Apple, Hey and Augmented Reality
A battle over Apple App Store rules provides a peek at the much larger wars to come.
Apple wants a cut.
A very public battle is brewing over a new e-mail app called Hey. Developed by the folks at Basecamp, the company collects $100 a year via Web sign-up and wants to make a version available for your iPhone.
Not too complicated - it’s a bit like Basecamp. Subscribe so your team can use it on their computers at the office and download a version for mobile so that you can track projects on the go.
But Apple said no:
There are three strands to the argument:
Apple’s decision demonstrates an inconsistent approach. If Netflix can collect subscriptions outside of the App Store, why can’t Hey?
It’s the policy itself which is the problem: if a developer bypasses the services Apple offers around payments, why should they need to pony up 15-30% of their revenue?
It’s illegal: what Apple is doing represents anti-trust. (Which does not, by the way, rely on being a monopoly).
An Inconsistent Approach
John Gruber at Daring Fireball thinks that this specific issue is more closely related to the inconsistency issue and that it sadly overlooks the actual history of Apple:
The tragedy here is that Apple, since its inception, exemplified the folly of such distinctions. The Apple II and Macintosh weren’t consumer/toy computers in answer to ostensibly professional/serious computers from suit-and-tie companies like IBM. Apple’s own hardware and software showed that such distinctions were not just unnecessary, but were harmful, holding back the entire industry under artificial signifiers of “seriousness” that were every bit as much bullshit when it came to how computers looked and worked as was how the employees of the companies that made them dressed for work.
Antitrust and Special Deals
Tim Sweeney at Epic has famously railed against the App Store approach. The experience of Hey is part of a larger issue, he would say, with regulators in Europe also honing in on Apple:
Rent Seeking and Digital Goods
Ben Thompson at Stratechery points back to a 2018 post which calls Apple’s approach rent-seeking (emphasis added):
“What I do believe is illegal is Apple’s insistence — based on nothing other than rules enforced by their mandatory app approval process — that no company can sell digital goods in their app that have nothing to do with smartphones or their functionality without giving Apple 30%. I know “rent-seeking” is a loaded term, but there frankly is no better way to describe this practice. Just think how absurd it is that you can open the Amazon app and buy a physical good but can’t do the same and buy a digital good; Apple is contributing nothing to the digital good in question, which has nothing to do with iOS’s unique capabilities, they are merely taking 30% because they can.”
He also says he’s hearing similar tales:
So What Does It Mean for Augmented Reality?
You can come down on the side of Apple or the developers. We can talk about side loading and how bad it would be for security, or how good it would be to open up the Apple ecosystem.
But these battles will pale in comparison to a world where computers are worn on the bridge of our nose.
And there’s a few reasons for that:
First, real estate will be at a premium as we walk around with AR glasses. This will incentive Apple to be even more strict about who gets access to the coveted real estate in front of your eyes.
If you think the App Store guidelines are strict now, just wait until you need to build apps for glasses. You won’t just have to worry about the whole IAP models, but will need to navigate all kinds of issues around data collection, UI/UX and accessibility.
But even more important: the world will now be an interface. We’re not just talking about clicking buttons in an app. We’re talking about interacting with physical, real-world places and objects.
Should Apple get a cut if you glance at a pair of shoes and they open up a “buy now” option? Should Apple get a cut if you approach the counter at Starbucks and your Starbucks card pops up above the cash register via AR glasses?
The Physical World Is a Transaction Layer
Robert Scoble thinks that Apple will have all kinds of designs for AR-facilitated commerce and gives the Starbucks experience as an example:
“Apple can use these codes to augment menus, signs, and even the food or beverage cups themselves. A game could pop off of your cup after you get it. You think coffee can't be turned into a game? Right.”
And so we won’t just be talking about issues of in-app purchases or subscriptions to a news feed. We’ll be talking about a digital overlay on the physical world.
Everything we do, everything we interact with, everything we look at and every store we walk into will potentially have an augmentation layer.
So as we debate whether Hey should be allowed to play in the App Store, it’s also worth wondering how these arguments will play out when Apple is a potential gatekeeper not just for mobile apps…but for how we interact with reality itself.