US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
US Supreme Court declines to hear appeals in Apple-Epic Games legal battle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39014642 - Jan 2024 (162 comments)
https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/174740814726057173...
If we’re talking about the details of the implementation, maybe.
If it’s about the commission that still needs to be paid, then no. That’s directly mentioned in the original ruling by the district court, a commission is due regardless.
Ironically, this is something that is bothering the appellate court as well if you read between the lines of their judgment[0].
They gently criticize the district court for both saying that developers should be able to link and sell outside the app while simultaneously saying that it’s undesirable for Apple to audit developers because it’s too cumbersome.
But the appellate court isn’t meant for do overs, just for when courts have erred in a significant way, so they only gently lament this, instead of doing something about it.
0: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2023/04/24/2...
You agree to keep accurate books and records related to your development, manufacture, Distribution, and sale of Royalty Products and related revenue. Epic may conduct reasonable audits of those books and records. Audits will be conducted during business hours on reasonable prior notice to you. Epic will bear the costs of audits unless the results show a shortfall in payments in excess of 5% during the period audited, in which case you will be responsible for the cost of the audit.
> Apple is already pretty clear in its developer agreement [0] that the 30% commission is for "its services as Your agent and/or commissionaire" (Schedule 2 3.4), not for its services as a payment processor. They are contractually allowed to take the 30% fee out of payments collected, but merely using a different payment processor doesn't remove the obligation to pay them for their other "services as Your agent and/or commissionaire".
0: https://developer.apple.com/support/terms/apple-developer-pr...
In addition, from the original ruling:
> Yvonne-Gonzalez was skeptical of the 30% fee during the trial, and in the ruling she was suspicious about Apple's justification of the commission, writing that "the 30% is not tied to anything in particular and can be changed," but did not order Apple to do so.
Mind you, you can be blocked from doing needed Apple dev stuff (eg sign binaries, etc) until you've manually logged into your Apple account and clicked on the "I accept" button whenever they change terms.
This happened to us (sqlitebrowser.org) in recent weeks, as our CI just stopped working one day.
It turns out there was a new developer agreement that needed signing, and until I'd logged in and done that then Apples servers would no longer sign binaries.
There's literally no choice but to sign the things - regardless of terms - if you want your users to have software that runs.
This gets to be a real nightmare in large organizations with multiple Apple Dev Portal admins, some of which may not even be authorized to sign legal documents on behalf of the company.
I suspect the EU will at some point, they have haven't already, make terms that must be accepted to continue void.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...
You know given they charge exactly the same way for Unreal Engine.
Apple isn't charging for use of the iOS platform SDKs; the developer agreement is much more vague and weasely about what they're charging for, being the developer's "agent and/or commisionaire".
Per-sale licensing for a copyrighted (or patented) work is pretty normal and done in many industries. Apple's agreement doesn't specify any fees for licensing at all.
I.e. Epic's goal here isn't about whether Apple charges 99% or 1% rather it's about allowing other payment methods (theirs in their case of course) to compete with equal footing regardless what Apple wants to charge to do it through them instead.
And the fact the developer is to hide the fee and not list it on the receipt (subscription: $10, Apple tax: $3)
And the fact you cannot charge less for the same service if you sold it outside the platform (as you'd like to do as you didn't need to collect the Apple tax).
Netflix has an app, Netflix “is not” an app. Google Chrome, Airbnb, Epic, anyone who has spent marketing bucks promoting their service and providing a supporting app, was rather acting as a marketing agent for Apple than the opposite.
Apple’s new stance has no merit. We all understand it’s fair to participate in the funding of the Appstore, but it is a very bad defense.
I thought that was expressly permitted - just that Apple Tax still must be collected:
> The link can mention the specific price of content on a website, or that content is discounted on the website from the App Store price. Comparisons are allowed.
In that manner, this ensures you cannot compete with Apple IAP on price, and is hence still wholly anticompetitive.
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/25097/
They’re a so called “reader” app which can send you to an external site to subscribe.
https://developer.apple.com/support/reader-apps/
Other streaming services fall into the same category.
If I recall, and from what I’m now able to find, Netflix didn’t lower their prices when they did that move. And remember they have added ads, are cracking down on password sharing, and prices keep increasing.
So while Apple’s cut is high, let’s not fall into the trap of believing that other big companies are somehow fairer and would totally pass the savings onto us. The overwhelming majority, if suddenly exempt from paying Apple’s cut, would keep charging the same thing and pocket the extra revenue.
Epic's goal is to pay lower platform fees to Apple and Google, presumably lower than the (30%?) platform fees they pay to Nintendo.
(Not defending anything here)
Anti-price-gauging laws have already been ruled as constitutional, so there is case law for "You're charging too much"
The 30% App Store tax does suck but I’ve never understood why it’s singled out. My best guess is that people hate platforms because it’s a 3-way transaction, which makes everything harder, including price negotiation. And also the service isn’t particularly unique, unlike the house, or a status symbol, unlike the Gucci handbag.
Ironically, if Apple made App Store publication more expensive but invite-only, like a high end Bugatti sports car, I don’t think it would’ve ended up in court.
https://game8.co/articles/latest/epic-believes-nintendo-sony...
The argument that the consoles are subsidizing the hardware is just an excuse which has the causation reversed. They're not charging 30% because they have to subsidize the hardware, they're subsidizing the hardware in furtherance of their scheme to charge 30%. Without it they would stop subsidizing the hardware, but so what? People would pay less for games and more for hardware.
You might even pay less for hardware, because there would be no more reason to restrict games to a particular console and then you would only need one to play all the games, and Sony/Nintendo/MS would compete like (or be replaced by) Dell/HP/Lenovo.
Price gauging has a very particular meaning; it isn't simply a subjective "you're charging too much".
It is the practice of significantly increasing the prices of goods, services, or commodities during a time of crisis or high demand. This can happen when there is a sudden shortage of a product, like during a natural disaster, or when there is a surge in demand, like for popular concert tickets.
Characteristics of price gauging include:
- unconscionable prices
- taking advantage of a crisis
- limited supply or high demand
In the United States price gouging is illegal after a state of emergency has been declared.
You can read more here: https://oag.ca.gov/consumers/pricegougingduringdisasters
We really do live in clown world
> Apple is charging a commission on digital purchases initiated within seven days from link out, as described below. This will not capture all transactions that Apple has facilitated through the App Store, but is a reasonable means to account for the substantial value Apple provides developers, including in facilitating linked transactions.
> Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales (“transactions“) to the user for digital goods or services on your website after a link out (i.e., they tap “Continue” on the system disclosure sheet), provided that the sale was initiated within seven days and the digital goods or services can be used in an app.
So tl;dr: of that page is that Apple is saying "if you wanna link to your website, it can't be prominent (only a single text link with our language in our chosen placement) and we still get our commission."
> As discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
> In such a hypothetical world, developers could potentially avoid the commission while benefitting from Apple's innovation and intellectual property free of charge. The Court presumes that in such circumstances that Apple may rely on imposing and utilizing a contractual right to audit developers annual accounting to ensure compliance with its commissions, among other methods. Of course, any alternatives to IAP (including the foregoing) would seemingly impose both increased monetary and time costs to both Apple and the developers.
They did back when they were part of the developer program. If they can make their case that it is bad faith compliance as part of their original case before the Court goes “c’ya, we’re done here”, they might have something, but Apple revoked Epic’s membership for violating their terms in the developer program worldwide and at the conclusion of this lawsuit, Apple has not been ordered to reinstate it. So Epic can’t really argue that they have or will have suffered a harm under these new terms since they’re still in a position where Apple isn’t doing business with them and their lawsuit under which they did have standing is basically at its conclusion.
Again, little surprises me in the legal system these days, but I have to think courts would be very skeptical of an argument where a potential defendant controls the gates that decide whether a potential plaintiff has standing.
They did so in Cameron vs Apple and Google … and settled I believe !
I'm repeating the words of another commenter, but most app devs aren't competing against Apple but other devs. They aren't billion dollar businesses that stand to benefit by trying to get a lower rev share.
But I do agree that most developers probably wouldn't be interested. They don't want to stand up their own payment processor, or don't care to do integrations with a bunch of third parties, and tolerate the fees to use Apple's payments platform. And for many of these developers, their entire business is built on their relationship with Apple. Getting their developer accounts terminated would mean shutting down entirely.
- Epic pushed an update to Fortnite at some point to the App Store that would allow them to issue an update from the server side to enable a flag to offer Epic’s own payment processor where you could buy in-game currency from them instead of IAP. They then issued a server update toggling this flag and began advertising it to Fortnite players immediately.
- Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store for violating their policies.
- Epic files suit almost immediately and begins a PR and advertising blitz they had clearly prepped far in advance. In other words, picked a fight. Epic has standing for this suit because they have suffered a harm (Apple removed their app).
- After a grace period in which Apple explicitly laid out to Epic that they were risking their developer account, offered them time to get back into compliance and resubmit Fortnite to the App Store, they terminated Epic’s developer program account. This ended Apple’s business relationship with Epic.
- That lawsuit has now concluded. Apple took it on the cheek for the anti-steering provisions and has come up with a plan to comply which they are now implementing, all appeals have been exhausted, and Apple and Epic no longer have a business relationship.
(I’m missing some details, and the language is vague because I honestly can’t remember the full timeline of events and would rather be vague than wrong here, but that should the gist of it.)
Put another way, when you choose to be in a business relationship with Apple, Apple is also agreeing to be in a business relationship with you. Apple has not chosen to re-enter a business relationship with Epic, and has rejected Epic’s offers to do business with them. It’s a simple as that. So how can Epic now argue that they have standing for harm caused by Apple’s plan for compliance that affect the way they do business with developers in their developer program when they are no longer in Apple’s developer program?
Once the judge decides they’re done and there’s no more avenues of appeal or additional grounds for appeal, they’ll have no more standing than some random guy off the street who has never signed a single agreement with Apple, not even an iTunes ToS agreement. From what I gather, the Judge wants to be done here too, Epic has had their days in court with the full due process of law but there are other cases to be heard and Epic doesn’t get to hold up the courts any longer because they didn’t get the W they were looking for.
Somebody else, if they think they can do it, can try to have a go at Apple next, but even with the one L they took on anti-steering, I think without some new laws being written their entire business model just got a lot more legally resilient.
Now why is standing important? Put simply, in theory, you can basically file suit against anyone for anything, but if you didn’t actually suffer a harm, and you can’t convince a Judge in the jurisdiction in which you allegedly suffered the harm that you did, then they’re going to throw out your case. It’s a waste of the courts time if there’s no case to be made, you filed suit in the wrong jurisdiction, or you filed suit under the wrong provisions of the law under which you are arguing you suffered a harm.
Apple's public comments to the point have been that Epic is free to resume publishing under the developer program if they abide by the developer agreement, and Epic's CEO has stated they have no intention to do so.
Agreeing to the program terms would seem to put them in a position where they can either argue they have standing or that they have been caused harm, but not both.
> Agreeing to the program terms would seem to put them in a position where they can either argue they have standing or that they have been caused harm, but not both.
Agreed.
Apple gives much more consistent terms.
The speculation is that the 15%-after-first-year subscription change was something they had actually negotiated with Netflix in an attempt to keep in-app subscriptions, which they then rolled out to everyone rather than keep as a Netflix-only deal.
I'm sure Apple is not sad Epic is off their platform, because they are a bad partner. But they would still let them back under the same terms as everyone else, if they agreed to actually abide them this time.
The issue is the last time I recall them saying that was before they terminated Epic’s developer accounts. That was a couple of years ago at this point.
So my question was not about any of that, none of it is new to me, my question was the following: how recently, to your knowledge, did Apple say they would let Epic back in the program? I tried searching around but I didn’t turn up anything recent, or anything from after 2021, but I don’t think Apple’s statements from before they terminated the relationship are applicable at this time, so I was hoping you could provide some additional information that I am lacking.
Apple is likely asking for 27% cut for non-IAP w/Apple because they are saving 3% by not processing credit cards directly. They don't need devs complaining it's MORE expensive to use their own payment processor.
Maybe they want to be the competing payment processor for third party developers who are in Apple's developer program, but don't have the resources to litigate against Apple themselves.
And doesn't Epic Games Store already do payment processing for third party game developers? We know they want to offer the whole store on iOS but if that isn't yet possible then you do what you can.
Yes, but they don’t currently offer it for iPhone apps and games. Just to reiterate, I think this is the best argument for standing I’ve seen, but it’s not an easy sell and if Epic does get into this business, it leaves them in a position of basically trying to undercut the 3 percentage points that Apple is valuing their payment processor at.
> Maybe the argument would be that Apple is actually charging more than 3% for payment processing and is continuing to charge the difference even when you use a third party payment processor, to discourage anyone from doing so. Which could provide a new chance to raise the issue of their high fees, if this is the first time Apple has tried to declare a split.
Judges don’t usually want to get into the business of setting prices for private businesses. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has already determined that Apple has a right to collect their commission, and Apple has already had to define the value of what the payment processing portion of what that is in the Netherlands. ~3% is also generally what you can expect to pay a payment processor to begin with which is why it never, even from the beginning of the App Store, for people to interpret “30%” as Apple’s payment processing fee because even back then, that’s not what any reasonable payment processor charged. If needed, Apple could probably produce documentation showing what they pay a processor.
Isn't the whole premise that they want to be in that market and Apple precludes it?
> ~3% is also generally what you can expect to pay a payment processor to begin with
But that's kind of the point. If Apple is charging more than that for payment processing but then only refunding the ordinary amount when you don't use their service, it precludes anyone else from competing with them on price because the customer is still paying Apple the remainder of Apple's payment processing fee which isn't refunded.
The way to evaluate this isn't to look at what payment processors charge, it's to look at what the rest of what Apple ostensibly charges for would cost in a competitive market.
At which point the first thing you'd have to ask is, why is this still a percent of revenue? It is for payment processors because their fee has to account for fraud risk, which scales with the amount of the payment being processed.
Fees as a percent of revenue are quite unusual for providing any kind of hosting services or marketing or development tools etc. Even sales commissions are a percent of the sales attributable to the salesperson, not a percent of all sales including the ones via other sales channels.
Charging a percent of revenue is a strong indication of a monopoly rent because it's so hard for anyone but a monopolist to get away with it. Even when Visa does it, the fraud risk is more of a fig leaf and the truth is a big chunk of that amount is going to fund credit card rewards programs intended to get people to prefer credit cards to other payment alternatives and the credit card networks only get away with charging it because of the weak competition.
And in any event the balance of what Apple provides is typically extremely inexpensive. Development tools are widely available for free, search engines don't charge to be included in search results (and the fee can't be for search advertising when it's paid by everyone), the per-download hosting cost for an average-sized app on Amazon S3 rounds to zero cents. What are they doing that could explain 27% if it isn't a monopoly rent? Why is it 12% for smaller entities, when economies of scale go the other way?
> Judges don’t usually want to get into the business of setting prices for private businesses.
Which is why the better solution is to prevent this kind of tying of products and services together, so the prices can be set individually by the market instead of trying to disambiguate the price of each service when they're all tied together.
It's the weakest objection you can have, and typically would only be sufficient to get relief in very, very specific circumstances where the unfairness could be proven (as intended). But this case involves broad policies for millions of developers, and it's perfectly compliant with permitting other payment processors.
So: there's almost no chance it would be "shot down" on those grounds.
They're clearly making Apple's in-app purchases the preferential choice by prohibiting developers from using anything but a single plain text link, and scaring users with strongly worded warnings.
IIUC, the ruling said Apple has to allow devs to link to an alternative payment processor (i.e. Netflix can now link to netflix.com instead of the absurd rigmarole they had to endure before). Apple now allows devs to do this, with certain requirements (namely, a 27% commission). Since the court said Apple is allowed to collect a commission, those requirements don't seem to be (to this non-lawyer) illegal.
Are the strongly worded warnings untrue?
Absolutely no one should be surprised by the new policy. Every podcast I listened that discussed the matter when the judge handed down the initial verdict predicted this outcome.
The main thing that feels icky to me is the hurdles to getting approved to link to alternative payment methods, but even if those are walked back that doesn't solve the main issue, which is that alternative payment providers were never a sensible solution to Apple's tax.
Apple has always argued that the commission is for the App Store, not for payment processing, and it is only collected through their payment processor as a matter of convenience. The policy announced here is essentially the same that they announced two years ago in the Netherlands in response to a similar ruling [0]. I'm surprised that anyone here is surprised that they're doing the same thing in the US.
How are they even going to attempt to enforce compliance. Is every store required to integrate with their payments API?
If they’re taking payments from the platform and it does turn out to be a scam, now their hands are dirty as well.
This is worse from the original restrictions _specifically_ because the original restrictions were chosen to simplify from this sort of scenario.
If Apple says all app purchases and purchases of digital goods/services within the app are subject to the 15/30%, and those payments are always made through Apple, then Apple can check for non-compliance with the contract terms up-front (via App Store review) and then there are no separate books to audit, there is no commingling of revenue from in-app purchases vs independent web purchases or purchases made on other platforms, and so on. No need to audit the company's books, because they are using Apple's books.
It is hard to take Apple to task for charging too much, because the 30% ceiling and who pays it has effectively been the same since day 1 of the App Store. They have only created special cases to reduce that percentage (small business program, multi-year subscriptions).
Regulators can say that you can't block other companies from the "iPhone in-app payment for digital goods" market without being anti-competitive, but it is much more onerous to force a company to continue to provide a set of services (maintaining developer tools and SDKs, reviewing and signing binaries, providing backward compatibility in new OS versions) but for a fee schedule determined by regulators.
> Taking a commission from a company that’s already paying for payment processing can’t possibly be seen as reasonable.
Why not?
There's a decades-running assumption by some that Apple was a ridiculously expensive payment processor, only existing because they gave you no other choice than to use them for certain things (and outright forbade you from using them for others).
But Apple provides other services and access to developers per a financial agreement, and was doing payment processing to meter the revenue split.
The regulator argument is that Apple is blocking other companies from taking in-app revenue for digital services. Apple has now split that out in a few markets for companies willing to take on such complexity.
IMHO the only apps I think actually have benefited from the split are dating apps in the Netherlands - because quite frankly the way many dating services charge people is user hostile and/or discriminatory.
A rather obvious thing they could do is just prohibit the fee from being a percent of the developer's revenue. If Apple wants to charge everyone $1000 for a copy of Xcode and the iOS SDK, go to town. But then, people should be able to make competing developer tools and SDKs for iOS, and have competing stores where someone other than Apple is doing the reviews etc.
The main issue isn't even what they're charging, it's that they constrain you from using the alternatives that would induce them to charge less via competitive pressure.
Per the judge's own words, Apple is allowed access to the company's financials and other information that would allow them to audit developers' use of third-party payment systems.
> As discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
> In such a hypothetical world, developers could potentially avoid the commission while benefitting from Apple's innovation and intellectual property free of charge. The Court presumes that in such circumstances that Apple may rely on imposing and utilizing a contractual right to audit developers annual accounting to ensure compliance with its commissions, among other methods. Of course, any alternatives to IAP (including the foregoing) would seemingly impose both increased monetary and time costs to both Apple and the developers.
The court didn't rule against the Apple Tax, just on the monopoly for payment provider. I understand that many people misunderstand this point, but that does not change it.
By trying to make it apply to apps purchased on other stores, they are essentially saying they have a right to add a commission fee to any transaction involving Apps that happens on an Apple Device, which seems like an overreach to me.
This whole lawsuit is because Epic wanted to avoid the Apple Tax by processing in-game purchases via their own payment provider, bypassing Apple App Store or Apple Pay or whatever other thing Apple forces everyone to use on iOS.
So Epic is now allowed to use their own payment processer for in-game purchases, but Apple is saying that they will still have to pay the Apple Tax for those purchases.
In this case the "store" is not an app store but an in-game store, sure.
Have I got that right so far?
That may be, but that's not what the court ruled. The court ruled in favor of Epic on only one count of ten - specifically that Apple must allow other payment processors.
As long as the app was originally installed via the Apple App Store, it's still subject to the Apple Tax.
For every value created a customer receives there is value captured by a company paid by this customer. Let's say a company creates a service valued as 1X by the customer and the customer pays 1X for that. This balance guarantees accessibility and interest among many customers.
Apple tax demands for a customer to pay 1.43X for the same value of 1X (0.43 = 30% of 1.43). It means that the balance is ruined and customers do not get enough value for what they pay. In value, they still get 1X despite paying for 1.43X.
There is a price elasticity curve that measures how many clients a company loses after each step of the price increase. In other words, a company gets significantly fewer customers due to the increased price at the same time, it’s unable to benefit from an additional 0.43X customers paid. A drop in the revenue is significant. At the same time, the company needs to increase its marketing budget effectively decreasing its margin even more. That makes business unsustainable.
Imagine what a decrease in purchases a product gets if its price is increased by 43%. This ruins all economic assumptions of a business.
Not to mention that if it has any network effect, significantly fewer users result in a degraded experience for all users.
I'm considering using PWA for the next mobile app and not investing in native iOS development. Even 50% fewer users due to PWA installation is better than being a lifetime slave to Apple which extorts 43% of what a company gets after Apple TAX from a user.
> it ruins value-chain and makes it uneconomical
This is empirically not true. If the value-chain is so 'ruined' and 'uneconomical'. Why are there so many iOS devs? Lots of people are participating in the system and lots of people are getting rich.
Examples of truly uneconomical ecosystems are Windows Phone and Blackberry - which is why all the devs left and those platforms are dead.
Survivorship bias. You only see businesses that have high enough margins to eat the fees. Whether that's a desirable set of incentives for long-term prosperity of everyone involved is a different question.
Apple could raise their fee to 90% and there would still be plenty of iOS developers using in-app purchases, because selling a few bytes in a database is effectively free. It would all be trash, but they would definitely be there.
1. A user knows they want to install a certain app; they do so using the app store since that's the only method Apple allows.
2. A user discovers an app while browsing the App Store, but Apple isn't involved beyond that.
3. A user discovers an app through Apple's marketing, e.g. from WWDC.
With (1), it feels very unfair for Apple to charge 30% just to essentially get out of the way. It's not too far off from Apple threatening to block websites from Safari unless they agree to a ransom payment.
With (2), Apple did refer the customer in some sense, but it still feels unfair in a way since the user was essentially forced to use their App Store for discovery.
With (3), at least Apple is putting in some kind of work (specific to the app) rather than purely rent seeking. Still feels morally questionable since developers have no choice to opt out, though.
Keep in mind Apple sells advertising in the App Store. They make $ beyond just the 30%.
Disclosure: I am APPL shareholder and sometimes app developer.
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
I do think this is why EpicGames only takes like 12%. It isn't really good will, or it is surface level goodwill. Its market share. They'll eventually crank it up to 30 like all their main competitors.
Let's hope for more competition in the future, at least in EU.
Like bandwidth becomes essentially free at a certain scale, but even if we're paying s3 retail prices, that's under $0.001 to transfer the average (~40mb or so) iOS app. Compute should be less than that.
There would also be fixed costs to develop the service etc, but Apple earns something like $80 billion / year in App Store revenue, so if a competitor could capture a nontrivial portion of that, any reasonable development costs should be pretty negligible by comparison.
Could you do it cheaper than Apple and Google. Yes, in theory. But probably need quiet a bit of upfront capital to get it going, which might require investors who are eventually gonna wonder why they arn't collecting that sweet 30% while their competitors are.
I do wonder how that would work regulation wise. Is the store PCI compliant? How do you manage PCI compliance in a FOSS project? I do a little work on payments processing and what happens when VISA makes up a new rule on the fly that they force the payment gateways, issues a fine and the gateway companies (like World Pay) want to pass that fine on to the developers using the payment gateway? This almsot happened at my shop, we almost got hit with a $25K fine because Visa made up a new rule, tried to fine WorldPay and WorldPay tried to pass that fine onto us.
Edit: If anyone has some answers or experience to the last paragraph, please let me know! I've only dealt with payment processing on the proprietary software side and doing integrations for brick and mortar stores. So working with physical cards and payment terminals. I would be very interested to learn how this works or would work in a FOSS project.
The easy path to PCI compliance would be to use something like the Stripe iOS SDK and never see any payment card data. Agreed there are still some risks with card processing, but it's nothing unusual, millions of businesses deal with card processing.
Overall I agree it's not easy, but the challenges seem like normal ones that many startups deal with, mostly in smaller and/or more competitive markets which could never dream of the revenues or profit margins that would be possible here.
We could also look to the PC market to see that quite a few businesses do find it worthwhile to avoid the 30% charged by some stores. E.g. Epic Store undercuts it with 12% fees (7% if using UE), and larger companies tend to sell to consumers without using third-party stores, like EA, Blizzard, Adobe, etc.
That's exactly why the apps succeeding financially on the play store and app store are casino-like games.
The problem with modelling this as a tax is that... it's not a tax in a pure sense. Apple has partly built the product that you're selling. You're building on their hardware with their libraries and their APIs and their servers and their quality control. They want compensation for that.
Now you can argue what level of compensation is fair, and as you point out, its a free market and you even have an option to use a different technology to build you product. The alternative is that Apple doesn't collect this cut of the profits and you have to actually engage in what that means.
Why would they build APIs for you? Why would they distribute your app at all. What happens for example if we pass a law tomorrow saying "Sorry Apple, you can only collect enough for credit card fees".
Well one option is Apple just closes the store, hires a couple hundred high quality developers and builds out their own library of Apps, take 100% of the revenue. No tax in that situation! But I'm not sure it's a better outcome for developers.
It's also not better for Apple, quite obviously, or they'd already do this. People want and expect their favourite apps to work on their phones.
Hell, without the revenue they could just turn around and say "We're not going to charge a 30% fee. But you need to pay us $10m per quarter to license our SDK". There's tonnes of options that Apple can use to squeeze developers for something that genuinely is hugely valuable.
I think people lose sight of the fact that before the App Store the way applications got onto phones was far far more favourable to the hardware vendor.
They would do it because they make massive margins off hardware. Apple can't build good software and third party iOS devs are a major reason why the iPhone is successful.
I found this discussion of the Apple v. Epic ruling to be informative:
> as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
Indeed, while the Court finds no basis for the specific rate chosen by Apple (i.e., the 30% rate) based on the record, the Court still concludes that Apple is entitled to some compensation for use of its intellectual property.
https://stratechery.com/2021/the-apple-v-epic-decision/
The judge hinted here and there that Epic should have sued over the size of Apple's cut, not it's right to take a cut.
Epic charges 5% for Unreal Engine.
Apple offers developers significantly more than just a games engine.
Looks like whoever developed iOS and all the hardware it runs on and the ecosystem that makes it appealing for rich users is actually providing Epic a ton of value and profit, but Epic doesn't want to pay for it. I wonder who's greedy here
(Also it's insane how we just accept that Epic with its massive profits and margins is the one who wants to get a discount from Apple, if anything they should be charged double what small business single person devs pay.)
Epic developed a cross-platform game that runs on half a dozen platforms. The appeal of the game is exactly because of that. And you claim that Epic should pay 30% to Apple, because "we are friends with rich people".
Not to mention that the "is actually providing Epic a ton of value and profit" claim is completely bollocks. Can you point to any iOS-exclusive games that matter out there? Ah, right. They don't exist. Because there's (comparatively) very little money in iOS gaming.
What?
> "is actually providing Epic a ton of value and profit" claim is completely bollocks
If it was true Epic wouldn't be clamouring so hard for App Store presence and iOS users. Epic is the first to admit that App Store provides a ton of value and profit. The whole rigamarole is Epic wanting it but paying less or nothing for it.
> there's (comparatively) very little money in iOS gaming.
According to whom? Epic filed a lawsuit because they were losing ungodly money after millions of iOS based gamers stopped playing Fortnite. What did they expect, users will start buy gaming consoles just for this? Sorry but that's ludicrous, there's plenty of other good games on iOS. Many of them also don't try to leech money off you or your kids like Fortnite.
> Can you point to any iOS-exclusive games that matter out there?
That's true of any big game, most games are released for multiple platforms because it'd be stupid not to do it if you can.
Do you see deliberately kicking themselves off of Apple platforms as "clamoring so hard"? On the contrary, Epic saw the platform was terrible for shooter games and driving extremely little value, and thus was happy to fight the monopoly on behalf of their _other_ main consumer - game engine developers.
> they were losing ungodly money after millions of iOS based gamers stopped playing Fortnite
Sorry but this is just laughable, and the numbers are all there in the lawsuit already. Almost no one played Fortnite on IOS. Some players installed on mobile but the majority solely used it as a web frontend to purchase cosmetics. Thus robbing Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo of their commissions for creating the platforms that players _actually_ play on.
> leech money off you or your kids like Fortnite.
If it wasn't obvious you have some weird bone to pick already, this certainly proves it. Epic's monetization model is wildly less predatory than the vast majority of mobile games. Why are you speaking so confidently about something you seem to know nothing about?
> [iOS] is actually providing Epic a ton of value and profit > Apple offers developers significantly more than just a games engine. (comment from threeseed)
Apple sells hardware to consumers (above cost), then blocks consumers from actually using the hardware they own, and developers from distributing software for it, without paying Apple a monopolistically-high cut of sales. All Apple provides to developers is access to consumers who are blocked from their own hardware, and a nominal file distribution via CDN. A game engine provides an order of magnitude more value to developers than a CDN file distribution platform offers.
If Apple was providing real value to developers they wouldn't be so deathly afraid of competing with other app distributors.
It was a miscalculation. They didn't realize that so many of their users play only on iOS and are not about to invest in new hardware.
Well, turns out their game wasn't that addictive by itself! what made it a killer is a combo of 1) a decent game I guess 2) being available on the most popular gaming platform in developed world. Simply look at HN headline, since 2020 the game made almost no news except for being kicked off marketplaces. Even during Covid lockdowns! It just speaks volumes.
> the numbers are all there in the lawsuit already. Almost no one played Fortnite on IOS
Exactly, they are in the lawsuit. Some 100+ millions of nobodies eh?;)
> Epic's monetization model is wildly less predatory than the vast majority of mobile games.
Oh yeah, I totally agree that scammy behavior is a continuum.
> Apple sells hardware to consumers (above cost)
You are expecting them to sell below cost? And then what, be a charity? Or sell your data to profit, like the alternatives?
> then blocks consumers from actually using the hardware they own
It's clear that you have a preexisting bone to pick with Apple. No one blocks me from using iPhone...
> All Apple provides to developers is access to consumers
The consumer base they created by daring to develop a completely new product with entire ecosystem of hardware and software that those consumers somehow keep and keep finding appealing.
It's $1000, most people have acess to that kind of money, even if they need to finance it and even if it is a terrible financial decision for them to buy one, many still do.
"Most people" don't. I maybe do but it's at least half of my monthly income after tax & rent
Worldwide, iPhone user = rich person (and also almost any American = rich person). By being on App Store, Epic had access to those users. Then they lost millions of users after Epic left App Store. You reap what you sow.
You don't need to be rich to have a payment plan of $40 a month for 3 years.
The concept that Kroger (for instance) has a monopoly of customers in its own store is ridiculous. There are other stores, and other bazaars.
What analogy would you use to describe this situation that clarifies your position?
As a vehicle owner I'd like to be able to have a choice whether I want to install OEM parts or after market parts. The after market parts might be cheaper, or have features that the OEM parts lack. I would like to be able to purchase these parts without a 30% markup that goes to the car manufacturer.
As an iPhone user, I'd like to be able to install apps on my iPhone without having to pay the iPhone manufacturer a 30% markup.
I realize that this analogy doesn't directly address the issue of whether Apple has a monopoly on the market of iPhone apps, but it's how I think about it as a consumer.
Apple represents the town government, and the App Store is the only general store in the entire town; other stores have been banned. Don't like it? You're free to pack up and move to another city!
The reason I'd characterize it this way is that changing phone platforms is nontrivial. It's not as simple as just going to another store that day.
I'm sorry, but how is it "nontrivial" to change phone platforms? Google says it's easy and all you need is a cable to get the best experience: https://www.android.com/switch-to-android/
You shouldn't. It's a marketing page.
This argument doesn't work if you don't believe the part about getting all the same apps, which is objectively not true.
It's a fun way to mock google, but it has nothing to do with the merits of this issue with apple.
Your iMessage history disappears; Google can't transfer that to your Android phone. They claim to be able to transfer SMS/MMS history, which surprises me: I'm not sure how they accomplish that. I'm sure there's a ton of other user data that they also can't transfer. (Speaking of iMessage, any group chats you were in are now broken.)
Google of course has an interest in telling people that switching is easy and painless. It's not, though.
Everything else you mention is part of the nature of changing operating systems: software incompatibility / unavailability. That never has and unfortunately never will be solved. It’s hard enough to keep old software working on new releases of the same OS.
You can't force everything to be uniform and support all of the same features to make switching between manufacturers of a product-class "trivial". How's that part of a healthy free market? Requirements to that effect kills all creativity and specialization of products for different purposes. Android and iOS are different and that's a good thing!
not saying it's good (in fact, it's much worse than what Apple is doing), but no one contested its legality
This unethical model is not any better in our modern world.
I'm not making the argument from a legal perspective, but from a reality perspective, I think that's a very poor analogy to the way operating systems (and "platforms" generally) work.
The very nature of operating systems is that they have much more control than a simple store. For example, if you want to switch from Kroger to Safeway, just go to Safeway. There are almost zero switching costs. I actually was strongly considering switching from Android to iPhone solely to get iMessage access (that's a whole different ball of Apple anti-competitiveness, but I digress...) But in the end, even after buying the iPhone, I decided to give it away as a Christmas gift because I just couldn't stomach how painful switching would be after a decade-plus history on Android: I'd lose all my Android apps, I'd lose all the easiest access to things that live in Google's ecosystem, I'd lose my day-to-day familiarity with my phone, etc. To be clear, I'm not saying that's impossible, but it's just a much higher burden that deciding to go to a different grocery store.
Note the government has often developed special laws for "platform businesses", for example railroads, telecoms, etc., understanding the unique positions these companies are in when it comes to controlling the larger economy. I wish they would regulate operating system platforms in a similar manner.
That very much depends on how much you're invested in a particular platform.
Using the store analogy, if you decide not to shop at Walmart anymore because you detest their policies, and the closest store that carries the products you're used to getting is 20 minutes away, or maybe you now have to go to multiple different stores to get everything you need, making an extra 50 minutes of driving, that's a considerable burden of switching as each time you make your purchases (plus pay higher prices).
There are no other stores, or other bazaars. If you want to sell an iOS app, your only option is the Apple App Store.
Apparently the courts don't believe this is a monopoly, presumably because you can also choose to toss your iPhone and buy an Android phone instead. I disagree with that reasoning; to me that's like if Whole Foods also exists in addition to Kroger, but if you want to switch to Whole Foods, you have to get an expensive operation to swap out your stomach, because the groceries at Whole Foods don't work with the stomach that works with the groceries at Kroger.
You also have the entire internet, no tossing required.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/15/1224401179/kroger-albertsons-...
Every single framework and the OS itself up to the Mach OSS Kernel is Apple IP.
It would be entirely unfeasible to run anything on an iPhone without some Apple IP. You'd be looking at an Asahi Linux for iPhone.
Apple is also benefiting from developers IP, as they enrich their value proposition.
Should Intel or AMD get a cut from any app (including Open Source) on Windows and Linux? Should MS get a cut of every app you run on Windows?
You buying the device compensates Apple IP. Commonly their marketing showcases heavily third party apps.
What makes the iOS situation different? Aren't apps essentially "digital accessories"?
Here's another caveat: assume the bundle I distribute is dynamically linked into the underlying operating system, such that I'm definitely distributing nothing except my own code that I wrote. Or, similarly: I ship nothing but my own code, plus a script I wrote the purchaser has to run to statically link the package with iOS libraries present on their Mac.
If you were to compile it yourself such that the end-user device would need to be jailbroken because it lacks the necessary digital signatures, IANAL but I think this would be totally fine on your part, and the end-user would be protected by the jail-breaking exception to the DMCA;
> Jailbreaking and Unlocking Smartphones and Tablets
Since 2010, the DMCA has allowed users to jailbreak their smartphones in order to execute lawfully obtained applications unauthorized by the phone manufacturer. Last week’s announcement reaffirmed the rationale that using unapproved applications on smartphones is fair use and limiting users’ ability to execute such applications hinders choice and impairs innovation.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/latest-dmca-exemptions-r...
This is a non-solution.
A developer writing an app for iOS can use the APIs provided by Apple without agreeing to license them.
(Granted, you can't get your app into the App Store and onto iPhones/iPads without agreeing to whatever Apple wants you to agree to. Which... is part of the problem.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
If it were possible to run unsigned code on the average iDevice (and Apple's framework/drivers disabled for unsigned code) then this would have already been done, a long time ago.
Nobody has been able to build a new browser engine in 25 years. So what would be the dollar estimate of a similarly complex UI framework along with high quality device drivers, development tools, services frameworks like iCloud, etc.?
If that one person does it and lets everyone use it, will they do it for free or should they charge for it, perhaps as a percentage of revenue of the developers and applications who use the code?
Many free apps on the store who can get away with charging outside do it. Uber, Banks, etc...
Why can they use Apple's IP for a flat $99/yr and others don't? It's not a fair system. Paid apps are essentially subsidizing the free ones.
The consumer, who bought the device? Surely the cost of development of said IP is in total recouped from device sales? The device doesn't work without said framework.
The developers who provide a reason to buy the device? Why should they be forced to use a monopolistic platform only because Apple's marketing has successfully clouded consumers' heads?
Humans are terrible at actually boycotting, but I'd love to see what would happen if 90% of app store devs pulled their apps from app stores. Would people buy as many iPhones? Ooooh, now we realise the value proposition that devs are _offering_ Apple, not taking from them.
Watch and Mac are more or less failed developer platforms (how many native 3rd party apps exist for them?) yet are also both huge businesses just with Apple apps.
Of these Apple is only responsible for 2 of them: textedit I could replace with vscode tbf and activity monitor is only open for when the Macbook plays up (constantly) and doesn't even offer remotely useful _aggregate_ stats like "what the fuck is actually consuming all of my memory".
I use Android so let's see what's open on my phone: Ebay, Telegram, Firefox. Hmmm nothing specifically Samsung/Google related. Just because you make a device with an OS doesn't mean you get to charge rent. Flat charge app developers for the minor admin involved in them submitting apps but charging a percentage is a ludicrous anti-consumer money grab. Doesn't matter if it's Apple, Google or anybody else.
Not under US law according to the very court case being discussed.
Why are people still making this claim when the judge literally concluded otherwise and then a panel of appeals court judges confirmed her ruling?
Courts get rulings wrong all the time. How many times has someone on death row been exonerated for a crime?
The App Store is a monopoly by definition. It is the only form of app distribution to 100% of iPhone users. Going further, it is the only form of app distribution to greater than 50% of the US market. Vertical integration is a very valid argument to make here, same as it was with Standard Oil, and other companies of the early 20th century.
That’s not how monopolies are defined under US law, so no it’s not, by definition.
It’s always possible to define an arbitrarily narrow market such that one company owns 100% of it. The legal definition of a monopoly requires specific criteria to be met which have not been met in this case.
I quoted the specific line I disagreed with?
> Can you please link to the definition you are using?
To be honest this issue is too complicated to be boiled down to a simple definition as the criteria have evolved over time across multiple Supreme Court (and lower court) cases. In this particular case the "iOS app distribution" market is considered an "aftermarket" in antitrust law (the foremarket being smartphones), and single-brand aftermarkets are rarely allowed by the courts.
If you are genuinely curious about the topic this is a good primer:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/attachments/us-submissions-...
As are these two court cases:
https://casetext.com/case/eastman-kodak-company-v-image-tech...
https://casetext.com/case/newcal-industries-v-ikon-office-so...
(Which were precedent setting and indeed referenced in the Epic v. Apple case.)
Apple's bad-faith compliance will backfire. Enough of this.
Just something to think about if you want to argue that a 30% commission is too much for facilitating a high trust purchasing environment with customers who are ready to spend money.
Oh yeah, and you’ll never guess what Amazon’s policy is about steering customers off of Amazon.
But genuinely, your comments enrich this sort of thing. I love your input.
2. Because some products might be sold at breakeven price to attract and retain customers
3. Because some products might be loss leaders to attract and retain customers
b) I don't know if parent poster was talking about FBA (fulfillment by amazon) sales or not. If they are, then Amazons cut includes shipping and storage costs, which for low value items are often more than the stuff costs itself.
It's not anymore; the reason they continue to be so popular is locked-in mindshare (just like you think of going to Google to search the web) and because of the fast shipping and easy return policy (esp through Prime).
e.g. Spotify, Twitch, Patreon etc. Most of the funds go to the creator. Completely breaks the model when Apple forces a 30% cut of gross.
That being said, i'd also argue Apple's app store is a complete monopoly on iPhones. Iphones and app stores are such an essential part of life, they deserve to be neutral a la internet neutrality. Not sure how we all become pro internet neutrality but somehow suffer Apple's 30% tax.
"You can't upgrade to premium in the app. We know, it's not ideal"
You have to go to their site to upgrade your account. Apple gets a 0% cut of Spotify's subscription revenue
Now that they're trying to capitalize on it they're becoming worse as a store and I can't remember last time I used them (in NL).
If you buy an iphone there is no one to compete, Apple does not have to play the low margins game because there is no other game in town. Amazon does not take 9% if you sell somewhere else and does not care if you sell cheaper elsewhere, Apple does.
This. The problem is not the 30%, the problem is that iPhones do not have an option to buy apps from, lets say a Amazon Store or Epic Store.
However then people get shocked that Apple says ok, we've rolled out the ability for third party app stores, we still review all the apps before signing, and the store owes us a 20% commission.
Their App Store monopoly is the most literal definition of anticompetitive bundling in the 21st century; they're tying the primary product (Apple hardware, software, APIs, etc.) to a secondary product (the App Store) that can be offered from multiple competitors.
Apple will continue to take a cut to make apps for the phone. The App Store and in-app purchases are how they take their cut today.
The bundling is anticompetitive against the potential market for third party payment providers and third party app marketplaces, sure. However, decoupling it is independent of reducing Apple's high fees. Apple will continue to charge a substantial fee for their part, even if due to regulatory compliance they offer less services to developers.
Someone would need to make a legal case directly against the fees Apple charges. I suspect that is a very challenging thing to do - least of which because they have never raised rates. The fees Apple collects have been the same since the first app was sold for iPhone, and the success has grown under that framework.
What I expect is that, for the first time, Apple and their App Store partners will be forced to reckon with user choice. Their business will have to change if their success is predicated on a neverending source of R&D funding from payment processing revenue.
If it's shipped via Amazon.
And also if we were talking about software rather than physical goods, and there were about a thousand other complications that made it not quite a 1:1 metaphor.
So we do sell on other e-commerce platforms and you’re never gonna guess what their fee structures are.
(Basically the same as Amazon’s)
Whereas Apple could start charging 50% tomorrow and still have all the major apps in the store because of their market dominance position combined with ecosystem lock-in and walled garden.
I can't find a good source for it, but Amazon is very sensitive to prices for the same goods on other sites. My understanding is they automatically match lowered prices on a number of competitors. They are also getting sued by the FTC[1] for punishing sellers that sell lower elsewhere.
1. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-amazon-forces-customers-...
iPhone users don't carry a second Android phone, and their purchasing decision has committed them to only buying on the App Store for at least a few years at a time. And the crazy part is they are paying the Apple Tax even for services like Spotify that they might primarily consume on other devices. You can't make a store that ships to Apple users - only Apple can.
The parent seems to be saying that when you take the difference between physical and digital goods into account, that Amazon is leaving him with a similar slice of the revenue.
You seem to be arguing that he has alternatives to Amazon.
However, you also seem to be making the point indirectly that the motivation for selling on Amazon, and why businesses sell in the App Stores, is that they want the additional sales that come from targeting those marketplaces.
Isn't then there little real distinction from selling products on Amazon (where you could sell elsewhere, but dramatically fewer would see and purchase your product) or the App Store (where you could make a web app and sell elsewhere, but dramatically fewer would see and purchase your product)?
Web apps are not a real alternative. Firstly, an app you can only use on a desktop is a non starter for almost every use case. So you need a mobile layout. Now, some features like background audio and video are not available as a web app. Some are less reliable like user sessions, timers, push notifications and offline behaviour. Technical innovation is not possible due to the standards based approach - for video calls you have to use WebRTC for example, for games you have to use WebGL. Some features like notifications, vibration, were delayed by Apple until users were trained to only accept native apps. There's others like battery status, Apple Watch, Settings pane that I don't know the exact status, but I'm sure App Store gets an advantage there too.
"Web apps for mobile".
Apple will lower their cut to 15% if you earn less than $1 million USD/year across your app businesses, or if you sell subscriptions and your subscribers persist for longer than 1 year (so 2nd - Nth year of subscriptions are split at 85/15)
Not defending the size of their commission, but in practice it does vary from the 30% that is commonly quoted
I've been burned by too many places to just start arbitrarily buying from someone I've never purchased from before directly. I've had companies just not respond, accuse me of stealing, tell me missing packages aren't their problem, charge enormous restocking fees, and in more than one case call me an idiot that doesn't know what I'm talking about. None of that with Amazon.
Maybe after establishing a relationship of being a reputable brand I could be swayed over, but even then there's no benefit to me unless the price is cheaper.
The fact that they have a browser and allow “3p browsers” is only because the web was already established and customers wouldn’t have bought in without it.
iPhones and iPads are not general purpose computing devices. Not by tech, but by policy.
https://krausefx.com/blog/announcing-inappbrowsercom-see-wha...
I always thought that a company should make an app those does something trivially, but also has its own in app browser as the true functionality.
Making things proprietary when they should be commodities is a step backward, and we should fight that, tooth and nail.
Hopefully they all figure something out eventually to allow Kindle purchases from the app.
I don't see how Apple would prohibit me from visiting a website, and they've allowed use of content/subscriptions purchased elsewhere in iOS apps for a while now.
What has not been allowed (at least until today) is to directly link to that external website.
If you attempt to purchase a kindle book from within the kindle app, you will not be able to. Nor will there be any messaging explaining how to make a purchase (because apple does not allow such messaging). You’ll just be mysteriously confused about why you can’t buy a book.
You can use your credits from your subscription, but you cannot pay for a new audiobook in the app.
It’s a relatively recent feature (past year), but it’s possible.
No idea why the price through the app was better than the price on the website. Maybe some kind of promotion? Weird.
I'm not surprised, since you can often buy a Kindle + Audible book for cheaper than buying the Audible book alone.
If you look at the Audible book (such as Wool https://www.audible.com/pd/Wool-Audiobook/B0BKR3Y6SP) the price is often higher than if you look at the Kindle book price, and adding the Audible narration (https://www.amazon.com/Wool-Hugh-Howey-ebook/dp/B088SY4GSD).
In the Wool example, the Audible book is $31.64, but the Kindle book with the audible add-on is $9.48 ($1.99 + $7.49). Even if the Kindle book was selling for "list price", it would still be cheaper at $27.48.
So, I'm guessing there's just a lot less margin headroom to eat a 30% cut on Kindle prices, but plenty to eat that on Audible's prices.
I kind of figured this already when there's no way to filter apps by "doesn't have in-app purchases".
I feel more taken advantage of by the original maker than I do Apple.
However, my belief is the entire App Store should be subject to the same rules as Apple Arcade. It would be a far healthier app ecosystem, far less predatory
Although I think this sounds extremely petty-bullshit of them, in part because that flat 3% is basically calculated to make this cost more for developers who do this overall, the court in the Netherland did go along with it. So we'll have to see how it'll work out under US courts now.
(I feel that them charging some sort of fee for the App Store isn't entirely unreasonable, though this seems too high -- we can debate the actual amount that'd be acceptable. It's the lack of an alternative via sideloading that makes this egregious.)
Do you get upset at business class in airlines? Or cinema food being so expensive? Isn’t this the point of capitalism?
I'd tend to think of the Mac as the most-direct comparison point, where there's the App Store but also where a developer who wants to handle everything themselves can.
Capitalism says: the market will figure it out.
Given Apple does not have a monopoly. I don’t see how any of this is a problem. If they want you to sacrifice your first born child in order to publish an app on their App Store. That’s okay. Just don’t publish your app to their phone.
Are you serious? airline companies is not a good place to be when it comes to margins and making a profit. Business class subsidizes air travel "for the rest of us". Even then, they still often depend on government subsidies to make ends meet. You say business class is a fee not related to their costs? you really don't understand how unprofitable airlines would be and how cheap air travel currently is. In France it's cheaper to take a plane from Montpellier to Paris than it is to take the train!
Meanwhile Apple is one of the highest margin company in the entire world. To put things into perspective, Apple has a /cash reserve/ of 162 billions USD. They have far more money than they even know how to spend. The 30% on in app purchases is definitely not because they need to recoup their costs in any way, shape, or form.
So “having a good business model” is punishable?
No Apple's argument is that this is a fee for everything e.g. SDKs.
As well as being a highly lucrative distribution channel.
Firefox hooks into the Android type display settings. I would like to see chrome support this. It really adds to the app feel.
When you make a PWA you have to remake native components. Material Design 3 Web Components is not done yet. Apple has nothing for you so just set your border radius to 17px or whatever they use. Backdrop filter blurs.
You don't get the advertising from the app and play store. You don't get discoverability. However, discoverability is a marketing function. If your acquisition costs are under 30% of your product fees then there is no reason why you can't drive users to your mobile optimized website.
Added: I will also add that the icons I'm using are very basic. Found in many ui kits. The minus symbol, arrows, trash can. The only one that is recognizable to the trained eye is that I'm use the copy symbol (two pages). So if it's going to be an issue for that one I would be fine to use something from Google. I just want Apple to know that I'm on team Apple. I want people to use Apple products. When they come out with SwiftUI Kit for web, I will be the first user. For a product like mine, most users are iphone users.
Dark/light mode switching does not work
Wake Lock API does not work
These features work in browser.
You can side-load on Android, and the Play Store's commissions are on par with Apple's.
The mistake here is believing that either Store is competing for developers. They are not. The stores compete for users, and they charge developers a fee for access to those users. Most users prefer the safety and convience of Play, or Steam, or Apple's iOS store.
So long as user's are primarily using Apple's store, either through defaults, habits or choice, Apple won't have to change much.
Google allows third-party stores and side-loading, but they're still able to charge a 30% cut on the Play Store.
I personally make use of third-party stores and side-loading on Android, but I don't personally know anyone else who does.
For that reason, people seem strangely committed to defending them through their rent-seeking period.
Apple cannot be both a good company and a monopoly.
As their users, we should not accept the false framing and false choice their management presents of either monopolistic control of the mobile ecosystem or endless spam and a Wild West free-for-all.
I do not understand why people's hearts are still drawn to Apple as the company of Steve Jobs, when it is clearly something very, very different today.
What? Tim Cook has done a great job of keeping up the Apple philosophy. What significantly has changed?
The way I see it, you get 2 major pieces of value out of these. First, they serve as a B2C marketing channel. Second, they provide access to certain native hardware features & OS integration.
The first point is difficult to contend with, but HN and Twitter seem to serve as a fine counterpoint.
For native hardware access, I'd recommend just trying it in your browser right now. You'd likely be surprised what works in 2024 on iOS/Safari clients. We've been shipping just a webapp to our customers for the last 3-4 years now. We do 2D barcode scanning, signature capture, etc. without any difficulty these days. You DO NOT need a native app to access camera, location, etc. you may find some friction with the web, but you just have to work through it and have patience.
Watching founders obsess over App Store presence and its requisite taxation is a bit of a red flag for me regarding the effectiveness of their business model. The open web exists - why haven't you even tried it yet? Seems to me it's easier to complain about how unfair things are on twitter than it is to iterate into a viable business.
I am under no legal contracts with Apple, aside from any EULAs I may have clicked through for iOS, etc.
I can inspect the dom, scripts run on my device, the network. Set adblockers and script filters.
None of those freedoms are available on smartphone apps. As a dev you pay the trillion dollar mega corps, as a consumer you also pay to them.
The app paradigm could have been as open as the web, but we voted with our dollars for a walled garden with 30% tax.
Naturally, there can be endless debates about whether this is acceptable or not. However, the reality is that there is a striking disparity between the iOS's model and that of Android, PC, or even Mac.
It's literally the same problem that led to antitrust in 1890.
I hope Apple will be forced to allow third party app stores and sideloading apps.
For the External Link Account Entitlement that "reader” apps can use to link to purchase flows off-app, Apple forbids offering IAP in the same app. Why? Because they think this will discourage adoption.
For the new StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement that other apps can use for the same exact thing, Apple requires an IAP alternative. Why? Because they think this, too, will discourage adoption.
It really seems to me the best way around this is:
- Don't sell on the Apple store at all with no alternative (likely same for Google if your particular gripe is the 30%). Stick with web.
- Push more PWAs to your customers. Sounds like Apple is finally opening up a bit on that front? Maybe the EU antitrust will open the doors wider.
- Sell ONLY on Apple (and again Google), then 15-30% is your norm, and you won't feel the "loss" of not having a middleman.
The argument about 30% being standard and OK to me only makes sense without the $99/yr license in place, and if only comparing to other locked down platforms. E.g. with Steam, there's plenty of ways to distribute via Steam and still have them take a lower cut, or you have other stores you can sell on. It's only the consoles that have the same kind of locked-down environment, but even then those are explicitly niche devices whereas phones are general-purpose.
[0] https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/174728054136210228...
This was announced for dating apps in the Netherlands in Feb 2022, I think Korea also has had similar changes. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3649111/apple-begins-t...
As GP mentioned it has been in effect for a while in Holland and maybe Korea or a few other places for at least certain kinds of apps due to local laws.
Interesting note: this only applies to the US. I know the EU is forcing changes as well, but those are EU only.
So South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, Canada, Mexico, and others haven’t changed one bit and likely still require 30%.
In this scenario, is there something specific that we should know/understand about (a) dating apps or (b) the Netherlands?
Developer puts out ads on Facebook (or some other way of getting traffic). Traffic flows to the developer's checkout page, where they buy access to in app content on an external website. Then they are linked to the app store where they can download the app and access the content.
Apple is paid no commission on this transaction. They only require commissions paid when the customer is sent to the website FROM the app store and checks out within 7 days.
If this is in fact true, then payment / support service recommendations would be great to hear right now!!
What I would like to see instead is more competition in the OS market and the hardware to be like PCs: you buy whatever device you like and install whatever software you want from wherever you want.
> In accordance with the entitlement agreement, the link may inform users about where and how to purchase those in-app purchase items, and the fact that such items may be available for a comparatively lower price
The fact that you must apply for permission to tell your users that you even have off-app purchase items is bullshit.
Apple’s welcome to make the rules of their own platform (within reason), but it’s garbage that developers aren’t even able to say the rules exist. If Apple believes they’re so right and just, why must they leave users uninformed?
What’s the good faith argument for any of this? I want to see Craig Federighi on stage at WWDC announcing and this revolutionary new "link" API, demoing how great the scary warning screens are.
> No redirecting, intermediate links, or URL tracking parameters are allowed.
It’s 100% clear to me that the link they let you use will be a redirected intermediate link through Apple’s servers, probably with tracking params (and at the very least with OS-level tracking).
With Apple, I feel like people are under some kind of spell. I cannot relate to their behavior. It's ironic that they've become exactly what they were claiming to be working against in their 1984 advert. It's has become some kind of big brother mind control operation.
I would love for Progressive Web Apps to be normalized, and PWAs can do a lot, and you can also get a button for a PWA on your home screen, but the process to do so is odd/cumbersome, requires explanation for inexperienced users, which is not something that most companies that want a well-positioned mobile app are willing to tolerate.
And while PWAs on iOS can access some sensors, the API support is limited[0] and in some cases not supported at all. Not being able to capture links to properly direct users into installed PWAs, not being able to provide install prompts, background sync, etc. are considered serious limitations to people who are used to those luxuries available to actual iOS apps.
The app is a reddit-like site where you subscribe for an amount you choose (say $10/mo), the site takes a $1 cut, and the remaining $9 gets distributed between everything you upvote that month (creators get sent this money into their stripe connect account).
How much does Apple take as part of this? Do they take 27% of the $1/mo server fee, or 27% of the $10/mo total (thus taking away from money users would be sending from each other)?
It's a weird situation because it ends up being a subscription-based digital wallet, and I'm unsure how these are treated or what the right approach is when submitting the app.
It doesn’t matter how you distribute the money on your end. While you can definitely reflect the exact amounts involved to your customers, it might be wise to convert incoming money to something else, perhaps simply “credits.”
Does Apple have the manpower to chase every developer for that fee? Do they really expect to collect it or is it more of a threat?
Any HN people with first hand knowledge of a business paying that fee?
There's no firsthand knowledge because this is the first time Apple's actually had to chase companies for the fee. In fact, their whole argument against Epic was that banning steering made it easier on both parties to attribute revenue.
In other words, a developer can have a Facebook ad or similar go directly to the checkout page and buy the app there, bypassing the app store commission for traffic the developer is bringing to the app store themselves. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this.
This being the case, any recommendations for carts / processing services / etc that would be ideally positioned for this kind of use are MASSIVELY welcome!!!
For small players a 3% savings isn't worth the administrative overhead of paying apple separately.
Apple is begging for another lawsuit over this.
Apple doesn’t see their cut as “payment processing and hosting”. They see it as the cost of selling for their platform.
I don’t see anything that prohibits this: https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
Apple cannot (or, per antitrust law, should not) tell a developer how to design and sell their merchandise in their web based storefronts.
If something like that had been in incubation and available for lawyers to draw on for their arguments I wonder if it would have impacted the case (especially when judge says things like "failed to prove the existence of substantially less restrictive alternatives").
In this light, I see what Apple is doing to Epic as totally legit: It's like any other government taxing a business within it's borders. Apple needs to take a cut to make sure that the infrastructure for all these services it provides to us citizens is funded. I'd be happy with a 95% income tax on The 1%: why wouldn't I be happy with a 20-something% tax on Epic? Epic going to the Supreme Court is similar to them asking to not have to pay taxes in my 'Nation of Apple' and I'm not sure that I want that.
Of course, this is from a certain frame of thought, and may not actually be how I genuinely feel about this. More of a thought experiment.
How is this current practice of Amazon consistent with the (new?) rules in which all sales taking place even outside the store will attract commision from Apple ?
It is because Kindle does not offer ANY sales at all through its own Apple app ? Some other reason ?
https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1747406430054097099
It's beyond a joke. Between that and the payment processing fees, you're no better off. In fact, you get all of the same costs but none of the benefits of Apple's app store native payment infrastructure.
They're indeed making quite a joke out of antitrust at this point.
Everything was different though, you'd be paying for your OS upgrades too which doesn't happen on iOS. I agree 30% is crazy, but the market on iOS they're enabling has to get paid for somehow. That source of revenue was different for Microsoft in the 80s/90s but it still existed.
Which conveniently ignores the fact that you can buy software for digital download on the Internet for significantly lower overhead.
But they keep arguing it.
But you are looking at that through the lens of an end user.
As a developer, Apple's total acquisition cost i.e. 15/30% is far less than what it costs me to acquire customers through other channels e.g. Paid Ads, Referral etc.
I'd say the key difference there is that Microsoft didn't own all those retail stores.
Visual Studio wasn't free, but it also wasn't required. There are a wide variety of ways to develop software for Microsoft OSes.
How about paying for it with the massive profit they make selling the devices?
As far as I can tell, the only reason Apple’s doing the whole rent-seeking App Store business is “because they can.” Upside is all that money, downside is the developers kinda hate you.
Apple has 50%. Courts have already ruled they’re not a monopoly. Epic asked the Supreme Court to look at that again and they specifically decided not to and to leave the decision in place.
That’s why Apple can do what they’re (now, post order) doing legally and Microsoft couldn’t.
Making matters worse the Google Play Store is completely optional you’ve been able to side load for years. To the degree Google prevented that they just got kicked in the teeth for it.
So you’re going to have to argue that the combination of the Apple App Store, plus Google, plus Samsung, plus everything else all work together to screw over users.
Good luck.
That’s impossible by definition, a literal contradiction in terms.
And there is nothing preventing other companies e.g. Samsung making their own store.
Setting the price the same as your competitors is not price fixing.
That's deceptive language that undermines your argument.
A monopoly is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular thing.
If you said "duopoly" your argument would be more easily entertained or if you said "cartel". However, neither of these two characterizations stand up to scrutiny either.
Having locked in the richest consumers of the world, they get to say what goes and what doesn't, worldly courts and laws be damned.
It's both hilarious and gruesome at the same time, because we're supposed to be equal under consumer laws or whatever, but there you go!
Most of the modern digital consumer economy is based on products and services which are device-agnostic. If I’m using Spotify or Netflix or something they are service providers and the iPhone/ipad is just a client device. Apple should have no marginal returns (a cut) on money that should go to artists, actors, developers. They’ve already charged massively for both their physical products and their services.
Antitrust law is a joke. This has always been glaringly obvious since Jobs first came up with this shit. The fact that it still ain’t fixed is a travesty, not just for tech nerds, but it impedes the digital economy at large.
The greediest thing of it all is that they’re actually providing a service people would pay premium for - in-app purchases and their “all subscriptions in one place” without dark pattern harassment is very nice for consumers. They have a legit product worth a ton yet they still refuse to compete fairly. Anti-market capitalism..
Someone unironically complained yesterday that developers who don't like paying the 30% fee probably don't like paying their taxes, and I made the exact same argument that Apple was acting like a sovereign state [0]. And now Apple is doubling down by announcing that they'll be performing financial audits just like the Internal Revenue Service if you include a link to purchase content/services outside of the app store.
> Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales (“transactions“) to the user for digital goods or services on your website after a link out (i.e., they tap “Continue” on the system disclosure sheet), provided that the sale was initiated within seven days and the digital goods or services can be used in an app.
As any F2P gamer knows, “whales” don’t just spend up front - they make microtransactions on a regular basis for months or years as new rewards become available. This is incredibly meaningful for game publishers who depend on long-term customer engagement.
I’m not sure why the audit requirement is getting called out. That seems pretty standard for this type of revenue sharing agreement to me.
If Apple gets commission, the sale took place on Apple's cyberturf, all of which can be identified as being their app store.
The user's Apple device where they made this purchase is effectively a branch location of the that store.
Nice term; it is fortuitously applicable in another ongoing HN thread.
"All they do is steal 30% from society" - objectively it's for providing a service, an infrastructure, a very solid user market, a very solid developer experience (you have to build for a limited number of iOS versions, you don't have to test on a gazillion devices with different flavors of Android), a slightly higher income userbase, and a few others.
Seeing the whole thing simply as "theft" boggles my mind, especially coming from people working in or around this industry.
You the consumer can go to a different store any time on a whim. You can shop anywhere online with a click.
Not the App Store, which controls what and how over half of Americans can access, and the barrier to switching OS-es is fucking huge. How is this remotely the same
The more correct metaphor is: Walmart sells you a coloring book. In the back of that coloring book there's a mail-in coupon: send it in, $5 for a second coloring book. Walmart now not only expects to make a cut on that initial coloring book sale; they expect to make a cut on that mail-in sale.
One might say: Wait a second, if I'm going to buy that second coloring book, its probably because the first one was so good. If I'm going to buy a book from Kindle, its probably because that book was surfaced to me in the Kindle app. Walmart and Apple didn't exactly have a large hand in making that second sale happen; my product clearly had a much larger hand in it. Apple would, of course, disagree; because they have a god complex.
But how will they actually know how much money developers are making via external web purchasing? Audits?
In my opinion working with both Apple and Google's billing libraries is pretty painful. Many developers use third parties to make it easier like Qonversion or RevenueCat. These all have to go through Apple and Google respectively
If you can just have a web page to do it, that seems easier actually. You can just save if the user is paid or not directly in your backend after they make a purchase
> Developers are required to provide a periodic accounting of qualifying out-of-app purchases, and Apple has a right to audit developers' accounting to ensure compliance with their commission obligations and to charge interest and offset payments.Depending on the payment method used, they might just make a profit on this (e.g. some cards charge more than 3% of interchange alone, and there's other fees on top).
I don't get it. Absolutely greedy and (seemingly?) short-sighted.
From a legal perspective and the size of Apple I understand why this happened and for the most part I fully agree with the legal arguments.
I went with Android for a well over a decade and it was fun. So many things I could do with it and so many ways to fiddle with it even rooting it. My nerd in me like that.
I had an iPhone for a while and the lack of customizations and fiddling was quite annoying, switched back, then a few years ago I went and got an iPhone for reals (I mean fully knowing what I was giving up).
I was tired of all the Android problems. I didn't enjoy fiddling anymore I had no longer an interest in rooting it. and I was pissed off about 6000 different Android implementations and how older phones lost Android updates quickly leaving plausible security vulnerabilities.
(I suppose Google phones get all the updates for a long time). and usually, one vendor would make their own "enhancements" to the OS anyways.
I became the enemy and embraced the walled garden, the shitty game of move your new app icon around and around to try to fit it where you want it, more expensive hardware/cables etc. In my opinion there is less shit in the app store as well.
As long as the sideloading and whatever else does not impact my phone as long as I dont do it myself I am fine with it. It it leads to more vulnerabilities and other problems for everyone I dont like it.
It is not the 100% great mobile phone. (hello my classic BB), and at times inconvenient but I prefer a nice walled garden and limits on what I can do.
I also prefer all my family and friends to be on the iPhone, if and only if I know I will be providing endless technical support
"uh you need to fix my cellphone!" > ok.,. what phone do you have? Well its a model XXX from YYY company about 4 years old. > Do you know what version of Android its running? ¹ Sure its the VVV version customized for YYY but it has not been updated for over year. > Buy an iPhone.
another day
"uh you need to fix my cellphone!" > ok.,. what phone do you have? " uh it is an iPhone 10" > great. > what is the problem?
¹ In real life there is no way the people I provide with unwilling endless technical support would have even a small inkling of what OS it is running. but it fit the made-up dialog.
Because charging people to charge them again to make Apple useful seems abusive.
So let them burn through their goodwill and suck the gambling whales dry, why do I need to get my blood pressure up over their greed...
How would that not be a net positive for the mobile device ecosystem?
This and the other rules amount to effective evasion of the ruling. If the link isn’t allowed under almost all circumstances, it’s hard to see how Apple is complying in good faith.
I often wonder had Apple lowered their In-App purchase to 10% would we still have the same problem.
>The difference between self employed and employed is that123:
> Self-employed workers work for themselves as sole proprietors or independent contractors, while employees work for an organization under a contract of service.
> Self-employed workers have more control over their work, but also more risks and responsibilities, while employees have more stability and benefits, but also more restrictions and obligations.
> Self-employed workers pay their own taxes and expenses, while employees have their taxes withheld and their benefits provided by their employer.
Apple also withholds VAT for the "employee".
Don't get me wrong, legally they are not employees. The interesting thing is how much it is like employment. You work for a single company, you have to do as told, they can fire you at any moment. When that happens you wont be able to sell to your customers because they are not your customers.
Because Apple had always said their platform was closed and were up front about it.
Google, on the other hand, called their platform open and then engaged in anti-competitive behavior to get the benefits of a closed ecosystem.
You might not like Apple’s approach, but at least they’re up front and honest about it.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/alphabet-loses-googl...
Apple is demonstrably more closed (which IMO makes them worse) than Google on this axis. What they've both said about their platforms is irrelevant to me.
There's nothing "honest" about deceiving your customers and hiding a 30% fee with NDAs.
> Apps that use the StoreKit External Purchase Link must continue to offer in-app purchases as an option.
This is worthless. I cannot believe a court allowed Apple to get away with such a useless remedy.
If you don't think it's worth it, no one is forcing you to use it or developer your software for them. :)
This is directly part of the underlying court decisions.
While the courts haven’t explicitly stated a percentage, and the initial judge questioned the percentage, it was made clear by both the district court as well as the appeals court that Apple can still charge a commission even when payment takes place outside of Apple’s IAP system.
The courts consider it payment for Apple’s IP that’s directly tied to the sales, not IAP:
“In essence, Apple uses the DPLA to license its IP to developers in exchange for a $99 fee and an ongoing 30% commission on developers' iOS revenue.”
The district court even went as far as to outright state Apple’s entitlement to a commission, despite hemming and hawing about the exact rate (and ultimately not making a decision on it):
“Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission”
“Indeed, while the Court finds no basis for the specific rate chosen by Apple (i.e., the 30% rate) based on the record, the Court still concludes that Apple is entitled to some compensation for use of its intellectual property.”
“Apple is entitled to license its intellectual property for a fee, and to further guard against the uncompensated use of its intellectual property. The requirement of usage of IAP accomplishes this goal in the easiest and most direct manner, whereas Epic Games' only proposed alternative would severely undermine it. Indeed, to the extent Epic Games suggests that Apple receive nothing from in-app purchases made on its platform, such a remedy is inconsistent with prevailing intellectual property law.”
“Suffice it to say, IAP is not merely a payment processing system, as Epic Games suggests, but a comprehensive system to collect commission and manage in-app payments.”
The appellate court echoed these sentiments, if not outright making stronger statements about this, while at the same time complaining between the lines that the district court wanted its cake and eat it too by insisting that the anti-steering provisions are not kosher while simultaneously stating that it would be too cumbersome for Apple to retroactively audit sales to collect their commission.
Either way, the long and short of it is that Apple collecting a commission from developers using third party payment processors has the blessing of the courts.
Even when the district court in particular isn’t entirely happy with the rate of the commission while simultaneously not willing to make an official determination on the rate because Epic never fought the rate, rather the existence of the commission itself.
Now that SCOTUS has declined to look at it, this situation, including the blessing to collect a commission even when using third party payment processors, is the law of the land.
[0] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-smartph...
So they're basically saying that their SDKs (+ distribution) are worth 27% of sales.
I wonder if one could make the argument in court that if you don't use their SDK, eg you use react native or flutter, you shouldn't pay 27%. Yes, i know those frameworks still use apple's SDKs, but they commoditise them such that you might make the argument these SDKs aren't worth any more than any other sdk such as android.
(I'm skipping distribution in my argument too, for simplicity's sake)
https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
I'm guessing Apple were required to provide developers with Alternative Payment options and not 'a link to a webpage that informs users'...
Interesting terminology.
If I have a web based saas currently where I charge customers $300 a month.. if I were to make an iOS app for them to use, would apple want a % of that?
The main rules were:
1) A user making a payment that has any effect on app functionality (this is very broad) from inside your app must go through Apple IAP (paying 30% commission). There were some exceptions, but mainly think buying physical goods - Apple isn't forcing the use of IAP for EBay or Amazon retail.
2) You may not link to, or even mention other payment methods.
Really it comes down to: if there is any difference in what the app will do for a user before and after they pay money then that money paying must go through Apple and then Apple will give it to you (minus 30%). So what a lot of apps did is just open to a login screen. No sign up button, no link to your homepage, heck, no links anywhere. The downside is that users have to know about your app from at least one more channel than searching on the App Store, but that's not a very high bar. Probably less common if you're B2B, but for B2C a lot of them would pay their subscription through Apple if possible, the experience is great: one central place in system settings showing all your subscriptions with easy cancellation buttons and enforced standard refund/proration semantics.
Its not based on how much money they have. Its how they've managed to accumulate the money - by gouging devs.
BUT, I will also mention that part of its market capture comes from all the charges on devs even before the rev share. You need apple equipment to develop, and they (apparently) don't sell server racks anymore for businesses to scale off of, nor any legitimate form of emulation. You have a small cost per year to have a developer account, and a cost to submit your app for review. Then if you care about visibilty they have their own ad discovery program you can pay into.
So I did disagree with a brief judge statement about how "It's possible to skirt around Apple's innnovation for free...". Apple controls and charges for the entire pipeline, even before you launch the app.
They charge you to submit an app? Is this new? When I worked as an iOS developer this was not a thing but that was many years ago.
Im sure both App stores have lot of automated tests. But I've submitted a lot of apps and the feedback from Apple is much more specific and from humans.
I agree it's very annoying, often complaining about things that are explained in submission notes.
But if I submit and do around 5-10 updates per year that seems highly unlikely it covers their salary cost.
Their priority is to ensure every dollar gets taxed and to block features they want to monopolise. The idea that it is a service to developers that they should pay for is insulting.
In this case, who exactly are they protecting, the townsfolk or car enthusiasts that you have an independent relationship with?
Would this scenario seem like a good idea to agree to? If no, why is the app store/walled garden model an appropriate use case at all/how is it substantially different?
And it doesn't have to conver the cost really. It's not a service to developers like developer support would be. It's more an impediment due to its randomness.
So, how long does Apple get to reap the rewards of their old accomplishments from 18 years ago? how long should such works be benefited from before we shift the dynamics back to being "a public commons"?
There is no "right" of any student for their debt to be forgiven, but we want to do it anyway. Apple has taken advantage (as have others) of a ridiculously broken tax code, availed of the strong US legal system, property rights, etc. How about we shift the balance back?
Do you account for the fact that it might not be the same people making both arguments? Most websites’ readerships are not monoliths and even on HN there are plenty of people with different perspectives, and who are not necessarily vocal in the same threads.
> So, how long does Apple get to reap the rewards of their old accomplishments from 18 years ago? how long should such works be benefited from before we shift the dynamics back to being "a public commons"?
That’s an interesting argument, but it’s usually not discussed with any nuance. Basically there are several layers:
- are we entitled to Apple opening their platforms? (AFAICT the opposite would be a first though the EU seems to be going that way)
- is Apple entitled to profit from the App Store in principle? (Some people are arguing that they are not, but they are a fringe; Epic lost their argument about that)
- is 30% too much? (But then, where is the line? It’s more or less the standard for closed platforms
Where would you put your “public commons”? Did this ever happen?
I don't. It's possible to (dis)prove this with comments but that would be a bit invasive (ironically enough) without doing a lot of work to anonymize the dataset I gather and prove sufficient random sampling. It's possible for admins to (dis)prove this through voting habits, but not for me to bring about such evidence.
All I can say from here is that so far, there's a local sample of one reply to me that seems to indeed think this way.
>Where would you put your “public commons”? Did this ever happen?
The "commons" in this case would be the OS. I don't think we've ever historically had another OS as locked down as hard IOS. Game consoles come the closest to this, but are ultimately ephemeral; no gaming OS store has lasted (i.e. been officially supported. I cannot submit a PS3 game today even if I wanted to) as long as IOS, and I don't see IOS closing anytime soon.
On top of that, there is the argument on IOS being a general OS compared to games being specialized; no one de facto seems to desire doing much more than consuming media on consoles (consoles don't even have proper web browsers these days). So that's another factor to consider when determining what is a "major OS" and if/when it should be opened up if closed down.
These seem to be questions that are slowly being asked in formal channels. So I suppose these are all TBD. But if you want my sample of 1 answers:
- At some point I do think a "major OS" should become a commons for those who seek to publish through it. Microsoft was dinged 30 years ago for much less and Apple has way more control and restrictions now than MS ever did.
- Apple is entitled to profit from the App Store, but isn't entitled to be the only store able to distribute apps on its platform. Again, MS was considering this with Windows 8 and 10 and it was an absolute disaster. Another aspect of an "existing commons" trying to close up in a way that MS in theory feels entitled to but in a way that would hurt consumers and developers.
- the 30% is definitely a question to ask and not one I have a particularly strong answer on. I feel this is where the invisible hand should take charge, so it comes down more to "would the audience take a lower cut if they were able to find an alternative (which may or may not include themselves)?". So my concern here is with providing alternative options and seeing if the market shifts rather than throttling existing rates.
50,60,80% cut would still be legal, but there is no way Apple can get away with that. What Apple is entitled to is going to be based on peoples feelings and opinions, and the amount of pushback generated. Its good to generate push-back on things you don't agree with.
There are multiple people on here, who say different things.
Assuming a slightly generous definition of "the fuel you put in your car," you've just described a lease.
Or the purchase of a German car.
I don't care about the fee for using their services, I care about the fact that I'm forced to use their services
* we submit the Kindle app ...including an in-app bookstore... to Apple for initial app review
(Note: multiple ebook readers with in-app bookstores are already on the app store at this point)
* several weeks pass with no response
* Apple announces in-app purchasing (to be released several months later)
* Apple rejects our app: we have to give them a 30% cut of all sales through the app, or remove the store and all references / external links to it. We chose option 2.
* Apple forces the other ereader apps to remove their stores or go with IAP. Several (most?) just gave up and pulled their apps entirely
* Apple negotiates agreements with most of the major book publishers that if they want to sell books on iBooks, ebooks must be listed at the same price on ALL stores, and have a 30% margin
* Apple launches in-app purchasing and the iBooks store (with the iPad announcement, IIRC)
...aka even if we (or any other ereader app) wanted to sell books via our app, the terms Apple set forth effectively meant that ALL profit from those sales must go to them (and we would have to eat the bandwidth / service costs on top of that)
But if you must use them, keep each storyboard small enough it's only going to be used by one dev at a time to avoid conflicts, and then combine trusting the GUI won't make stupid XML plus some automated UI tests to make sure functionality isn't damaged by e.g. a button being deleted.
You can build UIs without storyboards/Interface Builder in UIKit just fine. And writing your UI in code indeed easily solves the whole versioning conflicts issue that storyboards have.
So no, not a big argument for SwiftUI, but instead for writing UIs in code.
SwiftUI vs. UIKit and IB vs. code are two entirely separate discussions.
But yes, I totally agree, if you must use storyboards, keep them as small as possible.
Unless I've missed something, by doing the latter it automatically also does the former?
> You can build UIs without storyboards/Interface Builder in UIKit just fine.
Eh, perhaps the examples I've worked with of that were especially egregious (it's certainly possible given some of the other things very very wrong with that code), but my experience of such a codebase was very much not fine.
UIKit works okay in code. But unless you have experienced people actively laying groundwork, it's IMO more likely to be a mess than SwiftUI. Even the explicitly declarative part, Autolayout, will only be understood by like 10% of the team and the rest are kinda winging it. Using Autolayout outside of Storyboards makes it less declarative, so it is then more conducive to programmer error (like non-idempotent updates).
We should be rooting for better outcomes for consumers. Not picking between which megacorp is less bad.
I will argue that pointing out the hypocrisy of a megacorp complaining about the anti-competitive behaviour of another magacorp, when it engages in the same type of behaviour but at a much bigger scale, is a pro-consumer move.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...
There was little to cheer about whatever happened.
Not exactly doable for the ‘everything store’.
Also hi :) long time!
So $MEGACORP abuses their absolute monopolistic position in the market to underhandedly negotiate with book publishers and force their hand into working the way $MEGACORP wants: in order to gain access to $MEGACORPs completely dominated (but technically not a monopoly*) audience who wishes to buy books in a convenient way online, book publishers must bow down to $MEGACORP and pay the tax. Meanwhile, everyone else who sells books through alternative avenues is decimated because the audience only wants to buy books through $MEGACORP.
And you can replace $MEGACORP with both 'Apple' and 'Amazon', and it is 100% factually accurate. Beautiful. It's fucking turtles eating turtles all the way down.
‘Funniest thing in a fortnight’ sounds less impressive.
You’re comment is actually funny, the OPs just makes one sad and frustrated.
It's a less direct form of market manipulation and one that doesn't usually meet the US's legal standards for antitrust, but it's a strategy Amazon loves to use.
That small margin above wholesale in the article's example is probably still effectively selling at a loss when you account for overhead of running the store, shipping, etc. It certainly would be for a smaller competitor.
Either of those represents a price that a competitor whose only business is selling books cannot compete with. Amazon can offer these prices as a loss leader because of their position in other markets, not because it has found a more optimal way to run the business of selling books.
Amazon was selling eBooks at $9.99, for Apple it was an issue because they couldn't ask a 30% share from publishers AND compete at $9.99 because Amazon achieved that price due to wholesale volume-deals, and likely not with a 30%+ margin.
Publishers wanted Amazon to increase sales-prices from $9.99, but due to their wholesale model they couldn't dictate that. Even when they increased wholesale prices, Amazon kept their sales-price of many NYT bestsellers at $9.99 making a loss (probably to drive eReader growth).
Quote: "Amazon continued to sell books at $9.99, losing money, even when publishers increased the wholesale price of books they were giving the online giant."
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-and-apple-fix...
Neither does Apple. Amazon prevents all of their sellers from selling their goods at any sort of discount anywhere else (including through direct-to-consumer channels).
>The platform they do own, AWS, unlike the iphone, is perfectly open to competitors to Amazon's retail business.
It's not apples-to-apples comparison. Here's a better one ... Amazon will gather competitive metrics from sellers on their marketplace (i.e. their 'partners' and 'costumers') and then launch a competing product, undercut them on price, rig their search (to prioritize their product) and ultimately drive them out of business.
Apple is bad, but their terribleness is limited to the Mac-iOS ecosystem ... Amazon is way worse.
Brick and mortar retailers do the exact same thing and make generics that are exactly the same as best selling brand names, put them in favorable shelf position, and even put "compare to <brand>!" on their labels. This practice has probably saved me multiple thousands of dollars over my lifetime, so it is definitely to the benefit of the consumer and I am 100% in favor of it continuing. If you, as a company, add nothing that can't be replicated to your product other than a brand label, then you deserve to be replicated and undercut. That is a perfect example of the market working towards the public good.
Apple actively engaged as facilitator to help publishers raise prices on the whole market, for a 30% cut.
The result was that books previously available for $9.99 were suddenly sold for $12.99
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-and-apple-fix...
I loved ebooks and my reading went way up. They were cheaper than paperbacks and cheap enough that I was making curiosity and impulse purchases. The problem with digital sales is that unlike a bookshop, I could not browse and take a book from the shelf and start reading and get hooked.
Once ebooks suddenly jumped in price and absurdly became more expensive than paperbacks, I was done, and didn't buy a book for years. You might try and argue this was irrational, but when I feel I am being scammed, my wallet stays in my pocket. I will indeed cut off my nose to spite an asshole.
(A short story about how cheating the user with exorbitant prices results in the exit of your audience.)
There’s some level of irony in the fact that the most successful product from the guy who wanted to build a “bicycle of the mind”[1] ended up being something more like the floating chairs in Wall E.
There are weirdly other audiobook versions that cost only 29€ so I wonder what's the story here.
My bad puns aside, thank god for libraries. Otherwise these stories would be truly lost to the rich.
It's a professional reading/acting out a full book in a professional studio, with at least an editor, a production team, a corrector. And the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule.
Not saying this is fair, but musicians often do economically sub-optimal things for the love of creation and because it is a passion. Hopefully, the musician also gets added revenue from concerts.
The voice performance doesnt get the fame nor after-performance revenue -- so naturally they are charging market rates for their time reading. Further, most of the credit/glory goes to the author, not the voice performer. I doubt most people know who the voice performer is on audiobooks.
> A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible
Is this really surprising? Production costs for a single audiobook are _significantly_ less than something like a movie, but the audiobook is more than double the cost of seeing a movie?!? I straight up refuse to buy audiobooks based on the price alone. Ebook prices are bad enough, but audiobook prices are ludicrous.
Then the audiobook of "A song of fire and ice" is apparently 33 hours and 46 minutes, which is more than 3 times the average length [1], so just the narration production-cost is 3 times higher than the average audiobook.
So overall there's not so much left to make a profit, leave alone break-even.
> Younger people are more likely to consume audio format, as 57% of Americans younger than 50 listened to audiobooks in 2021.
I know I only have anecdata (I'm in that cohort), but that seems off based on my personal experiences and the people I know. Perhaps 2021 was an outlier?
> Over 23% of Americans listened to at least one audiobook in 2021, 15% more than in 2020.
This also seems off. Almost 1 in 4 Americans listened to an audiobook in 2021? That seems... high.
I couldn't find a link to the source data used to generate those statistics.
Based on your link, you'd be looking at something in the range of $24,000 for ASOIAF. Even if you double that you're looking at $48,000. If we factor in 50% (WTF?) rev share with Audible, that's ~2400 units to break even. And then they are clearing ~$20/unit after that. Yeah, I know I hand-waved a bunch of minutia, but my point is that the volume of sales needed to start making a profit, even considering a large rev share, isn't _that_ high.
I can't stack that against sales numbers, but I'll say this, even if it's a legit price based on costs and volume that it doesn't _feel_ legit to _me_. As a result, I won't buy audiobooks. I don't think I'm totally alone. I can't say much past that.
Yes. A book. That's one single book. As with anything, the majority will listen to a few popular titles like self-help books and Harry Potter.
No idea how you arrived at $24000 for ASOIAF and then decided to randomly double it
From the article in the post I was replying to[1]:
Audiobook production is a multi-step process that requires equipment, software, a studio, and a narrator. Depending on the cost and availability of each of these aspects, the price of producing an audiobook can vary.
* Generally, around 9,300 words of text equate to one hour of audiobook length.
* The average audiobook is around 10 hours long, containing close to 100,000 words.
* The average narrator charges around $200 per finished hour, meaning that the expenses on the narrator will amount to $2,000 for recording an audiobook.
* On top of that, it is necessary to either rent a studio where the recording will take place or invest in the equipment and sound production yourself.
* In either case, producing an audiobook will take between $4,000 and $8,000.
* Some companies offer a complete production service for a fixed price, usually at the $6,000 range.
Edison Research’s Share of Ear is a quarterly survey of Americans who are asked to keep a detailed one-day diary of their audio usage. Share of Ear utilizes a nationally representative sample of those age 13+. The sample for this study was 4,118
https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-spoken-word-audio-report-... or https://www.edisonresearch.com/solutions/the-infinite-dial/
https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/06/apa-report-audio-...
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/a...
That's ONLY production-cost, it doesn't take into account the royalty/license for the actual content-author and the cut the book-publisher takes for "publishing" it. I doubt that the author takes a smaller share just because the book was recorded instead of printed.
If you assume that production cost should make up max. 10% of that revenue (like the actual cost to design a cover and print a book), then the break-even shifts ALOT farther away...
> Yeah, I know I hand-waved a bunch of minutia, but my point is that the volume of sales needed to start making a profit, even considering a large rev share, isn't _that_ high.
Yeah, the scale is indeed hard to estimate, and I can't find ANY statistics on the actual volume-size of the market (actual amount a bestseller Audiobook has sold)
But the stat from the same source stating that "Audiobook revenue accounted for around 3.8% of the book publishing" is an indication that despite glorious growth-figures of the Audiobook industry, the actual market-size is still VERY small even in comparison to the book-publishing market.
AND at the same time, Audible controls ~50% of that market, and drives consumption with Spotify-like flatrate offers.
Making big upfront investments for Audiobook production seems to be a risky call for a publisher then. Unless you have a title like ASOIAF and set the price at 36 USD I guess ;)
So, let's assume Netflix. It has 247 million subscribers. You do the math.
An audiobook (and audiobooks in general) don't have that.
Then a few days before the feature was scheduled to leave beta and be formally supported, Apple changed the app store terms to disallow it, by requiring that apps be "originally written" in certain languages like objective-C or C++. Nothing to do with what the app did or how it worked, and no definition for what "originally written" specifically meant. And there were lots of other technologies for building apps by then, so of course they all freaked (though AFAIK Apple never actually enforced the new terms for anything besides flash).
Anyway shortly afterward Adobe reverted the app-publishing feature, and then a few months later Apple quietly reverted the terms to what they were before.
- writing it in a different language that only really runs on one operating system
- pay $99/yr for the privilege
- at any point and for any reason you can be cut off from reaching your audience
- you have to pay them 30% of your revenue (not profit) for any money your application makes
- you can’t make updates in a timely manner
- you have close to zero avenues of recourse if you disagree with any of this
- the deal can change at any time and you don’t get a say in it.
Why the fuck would anyone choose that option in 2024 if they didn’t have to? It’s no wonder Apple went out of their way to try and cripple the web for over a decade now, it was only legal action from the EU that forced them to staff Safari properly about two years ago.
And even now, they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.
That’s a hostage taking business. Get out of that ecosystem if you can
That isn’t true. It takes two taps. You tap the share button, then you tap Add to Home Screen. That’s it. That’s not “hidden deep in a series of unrelated menus”. It’s a top-level option.
And don’t complain about the “share” button – that’s just a bad name for what iOS users understand as the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. It makes total sense if you are an iOS user, don’t be misled by what people call it. People tap it when they want to “do something” with what they are looking at. It’s exactly the button you’d tap if you wanted to add a PWA to your home screen.
It is absolutely set up in such a way that normal people not only can not do it but don’t even know it’s possible.
I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum.
Go and ask a random person to install a website on any OS, and watch what happens
I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work.
I’m sure when it arrives like other APIs that require certain permissions you will be able to disable it and live in peace.
Indeed. The (collective) you are designing the web around maximum profit to stakeholders. People's interests and preferences don't come in to it.
How did we get from “I think app install prompts should be a thing so the web is on a level playing field with operating systems” to me somehow being responsible for the ills of capitalism?
I literally said you should have an option to opt out and your response was an impassioned speech about “the will of the people”.
I cannot disable these things when Apple has a profit incentive. I haven't been able to make the dumb Game Center thing permanently quit appearing. I guess they don't have a profit incentive, here, huh? So the result is that people who understand how to turn it off, will turn it off. Most everyone else will be trained to hit no instantly. A few people will have hundreds of webapps on their home screens like the browser bars of yore.
For the record; I completely agree that side loading should be possible with minimal barrier and it would be nice if web apps were more discoverable and integrated. But preventing websites from nagging people with a system-level iOS prompt is a feature.
No, I don't
> I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work.
No, you shouldn't. Not until you prove that you can actually make proper prompts and not turn the web into what it is today: a collection of in your face modals, calls to action, popups etc.
I’m not sure where to go here if I’m supposed to be responsible for your sense of reading comprehension.
Would you say that Apple are deliberately hiding how to bookmark a website and that people are unable to do that? Because you do that the same way too.
How about printing? Does Apple have a secret motive to stop people from printing? Because you do that the same way too.
The share button is the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. That’s just how iOS works. It’s not a devious plan. It’s a standard platform convention.
> I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum.
This is not currently part of any web standard. It was implemented unilaterally by Chromium and hasn’t been accepted by any other rendering engine yet. It’s explicitly not on a web standards track:
> Status of This Document
> This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track.
They have a multi billion dollar incentive here along with a long history of actions all clearly focused on protecting that revenue stream at the expense of the web platform.
I’m making an argument that like any other application delivery platform I should have a clear and standard way for my users to install my software.
The reason we don’t currently have that is largely tied up in Apple yet again with the exact same incentive structure as every other time they pulled shit like this.
Do you want to try that reply again in a less insulting way? Perhaps consider the possibility that people can have a legitimate difference of opinion with you without it being a stupid act?
You tried to do a weird gotcha by claiming that the ability to install a web app is no different to print a webpage and implied that I was seeing conspiracies where there were none to be found.
I’m saying that the thing I’m talking about has a very clear difference when it comes to incentive structures and I know you’re aware of it because we are in the middle of a discussion about it.
So I don’t know what other conclusion to draw here other than you’re pretending to not understand the difference.
You are claiming that it’s literally impossible to honestly disagree with you; that the only possibility is that I’m deliberately acting the fool? Do you really believe that?
If you took offence at the original comment where I said you appeared to be playing games by ignoring something I’m sorry.
I am however asking that you present some kind of rebuttal rather than trying to make this a thing about polite discourse on the internet.
I made specific points, you came in talking about unrelated points, I pointed out that your reasoning had a major hole in it and now we are in a conversation nobody wants to be a part of.
Let’s just say we both understand why an install prompt and printing a web page aren’t the same thing because I think we covered that ground already.
To get it back on track, I’m saying that they don’t belong together and that when you listed all that other random set of actions people could do that appear in the same screen that this illustrates the point I’ve been trying to make from the start.
If the argument is “oh that’s just iOS, it’s totally innocent and how could you ever seen anything nefarious there” then make that argument but as discussed, it has major holes.
I’m not getting worked up, I’m refusing to accept direct insults. It’s possible to do that without getting worked up. This place is supposed to be better than this and you’re falling short. If people don’t push back on behaviour like yours this place will be dragged down into the muck. Insults should not be tolerated here.
And telling people they are getting worked up when they complain about you insulting them, in itself, additionally insulting and inflammatory. Don’t do that.
> If you took offence at the original comment where I said you appeared to be playing games by ignoring something I’m sorry.
You didn’t accuse me of playing games, you accused me of “acting purposely obtuse”. You’re saying that I’m pretending to be a moron because my argument is far too stupid for anybody to really believe. You don’t get to put me in the catch-22 of either taking your insults without complaint or getting accused of being worked up. It’s entirely reasonable to reject your replies calmly until you stop being insulting.
> I am however asking that you present some kind of rebuttal
I already did that. You called it a “weird gotcha” and ignored it. I suspect you missed the point because you were so sure I was pretending to be an idiot. You are free to go back and read it again. If you still don’t understand it a second time, ask for clarification instead of throwing insults around.
That’s my good faith understanding of the point you’re making at the moment so I will try one final time…
Do you care to address the incredibly specific point I’ve made repeatedly that that line of reasoning has a huge hole in it which you seem to be ignoring no matter how often I ask you to acknowledge it.
I wasn’t ignoring it. I was refusing to respond to replies with insults. I have been very clear about that.
> Just to be clear… your argument is or isn’t “That’s just iOS and there’s clearly nothing nefarious about it”?
No.
Your argument is:
> they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.
Let’s deconstruct that to three assertions:
- It’s deep in a series of menus
- It’s in an unrelated menu
- It’s being purposefully hidden by Apple.
I have pointed out several things:
- It’s a top-level item in a very commonly used menu.
- It belongs in that menu.
- Other items in that menu are also there for the same purpose.
- Apple has no incentive to hide those other items.
So right away, we can get rid of the first assertion. It’s not deep in a series of menus. That’s just plainly false, as anybody who has an iPhone near them can verify. It’s a top-level item in a primary menu. It’s a single tap away.
Next we move on to whether it belongs there or not. As I repeatedly point out, the “share” button actually exposes a whole lot more than just sharing. I’m not even certain “share button” is its official name, I think it might be called “action button” or something. You can consider it the “put this somewhere else button” because that’s what it actually means, even if the name doesn’t roll off the tongue. That’s the platform convention. That’s how iOS users perceive it.
Want to send it to somebody? Tap the button. Want to open it in a different app? Tap the button. Want to save it somewhere? Tap the button. That’s what the button is for. You are looking at something and you want to put it somewhere.
What else is in that menu? You can save a document to files. You can print it. You can bookmark it. You get a list of other apps you can open it with. You can add it to a note. You can copy it to the pasteboard. These all fit the same theme. You are looking at something and you want to put it somewhere.
Does “I want to put this PWA on my Home Screen” fit there? It absolutely does. That’s exactly where I’d locate the feature. You are looking at a PWA, and you want to put it somewhere. So tap the put it somewhere button.
So no, it’s not in an unrelated menu. So the second assertion goes.
Finally, is Apple purposefully hiding it there? Well, showing that it belongs there should be enough to disprove that, but there’s also more. What else is in that menu? Let’s skip over sharing to eliminate quibbling over “but those belong there”.
Saving a file isn’t sharing. Printing isn’t sharing. Bookmarking isn’t sharing. Opening in another app isn’t sharing. Adding it to a note isn’t sharing. Copying it to the pasteboard isn’t sharing.
Are all of those purposefully being hidden by Apple where users won’t look for them? How does hiding “Add to bookmarks” have a “multi billion dollar incentive” behind it? How does hiding “Copy to pasteboard” “protect Apple’s revenue stream”? Why would Apple even implement these features in the first place only to hide them?
They aren’t being purposefully hidden. They are all there because they all do the same sort of thing – the same thing that Add to Home Screen does. They take what the user is looking at and put it somewhere.
And users use this menu all the time. It’s not some obscure part of Safari you’ve got to dig to find. The average user has probably scrolled past Add to Home Screen thousands and thousands of times.
If Apple were trying to hide this functionality, this is the very last place they’d put it. They’ve put it somewhere that a) is accessible with a single tap, b) makes sense conceptually, and c) will be seen by users all the time. So the final assertion is no good either.
And like cpuguy83 pointed out elsewhere in the thread - this has been how you add a site to your home screen since day one, when Steve Jobs was telling everybody that web apps were the only way to build apps for the iPhone. At that point PWAs didn’t even exist. And that’s the spot they chose for it back then – before native apps were even allowed by Apple, when Apple wanted everybody to build web apps and add them to their home screens. It completely contradicts the idea that this is a hiding place where they don’t want people to see it. That’s where they chose to put it when it’s incontrovertible fact that they wanted people to use it.
Just to give a bit of context on my own background because it’s relevant here but I spent most of the last ten years running A/B tests for companies and then analysing the results.
One of the core truths in my particular line of work is that default options matter a lot more than people tend to realise.
So when you take an idea such as “I would like to install this app” and you then:
1. Don’t provide a way to ask users if they would like to do that.
2. Put it in a menu that’s cluttered with many other unrelated things.
3. Call it something entirely different “add to home”.
It’s not a mystery what is going to happen here. We are talking the overwhelming MAJORITY of people will have no idea and it won’t get used.
I’m just a random person on the internet so I’m not asking you to take my word for it.
It’s specifically why I mentioned the test before of go and talk to any person with an iPhone and ask them how they can install an app without the App Store. You can prove this to yourself tomorrow by asking ten people.
You can even incentivise them with money. They absolutely can not do it and will look at you like you have two heads.
They have no idea it’s even possible.
So the next logical question that comes to mind is why do you suppose that is?
There’s a few potential options:
1. They somehow have no idea that this is a problem their users struggle with.
2. They are bad a UI design
3. It’s an intentional choice to try and keep people in the dark while still avoiding any legal action for anti competitive behaviour.
I can only find evidence for one of those options but I have a LOT of it. It’s not a coincidence that it happens to align perfectly consistently with all of their other actions towards treating the web as a competitive application platform.
That’s just who they are and how they do business.
The Web Standards Committee has decided the correct way for the web to work is that there is an expectation that a user understands how to bookmark something and can elect to do so if they choose. They don't make a part of any web standard a developer being able to ask a user to add a bookmark. So not just Apple, but on the standard web, developers don't have the install rights you are saying they should have. It's hard to argue it's a conspiracy by Apple when a standards body outside Apple has defined how it works.
Maybe enough users don't know how to bookmark on iOS. Could Apple do more to make sure they know how? Yes. But I don't think we should change the web to allow websites to ask to create bookmarks because Google Chrome thinks its a good idea.
That committee you are talking about isn’t actually independent of Apple. They are a part of it.
Historically Apple have repeatedly used those exact committee bodies as a way to shut down a whole range of things that would bring the web platform closer to iOS in terms of capabilities.
The point about the bookmarking is also a bit hard to follow. I don’t know if this is getting a bit abstract or something so I’ll just restate my main argument.
Apple have repeatedly tried to make sure the web wasn’t able to compete with iOS and actively worked to get as much lock in on their platforms as possible. They have a terrible track record in terms of interoperability and as I stated numerous times in this thread they have an obvious reason for doing so.
The only point I saw them concede any ground towards a more consumer friendly and away from an overtly anti-competitive approach was specifically when serious talk of antitrust litigation emerged from the EU.
At that point they had a miraculously coincidental change of heart and began a hiring spree for Safari so they could try and close some of the more nefarious gaps with interoperability so they could point to it as evidence that they shouldn’t be fined billons of dollars and have new restrictions placed on them.
I am claiming that that looks like the text book definition of a conspiracy and you need to understand the arguments about installability in that wider context and the point you’re making about bookmarks is in no way relevant to what I’m talking about.
> Historically Apple have repeatedly used those exact committee bodies as a way to shut down a whole range of things that would bring the web platform closer to iOS in terms of capabilities.
That’s not what’s happening, neither for this specific case nor in general.
There are three major rendering engines: Blink by Google, WebKit by Apple, and Gecko by Mozilla.
It’s an ongoing theme that Google will write a spec. and implement it in Blink, then Apple and Mozilla will either reject it outright or not express interest, and then people come along and accuse Apple of “holding back the web”. This has happened with Web Bluetooth, with Web USB, and more.
In this particular case, the ability to trigger installation prompts from a PWA was originally part of the manifest spec. But it got removed because nobody was keen on implementing it as-is except for Google. That’s how it ended up in the non-standard manifest-incubations instead.
Now there’s a chance that further work will be done on it in manifest-incubations to the point where Mozilla and Apple think it’s worth implementing. If consensus is reached it could become a web standard in future. But just because Google implemented something by themselves does not mean that “Apple are holding back the web”. Google are not the sole arbiter of what constitutes the web platform and Apple and Mozilla aren’t obligated to implement whatever Google wants. This is a case of Google promoting something by themselves, not Apple holding something back. Mozilla and Apple are in agreement; Google are the ones acting unilaterally.
> Apple have repeatedly tried to make sure the web wasn’t able to compete with iOS and actively worked to get as much lock in on their platforms as possible.
There is no single organisation that has done more to push the mobile web forward than Apple.
You’re literally talking to an audience of largely web developers and trying to claim with a straight face something that they all know full well not to be true because they spent the last decade having to deal with Safari’s bullshit and lack of interoperability.
You’ve really got to figure out how to disagree with somebody without being insulting.
As for how to save a webpage to your Home Screen, that literally hasn't changed except maybe to have it together with other on-device interactions. It has been there since before there was even an App Store. It's not hidden in any way and never has been. It was demoed on stage by Steve Jobs.
The App Store is a scam, for sure. But Apple has not been crippling the web... at least not in the way you claim here (only one browser on the platform is sucky, but that's a different discussion).
I don’t know what to do with that argument other than to use that exact same set of facts to support my own point.
Also, that’s a nice historical fact that Steve Jobs once did a demo on stage years ago but my point was that nobody knows how to do it in real life or that it’s possible.
I’m explicitly making the argument that this isn’t a coincidence but is very much on purpose.
Well, they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago.
IIRC, there are also some limitations in what web apps launched from the home screen can actually do, which are not in regular Safari - but I've not looked at this in a long time so I could be wrong.
What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature. One could argue that Apple should, maybe, sprinkle on that feature a bit of the effort they lavishly pour on emojis, so that more people could be enticed to use PWAs. That would go some way towards reassuring developers that they are not slaves to the AppStore.
It’s entirely different. After Microsoft killed the competition and gained >90% market share, they disbanded the Internet Explorer developer team for five entire years.
Apple releases a new major version of Safari every year like clockwork and pushes people hard to update.
> What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature.
What data? The internal data I’ve seen across ~500 community apps is that when given a choice, two thirds of people use the iOS app, a quarter of people use the Android app, and about 10% use the PWA. And that’s across all users, including desktop.
“Don’t know” and “don’t want to use” are two entirely different things.
If people preferred PWAs and it was just down to Apple holding them back, there wouldn’t be any such thing as an Android app; people would just use PWAs on that platform instead. People don’t install PWAs because they don’t want to.
That's largely a byproduct of their attempt to keep support costs low by forcing yearly upgrades of the entire OS. Other browser makers release 10 times more often (literally!). When you're 10 times slower than everyone else (while being 10 times wealthier...), I think it's legitimate to say you're dragging your feet. The fact that they're not as atrociously bad as Microsoft was at its worst, doesn't mean they are not bad.
> “Don’t know” and “don’t want to use” are two entirely different things.
Come on now - discoverability and education are things. If Apple wanted to, they would make that feature so easy and promote it so heavily, that everyone would do it or at least know how to do it.
> If people preferred PWAs and it was just down to Apple holding them back
Don't strawman me, I never said that. I said that Apple is not making any effort to change a status quo where consumers are not keen on the feature, which tallies with your experience. There is nothing stopping them from aiming their reality distortion field at the feature, as a service to developers.
They aren’t ten times slower than everybody else. You can’t measure progress by counting releases.
> I think it's legitimate to say you're dragging your feet.
They aren’t though. Take a look at the Interop 2023 dashboard:
https://wpt.fyi/interop-2023?stable
Or just read through the WebKit blog:
They are getting loads done.
> The fact that they're not as atrociously bad as Microsoft was at its worst, doesn't mean they are not bad.
Your exact words were: “they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago” and my point is that it’s very unlike that.
> They aren’t ten times slower than everybody else.
Just to mention one, WebRTC took 7 years to go from the first Firefox implementation to Safari. Chrome had it less than 2 years after FF, so I guess not 10x but 3x-4x - still a very significant lag, which is definitely not explainable by lack of resources.
Sorry, no, not an absolute standstill. Windows XP Service Pack 2 tweaked how an HTTP header was handled. That was the most significant movement in the front-end development world in a five year period. Because of Internet Explorer.
Compare Safari 12 to Safari 17. Now imagine we were still stuck with Safari 12. That’s what it would be like if Safari “dragged their feet” like Microsoft did with Internet Explorer. They aren’t the same thing, not even remotely close. Anybody saying that “Safari is the new IE” clearly does not remember what Internet Explorer did to the industry, especially if they are saying it because of things like Safari won’t let websites vibrate your phone.
Of course nobody, today, would act exactly like MS did - that would make it trivial for people to see their game. Instead, Apple gives you something to show they're trying, "honest, guv" - but in ebbs and flows, only when pushed, and slower than everyone else despite being the most profitable company on the block.
To be honest, nobody would really care how many releases they push or how many features they push, if only they let other browsers compete on iOS. But they don't; so they carry a responsibility to be at the forefront of standards and look absolutely beyond reproach - which, at the moment, is not the case.
Look, the difference is glaringly obvious: Microsoft brought front-end development to a standstill for five long years. Apple has not. Apple has continued to add features, standards support, and interoperability bug fixes year after year like clockwork.
This isn’t a matter of nuance. This isn’t Apple being “smarter”. Apple fundamentally has not done what Microsoft did in any way, shape, or form. The two situations are extremely dissimilar.
We tried this at work at the time. They absolutely did not work fine. The best I can say about them is that they ran, mostly.
That's also what Amazon does, except with everything.
It's terrible what Apple is doing, but is peanuts compared to what Amazon does.
The ideal would probably be what Steve envisioned before the AppStore was a thing and that's basically PWAs. But I think it's been alleged that Apple is arbitrarily nerfing Safari to prevent PWAs on iOS running as well as native applications -- though I've no source.
How to effectively "disrupt" the appstore model is a billion dollar question I'm not sure of. What I do know is that the Tim Sweeny's et al of the world are hypocrites in that they just want to create their own rent-seeking AppStores and charge their own commissions and skirt around paying the platform anything for being on the platform. This is akin to wanting to be in a supermarket and put your kiosk inside and sell your product to the supermarket's customers without some sort of financial agreement between you and the supermarket.
The courts don't take stuff like "social compliance" into account when evaluating something like the iPhone, so it all looks rosy. In reality, it's incredibly difficult to be a social young person in the US without an iPhone. Which naturally spreads to families becoming "iPhone families".
All of it just comes down to messaging though.
Ostensibly this 30% cut is supposed to prevent things like this from happening, as Apple argues it uses that money to keep the App Store clean from fraudulent or misrepresenting apps, among other things. There is a much touted “review” process that is supposed to be partially funded by the 30% cut.
So if that isn’t really happening, what, pray tell, is that 30% going towards? It isn’t making the App Store a better experience
We're talking about the wealthiest company in the world who can obviously afford to run out the clock on the court system and bury an opponent with legal fees. There's a monster difference of offensive capabilities, even if we realize that Epic is a sizeable company; in this case, Epic is really standing in for every other tiny company or one-man shop in the App Store, and we should thank them for doing that.
This thread is dedicated to Apple's own wrongdoings. If Google does nasty things, that doesn't mean Apple should get a pass.
Most people here care about consumers, not about companies, especially about monopolistic companies.
Consumers don’t care about the fees developers pay.
But sure, for Android topics they get off lighter because devs do technically have F-Droid as an option, or simply hosting an APK on version control for user s to find. There are ways to get around Google's barriers even if they have a steep financial penalty. Apple gives no official way without voiding your warranty (I don't even think rooting your Android these days void you).
They are important apps, but they are relatively few that go that far.
I've never come across a company that instills that sort of blind faith in its users.
My personal stance is I don't trust any of these companies and will come to threads to be informed about whatever privacy/security/monopoly practices these companies are trying to bypass/do this week for their own profit. I have no allegiance, they're all as bad as each other. In my experience apple is able to do more and gets criticised less.
A recent example was Google implementing something in chrome apple had implemented ages ago in safari. You actually had people saying is was ok for Apple to do it but not Google.
They defend their choices. But do that in an almost religious way.
And is not something that is particular to Apple. Try to criticize Under Armour or New Balance in front of someone wearing it.
The main difference is that most people use one of the google products directly or indirectly, regardless of their attitude towards the company.
In comparison it is easier to not use Apple products if you don't like the company.
And thus people like you who own an Apple device feel targeted for their choice of using Apple and thus see it as more aggressive and powerful. It is as simple as that. You can find this pattern in every kind of domain, I see people replying with anger and/or passion to any criticism on their car, motorbike or bicycle brands. They naturally feel compelled to defend their brand of choice because they actually feel targeted as owner of it, because it feels like their own discernment is targeted indirectly.
True. But regardless if the commenter is right or wrong, anger is not the proper answer. If the commenter is right, you have some thinking to do. If he's not, you shouldn't care.
I'm being glib, here, but I think that's a fairly normal effect. If people's opinions about something are generally pretty boring, average, and uncontroversial, few people will feel the need to stir the pot and adopt extreme views.
But seeing others unquestioningly, unapologetically drooling over something, without allowing any sort of criticism, just eats at some people so much that they need to adopt the completely opposite position and find any reason to brutally criticize.
Human nature is weird.
Google's 30% isn't the only option on Android. Apple's 30% is the only option on iOS.
Regardless, Google gets plenty of flak here for a variety of things, including how they run the Play Store.
I doubt existence of F-Droid is even a drop in the bucket of fee savings for those developers on Android. Otherwise, Google would do something about it to get their cut.
Unfortunately, many corporations only leave the choice of Windows or Macos. Open source operating systems are treated like 3rd class passengers..
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
This is how all businesses work. If there was no way to make profit then businesses would not exist. Apple spent billions of dollars creating an app platform with a clear monetization model that did not get in the way of them accumulating a lot of valuable apps and users. Developers are not forced to make apps for the platform nor are users forced to use the app platform. Other app platforms can impose lower fees and developers are free to release exclusively on those platforms if they wish. Apple hopes that the developers willing to tolerate the 15/30% fee for what the developer gets in return will be good enough to make their app platform competitive to users compared to others.
It's not just defending a trillion dollar company, it is defending the right to set your own prices.
My bank generates revenue by offering me a service in return for my money, not by monopolizing access to my money and then charging people who want to sell to me for the honour of allowing me to buy their goods and services.
Very few companies that I deal with as a consumer have similar business practices, and the ones that do, like Visa and Mastercard, is also something I think should be cracked down upon.
There are many things the EU messes up in my opinion, but cracking down on this clearly immoral business practices is not one of those as it aligns 100% with my morals even though I'm incredibly pro "free" market (i.e. pro minimally regulated market, as every person who has ever been pro "free market" is).
Well, maybe Apple should open a bank. You just gave them ideas. :)
I don't want their platform forced down my throat. On my PC I can download and install software from wherever I see fit. Had I not being a MacBook Pro user for the time being, I would have a chance to upgrade RAM and SSD without paying twice on the damn device.
If anything, I consider Apple being an anti consumer company. What is good for them, is not good for the end user.
That being said, their devices do have some advantages.
Battery life.
> I would have a chance to upgrade RAM and SSD without paying twice on the damn device.
>> what made you decide to buy a Mac
> Battery life.
When you made the choice to buy your MacBook because of the better battery life were you at any point lied to about the disadvantages?
Additionally, if you're not aware the RAM on SOC is a fundamental tradeoff because of physics. Hardwiring it into the SOC is a BIG part of the battery life improvements that you have stated you prefer.
As a consumer the whole point of buying a computer is to get access to its app platform. It's not forced down your throat it just inherently is a part of the device's identity.
Without an app platform there would exist no software.
>I have a macbook and barely use the apple store.
The app platform is more than just the store. If you can install an app without the apple store, that app has to be able to run and actually do stuff somehow. The way it is able to run is the app platform.
>If they prevent me from running any software apart from through their platform
If you do not want to run software using Apple's hardware and Apple's software then Apple is effectively out of the picture. Apple won't prevent you from running apps on a different app platform like Android.
The wealthy people own the hardware, the devs own the app. Why does apple get the legal right to demand money in that transaction when it would be better for everyone if they weren't involved
I grew up in the age of torrents and Kazzaa and am tired of spam, malware, bloat, anti virus, etc. I want my phone to be an unbreakable toy, not a computing device.
Actually, I'll try out using then through the browser and see what happens.
If I afford something doesn't mean I should buy. I grew up being poor and I earn my living working hard. Throwing money is not a good option for me.
Also, in what world affording a damn phone does make you rich?
Not everything you pay money for is comparable to taxes.
In the EU this is happening on both fronts:
- The GDPR has Android phone manufacturers to ask consent for different ways of using your data and being able to remove data. This is starting to work, on a Samsung phone Samsung/Google will ask you separate consent for using your data for diagnostics, ad targeting, etc. It's not perfect yet, but regulatory pressure is giving people privacy back.
- The DMA will force Apple to allow side-loading and alternative payment methods without taking a cut.
Once this has all played out, we'll still have a duopoly, but at least users and third-party developers are better protected.
Sorry but that’s not a society I want to continue living in.
There needs to be strict regulations and maybe apple needs to be broken up. Owning the hardware and App Store has already shown have abusive they can be. They need to divest or spin off one of them into a new company or we can pressure politicians to do this for us.
That is the equivalent of telling someone who doesn't like the current dictator to "go live in the desert".
Remember: I did not bring up the bad analogy. Someone abusing their quasi-monopolistic position to charge high fees is not the same as a tax. This was the point of my post. And sure we can pretend it is the same and bend reality till it fits, but that seems to me more like an idological expedition, than an insightful exploration.
Just because you don’t like the options doesn’t mean it’s not voting.
Here the voting audience will be split in different paths which will all continue to exist, and a person changing his mind will have to leave behind things HE/SHE accumulated and contributed on this path.
If that would be like democratic voting, it would mean that if you decide to change your vote from one election to the other, you have to return your entire income and acquisitions you made during the ruling of this party, to start building your life again on the other path (--> "if you don't like it, go live in the desert")
Actually it is. How do I stop paying taxes, if not by living in the desert?
Of course they care about you. They hope you are healthy and in a good shape so you can work more to earn more money and give them their share.
It is no surprise that people will come to the defense of this giant when you stop to consider this. Apple doesn't have to care about them, it already has.
I am of the opinion that there should be some sort of disclosure of financial interest.
Even if you are not invested in public equity markets, you can be exposed to them via local and state government’s pension fund investments, because if those do not perform as projected, then your taxes have to make up for it.
The investments people have in Apple are often insignificant compared to the rest of their income or wealth.
Also, buying shares in the public market is like a bet. Instead of changing your opinion to agree with the bet you could simply bet the other way. Or you could bet that your own political activism will fail. Betting on an outcome doesn't mean you prefer that outcome. It can also be hedging.
The people who really do have something riding on Apple's success are employees getting stock options. And yes, I would also like to know whether someone is an Apple employee when they are commenting on these subjects.
Developers are affected by Apple's policies and success in very complex ways and can legitimately take either side on these questions.
Disclosure: I have an app in the App Store that made me ~£100 in the previous fiscal year. I also have £3000 in a NASDAQ 100 ETF. Apple's share of that is ~£270.
Please note that I was not paid by Apple to write the comment above.
I don’t need them to be my friend or to care about me but as a share holder I want them to succeed. So far their R&D has proven valuable to me as both a consumer and share holder.
I don’t care if a few people who already have everything get richer. Since I believe the company is doing great things and I think it still has a bright future ahead I get to share in that upside too. And so can you if you want to.
And this is the point that should be made more often IMO — App Stores (and Apple bing one of the first ones) have democratized software development by making the barrier of entry extremely low. Anyone with some talent or idea can go and write an app, without any additional financial risk. App Store is based around sharing your success. The relatively few successful devs carry the costs to keep that barrier of entry low to everyone. And I really don't want that to change.
On a serious notes, what are the alternatives? What exactly is your argument? That Apple should be charging nothing? Ok, then they also shouldn't be providing any services. You want to do distribution or payment processing? Take care of it yourself. Epic would love this of course, Joe the indie developer instead is dead in the water. Or are you arguing that Apple is charging too much? Well, there are solutions to that as well. They could charge for services individually for example, but that again hurts the small developer, because trying out things starts costing them money.
Frankly, my idea would be to split the App Store into a separate commercial entity and make it nonprofit. I am sympathetic to the argument that the Store itself is not a product but is used to support and create value for Apple's ecosystem. I do think that the devs should pay for running the store, and I like the current success-based model and it's low barrier of entry for new devs, so basing the fees on actual operating costs seems like a good compromise. Of course, similar considerations should apply to other stores as well.
The value proposition of iOS is that the app store is the place to go, and that my experience will be seamless. I want a centralised place to manage my subscriptions. Here's an example:
I subscribed to NYT Cooking in the web a few years back. I went to cancel only to find out that I have to phone them. If I subscribed on an app store it would have been one click and done. I'm actually still subscribed to it.
Why is your choice more important than my choice?
This won't be a choice for users, this will be a choice for large developers.
The larger point is this: in a free market, if you have a bad experience with a product (like NYT Cooking in your example), you can bring your business elsewhere. That's how it works, and that's what Apple is interfering with.
They explicitly carved out their own market by making it a tightly integrated walled garden that's closed to outside integration, it seems hypocritical to now claim that users are free to leave at any time. They're not and that's by design.
I don't want the Meta store where Meta decide what level of API access their apps get). I explicitly choose the iOS ecosystem _because_ of this. If you want the alternative, you have a choice right now with Android. If this changes, then I _dont_ get a choice. Your choice removes my only option of a curated app marketplace in favour of a marketplace that will allow for billion dollar companies to set their own rules on how I interact with their apps, rather than me delegating that to one trusted gatekeeper.
Are you asking why we have antitrust laws?
> I don't want the Meta store where Meta decide what level of API access their apps get
And they shouldn't! Users should have full control over what data their apps can access, how often, with optional spoofing where it makes sense to stop apps from gating functionality behind invasive data collection. This should be an OS-level feature, not (poorly) enforced by the app store.
Apple's superficial review process isn't going to spot malicious abuses of your data unless it's plainly obvious.
> Your choice removes my only option of a curated app marketplace in favour of a marketplace that will allow for billion dollar companies to set their own rules on how I interact with their apps, rather than me delegating that to one trusted gatekeeper.
How so? You can continue using whichever marketplace you trust. Meanwhile your privacy and security should be technological, OS-level guarantees. You don't need Apple's app store to stop apps from stealing your banking information. You need a secure operating system (which iOS advertises itself to be) which employs sandboxing and that offers fine-grained permissions which users can freely grant, deny, or spoof.
you're putting words in my mouth here.
> How so? You can continue using whichever marketplace you trust.
No. I get to use whichever marketplace the publisher decides to use. Epic aren't going to publish on the App Store (see Fortnite on PC), Meta are going to publish on their own store. 37signals are going to use their own store. I currently can use a marketplace I trust. If iOS opens to allow other stores, then those stores either need to be curated by Apple or the store apps are sideloaded and have wider permissions. I don't want Meta's store with those permissions, I'm fine with using WhatsApp and not giving them my location.
Users do not care how much it costs a developer. They want it to be easy to see and cancel subscriptions all in one place. The web’s myriad of payment systems is the opposite of a good user experience, meant to only fatten the pockets of developers by making it difficult to cancel.
This is a ludicrous statement. The users are the ones paying for it.
If Melinda wants to use the Facebook app, but the Facebook app is only available on the Meta store, then Melina is forced to use the Meta store. This is not giving users choice. This is replacing one corp-backed store by multiple corp-backed stores. The user loses.
The only way how this would be a choice is if the same app, with the same basic functionality was available on all stores. Then the user would really have the choice which store to use. Or if there were alternative apps on different stores. Good luck with that given the current monopoly markets.
An "App Store", when it is not used as a rent-seeking choke-point, is a nothing-burger, it's a simple website to buy and download an app, yet you are trying to claim some great horror if this website was run by Meta not Apple. Please. It's nonsensical.
By the way, I couldn't care less if Meta has their own shop or not, and I don't see any horror in that, they decide how to best run their business, not me. But I take an issue with claims that Meta running their own exclusive show somehow creates more user choice (which is the direction the commenter I was replying to was heading towards)
It's such a bizarre belief that a product sold by Apple remains "their platform" once in the hands of a consumer. The only thing they still "own" is copyright IP. They sold a product. They don't get to legislate user actions. Their power over the device post sale, that they use to extract rent, is entirely artificial.
I mean, it's not that I would oppose this ideology in particular, it just sounds a bit radical. We'd have to change quit a lot of things for it to be feasible.
I could make the assertion that I'd be able to provide everything that Apple does, but with a much lower cut, but this can't be put to the test because there's no way for me to start another app store that iPhone users can access. I suspect a lot of the arguments for the 15% cut will change once we have alternate app stores offering the same things Apple does, but with a much lower cut. You'll then see app developers with skin in the game, and we'll know if everyone actually really thinks Apple does this better or if they'd rather have the extra money from other app stores.
In practice you still see a decent amount of activity on the official app store, along with some other major app stores, and a relatively small amount of independent distribution. There's still a good amount of small independent developers shipping apps (both on the stores and independently), and there's not a ton of evidence of price increases - in fact there's a very large amount of free software being distributed.
The alternative is “competition”.
In any case, I don’t see how any of this affects you since you’re happy paying Apple the fees. You can keep doing so as others pursue other options once they’re available.
Yes! That's exactly what everyone wants.
> Joe the indie developer instead is dead in the water.
No, Joe the indie developer will happily use one of the most popular alternative app stores that fits their needs and doesn't rip them off with fees.
What would these be? Last time I checked, the "champion of the people" Epyc charges 12% and pushes the charges for some payment methods onto the buyer. And it seems like they still haven't turned profitable, even with their bare-bones store model.
Stripe (one of the most popular payment processors) will take 9% from a 5$ purchase just for payment processing. This doesn't include tax processing or any other stuff, all that you have to pay extra. A customer wants a refund? You are eating the cost.
I just don't understand how any of this stuff people are talking about is realistic. I am not aware of a single commercial payment processing solution that will end up under 12-15% for small charges, while offering much less value to both the developer and the user compared to App Store. And I don't understand why people expect that this solution will suddenly magically pop up if Apple allows alternative stores.
One developer might be operating on effectively infinite margins and opt to stay in the Apple app store for visibility and most familiar experience.
Another might participate in an alternative app store that charges a review fee, a distribution fee but doesn't charge anything for in-app purchases except baseline payment processing fees.
Yet another might be operating on razor-thin margins and/or doesn't need to participate in an app store for visibility, they might sell their app directly through their website and roll their own payments and distribution.
> Stripe (one of the most popular payment processors) will take 9% from a 5$ purchase just for payment processing.
We might as well treat this as 0 when discussing alternative options since it's an inescapable fact of selling things anywhere (cash and crypto aside)
You know what? I actually agree with this! If alternative stores would really offer competition, then it's indeed something worth investigating. The problem is that I doubt that we will see alternative stores much. We will have a Meta store that sells FB-relevant services, an Epic store that sells Fortnite, an MS store that sells MS Office experience, an Adobe store that sells Adobe subscriptions, etc. Basically big corps making their own bubbles to improve margins.
If all these stores are regulated instead (transparent rules for all, no corp-only stores, strict privacy regulations), sure, I'm all for it! But that's not where the suggestions are going, so far most of the comments are along the lines "Apple should not be allowed to do this, everyone else should be allowed to do everything". Unfortunately, many "fairness initiatives" end up with some other big corp creating a soft monopoly (just look at google who de facto control the web standards just because their engine has 90% of the market share)
Right now, in the EU, the standard fee (before negotiation and volume consideration) is 0.25ct + 1.5% which will work out to about 26.5% cut for a 1-euro payment that is the worst-case scenario currently possible in the App Store as far as I am concerned.
They sell added services but there is no obligation for them and I figure most developers wouldn't care for them. The most expensive it can get is for international payment with currency conversion: 0.25ct + 3.25% + 2%. I don't know exactly how they do the fee calculation, but for a payment of 1, you would get a cut of about 30% max. Apple definitely does NOT provide the same service, since they do not allow international payment in their different localized app stores and they don't do currency conversion (they will let the bank charge you for that, which will get MUCH more expensive).
And the stripe number becomes much better with bigger price because of the fixed transaction fee. If you sell an app for 5$, the minimum you would have to give Apple would be 75 cents (the 15% they will allow under certain conditions) when the maximum you would pay to stripe would be 51 cents, or about 10.25%. Realistically most developers that do not have the scale to operate a fully custom system will address one or 2 big regional markets (with mostly shared language, culture and currency) and they would be just fine with the standard offering of stripe that would bring the cost to around 6.5%. While setting up everything would be a bigger hassle, for most developers that make enough money to live off it, that's a no brainer. Even if we argue that Apple provides more value than the base stripe and push to 10% cost everything included, for a dev making 100K in sales, it's already "free" 5K coming their way.
Many seem to mistakenly think that Apple allows dev to sell their app worldwide with very little hassle. Not only this is not true since many apps are actually region locked for whatever reason and cannot be purchased in a different market (it happens to me all the time, especially with apps from the US or from Germany) but Apple does not realy simplify the process of localisation, marketing, and proper tax declaration in each relevant market. Apples gives you pretty sales statement with everything you need, but any decent system will do that, you still need to do the actual work of compliance if you are big enough or care enough to follow the laws.
There are some argument to be made about the benefits of Apple integrated solution but it is only relevant for cheap software that are impulse buys precisely because they were cheap enough. The higher the price of the software the less relevant Apple solution is. Especially considering the inflexibility and dumb "categories" they push everything into. And if you have to push subscription or in-app purchase nonsense like they currently do, the economics are even better for external solution.
That's Stripe's US fee. CC processing fees are much higher in the US so that card issuers can run all of those "cashback" programs.
Your base case is a bit worse and it will work out over 30% for a payment of 1 (0.329) but if you sell a 5$ app, it would be 0.445 or about 8.9% like you said. You are still 6% lower than the minimum Apple would charge you.
It's not clear cut depending on what you need, but at the same time if you are small enough to qualify for the 15%, you probably don't need much or have time to figure it out.
For small international developers, under 500K per year spread out over several states & countries, often they don't have to pay VAT in most international places, so they lose an extra 20-22%. For instance most US states won't require you to pay VAT under 100K revenue if you are from another country.
Same for refunds & subscription management, often clients will ask you, but you have zero control with Apple. Let alone 60 days before being paid, where stripe does it in a few days.
The thing is, I fully agree that the model has to change and adapt. There has to be more transparency, more accountability, and these stores have to improve in a way that best fits the interests of the developers and the users. I just don't think that third-party stores or unrestricted side loading will do anything like that — in fact, I fear that they will make things considerably worse.
The line of thinking you're expressing here is what leads to questioning free speech and privacy absolutism.
I beg to differ. As a blind user relying on accessibility, Apple was actually the first company that decided that accessibility should be an inherent part of the OS, not just an expensive add-on. Since the iPhone, blind users can just buy the product and turn speech output on, without having to install expensive extra software as was the case with Windows, for instance.
So keep your generic accusations for yourself, they are far from correct.
If cutting it was a way to generate high profit, finance and shareholders would probably ask for this to be removed quickly. For instance, in the last vote they refused assessments on social and environmental issues.
I'm not hating Apple for this, they play the game the way it's supposed to be. Let's not be delusional about their intents, that could hurt you.
I did not because I don't know.
Known then as Access Utility for Windows 2.0, the program improved the accessibility of Windows for people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who have limited dexterity"
If the EU DMA does eventually force them to open the platform to competing stores it’s going to be very hard to defend the different policies in different markets, especially as I assume Epic will push aggressively to have Fortnite and the Epic Games store on iOS in those markets as early as possible to force the conversation.
Of course everything improved massively after the plague. So it depends on which part of the middle ages we're talking about.
I think it’s also kinda weird to label Apple as a monopoly unless you mean a monopoly on revenues. They seem to actively swerve away from getting over 50% share of anything.
If BMW sell 10 cars with $1 margin, Jaguar sell 5 cars with $2 margin, and Ferrari sell 2 cars with $40 margin, the latter took home 80% of profits with 11% marketshare. Then Ferrari just work their hardest to make sure that their customers cannot change car without a lot of effort, effectively coopting (or rather enslaving) them forever.
That keeps antitrust law at bay in practice, while egregiously breaking it in spirit.
It's incredible to me that people arguing against apple here don't realise that they're arguing to allow another billion dollar company to do what they want, and that their own opinion is the only one that could possibly be valid
If you want an open ecosystem with alternative app stores, head on over to Android. The value of iOS to me is the app store and related ecosystem.
I'll just tell all my potential customers to buy a new phone before buying my app. That'll work.
True.
> All they do is steal 30% from society that could be used for more productive purposes than make a few people who already have everything even richer.
I'm old enough to have developed software before the App Store existed, and remember that everyone was very excited both buy it finally being introduced to iOS, and by the relatively low fees of only 30%.
You're free to argue that 30% is too high, or even that the 15% for small developers is too high, that this is rent-seeking by Apple and only made sense when they were also a small company… but I think this is also true for the businesses trying to convince everyone that it matters, and I think they would like to charge the same sticker price while collecting the difference for themselves.
30% is low compared to what? Mafia extortion rates?
The payment processor (cheapest PayPal (U.S. Accounts), most expensive American Express/Optima International[0]) and marketplace (Kagi[0]) fees were on top of that hosting fee, and cost anywhere from (1.9 to 5.0)% + $0.30 (payment provider) plus 2.5% + $1 (market place for ≤$25), which makes those two items combined also more than 30% for any item sold for less than $5.08-5.77.
Hosting fees are of course cheaper today, more so when bulk bought (I think more than enough to compensate for games today getting into the 100GB range when my shareware was 10s of MB).
I'd hope that payment providers are also.
But at the time, it looked amazing.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20090903044400/http://www.kagi.c...
Apple hosts the apps, doesn't charge devs or customers anything for bandwidth used when downloading them. At the time the store launched, this was a big part of my overall costs, which Apple covered in full from their take.
> The app store seemed to be more or less a ripoff of Facebook's (now long defunct) app store, back when Facebook was a web-based app-of-apps, and AFAIK Facebook apps were free plugins.
I forgot that ever existed, so I searched for it. Looks like FB's was announced about 4 years after Apple's App Store?
But it doesn’t allow developers to host the apps themselves, so they are being forced to pay for a service they don’t need.
I could also go the other way and say that being tax-like is good for the same reason actual taxes are good: that it gets spent on building up an economic environment from which others can profit (at this point one would then want to retort something about democratic values).
But as I'm not hugely interested in defending a trillion dollar company (just giving a historical perspective that 30% was, when it was first announced, an improvement over the status quo), I say that if anyone feels the world has changed enough this is no longer good, it is good to call for change — companies may not be democracies, but the nations they operate in generally are.
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I managed to use 25 GB in a month for games that were less than 5 MB(!) each (shareware model, so more downloads than sales), and that was for something generating mere hobby-level income, not full time job replacement income.
(But this is rather beside the point, I've been trying to repeatedly make it clear that I was defending the initial value proposition when the App Store was new and shiny and Apple were mere upstarts, not the ongoing one where the corporation's market cap is approximately the same as the net value of the entire country I was born in).
Go back and watch the keynote. Developers cheered because 30% was so much lower than any other stores available at the time.
You could try to argue that Apple give more value by supporting longer, but then again you would be completely wrong (some hardware manufacturer are not super good at supporting their stuff for the very long term, but windows in itself has a support timeline way beyond anything Apple ever did...)
If you have an app tomorrow that sells for $10 to 10k people you owe Apple $30k, now you manage to up your price to $30, same work same size same everything, but suddenly you now owe Apple $90k ? That's called a tax, not a fee.
Doing so wouldn't stop apple from having a separate, "pay 30% all inclusive" fee, and it wouldn't stop them from "if your app is free you have no fee" (beside the xcode sub fee).
Apple didn’t invent a marketplace.
Please have a look how other online and offline marketplaces work and how they monetize access.
You can look at anything from Salesforce, Shopify, to Microsoft, Epic Store, PlayStation and your local Target store.
Hint - it’s not a flat fee structure.
But as a user I'm able to buy my pc games, my groceries or my music from another store. Apple prohibits me from doing that.
"Excessive" or "monopolistic", if you like, but not really a tax.
And the thing is, 30% cut is pointless for Steam. They have more money than they could ever spend. There is no budget at Valve. They just spend whatever they want and do what they want.
They rob hardworking small developers of real money that they need to support themselves all so billionaire Gabe N can enjoy the extreme excess of his valve palace
The rest of your comment is baffling to me.
I assume you're neither a shareholder or employee of Steam.
But you count their money, you decide for them that their own money is pointless to them, you somehow know how much money they earn, and based on that make assumption it's more than they could ever spend (even though you admit yourself there is no budget at Valve).
And how long is "ever" in "than they could ever spend"? 1 year? 5 years? 20 years? 100 years?
I very much dislike people who count other people's money, I don't know if it's their own jealousy or greediness. But you on top of that also somehow came to the conclusion that their own money is pointless to them, and then accuse them of robbing people.
And this is about marketplace for PC games, a wild west of side-loading and land of free for all.
But somehow Steam is robbing developers.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You should double check your sources because you fell for low-effort low-intelligence fake journalism. What Sweeney said was that 12% was not viable in developing countries due to high finance costs. https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/109102593910919987...
You dislike people who count private profit margins?
I dislike low-information consumers who simp for corporations based on literal fake news.
Be better, shame on you.
Epic Game Store is unprofitable and losing money. There were financial documents released in Epic vs Apple about Epic Game Store becoming possibly profitable in a few years and accumulating 1 billion loss before the end of this decade.
> You dislike people who count private profit margins?
I like how you honestly believe that saying "% cut is pointless for Steam", "they have more money than they could ever spend", "they just spend whatever they want and do what they want", "they rob ... so billionaire Gabe N can enjoy the extreme excess of his valve palace" is counting profit margins.
To bring you back to reality, you're not counting profit margins, because you have no access to their financials. You're making stuff up and talking emotional nonsense like you have a personal grudge and accuse other people and companies of robbing people.
edit: can't reply to your comment below. wishing you all the best with your future trap laying for incompetent repliers
Steam's 30% is still a huge improvement on the overhead involved in brick and mortar physical sales. But if a developer doesn't want to pay the 30% they can always sell their game from their own website - and some do[1]. Most developers seem to think that the 30% is worth it though.
[1] https://fractalsoftworks.com/preorder/
Edit: Something I neglected to make explicit is that the PC is an open platform. If you don't want to sell through Steam you have tons of other options, including self-publishing. If you want to get your game on a PS5 or an iPhone, you have to go through Sony or Apple and they take a similar cut of your revenue.
It's up to the people who created these marketplaces to charge what they feel is fair and/or financially sustainable for the value they provide.
If it wasn't worth it for the sellers, these marketplaces wouldn't exist today.
But they do, and they thrive.
If you have a secret sauce how to build a sustainable billion people marketplace after spending billions on it without charging sellers access to your customers, please do it and show the world how it should be done.
> Apple prohibits me from doing that
Yes, because that's their product, their philosophy and the experience they want their customers to have.
And they do that for 15 years already.
You knew that and still bought the iPhone. As have hundreds of millions of others.
And it still is one of the most popular, highest rated consumer devices in the world for over a decade.
So it's not a deal breaker for consumers, is it?
Is a flat fee structure?
Basic: $39/mo
Shopify: $105/mo
Advanced: $399/mo
We can take them all down. We should. Doesn't matter if it's Valve or Steam or Google or whoever. It's only better for consumers and clearly we've let it slide to the point where even us usually cynical HN peeps are apparently willing to defend this predatory and anti-consumer behaviour.
Personally I don't like these practices -- it's all cuz of the walled garden, locked down aspect of it all. But luckily I'm also free to continue avoiding the heck out of Apple devices. They make nice hardware so that sucks that I miss out on that, but I'll take the trade off that I get to install whatever apps I want on this here Android phone of mine.
I hate Apple like the next enlightened guy, but then banks and credit card companies should also charge a flat fee for their services. This isn't the case and probably never will be, however. But their fee is much more reasonable than Apple's fee.
However...
> All they do is steal 30% from society that could be used for more productive purposes than make a few people who already have everything even richer.
If you're gonna argue that, you have to inspect the edges of this position. Are you willing to let go of your own shares? Or the interest on your pension (or equivalent), which comes via the roughly the same route you're arguing against. If you own your own company, do you share most/all profits with your staff (rather than pay a wage), or your shareholders? This is all wrapped up together.
IMO, To make such a claim, you need really to argue against the system these "rich people" operate in as much, if not more than, the individual cases.
This is not the same, there a degrees of unethical behavior. We should collectively try to give more meaning to these degrees instead of jumping to first principles.
Taking your example, there is a difference between taking a cut or underpaying your staff or severely underpaying them or perhaps not paying them at all or perhaps forced labor or perhaps outright slavery.
If I'm selling content, why couldn't I give customer the choice between:
- Paying the 30% Apple cut and benefiting from everything you like about this
- Buying directly, cheaper, without Apple cut (or maybe with a tiny cut if that make any sense, removing only 3pt is a joke)
They spent billions on hardware, software, R&D, marketing and operations.
Why would they give another business a free access to a billion of their customers?
You want to earn money of Apple's customers? Then pay Apple a revenue share of the money you get from their customers.
That's how pretty much any marketplace works in the world.
From your local Target to Salesforce/Shopify/PlayStation/Epic Store/Steam/etc.
You always have the option to not buy a ford, or not buy an iPhone.
The question with the App Store is, are customers allowed to choose?
Even taking your second part as given without addressing the actual complexity here: then how about you accomplish that FIRST? Because I've heard a lot of "we'll break this hack that makes things work suboptimally but better than nothing and then fix it properly in law later" over the decades and 99% of the time it breaks the hack and then surprise surprise never ever gets the "fixed in law" part, leaving us worse off without the gain. I'm all in favor of passing some laws in this area that'd accomplish stuff more efficient with fewer perverse incentives on all sides. I'd like to see users have the option by law to control their root key stores, to require standard secure APIs for subscriptions so that multiple 3rd parties can offer central management and users can cancel without any interaction with what they're subscribing to, for long basic price linked warranties required by law, local use and ad free data control options by law, but also for manufacturers/devs to be protected by default from liability etc. It'd be great to fix a whole lot of stuff.
But until that happy day happens I'm less inclined to just mindlessly bash down what we have and a lot of people are pretty happy with and seems to have struck an ok if far from ideal compromise. I mean, killing upgrades alone makes me hate the app store, but still fix first.
People are upset that developers are forced to use that product, and now with this news: pay an extortion fee on a 3p transaction that doesn’t concern Apple.
None of what you said matters. It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. The open question is if they're in a position where there's no reasonable alternative for developers and/or consumers which you can make a strong case for. That line of argument would not be affected at all by how much money Apple makes, their cut or if they're spending their money in a socially productive way.
The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint on issues related to internet based conversation where opinions consistently trump fact or reason.
Ah yes, loan sharks are perfectly legitimate businessmen too, then.
> The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint
I personally find sadder that there are people who just rationalize away the utter lack of morality in modern capitalism. "Why screw others? Because we can! Woot!" is even worse than "greed is good".
We used to be taught that one of the Bad Elements of feudal life was that the local lord could impose arbitrary taxes to use a road or a bridge, with no recourse for people and tradesmen. Now we are at the same point in the digital world.
Apples argument, which has legally worked so far, is the competition is at the ecosystem level. The iPhone and App Store are all parts of the whole. If someone doesn't like they can go to a competing ecosystem. Think game console, not computer.
Imagine buying a house, and having to ask to the original builder for permission to buy wardrobes, or a fridge, a table and chairs. The builder can tell you what he does or does not allow, and takes a cut of every purchase you make. It's a ludicrous proposition, but that's very much how our digital life currently is.
In Apple's case there are no reasonable alternatives and no practical way to say "no" to the service if you want any business at all. That and that alone should be the issue at hand. What Apple is doing should not be legal on that ground. Either they allow third party stores, or they adjust their cut to a level that can reasonably argued is aligned with the value they're adding to the publisher of that app or service. Now they're in "we can charge whatever because we're the only route to getting your product on Apple products" land, and that's just not where we want to be.
But that's not the topic at hand, and strawmanning one problem by pulling in another is just lazy. Ruling on this will not just affect Apple but any company with a similar modus operandi in the future, including smaller more ethical companies. Why people have trouble keeping legislative challenges (what you can do) and moral challenges (what you should do) apart is beyond me. You can have more than one opinion in your head at the same time.
For someone lamenting the state of discourse on the internet, you seem to have a problem with avoiding ad-hominems. You also seem to rabidly post multiple items at speed. Please calm down and refrain.
> Ruling on this will not just affect Apple but any company with a similar modus operandi in the future,
Absolutely - and absolutely, anyone creating a digital platform should be forced to follow better rules than what we have at the moment. The market alone will produce exploitative monopolies, and this is what we're seeing with Apple. If the letter of current antitrust laws doesn't touch them, the spirit definitely does.
> Why people have trouble keeping legislative challenges (what you can do) and moral challenges (what you should do) apart
Because it's in the cracks between those concepts that Bad Things for society tend to happen; which is why we have laws to reconcile them where the market fails to do so on its own. In this case, we have large companies effectively establishing exploitative and feudal relationships with smaller businesses and consumers, extracting parasitical rents. This is a Bad Thing and should be fixed.
Including your other comment:
> And yes, loan sharks are legitimate businessmen in the US.
No, they are not. You need licenses to lend money in the US, and to get those you have to follow extensive rules and regulations put in place precisely to make it illegal to be a loan shark. Some businesses get close to the limits of such rules (payday loans etc), and that is a political item - precisely because they get very close to be something that is Bad for society.
> if you want to change it vote for people that can turn that into law
Absolutely, and people do. EU representatives are running with this, and Apple is slowly being subject to more and more scrutiny (together with Google, Amazon, and anyone else with a digital marketplace). People understand that what these businesses are doing is Bad for society in the long run, so if they can't reign themselves in on their own, they will have to be reigned in by the law.
Apple stock is the most widely held stock by American 401k's and forms the basis of retirement investments for middle class Americans more than any other stock
"a few people" being everyone with a retirement plan, 401k or any equivalent around the world, i.e. the vast majority of people in developed countries
if anything, taking from smaller companies to give to megacorps is a net benefit for "the common man", since the former will generally belong to founders/VCs/private equity in which they have no stake, and the latter are owned by everyone with exposure to the MSCI World :)
We should put out an open letter to Apple that we will collectively ignore that product until it contains more favourable terms.
Apple restricts third parties almost entirely through technical measures.
Jailbreaking to bypass the technical measures is legal.
Looks like the lawsuit was settled not decided, and Apple is free to sue it's next victim.
(I agree that the 30% is probably bad for society though)
>make a few people who already have everything even richer.
I do wonder what percentage of Apple stock is owned by pension funds and the like, i.e. The Regular Person, once you unwind the levels of indirection (mutual funds, index funds, ETFs, etc). It is surely a double digit percentage, but high, low? No idea.
Pretty high. The S&P 500 has ~7% apple stock which means many peoples retirement accounts have several percentage points of apple stock.
If you had $1,000 invested in Apple around ten years ago (a reasonable amount in a retirement fund), you'd have made around another $8,500 by now.
While if you'd spent $1,000 on apps and subscriptions over 10 years, Apple would have taken $300.
So Apple would take $300 of your money from one hand and give you back $8500 with the other.
That's a difference almost 3x larger than the difference you suggested... but in the opposite direction!
Their anti-developer/consumer moves are worthy of backlash, especially since Apple isn't likely going to change their positions without enough of it.
It's funny but since the rise of the iPhone I feel like society has gone straight downhill, not that they have been the only player in the smartphone game, but they sure have profited well, are the biggest drain in the industry to the home developers that contribute to their ecosystem. They pay 0 tax and aren't contributing to the better of society through computing while convincing half the population they are protecting them, etc. It's a scam.
Like many large corporations, they aren't ANY better and will plead that it is due to 'competition' while being ahead of the food chain and able to lead in any way they choose.
You're welcome to project general failings of society onto the emergence of the iPhone (but not Android because Google maybe isn't nearly as evil I mean it's in their motto). And there's tons of hype and fanboyism associated with their products. But they are good products. After ditching Windows back in 2008, I've haven't yet had a compelling reason to switch OSes again in my career as a software engineer. Their higher-end devices are absurdly priced but my employer buys them for me, maybe that's why.
What's incredible is how people waste their tiny amount of personal energy defending their exploitation by a corporation that has vastly more resources than them and objectively does not need their help.
Apple is probably the poster child for effectively using marketing to brainwash their customers into identifying with them in a cult-like manner. That cult was close to the only thing sustaining them through the 90s.
I think Apple is wrong, but I don't think they're wrong because they're successful - in fact I think saying Apple is wrong because they're successful is against the concept of objective reality and not appropriate for HN.
The idea that Apple are wrong because they're successful is the same awful thinking that advocates for violence or systemic discrimination against people based on their skin color (because they're considered 'successful') and is abhorrent.
Nobody here is trying to help Apple by posting on HN. They're just discussing their viewpoints on how Apple operates and its policies around taking commission on purchases. That's what this entire message board is about - talking about tech and the like.
If they're wasting their time by posting in defense of Apple, you're doing the exact same thing with your response - neither is going to have any actual impact on the world, so either posting is a waste of energy or it's not. There's no valid argument that posting in defense of Apple is a waste of energy but posting attacks on Apple is a useful and productive thing to do.
An alternative view values human freedom and autonomy. From this perspective the size of an organization is relevant - a large enough organization can impose its will on individuals who don't wish to associate with it.
Neither viewpoint is wrong, but acting as if the one you prefer is somehow more correct or objective is.
Claiming that Apple is "stealing" their cut of commission is definitely wrong.
That is some choice rhetoric with a particular bias, but not a distinct point of view from people arguing for freedom and autonomy for Apple’s business practices.
The corporation is a legal fiction, but it’s still human owned, operated, and staffed, and reflects the millions (billions?) of choices that get made by individuals working together to accomplish whatever it is the corporation does. In Apple’s case, that gestalt includes running the App Store at a price to developers that they see fit who choose to do business with them.
I think rhetorically "..who choose to do business with them" is doing a lot more work than anything I wrote. Once an organization reaches a certain size individuals start losing meaningful choice in how they interact with it. You can say that the "gestalt" will of the organization is more important, but you can't make other people concede that their point of view is merely a rhetorical stance.
> I think rhetorically "..who choose to do business with them" is doing a lot more work than anything I wrote.
Dude, we’re talking about iPhone apps at the end of the day. When you’re at the level where you write iPhone apps for a living, you and your employer made your choices. If you’re only writing iPhone software in a way that generates income for you because somebody has a gun to your head, then first, I’m sorry, that’s really messed up and hang in there, but at that point in your life, your first concern probably isn’t Apple’s cut.
> Once an organization reaches a certain size individuals start losing meaningful choice in how they interact with it.
If you were talking about a sovereign nation with a standing army or maybe even a corporation with a standing army, or just a City’s police department, you might have a point here. In this discussion, we’re talking about Apple, and not all of Apple mind you, but specifically about Apple’s developer program and App Store policies.
> but you can't make other people concede that their point of view is merely a rhetorical stance.
Pointing out rhetoric isn’t for the benefit of the practitioner, it’s for the benefit of anyone else who comes across it.
The people who think Apple is evil because of their size are simply not systems thinkers. They have an illogical view of the world in which the little guy is always right simply because they are the little guy, and thus the big guy must be wrong. It's very similar to the Amerika thing you said. If you don't think about the system Apple or America operates in, it's really easy to hate them.
Which is not to say one can't be a systems thinker and still think this was a bad decision or that Apple is given too much power or does things that are unethical or bad for consumers or whatever else. I totally concur that the government should require Apple and Google to allow sideloading, payments they're not involved in, etc BECAUSE I am thinking about the system and how having two corporations own the device our world runs on is a bad one. And how there's essentially no way for governments to mandate a third viable mobile OS into existence.
But the people who say "I can't believe you'd side with Apple" phrase it that way because they are not thinking of the system. They're thinking small. They think making ad-hoc decisions about individuals within the system is appropriate because they can't think any bigger. If they could, they'd lay out the argument as I just did (and, as many, many people in here did too) or something that was less about the individual.
There's been a lot of this on display (not so much here) in what people say about the whole Israel/Hamas situation too. It's not so much what they say (systems thinkers don't agree anymore than anyone else) but how they say it that tips it off.
Every single platform out there is a dumpster fire of fraudulent and abusive software and products aggressively pushed by deception with every trick or vulnerability they can find exploited.
The App Store works just fine for me as a user as is. I don’t care at all what software you want to install on my phone or what access you feel entitled to.
In capitalism 101, Apple created a market and a shop, so they can set the rules. If they demanded too much, developers would move away, their venture would collapse, iPhones would become less popular, etc.
I think you’ll find that selling ice cream at Disney theme parks similarly is expensive for ice cream vendors. They’ll either demand a cut on revenues or charge a lot for the right to sell stuff, and be picky about who can sell what at their venues.
Large retail companies such as Walmart won’t technically take a cut if you want them to sell your product, but they’ll negotiate lower prices from you, require you to take back any unsold inventory, etc.
In summary: ‘we’ currently allow all kinds of huge companies to play by different rules than small companies and individuals.
For me, the main issue is whether iOS needs special handling because of its success, and if so, what special handling.
The first, for me, is “yes”; smartphones are different enough from theme parks, Xbox and Walmart to handle them differently. The second I’m less sure about.
For example, yes, I’d like to have the option to side-load stuff, but also think Apple should have control over what their iPhone product stands for.
They currently ban apps selling drugs, for example. Requiring them to support third party stores that may have such apps might harm the image of their iPhone product. Because of that, I think we should allow them (but not necessarily be happy with) to put up a firm warning whenever you try to install a third party app store, even though that would put them on unequal footing with Apple’s store.
Maybe, the best solution would be to make Apple’s App Store a non-profit with a monopoly on selling iOS apps, with Apple keeping the right to specify what can and cannot be sold there (keeping that a true non-profit would be hard, though. Some non-profits manage to hoard lots of money over time, their CEO’s ‘deserve’ large salaries, etc)
They should build it and you should just get it for free.
Is 30% reasonable? Should there be some taper once your app is in maintenance mode? No, and yes.
I don’t see any reason from either side of this argument frankly. They’ve built a wonderful think that provides immense value, and we all benefit.
They should be more flexible in their pricing model, and you should understand that actual people spent hundreds of thousands of hours of their lives to deliver it to you, and charging for that isn’t stealing.
I'd like to quote a passage from Reamde by Neal Stephenson: "So what are you going to do?" Yuxia asked. "Maybe tag along. Like escorting a drunk president home after a long night in the bar." "Didn't you say you had to make a phone call?" "I have been trained by the United States government," Seamus said, "to do more than one thing at a time."
> All they do is steal 30% from society that could be used for more productive purposes than make a few people who already have everything even richer.
Kind of an odd take. They take a cut because they provide a service. They are not stealing. I guess lump me in with the defending apple crowd if you want to but to think they would or should charge nothing for their service feels... silly.
can you imagine if selling a replacement bulb for a ford headlight required you to pay 30% to ford.
only in tech can this be considered fair.
Yes it’s not software and yes the tiny company is not single-person company. But that really doesn’t change the situation (well except for you being seemingly personally affected). You can call this situation unfair and say that it _should_ not exist. But reality just disagrees with your assessment that it _does_ not exist. At least as far as I can see. Feel free to explain the difference that I’m missing.
And just for completeness sake: this isn’t even unique in software. Distribution commissions were usually in that order of magnitude. Even for less service and reach
Steam deck recommends you purchase the official steam dock but they don't prevent you, nor do they take a cut of, 3rd party docks that interface with the steam deck.
only in tech would someone argue they should be entitled to a cut of that transaction because they _sold_ the original hardware to the user.
You can even install apps like altstore on iphones.
We should own our own computers
A great example that highlights this absurdity is vehicle ownership - imagine if Tesla announced tomorrow that they are actually a "transportation platform" and started charging Uber drivers a percentage of their revenue, or Mazda found out about the weekend race you did in a Miata and is demanding a cut of the winnings.
Businesses would love perfect price discrimination in every context (because profits!), but is not clear to me how that is a desirable state for humanity.
They could do this. It would just result in people being upset and likely no longer using their products.
I don't think it makes a ton of sense to compare a store or marketplace to hardware though? Every marketplace I know of takes a cut of items purchased through their store. Or they buy their items upfront and then take all the revenue of the sale.
The issue really shouldnt be that a cut is taken, it should be the amount or letting developers create alternative ways to download apps. Having an issue with someone taking a cut of revenue generated for products purchased on their platform just doesnt make a lot of sense.
I don't know exactly how every store works but doesnt every digital store, and non digital store, take a cut of what they sell?
I agree with the fact that we should own our own computers but you do own your iphone. You can jailbreak it and do whatever you want with it. You can even sideload apps, like altstore, through an incredible tedious process.
It sucks that Apple doesnt make this easier to do but that is another topic... Right?
Alternatively charge 30% but be forced to allow side-installing Apps. That way developers can decide if they want the convenience and reach of the AppStore or not.
Yes this exactly
I don't care whether they charge 10%, 30%, or 100%
I do care that there's no alternative to NOT using their services & paying their fee
Steal? What you want the App store to be free and become the Android Play Store which is utter garbage and hostile against small and mid developers?
In conclusion "Information wants to be free."
I don’t like what apple is doing here, and am not inclined to defend it.
However, I am inclined to complain about this type of rhetoric. If invalid criticism are being made, it is appropriate to correct those criticisms, even if the criticisms being made are criticisms of some vile person or organization.
It amazes me that people would rather force apple to open up through dubious court cases than simply buy a different device.
Put GrapheneOS on your phone(s) and Qubes OS on PC(s), and you have the world's two most secure and owner-respecting operating systems in existence today!!!! :^)
For the privilege of paying 2.9% more, my users get to see a scary privacy message and when I bill the customer a year later for a subscription, there's a 20-30% chance that their credit card will have expired.
If this isn't a monopoly abusing its dominate market position, then what is?
edit: here's one of the 'victims': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39022303
This is why unions are a thing. They create collective bargaining power. If all of the app store vendors would unite they'd have a formidable position vis-a-vis Apple, Google etc. And there is no reason why app store developers could not form such a collective to increase their bargaining power.
You must have seen it mentioned on HN before: don't build your house in someone else's garden or something to that effect, in other words: if you make all of your income in someone else's eco system you are giving them a lot of power over your business. That's a bad move, but if you have to do it make sure you have a lot of friends, just in case.
> And there is no reason why app store developers could not form such a collective to increase their bargaining power.
This is also where you lose me entirely. You’re basically talking about unionizing independent businesses. Just call it a cartel. That’s the word you’re looking for.
No, a cartel is something different entirely. A cartel is a bunch of businesses that set the price for a market, not a collective that serves to increase the bargaining position of individual entities that are too weak to do so on their own power. Cartels are all about price fixing while keeping the competition out.
[1]: through some silly chicanery requiring an application process, and only if your business earns $1M or less a year. Apple may be within their rights but damn do they make themselves look bad when it comes to this shit.
No, the aim is not to 'fix price'. A cartel sells a resource at an artificially inflated price to a group of consumers who have no idea that this is happening (unless the cartel owners happen to advertise the fact). Typically cartels are illegal.
> The aim is to fix a price, and the price you are trying to set is the price at which another business buys units of your software or services for resell.
No, it is not about setting a price. It is about setting a (reasonable) cap on a margin on your own price. That's an entirely different thing.
> That’s the price, and their right to charge it has been upheld, but your proposal is to band together the small, medium and large businesses that virtually fill the App Store and have them War Doctor around going “No more!” or dictate a lower price. That’s collusion, that’s price fixing, that’s a cartel.
No, that's much closer to a union than a cartel.
Okay, so what if Apple decided a reasonable price for doing business with them was between 12% and 30% of the price you set per unit, and that you can take it or go into a different business writing software for other platforms instead, for which a non-exhaustive list in 2024 includes the following: Windows, Android, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, Linux, servers, the Web, embedded systems, supercomputers, mainframes (no really), webOS televisions, and custom systems? Pretty soon, depending on how this DMA stuff shakes out and how Apple ends up complying, you might even be able to develop for iPhones on less onerous terms, but only in the EU, so add EU iPhones to the list above as a “maybe” after March 7th.
Some people might take that deal, and others might choose to do their work somewhere working on something else. How do you plan to deal with the businesses that are just going to take the deal? Like they have been, every single time they’ve voluntarily signed the developer agreement without a gun to their heads and invested more money into building on Apple’s platforms?
Also note that through their control of GitHub they could shut down 90%+ of of the FOSS movement out there with the click of a mouse.
I still disagree with the form of your rhetoric as I do see cartel as a more accurate description, but out of respect for the internal consistency of your argument, I’ll drop it. People can see the case you made and make up their own minds. :)
It could even be several groups, so long as they are pushing a similar agenda.
Your original comment used the term “abuser”, which refers to a very specific kind of crime that not only frequently does involve a victim’s acquiescence to their abuser, but that is often the ultimate purpose for the abuse. I understand what you’re trying to say, but I think it’s probably for the best to simply avoid using domestic violence to make such analogies altogether.
It not only risks being taken to be in poor taste, but I think it’s also unnecessary in this context. It’s not especially difficult to understand why Apple’s market position gives it the kind of outsized leverage to force other stakeholders into engaging with unfair, even illegal, practices that are frequently contrary to their own interests. In negotiations, and within free markets more broadly, there’s a level to which this kind of uneven power dynamic can be productive, but it’s very clearly gone too far here, and is rightly seen as suppressing competition, stifling innovation, and sabotaging the potential for entrepreneurs and small businesses to thrive.
It’s precisely the kind of thing that the federal government should be on top of, but until congress resumes its regularly mandated duties (it’s my understanding that the United States Congress has been starring in some sort of reality TV program for the last several years, and must continue until they have voted all but the last remaining legislator off of Joe Manchin’s houseboat) it’s probably a good idea to explore other options, like labor unions or maybe crowdfunded federal class action lawsuits.
Abuser has much wider connotations than just domestic violence and I'm not so focused on sex crimes/domestic crimes that I see the term as inexorably connected but for those that do feel free to substitute another term that indicates a power relationship between two parties in which one takes advantage of the other even if the other willingly entered into the relationship.
Note that class action suits are not powerful enough for this: they simply allow Apple to partition the world into many small fiefdoms each of which will have to fight individually for their rights. Much better to tackle this as all developers versus Apple, that way you stand a chance of making it stick.
Lmao, except, they literally do.
This is why leaving an abusive relationship is so fucking hard.
Android and iOS have an abusive relationship with developers.
But what I think would happen is that there would be enough hold-outs from such an effort that Apple would come out on top because the players in the eco -system are more in competition with each other than that they really mind Apple. They want to pay Apple less but they want to put their competition out of business even more...
Where you think of organising a rally or just an email campaign ?
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/19/23730302/apple-app-store-...
I just posited the idea here in NL at 2:30 in the morning and you, somewhere else entirely have already heard of it. That mechanism could be vastly improved upon but I think the principle is sound as your average cat meme has proven thousands of times by now.
If a developer union of sorts succeeds in negotiating down Apple's charge, there is absolutely 0 chance that this cost savings will make its way on the whole to consumers precisely because developers have already proven that customers are willing to take a higher price.
As an end customer I think it's a good thing if an indie developers get more money in the abstract. I don't think I care if it means that Netflix gets to keep more of their money instead of Apple.
I'm much more sympathetic toward lower fees for smaller companies. Once you are the size of Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, etc. it's just jostling between multi-billion (trillion) companies and I'm not really concerned one way or the other, especially if these actions result in more annoying behavior that I have to deal with, like multiple app stores, increase in spam and ads and spying, and the dissolution of the power of features like Sign in with Apple that allow me to generate fake email addresses.
That's perfectly ok because that's not the intended effect, the intended effect is to stop Apple/Google from exacting a 30% toll on their platforms, not to improve consumer prices.
> I'm much more sympathetic toward lower fees for smaller companies.
This already exists.
Having another “store” doesn’t necessarily mean having to get apps elsewhere. E.g., the one platform app store has severely degraded my ability to enjoy audiobooks. I used to be able to buy books directly in Audible (on Android anyway). It was convenient and Audible offered daily deals. I’d get books on a whim and discover new authors that way. Once Audible had to start paying a 30% tax, that feature went away. Now I have to browse & purchase in a web browser, which is far less convenient.
Incidentally, both Apple and Google sell audiobooks. Presumably they aren’t paying a 30% tax themselves and can use that as a builtin price advantage. But, then I’m tied to that platform.
In this case, you'd be making an "in-app purchase" with your Amazon account. There's no new annoyance in payment management and there's no new store to browse. You just get a more convenient way to buy content.
You’re also not required to use an iPhone. Grab an Android phone with the features you want (multiple app stores) and you’re good to go!
Anyway.
The best store isn’t necessarily the best store for me, and apps (think TikTok, etc.) have more pull than an App Store does so what will happen is they will launch their product only on non-Apple app stores that have less strict requirements and review processes and people will go download from there. Customers will have to download multiple app stores, manage subscriptions in multiple places, have to manage user profiles and credit card information across multiple app stores, etc. It’s kind of like today with the competing streaming services. Not great.
While this presents a few problems, my chief concern is that it unwinds some of the great features that Apple essentially lobbied for on behalf of customers. Features such as Sign in with Apple, and other privacy oriented features.
With multiple app stores customers have no bargaining power or anyone bargaining on their behalf. It’s a marriage of corporate interests united against customers.
I’m struggling to see the benefit to customers. It seems like we’re trying to screw normal people so a few big companies like Meta can make an extra buck and grab up more of your data.
The situation isn't much better on Android. Yes, there are multiple stores, but since Google Play Services are locked up you effectively have to use the Play Store. Of course, there's more to consider than just the store and there are other reasons, some involving lock-in, to want to use an iPhone.
> While this presents a few problems, my chief concern is that it unwinds some of the great features that Apple essentially lobbied for on behalf of customers. Features such as Sign in with Apple, and other privacy oriented features.
Using Android as an example, that just didn't happen. Granted, part of that is the hoops Google has you jump through to sideload anything. Samsung and Amazon both have stores and outside of Amazon Fire devices, their adoption is quite minimal. So, I don't think this future where everyone abandons the Apple App Store is apt to happen. Having competition in the space should spur Apple to deliver more. And as a consumer I have the option to sideload apps on my computing device if I'd like.
> With multiple app stores customers have no bargaining power or anyone bargaining on their behalf. It’s a marriage of corporate interests united against customers.
I don't know what power I really have with Apple's App Store. Some parts are nice. Some aren't. I have no ability to influence that. I can't "let the market speak" without using a completely different device.
Moreover, other app stores need to have an actual proposition to get adopted. Assuming companies still want to make money, they'll likely still sell apps through the Apple App Store.
> I’m struggling to see the benefit to customers. It seems like we’re trying to screw normal people so a few big companies like Meta can make an extra buck and grab up more of your data.
I don't care at all about helping Meta make more money. I think you'll find that's true for almost everyone. I'm not looking to screw myself or anyone else for that matter. I do care about the grabbing more of your data part. But, that's an argument against mobile apps. In Apple's locked down ecosystem I have no control over the data collected. In a web app I can run a blocker, at least.
I care that mobile devices are the general computation devices of this generation and we ceded control of it to Apple and Google then let them add a 30% tax onto it and control what we can run on our computers. If Microsoft did this with Windows applications, we would rightfully call out their anti-competitive behavior.
The common retort at this point is "just don't use a mobile device." That was a valid answer for a while, but particularly with covid, a lot of things became mobile apps with no web alternatives. I had doctor's appointments that required using an application on one of those two platforms.
As a consumer, I also dislike that Apple and Google don't really need to respond to market demands. Changing platforms is a huge upheaval and can be quite costly, since there's really no cross-platform licenses available. You just need to re-purchase all of your apps and any media. They also lock you in with their cloud services. Sure, I could use Dropbox, but Photo shared libraries only work with iCloud. They have a captive audience and get away with a lot that they wouldn't with a competitive marketplace.
I get it. Plenty of people like the gilded Apple path. But, we're well beyond the point of platform being limited to peripherals for Apple enthusiasts. These are primary computing devices that are essentially unavoidable. Switching to Google is an impractical solution and doesn't address the core problem anyway, so that's a non-starter. If the cost of opening up the platform is you can't get Fortnite in the Apple App Store, I can live with that. In the unlikely event Apple nailed every aspect of this, from pricing, to store presentation, to content restrictions, then its massive population of happy customers will ensure the App Store is the primary destination for applications. Otherwise, competition should force Apple to improve its service or decrease its prices to actually compete.
For this you get nice things like you don’t need to deal with taxes in all the different countries.
This is all their fault.
And I'm perfectly ok with App store developers doing what they are doing and making lots of money. But there is a price tag and they either must be ok with that or like me they'd opt-out.
So I've been 'striking' for as long as I've had App ideas and things that I could have fielded as an App but ended up just putting on the web. I don't need to convince anybody.
It came out in the Epic trial that’s where 90% of the revenue comes from. It’s not from small indy developers
And so by all means withdraw your app but the rest of us will simply continue to pay the 15/30% as we have always done.
You know what the experience was in one word?
Shit.
For both developers and consumers.
Then comes Apple with amazing hardware, software and APIs with focus on developer experience.
Developers decide to ditch side-loading & stuff like xda-developers in favor of 30% fees to develop for iOS (and then Android) because it’s so amazing for them and the consumers.
It got to the stage where developers were so happy with the 30% fee and Apple/Google duopoly, many even didn’t even try to develop anything for other mobile OS’s including the Windows Phone store.
Microsoft tried to fund app developers and spent millions, without much luck.
No modern apps, no consumers, no sales.
Microsoft then had no other option than to admit defeat, write off billions and shut down the era of Windows on mobile phone devices.
Even Epic never released Unreal Engine on Windows Phone, and cries the loudest today about the duopoly they helped to build.
So now you’re saying after abandoning side-loading, agreeing to 30% fees for an access to a worldwide billion people marketplace, suddenly after 15 years it’s terrible and we should go back to side-loading again, because greedy Apple?
macOS has both an app store and sideloading. It works great!
I personally use the app store for apps I don’t know/trust the developer of, because I trust Apple’s diligent vetting regarding data collection etc., and I sideload everything that I do trust, or that Apple “wants to protect me from” for non-security/privacy reasons.
1) Many App Store apps are completely free, paying nothing to Apple except the $99 per year fee, so they have no stake in this issue.
2) My understanding is that more than 90% of developers in the App Store make less than $1 million per year and thus are covered by the Small Business Program, which charges only 15% rather than 30%. Revenue in the App Store is extremely top-heavy, with most going to a relatively small number of the top developers (such as Epic, previously). How much are developers willing to risk just to lower the 15% cut somewhat?
3) Let's be clear, you're talking about a strike. Many developers derive their entire income from the App Store, so withdrawing their apps means no income. A wealthy corporation such as Epic can survive, but what about little indie developers?
4) An individual developer uniterally striking would be futile and self-destructive. Developers would need to be organized and all strike simultaneously.
5) Strikes are very difficult to organize. Forming a union almost always has to come first. And union members typically work together in the same building, which greatly facilitates organization. Whereas there are a huge number of App Store developers scattered all around the world, and they speak different languages. How would you even communicate with all of them to organize? (EDIT: I see in another comment that you think it's easy as spreading cat memes. That's not a serious suggestion.)
I don't see that as a problem.
> 2) My understanding is that more than 90% of developers in the App Store make less than $1 million per year and thus are covered by the Small Business Program, which charges only 15% rather than 30%. Revenue in the App Store is extremely top-heavy, with most going to a relatively small number of the top developers (such as Epic, previously). How much are developers willing to risk just to lower the 15% cut somewhat?
I can't answer that question for any particular developer. But if my PSP charged me 15% I'd be looking for another one and if my PSP arranged for things in such a way that I'd owe them anyway by virtue of developing for a particular piece of hardware that they already sold and made their profits on I'd go and do something else with my time. Which is why pianojacq.com is on the web and free instead of an App in the App store because that way Apple/Google don't get to increase their grip on the market regardless of whether or not it is free. I disagree with their business model to the point that I'm not partaking in it at all.
> 3) Let's be clear, you're talking about a strike. Many developers derive their entire income from the App Store, so withdrawing their apps means no income. A wealthy corporation such as Epic can survive, but what about little indie developers?
What about those poor dockworkers? Any kind of battle with the likes of Apple (or your merchant marine overlord) comes at a price. In some cases people died to fight for their rights. 'little indie developers' are still business owners who will either stand up for their rights or they will have to live with the consequences of not doing so. More likely: those that do stand up for their rights will find themselves kicked out of the App store (monopoly power abuse...) and their competition will thrive.
> 4) An individual developer uniterally striking would be futile and self-destructive. Developers would need to be organized and all strike simultaneously.
Yes, you got it. That's exactly what they should do.
> 5) Strikes are very difficult to organize. Forming a union almost always has to come first. And union members typically work together in the same building, which greatly facilitates organization. Whereas there are a huge number of App Store developers scattered all around the world, and they speak different languages. How would you even communicate with all of them to organize?
I would start with looking for places where App developers congregate and start spreading the message (SO / HN / Reddit / whatever remains of /. / any other forum), write a bunch of press releases and build a movement, then, when the numbers are there for the GADA (the Global Appstore Developer Association) I'd announce the first collective action and take it from there.
It will be work, but so what, if you think it is worth it then it's worth doing well.
As for language barriers and such: there's an app for that...
I can answer for this particular developer. No, it's not worth it for me. There are many huge problems with the App Store, but I personally don't consider the 15% cut to be among the top problems. I could write a long screed about those problems (and I have before), but that would be a bit off topic. I will mention one thing though: I think the "race to the bottom" is a much bigger problem than the cut. I would happily pay a much higher cut if I could charge higher prices for my apps. Just look at the simple math: 85% of $1N = $0.85N < 50% of $2N = $1N. Thus, a 50% cut would be worth it if I could charge twice as much.
Incidentally, I think even for Epic, the 30% cut is not the entirety of the problem. Epic is a cross-platform company, and App Store payments, locked in and controlled by Apple, make it difficult for Epic to do anything cross-platform that includes iOS.
> What about those poor dockworkers?
Well, I'm not poor. I don't need a higher income to survive. Also, going back to the points I already made, it's realistic for dockworkers to organize and all strike simultaneously, because of their much smaller number, geographic congregation, and shared interests.
> In some cases people died to fight for their rights.
You want me to die to slightly improve the App Store? Um, no thanks.
> write a bunch of press releases and build a movement
Oh, is that all?? Write the press releases, and they will come, amirite!
> It will be work, but so what, if you think it is worth it then it's worth doing well.
I've actually tried to organize a boycott of Apple's Feedback Assistant, but it doesn't seem to have been very effective. Organizing is extremely hard, especially a global movement! No, it's nothing like cat memes or Hacker News comments, especially when the stakes are so high.
> As for language barriers and such: there's an app for that...
Give me a break... I wouldn't even trust the apps for doing customer support, much less union organizing.
I suspected as much.
> There are many huge problems with the App Store, but I personally don't consider the 15% cut to be among the top problems.
You and many others like you. Hence the need for solidarity and that's why I don't think it would work. It's hilarious how in the same thread devs like you are being called 'victims' and here you are expounding on how you are going to continue in the relationship unchanged because it suits you just fine.
> I could write a long screed about those problems (and I have before), but that would be a bit off topic.
Fine.
> I will mention one thing though: I think the "race to the bottom" is a much bigger problem than the cut.
Yes, that's why you need to organize. That stops the race to the bottom. This is exactly why strike breakers are looked down upon and why companies used to bring in 'scabs' to break strikes. To push that race to the bottom that much further.
> I would happily pay a much higher cut if I could charge higher prices for my apps.
Of course you would. Because that means more money in your pocket.
> Just look at the simple math: 85% of $1N = $0.85N < 50% of $2N = $1N. Thus, a 50% cut would be worth it if I could charge twice as much.
I think most people on HN have a fairly good intuition about such things.
>> What about those poor dockworkers?
> Well, I'm not poor. I don't need a higher income to survive. Also, going back to the points I already made, it's realistic for dockworkers to organize and all strike simultaneously, because of their much smaller number, geographic congregation, and shared interests.
And because they're not going to stab each other in the back at the first opportunity.
>> In some cases people died to fight for their rights. > You want me to die to slightly improve the App Store? Um, no thanks.
No, definitely not. I don't even want you to be inconvenienced. But you've definitely illustrated why Apple is firmly in the seat of power here and given ample evidence for my thesis that the App store developers are doing it to themselves.
>> write a bunch of press releases and build a movement >Oh, is that all?? Write the press releases, and they will come, amirite!
So, you want it to be easy? I personally don't care enough to do your work for you, and if you don't care either then the work won't get done. But then we can stop sympathizing with App store developers.
> > It will be work, but so what, if you think it is worth it then it's worth doing well. > I've actually tried to organize a boycott of Apple's Feedback Assistant, but it doesn't seem to have been very effective. Organizing is extremely hard, especially a global movement! No, it's nothing like cat memes or Hacker News comments, especially when the stakes are so high.
The stakes are so high because people who should care don't and that includes yourself. Your boycott failed because many people look at that problem just like you look at the fees issue. Without organization you can not solve these issues at all.
> > As for language barriers and such: there's an app for that...
> Give me a break... I wouldn't even trust the apps for doing customer support, much less union organizing.
Forgive me for my failed attempt to injecting some humor into the discussion.
> here you are expounding on how you are going to continue in the relationship unchanged because it suits you just fine.
> Of course you would. Because that means more money in your pocket.
> And because they're not going to stab each other in the back at the first opportunity.
> I don't even want you to be inconvenienced.
> So, you want it to be easy? I personally don't care enough to do your work for you, and if you don't care either then the work won't get done.
> people who should care don't and that includes yourself.
That's how you talk if, as an outsider, you don't want the perspective of an App Store developer. If your desire is just to rip on me for doing it to myself, then you don't need me here to do that; you can accomplish such denigration on your own, in the self-congratulatory, know-it-all fashion that you've been exhibiting.
Organizing masses of individual people around a shared goal against a powerful opponent is one of the hardest tasks in the world. For example, the majority of people in the United States hate both of the two major political parties, and lots of people say, "We should have a third party!", and there are indeed many minor party alternatives, but turning one of those minor parties into a viable alternative to the existing major parties is obviously extremely difficult. It's not that people don't want to, but the barriers to organization are massive and multifarious. Though everyone may have the same vague goal, the devil is in the details. And the costs of defection from the status quo can be significant; as small as they are now, third parties are still blamed as "spoilers" of elections.
Funnily enough, what he's describing is called "price fixing" and is illegal. The "race to the bottom" is competition keeping prices low for consumers and is a feature, not a bug.
I think the difficulty of pirating apps on iOS does help developers. At least I’ve heard that piracy is a big problem on Android.
The main bit is getting people to care.
Reddit management won in the end.
I was on a bunch of small niche subs with 10k users or fewer each
Seems like the giant subs like you're talking about are still running, although they're a lot lower quality now that it's effectively impossible to use Reddit on a phone
And there are only 75,000 Reddit moderators in total. That's vastly smaller than the number of App Store developers.
You're certainly not talking about a strike. A strike is when employees refuse to work. What you're suggesting is that the app developers form a _cartel_, and perform a boycott.
It is also why house brands are a thing.
Also, as some other comment has pointed out, the % Apple takes is from their role as one manager. Ask an actor or sports ball player what happens if they don't pay their manager the % owed.
I just haven't figured out why software devs think they are so special that they don't have to pay to play. I have seen no honest answers to this other than Apple === BAD. Devs are pretty much "all monies are belong to us"
It's some weak sauce weasle wording to say, "you might have some other options". This position seems slanted as heck: working overtime to convince everyone that Walmart puts people through the ringer (true) & is the overwhelming desirable option (false), as if that justifies Apple being an awful squeezer too. As though Patagonia, North Face, Colombia, Gap, Saks 5th Avenue & every other brand only dream getting in the big store, as if they live horrible worthless lives now.
No, there's a ton of ways to sell clothing. Volume is one way to do it, but there's a free market here with lots of possibilities and no one is railroading brands and makers into awful decisions. There are also online only folks who just have their own e-storefronts and/or others. There's so many channels. Apple's App store has a unique in the world today, of dominating a massive sales channel it's customers cannot escape, on one of the most general purpose soft devices on the planet. For basically happening to do their job of building a consumer OS and not a lot more.
(Steam I think is a more interesting case, where they compete freely & without anti-competitive hacks, but still basically are the de-facto middleman.)
If you think a chain that can afford to open its own stores is the same thing as a company making a single thing or even a couple of things, then you're well beyond weasel words and are in a delusional state. Most people make something and need to have it sold at other stores. You've made hell of a leap here to try and call me a weasel
We're talking app makers. The equivalent would be pre-internet days of selling software at computer stores or again big box retailers. Again, your options are limited. If you're an app farm that just shits out clones of other software, you can burn in a fire and I don't care what happens to you.
Just because developers have fallen victim does not mean they should all pull their apps. How would you suggest that all impacted developers go about coordinating such a strike?
Solidarity is very difficult to achieve in a large enough consensus to a point where people would pull their apps.
I always had a mild smile for the tales of the "secure refined Apple store" but seeing the reality has been a bigger shock than I expected. It's a scam haven.
We don’t know what that is, since there currently is no market.
Sure, technically it's still a market, but I wouldn't consider it a remotely efficient one to do price discovery.
Insurance companies have lots of competition, also low profit margins.
Making a top of the line smartphone does not have a lot of competition, hence higher profit margins.
Medicine is patented and hence does not have a lot of competition, also higher profit margins.
If there is another - more popular provider. Isn’t it at the very least a duopoly? Or are we redefining words now?
Whether that’s a market considered relevant from an antitrust point of view is the big question.
At some point a company is just building a feature, and they're not required to make every single feature accomodate every other manufacturer's competing version of the feature. I knew I was buying the Mini system when I bought the car, and I accepted it. Same is true for iPhone users.
"Knowing that you're buying into a monopoly" is generally not a valid defense for a monopolist. The idea is that there can be a disadvantage/harmful impact to market participants even despite their full knowledge of the market structure (which isn't even a given for retail consumers).
But generally, I agree: There are definitely many closed ecosystems/non-competitive "markets" like the ones you describe, and more often than not, regulators don't step in. Who knows, maybe regulators will address that market at some point! The EU DMA doesn't seem to obviously not apply in this scenario, for example.
Several factors for why I'd consider that case to be a bit different though:
- Many car entertainment systems now offer you to connect an iPhone or Android phone and use CarPlay or Android Auto for navigation. You can reasonably use the car's navigation functionality (GPS antenna, voice output, built-in screen that won't hit your head in an accident) without paying the car manufacturer!
- If your car doesn't allow that, or you don't want to use Apple's or Google's solutions, you can stick a physical aftermarket navigation system to your windshield/ventilation grill.
- There isn't a single car maker that controls roughly half of the US market.
You still can't say Apple is a monopoly by being the second most popular in the smartphone OS market...
Toyota is a monopoly for RAV4 manufacture. Can you get a RAV4 from Mercedes? Monopoly!
You can be the most popular and not be a monopoly, but the reverse is definitionally impossible.
> Given the trial record, the Court cannot ultimately conclude that Apple is a monopolist under either federal or state antitrust laws. While the Court finds that Apple enjoys considerable market share of over 55% and extraordinarily high profit margins, these factors alone do not show antitrust conduct. Success is not illegal. The final trial record did not include evidence of other critical factors, such as barriers to entry and conduct decreasing output or decreasing innovation in the relevant market. The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist.
> The Court does not find that it is impossible; only that Epic Games failed in its burden to demonstrate Apple is an illegal monopolist.
GP made the monopoly comment.
https://ei.com/economists-ink/fall-2021/market-definition-in...
Apple argued from the very beginning that the 30% was its fee for running the App Store, marketing the apps, and storing and delivering the app bundles. The in-app payment system was a convenient way for Apple to collect its commission and a way for Apple to create a unified payment experience for its customers, but it was never the Achilles heel for Apple's business model.
The best case scenario here is that Apple is forced to walk back some of the more onerous requirements they've imposed for whether and how links may be shown. Them putting a price on the payment processor portion of the fee and discounting developers for that portion was inevitable and isn't even malicious compliance, the judge explicitly called this out as a likely outcome in the original ruling:
> First, and most significant, as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
> In such a hypothetical world, developers could potentially avoid the commission while benefitting from Apple's innovation and intellectual property free of charge. The Court presumes that in such circumstances that Apple may rely on imposing and utilizing a contractual right to audit developers annual accounting to ensure compliance with its commissions, among other methods. Of course, any alternatives to IAP (including the foregoing) would seemingly impose both increased monetary and time costs to both Apple and the developers.
Is it just me or does this argument seem insanely flimsy? If Apple were serious about it then why aren't they charging free apps for downloads and approvals? Why doesn't the developer policy require Netflix to pay 30% of subscriptions for anyone who signs in on an Apple device? Why are the prices lower for "reader" apps who presumably cause Apple to incur similar costs?
Its like a toll road arguing "no, driving on the road is free of course, we just charge at the entrance and exit for the privilege of looking at the toll road".
What does it take for the legal system to be able to call BS on a claim like that?
Some apps don't make any money at all, and Apple wants to let those exist and so they get a free pass. For others, Apple is only providing a tiny portion of the value of the app, most of it comes from the content that the app licenses from other companies. Apple recognizes that they can't take 30% from those apps without them giving up on an app entirely, so they get a discount in order for them to stay on the platform.
Is it fair? Probably not. But I see no reason to believe it's illegal.
If they take it too far, that's how you get into antitrust territory. That's why Epic's court case against Google ruled in Epic's favor, as it was giving paying off devs to not make their own app stores and blocked OEMs from making deals with other studios.
So I'd say this puts apple on thin ground. I'm sure this won't be the last high profile lawsuit over the app store this decade.
Where I imagine Apple could get into trouble is if they systematically turned a blind eye to commission-dodging by specific entities as part of a trade to ensure their market dominance. Unlike Google, though, I'm not even sure which entities Apple could bribe that would risk looking like a trust.
Like any discrimination case, it depends on the subject of discrimination and potential victims. So I would say that discriminating with the largest streaming service can be a way to lock out the rest of that market from competing properly.
>Where I imagine Apple could get into trouble is if they systematically turned a blind eye to commission-dodging by specific entities as part of a trade to ensure their market dominance
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. There's no hard evidence but that's what would be subpoena'd in court.
Ironically enough, Google is the biggest smoke signal here. Since court cases reveal they have some sort of deal with Apple to power search. That deal + potential discrimination with Google submitted apps can lead to those exact issues Google is under fire for.
Google essentially pressured and bullied OEMs and other third parties into doing stuff that was beneficial to Google in exchange for licenses and special deals.
At that point, you’re throwing your weight around, something that Google “had” to do because they started with a relatively open platform.
Apple, on the other hand, preempted needing such tactics by making their ecosystem closed and heavily regulated from the onset when they were still nobodies within the market. That makes it extremely difficult to prove antitrust issues.
Had Apple, say, increased the commission from 30% to 33%, then it would’ve been pretty close to an open and shut case because then it’s easy to argue that Apple threw its weight around once everyone was inside the ecosystem. But the opposite happened.
This is also one of the reasons why everything Apple does is restricted and limited from the onset. It’s always easy to loosen the reigns later, but at their size, you can never go the other way without risking antitrust liability.
FWIW, even MS, with their egregious behavior, got a lot thrown out on appeals and prevented being split up. The DOJ ended up settling instead.
I mean, there's actually many toll roads/bridges that only charge for travel in one direction. The other is free, with the expectation that you'll need to make a return trip anyways.
Apple being entitled to a commission regardless of who you use as a payment processor is literally part of the court ruling.
The court did not find that the size of the commission was necessarily justified, but they definitely ruled that a commission was justified.
Obviously if they tried to charge 85% no one would actually be a developer and the App Store would crater. So they have a very strong incentive not to.
But from a legal point of view is there a reason why one number would be legal but another wouldn’t?
The only thing I can think of is a contract being determined to be unconscionable. Until they hit whatever threshold that is it seems like it’s completely up to them to set the terms at whatever they think enough developers will accept.
That's not really true. If the iPhone became a real monopoly in the US, for instance, with perhaps 98% marketshare (similar to Windows before Macs started seriously challenging them), then Apple really could charge 85%. What is anyone going to do about it? They'd have a choice of paying 85% to Apple so they can sell apps to 98% smartphone users (basically everyone), or not selling smartphone apps altogether and finding a new business strategy that probably doesn't involve making software for consumers at all (which admittedly, many developers would probably choose).
I think the missing piece that most people miss is that it is not illegal to have a monopoly. It's illegal to use your monopoly to bully others. Apple did no such thing.
I'm not sure if it is just you, but both the district court and appellate court are on board with it. And honestly, I can see why.
Apple argued that they provide a bunch of services and access to their IP in exchange for $99/year and a commission over the sales.
The courts have deemed that an acceptable business model.
The district court was hemming and hawing a bit over the actual commission rate being set at 30% (15% for small devs) and at the fact that some developers essentially subsidize others but ultimately didn’t make a ruling on any of that in part because Epic didn’t bring it up as an argument.
The appellate court, however, went a step further and stated in no uncertain terms that it was kosher.
If you think about it, it makes sense. We see similar business models with differential pricing all over in commerce for various reasons.
Sometimes, it’s for goodwill, sometimes, to reach customers that would otherwise be harder to convert into a sale, sometimes, it’s based on usage and who puts the most strain on a system and sometimes, it’s for more egalitarian reasons.
Military discounts, student discounts or even free usage, senior discounts, teacher discounts, first responders, etc. These are all examples of differential pricing.
In particular, the student stuff is interesting because the philosophy there seems to be that as long as you don’t make revenue from it (commercial use), “we” don’t need to make a profit from you.
> It’s like a toll road arguing "no, driving on the road is free of course, we just charge at the entrance and exit for the privilege of looking at the toll road".
I don’t think the analogy is apt, but we see similar stuff on toll bridges. I’ve got a bridge near me where toll rates are based on vehicle type and axles.
While the pricing is slightly higher for commercial vehicles (e.g., trucks), it’s not proportional to the increased cost of upkeep those vehicles cause.
Edit: Also realized that only one direction is burdened with tolls. The other way isn't.
> What does it take for the legal system to be able to call BS on a claim like that?
A very carefully crafted legislative change, I suppose, if possible at all.
Currently, with SCOTUS’ refusal to take up the case, this is standing law, and it’s challenging to craft legislation that wouldn’t have reverberating effects across all of commerce while simultaneously only hitting Apple.
I mostly just find it silly that at no point does anyone seem to address the elephant in the room that the only way to access some hundreds of millions of users is through Apple, and that almost certainly influences the fee in a way that can't be really be explained by the value of the IP.
Does the argument require us to believe the fee would still be 30% if iPhone had practically zero users? Or is that legally irrelevant assuming that they aren't found a monopoly?
While not zero users, the default fee has been set at 30% since the beginning of the App Store, long before Apple had the level of market dominance it has today.
This argues in favor of it being acceptable: developers were willing to accept that fee without monopoly pressure being applied, since nobody has successfully argued that Apple held a monopoly in 2008.
A class of digital native judges.
The App Store sucks. That’s its problem. 30% fees rub salt in that wound.
Name an Apple application you aren’t forced to use that you like. Notes? Final Cut? That’s all I can think of.
The whole paradigm of iOS is predicated on a 65yo+ consumer who doesn’t know any better, and happens to be also the demographics of the government.
The other popular apps are front end for services where Apple doesn’t collect a dime like Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, etc.
Especially in the US, how likely is it do you really think iPhone users are going to sully themselves and buy Android phones when many people think that “only poor people buy Android phones”. (Note sarcasm)
It is an interesting question that I would love an answer beyond a hunch.
I would think a larger percentage would stay on iPhone and look for an insta alternative, compared to the percentage who might move on to a different phone for insta.
But what would those numbers look like? Any case studies or similar changes? Maybe in game consoles?
https://gitnux.org/android-vs-iphone-statistics/#:~:text=In%....
> In Q2 2021, the average selling price of an Android smartphone was $269, while the average selling price of an iPhone was $729.
The district court was crystal clear about this in their judgment, which at the time caused quite some consternation.
The appellate court then affirmed the same and even clarified more clearly that it’s completely fine because it primarily is the mechanic Apple gets payment for the use of their IP and, secondly, their services that encompass more than just payment processing.
In fact, if you read the appellate judgment, the annoyance towards the district court is palpable.
The annoyance stems from the fact that the district court states in their judgment that alternative ways of collecting the commission aren’t worth considering and expanding on because of how onerous they are (retroactive audit, collection efforts, etc.) while at the same time causing exactly that by striking the anti-steering provision and opening the door to third-party payment providers.
The appellate court doesn’t go further than expressing annoyance between the lines because, ultimately, the district court didn’t err substantially enough for the appellate court to step in, which is ultimately the bar that needs to be met. Appellate courts aren’t meant to relitigate cases, after all.
Or will everything stand as it is at the moment with figuring out specific details that Apple must abide by that haven’t already been listed up to future lawsuits to determine?
So as it stands, the appellate court’s decision is the law of the land.
Technically, from a legal perspective, there is a small chance this changes if a case makes it way to an appellate court in a different circuit and they’re in the mood to come to a different conclusion, at which time SCOTUS might be inclined to take up that case to resolve the contradictory outcomes, but those are pretty slim for a couple of reasons.
One, it’s not likely a new case would play out outside of California, by virtue of Apple being located there.
Two, a court of appeals of a different circuit would need to be in the mood to completely disregard the 9th circuits conclusion. While technically an option, most appellate courts don’t want to contradict their sister circuit, but there are some “activist” courts out there.
Three, the outcome needs to be sufficiently different for it to cause a significant contradiction.
And lastly, the fact pattern of the new case would need to be extremely similar to the Epic v Apple case.
This completely ignores Apple's market power though. Because what stops Apple from making this 40% or 50%? 30% is a fair price? Look what they did to Spotify with Apple Music. They absolutely abused their ownership of the platform to stifle a competitor.
Also, things change when you effectively become a utility. Apple shouldn't be able to hide behind their "aww shucks, we need the 30% to keep the lights on" routine.
Competitive pressure. 30% is pretty in line with what other platforms charge.
Apple has had the same 30% ever since it launched the App Store, back when it was much less dominant. They presumably picked it as a level that would make revenue but also not deter developers.
The App Store hasn’t got a monopoly on computing.
There’s no world in which Nintendo and apple are colluding to set rates.
What makes you say that? And short of direct collusion, is it fair game if Apple sets the precedent and Nintendo follows suit without direct coordination? If the agreement is only alluded to without being directly stated, are we okay with the ethical precedent regardless of legal standing?
They picked 30% because that was the iTunes Music Store cut. The iOS App Store was a direct clone of the iTunes Music Store in almost every way. It even existed inside iTunes for years. As a developer, I can still see "iTunes Connect" in some obscure areas of App Store Connect.
The documents from the Epic trial showed that the App Store was thrown together very quickly. Initially, Steve Jobs didn't even want third-party apps on iPhone and had to be convinced to add them.
Plausibly iTunes 30% was chosen because it met the same goal: high enough to earn a good amount, low enough music companies found it compelling.
I've never understood why video game consoles are the relevant platform. iOS is a general-purpose computing platform more akin to Mac and Windows. Indeed, iOS was based on Mac OS X. As an Apple user, I don't even play video games, on either iPhone or Mac. And as an Apple developer, I don't write video games either. Games are 100% irrelevant to my computing life.
> Plausibly iTunes 30% was chosen because it met the same goal: high enough to earn a good amount, low enough music companies found it compelling.
The problem is that the iTunes Music Store was based on selling 99 cent songs. 30% of that is just 30 cents. Before the App Store, computer software was almost never in the 99 cent price range.
From the courts’ perspective, it isn’t. The relevant market definition, as established by the courts, is digital mobile gaming transactions.
I’ve called into the District Court’s hearings almost every day, and many days were spent on determining the relevant market, but the long and short of it is that this definition was chosen because:
- The impetus of the case was Fortnite - Epic was unconvincing in establishing their EGS was more than just a gaming storefront, which limited the scope of the case to gaming - the court established that free-to-play games generated the vast majority of the App Store revenue
You also have to remember that the court can’t just hand out judgments that affect things beyond the case in front of it. This case was Epic v Apple and not, say, a class action by multiple app developers, so the court's conclusions will be limited to the facts that pertain to those two parties.
In other words, other markets might exist, but they might not be relevant to the case at hand.
Additionally, civil courts prefer to split the baby; in this case, this seems to be a middle ground between Apple’s proposed relevant market (games in general) and Epic’s (Apple’s App Store).
An interesting tidbit is that Nintendo’s Switch made a minor cameo of sorts because you can make transactions on it on the go (i.e., it's mobile). Still, the main competitor, according to the court, was Google, leading the court to conclude that Apple is primarily in a duopoly with Google.
Personally, I think video game consoles would be part of the relevant market because of the similarities in market dynamics. The way the payment for IP is structured (commission), the way entry to the market is managed (certifications, similar to app review), the way there’s a single brand market (i.e., monopoly by manufacturers), etc.
While the purpose of the devices might be different, the underlying products are the same (software), and the market mechanics are nearly identical. Even the platform limitations are artificially created by the platform holder (i.e., what you can and can’t do on iOS is artificially limited, just like what you can and can’t do on consoles is artificially limited by Sony and Microsoft).
Drilling it down further, you’ll find that on Xbox, you have access to non-gaming apps, and plenty of people use their iPads as a game device for their kids. Further blurring these lines of purpose.
> As an Apple user, I don't even play video games, on either iPhone or Mac
You might not, but it wouldn’t come as a surprise to you that others might. I, for example, play games on my Apple devices, as do others in my household.
> And as an Apple developer, I don't write video games either.
Same here. I mainly write apps, but I dabble in games and know plenty of other devs who make games.
> Games are 100% irrelevant to my computing life.
What I’m trying to say is that anecdotal arguments aren’t solid. This is not a dig at you; mine aren’t either.
> The problem is that the iTunes Music Store was based on selling 99 cent songs. 30% of that is just 30 cents.
I don’t follow this logic.
Does it matter if $300,000 is extracted via a million $1 transactions or 10,000 $100 transactions?
Ultimately, you end up paying $300,000 in commissions.
> Before the App Store, computer software was almost never in the 99 cent price range.
There’s a lot to unpack with this simple statement.
First is, of course, that the race to the bottom is a pro-competitive symptom.
If we, as devs, didn’t have to compete so hard, we wouldn’t have to sell our software at low prices. Ironically, this is good for consumers, but the devaluation of software isn’t so great for us developers.
Secondly, this, of course, undermines your iTunes $0.99 argument. Whatever it used to be, it’s now the same as with songs via iTunes. Does this mean you’re ok with the 30% commission or 15%, whichever applies to you?
This is why I’m saying I have a hard time following your logic because I guess I don’t know exactly what you’re trying to say.
Lastly, before the App Store, the revenue cut developers got was abysmal. I don’t know if you’re old enough to recall any of this. I barely am, but it wasn’t pretty.
In brick-and-mortar times, you would have a good deal if 40% made its way to you, but more often than not, it was a 70/30 split, with only 30% making it to you, with outliers as low as 10%.
Specifically for “smartphone” software, this continued for a while, with carriers being cutthroat regarding revenue split.
In the years before the App Store, things got better with Nokia and BlackBerry, who adopted a revenue split closer to 50/50, and Qualcomm’s BREW actually was “good” at times with an 80/20 split in favor of developers. The problem with those, however, was that the barrier to entry was relatively high and costly.
Then Apple came along with their 70/30 split, which, as you said, was a copy-paste from the iTunes Store. Still, because both an all-encompassing commission (payment processing wasn’t a separate charge as was typical before then) and because of the abysmal revenue splits in the decades before while also having a comparatively low barrier of entry, it was received with literal cheers.
Although I think people were also happy not to have to deal with carriers anymore, that was a huge pain.
Sure, App Review can be a pain for some, but it’s a utopian publishing pipeline compared to the hoops one had to jump through and the negations you’d have to go through every time before the App Store came along.
Does that mean that Apple is perfect?
By no means, there’s plenty they can improve on, but within the historical context of the time, it was like offering someone a glass of ice water to someone who was stuck in hell (to paraphrase a quote from Jobs on iTunes on Windows that didn’t age well).
I couldn’t care less about the commission. I was content with 30%, and I knew what I eagerly signed up for. The 15% discount was a nice bonus, and I think I got, and still get, my money’s worth and then some.
While my experience is overwhelmingly positive, I think there are other, more pressing matters for me as a developer that Apple can improve on.
Let me start with this, because it may clarify a lot. I qualify for the Small Business Program 15%, and while I think that Apple's developer services are totally crappy and not even worth 15%, from my perspective the cut is not among the App Store's biggest problems, and I would happily pay an even larger cut if I actually got a good return for the investment.
My goal was merely to highlight the historical origin of the App Store, which is important in understanding how we got to this point today.
> The relevant market definition, as established by the courts, is digital mobile gaming transactions.
As invented out of thin air by Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. But I'm not really interested in arguing the legalisms. I think the decision was bad, but that's par for the course in our legal system. I'm more interested in the public debate over the issue, here on Hacker News, on social media, in the news media, etc. Regardless of what the judge decided, the people in the public who defend Apple often point to gaming consoles and consider them to be the relevant platform.
> What I’m trying to say is that anecdotal arguments aren’t solid. This is not a dig at you; mine aren’t either.
I'm not sure what you think I was arguing, but it was simply that iPhone is a general-purpose computing device. Of course gaming is one of those purposes but definitely not the only purpose. Indeed I would argue that gaming is not even the main purpose, because after all, iPhone shipped in 2007 with zero games, and while Apple has created a lot of apps for iPhone, Apple has created almost no games for iPhone. (I think they had a Texas Hold'em game way back in the day, and they also made Warren Buffett's Paper Wizard.) I wasn't trying to deny that people use iPhone for gaming; that would be a silly argument.
You can argue that gaming consoles have some additional capabilities besides games, but does anyone ever buy a gaming console who doesn't play games at all? That would be silly and pointless. Yet huge numbers of people buy iPhones and iPads and Macs with no desire to game on them. Thus, I argue that those are general-purpose computing devices, unlike gaming consoles.
> Does it matter if $300,000 is extracted via a million $1 transactions or 10,000 $100 transactions?
Yes. 30 cents is actually a very good deal for a 99 cent transaction. I don't think you'll find a better one, and many payment processors would charge 30 cents plus a percentage. At least as far as payment processing is concerned, though, 30% is a crappy deal for a $100 transaction. So the question is, how much does the App Store add to the value above and beyond payment processing? I would argue, not much in most cases.
> Ironically, this is good for consumers, but the devaluation of software isn’t so great for us developers.
I dispute that it's good for consumers. You get a different type of software in a race-to-the-bottom market. When the platform makes it difficult for developers to produce quality, well-crafted, sustainable software, you get exploitative crap instead, and I think the epithet "crap store" is richly deserved.
You can really see the difference in the Mac App Store, because on the Mac, developers don't have to be in the App Store, and quite a few important apps are missing entirely.
It didn't have to be that way. The iTunes Music Store model was a very poor fit for software. For example, the "top charts", based on unit sales, was one of the main ways to get noticed in the App Store and was a big reason for the race to the bottom. The top charts are tolerable for music, where every song and album is more or less the same price, but it doesn't work well for software, the price of which varies greatly, so unit sales are not a good representation of the quality of the software.
> In brick-and-mortar times, you would have a good deal if 40% made its way to you, but more often than not, it was a 70/30 split, with only 30% making it to you, with outliers as low as 10%.
30% of $100 is $30. 70% of $0.99 is $0.69. I'll happily take the 30% cut of the much higher price.
> Sure, App Review can be a pain for some, but it’s a utopian publishing pipeline compared to the hoops one had to jump through and the negations you’d have to go through every time before the App Store came along.
This was not my experience. Before the iPhone came along, I was a Mac developer. We sold our software on the web directly to customers, bypassing all middlemen except for payment processors. Apple got a 0% cut. What happened in your comment was the same as I've heard in most arguments defending the App Store: the "history" goes directly from brick-and-mortar times to the App Store, completely ignoring the golden age of indie developers selling software on the web.
iOS was based on Mac OS X, UIKit was based on AppKit, and of course they both used Objective-C as the programming language at the time. The App Store was practically an invitation for Mac developers to jump in right away, and many did. But the business model of the App Store was atrocious compared to the Mac. (The Mac App Store, a clone of the iOS App Store, didn't open until 2011). From my perspective, the App Store experience was nearly infinitely worse than the Mac developer experience. It was not like "offering someone a glass of ice water to someone who was stuck in hell". Rather, it was more like kidnapping someone already in heaven and sending them down to hell.
This is why I make so much of iOS being a general-purpose computing platform. It's very much like the Mac, except for the form factor, and it could have been much more like the Mac in terms of third-party software. And at least in Europe, perhaps it will be soon.
> I qualify for the Small Business Program 15%, and while I think that Apple's developer services are totally crappy and not even worth 15%, from my perspective the cut is not among the App Store's biggest problems, and I would happily pay an even larger cut if I actually got a good return for the investment.
I’m sorry you’re unhappy with the services and tools offered in exchange for the commission.
As I stated before, I was already happy with what I got for 30%, the 15% is a cherry on top for me.
I’m one of the few (it seems) that’s very happy with Xcode and its improvements, I’m also very happy with the advancements made on frameworks and SDKs over the last decade or so. It has made my work so much easier and without many of the latest improvements much of what I currently do wouldn’t be possible.
Code level DST support has also proven to be invaluable to me.
> As invented out of thin air by Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. But I'm not really interested in arguing the legalisms. I think the decision was bad, but that's par for the course in our legal system. I'm more interested in the public debate over the issue, here on Hacker News, on social media, in the news media, etc. Regardless of what the judge decided, the people in the public who defend Apple often point to gaming consoles and consider them to be the relevant platform.
It’s not invented out of thin air, but based on well established case law and legal principles.
I used to practice law between my original stint in software and my current career in software and based on my legal knowledge I’d say that both the original judgment as well as the affirmation by the appellate court is a logical and sound legal conclusion.
But I understand that you’re mainly interested in the “every man’s discussion”, that’s fine.
> I'm not sure what you think I was arguing, but it was simply that iPhone is a general-purpose computing device.
I’ve addressed this both from a legal perspective as well as my personal perspective.
I think it’s safe to say that no new insights can be gleaned from a back and forth and we just fundamentally differ in our views on this.
> Yes. 30 cents is actually a very good deal for a 99 cent transaction. I don't think you'll find a better one, and many payment processors would charge 30 cents plus a percentage. At least as far as payment processing is concerned, though, 30% is a crappy deal for a $100 transaction.
I don’t think it makes much of a difference when taking volume into account. The “pain” is the same, it’s only a matter of difference to how it feels.
> So the question is, how much does the App Store add to the value above and beyond payment processing? I would argue, not much in most cases.
Perhaps not with that framing, I’d argue the question is really how much does Apple as a company add to the value as the commission structure first and foremost serves as payment for being able to use their IP.
The answer is easily found I’d say, try and reinvent the wheel for yourself, leave as many frameworks to the side and let me know how it goes.
For me SwiftUI alone is worth its weight in gold given how much time it has saved me.
> I dispute that it's good for consumers. You get a different type of software in a race-to-the-bottom market. When the platform makes it difficult for developers to produce quality, well-crafted, sustainable software, you get exploitative crap instead, and I think the epithet "crap store" is richly deserved.
I don’t agree with you on this either. I’d argue that the golden age of apps is here, if only because of the many high quality indie apps.
Something that would’ve been impossible without the available tools and frameworks, something that was completely absent in the software market decades ago.
> 30% of $100 is $30. 70% of $0.99 is $0.69. I'll happily take the 30% cut of the much higher price.
This seems rather shortsighted. $30 > $0.69 sure, everyone can see that.
But pushing 100 units at $100, leaving you with $300 is less than pushing 1000 units at $0.99 leaving you with $690 and that’s a conservative estimate.
I could’ve never dreamt of having as many sales as I have now and that’s not even opening the can of worms of recurring subscriptions.
Do I wish software was valued more these days? Definitely. Does the sheer volume make up for the loss in headline price? Also definitely.
> What happened in your comment was the same as I've heard in most arguments defending the App Store: the "history" goes directly from brick-and-mortar times to the App Store, completely ignoring the golden age of indie developers selling software on the web.
Great and you can still have that golden age. macOS is open enough to sustain that after all.
I didn’t skip from brick-and-mortar to the App Store, instead I highlighted the abysmal environment of the faux smartphone era. Why? Because a) we’re mainly talking about iOS and b) macOS is open.
You can choose to ignore that part, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone and their mom was cheering for a 30% haircut and a simple publishing process after having gone through hell with carriers.
> Code level DST support has also proven to be invaluable to me.
You're talking about things that have nothing to do with the App Store. These same tools are used by Apple to make their built-in software. They're also used by Mac developers outside the Mac App Store.
I'm talking about the App Store itself, as well as tools and services directly related to the App Store, such as App Store Connect.
> The answer is easily found I’d say, try and reinvent the wheel for yourself, leave as many frameworks to the side and let me know how it goes.
> For me SwiftUI alone is worth its weight in gold given how much time it has saved me.
Again, you're talking about things that have nothing directly to do with the App Store. The iOS and macOS system frameworks are not the App Store and would exist even if the App Store were eliminated.
> Something that would’ve been impossible without the available tools and frameworks, something that was completely absent in the software market decades ago.
Same thing here. Nothing to do with the App Store. And in any case, they were available decades ago. Xcode is 20 years old. UIKit is based on AppKit, which itself originally came from NeXTSTEP over 30 years ago.
> But pushing 100 units at $100, leaving you with $300 is less than pushing 1000 units at $0.99 leaving you with $690 and that’s a conservative estimate.
Your math is wrong. 100 x $30 = $3000, not $300.
Anyway, indie developers can't "make it up in volume". One of the most difficult things for an indie developer is marketing and getting discovered by customers. That's why we need sustainable prices. Not to mention paid upgrades.
> You can choose to ignore that part, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone and their mom was cheering for a 30% haircut and a simple publishing process after having gone through hell with carriers.
Was the pre-iPhone mobile software market even as big as the Mac software market? I'm skeptical. It certainly wasn't as big as the Windows software market, which is also open. Open platforms were the norm.
Market. It's capitalism, you know.
They provide users to devs (e.g. in case of Epic most people played Fortnite from iOS) and they provide apps to users. If they jack up the price and devs quit, the deal stops being attractive to users because there's not enough apps so Apple risks losing users unless they make selling apps appealing to devs again.
> Look what they did to Spotify with Apple Music. They absolutely abused their ownership of the platform to stifle a competitor.
Everyone I know on iPhone is using Spotify except me so for me it is hard to see who is stifled exactly...
There is no current iOS version of Fortnite. The only way to do it is with Amazon Luna or Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is only "playing Fortnite from iOS" on the very surface.
It's not there anymore but it was there originally. (It'd be amazing if it still were. If you were allowing me to sell my game in your store for a fee, and I stopped paying the fee AND sued you, you'd remove me from the store first thing. First to avoid funding my legal expenses and second because I agreed to your ToS that allow you to do it literally for any reason you like.)
After it was removed, Epic found out that people who were casually playing Fortnite on iOS were not about to start buying PCs and gaming consoles. After all there are other games in the store, including tons of buy-once-play-forever games which don't leech money off you or your kids like Fortnite does.
> More than 116 million registered users have accessed Fortnite through iOS -- more than through any other platform, Epic said in the filing
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/fortnite-users-flee-after-gettin...
Market power has little to do with the legality of a business model at first blush. Only in very narrow circumstances might it be a relevant factor.
In this case, market power doesn’t matter at all, no matter which angle you approach it with.
For starters, fundamentally, market power doesn’t preclude a company from extracting payment in exchange for their services and IP. This is what both courts explicitly (re)affirmed.
And that makes sense, of course; just because you’re big doesn’t mean you can be forced to give your stuff away for free.
From an antitrust angle, market power mainly starts to matter once you abuse that market power. Here, all signs on the commission point the opposite way.
Apple introduced the 30% commission and the strict App Store rules around the same time the App Store was launched, at which point they had no relevant market power to speak of, so that was not an antitrust issue.
The parties quibbled a bit about at which point Apple gained market dominance because that’s a relevant measuring point to establish antitrust issues. Still, regardless of wherever you place that starting point, it is clear that Apple didn’t use that market power to turn on the screws.
They didn’t, say, increase the commission or impose more onerous restrictions. The opposite happened.
They first introduced a commission discount of 15% for subscriptions after the first year, and later on, they introduced the small business program that provides a 15% reduction to developers with less than $1M in revenue, which, as I understand it to be, covers about 90% of the developers.
These moves, whether for altruistic reasons, goodwill reasons, or fear of regulatory action, are the opposite of abusing one’s market power.
I think that Apple is quite aware of this risk, which is why they always introduce things minimally and strictly, because that gives them the option to assess and decide to loosen up things, whereas the opposite isn’t possible; they can’t impose more restrictions due to the potential antitrust issues at their current size.
Moreover, courts aren’t eager to retroactively punish just based on success.
The way the courts see it, it’s almost self-evident that Apple wasn’t acting in an anti-competitive way with their commission.
From their perspective, if Apple was able to enter a market as a nobody (or create it even, if that’s how you want to look at it) with such restrictive rules and with a commission rate that is now considered high (even though it was a significantly lower commission than what was standard at the time) and still managed to capture a good chunk of the market as they did, then there must be pro-competitive forces at play, even when it’s hard to quantify them.
Again, the way they see it, if it all were so terrible, then nobody would’ve signed up for it in the first place. So, there had to be a pro-competitive benefit that outweighed all of those negatives.
> Because what stops Apple from making this 40% or 50%? 30% is a fair price?
Competition in the relevant markets as defined by the court? Antitrust violations? Pick your poison.
Courts generally don’t care much for hypotheticals because hypotheticals can’t be remedied, and it doesn’t feel good to dole out punishments for things that could be.
Courts tend to limit themselves to what has happened instead of what could happen.
That’s not to say they don’t look at it at all. In this specific case, they’ve looked at the competitive effects and what would stop Apple from doing X, Y, and Z in their test to establish how much competitive pressure Apple is under to understand the motivations behind some of Apple’s actions.
But ultimately, unless Apple does the thing you fear, they can’t punish it.
> Look what they did to Spotify with Apple Music. They absolutely abused their ownership of the platform to stifle a competitor.
I’m looking, but I don’t see much. Of course, this is in part because Spotify wasn’t a party in this case, and so their arguments weren’t a part of the considerations, and the Spotify matter hasn’t been adjudicated.
Ultimately, what I see is that Apple has some benefits that Spotify doesn’t have.
Apple doesn’t have to pay itself a commission (although it might have some internal bookkeeping that accounts for its left hand paying its right hand, like how the Apple entities pay the Irish entity licensing fees for selling Apple products and IP).
Apple also has easier access to customers under their vertical integration.
Other than that, Spotify has near feature parity (or at least the option to offer feature parity) by the frameworks Apple offers third parties.
At face value, this isn’t enough for an antitrust case. Businesses can expand and offer customers services that compete with third-party services and leverage their existing customer relationships to try and sell those services.
There is no positive obligation to facilitate competition or even help competition.
There is, however, a prohibition to leverage your power to stifle your competition actively; an excellent example of this would be Apple banning Spotify from the App Store once they started Apple Music. But again, the opposite is true; they created frameworks that can offer feature parity with Apple Music.
> Also, things change when you effectively become a utility. Apple shouldn't be able to hide behind their "aww shucks, we need the 30% to keep the lights on" routine.
Perhaps for you, but not necessarily for the courts. Especially when they haven’t designated your service as a utility.
Again, just because you are successful (i.e., widely used, successful at selling your stuff) doesn’t mean you suddenly lose your rights.
What’s surprising to me is that everyone always goes, “Oooh, just wait until Apple gets sued and the court gets involved.” Then, when the courts decide differently than the desired outcome, people try to relitigate the matter.
Either people have a poor understanding of what matters legally, or people have expectations that don’t match the legal reality of standing law.
And it’s not like the 9th Circuit or the District Court for the Northern District of California are known to be “activist courts” or known to be corporate friendly. If anything, they’re known to be pretty strict on SV corporations.
You can read plenty of admonishments in the District Court’s judgment, but ultimately, they have to stick to the laws and case law at hand.
The cost of operating an App Store and providing distribution is relatively negligible. Several Linux distros have app stores, and package management and distribution systems that are as good or superior than Apple’s.
The annual fee that Apple charges developers alone should more than cover the cost of App Store. It is not something that costs tens of billions of dollars.
Just based on your quote and without having much interest in the case... the fee isn't about covering costs. They have an app store, people want to be in the app store, and Apple is going to charge them a fee to be in the app store. Similar logic to drawing a wage.
This is bad analogy. A person who works provides services or labor worth a certain amount of value in exchange. Often that value exceeds the wage. For example, a software engineer $3000 "worth" of work in a day, but only gets paid around $1000 for that day. I understand the worth/value is a difficult thing to measure.
In Apple's, they provide almost nothing of value in exchange, other than the threat to kick your app out of the App Store: https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21366438/apple-fortnite-i...
So Apple is more like the Mafia. The threaten negative/adverse action, if you don't pay them.
Also, historically, software could be installed on computers without the permission of an overlord. I'm aware iOS & game consoles are glaring exceptions.
And the argument that Apple is like the Mafia because they can exclude you from something would cast most businesses and all landlords as Mafia-like. That is a position some people hold, but if mafiadom is so embedded and accepted in society it undermines the idea that Apple's is a unique problem and that it will be acted on.
> running the App Store, marketing the apps
What marketing specifically? Last time I checked, I had to integrate third party ad experiences in order to market my app in their ecosystem.
> In such a hypothetical world, developers could potentially avoid the commission while benefitting from Apple's innovation and intellectual property free of charge.
> Apple argued from the very beginning that the 30% was its fee for running the App Store, marketing the apps, and storing and delivering the app bundles
With hindsight of the antitrust case in the EU this argument itself seems like it is in bad faith. Apples argument in the EU against antitrust was that there isn't one but five different app stores, conveniently for each device family.
So they are indeed aware that a commercial app developer would likely not be "benefitting from Apple's innovation and intellectual property free of charge", because they are likely not taking advantage of their entire catalogue of intellectual property (if there is five different app stores, for five different markets, as per Apples argument, surely there is different IP between those markets to run the app store in an effective manner).
In other words, as others have mentioned, Apple charges a 30% flat fee for "intellectual property" that developers may or may not take advantage of, as per their own argument overseas. I don't see how it's not antitrust when a company forces me to pay for services that I am not taking advantage off or ever had the intent of using, or can't use, due to technical limitations.
As a developer, to me it rather feels like Apple is trying to artificially bind me to invest into the app store as a platform due to this high fee, for example by developing an accompanying watch applet or a tablet version of my app, because the act of simply offering these on their devices seems to be part of their precious App Store IP. And you can't argue that pricing these add-on apps differently would make a difference for Apple, since they collect the 30% cut across income in their entire ecosystem either way.
It also doesn't make sense for Apple to tell me to go elsewhere (Android) to mitigate this, as I can't replicate the UX of their ecosystem on my own even if I tried (prime example would be the peripheral integration imo. You'll find creating a device that integrates as seamlessly as the Apple Watch fairly hard, not because Apple has some special proprietary integration IP secret sauce, but because they artificially lock down ways to interface with peripherals to secure market dominance).
To this day it remains absolutely unbelievable to me that anyone would ever agree to this. I always have and always will tell Apple to shove their app store up their ass. Plenty of other ways to make a living in software.
And grocery stores are not even considered a monopoly!
Edit: which is not say that there should be an "is" vs. "ought" conflation. Just that it's unlikely that this situation is going to be changed through courts. Other routes: legislation and regulation to establish a new social norm, or as Jacquesm has been advocating here, collective bargaining. But as an App Store consumer, and a developer of other sorts of tools, I don't really care at all about the developer-Apple split and am not the least bit excited by whatever might happen should that switch to, say, 99% going to the developer. Even if developers dropped prices 30%, I would have a hard time caring!
The analogy would work better if the grocery store sold me some sort of platform for cooking food, that only worked with certain types of food... I don't know, it's hard to find the analogy compelling at all.
People develop for the App Store because they get access to a particular customer base. I could definitely support some sort of customer protection that forces side loading options (but they must be options and easy to disable and hard to enable, otherwise it destroys one of the best aspects of the phone.) But as far as caring for slight changes in percentages for app developers, well, I don't care about that one bit at all, anymore than I care about Apple getting a "fair" deal from the other businesses it interacts with.
this is what happens when the company controls their platform. In the technical sense, it's not monopoly, but surely if you squint a bit, it looks like it.
This is why i am only ever going to produce web based apps. I will not buy into a platform - even android has the same issue, albeit less severe (only because google does not completely control the android ecosystem).
"If you don't like it then alternative is your target market is cut by over 50%"
Not a great argument. When you essentially have the say as to whether a company can afford to exist then you have serious control over a "free" market.
Add to that that the link can only be displayed on a single page (not a modal or popup) and cannot be part of a purchase flow (where else would it go?). Certainly a huge slap in the face to all developers and the court's intent.
They also say that using parameters in the URL is a privacy concern, when the real reason is they don't want you to use some kind of one-time-link to log the user in. They want the user to have to log in again, making it as painful (and least likely to convert) as possible.
The problem is that it is extremely capital intensive to get it off the ground.
I know plenty of people who sell something for $20, and spend $30 on Google Ads to get that user to their site.
And FWIW, I'm an Apple fan and find Tim S a completely unsympathetic character. But seeing the hilariously absurd lengths that people will go to justify Apple's outrageous greed grows old.
That part of this outcome was inevitable, and I don't think any court will rule against it. It was even anticipated in the original ruling:
> First, and most significant, as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
So charge developers for the service of using the App Store, perhaps with a per-download cost. To "give away" the service of the App Store only to recuperate your costs (and then some) via payment processing is just daylight robbery.
Charging customers by some other correlated proxy is not robbery; it’s just practical. Which is exactly why the court had no issues with the arrangement.
Given that this is the US legal/political system, that question is being fought out in various proxy fights, but by looking at the largely equivalent situation in the EU and the DMA, you can see what’s really at stake here.
The idea wasn't to use third party processors as an argument to evade the fee, it was the other way round. Front and center Epic wanted to get rid of or strongly lower the fee, and as a consequence developers would probably have had to use other processors.
The judge shut this down by legitimizing Apple's 30%, which as a consequent allows Apple to collect that money however the dev processes their customers, third party PSP or not.
That only works if developers actually could save significant money by selling through alternate storefronts, which was never going to be possible because Apple was always going to pick something approximately market rate as their valuation for the payment processor portion of the fee.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39014642
For example:
> It seems easy to kind of shrug at this, but this does seem quite significant because of many mobile apps are 'free to play.' Apple pocketing 30% of all of these transactions, and forcing users/devs to go through Apple, is a major part of its revenue. And all of those apps now have the option to direct users to alternative payment methods, where they can both charge users substantially less and make more profit doing so.
Define greed. Seriously, I'm asking for an objective definition, not just ipse dixit.
They're charging what the market will bear for a _vastly_ better product (iOS vs. Android).
It’s just not an apples to oranges comparison: One vendor is forcing use of their distribution services; the other just strongly nudges their customers to stay within their walled garden and not enable sideloading.
Apple is in good company in this category.
I wonder how you see Qualcomm, being the crushing leader of mobile modem chips.
In many countries, antitrust regulators set some limits to how far companies can take their “take it or leave it” approach and in many cases require companies to provide a certain service, sometimes even at a certain rate.
Forcing companies to unbundle products or services is another common measure.
I'm not really though. I need to use either an Apple or a Google phone to participate in society.
Heh, there are still folks who actually grasp nuance… I have an iPhone, despise Apple in general, but consider their business disputes on a case-by-case basis. So for example, Apple is right to ignore Facebook’s plea to be allowed to track users, and simultaneously wrong in its App Store monopolistic money-grabbing.
Given the scary things Samsung gets away with in South Korea, I almost want to say they're worse than Apple.
EDIT: Wow, getting downvoted for saying Apple is losing me as a customer with this move is surprising. I don't understand how people on Hacker News of all places want conformity of thought. I switched from using Microsoft products to Apple when Vista came out. Microsoft lost my trust by that point and Macs were a viable alternative. Despite having a Macbook, iPhone, and an Apple Watch it seems like Apple is starting to lose me with this move.
You’re also not the customer in this situation — you’re talking not as a developer but as an end-user without any mention of a subscription service that you pay more for because you’re on iOS, or mention of an app you want to side load.
And, you might switch back to iOS after experiencing Android. Your comment says basically nothing, except that you got rattled by reading the news. It doesn’t have to do with “conformity of thought”.
Also, editing to complain about downvoting is just asking to get more downvotes.
I keep seeing this line of thinking in the comments (some may say these comments are conforming to a specific line of thought). When is the last time you used a modern android (Galaxy, Pixel, etc)? And really used it, not just tried to use your friend’s Android for a few minutes and then gave up?
I kept reading all these comments about how superior iPhones are on Hacker News. So after having used a MacBook (and being very happy with it over the past year) I bought an iPhone 14 to see if the iPhone also lived up to the hype. It doesn’t. It’s literally the same as an Android. There are no significant differences.
The gestures are a difference, but I kind of hate that about iPhones. You’re just supposed to somehow know these from tribal knowledge or reading something from some random thread (just violently shake the phone to undo typing, very intuitive!). After a couple months of use, I’m finally almost as good at using an iPhone as I was at using my Android. And once again, there are no significant differences. Of course, there’s a learning curve when you switch. But that should be expected. Give it 2 months, and then the devices will feel identical. They’re different, but in the end, they’re pretty much the same.
Edit: and btw, the same exact line of thinking can be used for Android. There’s a reason Google sets their App Store fee at 30%, and Android leads the market globally, and people continue to launch apps on Android.
I have an iPhone XS and a Galaxy Fold 4, and have bounced around between android phone and iPhones over the years. I won't deny that there are some things Apple does better, but it's far from a night-and-day difference.
The most shocking thing to me was playing around with a budget phone once, it was a like $150 motorola I bought for a family member. After setting things up on it, I seriously felt like I was missing almost nothing compared to my iPhone XS.... that i paid $1000 for...
At this point the only reason I keep an iPhone is I really like my Apple Watch.
With LTE smart watches starting to get good, the dream for me is to just lose the phone. Hopefully whatsapp makes a client for the watches someday and I will have everything I need without all the distractions.
It’s a far better option to buy a refurbished iPhone 8 for the same price, or get an Android phone at a higher price point.
It may be old now, but compared to the Moto G Play it’s probably similarly spec’d (minus RAM, which you need less of on iOS).
I daily drove some budget phones last year on Android, which was not an enjoyable experience.
My original comment was more about why the other commenter got downvoted (it was irrelevant pile-on), not trying to take a strong stance here, but I can see how it came across now. I obviously have my opinions, though (a bit more so now after the budget phone experiments of 2023…)
There is no good reason which comes to my mind to go with anything else if a sane, secure, privacy- and sovereignty-respecting mobile device is what you are after. 98% of devices are just beautiful overpriced subscription and microtransaction cash-traps. Just like setting a snare in the wild to catch a rabbit, Apple (and competitors) have constructed a beautifully seductive snare for you!
They are taking 27%, between that and processing fees you might as well use In App Purchases.
"Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales (“transactions“) to the user for digital goods or services on your website after a link out (i.e., they tap “Continue” on the system disclosure sheet), provided that the sale was initiated within seven days and the digital goods or services can be used in an app. This includes (a) any applicable taxes and (b) any adjustments for refunds, reversals and chargebacks. For auto-renewing subscriptions, (i) a sale initiated, including with a free trial or offer, within seven days after a link out is a transaction; and (ii) each subsequent auto-renewal after the subscription is initiated is also a transaction.] If you’re a participant in the Small Business Program, or if the transaction is an auto-renewal in the second year or later of an auto-renewing subscription, the commission will be 12%. These commission rates apply to all amounts paid by each user net of transaction taxes charged by you. You will be responsible for the collection and remittance of any applicable taxes for sales processed by a third-party payment provider. If you adopt this entitlement, you will be required to provide transaction reports within 15 calendar days following the end of each calendar month. Even if there were no transactions, you’re required to provide a report stating that is the case. If the cadence changes, we will update this page. To learn about the details that will need to be included in the report, view example reports. In the future, if Apple develops an API to facilitate reporting, you will be required to adopt such API within 30 days with an update of your app and follow the timing and requirements provided."
The “better security” argument just doesn’t make sense in this context.
On desktop you have similar stores like Steam. The store takes a 30% cut from all sales on the platform and they require apps on the platform to use their payment processing so that they can take that cut.
The difference between Windows and iOS here is that third party stores can be installed without being limited to PWAs or requiring hacky workarounds like AltStore.
Why does Apple have the sole app store on the device? Well it's because it ensures they have a closed platform that they fully control. They made this app platform so it's up to them to decide how open it should be from a range of first party only to fully open to any app from the internet. It's up to Apple to decide what kind of openness will allow them to provide the most value to users. Apple designs their app platform from the hardware all the way up to the operating system and libraries for developers to use. Apple has created a great app platform that brings value to a lot of users.
So on PCs, unlike on iOS, users can buy their content as they choose.
And it's not as if Microsoft forces everyone to use their (exceptionally crappy) store either.
My point was probably that Steam doesn't force users to only use their platform.
To further illustrate the non lock in culture, you can do a transfer of content from Steam into your Eagle Dynamics account if you want to change the account type.
I'm guessing that seasoned DCS players like the direct account method (more frequent sales, for one), whereas beginners are more likely to discover it through Steam.
(iRacing also has a similar relationship with Steam, although in that case Steam only managed the subscription - not the car/track purchases.)
That's not true at all. Steam literally lets you sell steam keys for your game from other stores, and takes no cut from those sales.
> they require apps on the platform to use their payment processing so that they can take that cut.
Which is not true. Both steam apps and in-game content for steam apps can be sold in other stores with steam's blessing, and steam expressly supports developers to bypass their payment processing (by offering steam keys and account integration).
What TFA is about is selling in-app content from external stores. Apple used to ban that entirely, and now wants a revenue share for it. Steam has never done either - they explicitly support it (via account integration). The two are not similar.
If you want to compare it to desktop computers, great! Compare it to the macOS App Store which… takes a 30% commission.
Whether or not you personally agree that 30% is a reasonable fee, you can't simply deny that operating the app store costs money and resources. Further, it isn't unreasonable for them to try to recoup those costs or even to make some profit off of providing the service.
Isn't that a forced situation though, unlike with macOS?
With macOS anyone can throw an application on a website (GitHub, etc) and the users can download the application and run it.
To get rid of the scary warnings, there's even a $99 dev membership that can be used to sign the macOS binaries.
iOS developers don't have any choices to host their binaries elsewhere though.
The EU "allow side loading" thing might allow for some improvement there (hopefully), but I'm not sure.
But it could indeed have been removed in some macOS version without my noticing. :)
On my own Mac I keep gatekeeper disabled.
They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year.
They charge 30% and restrict other installation methods because they can, but you cannot justify it based on those costs.
I firmly believe this model isn't going to last. If it didn't hurt Apple's bottom line so much, PWAs would be far more prevalent already than they are, and that's right now. In 10-20 years, this thinking will be gone. They just have to milk it as a long as they can for the shareholders.
It's their hardware, for now they can do what they want. Most consumers didn't even know about the 30%, and probably still don't. Guess who it benefits to keep that under wraps? Or convince the world they need an expensive app store to vet their apps before downloading them?
(And don't say "there's nothing like a native app experience". It's completely irrelevant. If there was a will to build it, the UX would be identical)
Would they? There are plenty of storefronts that sell games on Windows, yet Steam is the dominant one and charges, you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue. Epic charges 12 percent and loses money on every transaction. It might actually cost somewhere between 12 and 30 percent to make it a profitable and sustainable venture.
There is one interesting difference, which is that Steam charges a one-time $100 per game, rather than annually. It's very slightly cheaper in the long run, which is nice if you just want to distribute a completely free game on Steam, or if you're a part-time game dev with low sales.
1. they wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep their not-monopoly
2. the app store would be operating at-cost, with no margin
i think everyone agrees they have a margin, the question is how much. right now i think apple could make a profit with a 10% of revenue, and most likely at 5%. now they've done the hard work of creating an entire market, and invested huge sums to get there, so maybe they deserve a markup on that
but that's the beauty of startups and capitalism. a new product can skip steps, learn from your mistakes, work without your tech debt and bloated organisational dysfunctions, and disrupt your industry. it happens in every industry, and no company is immune. apple will fight to keep things as-is with everything they've got, but capitalism will win.
One platforms norms developed before the internet and one developed after.
Are the input devices the same? The screens sizes? The situations you use them? The means of network connectivity? The social conventions around them?
There are tremendous differences between phones and desktop computers. Really the only way that they’re not different is that they’re both Von Neumann machines. But that describes so many things around us these days that it’s a distinction without a difference. By the same virtue a modern television is no different.
They might just get away with something as crass in a vacuum, but given that the DMA will go into effect very soon, there will be a point of reference in a similar economy, and I don't think it'll be pretty for Apple.
US regulators (federal or state; I could see something equivalent to GDPR and CCPA) will be taking a very close look.
Off the top of my head...
- Bandwidth
- Running the App Store for users
- Marketing the App Store
- App review
- Security efforts to keep malware off the store
- Making App Store optimisation tools for developers
There's a lot of moving parts to this. You could argue that none of this is necessary if you sideload, but distribution is worth a lot in general to businesses, and I think it's clear that the App Store is a good distribution channel in many ways – easy to use for sellers (vs via traditional publishers, or physical retail), and easy to use for buyers.
Besides that, that list is very bundled. What if I e.g. want the convenient subscription payment processing, but want to (or need to) bring my own CDN for most content? What if I want their marketing and am willing to pay for it, but prefer my own payment processing?
Allowing other app stores would be the big win in competition here, properly forcing Apple to win on value proposition. The DMA could force this, but I'm not certain about the details.
It's an arguably quite sloppy illusion of competition/choice.
The advantage of mandating alternative distribution channels (i.e. sideloading or alternative app stores, both with their own payments infrastructure) would be that it wouldn't be up to a regulator to figure that out – the market could decide.
From my own experience, the app store brings negative value to both the users and the developers in many cases. It's most often seen not as the godsend like Apple portrays it, but as a stupid obstacle course that you need to clear every time you publish a new app or an update to an existing one, and sometimes even when you don't.
> distribution is worth a lot in general to businesses
No, digital distribution is worth so little it rounds to $0.
> App Store is a good distribution channel in many ways
It's the only distribution channel allowed so of course it's the "best" there is no competition allowed.
I get that there's no competition on iOS, but I was comparing to other ecosystems and mechanisms.
> So basically nothing that companies couldn't do themselves if Apple didn't explicitly block it. You pay 27% for fuck all.
No, you pay 27% for those services I mentioned. Those things aren't free if developers do them themselves. Developers may prefer to do some themselves because they think they can do them for cheaper, and in this case payments have been opened up so that there can be competition there – the DMA in the EU will do similar and I look forward to it.
You may disagree with the price (and I personally feel it's high), but these things cost real amounts of money to do. Not just this, but free app developers would also need to pay all these costs despite potentially having no revenue directly attributable to the app.
With limited exceptions, platform vendors (Microsoft, IBM, Sun/Oracle, etc) are generally not in the business of paywalling their development documentation, tools, and SDKs, otherwise it makes their platform far less attactive to third-party developers that they absolutely need in order to.
...and ever and never-mind that Apple's documentation is sub-par[1], even with the billions of dollars they're raking in. It boggles the mind because nothing is stopping Apple from hiring the people it needs to ensure decent documentation and DX, which can be paid-for directly from the $99/yr developer membership fee.
...so with that context in-mind, we don't benefit from - nor really need at all, most of those services you're referring to;
> Bandwidth
We're a small B2B SaaS with a userbase sized under 100,000 users and our old app bundle was around ~20MB and updated a handful of times per year, so even if 100% of our users used the iOS app with auto-updates then that's less than 2GB of data-transfer per published update - the cost of serving that is far less than a rounding-error on AWS/Azure.
> Running the App Store for users
I accept that.
> Marketing the App Store
No-one should be paying for Apple to market their own App Store - and as a B2B SaaS app, Apple would never promote us or do marketing for us.
> App review
I also accept this - but ostensibly this is what your $99/yr developer fee pays for.
> Security efforts to keep malware off the store
This is the same thing as App review; if we look more broadly, then it's better to compare this to Microsoft's Windows Defender which is free, and is funded independently of the Microsoft App Store.
> Making App Store optimisation tools for developers
Again, this is Apple's responsibility to pay for, not ours - and even-then consider that efficient update/patch distribution systems have been around for decades so it's hardly cutting-edge development (e.g. those ~KB-sized binary diff patches for CD-installed games in the late-1990s when we were on dial-up, like EA had for SimCity 3000 or C&C Red Alert 2)
For a B2B SaaS client app for BYOD users the iOS App Store is perfectly fine as a distribution system, and morally I'm fine with paying Apple some kind of fee for the benefits of their distribution system, but Apple has no legitimate claim to any percentage of the subscription fees we get from our users - so what this means is that we can make our app available for free to our users (which is fine, honestly) but (as per my understanding of the rules) we cannot offer any kind of account-management or billing-management for their SaaS subscriptions from within the app which isn't ideal.
I think Apple's main mistake here was deciding that having a single set of rules and fee-schedules/commission/etc for everyone, because the revenue models for exploitative mobile games (especially their gold/gems IAPs) differs massively from my company's unimaginatively dry B2B SaaS client.
On the other hand, non-equal fees ironically seem to be exactly what's made US courts decide in favor of Apple but against Google in two superficially quite similar cases regarding app store fees:
https://www.theverge.com/23994174/epic-google-trial-jury-ver...
I think the main mistake isn't the fixed percentage fee, but rather holding on to the golden goose that is an app store monopoly for too long.
Google has been providing sideloading since day one for example, and except for a few high-profile exceptions, people do genuinely seem to prefer the platform's native app store.
Apple always aims for total control and authority over everything: Their supply chain, the apps running on their systems, the devices allowed to interface with them – and while that obsession with keeping it as *their own platform arguably is part of what makes their devices attractive, I think it won't keep working forever in this case.
Even if for some reason you believe that's not true, there's no way they need 27% of all purchase revenue on the store to fund that stuff. The numbers simply don't check out. 30% was an arbitrary cut and that's why they can easily drop it to 27% or (for small devs as of recently) 15%.
In the situations we're discussing, both the app developer and every customer have already given apple hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of revenue. Out of that, Apple has a healthy margin.
Now we're talking about Apple sticking their fingers into developers' pockets for every single transaction even if Apple's participation in that transaction is limited to updating a couple database rows to indicate that Customer XXXXX bought DLC Package YYYY in App ZZZZZ. There is simply no way that is worth 30%. They're not doing that much work.
In the EU has the 30% (or now 27%) been found illegal? I know they’re being forced to allow other app stores or side loading or something. But what about the fee?
For obvious reasons, the US government and justice system is probably not interested in being the beta tester for such a regulation – they have relatively little to gain and much to lose. Even "green bubbles" seem to be a much bigger point of contention in US public discourse than sideloading/the 30% tax.
But if the DMA it ends up working well well and consumers like it, and app store customers manage to sell that fact to the US voting population, the wind could change for Apple too.
I don’t think that really matters at all. No one (in the legislative branches) cares enough to pass something about this. Is basically impossible to get things past anyway recently, even far more important things than this.
Even an ineffective regulation that neither hurts nor harms consumers but ends up hurting Apple would probably be seen very negatively.
> Is basically impossible to get things past anyway recently, even far more important things than this.
Very true, and another point in favor of inertia. The only thing that could possibly break that is seeing a similar regulation be a slam dunk in a comparable market, but even then it's a big if, I agree.
I just don’t see us leading (or going in parallel) due to lack of interest/will.
The regulatory rules passed in the DMA are written to allow action without the need to go through the whole legislative process.
I predict it will come to that. Apple is gonna fight this tooth and nail to the very end. And unless they change their attitude and business practices, Europe has very little too lose by piling more and more rules on them.
The 27% is not really a problem if there were a competitive market. If one emerges we'll see if not...see above.
I’m curious to see what happens in the EU. Apple could do a couple of things to make their life easy but I know they’re gonna go down kicking and screaming and make things worse for themselves. It’s what they always do.
<< The DMA covers eight different sectors, which it refers to as Core Platforms Services (CPS). Due to the presence of gatekeepers who, to a certain degree, affect the market contestability, the CPS are considered problematic by the European Commission:
online search engines (e.g. Google Search);
online intermediation services (e.g. Google Play Store, Apple's App Store);
social networks (e.g. Facebook);
video sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube);
communication platforms (e.g. WhatsApp, Gmail);
advertising services (e.g. Google Ads);
operating systems (e.g. Android, iOS);
cloud services (e.g. Amazon Web Services).[4] >>
This is a huge win for the developers, despite that pesky warning. They can still ask users to circumvent apple pay/in-app purchases and get away by not giving a revenue cut to Apple.
They say it'll be hard to actually audit this, and it will, and many developers may manage to get around it, but technically that's a breach of contract and they could be removed from the store for it, so I'm sure many won't risk it.
It wouldn’t surprise me if using a non-Apple payment system quickly became a very good way to figure out if you were about to get scammed by a random third party.
If it’s a company that I already know and trust, I might be willing (though Apple payments will still be more convenient).
Rando company? No way. Honestly this whole thing is probably going to prove their point. Even if they don’t exactly deserve the win.
But court has also found their required to do this. So if there are roadblocks are onerous you know someone’s going to go running to the court to try and get that fixed.
They could end up in big trouble if they try and fight it too hard. But they’re also not gonna roll over.
Expect the same exact thing with the DMA changes in the EU.
The Play Store offers a 4% discount on the commission for alternate payment processing only in India or South Korea [1]. In comparison, Apple is doing a 3% discount, but only in the US. Perhaps this will expand further to compete for discounts between the two stores?
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
If you need certain amount of money per user for the product to be profitable, raise the price to account for Apple's cut. But please do not force me to install app stores from companies which have their lifeblood in data brokering my life. At least I have an understanding with Apple that if they go haywire with that stuff (like it was close with the whole CSAM scanning debacle which damaged my trust in Apple and I started considering alternatives) they will lose my hardware purchases as well.
First they invented the smart phone and App Store. That gives them a right to rent seeking by most people’s standards for a particular period of time. It’s why we have patents. Perhaps you think 16 years is a long time but then Mickey Mouse’s patent expired recently.
Second they managed to stave off competition and still maintain a large market share. Smartphones had a large number of companies get into this business, including all of big tech at one point (remember fire phone?) and yet Apple has not barely managed to survive, instead it dominated. That has to count for something. The real problem is this society instinctively sides for the little guy and against the big guy. Sometimes that makes sense, but just like you wouldn’t try to change the rules to reduce the amount Roger Federer earns, there’s no sense in trying to hobble a winning dominant company like Apple. Even as a developer (who’s never worked for Apple), I think developers should just deal with it even if it sucks because I prefer a society where winners get to win. If your product is good enough, you can make users work to pay you and still be a market leader (think Netflix or Kindle store, both of which I buy from my browser).
No they did not. The first iPhone was released on June 2007 and Apple had no intent to give anybody else the ability to develop any app for their phone. In fact Steve Jobs was vehemently against any app store.
Apple only introduced app store on the second year of its first iPhone launch, one day before release of new iPhone 3G.
Other types of smart phones and app stores existed before Apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator