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All in all, Apple has had a great year, but it’s been a rough ride for the App Store business:
But the controversies surrounding the App Store are far from over.
Facebook vs. Apple
While all of this has been going on, a war has been brewing between Apple and Facebook over an announced iOS 14 feature that would require explicit user permission before app developers could track users through apps or websites, or access the unique identifier of a device. The feature was originally made mandatory for third-party developers with iOS 14, but Apple delayed the mandate until 2021 after receiving pushback from Facebook and others.
Facebook’s response can best be described as “panic.” Facebook estimates that the end of the tracking could cut ad revenue in half, and in its recent third-quarter investor call, the company spooked investors by calling the new feature a significant “headwind.”
With Apple’s deadline approaching, Facebook is turning up the heat. The company ran ads in the December 16, 2020 editions of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, proclaiming that the company is “standing up for Apple for small businesses everywhere.” (It’s noteworthy that given the ad’s high profile, its headline incorrectly uses a main branding instead of an apostrophe.)
Facebook claims that by giving users the option of whether Facebook can track their activities, Apple is hurting small businesses, which rely on the personalized ads that Facebook offers. Presumably, if users had that option, many of them would opt out of the creepy Facebook following. In a year where small businesses are being hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and regional shutdowns, it’s a timely, if rather selfish, message.
The social media company didn’t stop with mere announcements: Facebook also announced that it will be joining Epic Games in its legal battle against Apple, providing supporting documents and other assistance to the Fortnite developer. Of course, Facebook has its own legal battles against the US Federal Trade Commission and almost every US state and territory (See “United States vs. Facebook,” December 10, 2020). Additionally, CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Tim Cook in the virtual hot seat in Congress earlier this year.
Taking over a Facebook page, jailbreak app store Cydia has also filed its own separate lawsuit against Apple, making similar claims and demanding similar solutions to the Epic Games lawsuits. Namely, Apple is being a monopoly thug that should allow alternative app stores on the iPhone. Cydia has a unique claim that Epic Games doesn’t: Cydia actually predates the App Store by about a year. It’s hard to see a jailbreak-based app store exploiting quickly closed security vulnerabilities getting much traction in court, but it is an indication that Cydia believes Apple could be vulnerable.
Editors vs. Manzana
In September 2020, Epic Games and Spotify, among others, founded the Coalition for App Fairness to pressure Apple and Google to change their software distribution policies. The main complaints are that Apple and Google are unfairly competing against third-party developers (Apple Music versus Spotify, for example), Apple and Google app store fees are too high, and Apple doesn’t allow competing app stores.
New to the coalition is Digital Content Next, a trade association representing a large number of major American publishers, including:
- Associated Press
- Bloomberg
- ESPN
- The Financial Times
- The New York Times
- Meredith
- NBCU
- NPR
- Vox
- The Washington Post
Digital Content Next lashed out at Apple earlier this year over Apple’s deal with Amazon that lowered the usual App Store commission from 30% so that Amazon could sell videos directly through its Prime Video app (see “Now you can make purchases on Amazon Prime Video Applications for iOS and Apple TV ”, April 3, 2020).
Publishers are also unhappy with Apple for other reasons, including the aforementioned new Apple privacy guidelines. DMG Media, which owns the UK’s Daily Mail, has suggested that you can withdraw its iOS apps on the new privacy features.
Apple against brave
You might think that with all this pressure and the new regulatory scrutiny, Apple would relieve third-party developers, but if anything, the company has doubled down. The latest target of Apple’s ire is the iOS version of the Brave Web browser. (It’s one of our favorites here on TidBITS, and we recommend it on Google Chrome.)
Brave has a unique and somewhat controversial business model. The browser blocks ads by default, but allows you to choose to view Brave’s own privacy-respecting ads in exchange for a cryptocurrency called Basic Attention Token (BAT). You can keep BAT for yourself or you can tip the content creators of your choice.
Apple had allowed this functionality in Brave for a while, but it suddenly screamed foul, claiming that Brave was violating the rules against giving money to others without giving Apple a cut and performing tasks for cash. The last rule aims to prevent developers from offering rewards for things like positive reviews from the App Store.
Instead, with version 1.22 of Brave for iOS, the browser no longer rewards users with BAT for viewing ads, but the company encourages users to enable ads anyway, with the promise that Brave will use the proceeds for support editors. Brave says that a future update to its desktop browser will allow iOS users to extract the BAT they earned.
It’s another unfortunate example of Apple’s App Store policies limiting innovative business models.
