[throwaway_mark2]

I once saw an iOS app hit by this same IAP shakedown quite recently. The developer, a friend of mine, had called me in an emergency to help expand his backend for Apple payments. It almost felt like a protection racket run by your friendly neighborhood Mobster.

The most egregious thing is that they don't inform you about this beforehand, event when they could easily stop this on the first review. They will let you on the store, get users, and then sneak up on you and hang your users over your head to get you to comply.

I really hope dhh sticks to his guns and starts up a revolution against Apple.

[corkmask]

did he end up implementing IAP?

[throwaway_mark2]

Yes. He had to because Apple threatened to ban him if he did not comply. Since he was a small indie dev, he couldn't exactly create a twitter/media firestorm and get away with it.

[rpy]

Sounds like your friend should have read the App Store Review Guidelines, the rules are all clearly stated and have been for so many years now that it should come as a surprise to nobody doing business on iOS.

[kjakm]

I think this saga proves the rules are not clearly stated. The rules do not make clear at any point that “reader” apps (however Apple chooses it will define them today) and business focussed apps do not need to offer IAP. Apple didn’t even make that clear in their rejection. It took a statement from them to a blog to make it clear.

[hazza1]

The rules state they don't apply on initial submission?

[corkmask]

they change the IAP rules every couple of years and they make them more restrictive and more convoluted with each change.

[quantummkv]

Actually they don't. If you go look at dhh's twitter thread, he has a table of direct competitors to Hey that don't have iap. Yet they are on the store