HUGE win for EU and for Developers with apps in Apple’s App store! 🚀
It’s not a win. Apple is still requiring apps to undergo app review and even more exorbitant fees than distributing through the App Store. Apple is doing their best to comply to the letter but not the spirit of the EU ruling.
It will be fixed. It’s gov. So baby steps. The EU is working hard and it’s going to be a while before we get everything we want.
To use this feature, developers will have to opt into the new App Store business terms, which means they will pay the Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.
Wait… So if you develop an open source app and don’t charge for it, and 11 million new users install it, you have to pay apple $500,000? (10,000,000 * $0.50) Wtf?
Non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and governments are exempt from the fee. The full policy is here: https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
If you don’t plan to charge for it, you can also just publish through the existing App Store infrastructure, where there is no fee.
(I’m not being an apologist. There are so, so many shitty things about Apple’s implementation here, but this isn’t one. I believe the EU should blast Apple as hard as legally possible for the rest of their implementation which is intentionally terrible.)
