Linked List: October 7, 2021

Thursday, 7 October 2021

Paddle In-App Purchase for iOS 

Paddle:

The Epic Games v. Apple verdict clears the way for app creators to choose an alternative to Apple’s payment system (and its 15-30% fee!). But choose the wrong provider and you’ll be burdened with managing payment and subscription logic, taxes, fraud, and buyer support.

Paddle In-App Purchase will let app creators replace Apple’s In-App Purchase without worrying about any of that.

Paddle is charging a 10 percent commission for transactions under $10, and 5 percent plus $0.50 per transaction at or above $10.

It’s unclear to me exactly how Paddle’s SDK works. They’re calling it “in-app purchase”, but it sounds like it redirects to Paddle’s website in Safari (or whatever your default browser on iOS is). If it redirects to a website, I think it might be allowed; if they’re processing transactions in-app, it’s not going to be allowed.

iOS 15 and Google AMP 

Jeff Johnson:

For the past several days at least, Google search results have not included AMP links on iOS 15, but they still include AMP links on iOS 14. I’ve determined that Safari’s User-Agent makes the difference. (You can spoof the User-Agent on iOS using the Safari web inspector on macOS.) […]

Important Update: I’ve received a statement from Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison: “It’s a bug specific to iOS 15 that we’re working on. We expect it will be resolved soon.”

What a weird bug. It’s made weirder by the (I think) coincidence that there are a bunch of popular new extensions for Safari that redirect AMP links to regular non-AMP web pages. I’ve used all three of these extensions, and they’re all great:

  • StopTheMadness — Johnson’s own $8 extension, that offers a whole bunch of functionality to block shitty website behavior.

  • Amplosion — $3 extension from Apollo developer Christian Selig. Wins for best icon for sure.

  • Overamped — $2 extension from Joseph Duffy. Simple and focused.

From the DF archive, January 2017: “The Problem With AMP”.

ActiveTab: $2 Safari Extension That Highlights the Active Tab 

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that this is a thing.