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Comment by wand3r | Hacker News Reader

The Apple store seems good for small apps because the “tax” pays for discovery/marketing, distribution, billing & payment, lends credibility to the application, etc. This is especially true for single purchases.

Recurring revenue is a much different proposition— even for small or first time apps. A player like netflix which handles it’s own marketing, payment and all other ancilliary services doesn’t need to anything the apple store is offering other than distribution. I would understand if apple took $1 or some one time download fee but to regularly claim 30% of Netflix revenue seems like a stretch. While I think apple could make the case that they signed up through iOS, i think it is equally fair for Netflix to disable this option.

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> The Apple store seems good for small apps

This is simply not true. As a small app developer, I can tell you first hand that Apple only promotes and supports larger apps in the ecosystem. It is the exception, not the rule, when they promote a smaller app.

As a developer, you are on your own on the marketing and discovery front. The billing infrastructure you allude to would be easily replaceable with a dozen or so startups and wouldn't warrant a 30 percent hit that Apple charges.

As more and more big players like this choose to move away from transactions in the app stores we may see a lowering of that 30% margin. It's way too high to last. If it came down to something sub 5% it would make a lot more sense.

I have to agree with grandparent. You can't scale down international infrastructure like this. The cost per sale for someone managing a store for you has a certain minimum cost per month plus an amount per sale and per return.

Of course they're going to hype the big games. It's opportunity cost. Advertisement leads to sales, but feeding a hype train gets you more. If they stop advertising the hot new game to showcase yours then that person is not getting promoted. The guy who had no problems ignoring your game gets promoted and now everybody answers to them.

Is it awesome? No. Do I like it? Not really. But it's rational, and getting large companies to be rational is often better than you can expect.

The fallacy there is that their push to promote big Warner is mostly promoting toxic games that milk and dime users because freemium games is where money is at.

It's no coincidence that on both stores you cannot filter out apps that have in app purchases

s/Warner/earners/ sorry

Except that Apple doesn't hype the big games. They never have.

Go look through the Today/Games section right now. All of the featured games will be from super high quality indie developers. It isn't the ones that make the most money.

> This is simply not true. As a small app developer, I can tell you first hand that Apple only promotes and supports larger apps in the ecosystem.

We’re a two person shop. We’ve taken zero funding. We’re nowhere near Fortnite revenue.

Apple has done an outstanding job promoting us. Last month they gave us our first Today tab feature, and at any given time we can be found in several lists.

I am really happy for you. Genuinely. But most apps do not share your fate no matter how well designed, performant, or useful.

I am actually fine if Apple doesn't do any sort of discovery or promotion of our apps. Just don't charge 30 percent then.

I just opened the App Store. In the first list, “Great Apps for iPhone XR,” I’d estimate 1/3 of the apps listed were built by small, bootstrapped teams. Another third are larger companies (1Password), and the last third are pretty mainstream brands (Snapchat, Mint). Even if you draw the line for small apps below the size of 1Password, 1/3 seems like an amazingly fair share of retail space.

I’m sure many great apps went nowhere. That’s the nature of entrepreneurship. I’d say Apple’s promotion significantly improves the survival odds for small teams doing great work.

Go look through the store right now. The majority of the apps on the Today section will be small developers.

If your app doesn't meet a certain level of quality then Apple will not feature you. But if you do then it is almost certain that at some point they will. I suspect your app falls in the former category.

There is no need to attack. Let's be nice. You don't have any idea what the app is.

One of the things I find strange is that the features last so long. They appear to be...weekly? If so, that means about 50 apps PER YEAR in a slot, out of possibly millions?

That just seems silly. They should at least be rotating through a list of a few hundred apps per day.

Also, as a consequence I am quickly bored by browsing the store. Top-10 lists virtually never change. Featured lists seem like the same 3 apps forever. And a “See All” link that shows nothing more than the same 3 apps from the front page is just insulting. Apple needs much, much, much more in their featuring.

Despite the number of apps in the store, I am not convinced there are enough worth featuring for them to rotate through "a few hundred per day".

> As a small app developer, I can tell you first hand that Apple only promotes and supports larger apps in the ecosystem

I have friends at Apple who curate the App Store and I have a number of apps on the store as well. Your statement is categorically wrong.

Apple absolutely supports small developers. If you look through many of their "editor playlists" you will see plenty of smaller apps that get a lot of attention e.g. Bear, Notability, Calm. Even apps like Instagram were small once.

As an indie developer - HOW do you get in touch with them?

We have rave reviews on one of our apps and a very enthusiastic community in a unique space, but having a hell of a time getting the eye of anyone at Apple.

Look through Linkedin e.g. App Store Editor, find the person that corresponds to your country/region and then email them. Every company has a standard email format and Apple is no different. There are apps around e.g. Hunter that can help.

Then be polite, succinct and be specific about what you want. Don't just say "feature me". Say can you please include me in the playlist "Favourite Travel Apps" etc.

Did you fill out the form?

https://developer.apple.com/contact/app-store/promote/

> The Apple store seems good for small apps

that is fine if you ever show up as featured. Which is 1% of the apps, and even then, from already big companies after they spent the marketing money. Other than that, for distribution (really?) and payment, there are tons of alternatives/competition the small apps cannot even consider.

App store is nothing other than a racketeering scheme where you have to pay if you can't "protect" yourself against. It is "robber barons"/"ma-bell"/etc all over again.

As a data point, which I don't think is a huge outlier: I have paid $5 for lots of apps I like, which I would never ever have gotten around to paying for on someone's website -- partly trust, partly just mental overhead. But whether the app is $4 or $6 makes zero difference to me.

I don't think I found any of these through their listings or search, maybe those could be better? But the space is huge, maybe random blogs etc. can do better than any centralised store.

In the past, you bought software in a box from a retailer who took a margin as high as 50%. After you pay for manufacturing and distribution (shipping shrink-wrapped boxes of CD-ROMs, multilingual manuals and a unique serial number to retailers in Alaska and Singapore is definitely not free) a developer would be lucky to end up with one third of the retail price in their pocket.

The Apple app store is actually a huge improvement over that model; it just seems unfair because digital sales shouldn't cost much, right? Right??

Well, Apple created the marketplace. They spend a lot of money making that marketplace work correctly, keeping their software platforms and merchant facilities robust for customers and developers, and putting that marketplace in the hands of hundreds of millions of people. They built this opportunity for devlopers and every developer who has built an app did so knowing exactly what the terms were.

If you don't like it, don't complain after you voluntarily and knowingly agreed to the terms.

> In the past, you bought software in a box from a retailer who took a margin as high as 50%.

In the past, you bought hardware that could run software from more than one retailer.

You still can, if that is you want.

You are free to make that choice.

Meanwhile, I'd appreciate if you didn't object to my right to choose a managed ecosystem if that is what I prefer. I like the Apple ecosystem the way it is, thank you very much.

> You are free to make that choice.

i do not believe that apple allows you to sideload apps without jailbreaking (which voids warranty iirc). Therefore, the user is not free to make that choice.

Let me be clearer.

You are free to make that choice [of running software from more than one retailer] by choosing a different computing platform. Hundreds of models of Android phone are available at every price point, from super-budget to super-premium.

It's important to me that I can choose a platform that has a strongly walled ecosystem because I greatly prefer the advantages of it more than I dislike the disadvantages. That's my opinion and I am happy that a product exists that satisfies my needs. If you don't like Apple's ecosystem, don't buy their products.

Asking for an Apple device that uses the Android/AOSP business model is like insisting that Jeep builds a Wrangler with a Tesla drivetrain. If that's really what you want and you're willing to put the effort in, you can make it yourself. It's entirely possible.

Sorry but your Argument falls flat....you cannot use android as an option to defend Apple. If apple fails to meet the needs for the user you cannot defend them and say 'but you can choose android' that is not freedom. Freedom within Apple would mean the ability to easily host and run applications as desired. They do not have alveen caught trying to suppress users freedom. Aka jailbreaking and their fight make it illegal

His entire point is that Apple does in fact meet his needs as a user. It meets those needs precisely because of the choices they have made. This may mean that Apple doesn't meet your needs as a user. However, asking Apple to be all things to all users is an impossible requirement.

The market has your back though, because Android gives you a very different experience from Apple.

Exactly right, thank you.

If Jeep started suing people for modifying their Jeep with a Tesla Drivetrain, I would object to that as well.

Or even if Jeep started adding specific "features" that attempted to make it difficult for people to modify their car.

Apple used to literally sue people for this stuff. That's immoral. And the courts shutdown those frivolous lawsuits from Apple.

It is perfectly reasonable for people to modify products that they own. If you don't like then, then feel free to not modify your product. You own it, and all.

You can buy an Android.

Not sure what you are talking about here.

You could never buy software for your phone from more than one retailer. Or are you trying to force the desktop computing model onto Apple ?

> Apple created the marketplace

It used to be that the maker of the OS spent tremendous efforts to attract developers. They did this for free to gain app market share.

So, your argument falls flat. Apple is doing this to generate profit. They continue doing so because of their dominant iOS market share and that for apps there is no alternative.

Please stop making excuses for trillion dollar companies.

> Apple is doing this to generate profit.

Yes, that's what companies do. If you don't like capitalism, your beef isn't with Apple, it's with your government.

The app store didn't replace offline retail, the internet did. Software was sold online before the app store came along just fine. With app-stores we are back in retailer country: convenient as a customer but the manufacturer has to pay a fee to be boxed and put on the digital shelf.

And there is only one shelf! This is way worst than retailer country.

But even if you DON'T show up as featured, maybe you're one of the 10 vetted apps that do what yours does, instead of 1 out of 100 on the Play Store. I think that's what's being discussed here.

> you're one of the 10 vetted apps that do what yours does, instead of 1 out of 100 on the Play Store.

1. Citation needed (because looks like you are pulling these numbers out of your ass).

2. And by your argument, looks like people have more choices on Android. Who would have thought?!

Please don't be a jerk on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines so often that I've banned your account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Agreed on subscriptions. While paid and freemium apps benefit from being in the store (discovery, etc), recurring revenue models are much more difficult to optimize and maintain. That’s not something the store really helps with.

This is why both Apple and Google introduces the reduced rate after the first year of subscription, which in my opinion will eventually become the norm from the get go. It’s only a letter of time.

Ultimately, even such seemingly large losses are still a really small fraction of Apple’s bottom line. Once more apps find ways to do this is when Apple will start noticing.

I don't think that Netflix needs distribution. Netflix needs Apple's permission to run its software on its users devices. That what they are paying for. I doubt that many people would discover Netflix brand via AppStore browsing or that Netflix would struggle to serve .ipa file downloads.

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