We just yesterday overhauled our in-app purchasing system for the first time since 2010, in response to Apple updating their rules on June 4th to permit developers of cross-platform apps to distribute stuff outside of the App Store as long we don't advertise that in-app + offer the same stuff within the App Store too.
Things you'll notice right away:
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Also, the My Orders system is currently down for maintenance but when it's back online it will be nothing but a form you enter your email address on to have your purchases re-sent to you; no more passwords, since absent iOS/Android transfers there's not really any 'action' you might want to authorize. (we automatically turned old Palm / Windows Mobile licenses that had not yet been activated on iOS/Android into iOS/Android licenses with new Registration IDs) This has the added benefit of reducing our security exposure (no risk of somebody hacking our database / somehow unscrambling your reused-even-though-it-really-shouldn't-be My Orders password / using it somewhere else) and making it easier for us to comply with GDPR please-forget-my-email requests (which I don't believe we're actually legally obligated to do in the case of a customer order retrieval database but nevertheless we might as well make customers happy if they'd prefer that we no longer have a copy of their email address on our server).
Sometime next week we'll berolling out support for activating purchases made outside of Pleco on-device (so if you buy something from Outlier or whoever you can just click on a link and it'll activate correctly on your device with your current Registration ID) and also adding some new payment methods to our online store (looks like it'll most likely be Alipay + WeChat Pay (note that these will only work for USD and maybe Euro accounts, they won't let us accept payments in RMB), Apple/Google Pay, and possibly also SEPA or Giropay or something else for our many German customers).
Things you'll notice right away:
- There's no longer any separation between iOS and Android; any Registration ID from either platform will work on both, and you can now buy all iOS and Android Pleco add-ons at our web store.
- Likewise, all of your purchases are now lumped together in a single license with a single Registration ID, so you won't get a new one every time you Restore Purchases. (all of your old IDs will still work, they just all point to the same license now)
In a few cases we may have lumped too many purchases under one ID, or given some purchases to the wrong ID, e.g. if you shared an in-app purchase with a friend by logging into your account on their device; we're going through and trying to find / sort out those cases manually now, and we've designed the system to ensure that even if everything doesn't match up, purchases that you made from your current ID will still restore, but if you see any weird behavior / add-ons you don't think you should have / missing add-ons you do think you should have please let us know. (also, if you did in fact share something like that but don't want your friend to have access to all of your purchases please let us know - we won't delete your account or anything, we just want to make sure everyone has what they're supposed to)
Also, if you don't like the fact that you have dozens of different IDs associated with your account and would like to consolidate it to just one, contact us and we can now finally do something about that. - On iOS (as was already the case on Android), we now automatically restore purchases when you first open Pleco, no more accidentally-dismissed prompts or whatever. We also look for changes in your App Store receipt file + refresh your purchases when we find them, which will in most cases mean that when you buy something on one device it'll automatically activate on others that share that Apple ID without you having to manually "Restore Purchases." (you will still have to manually refresh purchases made from other places, though)
- Purchases made on a different Apple/Google ID, or a different platform, or on our website, or on the Outlier / ABC Cantonese Kickstarters, or wherever else will now be attached to purchases made on your current ID; the upshot of that is that as long as we can find *some* previous purchase to restore, all of your other purchases should also come back, and you'll no longer have that situation where you hit "Restore Purchases" and the OCR or stroke order or whatever else you bought on iOS/Android comes back but the stuff you bought on Palm doesn't and you have to dig around in your old emails to find the ID to enter to activate that.
)Also, the My Orders system is currently down for maintenance but when it's back online it will be nothing but a form you enter your email address on to have your purchases re-sent to you; no more passwords, since absent iOS/Android transfers there's not really any 'action' you might want to authorize. (we automatically turned old Palm / Windows Mobile licenses that had not yet been activated on iOS/Android into iOS/Android licenses with new Registration IDs) This has the added benefit of reducing our security exposure (no risk of somebody hacking our database / somehow unscrambling your reused-even-though-it-really-shouldn't-be My Orders password / using it somewhere else) and making it easier for us to comply with GDPR please-forget-my-email requests (which I don't believe we're actually legally obligated to do in the case of a customer order retrieval database but nevertheless we might as well make customers happy if they'd prefer that we no longer have a copy of their email address on our server).
Sometime next week we'll be
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