Knitters support Epic in knotty legal fight with Apple's App Store
Epic has gained the support of a knitting-related startup in its legal fight against Apple, with Knitrino needling Apple's handling of App Store policies that made launching its app harder than expected.
Apple's lawsuit with Epic is well into its post-trial phase, with Epic receiving support from multiple entities in trying to reverse a court's ruling on various App Store policies. On Sunday, a report revealed that Epic had an ally from an unusual source: knitters.
The Seattle-based startup Knitrino is identified as one of the companies who signed an amicus brief in November 2021 supporting Epic, as well as providing a "friend of the court" brief in January to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It joins entities including a group of 34 US States and Microsoft in criticizing Apple's policies.
Knitrino, created by sisters Andrea Cull and Alison Yates, aimed to provide knitting patterns and assistance to knitters via an app of the same name, reports the Seattle Times. After developing the app, the company sent it to both the Google Play Store and the App Store for approval, but only Google approved the app without any problem.
Apple's rejection was said to be due to a policy preventing the sale of both physical and digital goods through the in-app payment system. After days of changes and arguing with Apple, with the latter seemingly pasting portions of policies in response to queries, Knitrino appealed to the review board, and was rejected in 19 minutes.
"The feeling that we had when we were going through this was like hitting a wall, but not being able to see the wall," said Yates. "I don't know how tall this wall is. I don't know if I can walk a few miles that way and get around it. We were just feeling around in the dark."
Yates was also upset due to a lack of options and outside control of the situation. "When they are the approver and the appeals court, if they say no, we can't go to a different app store to get to our customers."
Knitrino later did get approved for the App Store, but it is still unclear to the startup what caused the change in position.
Following the playbook of Epic Games, Knitrino has already started to sell "Unravel Apple" stickers, in the worry that its support of Epic could lead to retaliation by Apple.
According to Yates, Apple has the ability to "weild the kind of power where they can say whether or not we can go into business, for something so arbitrary." While the app has made it to the App Store, Yates would still "love to have an alternative."
Apple is anticipated to respond to the appeal from Epic in March, with oral arguments expected in the spring or summer.
Read on AppleInsider
Apple's lawsuit with Epic is well into its post-trial phase, with Epic receiving support from multiple entities in trying to reverse a court's ruling on various App Store policies. On Sunday, a report revealed that Epic had an ally from an unusual source: knitters.
The Seattle-based startup Knitrino is identified as one of the companies who signed an amicus brief in November 2021 supporting Epic, as well as providing a "friend of the court" brief in January to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. It joins entities including a group of 34 US States and Microsoft in criticizing Apple's policies.
Knitrino, created by sisters Andrea Cull and Alison Yates, aimed to provide knitting patterns and assistance to knitters via an app of the same name, reports the Seattle Times. After developing the app, the company sent it to both the Google Play Store and the App Store for approval, but only Google approved the app without any problem.
Apple's rejection was said to be due to a policy preventing the sale of both physical and digital goods through the in-app payment system. After days of changes and arguing with Apple, with the latter seemingly pasting portions of policies in response to queries, Knitrino appealed to the review board, and was rejected in 19 minutes.
"The feeling that we had when we were going through this was like hitting a wall, but not being able to see the wall," said Yates. "I don't know how tall this wall is. I don't know if I can walk a few miles that way and get around it. We were just feeling around in the dark."
Yates was also upset due to a lack of options and outside control of the situation. "When they are the approver and the appeals court, if they say no, we can't go to a different app store to get to our customers."
Knitrino later did get approved for the App Store, but it is still unclear to the startup what caused the change in position.
Following the playbook of Epic Games, Knitrino has already started to sell "Unravel Apple" stickers, in the worry that its support of Epic could lead to retaliation by Apple.
According to Yates, Apple has the ability to "weild the kind of power where they can say whether or not we can go into business, for something so arbitrary." While the app has made it to the App Store, Yates would still "love to have an alternative."
Apple is anticipated to respond to the appeal from Epic in March, with oral arguments expected in the spring or summer.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Start making exceptions for different business models.
They’ve done this with subscriptions (allowing outside signups and dropping to 15% after a year), with small developers (15% fees) or with “reader” Apps.
Most Apps fit the current categories, but a few are always somewhere in the middle. Apple could, as each case arises, make new rules/exceptions as they occur and amend their guidelines.
This doesn’t mean Apple has to allow every single App that applies, or create 1,000 new types of App categories, but ones that are in a grey area and don’t appear to be trying to abuse The App Store (like Epic) can be given consideration.
They should be on Pinterest.
My point is people have an all-or-nothing approach to The App Store. Either open it up to everything or keep it as-is.
Epic and all the other whiny/greedy developers in their “club” think iOS should be completely open when a few small changes can accomplish just as much for developers without compromising privacy/security.
https://knitrino.com/apple
People who want to sell pornography can make the same argument that Apple doesn't allow for their business model. If only there was some kind of e-commerce system that was accessible on Apple devices outside the App Store. Like a way that you could add items to a cart, for example the button on the above page, to then be able to purchase physical goods via an independent checkout system.
Apple's rule is pretty simple, you can't pay for physical goods with Apple's IAP system:
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#goods-and-services-outside-of-the-app
"If your app enables people to purchase physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry."
They didn't say how they resolved the issue but it's not very hard to have a split payment system. They clearly already have a payment system for e-commerce on their website.
The above site also says 30% fee, if they are making under $1m, it's 15%.
Steve Jobs talked about this issue around 12 years ago (54:00), people aren't honest about what happened, as soon as they are inconvenienced in any way they just run to social media or the press and play victim:
They say they want an open and fair platform. They have one, it's called the internet, they can publish what they want. I don't know what kind of system they think would be better. Even if there was an alternative app store, it's not going to have millions of users let alone over a billion and they'd have to integrate that app store provider's payment system or their own.
At this point I think Apple probably needs to do something to reduce their market influence or they will keep getting targeted by anti-trust regulators. As cases like this come up, it tells regulators that companies can’t run their businesses and manage customer relationships the way they want. The regulators then take the worst possible action to solve the problem because they are lawyers not developers. I'm not an advocate for Android-like side-loading, so hopefully Apple finds a better compromise to lower the temperature. It could be better support for PWAs so developers could opt out of paying Apple commission for their closed SDKs and use cross-platform PWA SDKs instead. This would be a safer way to side-load. With WASM it is even possible for some native-like development.