to set up or manage an account. While the agreement was made with the JFTC, Apple will apply this change globally to all reader apps on the store. Reader apps provide previously purchased content or content subscriptions for digital magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video.

The key sentences are the second and third ones. With the latter, Apple clearly notes this is a new worldwide policy shift. And it is entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that Apple at least somewhat felt the need to do this given the recent backlash. Certainly the “techlash” overall played a role? But between this and the recent South Korea ruling about in-app payment processors, Apple was also running the risk of being forced to put a bunch of fingers in a leaky dam. Running the App Store with so many different rules — almost all of them entirely arbitrary to begin with — in different markets around the world obviously isn’t tenable.

At the same time, that second sentence is still a bit of a nut kick. The definition of “reader” apps has long been another kind of arbitrary joke within the App Store. As they point out, “reader” apps include apps you listen to and watch. It’s a definition Apple made up to suit their own business needs rather than to actually make sense. And they’re sticking to it, for now, at least. As I immediately quipped, perhaps we just need another country to sue for the non-“reader” apps and presto!

This whole thing is just strange. John Gruber and I discussed the situation leading up to this most recent change on his Talk Show podcast this week. And if anything, this just reinforces several things we discussed. Namely, Apple should be getting ahead of these changes they’re being backed into. How much more powerful would it be to see the company leading with a Steve Jobs-esque “Thoughts on Flash” or “Thoughts on DRM” statement rather than these legal settlement statements?

Apple must see where the puck is going. Yes, it’s away from where they’d like it to, but if they get ahead of it, they could at least guide it a bit. Instead we have these reflexive moves of appeasement. Apple clearly hopes they’ll be enough to stem the tide, to plug the damn, but they won’t. At best, they’ll buy some time by spin, spin, spinning the narrative as much as possible. But for what? One extra quarter of better services revenue? How inspiring.

That said, I do think this is perhaps a savvy/cynical move from Apple’s perspective in that they already gave up on much of the App Store profits in this regard. That is, services like Netflix and Spotify (you know, “reader” apps, obviously) had already pulled the ability to sign up via in-app, so… this just ends a battle Apple already lost. And it perhaps alleviates some pressure on the battles they haven’t yet fully lost, namely with games (though they have with Epic, hence, the lawsuit everyone is now watching with greater interest by the day!).

But this also is history repeating itself so…

One thing Gruber and I discussed was the idea that perhaps they could reach a middle-ground with developers and let them offer vetted third-party payment solutions, using the App Store review policies to enforce this in a way to ensure their trust and safety requirements were being adhered to. Same with linking to external sites for payments, as I discussed last week. Today, Apple basically stated that they’re going to do this for these external links:

Before the change goes into effect in early 2022, Apple will update its guidelines and review process to make sure users of reader apps continue to have a safe experience on the App Store. While in-app purchases through the App Store commerce system remain the safest and most trusted payment methods for users, Apple will also help developers of reader apps protect users when they link them to an external website to make purchases.

“Help” is a funny way to put it, but we get it. Thank you, Apple Nanny!

“Trust on the App Store is everything to us. The focus of the App Store is always to create a safe and secure experience for users, while helping them find and use great apps on the devices they love,” said Phil Schiller, Apple Fellow who oversees the App Store.

I think there are some countries in the world that may beg to differ with the Apple Fellow here, but okay. This is a good first step, provided it is in fact just a first step. The release goes on to almost imply that it is (or, perhaps, the last in a series of steps dating to the ones mentioned last week).

Again, this is all fairly obvious. Apple was always going to have to change these things one way or another. And there are other things — the 30% cut, the in-app payments stack — that will undoubtedly change as well with time. We all just wish Apple would be more proactive about these changes. None of these are set in stone. They were handed down from Steve Jobs. He is not God, all evidence within Apple’s policy team to the contrary.