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Comment by sbuk | Hacker News Reader

Not at all. There isn’t much second or even third order thinking around these issues and the precedents set to retail as a whole. It's clear to anyone that looks at this on merit as to what Epic are trying to do and, much like Facebook, they just don’t care about the consumer or the little man, despite what they say. Quite the contrary, it’s all about the bottom line.

A lot of discussion has gone into what the 30% covers - it is arguably too high. At the same time, it would be interesting to see what Epic sees as the cost impact of hosting and distribution along with the cost of data security and what protection for their customers privacy they will put in place, were they permitted to have their own store.

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I’m impartial to the 30%, but I don’t want Apple to allow payments to be done via other vendors other than Apple. I trust Apple with my credit card, but I don’t trust epic.

My biggest fear, although I don’t think it will ever happen, is apple being forced to support other stores on iPhone, and someone like Facebook moves their app over due to it allowing them to farm data, or games moving over using their own credit card provider and not knowing where my details are going.

You've been suckered into the fear mongering, unfortunately.

You already don't have any freaking clue where your credit information is being sold - I promise you it's being sold by your bank (Various "affiliated" 3rd parties pay the bank money for it). It's also being sold by most point of sale companies.

Apple is also using that data for its own ad sales.

Apple is also using your purchasing data to put small dev shops out of business - They intentionally target apps that they see making money through their payment systems, copy them, and then place their own software at the top of the store results. Very convenient for them.

Apple is also tracking when and where you use your apps (don't worry - All in the name of security [fucking /s]).

Your biggest fear shouldn't be having to think for a second before handing over your credit card. Your biggest fear should be that you've literally given the richest company in the world full control of your decision making processes, because they happen to be excellent at marketing themselves.

Google was that company 15-20 years ago, and look at how well that's working out for all the folks who are slowly trying to move away from that ecosystem now that it's become apparent that no benevolent dictatorship ever lasts - regardless of how great it is at the moment.

I’m less worried about my credit card purchasing history being sold and more worried about the cc info being intercepted and stolen.

But if I’m going to share my info with someone, I would rather it be Apple than the likes of Google, epic, or some random app that’s allowed to take payments using whatever they want.

How often does this happen? Is this a USA-only problem? Credit card details stolen to commit fraud can easily be solved by calling your bank.

Statistically speaking, that's a low percentage of card theft.

You're much more likely to have your card information stolen at a physical, point of sale location - Restaurant, gas station, clothing store, etc.

If this is really a concern you have, a disposable credit card is a much more reliable way to prevent unauthorized charges.

> But if I’m going to share my info with someone, I would rather it be Apple than the likes of Google, epic, or some random app that’s allowed to take payments using whatever they want.

You're already sharing this info with all of these folks, plus many, many, many more. This is what I mean when I say your bank is selling that data to affiliated parties.

Basically - what makes you think this information is private? Apple has it and uses it to make money. Your bank has it and uses it to make money. Apple happens to be large enough and enough of a monopoly that they can generate money from that information without directly selling it (at the moment, in some places). But they're doing the same thing - Profiling you to make money.

The second Apple thinks it will make more money by selling that information, they will. Not to mention it's a tad on the late side, since your bank is already sharing it everywhere.

Never seen disposable cards in Asia / Pacific.

My biggest fear if Apple wins, which I do think will happen, is that general purpose computing will be eliminated. Apple will use their victory to lock down OSX in the same way that IOS has been. So no applications can be installed in OSX without going through the App Store. Then Microsoft will follow suit; future versions of Windows will be MS Store Only unless you pay for an Enterprise license.

This could potentially extend to the web as well. Apple already forces any web browser on IOS to use Safari underneath. So there's the potential that Apple could eliminate features from websites, such as the ability to play video, unless those sites pass the strict criteria enforced on native apps from the App Store.

The M1 should be a very strong signal Apple has no intention of taking away general purpose execution. M1 Macs could have easily been as locked as iOS devices, but Apple specifically went out of their way to let device owners load unsigned operating systems if that was something they want to opt in to.

I don't think anybody would have a problem with forcing vendors to allow the use of Apple Store payment as an option.

I'm impartial to having a variety of payment options, some more expensive and theoretically trusted than others.

As soon as Apple allows multiple app stores, it's going to be the same crappy situation as we have on PCs: Every goddamned software developer is going to insist on having its own app store. Want an Adobe product? You have to install Adobe's store. Want an Epic product? Epic's store. Want Minecraft? Microsoft store. You'll end up with all these crappy little stores all over your device. Then you'll have store exclusives, and you'll need to search through dozens of stores whenever you want to find something. Yuck!

I doubt that these companies will introduce that level of friction without good reason.

Assuming a competitive market the number of app stores and their markup should dwindle. It's not like we are overwhelmed with app stores on Android.

And this is what Apple already does, e.g. with federated identity - you must offer AppleID, you can offer others as well. A scheme like this enables iOS users without being anti competitive.

You could go as far and look at the costs to run their own store on Pc.

Unfortunately Epic's store on PC is being run at a loss in order to win market share and not expected to be profitable for another 2-5 years. So that wouldn't be a great comparison. The cut they take for their store is 12% but compared to other launchers on PC they provide appreciably worse features.

If Epic is indeed taking a loss at 12%, Apple’s 30% cut doesn’t seem all that unreasonable anymore.

Epic is taking a loss at 12% by spending a whole bunch on exclusivity agreements to try and get gamers into a store nobody wants.

It’s honestly a perfect example showing that Apple has little to fear - users have preferred marketplaces and are hesitant to shop outside them.

Agreed, if they can't even run their own store properly, will they spend the time and effort to police the apps to the same standards as Apple? Doesn't seem likely.

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