* 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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘Funniest thing in a fortnight’ sounds less impressive.
You’re comment is actually funny, the OPs just makes one sad and frustrated.
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.
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.
(A short story about how cheating the user with exorbitant prices results in the exit of your audience.)
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.
Not exactly doable for the ‘everything store’.
Also hi :) long time!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...
There was little to cheer about whatever happened.
That's also what Amazon does, except with everything.
It's terrible what Apple is doing, but is peanuts compared to what Amazon does.
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.
We should be rooting for better outcomes for consumers. Not picking between which megacorp is less bad.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I don't care about the fee for using their services, I care about the fact that I'm forced to use their services
>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.
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.
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.
Claiming that Apple is "stealing" their cut of commission is definitely wrong.
Their anti-developer/consumer moves are worthy of backlash, especially since Apple isn't likely going to change their positions without enough of it.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Is a flat fee structure?
Basic: $39/mo
Shopify: $105/mo
Advanced: $399/mo
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.
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...)
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...
Go back and watch the keynote. Developers cheered because 30% was so much lower than any other stores available at the time.
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.
The question with the App Store is, are customers allowed to choose?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Please note that I was not paid by Apple to write the comment above.
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.
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 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.
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.
The line of thinking you're expressing here is what leads to questioning free speech and privacy absolutism.
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 agree that the 30% is probably bad for society though)
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.
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.
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.
Of course everything improved massively after the plague. So it depends on which part of the middle ages we're talking about.
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.
We should put out an open letter to Apple that we will collectively ignore that product until it contains more favourable terms.
"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 :)
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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!!!! :^)
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."
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.
Not everything you pay money for is comparable to taxes.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.