Coming to Grips with Apple's Seemingly Unshakable Sense of Entitlement
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
So much on this topic lacks real grounding.
1. Apple's take is legal. Even Sweeney admits his objection is only on bad faith grounds; there's no failure to comply.
2. Gruber and others want Apple to be nicer. But doing more than the law requires just invites more lawsuits.
3. People objecting to 30% fail to mention the small-business program, where if you have revenues below $1M, Apple's take is 15%. So these businesses are significant, and many, many years of expectations are baked into their business models. Discounts for nothing would just be a giveaway.
Regular people are entitled to have their devices from Apple just work: no viruses, no adversarial software, no snooping by Apple or others, no creeping data overages, effective and automated (security) updates, and no premature end-of-life. The cost of even a little bit of that would be the biggest tax on productivity and enjoyment.
Then charge people for it. Apple has an annual developer registration fee, they should cover their platform costs using that instead of an arbitrary surcharge. If you want us counting our blessings, Apple also generously "gives away" access to a browser and phone app that don't see the need for all-encompassing payment processing. Those aren't giveaways though, those are basic features that have existed since before the App Store was an app. Apple's insistence on conflating their value is a textbook case of bundling.
Apple can be justified in charging whatever they want for their App Store if comparable services have a chance to compete. Nobody is prevented from sticking with OEM defaults if they choose.
Sure, let's assume you actually wholesale your app to Apple knowing they are going to add a 30% cut on top.
Where do I go if I want to sell it to another App Store to distribute for me?
I don’t think it’s because of epic.
I don't know that it was specifically Epic alone, and Apple certainly wouldn't outright say "we're doing this to help strengthen our ongoing legal arguments with these specific companies", but between Epic, legal complaints from other high profile companies like Spotify, and antitrust investigations in EU opening all at the same time just before that announcement time it seems an awful large coincidence to have a press release drop about how they're cutting the commision for 98% of developers to 15% but managing to leave 95% of the total revenue at the 30% rate with no influence from these external factors at the time.
Either apple behaves or it's golden goose will die from a thousand cuts. Their choice.
Two companies have more control than entire governments. They tax everything and control what can be done in the mobile space.
Mobile means taking photos, dating, ordering dinner at a restaurant, navigating, buying at the store, presenting an officer your state ID, looking for a new home, reading the news, scheduling meetings, answering calls from loved ones, ... E V E R Y T H I N G.
The uses of mobile have outgrown these two companies, and it's time the control these two companies have is rescinded by worldwide regulators.
First class web installs must be supported, and moreover they cannot come with a scare wall. Furthermore, Apple and Google shouldn't be allowed to control which technologies can be used (JIT, runtimes, browsers, dynamic apps), which payments/login rails can be used, etc.
Paraphrase: Apple/Google provide access to the internet therefore they 100% control access. You might use your argument for a mall or a credit card!
Not saying that Google/Apple are not monopolies especially in payments as you point out: I'm just suggesting to avoid using strawman examples that don't support your thesis!
theres no more free market, just competing jails.
I'm no fan of any of those companies, but that doesn't mean I think they're less trustworthy than governments.
In fact, a big part of the reason smartphones as a platform can be locked down to the extent they are is government regulation of the "phone" part. Regulations intended to prevent a bad actor from using a phone or similar device to blast everyone else within range off the air by transmitting at high power (or other similar nefarious things) have had the actual effect of making entire phone platforms into jails. What should have happened is that the "phone" part that controls things like transmit power should have been separated from the "computer-like device" part, so that the latter could be open, at least to the extent that PCs are. But that didn't happen, because government regulation is a very poor tool.
These companies have a hand in everything you do and touch. And they tax any business that wants to do business with you via your phone.
developers need to realise most of the world just wants a phone that works, and outside of nerds, they don't give a crap about who pays what to whom.
personally, as an engineer, i don't want any third party doing OS-level tampering or opening up secure areas of the hardware, nor do i want random power-hungry runtimes and code being ran. i want my phone to work the way it was sold to me, and i don't want meta or some leet haxxor's apps or app stores
What does this mean, exactly. Is there some Apple competitor that does snooping. (There are certainly third parties doing some snooping on Apple users.)
Is Apple not planning to ramp up its advertising services business. According to its SEC filings it is dead set on advertising.
How does one prove that Apple does not use data from customers for its commercial gain. The company is ridiculously secretive and non-transparent.
Apple is acting as an intermediary to peoples' use of their computers, for communication or otherwise, storing vast amounts of personal data on Apple's computers instead of the owner's. It's no different than any other so-called "tech" company in that regard. The company _wants_ more customer data.
And the "no premature end of life" is untrue IME. Perhaps there is some creative definition of "premature" I am not aware of. The owner decides what is and is not premature. I have older Apple hardware that is crippled thanks to "updates".
Maybe the term "entitlement" is taken from Apple's announcement. That's the term Apple used to describe what developers might be eligible to receive from Apple.
Apple does use customer data for commercial gain. But it does so anonymously and in an aggregated fashion. I think it’s fair to be skeptical here, but Apple does take their users data privacy much more seriously than their competitors. I think it helps to understand where their value proposition is aligned compared to the competition.
At Apple, privacy and security are core features of the product. They tend to push personalization features down to the device level to avoid building customer profiles in the cloud. They are generally ok with not releasing a feature if they cannot do so in a way that respects data security and privacy.
Compare this to Google, whose philosophy is that customer data is important to protect, but they expect their customers are alright with Google building a highly tailored profile to them. Google tends to process customer data in the cloud and shares this profile across their product lines. They believe that they can build better products and features by centralizing customer data.
For Apple, there isn’t any reason for them to try to get a secret edge by telling the public they’re not using data and secretly doing so. Their customers would be rightfully weirded out if they saw over-personalized products in ways they didn’t authorize. A large part of their competitive moat is actually denying companies like Facebook access to their users data.
This sounds like a press release.
I think "contractual obligations" sounds like an unfairly high standard to hold Apple to. It'd be great if we lived in a utopia where corporations were genuinely looking out for our best interests. We don't. We live in a world where corporations are relentless profit-seeking vampires, and in that world Apple is an uncommonly benevolent mega-corp relative to its peers. This benevolence is not just a factor of being mostly built by morally "good" people[0], it's also a matter of what Apple has chosen as its market niche. They build privacy-first technology because that's what they tell us they're selling us, and it's why we buy it. It's profitable for them. It's good for us. It's a mutually beneficial situation.
[0]I think there's an argument to be made that because Apple has now spent a decade positioning itself this way, it probably attracts the type of employee who believes in privacy as a human right and is largely made up of people who genuinely do believe it's the "right" thing to do.
There is no business logic. They do it just because they can. And they can because the App Store is the only store on the iPhone.
Microsoft was sued (and lost) for pushing Internet Explorer with every Windows install, but Apple can push its own store on iOS (and not only push, but limit the installation of other stores on their system)
I struggle to see how this is any different. It seems the same and even worse.
This is not true.
However the core of the issue remain: the whole conversation around the fees is because there is no competition allowed. Let other app store exists and the problem is fixed.
Edit:
Re-reading, and I wish that the article was longer. Of course Apple doesn't want to allow side-loading, but they're going to have to eventually, so why not do it proactively and in a way that allows third-party apps to be extra-sandboxed or reviewed? Oh right, because they're Apple. I appreciate the methodology, but a touch of openness will not kill their profits or trust level.
They're only demanding a cut if the lead resulting in an external sales comes from the App.
If you market your app on a website and sell there, you don't have to pay Apple anything. If you market inside the appstore, attract leads there and sell, you have to pay Apple.
That's like saying that highschools are doing lead generation for universities.
Sure, kids going to university do indeed come from highschool but on the other hand it's not like there was much of a choice or effort by the school involved.
Can't say Apple is doing any effort really.
> (a) still offer Apple’s IAP for those items; (b) pay Apple its adjusted 27/12 percent commissions on web sales that come from inside iOS apps; (c) send Apple sales data monthly and submit to audits of their sales; and (d) follow Apple’s stringent design edicts for these in-app links to the web.
Disclosing sales data and submitting to random audits is fairly invasive and has wide anti-trust implications. E.g.: Apple can see how effective external linking is compared to IAP and use that metric. Or they can use that metric from a similar app and guesstimate your customer base, and adjust their speed building a competing service.
Not to mention the added cost of compliance, suddenly an indie developer who could withstand a Shopify/Stripe payment processing setup won’t dare to bother linking, out of fear for messing up a report and getting randomly audited.
(I mean, I get the reason for doing this, since a % of companies will fudge numbers to pay less commission, given the chance. But it’s still just a can of worms.)
...then you still have to put your app on the App Store and pay Apple a commission, because they don't allow sideloading.
Which clearly proves that you aren't paying Apple for marketing or lead generation, you're paying for access to the app market. If current antitrust law (mostly written a hundred years ago) doesn't cover that, it's time to update the laws.
It's crazy to think that anything you do inside your app between you and your customer is subject to Apple forcefully inserting themselves into the relationship, and then demanding payment.
Apple's marketplace is inside the App Store, not inside the apps that are developed independent of them. You could argue that the apps are not developed independently, as they could (not by choice) use Apple's APIs, but I feel that that is what the $99/yr developer fee entitles the developer to use.
To the general problem; I really hope Apple stops being anti-consumer and anti-developer using these landlord tactics. The (second?) richest company in the world does not need to take these extra commissions. Without these developers, there would be no App Store, and it's in Apple's best interest for them to thrive. Apple is making the calculated decision of how much they can take off the top while still having developers make good products for their platform. Yes, their investors will not be happy that a source of income is being lost, but it's up to Apple to convince them that the good will from consumers and developers will provide more value through other means than that loss of income.
i'd be fine with apple saying "we take 0%, but then you have to do literally everything yourself, have fun" and then you can see how it will work.
i don't understand the entitlement. don't develop for iOS then, or make your own phone. it's not easy and costs a lot of money. 12% doesn't seem like a bad deal to reach billions of people and make money enough to be a mobile developer fulltime.
Also, a lot of these developers are suggesting they do everything that Apple allows them to do themselves by themselves, and Apple still wants to take a huge cut? If Apple were to say, have the exact same policy but only take a 5% cut, maybe people would balk less?
Some of the largest apps on the platform are free. These companies are using these resources more than smaller developers, but Apple has no way to extract money from these large companies. In that sense, these smaller developers that are subsidizing the platform for these large companies. I'd argue that this isn't the correct structure for the platform to have the apps using the most resources paying their cost.
You say you don't understand the entitlement, and then go on to say 12% is the amount that developers are paying to Apple? Why do you feel the need to use the lowest possible amount rather than the regular going rate?
It's 30%. 30% if you use Apple Pay in your app. 27% + 3% transaction fee when using the web and doing as much as are allowed to do by yourself, by yourself. Please tell me what edge case the 12% applies to, and if we can know how many transactions fall under that slim category.
Apple owns a huge computing platform, and has it locked down so that all commerce must go through them, and takes a huge cut of each transaction. I don't care who else is doing it, but this practice, done to this extent, is damaging to the users and developers for that platform.
That arrangement existing in perpetuity is immoral, and that's what Apple is doing.
It feels like this comparison only holds for the Steamdeck where Valve would have comparable control and you are staying within their offering/hardware regardless. There is of course no sensible equivalent for the desktop client which sees like 99% of the usage. A better comparison might be regular video game consoles which allow none of this.
To this day I think you can’t sell DLC from outside Steam while in a Steam version — i.e. the in-game UI must use a Steam store API — but you can share DLC, currency, etc. bought elsewhere with the Steam version through your account system. (E.g.: Overwatch 2 credits and content is cross-platform, Sims 4 DLC is cross-launcher, Apex Legends currency and content is cross-launcher, etc.) I’m not sure if it’s an oversight or if Valve and the developer sort of handle it monetarily behind the scenes in some form.
* In Genshin Impact: if your account was first played / created on mobile, you can only purchase currency on mobile (either platform). Clicking the same button on PC throws an error saying you can only do this on mobile. Other way around (first played on PC) results in an account that can buy currency on all platforms.
* In Hearthstone: There doesn't appear to be a platform limitation for buying in-game packs or stuff; pricing may be different due to regional currency reasons but you can buy on either platform freely. (e.g.: Blizzard's PC marketplace has a handful of currencies but iOS has tens of them with different template prices)
The developer for Genshin is frequently featured by Apple and even has some iOS-exclusive features (e.g.: 120Hz/120FPS is iOS-only), so I assume this was a sort-of privately-negotiated revenue sharing situation.
> Indeed, for example, Epic Games has agreed to such a rate on all Fortnite transactions via the Microsoft (Xbox) Store, the PlayStation Store, the Nintendo eShop, and Google Play. Epic Games has also agreed to extra payments for certain platform holders above and beyond the standard 30% commission rate. For example, for all Fortnite transactions via the PlayStation Store, Epic Games agreed to make additional payments to Sony above this commission rate based on the amount of time that PlayStation users play Fortnite cross-platform.
The judge forced Apple to allow transactions to take place off of the platform, but she explicitly noted that Apple would still be entitled to a commission on said sales.
Apple sees their App Store arrangement as similar to Upwork, Rover, or any number of other marketplaces, which all have policies preventing users from meeting through the system but transacting outside of it. From their perspective, if they hooked you up with the sale, then they're entitled to a commission. If you think you can do better without their sales, you're welcome to pull out of their marketplace, and if they find that you're abusing their marketplace they'll hasten you to the door.
That is, as far as the judge was concerned, perfectly legal, and I'm having a hard time not seeing it as a reasonable position to take.
This is why she (and millions like her) chose an iPhone. Are you seriously saying that Apple providing that as an option is anti-consumer?
There has to be a way for the physical owner to have full control over the device. It's not even a matter of inmediate benefit, but rather good consumer/human rights policy.
Much like the right to privacy, data control and GDPR, it didn't matter that many services relied on tracking-based ad revenue to survive, the user's right to privacy superseded that, and so the law was passed.
This is somewhat the same principle. The general "digital right" to control, or to at least have the same degree of control as the manufacturer (for cases where not even they can control it fully after it comes out of the factory), is becoming an increasingly important thing with every passing day. It's no longer only about taste, but about public policy.
You're arguing that they don't know what's good for them, but I'm not seeing how that's a more pro-consumer stance than Apple's willingness to provide what customers want.
Not really. In fact, that security and safety can be enforced even under the framework I'm proposing. Windows Defender is quite good these days, same on Android. It really doesn't compare to the early Win32/KitKat days.
"Outsourcing security to someone else" is a slippery slope of a DRM, anti-repair and anti-ownership future. We should be striving for more individual ownership and control over the devices and assets that we rely on for our daily lives, not less.
Really? Do you have "full control" over your TV? Your dishwasher? Your microwave? Your car?
I hear this argument on HN, but I've never met an iPhone customer who complained about not being able to side-load apps. Anecdata to be sure, but Apple's goal is to satisfy customers and therefore sell lots and lots of phones. If there were significant customer demand, Apple would work to satisfy that demand.
You should. I would 100% support a law that forces companies to not implement digital locks that only they can open, even when the device is no longer owned by them.
I find that hard to believe. I think every person I know who owns an iphone and knows what side loading is would rather it were possible.
Hello, I'm an iPad user and I hate I can't side load apps and that there's no compilers or alternative web engines on the App store.
The thing is, I think I am similar to the vast majority of Apple's customers in my preference for the App Store. Finding and installing software was a hassle before the store. The simplicity of app management with the store has been a revelation. Some will say that my preference shouldn't keep others from getting side-loading and I get that, but I imagine creating that installation path will also create a new exploit path. I don't think most customers will be happy if Apple has to allow side-loading and that leads to weaker security. Hopefully I'm wrong and weakened security can be avoided, but I'm skeptical for now.
A large segment of the HN readership doesn't seem to understand that many of their desires with respect to a device put them in a small minority of Apple's customers. If Apple is satisfying the vast majority of customers, why is that a bad thing?
I think Apple not providing the other option is anti-consumer. It can be as on the macs, where you have SIP and you can disable it if you so wish, although it takes some effort and is not straightforward. The phone can have 2 modes, a safe mode and an unsafe mode, and it's up to people to choose which mode they want to operate in. So your wife still has the option to have the non-general purpose computer in her pocket, and others can have it as a general purpose computer.
So why are you pushing for everything to have to be a general purpose computer? Why can't there be one phone maker that caters to those who don't want something like that? Why can't you just use Android, which is that? I just find it incredibly unfair that everything has to be the same for some odd reason for people who keep pushing for these things.
Not the parent commenter, but I suppose that the main problem is that there is a duopoly. So either they should be forced to make general-purpose computers (so they can be made to do what the user wants), or there should be more competition, so you can have your locked-down computer, and I can have my general purpose computer.
I am genuinely curious to hear from people who have domain knowledge, I’m not trying to make a point
Microsoft tried doing this with Windows phone, but they couldn't get traction among developers, which made their OS unattractive to end users, which made it unattractive to developers, which made it unattractive ...
Users don't just want a phone, they want a phone that can run all their apps. Developers only publish their apps to the App Store and Google Play, if you want to run the apps that your users want, you need to interface with one of those. This is even harder than the "Linux on the desktop" problem. If you have a good web browser, good support for .exe files (via Wine) and apps that can support most of the file formats users need (notably Microsoft Office files), you have a desktop OS that can replace Windows for most users, no cooperation from Microsoft or third-party developers necessary. You can't do that on mobile, even if you design a perfect iOS or Android emulator, users still won't be able to download any apps unless you get access to a store.
They are already general purpose computers that have been locked down.
I strongly believe users should be able to own their devices no matter what kind. While users should be able to keep those devices locked down if they choose, they should also be able to unlock them and run any software or OS they choose.
I think this applies to consoles just as much as it does to smartphones and tractors.
Allowing companies to prevent users from owning their devices puts less tech savy consumers who don't understand the risks at the mercy of the giant corporations.
If enough people refuse to sideload, developers will continue to provide the App Store as an option. Then you can pay Apple for their curation services if you find those services valuable, and other people won't be forced to pay.
Apple’s App Store review may not be perfect but Apple trying to police apps to make them adhere to some guidelines is better than nothing.
Remember with Facebook pushed a sneaky VPN as part of their iOS app so they could better track users?
Compared to that, a Facebook app with better tracking is trivial.
Apple could make this against the terms of service for App Store apps, and ban any apps that violate them. If the sideloading option exists, then Apple should be free to regulate the behavior of in-App Store behavior more strictly.
Sounds like those Mac v PC ads from 20 years ago.
Do you think Android users are constantly getting viruses on their phones and having their bank accounts drained?
As the NSO spyware has proven, if someone wants to break your phone, they can. Apple's 30% protection racket won't be able to intervene.
Phones and iOS tablets won’t be general purpose computers until I can easily side load and unlock root.
True, but they are also 70% of Apple's app store revenue.
Hence Gruber's suggestion of separate commissions for games vs. other apps.
Yes consoles prevent side loading too, and it's exactly as wrong there too, though, I would also say there is an argument that a phone is in a different class of necessity than a game console, and could easily be argued to require different rules and consumer/society protections. A phone not only is a central and practically required part of general life today, companies like Apple and Google go further and perform many many actions to insinuate and embed and integrate and entangle their phone and their attached ecosystem into as many aspects of the users life as possible. They are not neutral, and the resulting user entrapment is not of their users own choice and creation, even though there are no guns to any heads. Apple and Google are absolutely equivalent to Phillip Morris when it comes to the users voluntarily consuming a product that is bad for them.
Point of all that is, phones are not game consoles, and not only would that be true naturally just because of how one is a necessary tool for conducting life, while the other is not, the valid culpability of the phone maker is even more compounded when you factor their own actions to amplify the users dependence on them. They actively seek it and do many different things to get it and strengthen it, from advertising to policy to tech functionality. You can't do that, and still be innocent of responsibility for it's effects.
The only valid thing I see is the argument that if Epic agree to the same deal from MS and Sony, meaning all the same significant factors not just the cost, then it will require some non-trivial argument to claim that Apple has harmed them.
Uber does this. Amazon does this. Deliveroo does this. Airbnb does this.
Walmart does this. Target does this. Every frikkin company charges a margin.
If I download a free-to-play game from steam and then make an in-app purchase (DLC, loot box, etc) - does Steam not take a cut of that in-app purchase? Serious question, as I haven't used Steam in a while.
I still remember his early fanboy/apologist days and whenever I read him writing (actually "link quoting" because, well, that's what he does) anything even seemingly or notionally "against" Apple, my first suspicion is whether he has seen a drop in his readership and is just working to pull some page views from the other side? There was another one in those days - someone probably working at TechCrunch (I am forgetting his name) among many; Sig.. someone.
Next morning Facebook removes its app from Apple Store and directs users to sideload the app, because it needs those sweet permissions that were denied before.
I mean knowing Apple they'd probably make it so sideloaded apps break the phone more readily on purpose cause they're assholes and petty like that, but permissions should be handled at the OS level and not the app store level.
Apps in official store should work with the permissions approved by the store. The “should” is enforced by the store.
go to site.com/referral?via=apple with warning label on top "Wait seven days for the price to reduce (or Apple will charge us a commission and we will charge you this commission)."
US smartphone market? It's growing every year even with huge margins, lowering the price would accelerate this pace.
LLM hardware market? Like really, what is the incremental cost for 8gb to 16gb to 32gb to 64gb to 128gb for their macbooks? The could probably shave a few grand off the 128gb and still make a decent profit. Now you have 128gb unified memory macbook going for almost the same price as a rtx 4090 with a computer (and with only 24gb vram). That means a huge shift in hobbyist developers who will turn all their focus to ML with macbooks (e.g. MXL vs Nvidia/cuda). and if they do this with new macbooks, suddenly the market for older slower macbooks collapses, leading to much higher demand and even more hobbyists albeit with slower Cpus/less ram.
It sucks but apple laptop cpus and mobile cpus dominate anything else out there. I wish there were more competition. And their margins are massive.
Ryzen 7940HS and 7945HX are fairly close to the M3 16 core, if they had actually been able to build them on the same node, and if AMD were willing to shell out for the same die size, it's likely that they could have achieved or exceeded the uplift.
I mean yeah, probably, but they haven't been able to despite apple coming out of nowhere to dominate the laptop cpu market in performance only a few years ago with their first release m1. If AMD were to shell out more, and be able to build them on the same node, that would probably entail significant R&D costs and costs for die size and possibly raise the price to the m3 max or m3 ultra (whenever that's released).
>Ryzen 7940HS and 7945HX are fairly close to the M3 16 core,
https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m3-vs-amd-ryzen-... fair, i didn't know about these cpus, and it seems they absolutely destroy the base m3 in multicore performance. However, it looks like even the base m3 still far exceeds the 7945HX in igpu performance, power efficiency (probably because 3nm vs 5nm) and slightly beats the 7945HX in single core performance. And the Ryzen 9 is the best AMD has to offer right now, the M3 is the base model (apple still has the pro, the max and the soon to be released ultra). The price of 7945HX laptops also already seems a lot higher than base m3 macbooks (and again I think any ram upcharge is basically pure profit for Apple).
Now i haven't even mentioned AI cores. Even M1 series from years ago still seem far ahead of most laptop cpus today it seems for hobbyists running LLMS. I'm not sure if that's something the 7945HX competes vs Apple with?
AMD doesn't really have the volume to outbid Apple on the leading nodes, so what they do get is going to keep going to server/HPC. That stuff is more money for them anyway. Adding more cores, both CPU and GPU and shrinking to TSMC's latest node, it isn't easy but it's technically simple enough that they could do it in a few months if they thought there was enough of a market for it. There just isn't, unfortunately.
In my eyes any sane customer take should look something like “yeah, they complied in the shittiest possible way because their legal team said it’s the only way. Let’s hope they’ll find a way to make it work the right way.”
I register a prediction. Once EU DMA goes into effect and forces some way of side loading on iOS we’ll see absolutely no change in user exploitation. No amount of bad software on iOS will meaningfully change the situation to justify Apple’s involvement in the app distribution.
Apple could make stupid amounts of money by just lowering the cut to 7%. Just lower it! You'll make the IAP system more accessible to your mega-business peers, and one company like Netflix deciding that 7% is an acceptable cut is worth ten-thousand indie developers suffering through 30% (or, I suppose, 15% if under a million now).
Anyone who believes their behavior is about security is being intentionally daft about their inaction in lowering these fees. If its about security: lower the fees. Make these problems go away. The judge insinuated it herself; there is more a case here that their fees are too high, but that's not what Epic pursued, so they lost.
The alternative is dark for both Apple and Apple's users. There's no innovation in the iOS app ecosystem anymore, beyond thirty copycat ChatGPT apps. Why should there be? Software is expensive to build, and Apple is putting up a toll-booth larger than the US Tax System to enter. There exist alternate realities where the iPhone Pro and iPad Pro are actually professional devices, which cultivate the creation of bespoke, powerful software for the form-factor. Gates defined a platform as a piece of software itself could be created with. Apple, the company, could never be created within Apple's world. Apple doesn't create platforms. I'm not confident they create much of anything anymore. Their most profitable skill nowadays is extraction, not creation.
There's a multi-billion dollar revenue line item for App Store ads that Apple can't lose. Nobody on the Apple software side gives a rat's ass about innovation.
I can't confirm "most", but it's possible.
A retailer can sell thousands of Windows PCs for $200 because of pack-in, preloaded apps license deals.
It's one aspect of Apple's self image as a high end boutique brand that they forbid such avenues of monetization. They fear the entropy of enshittification.
And it's possible to appreciate their paranoia...
For my past sins, (some months spent in the 1990s Netscape group that licensed product placement on the home page), as a side project I've been refurbishing a neighbor's recently acquired collection of four Windows laptops, a 16-year-old iMac, and an HP all-in-one (like iMac) desktop.
Customer states HP desktop is unusable, became too slow.
This HP Intel Atom Windows desktop was thrashing its hard disk, unresponsive for more than an hour after booting. Because security:
There were four (4) antivirus programs scanning the disk, intercepting runtime calls to windows api, doing antivirus stuff:
- Windows Defender
- Intel NetSecure ®
- HP service apps
- MacAfee antivirus suite
Also Windows Update was scanning and installing crucial licensed apps like Candy Crush Saga and had just installed new Microsoft Edge browser. Edge was eager to help out with full-screen "Onboarding" to introduce awesome new features, had another instance that was a pop up widget to tell me that Brad Pitt was having Elvis' baby and homeowners in your area are using this one weird trick to gain financial freedom and you may also like
Machine had a single channel of 4GB SODIMM and 500 GB of mechanical hard drive: "rotating rust" driving rotating tiles in the Start Menu.
Thing is: this is relatively CLEAN setup. There were no scamming web toolbars. This was the setup shipped with the computer. Customer had added Microsoft Office 2016, Google Chrome, and had them well set up.
This was an improvement over many of the Windows machines I have cleaned up in the past.
The Mac was OK... for 2010. But that's another story.
Yeah...
That's the inconsistency I always bring up. One could argue Apple's massive cut and anti-competitive practices make sense if the App Store was some kind of idyllic garden, or even had the mediocre signal/noise ratio of Steam, but it absolutely is not and does not.
This totally ignores that it's not a problem on Android either, a mobile platform that has enabled sideloading from the start and has a much larger marketshare than Apple.
There's some malware yes and some users are tricked into installing it but it's not widespread. And Android has a really great and safe FOSS ecosystem in F-Droid.
Excuse my French, but this sounds like a take you'd expect from a delusional fanboy. The Mac "abuse" the author talks about is fictional. It doesn't even exist to any relevant degree on modern Windows systems.
In other words, companies like to take advantage of all of the benefits purchased with taxes such as enforcement of copyright, the court systems, police, an educated workforce, etc... but not actually pay any taxes themselves.
To translate the headline: "Coming to grips with the government's unshakable sense of entitlement to taxation."
As an iPhone user, I'm happy to pay a 30% tax to avoid the relentless scamming, outright malware, and impossible-to-cancel subscriptions in every other software market out there that isn't similarly controlled. I'm happy to pay this in the same way I'm happy to pay my taxes so that I can live in a civilized society.
No matter how innocent everyone demanding this change claims to be, the inevitable outcome will be this loophole being abused mercilessly by everyone to avoid the rules and restrictions of the Apple Store. No more easy cancellations. Unclear terms. Personal data collection and onselling of that data in bulk to anyone with a checkbook. Etc...
In that case, Apple should allow in-app purchases to be priced 30% higher, rather than mandating equivalent pricing to other platforms across the board.
If Apple allowed this, then the inevitable result will be for every subscription purchase in-app to have the following blurb:
“Go to our web store for 30% off!”
What they most definitely, for sure, absolutely will not include is the rest of what that should say, which is: “Outside of the oversight of Apple, where we will be free to trick you, scam you, sell your info, and make it nigh impossible to unsubscribe.”
Speaking of which, that reminds me: I have to call my bank to reverse charges on what I thought of was a one time payment to a website that magically auto renews itself quarterly (not monthly, that I would notice more easily!). Oh, and that quarterly cadence means that Mastercard disputes won’t go through either because it’s too far in the past. Awesome.
I can’t wait for this to be the new normal for iPhone apps.
I've seen questions on HN before about who to use for payment processing for SaaS and/or software sales, and usually Paddle or Lemon Squeezy get suggested since they're Agents of Record that provide international sales tax compliance, chargeback protection, etc.
Both are 5% + $0.50 per transaction and you're good to sell worldwide without worrying about time-wasting nonsense when it's time to cook the books for the year.
I'm assuming Apple acts in the same capacity for App Store in-app purchases and subscriptions? (unsure, this is why I'm asking)
If it's 15% for the vast majority of app developers, the point where it would be more economical to use one of those two external payment processors instead of direct through Apple would be $4.99 per transaction -- how many apps are selling in-app purchases / subscriptions for more than $4.99 that aren't aggressive impulse purchases? I've definitely seen $9.99/week, $19.99/month, $99.99/year grift subscriptions for video editing apps, that kind of thing, but the people who are psychotic enough to pay that aren't the kind of person that would actually follow through with leaving an app and completing a purchase through a website.. so I guess I'm curious, how many apps are doing huge numbers with in-app purchases greater than $4.99?
I know that's a lot of dumb questions -- just trying to understand at what point does this tip over from minor annoyance to significant loss of revenue, and how large of a population of app developers / publishers does this affect materially?
Also, is this iOS-specific, or for Mac App Store apps as well? I can definitely see it being a problem with Mac software that costs $80 a license, but it feels like maybe it's not as big of a deal for the average iOS app?
As an end user I really don’t want to buy from anywhere other than the App Store or pay a subscription through anything else. Why? Because prior to it existing it was more difficult to cancel subs than a hooky porn site.
The tech industry are two faced hypocrites. And attention seekers.
You don’t have to play in the market. It’s not like there aren’t other ones. Innovate. Create a new market. That’s what you keep telling us you do.
"As an end user I really don't want to use any browser other than Internet Explorer"
You are entitled to that opinion, but having alternatives does not stop you from enjoying that. The existence of sketchy porn sites and alternatives App Stores in no way prevents you from boycotting everything besides the single platform you support.
One click cancel on PayPal has been available for years. Also, doing something as menial as canceling a subscription shouldn't add a 30% tax to every single transaction. Apple charges that because it can, not because it's the cost of doing business.