Apple reverses course: app must pay 30% App Store fee on tips sent to teachers
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
You should always self host where possible at a discount. I personally would never publish anything on Apple's ecosystem as there's no alternatives.
Never publish anything on Apple's ecosystem as there no alternative... so don't publish at all is what you mean?
All these crazy ideas come from people who don't work in app development, clearly.
Since the dawn of computers, it has always been possible to write and publish software directly from the developer to the consumer. This is the normal state.
Apple has broken this on iOS with their model where they are the sole arbiter, gatekeeper and tax extractor, of every application.
Out of the box it is not. As root I can't read or write files that the permissions say I can, among other problems. It is still possible to disable all this but they make it more and more difficult.
If I were to bet, I'd bet that the roadmap is to eventually make OSX be iOS, where you can't do anything except what apple specifically lets you do.
iOS releases. Yes, and by choice.
And if they keep at it with OSX I won't continue releasing to that either.
Call me crazy but I'm not the one writing sob stories on HN about how Apple cucked my app which seems to be a HN weekly.
6 days ago: Apple confirms it's breaking iPhone web apps in the EU on purpose (800 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39388218
9 days ago: Developers revolt over Apple's new app store rules (330 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39346527
27 days ago: Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union (2486 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39132453
36 days ago: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission (1300 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38394364
62 days ago: Apple allows some iOS apps to track user locations via lists of nearby SSIDs (300 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38720656
75 days ago: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access (1222 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38574888
3 months ago: Developer account removed by Apple (425 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38394364
My interest in the Apple-is-a-monopoly argument is that it frustrates me that people act like having an iPhone was forced upon them and they should be entitled to having the iPhone the way they want it, when I consciously made the trade-off between customization and great hardware and chose customization.
Apple is not a monopoly. Any competitor can compete with them on price / fees and win if Apple really does not provide enough value to people to justify their prices. I genuinely hope that it happens. I just don't agree with the common heuristic of "hey you have a good thing going there, you shouldn't be allowed to have anything that good!"
Why is Apple not taking 99% of the revenue and takes 30%? Because if they took 99% nobody would develop for their platform. So there is a sweet spot between 99% and 0% where the services and market they provide is good enough that the fee is worth it. Currently it works for everyone as Apple's and developers' business is still booming after all those years. Developers want more, Apple also wants more, everyone wants more, all is natural. Wanting to optimize your gains is natural for everyone. It is not illegal, and should not be.
Part of it is the double-dipping. Consider why you'd be opposed to Toyota claiming 30% of the revenue of all gas that you buy for your Camry, or why you don't like ads in things you pay for.
> Apple is not a monopoly.
Until they allow third-party app stores and sideloading worldwide, and without any of the malicious compliance like intentionally breaking PWAs along with it, they are.
>Until they allow third-party app stores and sideloading worldwide, and without any of the malicious compliance like intentionally breaking PWAs along with it, they are.
How? Do you know what monopoly is? You being upset at how you can use a device you are in no way have to buy and use does not make the brand a monopoly.
See it like this: Toyota arbitrarily declares that they'll disable any car without "Toyota" approved 30% taxed fuel. Then all the other car companies immediately copycat, seeing a new way to make money.
This is the case with iPhone and android. They do not have meaningful competition when they can just work together as a pseudo monopoly.
It’s becoming tiring listening to people stating “that’s not THE market so it can’t be a monopoly” when legislation already disagrees with you.
[0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/21...
That doesn't make McDonalds a "monopoly".
If McDonalds sent someone to my house with me after I purchase a Big Mac, and tried to stop me when I wanted to put some of my own condiments in it, I would find this creepy and controlling behavior very weird.
Apple is the only place you can buy an iPhone, yes, but you don't have to buy an iPhone. You can buy an Android phone instead (in fact Android has about 2/3 of the market worldwide, which, condiments aside, make the claim that Apple is a "monopoly" pretty dubious).
People think the device is amazing. They want to be able to create their own applications on it. They ask for support.
I create the SDK for it support it and say "ok, you can if you want to, under my own terms. You need to pay me a fee for the privilege, we both win".
And you say "that is illegal! your device is too good! you have to let me develop and sell apps on it for no additional cost to me!"
is that really your position?
Apple, as a company, can disallow installation of any 3rd party apps on their platform tomorrow, is it not their right? I mean no one is not owed anything by Apple. iOS does not have to legally support 3rd party apps does it?
They are being punished for making it too easy. If they sold overpriced dev kits and demanded 5 figure upfront dev license costs and worked only with select partners for their apps, no one would bat an eye. They make the barrier to entry too low and suddenly everyone is entitled.
And there be the dragons. Thats why antitrust laws exists. Not everything written in a contract is contractual. Given the extensive protections that apple is afforded by law to prevent circumvention of their platform, there must also be some take. He who lives by the sword...
My position is that if you open development to 3rd parties they have to be able to develop for your platform for free. You can charge for the services you provide to the developers (fees if they use your payments platform, your distribution platform, etc), but you should not be able to force them to use such services.
The win-win is that by opening your device to 3rd parties it is made more useful for your users and hence more desirable. Iphones wouldn't be so popular if you couldn't access tiktok, instagram and what not with them after all...
No, they can't. False advertising, etc. Installing apps is one of the expected/marketed features of an iPhone at purchase time. Apple could be sued into the ground for doing something like that.
It's like saying that an auto manufacturer can advertise their car going 0-60 in 3 seconds, so you buy it, then afterwards they release an OTA update that drops the cars performance to 0-60 in 5 seconds. It's not allowed at all, and if a company does it they owe the consumer.
But because you want to give Apple special treatment, I suppose the logic follows that you would think that this case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... was unjust to Microsoft, since it's their platform, they can do whatever the fuck they want, right?
The legislation really isn't clear enough about this -- if it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion -- and to the extent it was clear in 1930, it's been muddied ever since Reagan.
And sometimes things have nuance! Not everything is black and white.
It is when you’re essentially in a market dominating position, which Apple is.
Imagine if Automotive OEMs (a great example for another industry with questionable tactics) would get a 30% licensing fee for for each independent after market accessory somebody sells for one of their cars.
Again, with Automotive, as long as you have other options, it is fine.
Like …
- video game platforms, what about them? They all have similar platform fees & requirements that Apple has but yet they are getting a pass on this topic.
- other platforms. Why is it ok that YouTube takes 40% cut of ad revenue from content creators?
- analogy to in-store retail. Imagine Apple is like your neighborhood Walmart. If Walmart is going to put a product on its shelf, they are only going to do so long as they can mark it up and sell it for a profit. Why is Apple not allowed to do the same for their “virtual shelf” (aka App Store)?
- if people think 30% is too high, what is the right rate? Is it 25? 20? Something less? Who decides what’s fair?
- Security. There’s no question that Apple being the single facilitation mechanism for payments drives out fraud and provides a better consumer experience & trust (for both the consumer and Apple). To much fraud on their platform, through rogue sideloading payments, could deter the consumer experience of Apple and effect the adoption of their products. Why should Apple be forced to allow a new fraud vector and put consumers at risk? This will deteriorate their brand.
And much more.
Note: I’m not saying I agree with Apple or its tactics, but it’s also not black or white either.
This is a very tricky topic that is way more nuanced than most people acknowledge.
And obviously there isn’t much precedent for this either.
Because if walmart marks it up too high I can get the same thing from target or the local shop or from amazon or from tons of other places. So they are under competitive pressure to keep their markup low enough they don't chase customers away.
> Why is Apple not allowed to do the same for their “virtual shelf” (aka App Store)?
It is enraging because there is no competitive pressure on them. If the fees are too high, unlike with walmart, what are you going to do? There's nothing you can do. If walmart starts charging $100 for a bar of soap I can get for $1 at target, I'm going to target. If apple raises their cut to 200%, there's nothing you can do.
> Who decides what’s fair?
Ideally, a competitive free market. But apple does not allow that.
From the consumer perspective, you have a clear recourse: don't buy Apple phones if you don't want to (or can't afford to) pay for the markup that devs have to place due to the Apple tax. It's that simple. I have an Android phone and install most of my apps through F-Droid for free. No one forced you to buy an iPhone, and no one will force you to buy one again the next time you need a new phone.
From the developer perspective you have a bit of a stronger moral point in that there are a substantial number of US customers that you cannot reach without passing through the App Store, but the current legal situation in the US is pretty clear [0]: US consumers knowingly choose to buy iPhones even though they know that they're choosing a locked-in platform, so there isn't a single-brand aftermarket and there is no monopoly.
[0] https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca9/21...
As far as I know, that has not been used as a successful defense of any large antitrust case. Ma Bell and Microsoft could have tried arguing the same point, but I'm not sure if it would override the anticompetitive damages of either company.
The court ruled that in order to make that case, Epic had to demonstrate (among three other tests) that "the challenged aftermarket restrictions are “not generally known” when consumers make their foremarket purchase". The court found that consumers do know about the restrictions in advance of making their initial purchase decision and therefore found that the relevant market had to include more than just iPhones.
It'll be a hard fight for sure, but Epic and Spotify go for low-blows because they know Apple will cede something in the end. Their hostile behavior in France and the Netherlands did not go unnoticed.
Your take on the developer perspective is a bit confusing. Everyone knows it's a closed system, but that doesn't mean it's not a monopoly. In many ways, it is a monopoly.
They've given themselves this image of everything we make just works, is designed perfectly and consumers are happy to accept any and all rules and conditions imposed on them to live in the Apple ecosystem, it's all very Stockholm Syndrome.
Apple could be taking 30% of donations to orphanages or for children with cancer thru an app and fans would be like "well it's expensive to run the app store!1!1" (no, it's really, really not...$173bn profit 2023).
Companies want to avoid officially increasing wages because wages are sticky while tips are not.
For example: you deliver food for fictional service Yoter Eats. The customer pays a fixed price for the meal plus surcharges. Yoter Eats and the restaurant are guaranteed to get their cut no matter the quality of the meal, the completeness of the order (ie missing items 'accidentally' left out by the restaurant), how well it was dispatched, how quickly it was prepared, etc.
You, the delivery person? You're the only expense of the transaction that the customer has control over.
You have no recourse if your payment for services is reduced or withheld.
It's even worse: some services don't show how much the "tip" is before you accept the order (because they don't want you to refuse low tip orders) or after the transaction completes, other services take a portion of your "tip" and don't tell you how much they took.
Some services allow customers to "tip bait" - they can set one tip when they order, but then reduce it for no reason, up to hours after the order is delivered.
Even consider a tech geek, gets $1M a year from a hot app, 30% goes to Apple, 37% of what's left goes to federal taxes, 13% goes to California taxes, there's hardly anything left, do we even own our money anymore?
And then lose another 10% of what's left to sales tax when you try to actually spend any of it ... god damn.
Also $320K/yr spending money is pretty good.
hardly anything left? i made less than that at a FAANG and live an amazingly comfortable life.
also, everyone pays sales tax: consume more, pay more. how is earning over $350k in cash a year net a bad place to be? this is insane
Really? Houses here cost $3M, and since you can't afford that you'll be paying an arm and a leg to rent from a greedy landlord. You'll take 20 years to save up that 3M, by which time you're too old to enjoy life, and houses will cost 8M at that point in time. Good luck if you plan to have kids, that $32k/month won't be enough at all for daycare, schooling, afterschooling, insane medical expenses, fixing all the shit they break, and all that.
And no, taking out a loan to buy a house doesn't mean you can afford a house, it means you're spending money that you don't have. This should NOT be the norm. People should be able to afford basic shit, like a roof.
This tech geek actually COULD have afforded that roof if Apple and the government weren't stealing all of her money.
> and if this supposed dev did $999,999 he’d only pay 15%.
No that's not how taxes work
but to say that any mortgage should not be the norm i think is clearly wrong. history doesn't repeat itself, but through the past 100 years, the extra leverage you get from putting, say, 25% down on a 20 year mortgage has made it an amazing investment.
If I'd done your stupid "wait till you have 20% deposit" thing that some 75year old told you they did 40 years ago to buy their first home - my first home would've been bought 20 years later because with the way the market prices are going up the length of time for me to save 20% vs buying now and reaping the reward of the 2019+ housing market.. And now I'd have at least an 8% APR.
Yeah, nobody listen to this warren buffet here.
the people i'm talking about earn $60k and this is their only chance to own property. 1 interest rate change, unexpected expense, property market downturn, and they're literally broke.
I don't care at all about 20% now that I know PMI is only around $160/mo and can be removed. I wish I'd known that like a decade before I bought my first house, I would've bought WAY earlier.
I thought you HAD to have 20% until I was probabyl nearly 30 and could get anywhere near buying a house.
Where is this?
The median in the SFBA is $1.4M.
Even in Sunnyvale the median is $1.6M.
Unless you want to try to make arguments about places like Atherton, in which case you can't really point to a community of 5,000 people with residents including multiple NBA and NFL players, Eric Schmidt, Ben Horowitz, Robby Krieger of The Doors, Charles Schwab (the one and the same), Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac... any more than you can point to Medina in Washington and try to extrapolate that to Seattle.
I disagree. EVERYONE should be able to afford basic necessities (housing, food, car, clothing, heating, electricity, water, internet, medical care) with cash.
> 850k/yr (1M/yr minus apples cut)
The government steals close to 50% of that 1M. More than 50% if you're self employed. You aren't left with anything close to 850k.
What incentives are we setting up for people looking to start new tech businesses? No wonder the average start-up plan these days is 'don't bother with sustainable profits, just make a splash, cross your fingers and hope to "exit" on the back of some VC with more money than sense'.
Guided meditation helpers are receiving less and less opportunities outside of app stores? What are these shrinking alternative opportunities you talk about?
Likewise, You make it seem that each one of those % values are deducted directly from the $1M/year. Thats not how taxes work.
> Apple took issue with Insight Timer accepting tips for live events and meditations, deciding that this money was for digital content. Plowman did not agree with Apple's assessment, and spent months negotiating. Apple did agree to allow tip links on teacher profile pages that are not subject to a 30 percent fee, but donations from live events and meditations are not considered tips. Apple's reasoning is that a one-to-one donation is a monetary gift, but a workshop or class with at least two people is digital content that's subject to a commission.
It is unquestionably digital content when it's a teacher giving a class and the amount of tipping is so high that it is their primary compensation model.
And in the 15 years since then very little has changed with how it works.
The cult of Apple lives, even though Mr. Jobs died of acute pancreatitis wrought by his exclusively fruit based diet.
Can't make this shit up.
Ironic, because you just did. Jobs thought he could cure his cancer through diet, and didn't. There's no indication that his diet caused his cancer.
https://www.self.com/story/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-hospita...
that's what happens at companies that become ossified and management oriented.
1: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/4/22418828/apple-app-store-c...
Its the most convenient option for anyone who owns an Apple device by far. Its not even an argument, the number of apps and the income generated from customers says it all.
People want fully featured apps, not companion apps. Your personal feelings on the matter aren't relevant to what a customer wants.
Not my experience. I rock climb, sail and play pen and paper rpgs. I have a companion app for the second, four for the third (2 I coded myself). The rock climbing is the only one that would need a true app (with geo-localisation and maybe a gmap interface). Idem for my work, I don't care, on my phone, about a full feature github, or even email service.
Just forgot, I also have a tuner, it's a full app but it doesn't need to be (I had one of Firefox OS too, you only had web apps on it).
The initial argument was completely different. This person makes companion apps simply because they don't like Apples business practices. Lovely for him I guess.. for most it makes absolutely no sense financially to ignore your customers needs based on a personal preference. Customer will just use a better, fully featured app thats not bound by the developers inflated ego.
> 'ignore your customers'
I'm not a customer of any music app. I'm not a customer of any dnd app. I am a user of music companion app, and in my opinion, but i'm clearly in the majority in my area, full feature tuner/music apps are inferior to companion apps for musicians. And it's the same for character sheet helpers for rpgs, we tried using an app a few years ago, it worked well enough, but companion apps are just better in my experience if you play on a table.
Probably because often, companions app have users, not customers?
Customers, users… just interchangeable terms to mean the same thing. The whole issue is this particular developer does not build fully featured apps with Apple as they would take too much money out of any generated income (if any). So yeah, this is just about money.
> People want fully featured apps, not companion apps
I gave multiple example on why this is false. I thought one example was enough to prove something is false, but okay.
From my experience in a sibling discussion.
Their language is emotional and loaded, and include ad hominem attacks.
Perhaps they are going through some difficult times or something.
By what standard?
Xcode is historically inferior when compared to the likes of Jetbrains IDEs and Visual Studio.
And their documentation is so bad devs resort to watching WWDC videos in search for scraps of information.
Anecdotal stories of developers watching WWDC videos for info means something? There are millions upon millions of developers who worked and created apps just fine without referring to WWDC videos.
Maybe because xcode has been the only sensible choice since forever due to apple's imposed limitations?
That's like saying webkit is the best browser engine since it's the most used one on iPhones.
This line of reasoning, if one can call it that, is laughable.
I can't.
With Apple - I am a user and developer. To be honest, I am pretty happy with App Store from both sides. I mean, there are a LOT of issues. But comparing to other platforms, I can deal with them.
I have more problems:
- with cars that don’t have documentations how to replace anything on them, or install CarPlay after purchase. And we pay for those way more than 1000.
- medical insurance in USA and the whole medical system. Everyone knows all the issues we have here. Forget even about the prices, just the whole system.
- very shitty quality of any home appliances, that become smart and might not do basic features as they used to.
- smart TVs. This is certainly where things need to be fixed. My TV now takes 30 seconds to turn on. Vizio, LG, Samsung, all of them.
- amount of spam, robocallers, text, emails. I want that to be fixed.
- internet and cellular providers in USA. The max upload speeds are still 20mpbs
- streaming services, we cut the cables, but now we pay $100 for hbo, disney, hulu and netflix. And prime just added 2.99 for ad free subscription.
Those are just examples. We know about those issues, but we don’t talk about them, because they are beneficial for other large organizations. But we talk about Apple because some large organizations don’t want to pay other large organization money.
And yes. The title is clickbait. Those aren’t tips, those aren’t teachers.