Patreon being forced to pay creators through in-app purchase reminded me of a cool app I made two summers ago.
VPN clients on iOS lie on a spectrum between selling you out to data brokers or being expensive subscriptions.
Having prior experience with Digital Ocean my app made it easy to spin up droplets configured as VPNs ready to use from your iPhone.
It was so fast that droplets could be launched on-demand and shut down fast keeping costs extremely low.
The app used OAuth to act on behalf of users on their personal Digital Ocean accounts making the cumbersome task of setting up a truly personal VPN available to the less technical or less patient user.
App Review rejected the app because I didn’t collect payment to Digital Ocean through in-app purchase.
Tried to appeal and spoke to Apple on the phone arguing that the payment was outside my control and that my app was a privacy boon but they did not care.
Can I get it on Android? Sounds good
Even better: they kinda admit that. It's mandated in the App Store guidelines (iirc) that all purchaces made because of the app are handled through Apple's in-app payment API...
Yes, you can apply for an "entitlement" to not do that, but then you have to give them basically the same cut yourself.
Because subtlety is dead.
@palmin I’m guessing that it was probably possible for users to create a new Digital Ocean account within the app, possibly from an embedded web view that was intended to allow them to sign in and get the OAuth credentials?
I’m not defending Apple’s choices here, but if that was the case it would fit more squarely within the expected cases for rejection we’re used to seeing.
@dalias
Maybe there's a file which could be generated? IDK, I'm not trying to write such a thing.
It would also require hosting a web app that deals with auth etc rather than having that all local, which adds further complexity.
I think the point is that Apple won't let you do lots of things which would be useful because they can't make money on it, not that it's impossible to do useful things despite the limitations they artificially impose.
@palmin
@smolwaffle @dalias Perhaps it would be possible by someone else but not me.
I had some experience with Digital Ocean APIs, cloud config and networking on Apple platforms and felt I could improve the state of VPNs on iOS but it wasn’t meant to be.
@palmin Ouch. I would absolutely have purchased such an app. But it’s bad luck for me because without a clear way for Apple to take a cut I’m out of luck.
If you ever decide to release it on Alt Store or something I’d happily lay 2€ a year or whatever CTF B.S. Apple wants from you.
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