This app developer is looking out Apple’s ‘bullying’ ways, right here’s why

Basecamp‘s founder is once more concerned in a tiff with Apple – this time for rejecting their calendar app, Hey Calendar, from the App Retailer. However why? Apple says it’s as a result of non-paying customers can not do something upon opening the app. And new customers cannot join via the app. Nicely, this isn’t the primary time the oldsters at Hey would have heard this, as 4 years in the past, again in 2020, when Apple rejected Hey’s e-mail app, it had the identical cause.And David Heinemeier Hansson, the co-founder of Hey and Basecamp, shouldn’t be pleased with what he calls Apple’s “bullying” ways.
On Saturday, Hey’s co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson introduced that Apple had rejected the standalone calendar app of Hey. “Apple simply known as to tell us they’re rejecting the HEY Calendar app from the App Retailer (in its present kind). Identical bullying ways as final time: Push delicate rejections to a name with a first-name-only one that’ll softly inform you it’s your pockets or your kneecaps,” he wrote on X (previously Twitter).
Hansson, in a weblog publish, said that Apple took 19 days to overview their submission, inflicting them to overlook their deliberate January 2nd launch date. Apple rejected Hey’s stand-alone free companion app stating that it “would not do something”.
Hey apps’, both the calendar app or the e-mail one, present customers with entry to a paid service via a free, standalone app. That is much like how apps resembling Netflix and Spotify perform, the place the app is a reader app that accesses off-device content material.

So, new customers can not join Hey Calendar instantly via the app. Basecamp, the corporate behind Hey, requires customers to enroll by way of a browser. However Apple’s App Retailer guidelines mandate that almost all paid companies should supply customers the choice to pay and join via the app, for which Apple receives a fee of as much as 30%.
Though there are some exceptions, resembling reader apps like Spotify and Kindle, the rule has many gray areas. Earlier in 2020, Apple “carved out HEY in App Retailer Evaluate Tips,” when it rejected the e-mail app over cost strategies. Apple urged providing a free possibility, which Hey did, with a twist: customers who signed up by way of the iOS app bought a free, non permanent e-mail deal with that labored for 14 days. Hey e-mail customers can solely pay for an account via the browser. Apple modified their guidelines, however Hey’s calendar app wasn’t included within the exception.
Hansson and Hey plans to struggle Apple’s determination. However we’re not giving up, and we’re not rolling over. He wrote, “Apple won’t ever get 30% of our revenues. Somebody has to often stand as much as this to ensure that issues to vary. And alter they have to. Free markets rely upon monopolies being stored in examine.”