{"id":19228,"date":"2024-01-06T09:54:41","date_gmt":"2024-01-06T04:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/apples-rejection-of-hey-calendar-app-renews-an-old-fight\/"},"modified":"2024-01-06T09:54:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-06T04:24:41","slug":"apples-rejection-of-hey-calendar-app-renews-an-old-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/apples-rejection-of-hey-calendar-app-renews-an-old-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s rejection of Hey calendar app renews an old fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The new year was supposed to begin with a brand spanking new calendar app. But roughly 72 hours after the premium email service Hey announced its latest feature \u2014 an integrated calendar \u2014 co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson received some unwelcome news from Apple: it was rejecting a standalone iOS app for Hey Calendar, because non-paying users couldn\u2019t do anything when they opened the app up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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New users can\u2019t sign up for Hey Calendar directly on the app \u2014\u00a0Basecamp, which makes Hey, makes users first sign up through a browser. Apple\u2019s App Store rules require most paid services to offer users the ability to pay and sign up through the app, ensuring the company gets up to a 30 percent cut. The controversial rule has a ton of gray areas and carve-outs (i.e. reader apps like Spotify and Kindle get an exception) and is the subject of antitrust fights in multiple countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But as Hansson detailed on X<\/a> and in a subsequent blog post, he found Apple\u2019s rejection insulting for another reason. Close to four years ago, the company rejected Hey\u2019s original iOS app for its email service for the exact same reason. \u201cApple just called to let us know they\u2019re rejecting the HEY Calendar app from the App Store (in current form). Same bullying tactics as last time: Push delicate rejections to a call with a first-name-only person who\u2019ll softly inform you it\u2019s your wallet or your kneecaps,\u201d wrote Hansson in a post on X.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The outcome of the 2020 fight actually worked out in Hey\u2019s favor. After days of back and forth between Apple\u2019s App Store Review Board and Basecamp, the Hey team agreed to a rather creative solution suggested by Apple exec Phil Schiller. Hey would offer a free option for the iOS app, allowing new users to sign up directly. But the email service proposed a slight twist \u2014\u00a0users who signed up via the iOS app got a free, temporary randomized email address that worked for 14 days \u2014 after which they had to pay to upgrade. Currently, Hey email users can only pay for an account through the browser.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Following the saga with Hey, Apple made a carve-out to its App Store rules that stated that free companion apps to certain types of paid web services were not<\/em> required to have an in-app payment mechanism. But, as Hansson mentions on X, a calendar app wasn\u2019t mentioned in the list of services that Apple now makes an exception for, which includes VOIP, cloud storage, web hosting \u2014\u00a0and of course \u2014 email. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAfter spending 19 days to review our submission, causing us to miss a long-planned January 2nd launch date, Apple rejected our stand-alone free companion app \u2018because it doesn\u2019t do anything\u2019. That is because users are required to login with an existing account to use the functionality,\u201d wrote Hansson in a blog post.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As Hansson details in an X post, Hey plans to fight Apple\u2019s decision \u2014 though he didn\u2019t specify what route they will be taking. The Verge <\/em>has reached out to both Hey and Apple for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n