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The Almighty Buck Apple

Hey Email App Open To All After Apple 'Definitively' Approves It (engadget.com) 30

Posted by BeauHD from the flip-flopping dept.
Basecamp's Hey email app is now open to everyone after Apple "definitively approved" it for the App Store. No invite code is required for users to sign up. Engadget reports: Basecamp CTO and co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson tweeted the news today. Hey will not include any in-app purchases (IAP), so Apple will not get its standard 30 percent commission. At first, Apple objected to the fact that users would download the app from the App Store but have to sign up via the web. Apple's policies require that developers use IAP to unlock paid features or functionality in an app. Hey managed to skirt around those rules by offering a free trial option.

Hey is now open to everyone, and it does not require an invite code. The app promises a more organized approach to email, for $99 per year. But perhaps more importantly, Hey is an example of how developers can avoid paying Apple 30 percent of IAP and subscription fees. "Hopefully this paves an illuminated path for approval for other multi-platform SAAS applications as well. There are still a litany of antitrust questions to answer, but things legitimately got a little better. New policies, new precedence. Apple took a great step forward," Hansson tweeted.
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Hey Email App Open To All After Apple 'Definitively' Approves It More

Hey Email App Open To All After Apple 'Definitively' Approves It

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  • Hopefully this paves an illuminated path for approval

    Adam Weishaupt, is that you?

    • The illuminated path aint so bright (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The path still looks pretty dark to me. Apple did this to me a few months ago. They refused to allow any updates to my free app that absolutely follows all their rules, the same app and same functionality that they have approved many times, over several years. I was forced into entering a paid app agreement.

      things legitimately got a little better

      Not from where I'm standing. A major basis of the initial complaint is how capricious and arbitrary Apple acts, applying negotiated rules and discounts to

  • Apple will kill hey (Score:3)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:13PM (#60227702) Journal
    Its model is a danger to its core revenue stream. It will match hey feature for feature and give it away for free to starve Hey of funds. Apple can afford to give away entire revenue stream of Hey ten times over and still not feel the pinch.

    It is make an example of what would happen if you openly defy Apple's hegemony.

    • Let Apple kill Hey. I don't even think they'd mind if they were cloned. This is a company that pretty much just chases their own muses and scratches their own itches and have plenty of money from Basecamp. They'd rather see a good idea spread than have their own app fade away for no reason.

  • What am I missing? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Presence Eternal ( 56763 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:22PM (#60227722)

    I kept hearing about Hey, so I went to their website. It sounds like a hundred bucks a year for puffery and an email whitelist. So they failed their elevator pitch hardcore with me. Still, if I'm missing something, I'm willing to hear about it.

    • Yeah, I was expecting they were offering something new, given all their claims to be offering something new.

    • Re:What am I missing? (Score:4, Informative)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:30PM (#60227770) Homepage

      It's not for me, but it's hosted email with 100GB of storage, not a general-purpose email client. So a bit more expensive than Office 365 or G-Suite, but not insane. They aren't offering custom domains, so it's definitely not for me - but I can see the separate attachment view or "reply later" functionality being useful for me. I'd just rather have existing mail clients implement these (or for me to be less lazy and create smart inbox filters/flags/labels on whatever email clients I'm using.

    • Re:What am I missing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:47PM (#60227844)
      You're not missing anything, this whole thing is a bunch of very successful astroturfing by the founder (who literally wrote a chapter in his book about "making an enemy" to market your business).

      "Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers, too. Taking a stand always stands out. People get stoked by conflict. They take sides. Passions are ignited. And that's a good way to get people to take notice."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        You're not missing anything, this whole thing is a bunch of very successful astroturfing by the founder (who literally wrote a chapter in his book about "making an enemy" to market your business).

        "Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers, too. Taking a stand always stands out. People get stoked by conflict. They take sides. Passions are ignited. And that's a good way to get people to take notice."

        Which makes me think the whole Apple thing was a deliberate attempt at marketing. I mean, how

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by beck24 ( 1772278 )

          Apple will simply incorporate into the developer rules that they can publicly release your app review notes if you complain publicly about being rejected.

          I'd be fine with that, then people could see how stupid the app reviewers are. I've had apps rejected because of: 1. A reviewer that failed to enter the correct password that was provided to them. Great, back into the queue to hopefully find a reviewer that posesses basic copy/paste ability. 2. A group in a social network that had the word "test" in the name, which apparently violates their policy of not allowing test content on an app, even though it was a group that was created by a real user, and was

  • $100/year? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @02:44PM (#60227840)
    $100/year is peanuts, but it's still a heck of a lot more than the $2/month I pay for my IMAP account with an excellent provider, and not much less than the $120/year I pay for a full Exchange hosted account. What's the high price for, exactly?

  • Hey is an example of how developers can avoid paying Apple 30 percent of IAP and subscription fees

    Apple will work on how to shut that hole in their revenue stream...

  • Advertisement? (Score:3)

    by unixcorn ( 120825 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @03:10PM (#60227942)

    I have seen more articles about Hey here in the past month than about any other topic ever. Is someone getting paid for these "articles"?

  • I'm just shocked anyone stuck around for the app-store-mageddon and the mass breaking of older (mostly 32-bit) apps people already owned and paid for. All my Intel macs run Mojave at worst. In the meantime, I've found my M68k macs a lot more useful since Apple is trying to emulate Microsoft of the early 1990's by quashing competition rather than entering the competition. Well, that and I don't want to spend 20-something-grand on a decent workstation. Keep making sealed battery crap, Apple. I'll be applaudin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Plus you still get to use AppleTalk and that glorious Apple SCSI over DB-25 connectors too, right? Can't imagine how useful those machines must be to you now that something totally unrelated happened.

  • $100/yr, for freaking... email. This is the future you're asking for when you're saying you don't think companies should be allowed to monetize your information and show you ads in exchange for providing you with a free service.

    I don't know about anyone else, but ads annoy me a hell of a lot less than the prospect of being nickeled and dimed to death for every little service on the internet.

  • Congrats to Basecamp (Score:3)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Thursday June 25, 2020 @04:39PM (#60228312)

    You got a huge amount of free publicity for your email service. Mission accomplished.

    No one would have noticed your service otherwise because we all already have email.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tvzion ( 6996148 )
      Hey email app open to all after Apple 'definitively' approves it. After flip flopping on whether it would approve Basecamp's Hey email app, Apple has “definitively approved” Hey for the App Store. Basecamp CTO and co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson tweeted the news today.

  • Am I missing something here? Who cares. This is not news.

  • I signed up for the free 14-day trial. On the upside, it's delightfully absent of bloat.

    On the downside, no custom domains yet (later this year.)

    Yea, not sure if I want to pay more for email at this point, I already have a website where it is hosted via IMAP / POP3. I'm not a fan of storing my emails on a server (they are deleted after two weeks by the POP downloader) but I'm getting to the point where I need to be more portable, I'm travelling for business more now than ever and sometimes need access to

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