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Comment by villgax | Hacker News Reader

> We understand that Basecamp has developed a number of apps and many subsequent versions for the App Store for many years, and that the App Store has distributed millions of these apps to iOS users. These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years.

They literally have paid 8 years of Developer Program fees for supporting the AppStore.

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The apps have also augmented the iOS platform over those 8 years.

An Apple device is better thanks to the apps on it, so they sell more devices. They are double dipping when they benefit from App Store revenues + Developer program fees.

>The apps have also augmented the iOS platform over those 8 years.

Yeah, let's not forget Apple's famous "there's an app for that" ad campaign.

It's a different matter whether 30% is a valid cut for Apple to make on Hey In App subscriptions. But $2,400 (8*$300/year?) for the delivery and update, notifications and Siri integration etc to millions of apps/devices sounds a pretty good deal.

Where do you get $300 from? The developer program is $99/year regardless of how many apps you have.

Enterprise account is $300 https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/

The enterprise account is for people deploying enterprise apps internally. You can't use it for publishing apps to the App Store. Basecamp will be using the standard developer account, not the enterprise account.

An enterprise account is not required to ship public apps. It's specifically designed for those who want to ship private apps, which I'm pretty sure Basecamp don't do.

+ the hardware mandatory to build and submit Apps to the AppStore, right?

Yes. Apple forces you to buy their overpriced hardware if you want to develop for their platform.

Xcode comes with an iOS simulator so you don't need hardware, but it would be a bad idea not to test on an actual device.

How do I run xcode on Linux or Windows?

In qemu.

Is this legally possible without software piracy? Can you link me to instructions? Does apple have documentation anywhere?

IANAL.

https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

I don't know if Apple has documentation somewhere.

Xcode only runs on Apple hardware. (a)

a. Well, if Apple got their way when it came to Hackintoshes.

You got me there.

On the other hand, for a lot of successful apps Apple’s share looks like profiteering and it becomes a very bad (but unavoidable) deal for developers.

actually you can't use an enterprise license for the app store. https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/ it clearly says that:

> Please learn about the Apple Developer Program first. The Apple Developer Program is the right option for most organizations that want to distribute proprietary, internal-use apps. It allows you to use Apple Business Manager, Ad Hoc distribution, or redemption codes to privately distribute custom apps to employees, and TestFlight to test beta versions of your apps.

> The Apple Developer Enterprise Program is only for specific use cases that cannot be addressed using these methods. Before applying for the Apple Developer Enterprise Program, learn more about the Apple Developer Program to see if it addresses your use case. If not, you can start your application.

so it's only 99 USD

OK - so its $800 - that makes the services provided by Apple even more value for money

Sure, it might be decent value to a company. It's still not zero revenue as Apple likes to frame it.

It equates to the value of exactly one annual Hey subscription.

Those are all things that you have no choice in.

You can’t install an alternative to Siri. You can’t use a different push notification system. You can’t use an alternative store and send updates yourself.

There is also the missing other side to this argument, and that's without third part apps Apple couldn't sell it's phones that it surely makes a decent amount of money on. Without third-party app authors Apple couldn't sell it's phones. Perhaps Apple should be paying them?

Seems like the best we can hope for is an EU antitrust ruling that reigns in Apple’s anticompetitive behavior here.

Almost everyone in the world have a smartphone. Having only two options (iOS or Android) to choose between in such a big market is a joke. Google or Apple will just continue to buy out the competition to make sure they are the only option.

Yeah, Apple keeps pushing this narrative that they are giving away a free service to developers that don't accept payments. It costs $99 a year to put anything on the App Store.

And if Apple is really that concerned about free distribution, I'm sure they could set up an AWS-like pricing model where there's a set price for data transfer, updates, maybe even push notifications.

Business program is $249 IIRC

Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers?

What if I bought an iphone, I am ONLY allowed to install apple apps on it, and I want the basecamp app?

> Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers?

Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver the binary of its app. Basecamp can’t be said to be ‘freeloading’ on Comcast.

Basecamp would come back and say ‘well, we pay our developer fees’ but developer fees don’t differentiate whether Apple has to maintain app updates for hundreds of downloads or millions.

Edit: Was clearly referring to the app binary.

I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't host basecamp...

I was making an analogy from when comcast was charging "transit fees" to netflix for instance. In the end, the customers are paying twice.

>Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver it’s service.

Neither Comcast or Apple provide any infrastructure to Basecamp for hosting. They are just in charge of delivering the ways and means of accessing their platform.

They provide all the infrastructure to deliver the iOS app binary, receive notifications, etc.

Only because Apple set it up like that. For example, you could presumably have an app store that is only a lightweight directory of signed URLs and hashes, where the developers have to host the blobs themselves.

There’s no reason why Apple would do that though: you’re a hosting outage on some shitty VPS box away from the download button not working when you click the button, and the URLs are then discoverable on the open internet for anyone to be able to download at will. Or an indie developer hosts on S3, the app becomes wildly successful, and the developer is unable to pay the AWS bill.

I don’t know why people expect Apple to be the kind of company that would behave in a way that is antithetical to itself and in many ways it’s own customers out of a puritanical devotion to ‘openness’. Most of these ‘Apple could’ changes would cripple the product.

They could do any number of things, and that might affect what they charge.

But they do what they do, and they charge what they charge. The comment I replied to, said Apple provides no infrastructure. That is categorically false, and thus I replied.

Positing alternate realities where they might operate differently isn't really a relevant response, IMO.

Comcast also doesn't restrict all its users to exclusively acquire software from the Comcast Store™. Apple does.

Apple would say tough potatoes and point out that billions of users worldwide are very satisfied with such a deal. You also very rarely hear stories of malware / fake apps on the Apple store.

Yes, so it's time for an antitrust lawsuit.

But basically all apps on phones are dystopian now.

If I could block apps from network access, including apple apps, then that would prove they're not playing both sides.

You literally can disable cellular access for every app on the phone, including Apple ones.

remember when comcast was blocking/throttling netflix until they paid?

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