Apple vs Epic trial is ongoing.
Documents revealed Hulu was a whitelisted developer and had access to cancel/refund API.
No other developers have been specifically named yet.
As the Apple vs Epic anti-trust trial continues, and on its fourth day of proceedings, Apple has confirmed that special deals for services like Hulu have been offered in the past.
The App Store Vice President Matt Fischer was on the stand today answering questions about the App Store policies on things like API and special offers. An exert from an email between Matt Fischer asked Cindy Lin revealed this: Hulu is part of the set of whitelisted developers with access to subscription cancel/refund API. Back in 2015 they were using this to support instant upgrade using a 2 family setup, before we had subscription upgrade/downgrade capabilities built in.
Apple Gave Hulu Access to Special App Store APIs, Reveals Internal Emails
Posted by Sanuj Bhatia on May 06, 2021 in Apple News, News
Apple’s unethical behavior towards different app developers has been the talk for quite some time now. A day after it was revealed that Apple struggled to ‘convince’ Netflix not to drop in-app purchase support, new documents have unveiled that Apple gave Hulu access to some special App Store APIs.
Epic Games vs Apple trial is in place now, and the documents being shared in the trial are giving us a look at what goes behind the scenes at Apple. Yesterday, a report claimed that Apple kicked Shadow game streaming service out of the App Store only to prove a point to Microsoft about its strict App Stores policies.
Day 4 Developments in the Epic Games v. Apple Trial
The documents shared during the Epic Games v. Apple trial yesterday allowed people to learn more about the App Store and Apple’s business practices. Apple s Matt Fischer, vice president of the App Store, answered questions raised by both Apple and Epic lawyers in respect to details of his involvement in the Apple App Store and the process of establishing Apple s guidelines.
Fischer explained that Apple has long been concerned about the security of the App Store and refuted views on alternative payment methods and side-loaded applications.
Fisher also discussed Apple Arcade, the App Store s account system and fraud. The vice president told Epic s lawyers that Apple has not conducted research on whether gaming companies use of third-party payment platforms in apps would cause security issues.
Apple made it harder to change Hulu subscriptions because of a tweet
Prior to 2018, the streaming service had access to Apple’s subscription APIs
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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Apple made it more difficult to upgrade your Hulu subscription plan say, to add live TV after it realized the company was offering a way to automatically cancel subscriptions made through the App Store.
According to new emails revealed as part of Apple’s lawsuit with Epic Games, the company had given Hulu access to its subscription API but didn’t realize Hulu was using it to help people switch to Hulu’s billing system (and avoid Apple’s in-app purchases) until 2018 when the feature was mentioned in a tweet that caught the eye of a higher-up at Apple. You can see the tweet embedded below:
Apple Offered Special App Store API Access to Hulu and Other Developers
Thursday May 6, 2021 12:42 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Today is the fourth day of the Epic Games v. Apple legal battle, and documents shared in the trial continue to give us insight into the App Store and Apple s business practices.
App Store Vice President Matt Fischer is on the stand answering questions from Apple and Epic lawyers, and one of the emails shared as evidence confirms that Apple has established special deals with major app developers like Hulu.
In 2018, a tweet from developer David Barnard commented about App Store subscriptions being automatically cancelled through the StoreKit API, questioning why there hadn t been more offers to swap billing away from the App Store.