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Comment by HunterWare | Hacker News Reader

It’s not cheap, but on the other hand you get a lot. They handle the billing, credit card fees, returns, reviews, the site, bandwidth, updates, uptime (reliability ain’t cheap), security, and 10 other things I’m not thinking of. Oh, and the full updated toolchain and dev environments... Let’s also recognize that effectively the devs are paying some for the platform, just like the users are when they buy the phones. We all are paying in because it’s better (for us), otherwise go elsewhere... I would.

You as a dev just create a simple parked webpage for your app and you are done. So many barriers to entry are just dissolved. At no upfront cost to the developer. That’s huge.

I think the many many business that prefer to be on this environment, and always have, speaks to the value of that 30%.

Maybe 30% is a little high, it’s really hard and subjective to say. But it’s not crazy... there is a lot of value provided for that 30%.

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> They handle the billing, credit card fees, returns, reviews, the site, bandwidth, updates, uptime (reliability ain’t cheap), security, and 10 other things I’m not thinking of

Bandcamp does all of this and more, including selling physical merchandise, and only takes 15% of the sale price for digital goods, and 10% for physical merchandise.

> Oh, and the full updated toolchain and dev environments..

Developers have privilege of paying Apple $99 each year to develop and release iOS and macOS software.

Your points do stand, but if I may:

1) One certainly can do this cheaper. But I’m going to hazard a guess (sight unseen) that bandcamp doesn’t provide as much for that 15%. The original point wasn’t “can you do it cheaper”, it was “do you get a desirable amount of value for the 30%”. I’m a consultant, and there are cheaper options than me. I feel I provide good value for the money, and I guess the fact that I have customers says the market agrees, but that doesn’t mean that some less expensive competitor isn’t a perfectly fine option. It means that the market says I am worth X so I can charge X... Nothing more.

2) The $99 argument is interesting. From my persepective: Enterprise tools cost a lot and 99$ yearly is insanely reasonable. I’d guess that it basically just covers the cost to them of supporting the devs and maintaining the interface to the dev side of security infrastructure. What I can say with some confidence is that it can’t cover even a fraction of the cost of creating and maintaining Xcode. I think the $99 is a way to recover some cost, and create a barrier to entry that makes sure that people who join are at least a tiny bit somewhat serious.

(oh, and I love your username... awesomeness)

Sure, they provide all that, but it can be done for less than $15B. Apple has around 150,000 employees. That's $100k per employee, assuming all work on the iOS and iPad app stores, which is obviously not the case.

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