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Comment by coupdejarnac | Hacker News Reader

For my apps, I used the affiliate program to get back some of the Apple tax.

So from my perspective, this is just the latest in a long line of developer hostile developments from Apple.

Sidenote- I tried deploying an app to testers on Testflight for the first time, and the app was rejected. What a complete waste of time. It was rejected for not running on iPad properly and not working with ipv6. Not exactly too frickin helpful when I needed to get the app out to testers/stakeholders asap. Fortunately Tryouts.io don't want to waste my time.

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>For my apps, I used the affiliate program to get back some of the Apple tax. >So from my perspective, this is just the latest in a long line of developer hostile developments from Apple.

I know this is a common practice but it's not the intended use of the tool and therefore I think it's quite a stretch to say this is a "hostile development towards developers". I understand the frustration, though.

It's a logical practice as well. You're the one generating the user's interest and directing them to the app in the store to get the sale. So, it would be logical that you'd want to pay less of the Apple tax.

I think it actually is (one of) the intended uses of this tool. I've been told directly by the managers of this program at Apple that it's meant to reward app developers for driving traffic to the App Store.

What's the point?

They don't want you to come from a web page that you arrived from after a google search or a facebook ad.

They want you to go to the AppStore app first. And search there and see advertisements there.

They want people to be engaged.

It would be amazing if this were a precursor to the "Apple tax" being lowered. If Apple is going to lower their 30% take on app sales, then perhaps that requires lowering these affiliate commissions. I know this is probably wishful thinking, but as the author of this[1], I will hold out hope...

[1] http://blog.anylistapp.com/2015/02/open-letter-to-tim-cook-r...

I did the same, and since the majority of my sales were generated through my own site rather than directly on the app store, it was relatively successful too.

This represents a roughly 6% cut in post-Apple revenue... on sales of our own apps. Unbelievable.

What is the "Apple tax"?

30% and 30% for subscription for the first year and 15% after 12 months of subscription.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-changes-app-store-reven...

AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits.

> AKA Highway robbery and Google doesn't do any better. It should be in the single digits.

Why single digits?

why almost a third of your revenue?

Which for many developers is more then their own cut of an app?

It's a shit-ton more than most musicians get from a record label deal.

It's also way more than you'll get shipping for XBox or PS4.

Well, when I was actually working for a company that billed me out to clients I would have killed to get 70% of my billable rate.

Because a fair rate is always determined by what number base you use.

Why not? They make plenty of money elsewhere and there's no value-add here aside from the storefront that you're forced to use anyway. It's basically a self-enforced monopoly.

> Why single digits?

What's is their cost? When you look at an ebook Apple makes more money then the Author of a book. Most developers don't make a profit but Apple is guaranteed a profit form each purchase. http://alltopstartups.com/2016/03/30/do-apps-still-make-mone...

When the creator makes less then the deliver there is a problem. When the deliver makes money from purchase 1 and the developer might never see a penny after thousands of purchases there is a problem. A developer makes an app that cost her $10,000 and she must sell $14,300 to break even and not make a dime. Apple will make $4,299.

well, that's not necessarily fair. Apple has done an incredible amount of work to give devs and content creators an audience in the first place. Their rules are no different from many others. The economics of a "good business" need to take into account the delivery costs. Just because those costs are borne by a 3rd party (apple), does not mean those costs aren't real. Yes, shifting the costs more on apple would change the economics for app developers, but as long as the economics remain great for apple, they keep developing better services, devices, and platforms for devs to use (and, they give some of that away for very cheap or free).

I know quite a few App Store Developers and I don't think a single one would say that Apple does the following:

> they keep developing better services, devices, and platforms for devs to use (and, they give some of that away for very cheap or free).

Follow the money and Apple, Google and Valve are making a killing off the backs of creators. The cost of delivery is what 1% if that?

Follow the money and Apple, Google and Valve are making a killing off the backs of creators. The cost of delivery is what 1% if that?

Well, if the cost of delivery and maintenance of these platforms is so low and the charge to developers is so high, why not arbitrage this? Create your own trusted multi-billion hardware/software platform with expedited payment and protection from cheating, and you can cut developers a better deal!

Twitch is, gog.com, gamersgate.com, humblebundle.com, and etc. etc. etc.

I'm an iOS developer and I'd definitely say that.

I think you should forget about "hard" costs. They're completely irrelevant to how valuable something is.

You're right. This is something that annoys me me when people evaluate thing. The values of something is of much more important thing than just cost. Its like punishing poeple who optimize things to reduce cost

Apple, Google, and Valve are creators, and they're also providing the service of being middlemen for you. They deal with hosting, serving, taking payments, so on and so forth. There are AAA companies that have found Steam so much better for distribution that they no longer sell any other way (look at Paradox Studios, for example).

And while you're locked into Apple (not that anyone is forcing you - and Apple basically created that whole industry), with Google and Valve, you're free to run your own setup and deal with all the middleman stuff yourself. 30% to hop onto their infrastructure and let them deal with bad payments is a pretty good deal.

In short, you can always tell the people inexperienced in business in these conversations, because they think that 30% is a crushing 'take'. 30% is actually pretty damn good - normally in retail it's what you'd get, rather than what they'd take.

In the case of Google and Valve, if developers think that the commissions are too high they could always try to sell the software on their own site.....

They make the hardware and the operating system!

I know math. But my point is that no solution will ever be satisfactory. Is 9% too high? 6%? 3%?

Also, think on the reverse situation. Apple currently makes 0$ on the sale of free apps but obviously these apps have a cost in storage and distribution. ¿What is the "fair" proposition in that case?

> Apple currently makes 0$ on the sale of free apps

That is 100% not true and probably right now Apple makes most of their App Store money from free apps.

98% of Google Play income is from free apps.

https://www.smartappmarketer.com/how-do-free-apps-make-money...

Apps that use in-app purchases are not free apps, they are priced apps that defer payment. There are millions of real free apps in the AppStore.

That's a bit of a broad brush statement. An IAP could be any one of:

    * An upgrade of some sort (often ad removal)
    * In-game currency (which may or may not be a defacto requirement)
    * A tip to the developer with no added functionality

Neither of those carries an implication for the pricing status of the title. It's all context-dependent.

Apple makes at least $99/yr for each free app (Developer's program fee)

Apple makes $99/yr for each free app developer. There's nothing stopping any developer from releasing multiple apps.

For like 95% of apps the $99 yearly developer fee more than covers the storage and distribution. A terabyte of data transfer is about $100 on S3, most apps are a few MB at most and will never reach that many downloads in a year, even with re-downloads and updates.

The fair thing is anything lower than what it is now. Distribution costs have dropped dramatically, and user trust has increased so accepting credit cards on your own really isn't as huge of a deal as it was ten years ago. Visibility is now zero from the App Store as well which was also a benefit back in the early days.

Free apps must, just like paid apps, still get reviewed by human Apple employees on every release, which (I would assume) is a far greater cost than distribution, and might heavily outweigh the $99 charge in the case of complex free apps like Facebook or Chrome.

If prices of anything were ever determined by the price of a terabyte of data, you'd be right. However, in this case, they are not. The price of data is wholly irrelevant to this discussion.

As an app developer, I can tell you that visibility is not zero. If you understand how the store works, there is still excellent money to be made there. The 30% cut isn't outrageous. You just can't be pushing shovelware.

> What's is their cost?

Cost isn't relevant, the commission is because Apple brings X hundred million credit cards to your door and presumably increases sales by at least that much.

> Most developers don't make a profit

Because most apps are garbage?

> but Apple is guaranteed a profit form each purchase. When the creator makes less then the deliver there is a problem. When the deliver makes money from purchase 1 and the developer might never see a penny after thousands of purchases there is a problem. A developer makes an app that cost her $10,000 and she must sell $14,300 to break even and not make a dime. Apple will make $4,299.

Except Apple eats all the credit card fees, server fees (hosts free apps for free), built the platform with an install base of hundreds of millions with a demo that spends more than other platforms etc.

> Cost isn't relevant, the commission is because Apple brings X hundred million credit cards to your door and presumably increases sales by at least that much.

Except that developers have demonstrated with real numbers that that is not always true: https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2017/02/10/piezos-life-outsid...

Aside from the fact that I didn't claim it was a universal rule, are we drawing big conclusions from sample size n=1? How about looking at the amount of money developers made from app store vs google play by year?

http://bgr.com/2016/07/20/ios-vs-android-developers-profits-...

If we still lived in 2008 this is relevant. But it is now 2017, server costs are so close to zero for an app binary download, and credit card transactions can be had for 2.9% + 30 cents with Stripe. App visibility used to be a bonus, but today your app will get seen by literally no one if you just upload it just because of the sheer number of apps being released every day. And that is only mentioning the "good parts" of being on the App Store.

The bad parts: - No customer data, this is fine, except for when the expectation is that you will host the application for that specific user indefinitely. But this leads into the next point...

- No ability to do customer support - Want to refund a user? We have to tell them to go to Apple. Want to give a user a free subscription month? Can't do that, as subscriptions will just continue to auto-renew on apple's servers. Want to give an existing user a discount on a new app? Can't do that without some super awkward app bundle. Want to even know that a user purchased your app in the first place? I hope you collected an email when they signed up...

- Arbitrary app review process - my company has had an app stuck "in review" for two weeks. We pulled it and resubmitted and it was available later that day. What?

- Search. And now Search Ads. Search highly favors volume over user satisfaction. Have a small user base but impeccably high retention rate? Who cares, we have another app with 10x the downloads and a 2.5 star rating that will rank above you. Also your competitor is buying your app name as a keyword to also bump you down one more slot.

- Subscriptions: They pushed these really hard last WWDC, but in iOS 10.3 users still have to find the subscriptions page buried in settings and use a crappy web view emulating iOS to cancel.

So for "all that" Apple takes 30%...

I appreciate all Apple has done in creating the market, but they need a way to make it actually sustainable for things that aren't SaaS or candy crush clones with in-app currency. Paid apps are dead along with anything wanting to be "pro" level on the iPad. My main issue is that almost all of these things can be fixed with some small changes to how things work. Responding to reviews was a definite step in the right direction, but they still have a ways to go to actually be worth 30% in 2017. There is a reason you can't sign up for Spotify Premium in the iOS app anymore.

The parent's real meaning behind "bringing credit cards to your door" is not quite addressed by cheap CDNs or Stripe. It's the fact that Apple has gotten these people to sign up for user accounts and pair credit cards to those accounts, and then authorize devices to one-tap purchase your app using those accounts+cards. They've pre-qualified your leads through 95% of the funnel before they get to you.

If someone is looking at your software within a Store (Apple's, Google's, Valve's, whoever), you've essentially already "won" in terms of likelihood of conversion. You will still have to do some inbound-marketing work up-front to drive the user to that Store-page, but that's way less effort than the several-funnel-step process required to qualify and convince a "cold lead" your app, and your site, and its CC processor, are all safe to interact with, and that your app actually does what it claims to do.

> Why single digits?

Competitors to the Mac app store charge in the single digit range, whether it's Paypal or Stripe at about 2.9%, or a more full-service offering like Paddle at 5% + 50c, FastSpring at 5.9% + 95c, or Avangate at 4% - 8%.

...You think Paypal is a competitor to the app store?

To the Mac App Store, in that you can sell your software from your own website & take the payments using Paypal.

Fastspring / Avangate / Paddle are better comparisons, as they also handle license/serial keys, file hosting, subscription management & tax accounting like the Mac App Store does, and have been doing so before the App Store ever existed.

The EU just limited credit card fees to be below 0.25%.

Apple and Google can have their 30%, but only if they allow third party stores to exist just equally.

There's a somewhat fair way of adjudicating this discussion, where the truth is obviously neither "highway robbery" nor "best deal ever", and that's the Mac App store.

Mac developers are free to choose distribution via the App store, or to roll their own and not pay a cent to Apple.

I don't have any numbers (and I'd guess very few people do), but I'd guess that the majority of developers is still in the App store, even though there were a few high-profile defections. OTOH, the Mac app store may be <50% in total revenue because the really expensive stuff is usually distributed independently (Adobe, for example, is big enough not to need the platform).

So right now I'd say most iOS developers are probably still getting a positive return on investment. Although that doesn't mean that it's a completely fair price–Apple is probably getting the lion's share of the App Store's value.

Apple takes 30% of the purchase price for app sales on the app store.

Apple tax to me also means the average ~$1000/year I have to spend on replacing otherwise completely perfect Apple hardware that gets conveniently software upgraded to be too old for normal daily functions :)

What on earth are you buying regularly? Several 4 year old iPhones?

If a computer costs $3000 and you save up $1000 a year to buy it, in 3 years you can buy that computer.

I question your decision-making if you aren't doing bleeding-edge graphics programming and are replacing a $3,000 computer every three years.

Three years ago was when I got my current retina MBP, I do stuff on it that's considerably more demanding than iOS app development, and I expect to replace this in 2020.

Hah, I can barely get the hardware on a heavily used laptop to last 2 years, let alone over 3. Shit is just junk, Apple stuff included. HDMI port failed on my new Macbook.

Alternatively, they are sane enthusiasts who enjoy using and taxing state of the art hardware. Or they are gamers. Or both. I could say I question the decision making of someone (especially a hacker) who doesn't upgrade their laptop every six years. But that would be rude.

> Alternatively, they are sane enthusiasts who enjoy using and taxing state of the art hardware

If you're complaining about the "Apple tax" of hardware in a thread about Apple taking 30% off the top of an App Store sale, then it stands to reason that you're talking about using that hardware to build applications that would be hit by the first. But even if you overlook the "sail into a topic and go grind that axe" non sequitur of it, the complaint here was that software was being "upgraded" to the point where it no longer suffices for "normal daily functions"--which is kinda silly, Sierra is about as performant on my older MBP (a 2011 midrange one) as OS X ever was even if applications running on it have gotten more grabby, but that's not Apple's fault either.

(But to be clear: gaming? Hey, that's totally fine. I keep a moderately recent gaming rig, myself. But I don't then turn around and complain about the "tax" of my own choices, because that would be transcendentally dumb.)

Well, I agree with everything you wrote here.

Above that, the resale value of Macs is great. I typically buy a new MacBook every 1.5 years. But I can sell the old one for 75% of the purchase price. 300 Euro per year for a cutting edge machine is not a lot, especially if your income depends on it.

But a 3 years old $3000 computer won't have been obsoleted by software updates (the OP contention). So... that won't be an issue.

Probably a base model iPhone every 2.5 years @ ~$720 after tax/state fees, and $1645.90 for a base model MacBook Pro every 3 years. Figure OP might bump some specs up to hit the $1k spend a year mark, but minimum your spending $800 a year for a decent environment to target iOS.

And this is why I haven't made any apps for iOS :P

OP said: "replacing otherwise completely perfect Apple hardware that gets conveniently software upgraded to be too old for normal daily functions"

For iOS v10, the iPhone 5, which was released in 2012, is still supported. So no, Apple is not forcing you to purchase a new iPhone every 2.5 years.

No, I was pulling that 2.5 year figure from my prior life of selling cellphones to businesses and the occasional consumer. On average 40% of a wireless account will upgrade per year, so about every 2.5 years you'll see a line upgrade devices.

Its great that Apple supports the iPhone 5 still, but the user experience on an iPhone 5 is different from an iPhone 7, and its hard to optimize for a device you don't have that is multiple generations newer.

If you're developing on Apple hardware in Xcode, you have a number of simulators available in the development environment to test/optimize most of that. I'm sure someone will come up with plenty of reasons that this isn't good enough for some developers, but it's not something I ran into when I was developing for iOS.

What you have to optimize exactly?

If it runs fine on a iPhone 5, it runs better on an iPhone 7.

You are not writing drivers, you don't need to optimize anything.

Look at the costs for developing for a VR environment ($5K+), Xbox, PS4, or literally any other platform.

Android's computer requirements are more modest, but if you're a serious Android developer you'll need to have at least one of the flagship phones from every major vendor to be sure your stuff runs properly. That can mean dishing out thousands a year for the latest Android device from Samsung, Motorola, and Google itself, normally unlocked so you're not also paying for service you don't need.

If all you're doing is building web sites, maybe you can hack it on a Linux desktop with Windows in a VM. Anything else requires more hardware.

Definitely, VR dev can cost a pretty penny. The only reason I have a VR capable rig is cause I was given the CPU & GPU by a friend who reviews hardware after he was done with them.

Android has low development requirements, but you can definitely get by without a flagship phone from each of the major vendors, one mid-range device will usually suffice.

Wrt web development, why bother with a Windows VM? It either renders in Firefox & Chrome or it doesn't, and if IE/Safari can't hack it, tough luck, you get the JS free version of my web app for being a steaming pile. I'm not willing to waste resources on dying platforms, that is silly.

VR is expensive, but $5K is really overstating it. I've done VR development very happily on my desktop with a 6700K and a 980Ti and, even with a VR headset (I had a free demo kit so I didn't buy it) it'd have been under $2500 all-told. Xbox One development these days is "get an Xbox One you can keep in developer mode" and a sub-$2,000 PC that'll remain relevant for five years at a time. If you're a spec-chaser, it'll be expensive. If you're a normal solo developer, not so much (and EA doesn't swap its workstations every year, either).

Android has also settled to the point where I disagree on the need for multiple flagship devices (most people I know develop on a single device and use something like Device Farm to test more widely, though this doesn't work so well for game development.

For that money you also get a great laptop which you probably need anyway. If you don't, you can also use a Mac mini which isn't nearly as expensive and lasts for a pretty long time.

You can also use the iPod Touch for iOS development if you don't want to buy an iPhone.

Eh, I'd hate to own a MBP again, it just can't handle my lifestyle. With my current Thinkpad, everything is repairable, a new screen is $45 for 1440x900 @ 14in, DisplayPort is right there for my external monitor, and it can take a beating without issue.

I've thrown it in the back of my pickup and let it slam side to side as I drove all over town, no worse for wear. Speaker fell from 20ft up and busted the screen once, and an angry former friend punched it and broke the last one, but I was able to get a new screen same day and swap it in both instances. Took me two screws and less than 5 minutes to be back up and rolling again.

If I need more than an i5, 8GB ram & an SSD, I've got a new KVM box that I can use as a desktop easily.

Wrt iPod Touch as an iOS development target, that would likely work for some applications, but if your app involves voice or seeing how performance is over cellular, it'd be non-optimal. Same for using an iPhone 5, your missing out on features that newer devices bring to the table, so you can't optimize for them/leverage them.

On another note, the Mac Mini is one of the most neglected product lines out there that Apple is currently selling, akin to their routers before they finally killed them off (which was a mercy kill).

Mac Mini: http://www.macworld.com/article/3154027/macs/what-the-mac-ne...

Whereas that 3 year old Dell laptop and Samsung phone are humming along quite nicely?

FWIW I just replaced my 5 year old MacBook Air, but only because I wanted to. It was still working perfectly well - and is now my flatmate's main computer.

Until last month my wife was using an LG G2 (2013 flagship), and it was still going strong. What killed it? A broken screen due to being dropped, and we decided that it was probably time for an upgrade rather than repairing a 4 year old phone.

Which, in the days before the Apple App Store, when one had to contact Verizon or AT&T to get your app available to cell phones, was the other way around. They would take 70%, and give you 30%.

I never had any issues sideloading J2ME apps...

How did you go about selling them?

I used a J2ME Twitter client where you paid via Paypal and entered an activation code - the shareware model.

You wouldn't go to Verizon, you would need to get a publisher, which was very hard to get.

How quickly people forget this. It went quickly from Apple is changing the game, and giving developers an unprecedented cut of the sale of their apps. And for their 30% they host it, they process the credit cards, they provide the iCloud infrastructure and notifications for free, they make it searchable in their store. No one said it wasn't a good deal.

But a few years pass, and now it's the Apple Tax? Some people could promote and sell it themselves for less. A lot less? Maybe, maybe not. But most of us could never ever do it for the 30%. Why does everyone think they're the smartest one in the room these days? Odds are, you're really not. Sorry. You're just not.

Well appstore is a walled monopoly and has pretty awful discovery. There's a huge tail and only the top 10 really make it.

They are using their monopolistic stance to kill others. But then it's their platform and they can do as they please. They gotta make the $$$ to keep shareholders happy with ever expanding profits.

Welcome to America.

Just look at Android, despite having 85% or more of the smartphone market...

What you say is great if I was able to install Apps from anywhere and not limited to the App Store.

Getting approved was also a months long process that required a substantial upfront investment in bizdev, legal, and custom engineering. And you had to do this for every single carrier, which was extra fun internationally.

A lot of people came to iOS not from cell phone development, but from developing for the desktop, where 'store' fees did not apply most of the time.

This is true, and it's also why apps hardly existed in those days. But really it just shows that the market has moved from having the mobile companies as rent-takers to Apple as a slightly more generous rent-taker. Neither the 70% nor 30% is really the product of a market process.

The counter-argument is of course the PC era, where you could sell stuff and give 0% to the manufacturer and OS vendor.

I admire you app store developers -- I really do. To me Apple feels like working for a restaurant -- always finding out a way to pass on more costs down to the waiters and waitresses and support staff, and reaping more of the profits themselves.

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