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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

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

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