If you're at the size and visibility of Hey, you can strike these kinds of compromises. This isn't particularly surprising. The real issue is the smaller guys, who are forced with a "take it or leave it" roadblock from app stores.
You'd hope the bigger players - particularly ones who have hit these roadblocks - to become advocates for developers. Perhaps working in some sort of ongoing developer agency/evangelist fashion would be good for all involved.
Lots of people want the walled garden abolished, but it would be HUGE if Apple simply created a set of guidelines—no matter how draconian—and then applied them equally and transparently to everyone, big or small.
If the guidelines are transparent and fairly applied, it's up to you as a developer whether to play their game. But it is ridiculous that small developers are literally spinning the Wheel of Fortune every time they submit an app that does exactly what Google, Netflix, Amazon, &c. are doing.
And speaking as a user, I bought a mail app called Spark. It's great. But now I have to worry, what if Apple decides that the next release breaks their rules? What if they pull the app entirely?
Capricious and unjust application of the rules is bad for users as well as developers.
A web browser? Aside for a few apps that provide significant advantages over the web version (or those that force you to use the app even in "requst desktop version" mode), I use a browser for everything. Hell, even though the YouTube app was preinstalled on my phone, I still used the mobile site because I just found the experience better.
What I’m saying is that in order to make these claims you’d need to be able to show that it’s more than just a normal rate of error.
If you just take a few reports (or indeed even a few hundred) and ignore the size of the sample, then the conclusion is likely to be flawed.
Do you actually know what the rate of ‘capricious’ rejections is? I have seen a few 10s of cases reported, and many of them aren’t actually capricious, although a few clearly are.
My guess is that the chances of a capricious rejection of an App Store submission is less than 1 in 1,000,000.
I’d say that is neither unjust, nor capricious, and simply a reflection of scale.
I agree that when they make a mistake in the form of applying the rules inequitably, get called out, and fix it, that's a mistake.
But I claim that when they make a mistake in the form of applying the rules inequitably, get called out, and double down on applying the rules inequitably, that is not a mistake, that is capricious.
There may only be a small number of times they have been capricious, but they are not "making a mistake." They are applying the rules capriciously.
And while nobody is getting killed, the principle of justice is the same here as in our society. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
One person imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit and the police knew they didn't commit taints the entire justice system. It removes confidence for everyone.
It's the same principle here. Mistakes, fine. But applying the rules inequitably and doubling down on that even once taints the system for everyone.
TL;DR I agree that the system usually works. But for a mistake to be a mistake, Apple has to be prepared to fix the mistake, not double down on continuing to have different rules for different developers.
In the Hey case it does seem like Apple was simply applying it’s rules, and DHH didn’t quite understand them.
I was far from simply applying the rules. The only documented rule they were applying was the one, which states that you must use Apple's in-app purchase if you offer sign-up within the app. There are many high profile apps (Netflix, Kindle, Fastmail etc) that require paid memberships but which don't offer sign-up within the app (not to mention several apps that Basecamp already offer in the app store), and Apple has apparently been fine with those for a long time. For that reason, Basecamp had every reason to think that they were in compliance with both the letter of the guideline as well as Apple's interpretation of it.
The distinction between what Apple calls reader apps and whatever they deem an email app to be, as well as the consumer/business distinction that an Apple spokesperson also offered as an explanation to one publication, are not mentioned in the app store review guidelines, and Apple has not talked about them before, so how on earth can DHH be blamed for not understanding that these distinctions mattered?
Just as with YouTube, or Facebook, or just anywhere else whenever there's a big player involved: things get resolved if you have enough clout and you make a big enough of a stink-up.
I'd sincerely hope for a genuine change of heart at Apple and that Hey's resolution was just not the exception to the rule, but I seriously doubt so.
Smaller guys aren’t forced to take it or leave it. Even the no name companies like ACloudGuru that have “view only” functionality force you to subscribe outside of the App Store.
You'd hope the bigger players - particularly ones who have hit these roadblocks - to become advocates for developers. Perhaps working in some sort of ongoing developer agency/evangelist fashion would be good for all involved.