It's awful, and it's painful for everyone -- not just those using the DropBox APIs. The origins of these clauses are with iBooks and the Kindle app for iOS.
I wrote about it in a recent blog post:
I wrote about it in a recent blog post:
As for the payment question, simply in terms of UX and as a consumer, I want only one payment provider and account on the device. I hate pulling my credit card out and remembering my password for the nth account.
Consumers are happy with the platform. Look at the sales numbers and earnings reports. Obviously companies like Dropbox see the value in the platform too -- I just wish they'd take the time to understand why it has that value, and why Apple has huge profits and very happy users.
In the long run the open market always wins.
If Apple wasn't forcing the larger industry to learn how to turn a profit by putting users first, the market would simply saturate the app store with whatever existent concepts are popular today.
Remember, prior to iOS, the Mac OS X market was both cry user friendly and very insular. Now, iOS has gone mainstream, but Apple's user-friendly focus hasn't (yet?).
Of course, your open market does still exist -- users can choose Android, which thrives on the notion of 'user choice'.
Of course, your open market does still exist --
users can choose Android, which thrives on the
notion of 'user choice'.
When I decided to buy a smartphone, I wanted one that allowed me to block calls and SMS messages completely, without leaving traces in the calls/sms logs. I wanted this because somehow my number ended up on a lot of spam lists and a smartphone should be smart about these things, right? If my email address is protected by spam filters, it should be a no-brainer for my smartphone to do the same for calls and SMS.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that such apps are banned from the iTunes App Store and that the only way to get such functionality on iOS was for me to root it and install software through Cydia. And why should I as a consumer go through so many hoops to use such software, when the company (that receives my money in the process) is actively hostile to my use case, a use case which is in no way immoral or unjustified.
When it comes to Android, building an app that blocks calls and SMS messages is still hard, as the APIs you have to rely on are private and keep changing, so the results are unpredictable. But upon a search on Google Play, I did find one that works well, installed with a single click. And I didn't have to root my phone.
Now that's what openness gets you - user experience is important, but it's all for nothing if the apps allowed don't solve your real problems.
The App Store is not an open market, nor is it intended to be an open market.
I've never seen an open market in the wild, much less it "always winning".
You mean an open market like the "$1 trillion bailout not to collapse the whole economy" open market? Or an open market like "we enforce strict copyright laws to artificially limit each copyrighted product to one maker and it's pricing at his whims"? Or an open market with patents, for the same purpose? Or an open market with frequent cartels, to everything from dairy products to RAM? Last, but not least, an open market where a country with a military advantage has several army units deployed and several wars to secure resources and keep their prices down?
What application market is it that is open and always wins?
The same hold true for application markets. In any market where money are involved and parties with interests of their own can get a stronghold on the rules, the results are the same.
>I didn't know Google was using their market to bail people out and wage a secret resource war.
Well, pushing their own apps to users with "picks" and front-page promotion is akin to a bailout. They can restrict apps that compete with their core businesses in a snap, they can change the rules of the game anytime, etc. They use it to do whatever offers them a competitive advantage.
Apple's marketplace is an even better example, as it is more closed. Google cannot close the Android marketplace at the same level, because they cannot do all the stuff Apple pulls and still attract developers away from more lucrative iOS at the same time (developers are the "scarce resource" here).
Btw: "ideological rant" implies that something I said re: "free markets" does not hold true and I say it because of my ideology. Can you point to it? Else it's not "ideological", it's mere empirical observation.
I can. You didn't say (as in "state") anything. You asked a rapid fire succession of rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are one of the best indicators of ideology (as in "zealotry").
There's no reason to hijack a fairly specific discussion with a much broader ideological rant. This sort of thing has been happening on HN lately and it bothers me. It takes a potentially interesting conversation and turns it into an ideology measuring contest.
I understand that the theory of free markets in general might be applicable here, but the point is the way the GP is framing the debate it can't be resolved without much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
The free market left to itself would fix most of it's own problems (I say most because I think some regulation is necessary and good). But it requires patience to let the market work.
The free market left to itself will eventually converge into a monopoly.
No, all the things that I mention are instances of actual markets. Were is this free market? If it's possible, why it hasn't been seen anywhere on earth?
>The free market left to itself would fix most of it's own problems
I mean, to reason about what the free market will do IF it exists has no value.
The free market, even if it was imposed by some power for one second, would have to be forcibly sustained by human agents --namely corporations, consumers, workers and the government. Nothing tells us that it would, in fact history teaches us otherwise.
One might as well say: "If everybody always was pro peace and love, and never did anything bad, we would have world peace and love".
Of course, but the whole point is in how to achieve that. So, to say "the free market would fix most of it's own problems" has zero value, if the #1 problem is how to create and sustain a free market itself.
We perhaps disagree about the motivations behind the clauses, but without inside knowledge I suppose we'll never know for certain.
The piece that perhaps I didn't express clearly enough: there are cases where developers -- even the good ones, who care deeply about doing the right thing for their users -- are boxed in and, no matter how much they would like to play by Apple's rules, are unable to for one reason or another. The result is often worse for users.
It's the unintended consequences of the "Kindle Clauses" that I find so interesting; that was what motivated my original blog post.
The fact is that Apple is the one that requires apps to open the browser in the first place. It's rule upon rules upon rules. I'm an iOS user and I'm not happy with this aspect of platform, if that means anything.
(Emphasis mine) Sounds like it might be time to find a new business plan, then.
I would be surprised to find many software products where the gross profit margin would be less than 50%.
Software and service prices seem mostly arbitrary to me anyway.
How else Aperture went from $300 to $100, Lightroom the same, BBEdit shed 70% of it's price in one day, etc etc... Same, why was iWork a $99 package and now it's 3 components are $10 each on the Mac App Store?
Services are more deeply and negatively affected by price changes than software, though. A price change that seems insignificant to you can drive many users away. Look at the fiasco with Netflix last year; they changed their prices by about $6 and subsequently lost about a million subscribers within a few months. Some users see price increases as an indication of a service's instability in the marketplace (and therefore a cue to jump-ship). Most users have lower tolerance thresholds for price differences when comparing services than they do when comparing one-time purchases (like software).
Regardless, now would be a really bad time for Dropbox to increase their pricing. Many Mac & iPhone users are watching iCloud closely and realizing that it could make Dropbox redundant for them. A price increase, even one as small as a ~$30 a year change for their 50+ plan (corollary to your $3 a month change), could push enough users away from the service that Dropbox is better off sticking to its guns.
If your competitors can offer lower prices and still give away 70%, then you're not competitive enough.
create a subsidiary.
dropbox.com, charges $x for 5GB
idropbox.com, a dropbox company, optionally in the caymans, charges $(1.3 * x) for 5GB and has an app.
They've rigged the game.
No, I know of that rule. Just jack the price everywhere --if the iPhone is an important market to you, that 30% is a factor you have to take into account in your overall pricing strategy.
The same holds true for all of your competitors, after all. Either they give up the iOS market, or they have to do the same. So it's not like someone has an advantage over you.
( And, I'd say, if it IS an important market to you, well, you don't get to both have all those customers with their credit cards at the ready in a system someone else built out of thin air AND complain that you have to give him a cut).
> 11.3 Apps using IAP to purchase physical goods or goods and services used outside of the application will be rejected
In app purchases are simply a wildly inadequate solution for many apps and services, and Apple forcing everyone to use them is absurd and helps nobody.
[1] 1 - (1/1.3) is the additional percentage that must be added to a price maintain constant revenue.[2]
[2] To be pedantic, Apple also handles payment card processing, which is ~3%. So the difference is really 1-(1.03/1.30) = 20.8%
Yes. If the choice is between UX and cost, I'll almost always pay more.
Not everyone will, but the people that don't are less profitable customers, as Apple is demonstrating.