Apple took to its developer website to announce a variety of the latest initiatives, services, and tools for developers today. Most of what the corporate listed are evolutions of the quality offerings it promotes at its ongoing developer conference.
Apple came under attack after it rejected a bug-fix update to the email app Hey, which is formed by Basecamp. Apple told the app’s developers that the app would need to incorporate Apple’s own system for in-app purchases or risk being delisted.
The CTO of Basecamp took to Twitter with an impassioned thread accusing Apple of criminal behavior for insisting on a cut of the app’s revenues.
The tweet thread sparked an excellent deal of dialogue, not only about Apple’s take of app revenues but also about the company’s failure to be transparent and consistent about App Store guidelines.
Developers will surely be glad to listen to the change regarding updates that are composed of bug fixes.
The remainder of Apple’s statement seems to suggest that the corporate is opening up new avenues of dialogue with developers about App Store review guidelines and specific judgments Apple makes supported them.
What will appear as if it is unclear, though?
Equally, unclear is whether it’ll cause any actual changes in policy or enforcement.
More details will likely come because the changes roll out later within the summer, except, for now, Apple is especially just telling developers that it’s listening.
Last week, Apple SVP Phil Schiller gave an interview during which he defended Apple’s guidelines and said there would be no changes to the particular policies in response to the complaints about Hey’s situation.
However, Apple nonetheless approved the Hey app in any case, after Basecamp submitted a version of the app that followed Apple’s guidelines in a minimal way.
The dispute is probably going to continue.
The other new initiatives, services, and tools that Apple mentioned in its article today include evidence of Clips and Widgets, access to new or expanded APIs and frameworks like ARKit, a replacement Store Kit tool for helping developers plan out monetization, details about the Xcode redesign, new capabilities in Swift UI, expanded features for Catalyst, and knowledge on new privacy requirements.
