Apple told WeChat and other Chinese social apps to disable “tip” functions, | Hacker News Reader

Apple told WeChat and other Chinese social apps to disable “tip” functions,

wsj.com

19 pointsxbmcuser46 comments

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-19/tencent-s...

April 19: "Tencent's WeChat Abolishes Tipping Feature on Apple iPhones"

"Tencent Holdings Ltd. is shutting down a popular feature on WeChat that allows iPhone users to tip emoji and content creators to comply with Apple Inc.’s policy on in-app purchases."

China seems the perfect place to call Apple's B.S. policies out. The government isn't afraid of confronting a global powerhouse if it threatens domestic companies with unfair trade practices. And Apple's whole running of the app store approval and payments policy and process is nothing but unfair.

I'd bet on Apple having more leverage with the government than Tencent just because Apple indirectly employs millions of workers.

Actually, I'd think the Chinese government has quite some leverage over Apple, too, since all their products are manufactured by Foxconn etc..

I wonder what negotiations and power struggles are going on behind the scenes?

Please, China doesn't give a shit about the Apple's app store and payment policy. It's a relationship; Apple does shit for China, (e.g., I'm sure the app store in China is heavily censored), China complies with some Apple pushback. They only disabled the functionality on iPhones, so the only reason they implemented it was on Apple's demand.

In what way are their policies unfair?

I wonder how long the iphone would last in China without WeChat if they were to ever decide to just not publish their app in the app store because of this.

I dont quite understand why Apple requires 30% cut here.

There are many other payment services App that allow you to transfer money from one person to another. And those are free from the 30% tax.

So why does tipping requires 30% cut?

( Both are totally different to In-App Purchase )

Because Apple wants a 30% cut and is big enough to force developers to accept it.

Because 30% has always been a screaming deal for developers too.

I'm old enough to remember when Ingram MicroD took 50%, and out of our half we had to pay for shipping, packaging, disk duplication, and pay them and stores to promote our products.

If it was a "screaming deal" for developers, it'd be popular based on merit alone and Apple wouldn't need to disallow other payment methods, yet they do.

Yea, that doesn't make sense. If I charge 30% to host foodcarts at my concert event, cart owners will agree only if it's a good deal. If someone else decides to tear open a hole in the fence and sneak their cart in, it doesn't mean it wasn't a good deal, it means they were cheating scumbags.

In Apples case they've paid developers tens of billions, at least 2x as much as all other mobile app stores combined, and never lacks for new apps from their developers. Their devs clearly think App Store access is worth 30%.

Tencent should man up and pay the 30% to Apple, and send the 70% to the Tippees.

Apple is not hosting anything in this case

In your analogy, there would only be two venues for food carts at all.

In that case, if I had a food cart and a family to feed, I'd tear a hole in the fence, too.

Apple allows anyone who follows the rules on the App Store.

> If I charge 30% to host foodcarts at my concert event, cart owners will agree only if it's a good deal.

They agree because it's the best deal. In your hypothetical and the case of IAPs, it's the best deal because it's the only deal. When the options are make no money and make a little money, you're going to take what little you can get. That by no means makes it good.

Devs have no choice. Users are caught in an Apple/Google duopoly and both app stores charge 30%. Devs can either pay their 30% or give up on IAP revenue as a whole.

Dealing with license management and account access and payment processing and chargebacks and international tax compliance and everything else I am not thinking of after only five seconds is actually a lot of work. Apple has a lot of revenue from the App Store, but almost no profit: it is something they run and have weird business model restrictions on to maintain device lock-in for users, not something that makes them much profit. In fact, Apple has often reported in public earning calls that the App Store mostly breaks even, and a judge reviewing Google's finances showed that they were losing money on the Android Market.

I run an app-store-like service myself with the same 70% split (which is a more honest way of describing the "30%") that has no forced restrictions (as you can always sidestep it and still distribute your products via my services), and vendors have often even shut down their own payment processing once trying mine as it is just so much easier: being able to concentrate on building your own applications rather than spending time on distribution is actually valuable.

Again: the reason Apple wants payments to go through their wallets and they want licenses for apps to be managed by their store and to control the device licensing model is to maintain platform lock-in for users. It is really important to them that when you buy your paltry $30 in apps--where even if Apple made all of the "30%" they would only net under $10--that that "investment" doesn't make you think twice about plunking down $600 on a new iPhone, where estimates have been made that Apple has a nearly 50% profit margin.

To make this work Apple needs to maintain all of this ludicrous platform control, as otherwise your custom licensing model is obviously going to support stuff like users getting discounts if not entirely free copies of your app for Android if they just bought it for iOS or charging upgrade fees for users who switch to the latest generation of device. I honestly don't believe that given their intense desire to maintain this control--which I will argue is the real problem here--that the 30% just falls out as a reasonable charge for what they are providing (in some cases whether you want the service or not, such as the app review process).

Exactly, it is not the 30%, it is more the lock in.

Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, etc would be glad to use their own payment systems

Apple doesn't charge for person to person transfers.

They charge for selling content through their platform. Tipping was just a way to skirt that rule.

Non paywalled article at https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/18/apple-chinese-chat-apps...

As a former MacRumors regular, I find it interesting to see that the even the Mac fans there are not in favor of Apple's decision, with a notable exception being a user who mentioned that without the app store, the apps would be nothing.

WeChat is huge in China. It's used for everything. It's bigger than Apple's or Google's app stores. I expect (and hope for) Apple to lose this battle.

MacRumor regulars have turned quite sour on Apple.

Don't get me wrong. It's still a pro Apple site with a pro Apple fan base, but it has a very strong contingent of Mac fans, many of who've been around since well before OSX, who feel, justifiably, completely neglected by Apple. Despite the fact that one could make a strong argument that these Mac fans are the reason Apple existed long enough to even make the iPod in the first place.

> Despite the fact that one could make a strong argument that these Mac fans are the reason Apple existed long enough to even make the iPod in the first place.

There's an interesting pop poli-sci book called The Dictator's Handbook (which despite the name draws examples from corporations and small-town governments in addition to actual dictatorships) which examines how people come to power. It generally works out to keeping the "essential" group happy. At one point the users you mention were "essentials" but they have been supplanted by other users. Apple no longer needs to pander to them, so they don't.

No one has time to post on MacRumors unless they are super pissed off. These posters are representative of little to nothing.

I'm pretty sure the one guy that was on Apple's side misunderstood the issue. He seemed to think WeChat was taking the tips and not that it was a person to person transfer.

Two things. First, it is really troubling if Apple wants to impose a tax on transactions between app users. Tipping is used often in China (for example, in the form of "red envelopes" at Chinese New Year) and a 30% cut for Apple is simply incomprehensible and downright immoral. Second, the day that WeChat gets out of the App Store is the day that Apple becomes irrelevant in China. If the story is true, I am afraid somebody at Apple has not thought this thing through.

Apple doesn't charge for person to person transfers, or buying physical goods. They only charge if you are selling digital products (apps, features, content) through the App Store. Just those things that cost Apple to store and transfer.

Apple doesn't store and transfer any in app store purchases, nor hey store or transfer any subscription

Apple stores and transfers all of the apps that make purchases and subscriptions. Trillions upon trillions of bytes.

You must be joking.

Do you really think WeChat pays Apple for the file transfers for hundreds of millions of copies of WeChat to customer iPhones every month (when you include updates). Essentially at least 100 Megabytes times 100 to 200 million a month.

Apple has been doing diff updates for a while, meaning that the actual bandwidth consumed for updates is most likely much less than 100mb

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1779/_index...

Even with diffs it's a huge cost.

Yes, they pay with they developer account.

If you don't like it, please, tell Apple (or Google) that bandwidth has to be paid.

Until then, it is irrelevant if the app is 10kb or it is downloaded 12.000.000.000 times.

It's entirely relevant. That 30% pays the costs of the app store, and bandwidth is probably the biggest cost of running the app store.

Please show me where Apple says the $99 I pay every year pays for their Sales, Marketing, Distribution and Operating costs of running the app store and getting me customers.

Please, show me were the bandwith has to be paid. Until then, it is irrelevant if an app is 1kb or 1gb

You really believe someone is going to host a store for free where you get to distribute as many copies of whatever you want?

I guarantee bandwidth has to be paid for. If Apple doesn't write that check the App store ceases to exist.

"We don't charge anything as the platform, but Apple gets 30 percent for doing nothing," one of the executives reportedly fumed."

Uh, Apple's servers hosted and distributed hundreds of millions of copies of your apps. For free.

Apple is clearly doing the right thing here. They can't charge developers 30% to sell apps and content through their platform, then allow one developer to skirt the rule by calling it "tipping".

Tencent can just man up and pay the thirty percent like the rest of us have to do.

The difference is that if Tencent pulls WeChat from the appstore, Chinese people will (grudgingly) leave the iPhone for some Android model. They need WeChat more than any other app. Actually Tencent could ask Apple money for continuing their app on their platform.

> Apple is clearly doing the right thing here. They can't charge developers 30% to sell apps and content through their platform, then allow one developer to skirt the rule by calling it "tipping". Tencent can just man up and pay the thirty percent like the rest of us have to do.

I think you're confused and you don't know what the case is about.

By the way, I didn't knew that Apple Developer Program was free? Guess what it is included in the yearly price.

$99 a year is about as close to free as you can.

And I know exactly what it's about. No one is getting "tips" without providing services or content through the app.

> And I know exactly what it's about. No one is getting "tips" without providing services or content through the app.

So, you would be glad to pay 30% of your banking transactions to Apple, isn't? Because this case is exactly the same as Paypal, banking applications or booking applications

Great, we agree these tips are compensation for content being offered through WeChat, now you want to argue whether Apple's 30% is reasonable.

I don't need Apple to do my banking and I don't need to pay Apple if I want to sell apps, I can sell through Cydia, or write apps on platforms that let me distribute over the internet.

If I want to sell to iPhone/Ipad Apple customers through the App store is the only time I need to pay. 30% is an amazing deal, given historically for software distribution you'd pay Ingram Micro D 50% of revenues, and still have to pay for disks/duplication/packaging and pay stores and Ingram Micro D to promote you.

> Great, we agree these tips are compensation for content being offered through WeChat,

Yes, like Amazon physical goods

> If I want to sell to iPhone/Ipad Apple customers through the App store is the only time I need to pay.

They are not doing that

With IPhone's market share of just 9% in China, WeChat should drop support for the IPhone.

They probably have the resources to buy or develop a jailbreak. If not software then maybe even hardware via the connector, and have it installed in all those little telefone shops in China.

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