Hello and welcome to The Tech Brief. Today’s top story: HEY, the subscription email service from Basecamp, is finally for sale on the iPhone in the US. Founder David Heinemeier Hansson calls this the culmination of a battle against Apple’s “gangster attempt to extort 30% of our HEY revenues.” After risking everything, HEY secured a four-year truce with Apple, and now users can sign up directly in the app and link out to a web-based checkout.

This breakthrough follows the Epic Games lawsuit—spending over $100 million to challenge Apple—which led to developers being allowed to link to their own billing systems. As Hansson puts it, Apple’s real issue wasn’t just the 30% toll but an “obsession with collecting the easiest billions Apple has ever made.”

With this change, HEY users will no longer face awkward burner-account setups. Instead, you can subscribe for $99 a year via a straightforward web flow, all while keeping the direct customer relationship. That’s it for today’s update—stay tuned for more.
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