News You Can Use

Good morning, Drew. Morning, Dan. How are you today? I'm really well. Good morning, listeners. Welcome back once again to another episode of Drew and Dan in the morning. It is, in fact, morning. I do, in fact, have coffee. Nice. Nice. Glad to hear it. Welcome back. How was your weekend? ⁓ my weekend was long, actually. ⁓ no, it was good. ⁓ I can't say I did anything that exciting. Let me think here quick. How was your weekend, Dan? Let's start with that. ⁓ okay. All Well, not a heck of a weekend. My wife ran yet another marathon. She ran her fifty third marathon. ⁓ my gosh. In Duluth, Minnesota. And she it was her eleventh time running that particular marathon. Wait, why did she where did she run it? In Duluth. Minnesota. Minnesota. Yes. She ran she went all the way to Minnesota just to Well, we we live in Minnesota. ⁓ and every time I say the word Minnesota, my accent, my Minnesota accent comes out. So I appreciate you making me say it repeatedly for everybody to hear. ⁓ because that long O, you just you just cannot escape it as a native Minnesotan. But anyway, when she's doing these things, ⁓ I am not, I am not running a marathon with her. I've run one. No. I typically go to a coffee shop or ⁓ a cafe or whatever, and I and I work on my My projects. And that is what I did. I dropped her off at 515 AM. And I was downtown Duluth, ⁓ mostly at a Starbucks and then at a park, between the two, you know, between the hours. And then ⁓ when she completed her marathon in just over five hours, ⁓ then I I picked her up. But I was working most of that time, ⁓ a little bit of walking around and taking pictures, but I got a lot of work done. So how about you? I didn't do any of that. I didn't run any marathons. I didn't even hang out at the coffee shop, which is Kind of rare. But you know, it was ⁓ I think it was Father's Day recently. It was happy Father's Day too. Over the weekend. Yeah, thank you. And you as well. ⁓ but ⁓ I mostly was home doing things with the family and ⁓ did some grilling and cleaning and some little projects around the house. Nothing that exciting. Yeah, sounds like a nice Father's Day. Yeah. So we've got a lot of news. I just want to start with one of these things. So there's gosh, there's so many things. But let's talk about this one first. Let's talk about ⁓ app store rule changes. Okay. I don't know if you've been on top of any of these. I saw one on I think it was Twitter X, whatever it's called. ⁓ someone was talking about an app rejection as people often do. And it basically says the app requests users to rate the app on first launch or during onboarding before they've had enough time to clear under to get a gain a clear understanding of the app's value. Yeah, we talked about this ⁓ a couple episodes ago. Right. We did, but it wasn't an app it wasn't a new rule then though. ⁓ but to me that was to me that was new news. I I don't know. I didn't I know we talked about it as being a kind of an anti-pattern that developers often like to do this really annoying thing. And one of the problems with anti-patterns is that if you don't do them and everybody else is do them doing them, then you're just at a severe disadvantage. ⁓ everyone knows that ratings and reviews, they drive how visible your app is in the store, which directly goes to downloads and if you actually can make money at the same time. You've got if if people are doing the thing that's not allowed and you're not, you know, you're you're at a severe disadvantage. So I it's actually pretty good to see them ⁓ cracking down on that. Whether whether or not that's a new review a new rule, I guess I don't know then. Yeah, we talked about that before, but you know, I I respect that because ⁓ when you set a rule in place, everybody has to abide by the rule. ⁓ and otherwise you get in in my industry work life. That's called procedural drift. And you know, where you've you have a rule in place, but people aren't really following it, and it's it's kinda then it becomes a guideline and then it's just, ⁓ yeah, nobody does that. And so why even have the rule at all? Right. So you get this procedural drift. So every now and then you have to make a correction back. And ⁓ it sounds like Apple's making that correction. What other news did you have? Another thing that came out of Apple was ⁓ more about that Apple is removing App Store clutter. Apple is apparently preparing to remove what it describes as opportunistic apps that provide little value to iPhone and iPad users. ⁓ already had a policy of not approving applications that are, quote, indistinguishable from what's already widely available. But there's been a kind of a new round of ⁓ notifications going out to developers that it's going to start removing what it calls low-value software that doesn't attract attention from users. One of the phrases in there was that it hasn't, if it hasn't attracted new customers. And that's kind of concerning. Everyone's a little bit concerned about that one because there's a lot of apps that don't attract new customers that are, you know, we're still working on them, right? Like we're we're hoping to get the new customers. None of my apps attract customers, none of them. So I'm trying. But you know, and then there's the ⁓ you know 4.3 B guideline that says don't distribute don't submit apps that are indistinguishable from what's already widely available. And then they talk about ⁓ you know, opportunistically creating variants of existing app categories or popular apps degrades app store. Discovery. So they're saying don't just make a quick copycat of something that is already hitting well or whatever. ⁓ and then it talks about certain kinds of apps such as dating, flashlights, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling are well established in the App Store, and we will not accept new submissions unless these apps are offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. So I I read this and I was aware of this because there was some some chatter about it on Blue Sky. And ⁓ and the complaint about, well, I'm trying to make an app that attracts customers, you're gonna kick my app off the app store. Right. And and I yeah, and then the apps that are indistinguishable, like I get it. Like we don't need more timer apps unless there it's a very unique. I mean you can do you can you can reinvent the mousetrap very well, right? ⁓ but ⁓ but there's also a like a ⁓ what is it a a gate that you pass through as a developer once you've submitted and gotten an app on the app store. That's like a a rite of passage because it's a it's a whole process that you have to go through. So if you make your first app and you and it's you know my first app that I tried to make was a timer app for timing my ⁓ my my washer and dryer, you know, so that I didn't have to listen for the beef. But that that was my first idea. This is like and it wasn't really going to be an app. It was like I'm just going to focus on doing this. ⁓ so y we don't need more of those, right? The the first app you've ever made, and then I'm gonna submit it to the app store. I didn't try to submit that one. But there is a a a a rite of passage to go through to to get an app on the app store. It's hard to to just submit an app. What do you have to go through to get go through app review, get rejected, complain about it online, and submit again. You know, that that's a whole process. So I I wonder if a a solution I'm just spit you know, kind of thinking out loud here, like It would there be a a ⁓ like a a test way of of here's how to submit your app to the app store process, but you actually have to go through the process. ⁓ the tool I'm going to talk about later ⁓ actually touches on that a little bit. But anyway, th those are my two cents about that. Yeah, I think that's interesting. I mean, I think none of this is unexpected. I think ⁓ you know, Apple's had I think they've left ⁓ a lot of the rules sort of static for Kind of a while until this last year or so when they've been really just inundated with new submissions from, you know, five coded apps. and I I don't remember which one it was. I don't remember it was App Follow or or somebody like that. It posted a a blog post talking that about that new apps new app approvals or something were up by I don't know, eighty percent or something compared to the previous year. Like I and you gotta think, well, okay, if that's true then Apple definitely has to do something to screen the cruft a little better. And, you know. Whether or not my app or your app is considered cruft is obviously a a concern. I don't want my app to be cruft. I'd like other people's cruft to be removed and mine to just be given the benefit of the doubt that I'm gonna turn it into something good at some point. ⁓ Right. How do you distinguish that, especially from a one point ⁓ It that's it's tough. I don't know. You know, initially I was thinking that we might see something like Increased app store fees to add friction. ⁓ to to slow things down. But that aside, I mean, I think, you know, enforcing the rules that are already there is probably a pretty good idea. You know, we talked about that previously a little bit with I think it was Cal AI, something about the paywall, right? ⁓ but there are other changes, you know, they've ⁓ strengthened some of the things, some of the content here. There's under user generated content, there's the section one point two of the app review guidelines. There's ⁓ How you have to filter and give people a mess ⁓ mechanism for what is it, reporting offensive content. Yeah. And the ability to block users, block abusers, users from the abusive users from the service. ⁓ publish contact information so users can reach you. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, when I was submitting the MIST, because it allows user generated content, it's a social network. So there has to be a means of blocking users and reporting users. And and the means of reporting users that I did is just you email me. Okay. ⁓ that that doesn't scale well at all. But ⁓ you know, it it it works today. And and I know that this should the app ever I mean it would be a good problem to have that that I was getting overwhelmed with ⁓ emails, ⁓ you know, but ⁓ at this moment I have received absolutely zero. So it it's working fine. And there is that ⁓ really nice API from OpenAI that they Still offer for free, I believe, which is ⁓ it is a like a content moderation ⁓ API where you basically send your content to it, it sends back a thing saying, you know, rating it as it might be bad in these areas or it might not be and and scales and stuff. And ⁓ hopefully they're not just slurping up everybody's content. I don't I don't think they are, but ⁓ they are. But it's but well it y you know, if if a product is free, you're the product, right? Like so you're gonna you're gonna give us your data. ⁓ and then we're going to moderate it ⁓ in an AI way. So there was a discussion that I heard and and this this I'll paraphrase to to not get into explicit content ⁓ flags here. But ⁓ so the idea if you use an AI generated an AI model to do your content moderation, there's a difficulty in expression where if I say F yeah, right? Word yeah, F yeah. ⁓ that's good, right? I mean like, yeah. ⁓ but if I say Yeah, that's a positive thing and you're not trying to use it in a bad way, even though although if it's ⁓ you know, showing it to a five year old, maybe you still don't want to show it to him, right? Exactly, exactly. ⁓ and then if I say F U, well that's that's a bad. So now how do you you know, does the L L ⁓ can it discern the difference there? And and this is a a different discussion on on different podcasts, but ⁓ But basically it's it's an impossible problem. Also, it is perfectly fine from a freedom of speech standpoint to say F you. ⁓ that is, you may not like it, but that's freedom of speech. So Right. Anyway. Right. ⁓ anyway, one thing that the Apple added recently to the one point two user generated content. Well, I'm comparing the June eighth version versus the February twentieth version. So I don't know. I apparently I didn't get any updates in the middle. I don't know if they didn't update or if my thing wasn't running, but ⁓ the section they added says, it is your responsibility to remove content that violates this guideline, your terms of service or your community standards. If we find such can't content, we will ask you to remove it and provide a plan to improve your compliance with this guideline. So they're put you on a performance plan. ⁓ based on your response, your app may be removed from the app store until you can demonstrate improvements. That brings your app into compliance. Egregious or repeated behavior is grounds for immediate removal of your app from the app store and from the Apple developer program. Ouch. U user generated content is tough. It's it's part of the reason that I do not allow pictures to be posted on the mist, because it's just there's a whole thing, you know, that that comes as soon as you allow public posting of photos. ⁓ it's, you know, by and large it's good, but the bad is real bad. Yeah. ⁓ so as far as that, it I mean, it sounds like they're definitely trying to strengthen language on that, which, you know, we're about the repeated violations and putting you on a performance improvement plan of some sort. Like that's ⁓ I haven't seen that one in any of their guidelines before. I would not want to be put in that category. Kind of ⁓ I think it's good actually. It is good. I think it's good because I think I think for all of these things, I think there we have, you know, often some pretty big players in each category, in the category that are allowed to largely run afoul of a lot of guidelines and it doesn't matter at all. Yeah, yeah. Well, it comes to ⁓ the the grok generated images come to mind. And I don't know if that's what they're specifically saying, but ⁓ like, hey, you need to ⁓ get your act together. So especially those big players like that. Well I ⁓ I d don't have any news this week, but I have a tool ⁓ that ⁓ that and and we talked about it before. It's it's icon composer. So it's it's a bit of a confusion or gripe on my part. So we talked about icon composer, the new, I think it's beta two this year for iOS twenty-seven. And what I did, because I just submitted my new app Relay Team Finder ⁓ to the App Store for test flight. So I uploaded it to the app store connect. Really? ⁓ that's great. As we record this on June twenty second. So there is a beta out there. It's going to be kind of a limited release beta. I'm not going to run a continual beta, but ⁓ so when I uploaded it, now I generated the icon ⁓ using sketch myself, all by my little self. ⁓ it's a very basic icon. I exported the layers into icon composer as you do, and then I tweaked the ⁓ you know, the liquid glass. We talked about this last time, and then I exported that into Xcode, and then I uploaded it to the App Store, and it failed. ⁓ no. And it failed because there ⁓ when you export icons with icon composer and drag it right into your asset folder in Xcode, you get an alpha channel. And I'm not a graphic designer, but you get transparent pixels. And I just kept thinking, what am I how can this possibly be? So I went back and rewatched the WWDC video from 2025 about icon composer, and there was a little thing that they said in there when you export Your graphic from your tool, Sketch Figma, whatever you use, ⁓ exported as SVG. So I thought, aha, I was exporting as PNG. So I went back and I exported all my layers. There's only two, not including the background, which icon composer does for you. Anyway, I exported those layers as SVG. I re-exported from iComposer into Xcode, re-uploaded to App Store Connect, and failed again because of transparent pixels. And this is my Gripe or confusion, I'd love feedback on this. Is there something I'm doing wrong? Because why on earth will the tool provided from Apple to create icons, they say just drag it, export it and drag it into Xcode and you've got your icon, which is true, but as soon as you try uploading it, it f it has you can't have an alpha channel. And why would it not strip that out? Interesting. So my experience has been that you don't export from it, but instead you drag the whole dot icon bundle. Into your Xcode project and set your set that as your icon. what? Yeah. I know it's crazy. What? It's like what? That said in the in the video, export from icon composer. Wait, what are you talking about? So you're you're ex you're talking about the file made by icon composer? I'm saying the dot icon, which is actually ⁓ a bundle, so it's like a folder with files in it. That I well, the two two things, right? ⁓ you you drag that, put that drag the whole thing into your Xcode project, or just keep it in your Xcode project. Okay. and then you set whatever the name of it, let's say it's called, you know, my icon dot icon. ⁓ you would just set your app icon name, you know, where you specify the file name for your app icon. You set it to that. And cleverly, if you have, I believe this is correct, if you have ⁓ an old icon that's one of the bitmap ones that you use on you know, older operating systems, you can also have that be the same name and it'll choose that one for the old one and this one for the new one. Okay, I have that. So you're saying take that and drag the that, the the icon composer file, drag that into my Xcode project. yeah, it'll show up as a it'll show up when you drag it in there, it shows up and as a little icon that's got well seeing I'm using the word icon too many times, but it's got like little stacked layers as the little icon in your Xcode. So I am going to ⁓ I'm going to build this or archive it and upload it. ⁓ build failed right away. Wait a minute. What failed? No idea. ⁓ here's another one I want to bring up quick while you're working on that. ⁓ another kind of piece of news. It was ⁓ from Apple Developer News. It's ⁓ new domain for sign in with Apple and iCloud Plus hide my email. And it says that new addresses generated with for both features will be issued on the new domain, which is private.iCloud.com. So sign in with Apple addresses previously issued under private relay.appleid.com will will now be issued on private.iCloud.com. And the iCloud hide my email, iCloud Plus hide my email address ⁓ previously issued on iCloud.com will now be issued under private.iCloud.com. So whichever one they were before, new ones will be issued under private.iCloud.com. Now if you've already set up ⁓ one of these, either sign in with Apple or a hide my email and it's you've already got one at one of these old ⁓ subdomains. It'll still work, right? Like the hide my email addresses. One of the great things about those is they were on iCloud.com. Now I think this I understand why Apple's just trying to like clean it up and put it under one spot and it makes perfect sense. However, it's a huge problem because now I can just like ⁓ if I don't want to accept people's private hidden emails, I can just block anything that says private.iCloud dot com. ⁓ when previously When they were issued under iCloud.com, well, now I was in trouble. I couldn't I can't block everyone that has iCloud.com. You know, if you did hide my email. ⁓ now signing with Apple was previously showing up like if you didn't choose to share your email, it gave an email that was under private relay.appleide.com. So that could also have been sort of blockable. but now just anything you put under h hide my email, you're gonna have a thousand websites out that are like say, ⁓ we're just gonna block that. You know, private email not allowed. Could you something like that. D would this allow you to to not let people use the hide their email? I mean if you did sign in with Apple V. So you've got a website, let's say, and you're trying to get someone to sign up and they go to sign up, you say hide my email. It generates something at private.iCloud.com. The website server side says, ⁓ yeah, we're not accepting that. Says sorry, choose a different e choose a different email. ⁓ no, I wonder why Apple did that, because that seems like the poor I mean, if I want to hide my email, which I use I probably use that fifty percent of the time. I don't I don't know. It probably depends on my mood when I do it. ⁓ I I wonder why why they did it. I I don't know. But I did see that about like the ⁓ changes in in the hide my email, but I was like, okay, I don't understand why, but what I Yeah, I didn't at first my first first glance was like it kinda didn't matter, but then ⁓ sorry. but then after I think about it, ⁓ it's it could really be a problem. I think it'll become a lot of people will try to block it. Yeah, just yeah that Just because why wouldn't I why would I want to take the private one that they can delete when I can just take a real one that they won't? You know if I'm the website. ⁓ but it it reduces trust in the system though. I mean I tr I like the fact that that I can use this temporary thing, this temporary key. That's what I know with Apple. Now you're reducing the effectiveness. If if people start ⁓ if platforms start limiting the use of that. Yeah, and to be clear, I haven't seen anybody doing that yet, but it's you know, it's brand new news, so give ⁓ time. ⁓ I'd have heard other people complaining about that same thing though, that it's probably will be a problem. ⁓ although to be fair, the sign in with Apple hidden emails, which is kind of where I've used it the most, those were already getting issued under private relay.apleid.com and not iCloud.com. ⁓ maybe it's a change that doesn't matter all that much. What are your thoughts? Well, like I said, I I think that i it ⁓ it didn't really affect me. to begin with that I thought about, but if a platform detects that I'm hiding my email and rejects it, I'm just gonna not sign up. So if if i i i because that that's a distrust issue. Now I now I don't trust you. You're just harvesting my data. ⁓ I mean I know you're harvesting my data. I know that my it's out there. But ⁓ but if you're going to such lengths as to get my, you know, that what other lengths are you going to? It's kind of that ⁓ you know a A ladder of trust. I I I don't know. No, hopefully it'll be hopefully it'll be a non-issue. I just wouldn't be surprised if it becomes an issue because it seems like when people can do a thing, they do it. ⁓ not everybody, but you know, sort of the bad actor types and and again you've got that same thing of the mindset of that I was talking about with respect to the thing we talked about earlier, which is, well, if everybody else does this and I do it, I'm at it I don't do it, I'm at a disadvantage. And I think that's, you know, in some cases more of a fear. In other cases, it's more of a reality. This one's probably more of a fear, but anyway, that I thought was interesting. ⁓ you know, picking through some of the other things we didn't talk about previously, there are ⁓ other app store changes that are kind of interesting. ⁓ group and volume purchases. Have you seen this? We talked about it briefly, you and I ⁓ but but refresh my memory again because I know you were looking into it. So Yeah, they have added Apple is adding a group and volume in app purchase or subscription system. So right now, if you are, let's say, a school or a you know a business or an institution of some sort, if you want, let's say, all of your people to be on ⁓ I don't know, relay team finder or something like that. Good plug. You think, hey, this would be the perfect thing for our people. And but each person has to go and subscribe for, you know, what is it, a fifty-nine dollars a year, something like that. ⁓ sure. Okay, well I'm just throwing that out there. So now we've set a bar. $59 a year. ⁓ you could say, okay, well I want if ⁓ people are buying let's say 10 of these subscriptions, let's make them be ten ninety nine a year. You know, give them a deep discount if they're buying more than some number. And so you can do it as a ⁓ two different ways. There's group. There's group purchases, which are just for regular people that are interacting with your app. You can sort of merchandise it in your app. You can have a thing saying, hey, how many seats do you want? ⁓ and then if if you do that, so you could say, and it's and it's the same purchasing API that you're used to, but you just put a quantity with it of, you know, 10 or 50 or a thousand or whatever. ⁓ hopefully it's a thousand. And then ⁓ what you get back ⁓ through the regular purchasing system is you get a an invitation link that you can then send to other people and they use that link and then it it allocates them one of your subscriptions out of this group. ⁓ interesting. Okay. Yeah. So I could see for from a team perspective, just to put this into context, I can I can visualize a team, you've got a team of of of twelve people, we all want to have the same app. One person buys it maybe everybody pays that person. We get our Deep discount because we're buying 12 of them. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, okay, so something like that. That's definitely kind of a retail way to approach it. ⁓ there's also for so let's say you're a school or a doctor's office or ⁓ you know, whatever. ⁓ and you normally are setting up your your either your maybe your Macs or your phones are set up through your mobile device management system, your MDM. You so you're setting these up with like Apple Business Manager or what's the other one called School Manager or something like that. I forget the name. but basically on those what you normally are doing. ⁓ so previously what you could do is you could put like if you had a paid app, let's say it was fifty dollars, someone that was using these like Apple Business Manager or an MDM could say, Okay, I want all my all of this group of my users to have that app. And they could buy that app, you know, okay, well we need 110 of them. So we'll buy 110 and then I I want to put it on this one and this one and this one. And you know, these people get it and these people don't and and that's how they could manage that. and every now and then in App Store Connect you would see something like this. You'd see like, ⁓ my gosh, I had like 50 purchases today of my app or you know downloads or whatever. And what was that about? And you know, sometimes you wouldn't see all the users come with it. Like if you were tracking analytics and things, but you would just see these lumpy things and you go into it and it says like institutional sale. that but that only worked for the purchase of the app, not for subscriptions, not for in at purchases. ⁓ I believe this one is all subscriptions. ⁓ I don't recall if it was also in at purchases and I don't have my notes right here, but ⁓ But the way it works there is a little different. Instead of getting so they the same thing, they can go in and say, I need 127 of these, and they get a discounted price. And we can talk about that in a second, the discounted price, how that works. But then now they says, okay, you have 127 of these. Who do you want to allocate them to? And they allocate them just like they would do with the rest of their apps. So they can say now they can say if your app is something that would appeal to that sort of a group, they could say, Okay, great. Well, we're getting these for our whole, you know, assign them to people and Like if that person leaves, I can pull it back from that person, give it to this person. And as far as, you know, in your app, like again, it it's just a a quantity purchase. They could do it if they're doing it in your app, like with the group purchasing, that that's a thing then that you have to show a user interface for to make it so they can choose a quantity or whatever. ⁓ however, if they're doing it ⁓ through like Apple Business or the school manager one, they're usually gonna do this through Apple's interface. And select it there. And so you'll just get, you know, the purchase notification like normal. And then when one of the people logs in with this, they'll you'll see that they've already purchased ⁓ a seat. And this is this is part of the store kit two API, is that correct? Correct. Yeah. Correct. And there's there's a session ⁓ WWDC video on it. So ⁓ should probably look at that one. Because you work with this with with one of your client apps, is that right? ⁓ yeah, I've got well, I've got some client apps that are ⁓ that are managed under the Enterprise Program, Apple Enterprise Program, which is again also through the Apple Business Manager and their MDM system. They they they do that's how the app gets on everyone's devices. They ⁓ someone goes and clicks something somewhere and it says, Okay, now everybody gets the next version of this app and and then they get updated and ⁓ and they can choose which devices get them and which ones don't. And but the way the the way for both of these ⁓ they're like kind of two p two halves of the same system. ⁓ the way the the discounts work is they're they're like kind of like the taxes. They're like ⁓ like a progressive inverse progressive tax. So like ⁓ if if if a quantity of one, let's say is ⁓ twenty dollars and you buy one, you get you pay twenty dollars. But let's ⁓ let's say you said at one they're twenty dollars. At two to nine they're fifteen dollars and ten or more is ⁓ four ninety nine. Let's say five dollars. If you set it up like that and I buy thirty of them, the first one is still gonna be at the twenty dollars. Number two through number nine are gonna be at the ⁓ whatever number I said, fifteen dollars. And I view it like a tax bracket, right? It's just like the tax brackets, yeah. Yeah. So so the first, you know, the first unit is is is more expensive than then the next ones are cheaper and the next ones are cheaper. So but you can You know, certainly say, well, hey, look, you if you do this, your average price is if you're getting fifty of them, your average price is gonna be pretty close to the to the higher number, ⁓ a lower number. Right, right. So as that number goes up, if if you say a hundred or a thousand, that that up at the thousand point y ⁓ that that number should be pretty low. So the average. Right. You could say, hey, you know, it's one to ten is, you know, twenty-five dollars and ⁓ eleven to ninety-nine is ⁓ fifteen dollars and everything over ninety nine is five dollars. You know, you could say that. And if you buy a thousand, well you're gonna be awfully close to the five dollar price, but overall. But that could be a subtle ⁓ it's a subtle pricing ⁓ nuance that that could be easy to overlook. You just think that, ⁓ everything if I'm buying a hundred of them then they're all five bucks each. Well that's not actually the case. Right, right. And it's not and and and it does matter because I and I don't know how this works, but ⁓ like if I buy ten now and I buy twenty later. Mm. How do I get charged then? Am I is the is a twenty a new batch of twenty where the first ten are still at the high price? I don't know. Okay. ⁓ I haven't looked into it to that extent, and but that's a question, I guess. I know it I know it applies to subscriptions. I don't know if it applies to single purchase. Single internet purchase, like a yeah. But that was sort of interesting. ⁓ gosh, there's so many things. ⁓ retention, the the customer retention APIs. Now, were you working on that, Dan? No, I was not. Weren't you working on something? You were working on some kind of ⁓ win back messaging or you talked about it, I thought. Mm-mm. I was it was ⁓ it was just subscription ⁓ store kit ⁓ notification server side. It that's not right. What does that do? Well, it's just taking your ⁓ it it's taking your your store kit code and putting it on the server. And that's that's what I was working on. So every every transaction to handle so it handles all the parts of your purchase on the server side and then And then your server can just tell your app what's what. Yes, yes. ⁓ yes, yeah, correct. My my the subscription service has moved to my server and and the server is my server is talking to Apple's server ⁓ when a purchase is made instead of it all being on device. The reason I did that was ⁓ because I wanted to be able to allow my beta testers to have everything unlocked. When you subscribe to an app on the beta, the subscription expiration time is is gr drastically accelerated. So there's some features on my on my social network that are that are behind a paywall, a subscription wall, that if you don't subscribe, you can't check into more than five places. So beta testers would have to constantly re subscribe if they wanted to check in and post from these locations. And it's because ⁓ because the beta subscription only lasts a short little bit. in the sandbox thing. Yeah. Yeah. It expires at I think the ⁓ I want to say the that a yearly subscription expires after a week. So that's that's not a great experience as a beta tester. So so I moved everything to the server and and then I just put a I I just put a true false thing on on a ⁓ on every user is beta tester. And I can from my end I can set just true false. I can just flip that to true and then they just get every ⁓ Okay. Okay. And and That's why I went through that whole process. But it was an interesting sounds like a process. Yeah. I mean ultimately it's it's it is better because you can ⁓ you know, you can manage ⁓ your your users, your subscription levels, and and features much more fine-grained. ⁓ and and I haven't looked at it for a couple of weeks, so I I couldn't get into the nuances, but ⁓ It is a great way to do it. There's some dark patterns that you can get into there because you know immediately if somebody unsubscribes or they cancel their renewal, you it it sends that notification immediately. And Apple's ⁓ the Apple's API does. So so you could s you you know, you could then go down that rabbit hole of of if you have gathered email addresses and you've registered to say that I'm gonna use these email addresses to serve, you know. And push notifications or something and say, Whoa, what are you doing, buddy? If I want to unsubscribe because I'm not happy with the app, I'm gonna unsubscribe. And that should be a message to the developer that hey, I'm losing I'm I'm ch people are churning. And w you know, th why are they churning? Where are they churning? Maybe, you It'd be great to be able to ask ⁓ though. Yeah. ⁓ good point. So there's that. Can like, whoa, looks like you're leaving. Can you just answer us one, two questions? Right. First question, what could we do better? What could we have done better here? And number two, how about if we give you a discount and you keep working? Right, right. Yeah. It's I I hate overwhelming people with that. I hate feeling overwhelmed with stuff like that. So I I don't do it. Plus I don't have any subscribers, so it's ⁓ it's not really a problem. That works. That was ⁓ yeah, because ⁓ no, so related to that, there's this retention messaging API that was in beta on a, you know, you had to be sort of accepted into their thing. And ⁓ I know Revenue Cat was doing something with that. ⁓ but my understanding is that in the fall here, ⁓ what we're gonna see is if you go to unsubscribe to something, you're gonna right there in that unsubscribe screen from Apple's thing, you're gonna see ⁓ You're gonna be able to have as a developer have a ⁓ a win back message and an offer for the user. And sounds like you might not get to know who the user is specifically, like you might know that ⁓ yeah, I don't I don't know exactly how what they're gonna offer there because they have sounds like they're gonna give you a couple different forms of messaging that you're gonna so you can have like prefab messages of different sorts that you could offer, but ⁓ and then you could say, Hey, ⁓ Sorry to see it go, you know. But ideally you would want to say, well, ⁓ boy, if this is someone that's really been using my app, ⁓ maybe I want to offer ⁓ something good, you know. but if it's long time, you know, they haven't really touched it in six months, well, but they just realize they're paying, then maybe I don't maybe there's no point to offering that, you know. ⁓ or at least maybe it could offer something different. I don't know what the level is there, but it sounds like that's gonna be right in that at that point of when you hit unsubscribe, it's gonna be s it's gonna give you an option to. Say, are you sure you want to unsubscribe? How about five ninety nine instead? I don't know totally how I feel about that, but I also don't know all the details, so and this is a Revenue Cat feature. No, this I'm sorry. This is an Apple App Store feature. Revenue Cat was part of the beta. So you could put in your like in your Revenue Cat dashboard, you could enter your something off of your App Store Connect into Revenue Cat to say, I want to try to be on this and they might put you on it and they might not, and it was like kind of a big thing ⁓ yet but yeah I you know I I have a perfect example for this. ⁓ maybe it's a perfect example. I just unsubscribed to ⁓ an app ⁓ that I was using and it was only it was $10 a year ⁓ and it's a a a project management can ban board app. And the developers ⁓ have not touched it in ⁓ I I they released it on the store and ⁓ I it's been at least six months I think I I just want I should probably look it up. But no changes, no updates have been done to it. And I thought, you know what? This ⁓ needs a lot of work. ⁓ and I'm gonna unsubscribe because I just it it's ⁓ you're clearly not focused on on this app and I'm not gonna pay for for something to be maintained. I I think that's a reason to to use subscriptions is ongoing support of the app. Absolutely. You're not supporting the app, I'm not gonna subscribe. ⁓ and so ⁓ there's there's a lot of ⁓ you know apps out there, a lot of products out there. And quite frankly, I want to build my own now. So ⁓ I would almost like I would like actually I'm just thinking and I've never thought about this before, but it would be great if Apple as perhaps part of this win back thing and messaging, if they'd let you show the customer a survey of like three two two questions or something. You know, like multiple choice. Like ⁓ you know or which of these, you know, what's the biggest problem with the app or I don't know, just something like, Hey, the guy's leaving. Let's ask him one question if we can. You know, he doesn't have to click it, but he could, and it's right there, maybe on one screen, you know, not multiple screens full, just like, hey, you're unsubscribing, you know, message from the app. Hey, sorry to seek co can you just tell us what's one thing area we could have done better? A, B, C, D, E. You know, it would be great to have that sort of ⁓ departing feedback. ⁓ 'cause just so often you just don't get that information, you know. Like you say right now, hey, I'm I'm happy that these people haven't been updating this and it's only ten dollars a year, but also they're doing nothing and it's got issues. So Right right. Well, we are out of time, Drew. ⁓ we've gone over a lot of news and ⁓ and we are we are out of time. ⁓ I actually have one more thing anyway. ⁓ it's really short. ⁓ on App Store Connect. So ⁓ see if the see how this resonates with you. On App Store Connect, there's right now there's like a trends tab and an apps tab and some ⁓ analytics, I think. ⁓ And one of the things they've said since WWTC, or maybe it was before that, that the ⁓ trends is gonna go away. And instead you're just gonna be able to see things within the app, in the apps area. And what ⁓ what they've they've added things in the apps area now to see like you know, the same kind of things you had in trends, like ⁓ you know, how many people downloaded the app, how many, what was your revenue, what was your after the fee, or were there subscription changes and that kind of thing. And they've added that, but now it's all per app, which a lot of times you do want to see it per app. but you also I feel like you lose this whole like what's my overview look like? ⁓ and you know, if you've got like one app that's ⁓ it's 99% of everything you do, then who cares? But if you have let's say a handful of dumb little apps that all of them don't each of them doesn't do much, it's really hard to have a sense looking at just the individual app screen app, ⁓ the per app. analytics screens to see how you're doing. Do you have a thought on that? Or not really? No, I do. It makes sense because ⁓ I mean underscore David Smith, right? David Smith. He he is ⁓ obviously ⁓ widget smith is I I I don't use it, but it it's probably his biggest ⁓ from what I understand. what is his ⁓ step counter plus plus he he's got he's known for having many pluses yeah pedometer pluses yeah plus plus every all the things ⁓ he's known for having a lot of apps and so for a person like him, then you want to look at the whole the whole picture of the business itself. And and yeah, you you get into the granularity of how is each individual app doing. But ⁓ I totally I totally get it. But is there a tool for this to to collaborate your entire the art picture? Not so far that I've seen. I I hope they I hope they they add something for that. And I can't imagine that people wouldn't lose their mind about it, but also the biggest people probably don't care because they have one product. One thing. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't seem like too hard of a of a problem to solve to ⁓ to collaborate. No, it doesn't. But it does seem like a problem that they're creating for no not necess an unnecessarily. So Yeah, you've you've added granularity and detail, which is nice, but you've also removed ⁓ the big picture. So Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all I had about that. I just wanted to say it a little bit. It's good. That's that's good. It's it's all part of the developer life, I think. Exactly. Exactly. Well, as you said, we are out of time. I appreciate ⁓ We are out of time, Drew, but this has been a great ⁓ great discussion of news, App Store Connect, and developer ⁓ the the the how we do things and how you get by with the ⁓ the the tools that you have. All right, well great. Good talking to you. Thanks, listeners. We'll talk to you soon.