🖇 Let’s Consider Some of the Implications of Third-Party Payment Processing for In-App Purchasing on iOS and Android
John Gruber writing at daringfireball.net
Apple, in a statement to MacRumors (and other media outlets), regarding South Korea’s just-passed “Google power-abuse-prevention law” which will forbid Apple and Google from requiring the use of their respective in-app purchasing systems:
The Telecommunications Business Act will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections, make it difficult to manage their purchases, and features like “Ask to Buy” and Parental Controls will become less effective. We believe user trust in App Store purchases will decrease as a result of this legislation — leading to fewer opportunities for the over 482,000 registered developers in Korea who have earned more than KRW8.55 trillion to date with Apple.
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I think the latter half of Apple’s statement is true — user trust in in-app purchases will decline. The gist of these legislative proposals — like this month’s “Open App Markets Act” from U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) — is, effectively, to require iOS and Android to be, to some degree, more like Mac and Windows. Put aside the specific details, that’s what these laws are saying: phones should work like PCs in terms of loosening the control of the platform owners (Apple and Google) over what software can be installed, and what that software can do.
You may like the sound of that, or you may not. But there’s no denying that the result of any of these laws will be to make iOS and Google’s Android more like Macs and PCs. There’s also no denying that people make far more digital purchases and install far more apps on their mobile devices (iOS or Android) than their PCs (Mac or Windows).
In my experience, it’s only two specific types of people who want their phones to work significantly more like PCs, permission-wise. The first group is comprised of the technically-savvy — like many of you reading this — who feel confident in their own ability to gauge the trustworthiness of third-party software. The second group is business-minded people, who are thinking only about what percentage of purchases goes to whom, and are only thinking about the money. (I believe the legislators behind these proposals are swayed entirely by the business arguments, and do not understand the technical implications at all.)
But I am confident that the overwhelming majority of typical users are more comfortable installing apps and making in-app purchases on their iOS and Android devices than on their Mac and Windows PCs not despite Apple and Google’s console-like control over iOS and Android, but because of it. And if these measures come to pass and iOS and Android devices are forced by law to become pocket PCs, I think there’s a high chance it’ll prove unpopular with the mass market. The masses are not clamoring for the app stores to be opened up. These arguments over app stores are entirely inside baseball for the technical and business classes. I’ve had non-technical friends and relatives complain to me about all sorts of things related to their iPhones over the last 10 years, but never once have any of them said to me, “Boy, I sure wish iPhone apps and games could ask me for my credit card number to make purchases, and that the overall experience of using apps was more like the anything-goes nature of using the web or my desktop computer.” Never. It doesn’t just seem that the unintended consequences of such legislation is being under-considered; it seems as though it’s not being considered or acknowledged at all.
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Apple’s subscription system is so useful, so trustworthy, and so beneficial to my peace of mind that as a general rule I only subscribe to anything through it. Of course I make exceptions, but only for subscription providers whom I inherently trust. I just pored through my list, and of 27 active subscriptions from third-party services (i.e. not counting Apple’s own service like Apple One), I would at most have subscribed to only 9 of them. And I’m being generous; there are a few of those 9 that I’d have thought long and hard about subscribing to outside the App Store. In many cases it’s not about trusting the app developer, per se, but simply my reluctance to subscribe to something I’m likely to lose track of and forget about.
I agree with many of the points that Gruber is making here.
