Despegar

>You also seem like someone who is for some reason predisposed to be an apologist for Apple's monopolistic business practices. You certainly don't represent what would likely be the average/majority sentiment of Apple's customers, were they sufficiently informed.

I'm willing to defend Apple because I'm tired of disingenuous arguments from either parties with self-interest or FOSS advocates who have some ideological opposition to Apple's closed nature (and have since the beginning of the App Store and decades before that with Macs).

Apple's customers don't care about the margin structure or costs of app developers. The App Store has massively increased both the supply and demand for apps, and it has actually led to a decline in prices for software. Everyone knows this because they've been complaining about how they can't charge as much for apps as they did in the packaged software days.

>The simple fact is that Apple is injecting itself as an intermediary in the payment process and extracting a comically oversized commission for no meaningful added value.

Frankly anyone who says this with a straight face is being absurd. Apple's commission isn't for "payment processing", promotion, any particular API, or service they provide on their platform. That they do all of those things makes it an attractive place to develop for and sell your product, but it isn't the reason why they get to charge 30%.

They charge 30% because they've amassed 1 billion extremely valuable users who are willing to spend money on apps in their marketplace.

Read the full statement that Apple gave to Hey and the media [1]. If Hey made their email client a standard works with any email account then it'd be fine without in-app purchases. The specific Hey service could be purchased outside the App Store if they want to avoid giving Apple a cut.

[1] https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1273719726196187136

How do you "get a pass if you're big enough"? If you're trying to use Netflix or Spotify as an example of big companies getting a pass then it'd have to only apply to them. But it doesn't.

Smaller subscription video or music apps could use the same section in the App Review Guidelines for "Reader" apps to have an app without in-app purchases that you buy outside the App Store.

They have a specific section in the rules for "Reader" apps like Netflix and Spotify. It's not unclear, it's been there since 2018.

Your analogy was good until the part about warranty, which isn't relevant to Apple.

"Conflict of interest" isn't illegal. Apple has been competing with app developers on their platform from the first days of the App Store. If Spotify is somehow trying to suggest that Apple should be barred from doing so, that's not going to be possible under antitrust laws.

If the antitrust laws were designed to prevent that (they weren't) then there's been a massive failure in enforcement because nothing has changed since Apple launched the App Store in 2008. In reality laws don't require platforms to be "open" or "closed" or dictate how you're supposed to make money. And that kind of regulation would be bad for dynamic markets and competition.

"Monopoly power" and "dominance" mean the same thing. One is used in the US, the other in the EU. You're going to have a tough time getting a court to agree that Apple is dominant in smartphones in the EU.

>That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market).

The reason why everyone has to narrowly define the market to "Apple has monopoly power in the iOS market" is because they don't actually have monopoly power in smartphones and are mad about that fact. Defining markets are a major part of antitrust cases and just because a prosecutor or regulator is willing to do it doesn't mean it will actually work in court.

Those things are all true, but fundamentally their share isn't about any specific API or "service" they provide on the platform. That they do all those things makes it an attractive place to sell your product. But the basic reason is that they've amassed a large number of highly valuable users who are willing to spend money on apps on their marketplace.

It was for ProtonMail though. Inconsistency among app reviewers are going to be a reality forever because they're human. They just need to have processes for appealing it to someone higher up so mistakes can be corrected (which they do).

https://twitter.com/Abjurato/status/1273151302361649159

>I am also fine with Apple collecting a modest fee for providing that service. That fee should probably be somewhere in the 2-3% range.

Apple's cut isn't for payment processing, even if developers insist that's all they do. It's for access to their marketplace and their very large user base.

That's not the case. You can sign up for Office 365 through IAP.

https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1273010912484446209

This isn't that complicated. Apple is free to operate a closed system, just like the video game consoles.

I don't understand how the comparison to government makes any sense. This is a private business and you want to sell on their marketplace. You agreed to their terms in order to do so. If those terms suck you can avoid the platform altogether, as many people do.

>In the scenarios where a user is paying for something that is delivered or executed by the app developer’s infrastructure, digital or not, Apple is a payment gateway, not a publisher. They can either match Stripe or go to Paddle’s rate of 5% because they handle taxes and VAT etc. But either way they are and should act as payment gateway and merchant of record, not publisher.

Your product and associated costs might have changed, but your relationship with Apple hasn't. You aren't paying them for payment processing, you're paying for access to the user base that is magnitudes bigger than when the App Store launched.

The fixation on what Apple's costs are in operating the App Store is weird. It reminds me of the people that look at the estimates of the bill of materials for an iPhone and who use that to say Apple's charging too much. That's irrelevant. It's not meant to be run at-cost for the benefit of developers. The App Store is a business to Apple just like any of their other products. The cut that "makes sense" is whatever the market will bear.

>Your phone is a general purpose computer.

This might be a useful distinction but it isn't for the law. There's no particular requirement that "general purpose computers" behave in a certain way.

>But aren't they a dominant power already. Android can have 80% market share but the revenue reality is 2:1 in the favour of iOS.

A regulator/prosecutor will certainly try to argue they're dominant! But market power is measured by market share, not share of revenue. That'd basically find anyone that sells high-end products in any category as a monopolist.

>Isn't it anti competitive for a new service like a movie streaming app to be at a competitive disadvantage financially than if Apple decides to launch their own.

Apple is not barred from competing with anyone in the App Store, just as Walmart isn't banned from competing with any of the vendors they stock in their stores.

There's no requirement in law that all technology businesses need to hew to any particular philosophy or ideology of computing; no one has to be "open". This has always chafed a lot of tech people because Apple is successful while being "closed".

The only thing that would change this is if Apple was found to be "dominant" or have "monopoly power" in a "relevant market" as held by a court.

The specifics of their business arrangements aren't relevant to my analogy.

I suspect that's an oversight by the App Review team.

Netflix counts as a "Reader" app.

>>3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Protocol just updated their story with this paragraph:

>Apple told me that its actual mistake was approving the app in the first place, when it didn't conform to its guidelines. Apple allows these kinds of client apps — where you can't sign up, only sign in — for business services but not consumer products. That's why Basecamp, which companies typically pay for, is allowed on the App Store when Hey, which users pay for, isn't. Anyone who purchased Hey from elsewhere could access it on iOS as usual, the company said, but the app must have a way for users to sign up and pay through Apple's infrastructure. That's how Apple supports and pays for its work on the platform.

https://www.protocol.com/hey-email-app-store-rejection

That's always been a rule but apps like Netflix count as "Reader" apps that are allowed to do that.

>3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Does the Walmart that has a McDonalds within their store need to charge themselves rent because McDonalds has to in order for it to be "fair"?

Distribution isn't free in any business. Spotify and the like might not be as profitable paying the 30/15%, but that's a Spotify problem not an Apple problem.

DHH is very good at marketing and the theatrics are part of their roll-out strategy. It's also coordinated with this story [1]. The screenshot he posted from Apple actually undermines the whole thread because it makes it clear why it was rejected. If you download their app it just takes you to a login screen with no ability to do anything else in the app. Apple has a section in their developer guidelines for these kinds of "Reader" apps, but there are only specific categories of apps that fall under it [2]:

>3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase.

[1] https://www.protocol.com/hey-email-app-store-rejection

[2] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

There's basically nothing new here that couldn't have also been said on day one of the App Store in 2008. It's just the standard App Store grievance regurgitated to market their new product.

This antitrust case is the most straightforward one for prosecutors to win. It's been a long time coming and the FTC would have brought one during the Obama administration if they weren't so captured by the tech industry and Google in particular [1][2]. I expect Google will lose their antitrust cases globally. Cases against other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon seem less certain, but I haven't really thought about antitrust theories too deeply for them.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-...

[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323689604578221...