Dirty Percent
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
When Apple was the underdog, it all seemed to be about not what was possible, but what was fair, and what was right. Now it's a "Well, of course Apple would do that, wouldn't you?"
And he then punts on the biggest question of all:
What if Microsoft did this with Windows, and, say, tried to require Apple to pay them 30 percent for every purchase made through iTunes on Windows? To that, I say: good luck with that.
Not "well I'd certainly write a slam piece about it", not "well, that would definitely require competition regulators", not "that would be a dick move." Just "they couldn't do it anyway, so your hypotheticals mean nothing."
The way I put it (crassly) is "When you're Top Dog, you don't need to play like a bitch." Which is what Apple is doing, and honestly, they're turning me off from their products. And that's not about "Oh well, Apple likes to make money, and why shouldn't they be allowed to?" It's about looking like you're above it. Brands like Costco and Amazon make a huge chunk of change, but you don't see them getting into petty stuff like this.
Also, no one complains that Google takes 32% of AdWords.
It's been repeated over and over again that this is about content publishers. eg. Selling magazine subscriptions.
Apple provides access to a large number are: A) affluent, B) have credit cards in the system C) are conditioned to buy via that medium, to me it's worth 30% to get access to that market.
It's like rent on a busy street, if you're selling trinkets with a minimal markup it's probably not worth it. If you're selling high end with lots of markup it's probably worth it. iOS isn't for everyone, it's a luxury brand, not every model is going to work on that platform. Want a marketplace where no one buys anything, there are confusing payment options, and your product is next to 10 task killer apps, well then there's a Marketplace for that.
Right, and that's absolutely expected. Apple should feel free to take 30% of anything purchased in-app. What they shouldn't do is force vendors to charge everyone else 30% more for the same product.
It would be like Google saying, "if you want to show an ad on your blog, you have to give us 30% of the money you make at your garage sale". It simply makes no sense.
Want a marketplace where no one buys anything, there are confusing payment options, and your product is next to 10 task killer apps, well then there's a Marketplace for that.
I want one where I can pay $10 for a book on my Kindle and read it on my phone when I don't have the Kindle with me. Paying Apple an extra $3 so that I can read my books on my phone doesn't make much sense to me.
But that's why I don't own an iPhone. My phone is a chunk of circuit boards that fits in my pocket, not my life.
The thing is, advertisers could use other channels to put ads up on the web. They can advertise with Chitika or whatever and get a bigger cut than they would with Google. They typically don't, because AdSense adds a lot of value by targeting the ads well. On the other hand, if you want to sell software on an iOS device, the only way is through the app store. Apple doesn't need to add any value to protect their 30% cut from competition because they don't allow competitors.
The argument about subscription issues is related but more complicated.
If you're a retailer willing to drop Coca-Cola, we can pretty much assume you're a strong-willed company. Whether that leads to triumphs of principle over practicality or displays of pettiness is, I'd say, a matter of perspective.
_Costco's maximum markup on merchandise is 14 percent, and "a lot of products don't come close to 14 percent," Sinegal said. By comparison, supermarkets commonly mark up merchandise by 25 percent and department stores by about 50 percent._
http://www.gazette.com/articles/costco-33279-springs-store.h...
Costco is extremely cut-throat, there have been several articles about Costco and how if they aren't receiving the lowest price for a product they just won't have it on the shelves, the Coke dispute was pretty big [1].
Overall I find that Costco is pretty transparent when it comes to the products they offer, and how much they charge for them. So far Costco has been a great value for me as a consumer!
[1]: http://www.wbur.org/npr/120590548/price-fight-coke-isnt-it-a...
And he was critical of Apple in two of the four points, so your premise is false.
Edit: This discussion is also something of a strawman, attacking none of the important arguments made in the article.
The point about what Gruber would say if Microsoft had done this is simply a preemption of an ad hominem attack against himself and it's quite unfortunate that he chose to address it. It has absolutely nothing to do with Apple's fairness in charging 30%, which is what we should all be talking about because it's a very important topic.
Very sorry to see this community of rationalists fall for a refutation of something that's irrelevant to the main discussion.
Debating is good and fine - but (imo) sometimes, concentrating on the minutia isn't as worthwhile as expressing an idea.
Discussion can exist without this constant battle to score 'points'.
I meant what I said about emailing if you'd like some tips about CSS - I had few 'a-ha' moments that really made my life easier.
Few things grate as much as the self-satisfied "strawman" police.
Your post raises an interesting point, how did all these 'strawman police' become such a bunch of self-satisfied nazis in the first place?
And instead of issuing snide remarks about categories of bad arguments, why not tell me why you don't think the label fits, and if it does why you don't feel compelled to address it?
I find this far better than responding to arguments that deliberately attempt to obfuscate avenues of attack by couching everything in terms of "opinion" or "I have opinion X, but".
And how is Gruber's overall argument right if he is critical of Apple in two of the four points? How does that even make sense?
Contains a claim that Gruber's mentality is to defend Apple at all costs. Since Gruber does not do this in the post, it is a false claim.
This claim is used to lend credence to the idea that Gruber is in fact misrepresenting his feelings about Microsoft since the situation presented would force Gruber, with the presumption that he defends Apple at all costs, to say otherwise than what he said he would say. Except that the premise is false.
All of this makes you wonder why OP would single out this point to begin with since it's the least salient to the thrust of the article. This makes OP's point something of a straw man and character attack.
Take his summation: "iOS isn’t and never was an open computer system. It’s a closed, controlled console system..." The implication being that iOS users have no right to complain because they signed up for a "closed" system.
Systems are never just "open" or "closed." Apple's move here is making the system more closed.
Is the following statement (from the article) false?
As for ruthless profiteering, consider that Amazon, with their e-book publishing, originally took the fat end of a 70-30 revenue split with authors.
Gruber owes his good fortunes to being the premier Apple shill, and no amount of logic, reasoning, facts or ethics is going to change that.
He earns money from ads, do you think he would earn less should he write critically about Apple?
(All of this seems very much beside the point, though. Discussions about Daring Fireball have become so predictable. Nobody seems to be even interested in talking about the arguments, everyone wants to throw dirt around.)
He earns money from software and services which run in Apple-based platforms. ( Pixelmator, for example ). If he constantly undermines Apple, will Pixelmator be happy?
He has to give an air of legitimacy by pointing out Apple's faults once in a while and competitors' good products now and then. His primary audience is Apple fans. and he writes for them.
Well, he has stated on many occasions that he has "sources" inside of Apple where he gets alot of his information from. If he started to be overly critical of Apple and his sources suddenly dried up then his writing would suffer, his readership would go down and his ad revenue would decease.
So I'd say it's pretty easy to make the case that he would indeed earn less if he was overly critical of Apple.
And what is the incentive of the Apple insiders? While Gruber may not, they are perfectly capable of forming their own, independent opinions on what Apple proper does, as orthogonal as they may be.
Why? When 99% of the media sledges Apple with no reason, why do you care if 1% supports Apple with no reason?
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The thing that gets me about the Apple vs $var debates, is that most of the people screaming about how they hate Apple have never tried Apple. Whereas the people supporting Apple against $var have almost invariably tried $var and found it lacking.
One side brings informed opinions, the other brings baseless bile. Whenever I see that happen, regardless of the topic, I know which side of that divide I want to be on.
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True story: today I went down to the local $non_profit and helped out one of the guys get his new Apple laptop hooked up to the network and the network printer. The network worked immediately after entering the WEP password. The printer didn't work first time, so I deleted it and tried with new settings. It worked the second time. I also tried to persuade him of the virtues of buying a 1-2TB drive and using Time Machine.
It was so easy it was embarrassing.
I contrast that with some work I did with a startup last year. I bought one of their own Windows laptops into their HQ, and trying to get onto their own wireless network was a nightmare, even though I had a room full of techies to help. I strongly suspect that in the end the tech support guy just turned off the wireless router and left it off because it was too much trouble.
I'll do Apple support for love (ie free support for friends and family) , but you couldn't pay me enough to do Windows support. I fully appreciate the guys that do take on that thankless task, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
Does that make me an incoherent raving Mac fanboy? Some would say so. But at the same $non_profit I stood and patiently nodded while one of the 70 year old blokes told me about his Windows experiences. At the end I fully commended him (he's running anti-virus, anti-spam and does regular backups) for his efforts, and I assured him that he was doing the right thing with the backups, to keep doing exactly what he is doing. I didn't preach to him about Apple at all, I don't see the need. If he's happy, let him be happy. If he is doing everything right but has some nagging feeling that he should be doing something else, I will reassure him that he's miles ahead of the rest of the pack.
This understanding is part of why Gruber often seems like an Apple apologist. Even when he disagrees with Apple' decisions, he can generally give a good explanation of why the decision was made and why Steve and Tim and company probably think it is the right one. And of course, when he is writing from the point of view of Apple Inc., the primary question is always "What is best for Apple?"
(This also explains why I hate Gruber's writing about competiting companies like Microsoft and Google. I don't think he understands how those companies think and work at all, so his commentary on them totally lacks that insight and usefulness.)
Yet he rarely qualifies that with, "While I don't agree" or something similar. He does sometimes, which leads me to believe that he usually is talking about what he believes.
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As a side note... I got my first Mac in 1989. I've been reading the Mac press for over 20 years, and Daring Fireball for about 7 or 8 years. There was a time in the "dark ages" of the 90s when even the most die-hard Apple fans had a "love the product; hate the company" mentality, because it seemed like Apple's management was doing everything they could to screw things up.
Daring Fireball is entirely a product of the Steve Jobs II era, with much more competent management, so it hasn't had quite as much reason to gripe. But Gruber has had some long-standing disagreements with Apple. He bitched for years about how much worse the Finder was in OS X. (I think the only reason he stopped is that he gave up hope that it'll ever be fixed.)
I do think Gruber intentionally blurs that line to insulate himself from criticism. And I think that's pretty dishonest and petty-- much like his irritatingly self-satisfied one-off comments aimed at his opponents. (Technology related and otherwise).
EDIT: Minor grammatical correction
No offense, but the idea that the government needs to step in is a nonsensical argument that is getting repeated with increasing frequency whenever Apple does something controversial. There is not a single market in which Apple competes where they have a monopoly (caveat: tablet computers right now, but that market is revving up to be hyper competitive in the very near future, and who would want the government intervening there at this nascent stage). A monopoly is required for antitrust investigations.
Do you know who Apple's "competition regulators" are? Google, Microsoft, RIM, Nokia, Palm/HP, et al.
<em>Brands like Costco and Amazon make a huge chunk of change, but you don't see them getting into petty stuff like this.</em> No, you don't - because you're a developer, not someone who has to argue with them in the areas where they <strong>do</strong> do petty shit like this.
John Gruber in general likes the way Apple does things. Right? Not a controversial position, well understood and, these days, pretty common. So first off, I'm never surprised when he posts about "here's the thought process and mechanics behind the way Apple does things" even if that's the top-level business decisions Apple makes.
So with that understanding, what kind of thing should he naturally be unhappy about? Things Apple does that are uncharacteristic, bad moves for their users, or just downright unethical (i.e. knowingly lying to customers). I truly believe that's it.
Let's toss aside the idea that this move is uncharacteristic (even detractors say "that's the way Apple likes things.") Second, he's explained how he thinks these rules seem good for users. And finally, although I know a lot of people think Apple is doing something unethical, I really don't think John sees things that idealistically when it comes to these kinds of things.
He did demonstrate some sympathy to criticism that Apple changed their rules, but I don't think he sees that at all as unethical. He's idealistic about design but I don't think he's idealistic about business and the marketplace. I actually don't think he really cares as much about the business angles, but that's where the interest is these days.
I really don't see any reason he should be unhappy with this plan. I think he's explained pretty well why he thinks it's a reasonable approach, and given that evidence I think you need to argue pretty forcefully to suggest he's being insincere.
On businesses that can't afford 30%: Too bad, Apple wants to be the middleman
On price matching: Apple won't budge because their competitors (e.g. Amazon) insist on price matching
On the 30% slice itself: Apple is proposing that publishers (et al) will make more money at 70% than they'd make at 95% with someone else's business model
On (anti-)competitiveness: Apple is the only one which allows its competitors to have apps on its devices
Summary: iOS is a closed, controlled console system - more akin to Playstation or Xbox than to Mac OS X or Windows
WHY is Apple bad for closing a system but Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are not? I really do not understand that.
WHY on earth has a cellphone to be open as a OpenSource project? Is there a reason for that? (Android has open sources but no-one can commit changes. It's all in Googles hands what comes into the next Android version which doesn't fit with OpenSource at all)
WHY is taking a 30% cut bad for all developers and Apps? (Jobs said that the 30% cut is not for SASS Apps but only for Newspaper Apps, right?)
Please give me some answers I'm starting to don't understand these discussions lately.
Thus the line apple is toeing here is a dangerous one.
I wouldn't make the same argument for iPods, iPads or Macs.
Talk about burying the lede!
"But leaving aside the revenue split, there are technical limitations as well. The existing in-app purchasing system in iOS has a technical limit of 3,500 catalog items. I.e. any single app can offer no more than 3,500 items for in-app purchase. Amazon has hundreds of thousands of Kindle titles.
"Something’s got to give here. I don’t know what, but there must be more news on this front coming soon. I don’t believe Apple wants to chase competing e-book platforms off the App Store."
In other words, all the rest of the article, defending the Apple terms, is so much codswallop. Because Gruber believes that these terms are unacceptable, as in Dead On Arrival, to major users of in-app purchases and will have to change shortly to accommodate them.
And once you have figured that out, why not apply this to the other users of the platform, the rest of these arguments? "Eating margins will chase applications off iOS" and "Catalog limits are too low for many credible use cases" apply to many more developers than just Amazon Kindle.
But for some reason these arguments are dissociated from the ones Gruber wants to make. Instead of putting together the whole picture, he comes to these major stumbling blocks and writes the equivalent of "Does Not Compute."
The one thing that really annoys me though is that Apple have decided is that if you offer a subscription-model outside of the app store, you now have to offer it at the same cost inside the app store.
Instead of paying 1-4% credit-card transaction fees with 24 hour payment terms, you now have to potentially pay a 30% app-store transaction fee with payments taking a month or more if your users decide to take up the option of paying via the app store.
Now I can see why Apple can't discount their 30% as this is the margin they seem to give to stores selling iTunes cards (yes, Apple makes nothing on apps bought with iTunes cards). But to require all apps to be forced to use the in-app subscription model is just ridiculous. What next? A native SAP client forced to sell their $100k product through the app store?
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/21/steve-jobs-email-suggest...
Perhaps Apple has now ceded the market for mobile clients of $100k enterprise Java applications to Android. If so, I doubt they are losing much sleep in Cupertino.
Obviously Apple's pricing model makes no sense for markets that they are not actually in. What matters, however, is the competitive landscape of the market that they are in.
These two statements are fundamentally at odds; it's highly unlikely that Apple is making more money from App Store purchases / subscriptions than from iOS hardware sales. Consequently, for Apple to be competitive, they need to offer as much value as possible to the user, so that more users will end up on their platform. Since many of the most popular apps are business models that can't afford a 70/30 split, Apple damn well better care about them. If I can't get Kindle, Netflix, Hulu, Dropbox, etc, etc. on an iPhone/iPad, I won't buy another one. Period.
The following Dickens quote springs to mind: "Income, twenty shillings a week, expenditure, twenty shillings and sixpence; result, misery. Income, twenty shillings a week, expenditure, nineteen shillings and sixpence; result, happiness."
However if Apple cut back to say 25% then it might mean that they are subsidising people's use of the store. This would be bad for Apple because they would be losing money. Boo hoo. On the other hand, if they were losing money with one hand in order to (as you suggest) gain it with the other, then they would open themselves to questions of dumping, price fixing, abuse of monopoly etc.
Selling at below cost is a typical strategy to keep new entrants out of the market, and so would be evil. But apparently taking 30% is evil too, so it doesn't matter what they do, somebody is going to be unhappy with them.
Both companies sell IP - and both rely on a various forms of DRM to enforce scarcity. I think selling IP will eventually be seen as a fruitless (and unsustainable) pursuit - but for the time being this is a way both these companies are making a profit selling digital goods.
It's not exactly freedom in the best sense of the word ;)
Are iBooks DRM free? I don't think so ...
iBooks having DRM is (IMO) a problem with the publishing industry, just as DRM on music used to be a problem with the music industry. I want Amazon, and Apple, to push the publishing industry into dropping DRM on books.
The MP3 tip's a good one - thanks.
http://www.cultofmac.com/apple-staffer-ipad-3-is-the-one-to-...
That's what I was thinking of. Kind of throws a wet towel on the already rumored incremental iPad2 release.
However the iPad is pretty billed as the future computer replacement. I don't think a new version every year will sell as well.
According to Fortune, either Cook, Oppenheimer or Cue said this "Capitalizing on the "explosive" demand for the iPad, believing that tablets could end up being a bigger market than PCs. (If this is so, Sacconaghi calculates that the iPad could eventually be a $60 billion to $100 billion business for Apple.)"
That doesn't mean that PCs will go away, at $500 for the average (future!) price of a PC that still leaves room for 100 million PCs to be sold each year, which is still a lot of PCs. It also doesn't say at what point in the distant future this might occur.
On the other hand, if it is some breathless pundit speculating hard (as they are wont to do) who claims that the iPad is a future computer replacement, I take it with exactly the same seriousness as I do all their other breathless pronouncements about the 101 iPod/iPad/iPhone killers that are announced each week, which is to say I don't take it seriously at all.
None of the tech pundits can predict the future worth a damn. They've proved this time and time again. Gruber has a running joke with claim-chowder (a play on words for clam chowder), where he takes the stupid things people said in the past and calls them to task for it.
Don't get me wrong; I think there will still be developers using a laptop/desktop - I can't imagine trying to develop using an iPad. However for the average user do they really have the need of a desktop/laptop? For most people I would say no and ultimately it makes their lives easier.
I'll see if I can find the article where Jobs was saying that basically he saw the way computers [read desktops/laptops] are now as a dying market and the iPad/mobile market was the future. Maybe my statement was pushing it too much but the way I read it I think not.
Anyways my main point was that I just wonder if they are trying to push the iPad cycle too fast. Where in the subsidised mobile space it makes sense; will it make sense for tablets to be changing every 6-12 months?
used to be quite good, doesn't seem to be working at the moment. It shows the time between each revision, and when it was working clearly showed that sometimes there were only a couple of months between revisions, and sometimes there was a couple of years between revisions (the 30 inch monitor springs to mind).
Most Apple products were completely unpredictable in this regard. You could perhaps argue that the release of new computers or laptops was tied to intel's cpu release cycle, which while still appearing pseudo-random in terms of when Apple does their refresh, at least gives it some sane causal tie to the real world.
Oh, it seems to have loaded. So okay, right off the top we can see the iPod classic has in the past had refreshes as little as four and five months apart, and then 4 years (2006-09) where the new models came out in September each year.
Note that with Apple sometimes what counts as a 'new model' is really minor, even just something as small as a price drop.
iPod Touch, same thing, releases in September. Nano, September.
Shuffle, updated twice a year during 2006-09 period, only updated once last year.
Mac mini, updated twice in 2009, and not at all in 2008.
Since 2003 there have only been 4 years with a single iMac update, all the rest had two or more (2003 had 3!). So 13 updates in 8 years.
Mac Pro, only updated once a year since 2003 (2003 seem like a year where Apple pushed out a lot of refreshes).
MacBook, twice a year every year except 2005 and 2010, so 9 updates every 5 years.
MacBook Pro, multiple updates in a year not uncommon, 3 updates in 2006.
MacBook Air, once a year.
The first three iPhone updates were all 5 months apart (!!!)
The slowest updating ones of that lot mini, air and Mac Pro all feel (to me) like they update really slowly. Maybe the Pro will pick up with the switch to consumer chips instead of the server Xeons. In an industry with Moore's law (price per transistor halving every 18 months) running rampant back in the 2000s yearly or year and a half updates feel very slow.
The average Apple (hardware) product (including taking all the slowpokes into account) updates every 0.700205338809035 of a year. Call it eight and a half months.
So if they release a new iPad in March, seeing another one in November (just in time for Xmas! Funny that) would not be at all unreasonable.
I concede your point. You were closer to truthiness than I was. I apologise and applaud your insight/foresight.
It feels like an imitation of what they did with 3GS, but I can't recall the details and time frames of it compared to iPhone 4 back then.
I thought the furor over the 3GS was from people who bought the original 2007 iPhone at the non-subsidized price and then turned around and traded up to the 3G model at launch and paid the subsidized price. When the 3GS came out those folks were halfway into two-year contracts and didn't have any upgrade options with AT&T, so they couldn't do the same again, and felt slighted that a year later a better phone would come out and they couldn't get the subsidized price.
And that's not Apple's fault, that's just nerd rage over what happens when you buy a carrier-subsidized cell phone.
This is what galls some: Apple is doing this because they can, and no other company is in a position to do it.
People aren't bothered simply because other companies can't do this. If Google, MS, RIM, Amazon, and HP all did the same thing people wouldn't say, "Great... everyone can do it!"
People are upset that Apple can do it, and they are.
People have long told me that Apple is a benevolent company. They point to the PC market and say, "Apple never did what MS did". And my retort was always, they couldn't, but if they could they probably would have.
Now we're seeing it play out. If Apple could squeeze Intel or Dell or Compaq they would have. Apple's benefit though is they're not a monopoly, and likely won't be one. But to the extent that they've captured a large share of disposable income they will drain their partners for every last cent. Because as Gruber has stated, Apple doesn't need you, but you sure need them.
So Android, which is already very feature competitive and may have a bigger install base, could have no competitor in distributing a range of very popular, rapidly growing services. Vic Gundotra must be grinning ear to ear.
So the same-price rule is good for the user, and good for Apple."
This type of arrangement is not good for users and is very anti-competitive.
Banks often offer reward points worth 1% of a purchase in exchange for the use of their credit cards which incurs something like a 3% fee on merchants. The merchants have to increase their prices to maintain their margins but since they are contractually obligated not to charge credit card users more, price is increased for everyone. Even those who avoid credit cards end up paying the banks for other's use of them. If fact those who use the cards pay a little less for than those who don't because they get the 1% kickback. Next time you spend $500 of airmiles or reward points, know that you imposed $1500 worth of fees on customers likely not even using the service. The bank gave you a $500 kickback and pocketed $1000.
This scheme basically amounts to imposing a tax on everyone and it's enabled by the one percent reward points along with the price matching rule.
It's the same situation when selling on iOS. In order to pay for Apple's fees and maintain competitive margins, merchants will have to increase the prices of their products across the board, even when they are sold completely outside the Apple ecosystem. This means that if Amazon keeps their Kindle app in iOS, Amazon will have to increase prices _on every devices_ and when someone purchases a book on an Amazon device, through Amazon only, they will be indirectly paying a portion of the sale to Apple. That, IMO, is screwed up. This type of rule is illegal in many countries (at least with regards to credit cards) because it is clearly anti-competitive.
$35.88/year for the New Yorker (47 issues/year) on (B&W) Kindle vs. $234.53/year in the New Yorker iPad app and about $50/year for the paper version which comes with access to the archive on the web.
http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Yorker/dp/B001O2SCKI/ref=sr_1_...
The xfinity iPad app now offers "Play Now" so it's not just a fancy remote control, but a content delivery app with a monthly subscription handled outside the app.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-first-look-comcast-xfinit...
I really don't buy the relation to the initial offering of apps, but I admittedly think this is one of two big problems with this whole scheme. For one, Apple is not providing an end-to-end solution by hosting the content and cannot really keep track of all the SKUs with their current system. Never mind and SaaS providers not getting hosting out of that 30%. The economics and mechanism of app delivery are different than content delivery.
I think Apple should say that if you provide no link to your purchase / subscribing site, then you don't have to use IAP. In other words, if your app downloads content for your account, but doesn't allow in-app sales or link to out-of-app sales, then all is well.
Why not allow developers and publishers to set their own prices for in-app subscriptions? One reason: Apple wants its customers to get the best price
So on one hand competition is good, natural, and everyone benefits. But on the other, companies shouldn't be be able to compete with Apple's built-in subscription system?
I think one outcome you're going to see from publishers is that there will be separate plans for iOS users. Before, there was naturally only one option and the App Store app was just a client to the same subscription. Now, I can see where it makes a lot more sense to have an a la carte iOS subscription for these publishers.
So just like all the iPhone cases, laptop bags, headphones, and external hard drives at the Apple Store, then.
What they were doing for their app was giving it away as a free download, then charging a one off subscription. Ta Da! No $ for Apple. Apple closes this loophole, and this guy starts screaming blue murder.
I've got very little sympathy for anyone like him who is just trying to rort the system and get something for nothing.
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All the people screaming about Apple's 30% cut should just pack up, shut up, and go to Android where Google will take a 32% cut of their ad revenue. Vote with your feet peeps.
This split is yawningly normal in retail. What's not normal is the huge numbers of "one-person" wholesalers... who have very little in the way of business experience and see that split as a "tax" rather than payment for a service.