Give up the App Store purchase fight, Apple, it’s just not worth it

It is time once again for a little segment the Macalope likes to call “Let’s Give Apple Advice We Know It’s Not Going To Listen To”!

OK, the Macalope has never named any segment that before but, honestly, he’s been running it for years now. (Small phones is a prominent example.) Free advice that Apple is willfully ignoring. Of course, you know the saying about free advice but on this particular issue, history seems to be leaning on the horny one’s side as well as the side of almost everyone else in the Apple community who has been giving Apple the very same advice for years.

That advice? Give up on its ridiculously aggressive anti-steering policy. If you’re not up on App Store jargon, this is the rule the prevents developers from (in certain countries) providing “links” to payment processes outside the comfort and safety of the App Store. Apple has defended this as right and just because, my dear Paula, everyone loves the App Store and its easy and secure payment processing and no one would ever want to be tricked by dastardly developers into using anything else.

Now, much like Toonces the cat, Apple’s anti-steering policy has sent it flying into a crevasse.

U.S. District Court judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers largely ruled in favor of Apple in Epic’s case against the company but finally said enough was enough and the company had to comply. If that wasn’t bad enough, she took a number of Apple executives to task and also referred one, VP of finance Alex Roman, for criminal contempt charges for lying under oath.

We Apple pundits frequently like to play amateur stock analyst, financial analyst, international trade negotiator, etc., as part of our coverage of the Apple world and, sure, we’re often out of our depth. But you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that getting caught lying under oath is generally not a good thing and, regardless, it’s not a good look.

The one person who does come out looking relatively good in all this is App Store head and fine fresh Apple fellow Phil Schiller.

…Gonzalez Rogers said Apple’s App Store chief Phillip Schiller “had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction” but that CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.”

Schiller was subsequently awarded a golden bust of Greg Davies.

Apple seems to want to deny developers and users the right to use web links as a means of communicating further information in an online context, something humans have been doing for more than 30 years. This policy is probably the most egregious of all the self-serving App Store rules Apple has concocted over the years and it’s no wonder developers are eager to move on from it.

Some developers are even predicting that they’ll be able to lower prices because of this. Can you imagine? Apparently, prices can fall. Not to hear the current state of economic policy in the U.S. talk about it.

Well, at least this is all over now and we can put it behi-

“Apple files appeal to wrest back control of its App Store”

Or not. Sigh.

This is where we get to the free advice part.

Apple is in a bit of a slide these days in terms of public perception. Sure, most developers have been mad at the company since… well, 1976. Meanwhile, most Apple customers probably don’t know anything about this. Even if they heard about it, they probably thought it was all a little too inside baseball for them to worry about. To them, the iPhone is just a device what they plays their Wordle on.

But now that Apple is being forced to comply and users will start to get more information and more choice, that may change. Regardless of whether or not customers notice, the company’s continued clawing to keep this rule that no one else liked is a bad look. On top of criminal contempt, which is not such a great look either.

Just drop it, Apple. You can afford to financially and you may find that the currency of good will is something you need more right now than services revenue.