Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebastien_b | Hacker News Reader

And besides this, most people seem content to compare it with the physical world with (IMO invalid) comparisons of malls, etc.

There's another thing: Apple already charges developers a fee every year. And they also sell ads on the App Store (which you basically have to buy otherwise you're a 'needle in a haystack'). AND they sell ads to your competitors, which use your (sometimes trademarked) keywords in their ads, which means you need to buy even more ads to counteract those.

Apple wins, and wins.

View on HN

And they make every developer buy a Mac because they prohibit running macOS in VMs and in general don't allow building iOS apps without the use of Mac hardware. That's probably a bigger expense than the app store fees for most, and artificially inflates macOS market share in the important developer market.

This upfront payment from the developer might have the side effect of weeding out all but those who are heavily invested in their iOS app. Ensuring the apps there are not hobby or side projects and are maintained and supported by full-time devs.

That said, I wouldn't lock myself into that ecosystem with all those upfront costs and restrictive terms where Apple benefits much more from the devs than the other way round.

If you write an app that you can sell on the app store to 860 people for $5 you already got the money to buy a Macbook Pro 16”.

I don’t think the Macbook restriction is such a big problem. However, if you sell it to 1 million people and Apple takes the 30% cut, that’s a loss of $1.5M for you...

(Maybe I miss something, I never wrote iOS apps, I’m just doing the math)

You need to buy the Mac before writing the app. You might make enough to repay that investment, but it's out of pocket to start with. For many people that is a big problem.

This also makes it difficult to write FOSS apps for iOS, because the developer would have to front the cost of a macOS workstation + the $99 yearly fee with no expectation of a return at all.

Technically you can make it GNU compatible and charge for it with the source online. A user needs the build system but can modify your app and rerelease it at their convenience.

I prefer the F-Droid model myself.

This really is a ridiculous point to make.

You need a Mac because important components like the XCode Simulator require OSX libraries in order to function. It's no different to me needed a Windows machine in order to build Office plugins.

If those software components were all that was needed, we could just run macOS in a VM, as we can easily do with Windows or Linux. Apple forbids that specifically to make all prospective Mac/iOS developers buy Mac hardware.

I regularly cross compile for Windows from Linux, and I don't need to buy any hardware from Microsoft.

Microsoft has little to do with the hardware you run their software on

> If you write an app that you can sell on the app store to 860 people for $5

fwiw, that's an incredibly hard feat that most people don't ever accomplish. Even "it's just 16 work-weeks at minimum wage" would have been a better demo.

I would bet that the median developer in the developer program doesn't sell enough on the App Store to recoup the cost of a mid-range MacBook Pro every 3-5 years and an iPhone every other year and the developer program annual fee.

> And they make every developer buy a Mac

No. You just need to be able to run OSX.

For the last 6 months I've been running OSX on my X299/10980xe desktop using OpenCore. And it is far along enough now that you can run it on a range of PC equipment including AMD.

And Apple has said on a number of occasions that provided you don't sell these Hackintosh desktops they fully support you playing around with OSX this way.

This is illegal and I am skeptical that Apple has officially endorsed breaking their EULA.

It's a breach of the EULA which is very different from being illegal.

And Craig Federighi has talked on quite a few occasions about supporting the hacking culture within OSX. Which is why Apple never went after Hackintosh like they could have e.g. by enforcing SIP.

There are hundreds of Github projects and websites right now detailing how to setup a Hackintosh Mac and not once has anyone ever received a cease and desist.

It's breach of contract and copyright infringement among other things, so it is illegal. Not taking every opportunity to enforce the EULA is not the same thing as condoning breaking it. If Apple actually wanted to support hackintoshes they could change the EULA, but they never will.

If the VP of Engineering publicly states it's okay I will take his word for it. And it's definitely not clear depending on your country whether an EULA is enforceable or not.

And the reason it's not permitted in the EULA is because it would allow commercial competitors to build Hackintosh Macs which nearly destroyed the company during the Power Computing era.

It is never a good idea under any circumstances to believe someone when they tell you it's ok to violate the terms of a contract they are requiring you to sign.

They could modify the EULA without enabling commercial sale of hackintoshes. They just won't. It's actually better for them when you are in breach of contract, because then they can use selective enforcement to create any unwritten rule they like.

Don’t forget their initiative to capture an even bigger percentage of app advertising spend. Nerfing the IDFA is designed to make advertising anywhere other than the App Store less effective. Apple is betting that this change will force developers to shift more advertising dollars to Apple, and away from places like Facebook.

> And besides this, most people seem content to compare it with the physical world with (IMO invalid) comparisons of malls, etc.

Are there any major digital stores that disclose the costs of doing business (royalties, fees, etc...) to the customer as purchase? For example, the PlayStation/Xbox Online Store or Amazon Music

I recall in the UK in 2006, in retail supermarkets, it's been disclosed that the tag price is a cash-only price. That if you pay by a credit card, then the price is 2 or 3% less, but there's an extra 2% or 3% fee for credit card processing.

In the US, sales tax is almost never included in the price tag, so, when you checkout, you get the sales tax itemised separately, including when different jurisdictions charge separate taxes (e.g., county + city sales tax). Hotels in states with a gross-receipts tax often pass this tax back to the consumer as well.

In Eventbrite and many other similar apps, including for donations, the processing fees are nearly always shown separately from the cash price itself; I believe some platforms let the seller decide how it's shown (e.g., "who pays it").

Tax break downs are also posted at the pump when buying gas in the US, because they are so high. Which is kind of the point in the case of the app store as well. They would have more sympathy from me if they charged a more reasonable fee.

In the US, credit card companies don't allow sellers to disclose credit card fees or charge separately for them. You do sometimes see a discount for cash, which is probably due to lax contract enforcement, and, of course, many sellers only accept the subset of credit cards with the lowest fees.

Are you sure the sellers aren't allowed to disclose the fees? I believe the sellers aren't allowed to charge more on CC than the cash price. Note that the example above may be a little convoluted if you aren't too observant a reader, but the whole idea is that the total price that the user pays is still the same regardless of the method of payment, it's just that the money are allocated differently, with the user being informed of the allocation.

Dunno, probably not. But "everybody else does it too" isn't a good excuse to prohibit it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com