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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely do NOT want to download/sideload anything from a third party. You are absolutely correct there. Not even from companies I trust (e.g. I wouldn't want to download the Netflix app from Netflix)

- I DO want apple to spend as much money and effort as they do now on vetting apps.

- I DO realize that means they must grab some money, somwhere.

- I DO NOT want apple to take a cut out of subscriptions for services.

It's as simple as that. There is zero way in hell that apple should have a cut out of subscription services. I should be able to pay any way I want for e.g. podcasts, and Apple should just suck it up and charge $25 from the distributor, once, for reviewing the podcast app.

Basically: Apple needs to just give up their golden egg, run the app store at minium profit, and I hope the EU breaks their kneecaps if they don't swiftly agree to do so.

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If the app you downloaded has an update, does the app not need to be revised again? Why would the revision fee not happen with every update?

Would that not mean developers that update more and get better value for their customers are penalised?

Subscription cuts strikes a happy medium, where apple gets paid when the company gets paid, so if they deliver more features they are not penalised but they are also not allowed to update for free forever (potentially adding malicious code without anyone checking due to only being checked the first time they paid).

Ok, well Apple can keep their model, but they must allow alternate app stores onto iPhones.

If consumers want to pay for Apple's premium services, they can just stick to the default.

If they want stuff cheaper, they can try an app store willing to only make a 10% margin instead of Apple's 40%.

> Why would the revision fee not happen with every update?

It would. So charge $25 again. So long as they charge what their actual cost is (with a reasonable margin) that's fine. But that's a universe apart from charging 10% of the profits of some streaming service because you "provide the platform".

That would actually be pretty nice; devs would maybe not update every day but once a month or something, and have actual changelogs, AND the review queue would be way shorter.

The problem is you have a misunderstanding of what the fee is.

From Apple's perspective it includes the ongoing cost of providing all of the SDKs i.e. CTF.

From a user's perspective it wouldn't be a phone worth buying if those SDKs weren't provided. Why do we have to accept Apple's framing that SDKs are a gift bestowed upon developers rather than an essential part of the software ecosystem that users are buying into?

Third party apps can't exist without the SDK, but the iPhone wouldn't be viable without third party apps. Who makes money in this arrangement has nothing to do with what's fair and everything to do with who has more power.

Then why isn’t there one on macOS?

I get the feeling that the CTF exists more to dissuade developers from building for alt app stores.

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