{"id":26302,"date":"2020-06-23T15:47:18","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T22:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=26302"},"modified":"2020-06-24T15:47:52","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T22:47:52","slug":"apples-developer-dispute-draws-lawmaker-scrutiny-of-app-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=26302","title":{"rendered":"Apple’s developer dispute draws lawmaker scrutiny of App Store"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple\u2019s App Store is coming under increasing antitrust scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators and competitors for its treatment of third-party developers.<\/p>\n

Much of the focus is on the fees Apple charges developers and the tech giant\u2019s ability to torpedo apps by denying access to its store following a very public dispute with a high-profile software developer.<\/p>\n

That dispute caught the attention of Rep.\u00a0David Cicilline<\/a>\u00a0(D-R.I.), one of the biggest antitrust hawks on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the market power that Apple has, it is charging exorbitant rents \u2014 highway robbery, basically \u2014 bullying people to pay 30 percent or denying access to their market,\u201d the chairman of the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee said on a podcast from The Verge late last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crushing small developers who simply can\u2019t survive with those kinds of payments. If there were real competition in this marketplace, this wouldn\u2019t happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

His comments were in response to Apple\u2019s rejection of an update to a $99-a-year email service from a company called Basecamp, which didn\u2019t offer a way for users to sign up and pay through their app in the App Store. Apple charges a 30 percent fee for use of its payment tools.<\/p>\n

Basecamp CTO David Heinemeier Hansson accused Apple of acting like \u201cgangsters\u201d for pressuring the email service Hey to add the in-app subscription feature, saying he would \u201cburn this house down\u201d before agreeing to the 30 percent fee.<\/p>\n

Apple ultimately approved a new version of Hey on Monday, but the green light is only temporary. Hey will now offer iOS users a free 14-day account in order to appease Apple\u2019s demand that customers be able to download the app and use it without having to sign up elsewhere first.<\/p>\n

The battle sparked other reports from software developers detailing similar pressure to conform to Apple\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apple\u2019s App Store is coming under...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26303,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26302\/revisions\/26303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}