Agreed, personally I think 3-5% would be fair anything more is rent seeking.
As developers, we don't even need app stores. They're an artifice that got shoved down our throat by trillion dollar mega corporations. A taxation clearinghouse. You can distribute the same program bytes from anywhere, most notably the web.
It's Steve Ballmer's old dream of taxing all software. There's just no point in it. It's massively unfair.
The excruciating review process adds insult to injury. And it makes fixing bugs a slow and stressful nightmare.
If smart phone manufacturers really want to protect customers, the best way to do that is to store signatures of known bad applications and provide solid permissions-based access to system resources.
Screw app stores.
Having a centralised place with reviews categories, updates etc. is very valuable.
The difference is that Palm, HP and Nokia didn't take a cut, and the stores themselves were based on open protocols that allowed users to add their own sources for apps. That resulted in excellent things like PreWare[1] and, in Maemo's case, enthusiast run apt repositories.
It's entirely possibly to have safe and open app stores that don't follow Apple's model. Apple's App Store model is implemented and maintained to protect the revenue it generates, and security has always been an afterthought.
The App Store model is about profits, and security is an afterthought that makes for good PR.
Apple is responsible for letting scams and fraud flourish on the iOS App Store[1]:
> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.
Apple is also responsible for distributing 500 million copies of Xcodeghost to users via the App Store[2]. Despite claiming that Android users are protected by Play Protect, the Play Store is the #1 vector for malware on Android[3].
It isn't 2003 anymore, operating system vendors have been taking security seriously for a while now. Abuse and malware are not a problem on macOS despite barely anyone using the Mac App Store to install apps. Same goes for Windows, it isn't Windows XP anymore, and despite nobody using the Microsoft Store, abuse and malware are much less of a problem than they were in the past.
The App Store model isn't necessary for security, it's only necessary to secure profits.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...
[3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/play-store-identified-as-main-...
Geeks are very different audience from general public.
If I dropped their app distribution onto Windows it would also succeed there with the general mainstream public, in fact even more so, because of the garbage state for app management there.
HNers forget this quite often.
Actually the merchant takes practically ALL the risk and the credit company has relatively little. If a stolen card is used or fraud is perpetrated, typically the merchant takes the hit depending on the type and scope of the fraud. If there is a chargeback, that money is held indefinitely until there is a resolution, but the merchant needs to dispute and prove that the product or service was rendered without any uncertainty, and much of the time the card company will favor the cardholder.
On top of that, the credit card processor will charge you the merchant a hefty chargeback fee regardless of resolution (as I recall, though they may reverse it if the decision ruled in your favor). Most of the time it's not worth the effort to dispute smaller chargebacks for smaller amounts. It's fair amount of work that just may not be worth fighting.
If your business is deemed in any way high risk, your merchant fees can be as high as 30% or more, but those are unusual edge cases.
When dealing with consumers directly that's the inherent risk and overhead.
That doesn't really justify a slice of subscription revenue though.
Wholeheartedly disagree. I download software on Linux and Mac frequently without ever having it reviewed.
I buy physical products that have sensors. These don't get scrutinized.
If we truly need a "health inspector", then it should be a third party. Not the mafia that makes the device and frequently launches competing apps and features.
And it seems totally uneven that websites can access and deal in the same data, yet they escape review.
It's an invented charade that is brutally unfair.
Android users don't care that they're being tracked, as long as it doesn't break their app or drain their battery too fast.
Google cares that apps track users, because (a) it allows apps to end run around their own ad offering & (b) it provides Apple with a talking point to bludgeon them about the head with.
Review is a PR measure masquerading as a user benefit, in order to technically enforce a centralized toll gate.
But yes, this requires knowledge of what you are doing.
So most people rightfully choose the playstore - and maintaining (and curating) the playstore requires work. So I also think it is fair, if google gets a cut. But 30% and also 15% is just cutthroat price range.
Depends on the payment processor/mechant bank/payment network/issuing bank and the fixed fees vs transaction amount. 3-5% is in range for a card not present transaction for a low dollar amount with not a lot of volume.
If Google or Apple gets a good deal on credit card processing because of volume and takes that plus a little extra to pay for their services, that's a lot more fair than 15-30%; high volume developers might want to shave that margin a bit more, but low and medium probably wouldn't bother.
I also work for a global tech company whereby that approach isn't needed as we have our own payment processing to handle that, but as a part-time indie, I want the option of deferring to the stores for payments.
Developers who don't want to set up payments outside of the app store can choose not to do that. But that choice should not prevent the developers who do want to offer a lower-cost payment processing option to their customers from doing so.
For high volume merchants.
For mom and pop shops they usually pay a fixed fee + %. For transactions under $5 they can lose money on a sale which is why you quite often see minimum purchase prices or discounts when paying with cash. In some states however there are no laws protecting small businesses and processor contractors usually have a clause forbidding merchants from steering customers away from paying with a card.
A local baobao shop by me offers a 10% discount for cash transactions, that tells me they make more money offering a 10% discount than accepting a card. When I was in Georgia my drycleaner told me she didn't make money on any card transaction under $25.
> In addition to the structure of the De Beers cartel, the main force behind this dominance for many years has been the role played by governments. It is possible for a cartel to continue if there is a governing body above that can enforce agreement. Through continuously changing its stance toward corporations, the South African government and other governments essentially protected the companies that were providing them with easily and centrally collected tax revenues. Governments have frequently imposed output quotas and have used legislation, such as the Illicit Diamond Buying laws (IDB), to protect these companies from black markets and their effects on pricing. (As a comparison, one of the weaknesses of OPEC is that it is a cartel of governments over which no other actor can impose control, whereas De Beers has formed a cartel of companies and has often successfully lobbied governments to enforce cooperation on its behalf).
> This argument of government-forced cooperation held while Africa was the dominant supplier of diamonds, but it no longer has the complete stranglehold that it once did. As the cartel has not yet disintegrated, however, other reasons must also exist. Researchers believe that De Beers exists as a monopoly to maximize profits, not just to maintain them. Hence, it is in the members’ interest to stay within the cartel rather than go it alone.
It's however conceivable that a monopoly like De Beers could survive even in a free market because they seem to be the optimal solution to a coordination problem where everyone's (including the consumer's and the prospective competitor's) incentives are aligned. The paper explains:
> Second, the demand for diamonds is not typical and must be analyzed using Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption. This theory replaces the traditional downward-sloping demand curve with one that is upward-sloping, suggesting that the higher the price of an item, the higher the demand. This phenomenon would imply that higher prices have a dual effect on the profits of a company, first, through higher margins and, second, through increased sales. Therefore, it is in a company’s best interest to maintain high prices. For diamonds in particular, this means that the perception of desirability associated with diamonds is critical to the life of the industry as a whole and that if the price of diamonds falls, the overall demand for them will follow. Therefore, it is again in the interest of the individual players in this industry to “play nice” and cooperate, since cheating the cartel will actually lower their profits instead of raising them.
[1]: https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfile...