Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Apple currently has three sets of business terms governing its relationship with app developers, including the App Store's steering rules. The Commission preliminarily finds that:

- None of these business terms allow developers to freely steer their customers. For example, developers cannot provide pricing information within the app or communicate in any other way with their customers to promote offers available on alternative distribution channels.

- Under most of the business terms available to app developers, Apple allows steering only through “link-outs”, i.e., app developers can include a link in their app that redirects the customer to a web page where the customer can conclude a contract. The link-out process is subject to several restrictions imposed by Apple that prevent app developers from communicating, promoting offers and concluding contracts through the distribution channel of their choice.

- Whilst Apple can receive a fee for facilitating via the AppStore the initial acquisition of a new customer by developers, the fees charged by Apple go beyond what is strictly necessary for such remuneration. For example, Apple charges developers a fee for every purchase of digital goods or services a user makes within seven days after a link-out from the app.

[edit] I will add one thing: right now, i'm rich enough that i wouldn't care about paying 30% less if it saves me the hassle of using a new payment processor, and i think this is the case for most people here, or even most people using Apple phones. But 10 years ago when i was scraping by, i had a phone that was given to me (not an iphone, but it could have been), and i would totally do everything i could to save 33% on anything (mostly food tbh). T=Not allowing link out and price discovery is not only anti-market, it's anti-poor.

> T=Not allowing link out and price discovery is not only anti-market, it's anti-poor.

What shops list their own markup? If I go to a supermarket I don't see what the markup is the shop adds. I just see the price here vs the price there. I did that when I didn't have any money as well. It seems to work.

Every shops allow price discovery, and none will charge me if I go in a physical shop to see what a product looks like in real life, then command it on internet. In fact, when I was a student, almost everyone I knew did that, as at that time, internet prices were a lot lower (and we had no money).

At that time I even went in different supermarkets to check foodstuff promos and sometime bought ham in a place, lettuce and mayo in another, and bread at another, on the same day. Not allowing to do that is anti-poor, I'll say it again.

Imagine that some people have only one way to access internet, and it's their phone on public wifi. What Apple is doing should be punished.

You can't compare appstore with other shops, though. It's the only shop that can possible exist, so it faces no competition at any rate by design.

I thought EU law is already going to allow for alternative app stores on iOS?

the law allows, the implementation that apple took, doesn’t in reality. yes, techinically it is possible, but with the associated cost only some big players can do it. there’s no room for free apps when the store has to pay 50 cents per user after a small threshold.

When the markup is external, this is quite common: e.g. shipping, taxes, etc.

When was the last time your grocer explicitly listed out the shipping cost of your globalized shopping cart? Did it show shipping of orange concentrate from florida? or grains from Iowa?

I think you are intentionally misinterpreting parent. When you buy something online, shipping is almost always a separate item on the bill (unless it's free). Taxes are also clearly specified on the invoice. Food delivery apps and Airbnb take it to the extreme, by charging a relatively small price and then adding surcharges. Uber breaks down price into the driver price, marketplace fee, taxes, and sometimes congestion fees. So yes, breaking down price is common.

They're only showing you last mile delivery fees. Don't mistake for once that your food is grown in the city you live in.

Go to a mall. You'll see shops happily advertising their stuff, directing people to their websites, asking people to download their apps etc.

The model breaks down because there is only one supermarket. Well, at least until the EU mandates alternate app stores without Apple handicapping them.

I also do not see where else I can buy it, or prices of other shops for the same product. I also do not see products in shop A tell me I should go to shop B instead.

Wasn’t the shop model what they copied?

It's hard to draw analogies to the real world. It's like if you bought a dishwasher and Best Buy forced the manufacturer to force the user to buy detergent from their store, and forbid the manufacturer from telling the user they can get cheaper detergent elsewhere.

Apples AppStore isn't the shop, it's street where all the shops are. They have decided that no consumer walking this street should know which shops exist or what their prices are.

These analogies break down real quick, but the center of the argument is that companies that grow too large can become "the market" and not "one actor on the market".

That's what I don't understand: what price can't I discover? Things like: how much Netflix costs, or how much something on Amazon costs, or how much a NYT subscription costs? I'm struggling to think of an example of what you're saying.

You cannot sign up for Netlifx on an iPhone, because Netflix either must make 30% less giving that cut to Apple, or charge 30% more.

This is even more egregious when it comes to Spotify, which is unable to compete evenly with Apple Music. I wonder if Apple Music has to give away 30% of it's revenue to a payment processor....

Okay, but I can see the price of Netflix and Spotify. Or are the prices different on iPhone? I don't have one, so I'm only going on what you're saying.

No, the impact of Apple's rules is that you cannot see the price of Netflix in the Netflix app, because Netflix doesn't want to use Apple's IAP and give them whatever % cut.

If Netflix did offer in-app subscription (through Apple), and charged it at a higher rate to account for Apple's cut, it would be forbidden from telling it's more expensive because Apple takes a cut, or that it's available for cheaper on their website. Apple even forbids Netflix emailing their customer after signup telling them it's cheaper on their website.

Okay - but I'm genuinely struggling to see an example. Is the worst symptom of this issue that I'm sent to sign up on an open platform like the Web?

From my understanding (I also don't have an iPhone), you're not sent anywhere, because Netflix were forbidden from telling you to go sign up on their website. There was just no sign up button, and an implicit assumption that you would somehow figure out that you need to open up netflix.com in the browser and subscribe there.

I think that has changed now for Netflix in particular, but not for some other types of apps?

No, that's called steering and it would be perfectly fine. But apple doesn't allow that, and that's what the EU's major complaint is about. So the worst case is that you have no competition, which is the definition of anticompetitive

Reply on news.ycombinator.com