[HN Gopher] Apple will charge 27% commission for alternative pay... ___________________________________________________________________ Apple will charge 27% commission for alternative payment systems in Netherlands Author : walterbell Score : 405 points Date : 2022-02-04 09:25 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (9to5mac.com) (TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com) | TheRealPomax wrote: | I like how they're literally explaining that the actual cost for | app payment processing caps out at 3%, and everything they charge | on top is just pure profit margin. | | Nice one Apple. | makecheck wrote: | Apple allows "free apps" that are _entirely_ ad-supported, _never | giving Apple a dime_ (aside from $99 /year), yet they are | consuming infrastructure: hosting pages, downloads, reviewer | time, etc. Why isn't Apple concerned about any of _those_ costs? | Simple: they make overwhelmingly most of their App Store money | from the handful of developers that offer purchases. This also | leads to perverse outcomes like Apple dragging its feet on scams | that make them heaps of money. | | Developers are literally subsidizing other developers, and it's | not necessarily the richest ones helping the poorest ones. | Someone trying to make money on a $0.99 app is sacrificing more | to Apple than Facebook does with their free app. | | That's why I find all these percentage and payment discussions | weird: _income is so insanely distributed_ that a lot of this | literally does not apply to more than 80% of the stuff on the | store. There are fundamental issues that need to be resolved too. | Infinitesimus wrote: | I suspect as Apple ramps up their second attempt to make | profits from Ads, you will eventually be required to include | Apple's in-app ad solution if you include any third party | (FB/G/etc). See what happened with "Sign In with Apple". | | It's the logical move for them as they move into being a more | service-oriented business and leverage all the devices they | have in the world. | anaisbetts wrote: | Ok, that's fine. If I can _choose_ to use Apple's services, in | exchange for their cut, then that's a trade that I can evaluate | as a business. Instead if I want to develop for iOS I am | _forced_ to use these services, and pay the cost. That's the | Problem. | kmlx wrote: | i don't get why you are forced to do this. | | the app for my phone network just opens a webview where i pay | for stuff. then i close the webview and the funds just show | up in the app. do they also pay 30% to apple? | anaisbetts wrote: | Because if you do this, and you do not have an explicit | exception (carriers being one of them), your app will be | removed from the store | kmlx wrote: | ah, so the carriers are exempted, interesting, thanks. | | so i guess the other route is what most companies do: | webapp... | yurishimo wrote: | If they are following apple's rules, yes, that is what they | want. If they catch you trying to skirt it, your app gets | pulled from the store until you "fix" it. | Spivak wrote: | No, the 30% commission is for digital goods (i.e. goods to | be consumed on the phone -- game "coins", ebooks, music, | movies, comics, app features). | | The things that Apple takes a cut for is actually pretty | small in the grand scheme of commerce. | daveidol wrote: | This is only allowed for "non-digital" goods - otherwise if | you distribute in the App Store. Hell, you can't even | _link_ to or mention that it would be possible to pay | anywhere else. | thegrimmest wrote: | well, the thing is iOS itself isn't exactly a separate | "thing" from these services. Also it wholly belongs to apple. | You don't (and shouldn't) have a "right" to develop for it on | anything but Apple's terms. | alickz wrote: | Is macOS a separate "thing"? Does macOS wholly belong to | Apple? Do I have the "right" to develop a Mac app without | Apples say-so? | | I don't say this to be combative, I just don't see the | difference between iOS and macOS in this regard. | thegrimmest wrote: | You can develop apps all you want, but Apple can break | them anytime with updates. iOS and macOS are marketed and | positioned by Apple differently. One is an open platform, | one isn't. This is and should continue to be at Apple's | sole discretion. If they choose to update macOS to be a | closed platform, they certainly have the right to do so, | don't they? | GeekyBear wrote: | Microsoft and Apple created Windows and MacOS as open | platforms. | | Microsoft and Apple created XBox and iOS as closed | platforms. | | The difference seems to be the intent of the platform | creator. | ellen364 wrote: | > You don't (and shouldn't) have a "right" to develop for | it on anything but Apple's terms. | | Sometimes I wonder what today's computers would be like if | Microsoft had exerted that level of control over DOS and | Windows. Forget downloading some random exe you found | online, only approved programs can be installed. Would | there have been a booming software industry? Would there be | so much malware? Would Microsoft have allowed things like | the first web browsers? | | No comment on the merits of operating systems as walled | gardens. I just find it fascinating (and difficult) to | imagine how things might have been. | musicale wrote: | > Sometimes I wonder what today's computers would be like | if Microsoft had exerted that level of control over DOS | and Windows | | www.xbox.com | | The iPhone is largely a game machine as well, as some 70% | of Apple's revenue from the App Store is from games. | thegrimmest wrote: | I just think we should allow both options to compete and | flourish. As you point out, each has their merits. If | users end up preferring walled gardens and appliance- | style devices, then shouldn't that be what they get? | AnthonyMouse wrote: | The choice needs to be independent of the rest of the | stack. If Apple wants to make an option where you can | lock your iPhone to only installing apps from Apple's | store and taking it out of that mode requires a factory | reset, that's fine, because the customer has a choice. | | Tying that choice to the choice of hardware and operating | system is anti-competitive. | thegrimmest wrote: | Why is tying software to hardware anti-competitive? It's | commonplace in literally everywhere, from washing | machines to televisions to game consoles to CNC machines | to cars to tractors. An overwhelming majority of hardware | is sold with software included, and is designed to work | with that software alone. Why are we trying to force | iPhones into a special, narrow category they are | _actively avoiding_? Why do we need to make the | distinction _at all_? | anaisbetts wrote: | > You don't (and shouldn't) have a "right" to develop for | it on anything but Apple's terms. | | That's one perspective. However I would argue that Apple is | big enough, and the number of alternative platforms is | small enough, that it is in the Public Interest that Apple | be required by the government (aka, Us, collectively), to | play by a different set of rules, rules that are decided by | you know, Democracy, rather than by fiat. | thegrimmest wrote: | Who is being hurt here? Users are clearly flocking to | this platform because it _does what they want_. Who cares | that app developers are unhappy? There are lots and lots | of smartphone manufacturers. It 's a thriving market. | Most non-technical folks don't perceive the device and | the OS as separate things. | | If any company wants to disrupt the market, much like | Apple itself did with the iPhone, there is literally | nothing stopping them. | | Edit: | | > _rules that are decided by you know, Democracy_ | | At what point does democracy overreach? Is there one? | Isn't it "democracy in defense of liberty"? | yulaow wrote: | If we are sure people like so much apple services and | integration, should be no problem at all to have | alternatives not even directly managed by apple (so that | it won't cost anything to apple to support it, except for | opening some "store api"), still most users would keep | using only the integrated apple services... | | or not? | | Maybe users would like them even more! | thegrimmest wrote: | The point here is that _Apple itself_ should be able to | choose when and how and to whom it open the _Apple | Store_. It should not be compelled to do so by anyone but | its own directors and shareholders. If someone wants to | sell phones that don 't have this limitation, they are | free to seek investment and build them. | pixl97 wrote: | There are two different things here. | | First is the Apple Store, and you are correct you have no | right to have your application on it. | | Second is the hardware device I paid money for and exists | in my pocket. There is no reasonable right that Apple | says "Only we can put a program on it, and you will have | no ability to run your own programs on it" | | We live in a world where hardware makers of all kinds | think we own them a permanent rent. It is a poor and | expensive path to let them continue. | commoner wrote: | It's not reasonable to exepct other app stores to build | their own mobile operating systems, which is why there is | momentum among lawmakers in the U.S. to pass a bill that | protects the right of users to use alternative app stores | and sideload apps.[1] It is unjust for Apple to use its | market power in the U.S. smartphone industry (57% market | share in Q4 2021)[2] to force users and developers to | endure the effects of a 15-30% fee (offset by a | 17.6-42.9% price increase) on the majority of revenue | generated by app developers, a fee that would not survive | a market where multiple app stores were able to compete | for iOS users. | | Apple's market share is different in the Netherlands, but | strong regulations in one major market are all it takes | to punch a hole in Apple's monopoly/duopoly position. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30195167 | | [2] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/q4-2021-us- | smartphone-m... | clusterfish wrote: | Users have no choice, the market is a duopoly, and | Android app store has all the same problems (because it's | a duopoly). You can't feasibly escape platform tax on | mobile. | Retric wrote: | You don't need to use Google's android App Store on | Android. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | They make it sufficiently arduous to do otherwise that | the bar is higher than what ordinary people can reach. | The proof that this is not the case will be when a single | store has less than half of the Android app market. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Yep, apple and google are basically a duopoly, and if you | want a "normal smartphone" (basically a device, where you | can get apps for your online banking, mainstream games | and other content, etc.), there are basically no real | alternatives. | realusername wrote: | Hence the market abuse regulations, we can't really have | only two companies controlling all the market. iOS became | too big for Apple. | thegrimmest wrote: | why not exactly? As long as consumers are getting good | devices and good competition (which they are), then | what's the problem? It's not like the door is closed to | innovation here, if any company can disrupt the | smartphone market then the takings are all theirs. This | is literally what Apple did with the original iPhone. | Have you heard of Blackberry recently? I don't see that | the incumbents are preventing this in any meaningful way, | in the same way that RIM wasn't. Furthermore there are | way more than two players in the smartphone game. | realusername wrote: | There's no competition, which competition exactly? The | only tariff change Apple ever done in 10 years was due | ... to a threat of an anti-trust lawsuit, you can't make | this up. Even Apple basically admits indirectly the lack | of competition. You only have two companies, with very | similar rules and behaviour, there's no market anymore. | | Don't get my comment wrong, I'd say the exact same thing | about Google. It's a duopoly without any competition | whatsoever. | | > if any company can disrupt the smartphone market then | the takings are all theirs | | I don't think that's possible, even Microsoft failed at | it with their massive funding. | thegrimmest wrote: | https://www.gsmarena.com/makers.php3 loads of mobile | phone companies, lots of healthy competition. Non- | technical consumers don't perceive the device and the OS | as separate things. | realusername wrote: | I'm talking about the mobile app market here, not the | quality of the camera. | thegrimmest wrote: | Right, but Apple is a mobile phone company, not a mobile | app company. iOS app companies exist entirely at the | pleasure of Apple, just like companies who depend on the | Twitter API. | realusername wrote: | I disagree with that, Apple is a mobile app company and | there's only two in the world. | | Twitter as big as it is, is just a website across | millions of others. In the mobile app market there is | exactly two companies, Apple and Google, that's it. | | Does Oppo or Samsung has any power when publishing an | app? No? Then they are not part of this market. | thegrimmest wrote: | There aren't many mobile apps you can buy from Apple. | Apple is primarily a hardware manufacturer. Their entire | product lineup consists of devices[1]. | | 1. https://www.apple.com/us/store | colinjoy wrote: | Entirely? | | https://www.apple.com/services/ | https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/ | https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/ | | Of course, these are not the bread and butter products. | | I find it a bit pointless to separate their hardware and | software. I know few people who run Windows or Linux on | their Apple hardware. For me, Apple is primarily a | _products_ company that excels in fusing hardware and | software together. They are increasingly expanding into | services, too. | smoldesu wrote: | > Right, but Apple is a mobile phone company, not a | mobile app company. | | Apple has consistently made more money from collecting | their 30% tax than they have from manufacturing iPhones: | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/263402/apples-iphone- | rev... | | https://www.statista.com/statistics/296226/annual-apple- | app-... | thegrimmest wrote: | Isn't that the whole point? They can only make that money | because they build the phones to begin with. They also | invested in building the entire platform, literally from | scratch. Isn't this just a return on their investment? | Aren't they perfectly entitled to it? Why can't phones be | loss leaders into mobile app ecosystems, just like razors | are loss leaders into razor blades? | owisd wrote: | > Aren't they perfectly entitled to it? | | Up to a point, no. Common Carrier laws have been around | for a long time and had demonstrable benefits. Net | neutrality means phone companies can't use their | infrastructure however they like. AT&T wanted to just sit | on their patent for the transistor but was pushed by the | government into to licensing it to Motorola, TI, etc. | There's no reason why similar regulations couldn't be | applied to mobile app platforms. | smoldesu wrote: | App developers shouldn't be beholden to using Apple's | payment processing if they don't want to use it. Along | that same line of logic, forcing developers to go through | Apple for first-party distribution gives them a defacto | monopoly over the iPhone. Apple could charge 85% overhead | and there would be nothing developers could do about it. | | The only fair resolution here is to force Apple to | compete with other storefronts to prove that the value | they provide is competitive. Apple could resolve this | issue in a number of ways, but they've only chose to make | the problem worse; that's why 34 states have come forward | voicing their concern[0], and why EU regulators have been | stepping in to block Apple's service expansions. They're | the largest company in the world, and they deserve the | most regulatory scrutiny for it; anything else is a | failure of democracy and capitalism. | | [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-dozens-u-states- | apple-03470... | thegrimmest wrote: | > _monopoly over the iPhone_ > _Apple could charge 85% | overhead and there would be nothing developers could do | about it._ | | That's exactly right! Then fewer and poorer apps would be | built on iOS, and users would notice, and they would | migrate to other platforms. This has happened plenty of | times before. Yes, Apple has a monopoly over the iPhone - | it's an Apple product. Just like Sony have a monopoly | over the PS5, and Samsung has a monopoly over the | WF45R6300AV Front Load Washing Machine. | | The only fair resolution would be to allow Apple to do | whatever it wants with Apple devices. If everyone at | Apple collectively lost their minds tomorrow, they would | have every right to pull all apps from the App Store | completely. They could shut down the platform. It's | literally _theirs_ in every sense of the word. They built | it. They own it. They operate it. Just because people are | concerned doesn 't make socializing iPhones or the App | Store in any way reasonable. | charcircuit wrote: | Apple could decided third party apps aren't allowed and | then developers make 0%. It's their platform to decided | what to do with. If they think 15/30% works well, then so | be it. | pixl97 wrote: | Apple is 100% a mobile app company. They guard all the | doors, they hold all the keys to the hardware device. | Thereby they dictate what you can run on _your_ hardware | that _you_ paid for after the sale. | spywaregorilla wrote: | > Apple allows "free apps" that are entirely ad-supported, | never giving Apple a dime (aside from $99/year) | | This is a hilarious quote, especially with the way you | highlighted "never giving apple a dime" | tobias3 wrote: | That's a good point. They are taxing paid apps and not taxing | ad-supported apps. Which incentivizes the ad-model and | therefore reduces the number of paid apps. | | This has been the case since the beginning with mobile app | stores so who knows how the distribution of paid vs ad- | supported apps would be if this wasn't the case. | AndriyKunitsyn wrote: | Uhm, the $99/year thing is actually substantial. It is not | competitive at all. | | I'm pretty sure if Apple let people just download IPA files | (like they do with APKs on Android), lots of developers would | choose that over the walled garden. | shagie wrote: | What about the price to become a Playstation, Nintendo, or | Xbox developer? | | ---- Sony ---- | | https://www.retroreversing.com/official-playStation-devkit | | > Perhaps the most ingenious move on Sony's part was its | decision to use the PC as a development platform, enabling it | to call on the skills of huge number of developers. Licensees | now receive a pair of full-length ISA cards that plug into a | normal PC. These two cards contain the entire PlayStation | chipset, as well as extra RAM and some logic to enable them | to talk to the PC. 'lt's great having the system inside the | PC,' reckons Peter Molyneux. 'With most bulky console | development systems it sometimes feels like you're surrounded | by NASA control.' | | > Such technology doesn't come cheap, though. PlayStation | developers need to cough up PS 12,000 for the full system | (which Sony is adamant it doesn't make money on), although | all subsequent software tools and hardware upgrades are free. | | ---- Nintendo ---- | | https://developer.nintendo.com/faq | | > Registering for the portal and downloading the tools is | completely free. Also, if you plan to release a digital only | title, you can use the IARC system to retrieve the age rating | for no fee, which will allow you to publish in all the | participating countries. All that is left is the cost of | acquiring development hardware: you will find more | information on this inside the portal. | | https://developer.nintendo.com/home/development-for- | nintendo... | | > On 3/25/2021, the only Nintendo platform for which new | development is possible will be Nintendo Switch. | | > Development for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U will only be | possible for those who have already purchased development | hardware. Those who do not have development hardware will not | be able to develop. | | https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/nintendo-switch-dev- | kit... | | > At the Game Creators Conference 2017 in Osaka, Japan, | Nintendo announced that Switch development kits would only | cost 50,000 yen, or roughly $450. | | > To put things in perspective, a PlayStation 3 development | kit ran for $20,000 at launch. | | ---- Microsoft ---- | | https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft- | store/regist... | | > Individual accounts cost approximately $19 USD, and company | accounts cost approximately $99 USD (the exact amounts may | vary depending on your country or region). This is a one-time | registration fee and no renewal is required. | | (having some difficulty finding the specifics of the Xbox | series X and series S dev kits) | | --- --- --- | | The point of this is that as a game device, the iPhone is in | line with other developer programs and in some cases (Sony, | looking at you) quite a bit less expensive. | pixl97 wrote: | Too bad the iPhone is actually a phone, and not 'just' a | game device. | fr2null wrote: | $99/year is literally nothing for most companies. | Furthermore, Android has competing app stores, yet by far the | biggest one is still the Play Store. Lots of developers (and | users) did not and would not chose other distribution | methods. | [deleted] | joseloyaio wrote: | That's a lot. That's basically a $9/month SaaS. | | They are not subsidized at all. | | I've seen cheaper subscription services that also come with | support, hosting and services. | charcircuit wrote: | It's less than a day's worth of wages for a software | engineer and provides you a potential audience of | millions of users. | willhinsa wrote: | $99/year, _AND_ you have to do your development on a Mac! | Kwpolska wrote: | > never giving Apple a dime (aside from $99/year), yet they are | consuming infrastructure: hosting pages, downloads, reviewer | time, etc | | Pretty sure $99/year is more than a dime. It should be more | than enough to pay for hosting the app. As for reviews, app | developers don't _need_ those, so if Apple wants to review | apps, they should also be the ones paying for it. | makecheck wrote: | It's the only income they receive in that case, and it is | fixed, whereas their costs are variable (e.g. whether some | app is downloaded thousands of times or dozens; whether apps | decide to post video previews or not; they receive the same | money but incur different costs on infrastructure). | | App Review alone takes hours per update and is done many | times a year for apps. Even if a single Apple employee is | involved, and even if they are paid something pathetic like | $5 an hour, that $99 will be eaten up quickly from reviews | alone. | | My point is that it doesn't add up; Apple likes to claim all | these "costs" for "running" the App Store but there are | gaping holes in their accounting unless you consider that not | all developers are really equal here. | Orphis wrote: | Do you really think the hardware costs THAT much too? | | Users are already paying a premium for the privilege of buying | an iOS device. And Apple knows that usually it will add some | pressure on friends and family to have devices in the same | family. Everything related to the app store is already paid | for, the bandwidth is cheap, maintaining the service is cheap | enough and covered by the device premium AND the developer | subscription. | | Whether the apps are free or paid for (with a big cut for | Apple), the company is already making money. The tax on top of | everything is just a way to make a lot of money and favor Apple | services when compared to competitors in the same segment. | consp wrote: | It's a bit late in the discussion but basically they are saying | at most 3% is cost , and emphasis on "at most". The rest is just | profit or legal requirements (and thus not counted to loss). | Isinlor wrote: | EU is specifically drafting legislation for gatekeepers in | Digital Markets Law. | | TL;DR Apple and Google will have to allow to install third-party | app stores trough their stores. | | This type of private taxes will become impossible to enforce. | | https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?qid=16081168... | | Gatekeepers like Apple will have specific obligation according to | Article 5: | | (b) allow business users to offer the same products or services | to end users through third party online intermediation services | at prices or conditions that are different from those offered | through the online intermediation services of the gatekeeper; | | (c) allow business users to promote offers to end users acquired | via the core platform service, and to conclude contracts with | these end users regardless of whether for that purpose they use | the core platform services of the gatekeeper or not, and allow | end users to access and use, through the core platform services | of the gatekeeper, content, subscriptions, features or other | items by using the software application of a business user, where | these items have been acquired by the end users from the relevant | business user without using the core platform services of the | gatekeeper; | | And Article 6: | | (c) allow the installation and effective use of third party | software applications or software application stores using, or | interoperating with, operating systems of that gatekeeper and | allow these software applications or software application stores | to be accessed by means other than the core platform services of | that gatekeeper. The gatekeeper shall not be prevented from | taking proportionate measures to ensure that third party software | applications or software application stores do not endanger the | integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by the | gatekeeper; | | (k) apply fair and non-discriminatory general conditions of | access for business users to its software application store | designated pursuant to Article 3 of this Regulation. | | Following articles, like: | | - article 7: Compliance with obligations for gatekeepers | | - article 10: Updating obligations for gatekeepers and | | - article 11: Anti-circumvention | | Give the EU Commission quite a lot of maneuvering power to ensure | effective implementation. | MilaM wrote: | A more general explanation of the new law can be found here: | | https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro... | tomjen3 wrote: | This should be changed so the end user gets to decide what | payment service to use. I don't want to download and app and | have to insert my credit card ever and I want to cancel | subscriptions in one place the way I can now. | | It should not be up to the developer to choose how I pay them, | only the amount. | schmorptron wrote: | Good point! If people are happy to pay 13EUR instead of 10EUR | for the convenience of using the platform owner's payment | system, that should always be an option. | disiplus wrote: | the app maker should have the complete freedom what payment | options he offers. if i want you to pay me in stones that | is my freedom, the same you are free to not use my app and | find another app that offers methods that you like. | john_minsk wrote: | Great point. Also true: I already have some level of | trust with Apple(I bought their device), not you. So | Apple should return more relevant results for me on | AppStore or even allow me to filter out those apps, that | doesn't support preferred option of payment. Will you | agree with such setting? | ThatPlayer wrote: | I don't mind it being a filter, but I think them sorting | them like that by default could be an issue. Would you | equivalate it to developers paying for higher search | ranking? Apple favoring their own services over others | definitely could be an anti-trust issue. | stale2002 wrote: | Sure. A reasonable compromise would be that the app developer | puts Apple's payment system in the app, for you to use, but | all transparently tells you that you have to pay the 30% | Apple fee yourself. | | So, you'd be shown 2 options. Option 1 would be their payment | processor, and option 2 would be Apple's. And you could | choose to pay an extra 30% to use Apple's. | | Problem solved right? Everyone gets what they want, and pays | the appropriate fee. | lifty wrote: | Card details can be stored in the phone and the OS can offer | a payments API through which any payment provider can | integrate. Similarly to how the File Provider API works. | srcreigh wrote: | What makes a business a gatekeeper? Would this require for eg | discord to allow 3rd party clients? | schmorptron wrote: | Uuuh, things are gonna get interesting! Putting on my tinfoil | hat here, if this goes through I forsee that we'll see a lot of | fearmongering about malware in the near future, and even some | well publicized cases of malware infecting people who go | outside of the established app stores. | MikeDelta wrote: | Indeed, that is the argument Apple is making, and at the same | time the app store itself seems riddled with scammers. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27413934 | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526156 | | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26015866 | | [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986515 | komuher wrote: | App store is full of scam right now so wouldnt be a big | change xD | kybernetyk wrote: | That seems very deserved. Not. | pembrook wrote: | It's interesting to me that the OS market in two separate | generations of tech has naturally shaken out to become a duopoly. | | Desktop computing for decades has been just Windows or MacOS (For | 98.5% of people, yes I know Linux exists, but quit being cute). | | Mobile computing took only a few years to shake down to iOS and | Android. | | Are OS markets inevitably always going to mature into duopoly? To | me this is the core issue here. | | Since computing is now the basis of the modern economy, the 3 | companies that are in the OS business across desktop and mobile | (Microsoft, Apple, Google) are basically the wealthiest companies | on earth due to their ability to extract rents from all of | computing. | | I get that these companies built the market (although you could | argue the tech was inevitable, so many teams were working on it | in the early days) but once you become one of the winners and | most valuable company on earth, extracting 30% rents starts to | feel like a drag on future innovation. | | It's also interesting to me that Jobs originally courted John | Scully from Pepsi to run Apple way back in the 80s---what a | bizarre choice. Did he know the market would inevitably always be | a duopoly like the Cola market, already back then? | toolslive wrote: | they're probably just anchoring the rate for future negotiations. | natch wrote: | I am a huge fan of Apple but... also a fan of reality so I'll | share this story here. | | This fun anecdote is about what I think is Apple's treatment of | other companies' pricing rules -- The Apple Company Store at 1 | Infinite Loop in Cupertino used to sell a variety of clothing, | accessories, and various items including, seasonally, Lego | Mindstorms kits. | | My impression from having observed Lego over the years is that | they have very strict retail pricing rules. I have no other | evidence for this than what I've seen in the market. | | Each year at the Apple Company Store, when Christmas season | rolled around, the store would get Lego Mindstorms in stock. One | year, we decided to buy a set. | | The store is frequented by Apple employees, who get a steep | discount on Apple merchandise. But Lego... they have (I think) | strict rules about discounts, so what was Apple to do here? | | Now I am making some guesses here, to be fair. But I found it | very interesting that there at the store they had a large pile of | Mindstorms sets that all had mysteriously carefully damaged | boxes, which looked like the corner of the box had been gently | stepped on, all in the same way, and that were all marked down | significantly, something like 30 or 40% for "damage." Inside, the | sets were fine. | | It could have been just a coincidence, but my spidey senses were | telling me it was something else... I suspect it was Apple, not | able to mark the items down for employees due to strict Lego | corporate rules about when sets can be marked down and when they | cannot (sound familiar? Apple is pretty strict about pricing as | well, in my understanding). And they found a loophole in that | damaged items could be marked down. | | So, somehow, the items ended up "damaged", as a nice holiday | special gift item for employees (or for anyone who came into the | shop, lucky for me). | | These days, the Apple Company Store after a revamp does not carry | as much third party merchandise, so I don't know if this is still | a thing. | eli wrote: | Or they made a deal with Lego to get them cheap in exchange for | making them harder to resell or return to a different store for | a profit | natch wrote: | Could be. | tinus_hn wrote: | This tactic is in no way specific to Apple or Lego, in many | businesses with high markup they want to (in specific cases) | sell at a lower price without breaking their contracts, | insulting their costumers and inviting scalpers. So they sell | items that can't be resold, aren't wanted by the costumers that | buy at the original price and are not covered by their | contracts. | jeffybefffy519 wrote: | I cant understand what justification Apple thinks they have for a | payment processing cost this high? A couple of percent sure, but | justify the rest? | Spivak wrote: | This is the biggest confusion. You're not paying 30% for Apple | to process your payments -- you're paying 3% for that, | apparently. Not really a surprise since that's what every other | CC processor charges but now we know. The rest is a sales | commission, always has been. If you read any of the documents | for the Apple/Epic lawsuit you can see exactly that. You want | to reach iOS users and sell to them on Apple's land, that's the | price. | | You wanna sell stuff to players in your Xbox game, 30%. You | wanna sell stuff to players in your Playstation game, 30%. The | service they're selling is stalls in their market that gets a | lot of foot traffic. | aspenmayer wrote: | A reminder: the original app store on iOS was saurik's Cydia. App | Store wasn't even on iPhone 2G at launch. | | Cydia is free and open source. Hopefully saurik can clarify the | commission for paid apps on Cydia, but something tells me it | isn't 27%. | can16358p wrote: | Don't want to play devil's advocate here but if they didn't, many | big players would be using their platforms to build their apps, | reaching Apple's customers on Apple devices, giving the app for | free and processing everything off-Apple land, basically using | the whole platform for making millions without giving Apple | literally anything ($99 dev fee is nothing compared to all the | money being made). | | If I were a company who literally created a whole industry and | many other companies were making millions off the platform I | created, I'd of course take my cut, and a well-deserved big one. | | It's a for-profit company who enabled those apps/purchases* to be | made in the first place, not a charity or a non-profit. | | (*: not talking about non-app related payments like real world | items, obviously) | tsimionescu wrote: | So poor Apple would only be left with the 1000$ for each iPhone | sold? | | I wonder if such arguments existed decrying Microsoft's immense | charity in allowing others to make money off of its platform | back when Windows was the dominant way of computing and | connecting to the Internet with 0 fees for installing software | on Windows... | amelius wrote: | > If I were a company who literally created a whole industry | | Because computing didn't exist before Apple? | wccrawford wrote: | Not even mobile computing. There was a Windows Mobile long | before the iPhone existed. They may have really brought it | mainstream, but if they hadn't, someone else would have. | qalmakka wrote: | Following your logic than all PC makers should be paying a fee | to IBM for creating the PC? It doesn't make sense, it was never | done this way in the past and it only goes on because sadly | most politicians are borderline computer illiterate and are | easily bamboozled by the complexity of the matter. Just look at | when Sundar Pichai testified at the US Senate, most lawmakers | have zero ideas on how the Internet works, and they don't | really have the means to understand the similarities that exist | between what Apple is doing and the "brick and mortar" world | they are accustomed to. | | If you create an industry, a platform, you already have | instruments to monetize on it. the Apple software platform is | already tied to its own devices, from whose sales Apple has | earned a vast amount of wealth over the years and profited | thanks to their massive margins. What makes Apple different | from Google in this regard is that the Play store has won due | to _consumer choice_ , while Apple has basically prohibited | side loading and alternate stores in any possible way and | shape. | | The Amazon Appstore has failed to gain marketshare because | people simply didn't like it, and Google play was just | superior, end of it, and if you want to use Google services in | order to give your customers what they want you have to pay | Google's fee, fair and square. On an Apple device there are no | ways to sell people anything without paying Apple because Apple | does not allow it. | | If Apple starts providing a shitty service with its Appstore, | there is no way to circumvent it, you must choose either to | quit the iOS market entirely or play along whatever rules they | decide to adopt. This is basically extorting protection money, | with a few extra steps on top of it. | Spivak wrote: | > Following your logic than all PC makers should be paying a | fee to IBM for creating the PC. | | This is called patents, so yes, actually. But this is more | akin to Microsoft charging 30% for sales in Windows and Xbox, | which would be totally allowed. | | > politicians are borderline computer illiterate | | And developers are ignorant of business and law which is what | this case is really about. Absolutely nothing about Apple's | sales commission is about tech. Wanting something to be | different just because it's digital doesn't make it so. Uber | is still a taxi company. | | > you already have instruments to monetize on it | | And that instrument is charging for access to the platform -- | some might say 30%. | | > there are no ways to sell people anything without paying | Apple | | Right. This is the point. This is literally the thing Apple | charges for. The one thing. The thing that people, very | rationally, want for free. I also want to get all the | benefits of a company's work without paying too. | | > you must choose either to quit the iOS market entirely | | This is the core issue, Apple, and the law in most countries, | say you have absolutely no inherent right to access the | market they created. You don't get to demand the ability to | set up a stall in someone's mall because they charge 30% to | the stores. | smnrchrds wrote: | It reminds me of ISPs' arguments that Netflix and like should | pay more for fast connection to their customers because | "otherwise who is gonna pay for the bandwidth?" We the | customers do. We pay a high monthly fee for our connection and | ISPs want to slow down our traffic to double-dip by charging | content providers the access to us. If I pay 1500$ for a phone, | I expect Apple to treat me as their _customer_ , not as a | resource to be sold to App developers. | sebastien_b wrote: | Apple's _real_ customers are their shareholders, not its | users. | mrtksn wrote: | If you paid attention to Epic v.s. Apple, that was also the | conclusion of the US court.[0] | | When you use Apple tools to to make and publish software, Apple | is entitled to a cut. The limitations Apple imposes on the | payment processors are simply to make it easy to collect their | cut and streamline the user experience. | | I think the only scenario where Apple is not entitled to a cut is | when you use non-Apple toolchain to develop your apps and spread | it through non-Apple distribution channels, i.e. Cydia. Currently | that requires a jailbroken device but maybe if Apple is forced to | allow side loading, the cut for distribution can be collected by | other companies instead of Apple. | | [0] https://9to5mac.com/2021/09/14/apple-can-still-charge-its- | ap... | | "Apple has the legal right to do business with anyone they want," | said Paul Gallant, managing director at Cowen & Co. "So Apple | could change the terms of the App Store and say to developers, | regardless of where you collect your revenue, you owe us 30%, and | if developers refuse to pay it, Apple would be free to de- | platform them." | GeekyBear wrote: | There's an excellent overview of the US Federal court's 180 | page decision on Youtube, but it's rather long. The diction is | good, so it's still understandable when set to run at a faster | speed. | | The first 15 minutes is a summary and the balance of the video | is a more detailed look. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43CMV8KIs3E | | TL;DW, the judge makes it clear that Apple can still charge a | cut even if developers use someone else's payment system. | | She also hints strongly that Epic screwed up by not challenging | the size of Apple's cut instead of challenging their right to | take a cut. | ls15 wrote: | If only they would allow sideloading. How cool would a F-Droid | equivalent for iOS be? I can only hope that Apple or regulators | will open up that walled garden a bit. | schmorptron wrote: | Doesn't that still leave the problem with "using apple tools"? | Currently, the only way I know of to compile apps that run on | iPhones are xcode, on a macintosh. | | Even when using frameworks like flutter I'm pretty sure you | still need to use an apple compiler to make the final build, | right? | viktorcode wrote: | Technically you don't need it. There's no mechanism | preventing another toolchain from producing an iOS build. | It's just nobody is interested in creating an alternative | toolchain. | mrtksn wrote: | I don't think that you have to use Apple toolchain, it's just | way way easier to do so. I think there was some linux | toolchain that you can use to build binaries for iOS. | | On a non-jailbroken devices you will need to sign your binary | with Apple's help but on a jailbroken device you can install | whatever you want. It's also perfectly legal. | | Besides, some hacking companies manage to install their | malware on non-jailbroken devices. | kbuck wrote: | There is no 3rd-party toolchain that you can use for a | complete iOS (or even MacOS) build. Even if you cross- | compile the majority of your code, you will need to | transfer the binaries to a Mac for code signing. Everywhere | I've worked that has produced Mac builds has had at least a | small cluster of Mac machines to perform code signing. (But | usually at this point, you just give up and perform the | entire build on the Mac cluster.) | foxfluff wrote: | Huh so they were fined 5M eur and pulled this trick. I think they | deserve a follow-up fine that's at least two orders of magnitude | greater. | rvz wrote: | I don't see why Apple would back down from making their | intellectual property to be used for free. But it is quite | unsurprising and expected that they will find a way to collect | the fees even if IAP was optional. [0] [1]. | | [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29490666 | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29914273 | jacquesm wrote: | What intellectual property? | rvz wrote: | So using Apple's SDKs, App Store, devices and services etc | isn't their intellectual property and it is all public domain | and free to use? | | In case if you haven't read the comment: | | From [0] of page 112 (b) | | > The Court agrees with the general proposition that Apple is | entitled to be paid for its intellectual property. The | inquiry though does not end with the bald conclusion. Apple | provides evidence that it invests enormous sums into | developing new tools and features for iOS. | | I don't think anyone would agree to develop all of that for | free at a loss, especially when it is used by billions of | users and devices. They will still collect the fees either | way and as predicted. | | [0] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17442392/812/epic- | games... | pritambaral wrote: | > So using Apple's SDKs, App Store, devices and services | etc isn't their intellectual property and it is all public | domain and free to use? | | Don't you have to pay $99/yr for that already? | etchalon wrote: | No. | jacquesm wrote: | Different court case. | fartcannon wrote: | Apple is acting a bit petulant. | sebastien_b wrote: | Instead of forcing Apple to allow alternative payment methods, | Apple should have been forced to implement PWAs to full specs in | Safari/WebKit. That would help take care of the AppStore | monopoly. | anonymouse008 wrote: | This is an appropriate way to handle the incentives. Not | keeping par with PWA (as in what is available in modern | browsers) is _the_ unfair competitive practice. | Apocryphon wrote: | Realizing Jobs' dream, eh? | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1nwLilQy64 | karmasimida wrote: | What is the reasoning behind this???? | | Can they be more blatant about the Apple Tax they are collecting? | linuxhansl wrote: | Sounds like waylaying to me. Hear me out... | | I can see a reasonable processing fee, and even a reasonable | establish-the-purchase fee. Perhaps in the order of - or a bit | more than - a credit card. So maybe somewhere between 5 and 15%. | (Depends on how much more likely users find an apps through the | app-store as opposed to a web search.) | | Anything above is abusing Apple's market dominating position. | Especially because there are no (official) ways to install 3rd | party apps on iPhones et al. | | Just MHO. | pixl97 wrote: | I personally think we should make it state/federal law that the | 'store' fee be printed at the time of purchase. | | So when the person clicks the buy button on the app they get a | invoice like | | Software subscription: 66.66 Apple hostage fee: 33.33 | | Total: $100 | skeletal88 wrote: | It is astounding to see so many people here argue for the 30% | apple tax. | | It is like the mafia demanding you pay for the privilege of doing | business on your street. | | 30% is just too much. | | My client is selling a service where they are selling a physical | product together with something you do with it in the app. | Currently the customers buy the service and device in a separate | shop and the app is just for the convenience of the user, they | could also use a laptop conputer or whatever else. The client | wanted to include a link to the shop in the app, but apple | wouldn't allow it without their 30% tax. With this 30% cut | providing the service for apple users wouldn't make business | sense, they would lose money on each sale. Should they have | higher prices for iphone users to make up for that? | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | The profit margins scream lack of competition. In a competitive | market you'd have dozens of companies scrambling in the hope of | shaving off even 1% of the App store's revenue. | echelon wrote: | People fall in love with Apple the same way they do a sports | team or actor. They begin to cheer for it and want their | favorite to win all the games, the best roles, the awards. | Unfortunately these fields are all zero-sum, and small | companies get pulverized by the hits to their cash flow. | mmar wrote: | I wonder how many of those defending Apple position also own | Apple stocks. | vmception wrote: | yeah usually the mafia has lower tax rates | jacquesm wrote: | People are arguing for that tax because they genuinely believe | that Apple will somehow respond to this in a way that will | cause their own income stream to be affected negatively (for | instance: if Apple decides to raise the 30% to make up for the | shortfall of companies that go outside of their platform). | | It's Stockholm Syndrome. | | Apple got away lucky that they weren't ordered to be split up | and to run their payment service provider as an independent | entity. It could still happen, the EU is pretty aggressive when | it comes to monopolies overreaching their legal limits or | abusing their position. | | The various phone operators here have been smacked down pretty | hard time and again on things like roaming, service fees and so | on. Apple is no different. | endisneigh wrote: | How much money did app developers make before and after the | existence of the App Store? | | Do the math. | wavefunction wrote: | If my math checks out, it comes out to...? Trust-busting an | Abusive Rent-Seeking Monopoly?!? | endisneigh wrote: | Yes I'm sure app developers were making tons before Apple | and their rent seeking abusive monopoly. | | If it's so abusive for the developers why do they stay on | it? | aspenmayer wrote: | If it were only abusive for the developers, why is EU | intervening on behalf of all users, including developers? | It's harmful to competition, and the harm to developers | is the cherry on top. | AJ007 wrote: | Yeah but how much money did Apple make before the iPhone? | Maybe they should be paying the telecoms for all this data | use. | rosndo wrote: | I'm arguing for the tax because it provides a strong | incentive for app developers to stick to Apples payment | systems, that's good for me as an end user. | | I'm also arguing for the tax because I believe that Apple has | the absolute right to collect such a tax, why wouldn't they? | They're far from being a monopolist. | | Stockholm syndrome? Mobile app development sounds like the | last thing I'd want to have anything to do with. | efraim wrote: | Wouldn't 50 % provide an even stronger incentive? Why is it | that 30 % is the perfect number? | | Apples seems to have that right, but some people are saying | that they shouldn't have that right. Laws are possible to | change. | matsemann wrote: | > * that's good for me as an end user* | | You're probably paying 27% more for your app stuff than you | would have to, though. Is that also good for an end user? | jacquesm wrote: | > I'm arguing for the tax because it provides a strong | incentive for app developers to stick to Apples payment | systems, that's good for me as an end user. | | You as an end user are not party to the agreement that | Apple has with the developers. You are of course free to | choose not to do business with parties that do not support | Apples payment system, but the same goes for Stripe, | PayPal, Adyen and all the other PSPs. | | > I'm also arguing for the tax because I believe that Apple | has the absolute right to collect such a tax, why wouldn't | they? | | Because they are abusing their position to do so. | | > They're far from being a monopolist. | | Your understanding of what constitutes a de-facto monopoly | is broken. | | > Stockholm syndrome? > Mobile app development sounds like | the last thing I'd want to have anything to do with. | | That is your choice and your right, but plenty of high | performance and/or low level applications have no choice | but to go native. | mehrdada wrote: | > You as an end user are not party to the agreement that | Apple has with the developers. You are of course free to | choose not to do business with... | | Under the same logic, you, as the developer is also free | to not do business with Apple and build on iOS. | | Or you could see it with the angle that Apple is in | effect hired by us, the end-users, to negotiate on our | behalf to ensure the ecosystem cannot dictate unilateral | terms unfavorable to us. | jacquesm wrote: | Yes, you could see it that way. I'd ask for better | glasses though, in that case. | ThatPlayer wrote: | >Or you could see it with the angle that Apple is in | effect hired by us, the end-users, to negotiate on our | behalf to ensure the ecosystem cannot dictate unilateral | terms unfavorable to us. | | Then continue to only use Apple App Store and Apple | Payments. Free market says if all the end-users truly | believe that, all the others will fail from no users. So | why is Apple so afraid of a little fair competition? | rosndo wrote: | > You as an end user are not party to the agreement that | Apple has with the developers | | In the end this will be a political decision. I vote. | | > Your understanding of what constitutes a de-facto | monopoly is broken. | | The monopoly argument _may_ work in the US, but not in | the EU. Apple may be up to nasty stuff that legislators | should act against, but they're certainly not a | monopolist. | jacquesm wrote: | You are getting quite tiring. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_ | law | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_101_of_the_Treaty_o | n_t... | | https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/selling-in- | eu/competit... | cruano wrote: | > You are of course free to choose not to do business | with parties that do not support Apples payment system | | Take a look at the videogames landscape on PC. There is | an ever-growing amount of game launchers because each | company refuses to pay that 30% to someone (e.g. Steam). | Having the option to create a store means almost everyone | that can WILL create one. Not having that option forces | everyone to play by the rules of the existing store. | | As a consumer, I like Steam's policies about refunds, I | like being able to buy any game with the same in-store | credit or the same credit card, I like their client's | features like download throttling or scheduling. | | I certainly do not like that each half-assed client comes | up with a bare bones implementation of the same thing and | calls it a day. If Rockstar shits the bed and launches a | terrible game, I can refund it on Steam but not on the | Rockstar launcher. | | Same case for Apple, the minute they allow external | stores, half the apps will be pulled from the App Store | into their own proprietary store and all the consumer | protection would go out the window | ThatPlayer wrote: | >Not having that option forces everyone to play by the | rules of the existing store. | | So what you want is a convenient monopoly, when there is | no such thing (unless it's under heavy government | regulation). As a consumer, I like Epic's free games. | GoG's policy of DRM-free. Which is why competition is | good. | zepto wrote: | No, people are arguing this because they think the 15% | represents good value compared to what you would have to do | as an indie developer to support multiple stores and payment | methods. | ravenstine wrote: | It's a mindset I'll never fully comprehend myself. | | Supposedly I did work to earn a profit, but clearly not so much | work that I shouldn't thank whatever system I'm subject to for | the _privilege_ of... making a transaction that barely involved | said system, if at all. | | 5% or even 10% would be more acceptable. But _30%_? lol For | what? There 's no way the vast majority of that cut is | necessary for Apple's financial operations or for them to make | a reasonable profit. How some people can't see this as greed is | mind blowing. Where do they draw the line? | dageshi wrote: | I'll tell you honestly why. It's because if they charged 5% | or 10% it wouldn't be worth Apples time. | | If they can't make 30% on the app store they'll go do | something else which will make them 30%+ and leave it to rot. | Because 5% or 10% is a commodity business and they can do | better than that. | kybernetyk wrote: | Well, the Mac software landscape flourished before Apple | had an app store. I wouldn't mind if they just gave up and | let people distribute software how God intended. | threeseed wrote: | Yes the Mac flourished with it's 5-10% market share. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | If there was something else that they could be making that | kind of money for that little work, they'd already be doing | it. Apple got lucky with a lock-in ecosystem and they | obviously design great hardware, but I don't see them just | up and deciding to dominate another market to make similar | profits just because they're Apple. | temac wrote: | Above something that is probably quite marginal this is | basically free money for Apple. What are you comparing 30% | to? Profit vs gross income? That's not what the 30% are | here. That's 30% of an amount which depends on: | | * a market that is so large that in a bunch of area it is | basically not limiting - Apple has an influence on that but | capturing so much value on 3rd party apps should not be | warranted IMO, otherwise it would be warranted for them to | also capture a big part on most of software for MacOs sales | (esp. since the configuration by default is now quite | secure so the argument that the App Store for iPhone is so | valuable because it is curated is getting weaker) and for | MS to capture a big part on most of software sales for | Windows (and maybe give some crumbs to PC hardware | manufacturers) | | * the success of 3rd party apps, most of which has not much | to do with Apple | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | Yours is a mindset that I'll never understand. You appear to | believe that the price of a thing should be related to the | marginal cost of the seller. Whereas, in reality, it's only a | question of what a buyer will pay and what a seller will | accept. | | When you look at an airline that's about to fly a plane with | twenty empty seats, do you say "sheesh, it's totally | unreasonable that seat is selling for anything more than | zero, it costs the airline nothing to have someone sit in it, | the greed is mind-blowing"? | | Maybe you do? | virgilp wrote: | > Whereas, in reality, it's only a question of what a buyer | will pay and what a seller will accept. | | Which is why you don't have to let a monopoly/oligopoly set | the price at will, they need to be regulated. Smartphones | are becoming essential tools in many people's lives, and | there are only 2 main providers; they need to be regulated. | You can argue at the exact regulation but this Apple move | has proved beyond doubt that we (as a society) need to | impose tough regulations on them; because by themselves, | they're not going to be reasonable, they're looking to | extract maximum feasible rent. | kybernetyk wrote: | This. And before some libertarian starts rambling about | how not to regulate stuff: I'm an libertarian myself and | the current tech monopolies are only possible because of | the state's intervention in the free market. Without | ridiculous copyright and patent laws we wouldn't have | those monopolies we see right now. | | So yeah, as long as there's state intervention in the | free market let the state regulate bad actors. I would be | glad if it all went away but reality is that we have to | live with this system. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | >Which is why you don't have to let a monopoly/oligopoly | set the price at will | | Even monopolies are generally allowed to set their own | prices; it's only the point at which there's abuse that | there's a regulatory concern. The argument that Apple is | looking to "extract maximum feasible" rent is undermined | a bit by some facts I discuss in one of my comments | elsewhere in this thread. | ravenstine wrote: | > Whereas, in reality, it's only a question of what a buyer | will pay and what a seller will accept. | | I didn't say that's not what determines a price. | | > When you look at an airline that's about to fly a plane | with twenty empty seats, do you say "sheesh, it's totally | unreasonable that seat is selling for anything more than | zero, it costs the airline nothing to have someone sit in | it, the greed is mind-blowing"? | | No. Plane tickets are quite cheap regardless when you | consider the amount of force involved in lifting that much | weight into the air across the planet. Even when it's more | expensive, I'm saving a ton of time compared to if I drove | my car across country and back, making even pricier tickets | worth it. In fact, the way I look at it, a plane with a | bunch of empty seats is a good thing because that allows | people to make last-minute travel plans. If one had to | reserve a plane ticket months in advance, that'd be pretty | lousy. | | So perhaps that was just a bad example. | | Here's the flaw in your oversimplifying of the argument. | The price being as simple as what the buyer is willing to | pay for is only adequate when you ignore the seller's level | of monopolism and the market incentives that drive the | buyer to taking it in the rear. Apple not only dominates a | massive percentage of the mobile phone market, but they | along with Google have created systems where your digital | service is unlikely to be successful unless you play their | game... because they are oh so concerned about the safety | of the end user. And app that's not found in the App Store | is never going to reach widespread use because even Android | users don't really want to use apps their friends who have | iPhones can't interact with them on. Even if you host | binaries on your own site, good luck having iOS users | figure out how to side-load the app or even have the | courage to do so. | | Would you be fine if your bank just ripped off 1/3 of your | income? After all, what are you gonna do? Use cash for | everything and be closed off from the modern economy? Sure, | you can do that. But does that mean that this hypothetical | banking system isn't ripping you off regardless of if you | choose to pay it? It's a large amount of value that the | buyer earned that the seller arguably didn't earn. In the | case of Apple, they effectively get a 30% share in every | company that hosts an app in the App Store because at any | moment Apple can just say "nah" and delete the app. | | But sure... let's have a society where everything's a free- | for-all and we don't regulate scams and ripoffs because | _the buyer was willing to pay for it._ | | EDIT: I now realized what I said was on the snarky side... | I changed it but left some of it and hope you're not | personally offended or anything. | passivate wrote: | I do not know which reality you are referring to. There are | various laws in the US related to pricing, price gouging, | price controls, etc. | hnra wrote: | That equivalence is awful. What is the profit margin of | airlines vs the app store? There is a real cost to an | airline seat, and there is a real cost to publishing an app | on an app store (and all that it entails). The difference | here is that airlines have tons of competition driving down | margins, while no one is allowed to compete with Apple for | iOS customers. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | The existence of large profit margins is not prima facie | indication of a lack of competition. Apple makes a huge | profit margin on iPhones but I don't think there's anyone | who suggests that the smartphone market is uncompetitive. | To that extent, the first part of your point doesn't | really hold up. | | On your second part: one of the defining qualities of a | retail store experience is, in my experience, that no-one | is allowed to compete with the owner of the store. No-one | would say it is uncompetitive that the owner of a | supermarket doesn't allow you to put your own goods on | their shelves. | | Presumably your point is really that Apple's App Store is | such a large fraction of the total smartphone app market | that it has, and uses, monopoly pricing power in abusive | way. That's a more interesting point. | | The fact that's interesting to me is that, as far as I | know, since Apple created the App Store, it has always | charged 30% (modulo the recent small business program); | from the very beginning when the market was practically | non-existent, with no guarantee of success, up until | today. So despite the fact the market has grown from | nothing, Apple hasn't sought to increase their fees. | | Also, look at comparison points. If you look at PC video | games, those can often be bought in physical form, | downloaded direct from their publishers, etc. etc. I mean | to say there is no restriction on alternative sales | channels. Nonetheless, a huge number of game developers | choose to sell on Steam; where, coincidentally, the store | cut is also 30%. They complain about it, but they do it. | Gorbzel wrote: | > while no one is allowed to compete with Apple for iOS | customers. | | This is basically the core question in Epic vs Apple, | wherein the court has ruled that "iOS Customers" is not | the relevant market to consider. | threeseed wrote: | It's 15% for developers making up to $1m a year. | | And you are paying for the cost of the channel i.e. customer | acquisition. | passivate wrote: | You can show an online ad on any platform to acquire a | customer. Apple is greedy grabbing 30% of sales. | kmlx wrote: | > 30% is just too much. | | i see you never had to deal with retailers. | weberer wrote: | >It is like the mafia demanding you pay for the privilege of | doing business on your street. 30% is just too much. | | Or like the IRS | [deleted] | AniseAbyss wrote: | It would be FAIR if you could charge iPhone customers more than | Android customers but Apple is not stupid. The small print in | your contract forbids just that. | scarface74 wrote: | They stopped that almost a decade ago. When Spotify still | allowed in app purchases , they charged more than on their | own website. | awildfivreld wrote: | > It is like the mafia demanding you pay for the privilege of | doing business on your street | | If Apple were to add this tax or raise it long after launch I | could perhaps see this argument. | | However, this tax is nothing new. AFAIK it has been like this | for _years_. App developers must have known (before starting | development) that there is a fee if you were to use the | platform. | | If you knew a certain street has mafia activity (or other | similar taxes), would you make the concious choise of moving | your store there? Well, if the business opportunuties are good | enough, then it might be worth it. If the mafia suddenly showed | up, then the equation could be different. This is just like any | other business investment analysis. | | If 30% is too much all in all, then it is unsustainable to keep | the app store as an option. | zachrip wrote: | App developers don't get to choose which platforms their | users are on. There's a reason why things like react-native | mainly target ios and android - that's where the users are. | That is why people compare it to the mafia, you have to do | business there, which means you have to pay them. Where are | you finding users that aren't on android/ios? | BiteCode_dev wrote: | If they do it, it's because they know they can get away with it. | They studied the risk and cost associated with a lawsuit, and | estimated it was more profitable to keep the commission high. | | Which is one more hint that our legal system is not working as it | should. It is completely ineffective at enforcing laws above a | certain threshold of power. | amelius wrote: | > it is anti-competitive behavior that they themselves would | never tolerate | | TSMC should force Apple to pay a 30% tax, and if they don't | comply, kick them out of the FabStore. | thathndude wrote: | But developers do tolerate it, and that's the problem. And they | tolerate it because there's immense value there. | clusterfish wrote: | There was "immense value" in every monopolist that was | rightfully broken up or restricted. There's "immense value" | in every monopoly / duopoly market. So what. The richest | company in the world is swimming in money, pays little taxes, | and gouges every developer who made its products successful. | They are nothing without the developers, they're simply in a | good position to abuse them, a position that they carefully | crafted for themselves. | amelius wrote: | On top of that, we really don't want to be in a situation | where every large software producer has to create their own | phone to maximize their income. It would be a terrible | waste of resources. What Apple wants to own can't be owned. | jacquesm wrote: | Until there isn't and then they should be free to take their | payment services elsewhere because a 30% cut to your payment | provider makes no sense. | | The value is there but then again, Stripe and other PSPs | provide much of that same value at a much better price point, | and that's because there is competition in the realm of | payment processing. | apexalpha wrote: | Developers "tolerate" it in the same way that I tolerate | having my income taxed. You really don't have a choice. | jb1991 wrote: | There is definitely _some_ value to the App Store and Apple | 's management of it and the payment service, listing, etc. | But I would not say it is "immense" value, and 30% is _a | lot_. | sunderw wrote: | Well they tolerate it because there is no other choice. You | can't say f** all the apple users. | | Would you have the same argument if Windows took a 30% cut of | all transactions that happened on "their platform" ? | interpol_p wrote: | It's not the number of Apple users that matter. There are | many more Android users world wide. It's the fact that | Apple users spend more, and more often than users on other | platforms. | spiffytech wrote: | Phone market share has different distributions in | different markets. In the US it looks like the iPhone | hovers around 50% marketshare. That's pretty significant | to ignore. | | Then there are the network effects. Many apps have a | social component, and if your app isn't on iPhone you'll | only get the customers who both use Android and who never | want to collaborate with iPhone-owning | friends/family/coworkers. | | This is of course true for iPhone-only apps, too, which | is why folks argue Apple and Google are a duopoly: it's | infeasible to succeed in the mobile market without | bending to the gatekeepers, and they don't give anyone | the market power to force them to change. | Spivak wrote: | I mean you absolutely can. If the commission was 90% would | you still pay it? Hell nah. Apple knows it's still worth it | to most publishers at 30%. | | And yes, if Windows wanted to charge 30% then go for it. It | is their platform. | ksec wrote: | Apple Apple argue buying iPhone was only the hardware while 30% | cut was for their IP. And yet accuse Qualcomm charging them 5% | for IP and selling them hardware modem ( with rebate ) as | double dipping. | rocketChair wrote: | Apple, and two other companies, are now taking out rent for | computing. That's not how the world should work. | | I like some of their products, but these companies have to be | curtailed. | Workaccount2 wrote: | The path that computing is on is "You will buy a screen, pay | monthly for internet access, and then pay monthly to access a | cloud service where you access all your SaaS applications. | [deleted] | jacquesm wrote: | They're nuts. All they are doing is setting themselves up for | another set of lawsuits. | | Seriously: Apple should focus on selling hardware and be happy to | facilitate those payments that people - and application | developers - voluntarily process through their system. | | All this stupid taxation of other peoples' businesses should | stop, it is anti-competitive behavior that they themselves would | never tolerate. | | Imagine if in the past Apple would have had to pay 30% of their | gross to Microsoft in order to be allowed to run their software | on Windows. | sekathlon wrote: | Nonsense. Most of those businesses only exist because of the | App Store. Apple can ask whatever they want as users can buy | whatever they want. There is no need for whining. | ketralnis wrote: | This is clearly bullshit. There was a software industry | before Apple came along. | threeseed wrote: | Not a mobile software industry though. | | And I know because I developed an app for Palm. | [deleted] | pbreit wrote: | 27% versus 30% for cards? | huhtenberg wrote: | > _They 're nuts._ | | They aren't nuts. It's a middle finger to the legislators. | virgilp wrote: | > It's a middle finger to the legislators. | | I.e. they're nuts. | rmbyrro wrote: | They're not. Apple is essentially acting like a government, | and they're certainly way more powerful than the Dutch | government: | | - They have an income tax -- 30% (wait until they come up | with a capital gains tax, and a property and inheritance | tax as well) | | - Use monopoly of "force" by removing us if we "evade | taxes" | | - Have their legislation branch to come up with their own | set of "laws" - they call it "terms", but can't be "terms" | if we have to swallow it without coming to terms with it | | - Their judiciary branch judge our actions with no recourse | | - Have their executive branch to put into practice what | their judicial branch decides (usually in an automated | fashion) | virgilp wrote: | Netherlands has a strong voice in the EU; I'm betting | that Apple doesn't want to cease all business in the EU. | Heck, they bent to China.... they'll bend to EU, make no | mistake. | | This is an mind-blowingly-risky move on Apple's part. | They show malice here - if they are acting like a | government, they invite governments to fight them. I.e. | they're nuts. | Apocryphon wrote: | And it's not even just the EU. The U.S., South Korea, | Australia, India, Russia- a lot of countries and markets | are taking notice. This is a global phenomenon. The | sharks are circling. | alexashka wrote: | Is it nuts? Or is it just business as usual? | | There's a department and the head of that department's | responsibility is to make the profit number go up. | | So, he/she is doing just that. | | It'd be nuts if that _didn 't_ happen, _that_ would be nuts. | markus_zhang wrote: | The point of making competitive mobile hardware is to make sure | users stick to it so you can extract values from left and | right. | [deleted] | zepto wrote: | The problem is that people can easily be induced to install | software that negates the benefit of Apple's hardware. Apple | can't deliver their hardware benefits without also controlling | the operating system. | | It's as simple as that. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | > Apple can't deliver their hardware benefits without also | controlling the operating system. | | Nobody is talking about loading something besides iOS on | Apple mobile devices. The argument that "The OS is | everything" failed over 20 years ago in US v Microsoft. | zepto wrote: | That's irrelevant. | | It would be simple enough for Facebook for example to build | a store into their own App, and build their own 'platform' | within the Facebook app. | Apocryphon wrote: | So you mean how WeChat and Alibaba do it, and are allowed | to do so by the App Store. Then why hasn't Meta done | that? Perhaps they don't care to? Not that the Facebook | app isn't already hugely overstuffed. | fxtentacle wrote: | Because Apple bent down for WeChat and Alibaba, but Apple | won't do it for Facebook? | | I'm 100% sure that if Facebook could have an iOS app | store, they would start one. It's worth all the work for | the improved tracking alone, as app download ads are a | big part of Facebook's mobile revenue. | Apocryphon wrote: | The GP is talking about Meta embedding its own app store | within the Facebook app, not about Facebook creating its | own iOS app store. An "internal" app store would still be | subject to the same restrictions and security that the | actual Apple App Store already has. I don't believe the | mini-apps within WeChat or Alibaba's apps can flout those | regulations, but it's China and those are big apps so who | knows. | | From a technical perspective, I'm not sure how hosting | littler apps within your own app, which is already on the | Apple App Store and subject to its review process and | rules, would allow you access to improved tracking. | | On the subject of a Meta third-party app store | independent of Apple's control- yes, there is motivation | there to do that, but I am dubious of how much of a | threat that is to the end user because: | | 1. Apple still maintains control of iOS and can restrict | invasive tracking from the OS level. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30199125 | | 2. I'm not actually convinced that Meta, Google, Amazon, | et al are really capable of executing successful | alternative app stores. They would need to make it a | sufficiently seamless and friction-free experience, _and_ | offer enough incentives for users to overcome having to | sign up for yet another service just to use the apps they | already have access to. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30204012 | manuelabeledo wrote: | > The problem is that people can easily be induced to install | software that negates the benefit of Apple's hardware. Apple | can't deliver their hardware benefits without also | controlling the operating system. | | Apple is less concerned about this than profits. | | They could make their hardware ecosystem more open, that's | easy, but that wouldn't make them a significant amount of | extra money, so why would they? | zepto wrote: | You don't seem to realize that Apple's profits come mostly | from hardware sales. | fxtentacle wrote: | They don't. They come from the new "Services" division. | manuelabeledo wrote: | They don't, but even if they did, that has nothing to do | with my comment. | jsnell wrote: | Is it really nuts though? This should be a completely | unsurprising move, given this is exactly what Play Store did in | South Korea [0]. That's three months old, has anyone heard of a | followup suggesting their solution is being treated non- | compliant by the regulators? This solution also seems to be in | line with what the US courts found in the Epic vs. Apple case. | | > Imagine if in the past Apple would have had to pay 30% of | their gross to Microsoft in order to be allowed to run their | software on Windows. | | Anyone making software for the Xbox has to pay Microsoft. Why | is this different? | | [0] https://developers-kr.googleblog.com/2021/11/enabling- | altern... | | Edit: Good grief, people. I am not pro-App Store. But jacquesm | is literally claiming that Apple is nuts and that their | solution will never fly. But everything we've seen so far in | analogous cases suggests it will. | 908B64B197 wrote: | > Anyone making software for the Xbox has to pay Microsoft. | Why is this different? | | Historically, writing software for the Xbox meant getting dev | kits not sold to the public as well as access to private | documentation. And there was a level of support from | Microsoft game studios could expect. The deals between | studios and Microsoft could also include co-marketing or | exclusivity. Plus to get an Xbox tittle out you needed a | distributor (remember brick and mortar stores) so it really | was B2B. Today I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft just | going with the Store model and taking a very small cut from | indies. But distribution is nowhere as hard and expensive as | it was back in 2001. | | I really don't think it's the same as Apple that advertise | it's developer program to individuals. Apple's developer | program almost seems like a consumer product (term and | conditions are pretty much the same for every individual dev | out there, it's a flat fee). | PretzelPirate wrote: | I think that the Xbox should be an open platform. Microsoft | has built in enough sandboxing and security that I'd hope | they could handle arbitrary downloads while offering their | store + online services for games that use their store | (provide actual value for their cut). | | It's not like they make money off of the hardware, and their | new push is in Gamepass subscriptions which people will still | want. | | There will of course be people who pirate, just like they do | on the switch, but piracy is likely to be so small that it | won't affect Microsoft's profits. | kmlx wrote: | > It's not like they make money off of the hardware | | microsoft hasn't made any money off of the whole xbox | ecosystem since it's inception 20 years ago. it's been loss | making since day zero. | vhgyu75e6u wrote: | Quotations needed please. You are not 20 years in an | industry without making a buck | spywaregorilla wrote: | They make it up on software royalties | threeseed wrote: | > but piracy is likely to be so small | | Odd take given how rampant piracy is within the PC gaming | market. | | Losing a similar percentage of sales in consoles would | absolutely make it unprofitable for smaller developers. | clusterfish wrote: | Right because you have data to show that piracy takes | away more than 30% of small devs' desktop games' revenue? | Given that most pirates wouldn't actually buy it if they | had to pay? | | Smaller developers publish PC games just fine, you know, | choosing whichever store they like most, or choosing to | entirely self publish. This is how it should be | everywhere. | theli0nheart wrote: | > _Anyone making software for the Xbox has to pay Microsoft. | Why is this different?_ | | It's different because Apple sells and markets their hardware | as general-purpose computing devices. An Xbox is a gaming | console and that's what it's sold and marketed as. | SllX wrote: | To my continued disappointment, this is exactly how they | have _not_ marketed iPhones since the beginning. | clusterfish wrote: | "A general purpose computer is a computer that is | designed to be able to carry out many different tasks." | | "There's an app for that" | | Seems pretty straightforward that they did. Them doing | their best to lock down the ecosystem for profit does not | make the device non-general-purpose. | 30204604 wrote: | >Apple sells and markets their hardware as general-purpose | computing devices | | Could you point to what makes you think this? As well, are | there any court rulings that indicate this matters when it | comes to this issue? | nightski wrote: | The fact that they provide development tools and almost | anyone can write an app for it? | | Xbox is not open to anyone to develop on. It's very | closed to new developers and expensive. | | FWIW - I think Xbox should be forced to open up it's | platform as well, not be used as a justification for | closed computing platforms. | threeseed wrote: | Xbox is very simple and affordable to develop for. On par | with iOS actually. | | How do you think all of the tiny indie studios build | games ? | | [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/gaming/xbox- | live/get-starte... | | [2] https://www.xbox.com/en-AU/developers/id | [deleted] | [deleted] | nirvdrum wrote: | Apple ran an ad campaign with the message "Your next | computer is not a computer": https://youtu.be/awTP7IUY3uo | kmlx wrote: | that's just one of many ad campaigns, plus a computer is | not by definition a general purpose device. | nirvdrum wrote: | I cited one campaign that very clearly answers the | question posed. It was not incumbent on me to go through | all of their campaigns and conferences and earnings calls | and whatever else. Although, this campaign was hardly the | first time Apple suggested their mobile devices could | replace a computer. | | > plus a computer is not by definition a general purpose | device. | | What are we even talking about then? It's not like this | campaign was suggesting the iPad would be a fantastic | purpose-specific replacement of my TI-89 or my web cam. | What, based on the context of this discussion, are we | supposed to understand "general purpose device" to mean | if not the colloquial definition of a computer? | SllX wrote: | I looked at that ad you posted earlier and refrained from | commenting at the time, but if you take the ad at face | value, Apple is claiming that iPads are _not_ computers, | or at least not the general purpose ones that culturally | we refer to as computers (desktops, notebooks) and do | this in both the slogan ("your next computer is _not a | computer_ ") and by demonstration, inviting the user to | think of iPads as something else. It's not an ad for | tablet computers, it's an ad for iPads. | | Technically, iPhones and iPads are absolutely computers. | General purpose computers. In fact arguably they are even | more general purpose because you can easily and non- | trivially manipulate them in 3D space in ways you | probably wouldn't even manipulate a notebook computer, | which makes the inclusion of various sensors in the body | of the device more useful to a broader array of | applications. I will absolutely use my phone as a wallet | in the way I never would a MacBook Pro. Apple has | absolutely never marketed them as general purpose | computers though even though I think you and I can agree | that's exactly what they are. Duplicitous? I think so, | but it's also the exact same strategy that game consoles | benefit from today and in either case I think both Apple | and game console makers are at the moment on solid legal | footing. | nirvdrum wrote: | We'll have to agree to disagree. This ad to me looked | just like the "Mac VS PC" ads, where Apple wanted to | convey to you that their personal computers weren't | "PCs", but something else, something better. But, they | very clearly were advertising the product as a | replacement computer. | | They want people shopping for iPads, not tablet | computers. I'll grant you that, but that's just a | marketing gimmick as far as I can tell. This ad to me | says "don't bother with another laptop because the iPad | can do the same stuff, but better (and you might look | really cool using it)." It's a marketing campaign, so | it's going to resonate with people differently. | | I still don't know anyone that went out and purchased an | Xbox to replace their laptops, but I know plenty of | people that have done so with iPads. And they're checking | email, commenting on Facebook, taking pictures, editing | video, surfing the web, managing todos, making video | calls, watching video streams, playing games, and doing | many other activities that they used to on a laptop or | desktop, while Xbox users play video games, maybe consume | media, and possibly deal with being called racist names | on a voice chat. | SllX wrote: | We probably will have to agree to disagree, but I'm | trying to see the message I think Apple intended to sell | and I think trying to sell a replacement _for_ or an | alternative to computers is a lot more in line with how | they've always marketed iPads. The reason to look at | their intended message specially is because this is the | marketing gimmick that colors their PR and lobbying | campaigns. | | I don't think it is severable from the manner console | manufacturers operate either. They sell locked down | computers with operating systems and license the software | that can operate on it. In terms of functions and | capabilities, they're as Turing complete as any other | machine, you just have to jump through extra hoops to run | unlicensed software and they take explicit action to | prevent this or make it more difficult. | | The intended use is basically irrelevant. A device that's | there to operate Facebook or Spotify or a device that's | there to operate Halo or HBO is functionally still just | an entertainment device. Where they significantly differ | is that Apple licenses a broader array of software and | Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo license mostly entertainment | software (games, video apps, music apps and comic book | readers). If you actually bought an Xbox to do the | functions you could on a Windows PC, you would be | disappointed but not because there's some inherent Xbox | property preventing this, but because Microsoft does not | license Xbox software in the manner Apple does iPhone and | iPad software nor allow unlicensed software to run the | way it does on Windows. That's a corporate choice, and | because that corporate choice was made, it would be a bad | choice to buy an Xbox for those functions or else some | people might actually choose to use an Xbox to check | their email or do whatever else they do on their PCs. If | you think about it, $500 is not bad for a decent gaming | computer that lets you get rid of your PC. | scarface74 wrote: | So you would be okay if Apple just opened up the App | Store for iPads? | nirvdrum wrote: | I think it was pretty evident that computers were going | to continue to get smaller, handheld, wearable, what have | you. Apple didn't invent the space, they just made the | product that got people to adopt the new form factor en | masse. That's no small thing. But, I don't think they | deserve near full control and a 30% tax on all revenue | transacted on that form factor as a result. We wouldn't | have tolerated it if Microsoft had done it on the desktop | environment. We wouldn't have tolerated if Microsoft | forced all purchases through their platform. | | We've backed ourselves into a weird spot. It's | essentially impossible for a new platform to develop in | the computing space. Google did everything it could to | kill off Windows mobile. Mozilla took a crack at it and | failed. There's an illusion of choice, but it's quite | difficult to get by without an Android or iPhone. That | became very evident to me with the pandemic. Virtual | doctor visits, check-ins, mobile passports, and so | required a device running one of Android or iOS/iPadOS. | My wife isn't fond of smart phones, but we had to get her | an iPhone to participate in society. Companies don't want | to support web sites for mobile and Apple's support for | PWAs is pretty bad, forcing you back into their app | ecosystem. Moreover, switching platforms is quite | expensive and often impractical, in no small part because | your purchases are bound to a particular platform | (desktop licenses, on the other hand, often work across | operating systems or charge a nominal fee to have | licenses for macOS and Windows). | | That's a very long-winded way of saying, sure let's start | with opening up the App Store for iPads. I think we | should do it for phones, too, but I'll take what I can | get. For many people, their phone is their "computer" | these days as well and as I said, I think that result was | inevitable. We can argue about whether smart phones are | general computing devices, but I'd argue the only reason | they're not as "general" as desktops is because Apple | won't allow them to be. Microsoft and Samsung both had | interesting technologies (Continuum and Dex, | respectively) that could turn your phone into a portable | desktop that showed promise for what the space could be. | But, people make do with the restrictions placed on them, | if for no other reason than switching is expensive and | hard. | | Regardless, smart phones a completely different class of | device than video game consoles. People run many of the | same tasks on phones & tablets that they would on a | laptop. Despite that, video game consoles are more open. | I can buy video games from a dozen different stores, get | them on a secondary market, and I can lend them out to | people. But, let's open up the consoles too if that's | what's holding us back with Apple and Google. | [deleted] | scarface74 wrote: | Apple sells a device that is called an i _Phone_ how is it | any more general purpose than a powerful computer sold as a | game console? | | Heck most of Apple's App Store revenue comes from games. | Apocryphon wrote: | Even from the beginning it was more than a simple phone. | It was at least a phone, an iPod, and a breakthrough | internet communications device. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrJzXM7a6o | scarface74 wrote: | But it didn't have an App Store.... | | You could always "sideload music" | pininja wrote: | What do I know, but I see Xbox as more than a gaming | machine with its steaming and web browsing features, and | iOS as less than general-purpose since I can't execute code | outside of a very narrow and curated api. OSX is general | purpose, no doubt, but I'm not sure it's relevant since I | can basically run whatever I can compile. | Tijdreiziger wrote: | > That's three months old, has anyone heard of a followup | suggesting their solution is being treated non-compliant by | the regulators? | | Yes, reported on yesterday by Reuters [1]: | | > As for Google's plan, the official said the KCC was aware | of concern over Google's planned policy of only reducing its | service charge to developers by 4 percentage points when | users choose an alternative billing system, and the regulator | is waiting for additional information from Google. | | > "As a result of any policy, if app developers find it | realistically difficult to use an alternative payment system | and resort to using the dominant app store operator's payment | system, it would not fit the law's purpose," the official | said, adding that this stance would likely be reflected in | the final ordinance. | | [1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-seeks-improved- | com... | clusterfish wrote: | Why? Because how much you have to pay is determined by how | much the platform owner can get away with. There is no | fundamental logic to it other than market power. Why don't | you compare to better, open platforms instead - desktop apps, | the web. Why does everything has to be as shitty as something | else. | jsnell wrote: | I'm not comparing to those other cases because the question | being asked was "what if Microsoft had been charging a | fee", so it seems rather relevant that Microsoft has been | charging exactly that kind of a fee for a couple of | decades. | | I hope we can agree that laws need to apply to everyone | equally. For a long time, it's been fine for platform | owners to charge e.g. licensing fees, for store owners to | charge a fee, etc. Why is Apple different, such that they | cannot charge such a fee while others can? If they're not | substantially different, do we expect that going forward | nobody can charge a fee? | shkkmo wrote: | > I'm not comparing to those other cases because the | question being asked was | | The question being asked was specifically about windows, | and wasn't about Microsoft being "good", but rather about | how Apple benefited from platforms being open. | | > If they're not substantially different, do we expect | that going forward nobody can charge a fee? | | That seems reasonable. | stale2002 wrote: | > Why is Apple different, such that they cannot charge | such a fee while others can? | | The difference is market power. | | Yes, literally if a company is big enough, then they | should be legally prevented from doing certain things | that anti-competitively take advantage of it's market | power. | | For video game consoles, I am less concerned about the | platform taking a fee, because there are 3 major | consoles, as well as an absolutely huge PC gaming market, | and the PC gaming market is very open | | Where as for smartphones I am concerned, because it is a | 2 company duopoly, and there is no major open competitor, | with significant market share. | elliekelly wrote: | Doesn't Google allow alternative app stores to be loaded onto | Androids though? If that's the case I'm not sure the | comparison makes sense because consumers aren't forced to use | the Play Store to install software. Give Google 30% of sales | or have no sales at all the way it is for iPhone developers. | wccrawford wrote: | Yes, but side-loading, either directly or through third- | party stores, prompts the user with dire warnings, making | it almost impossible for developers to realistically use | that method. | | The exceptions are hardware manufacturers that ship custom | versions of Android that have their own stores. | | If it weren't for that detail, or that Google warned _all_ | installs about the same thing (even from their own store), | I wouldn 't have a problem with it. | withinboredom wrote: | Just out of curiousness, does the Xbox have a shell like my | iPhone? Can I ssh from my Xbox? I can from my iPhone, for all | intents it seems like a personal computer (PC) and can do | anything my computer can do. My phone wasn't marketed as a | gaming console either. I'm not sure comparing an Xbox and a | phone is anywhere near the same thing. I could be wrong | though. | jsnell wrote: | The Xbox certainly has sufficient hardware and software | capabilities to run a shell or a ssh client; it is | basically PC hardware and a PC operating system, just | locked down. If it doesn't have a ssh client, it's only | because Microsoft didn't let the app onto the Xbox store. | If that's the line you draw, then the obvious thing for | Apple to do is to remove ssh clients from the store. | withinboredom wrote: | Heh, that'd actually be entertaining. After that it would | be image editing, then text editors, then, actually just | delete the utilities section from the App Store... | tehbeard wrote: | The previous gen had a developer mode which practically | let you run Windows apps... All for a one time fee of | $20? | | Of course this was within their hypervisor and security | systems, so you were kept well away from the | games/dashboard/Xbox live. | | But, homebrew and emulators could run pretty well on | there, an SSH client or vscode probably would just take a | small amount of porting. | nomel wrote: | Imagine how well the xbox would sell if there was a PC | "homework" mode, where you could just boot into windows. | I doubt Microsoft would do that to their PC making | brethren though. | meheleventyone wrote: | It has Edge on it so if you can do a browser version you | can do whatever. If you plug in a keyboard and mouse you | can gamedev on our platform for example. | kitsunesoba wrote: | The latest models of Xbox and PlayStation are basically | just Ryzen 3700X + Radeon 5700XT PCs, with the former | running a Windows variant and the latter running a FreeBSD | variant. They're pretty similar in stymied potential to iOS | devices. | amelius wrote: | > Is it really nuts though? | | I don't know. But I do know it is nuts that we programmers | still support these extortionists. | schmorptron wrote: | Consoles are a super interesting comparison. In principle, I | agree that they should have to be open too. On the other | hand, consoles' hardware is nearly always subsidized by | expected future software royalties, while Apple makes a lot | of profit just by selling the hardware alone. | vhgyu75e6u wrote: | It would be interesting to see the reaction if consoles had | to be open to other store (my opinion is that they | shouldn't since their are not general purpose devices per | se). When the Epic Game Store appeared, the pc gaming | community was up in arms against it because it was a Steam | rival (sort of a tribal reaction) but were complaining | against the NVIDEA GPU monopoly | schmorptron wrote: | How would you feel about a, say 100EUR, fee to "unlock" | your PS5 and turn it into a general purpose device that | can run ubuntu? | | And I think if you put your xbox into development mode | you can run your own code on it, like RetroArch although | I don't know to what extent that goes. | thegrimmest wrote: | But these are internal details that _shouldn 't matter at | all_ when deciding if a business practice is valid or not. | If I want to sell a toaster (regardless of whether it's | sold at loss or gain) that only toasts bread that I bake, I | should be perfectly entitled to do so. And if users flock | to my toaster due to its simplicity, predictability, and | ease of use, then the fact that other bakers are upset | about this shouldn't matter in _the least bit_. | | Whether a toaster or console or smartphone is sold at a | loss or gain is an internal detail that isn't even public. | It's totally irrelevant. | linspace wrote: | A simple line of reasoning, like the Earth being flat. | Big companies love it because it's the perfect way of | avoiding competition, leveraging existing monopolies to | build new ones, locking customers, using assimetry of | information to hide true costs from them, etc... It has | plenty of regulation against it, although it is not truly | enforced thanks to deep pockets. | thegrimmest wrote: | It's a line of reasoning that follows the original | intended definition of liberty. Anything I should be free | to do in my basement and sell to my neighbours I should | be free to do at massive scale. There's no avoiding | competition. If someone out there innovates the next | generation of personal computing, they will eat Apple's | lunch, just like Apple ate RIM's. | clusterfish wrote: | That's just ideological propaganda that ignores the last | 200 years of economic theory and observations. | thegrimmest wrote: | It's ideological because this whole idea of forcing terms | onto Apple to open it's store is basically socializing | parts of Apple infrastructure and parts of its workforce. | To me this is totally unacceptable. Apple's innovation | has advanced the state of the art a great deal. This | company literally invented the concepts that we're now | seeking to rob it of. Why can't we just be grateful that | the free market was able to produce such a marvel, be | glad for the nice devices we all carry around, and leave | the org and its investors well enough alone? | | Also which economic theory am I ignoring? Didn't Apple | itself enter the smartphone market by massively | disrupting the existing players and forcing the entire | industry to play catchup for over a decade? Didn't they | do this without any regulatory intervention to weaken the | market incumbents at the time? Why can't we expect that | the next smartphone-level innovation to personal | computing will come without similar intervention on our | parts? | 8note wrote: | Once it's in the hands of the user, they have the freedom | to make it work with whatever bread they want | thegrimmest wrote: | Well, sure, and you can _try_ to and some even succeed in | jailbreaking their iOS devices. That doesn 't mean that | Apple should be anything but hostile to such attempts. | schmorptron wrote: | We've reached the first point in recent history where | we're really seeing products with actively anti-user | features at scale. Coffe machines that only take | proprietary coffe pods, printers that have DRM on ink | cartriges, and more. These are all on a much smaller | scale than a computing device that we use for a | significant portion of our lives, both for management and | entertainment. | | Another comparison would be a car that can only drive to | restaurants that agreed to give the car company 30% per | customer that arrives in one of their cars, and there | have to be fences around it to make sure you're not | walking to the restaurant next door by foot. | | I'm not sure I agree with "I should be able to sell | anything with any anti-features I want" anymore to a | certain extent, since it does affect such a large part of | our lives, as general computing machines. | thegrimmest wrote: | Arrangements that subsidize a large purchase (printer, | paper towel dispenser, coffee maker, razor, smartphone, | tractor, etc.) by locking the purchaser into an | exclusivity agreement for consumables from the same | company (ink, paper towels, coffee pods, razor blades, | smartphone apps, tractor maintenance, etc.) are as old as | these have been feasible. This innovation tremendously | benefits both parties. I'm not sure why you'd dispense | with it really. | dustinmoris wrote: | > On the other hand, consoles' hardware is nearly always | subsidized by expected future software royalties | | Legally that has no bearing on the matter though. | 30204604 wrote: | >Apple makes a lot of profit just by selling the hardware | alone. | | Do you suppose that means Nintendo, which has sometimes | turned a profit on their consoles, should have an open | system? Interesting take, and I wonder what, in your mind, | the threshold is for "makes a lot of profit." I.e., if | Apple cut the price of their devices to make as much profit | as Nintendo, would they get a pass? | schmorptron wrote: | To be honest, I haven't thought about that much, and | don't have the mental capacity right now to really think | about the answer. It's a good point. | | On the spot though I'd say that that would make Nintendo | the ones that should open up their system in my mind | though, provided they are making a sizeable (10% | including stuff like R&D over the span of a few years) | profit. | blinding-streak wrote: | I'm not sure that Google Korea blog post supports your | assertion. It says: | | "97% of developers don't sell digital content and are not | subject to any service fee for having their apps displayed in | the Play Store or for any of the services listed" | | And it mostly talks about fees going down. | RC_ITR wrote: | >Imagine if in the past Apple would have had to pay 30% of | their gross to Microsoft in order to be allowed to run their | software on Windows. | | Sure, instead Best Buy would record a 22% gross margin for | selling the software on a CD [0] (I know it's not a perfect | example since Best Buy sells a lot of things, but Software was | 22% of sales in the linked period) | | [0]https://s2.q4cdn.com/785564492/files/doc_financials/2006/bby | ... | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | If Apple lists an app on the app store and it does not sell, | how much money does Apple lose? | RC_ITR wrote: | As much as Best Buy did, since they required vendors to | reimburse them for markdowns and unsold investory. | | We receive vendor allowances for various programs, | primarily volume incentives and reimbursements for specific | costs such as markdowns, margin protection, advertising and | sales incentives. Vendor allowances provided as a | reimbursement of specific, incremental and identifiable | costs incurred to promote a vendor's products are included | as an expense reduction when the cost is incurred. All | other vendor allowances, including vendor allowances | received in excess of our cost to promote a vendor's | product, are initially deferred and recorded as a reduction | of merchandise inventories. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Why does Best Buy require vendors to reimburse them for | markdowns and unsold inventory? Why doesn't Apple do the | same? | gamblor956 wrote: | So you're argument is that an online digital store justifies | a higher fee (30% vs 22%) even though it's significantly | _less expensive_ for Apple to run a digital store than it is | for Best Buy to operate physical retail stores? | | If anything, that's just evidence that Apple is grossing | abusing its market position. | nappy wrote: | Right, but there are at least many competitors to Best Buy | all competing for your business, driving down margins. | Running physical stores is costly. If Apple allowed competing | digital stores, I would expect margins would be less than | 30%, and even less than 22%, and the value would end up in | consumer and developer's pockets. | tssva wrote: | Google allows competing stores but this isn't the case. | withinboredom wrote: | If Best Buy doesn't sell the software, they lose money, | because A. They already paid the developer for it. B. It | takes up space that could be used to sell something else. If | Best Buy wants to sell it at a discount, it doesn't affect | the developer, they were already paid by Best Buy. | | With Apple, its the opposite. If Apple sells something at a | discount, the developer suffers (or Apple has to pay the | difference in some countries). If it doesn't sell, no one | gets any cash. Apple has no incentive to market something | and/or move inventory. Apple has only the incentive to market | things that you spend money on vs. Best Buy that has to take | a risk on something by spending money to buy it from the | publisher first. | RC_ITR wrote: | We receive vendor allowances for various programs, | primarily volume incentives and reimbursements for specific | costs such as markdowns, margin protection, advertising and | sales incentives. Vendor allowances provided as a | reimbursement of specific, incremental and identifiable | costs incurred to promote a vendor's products are included | as an expense reduction when the cost is incurred. All | other vendor allowances, including vendor allowances | received in excess of our cost to promote a vendor's | product, are initially deferred and recorded as a reduction | of merchandise inventories. | jurassic wrote: | By the same logic BestBuy, Verizon, and other hardware | retailers should get a cut of Apple's revenue. | Razengan wrote: | TYL that they do. | bdowling wrote: | > By the same logic BestBuy, Verizon, and other hardware | retailers should get a cut of Apple's revenue. | | Best Buy, Verizon, and other hardware retailers buy Apple | products at a discount and sell them for retail price. So, in | a way they _do_ get a cut of the revenue that Apple would | make when Apple sells products at Apple 's retail stores. | wccrawford wrote: | When Develop X sells IAP for their app, Apple demands a | cut. Apple didn't ship that IAP or have anything to do with | it. | | When Apple collects their cut from an app, they don't pass | any portion of that on to Best Buy, who sold that device. | | Apple insists that Developer X wouldn't have made that | profit without Apple's support, and they're due that cut. | By that same logic, Best Buy is due a portion of that | because they enabled Apple to make that money in the first | place. | | It's bonkers, which is why everyone's mind rejects that | Best Buy would be entitled to anything of the sort. But | Apple has managed to sell that line somehow. | selectodude wrote: | Wholesale pricing for brick and mortar is usually about 50 | percent of MSRP. | somethoughts wrote: | I think Apple would actually have more of a case if they | charged different rates for different types of apps based on | technical reasons (i.e. Basics - web/touch/image/audio, video | media, gaming/ARKit): | | 1.) web view/touch/audio streaming app - 10% | | 2.) accelerated web view/SDvideo app - 15% | | 3.) HDvideo H.264 app - 20% | | 4.) 3D Graphics/ARKit SDK app - 30% | | 3D and ARKit which are pushing the boundaries of the silicon | probably do have associated R&D costs as well as silicon COGS | costs that perhaps do need to be recouped in a manner similar | to gaming console SW licensing agreements (i.e. Xbox, PS, | Nintendo royalty payments). | | In the court of public opinion it would also minimize the | effectiveness of "think of the solo iOS dev" type scenarios | that the big guys such as Epic, etc. like to hide behind. | Apocryphon wrote: | I wonder if that would run into net neutrality-type issues, | but setting different rates is definitely a novel way of | looking at things. Charging higher rates for publishers of | larger app binaries would also make sense. Certainly tech | giants such as Facebook and Uber who have bloated app sizes | could pay the extra expense for the hosting and so forth. | Gorbzel wrote: | > I wonder if that would run into net neutrality-type | issues | | It absolutely would. Who is Apple or anyone on HN to tell | one developer that their app is more important/costly/uses | higher priority SDKs than another? | Apocryphon wrote: | Well, maybe app binary sizes are an objective metric. | Apple could even raise the existing cap and give Uber a | bit more room to breathe, while charging them for the | inevitable expansion of their app. | somethoughts wrote: | I think the analogy would be more equivalent to AWS. | There are different costs associated with using the | various SDKs (i.e. Lightsail, EC2, S3, SageMaker). | | I'd also say the more it can be defined in terms of | technical reasons the better. | | There are R&D costs to maintaining a cutting edge, | industry leading 3D Graphics SDK for iOS that the primary | users beneficiaries of said library (i.e. Epic, Xbox) | should contribute to. | | This would require a bit of mindshift and context. | aspenmayer wrote: | The original app store on iOS was saurik's Cydia. App Store | wasn't even on iPhone 2G at launch. | | Cydia is free and open source. Hopefully Jay can clarify the | commission for paid apps on Cydia, but something tells me it | isn't 27%. | scarface74 wrote: | Game developers do just that on Microsoft's consoles... | paulpan wrote: | I think Apple's stubbornness at keeping their commission ~30% | underscores how critical that percentage is to their bottom | line profitability - both present and future. "Services" is | foundational to Tim Cook's vision to continue to grow the | company and increase its revenue streams. | | Based on latest Q4 earnings, Services is one of the highest | growth segment of Apple at 25% YoY (others being Mac at 25%, | Other Products at 13%). As the clamor for M1-based Macs | subsides, monetizing its existing 500M+ users is the only major | revenue-growth area. But what happens if their commission rate | is cut in half to 15%? Apple doesn't break out the specific App | Store revenue amount or percentage but it must be quite | significant. | | Hence they're willing to risk these continued lawsuits and | regulatory backlash. The day that Services division no longer | reports 20%+ YoY growth could well be one when Apple stock | faces the reckoning like FB/Meta. | gilgoomesh wrote: | Please don't attack services in general. There's nothing | wrong with selling your _OWN_ services. | | Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade are examples of good services | where Apple are commissioning and paying content producers. | The services are good value, good quality and have | competition on a level playing field (e.g. Netflix directly | compete against both and don't have to pay a commission to | Apple despite both their games and video services appearing | on the App Store). | | Other services from Apple like cloud storage, Apple News and | Apple Music are more debatable value but they have | competition so if you don't like them, use something else. | | The App Store is different because you don't have an | alternative. It is a parasitic system where where 70% of | revenue (not a guess, that's the real number) comes from loot | box grifting in games and there's literally no alternative to | Apple's 30% tax. It is a poison chalice from top to bottom. | | It comes down to the monopoly. | polyomino wrote: | How long until they sell phones at a loss? | 908B64B197 wrote: | Ironically, this 30% and the pivot to "Service" is why iOS | devices get updates after 3 years while Android phones just | become paperweights. | | Android OEM are incentivized to sell as many phones as they | can. They only make money on new hardware. Apple on the other | hand still makes money on older hardware as long as the user | still buy from the ecosystem. So it makes sense for them to | keep the products working longer. | rogerbinns wrote: | Apple's approach is even simpler from a technical point of | view. The oldest supported iPhone is the second generation | of 64 bit processor. There were almost certainly problems | with the first generation (of anything). The oldest | supported Watch was the first with (a now mature) 64 bit | processor. They made it mandatory for apps in the store to | be 64 bit. | | Android meanwhile supports 32 and 64 bit, multiple | instruction sets, multiple (incompatible) SOCs etc. That is | a lot more challenging. | GeekyBear wrote: | >The oldest supported iPhone is the second generation of | 64 bit processor. There were almost certainly problems | with the first generation (of anything) | | The iPhone with the oldest version of a 64 bit processor | (the A7 used in the 2013 iPhone 5s) fell out of support | after six years because it no longer had enough RAM for | the new version of the OS. | GeekyBear wrote: | >Ironically, this 30% and the pivot to "Service" is why iOS | devices get updates after 3 years while Android phones just | become paperweights. | | Apple's support window advantage long predates their | services initiative. | | Every flagship iPhone since the iPhone 4s in 2011 has | gotten at least five years of OS and security updates. | | If you count years where you only get a security update, | but not an OS update the way the Android ecosystem does, | they have devices that have gotten eight years of support. | cmelbye wrote: | App Store has been a >$1B business for at least a decade. | GeekyBear wrote: | If it's just a question of revenue, Google can certainly | afford to update it's Pixel devices for more than three | years. Heck, they can afford to offer customer service | and technical support hotlines the way Apple does as | well. | | However, the claim made was that Apple only started | offering a longer update period after they started | calling out service growth. This simply isn't true. | 908B64B197 wrote: | They can except... They don't control the SoC! Qualcomm | decides if a SoC gets to boot a newer Android or not. And | it's in Qualcomm's interest to sell more chips, since | they get no revenues post sales; only maintenance costs. | GeekyBear wrote: | That claim doesn't hold water. If people doing unpaid | community support can produce custom ROMs for older | devices that are no longer supported, Google can support | older devices too. | | Not to mention the ability of any company to make demands | of their suppliers. If Google can demand device makers | not use a fork of Android, they can demand suppliers | offer support for their products. | | Google simply doesn't care, because the customers they | care about are the advertisers, not device purchasers. | flerchin wrote: | Google figured out the game better than that. After a few | years there's no ongoing costs for those devices, but they | still take their vig if users continue to use them. | paulpan wrote: | Great point. Apple is lauded for their 5-6 year of iOS | updates but it's not an altruistic move - the updates | enable users to keep using their apps/services. | | Also there's an upper-bound on price for an iPhone Apple is | able to charge and if I can speculate, the "Pro" lineup | does not outsell the "base" iPhone significantly. For one, | there isn't enough product differentiation for an average | consumer to pay the $300/40% price premium. | | So in the world of 3-4 year iPhone cycles, keeping up the | walled garden and monetizing those within is the surest | path to revenue growth. | geodel wrote: | > but it's not an altruistic move - the updates enable | users to keep using their apps/services. | | What is altruistic in this world? Government welfare? | parental love? I don't know of anything that is truly | altruistic. | Joeri wrote: | So Apple has around one billion customers. When you look at | global income distributions there are not that many more | people that actually have enough income to afford their | products. Practically speaking while they may grow their | customer base a bit further, they cannot double it without | making far cheaper products or the world's population | becoming a lot more equally distributed income-wise. | | The consequence of this is that they have to lean into | inequality: get their existing high income customers to pay | them more money. This is why services are such a good | strategy and they are so unwilling to give up on that | revenue, and it is also why they are planning to launch very | expensive (and therefore high profit) new product categories | like vr goggles and cars targeted at their existing customer | base. | | Apple is so ridiculously big that it is fun to map them back | onto the world economy. Their yearly revenue is 0.4% of the | world economy. Their market cap is 0.6% of global wealth. But | that does present a real challenge to Tim Cook to keep | growing. If apple doubles again they will be 1% of the world | economy. Does that make sense for what amounts to a luxury | brand? | nicoburns wrote: | > The consequence of this is that they have to lean into | inequality | | They don't _have_ to do this at all. They _could_ decide | that they have 1 billion customers which is plenty and | stick with that. | Apocryphon wrote: | And the problem for them is as they shed the luxury brand | and become mass market general computing... the antitrust | regulations will just keep accumulating, increasing the | pressure. A vicious cycle. | TheCoelacanth wrote: | Maybe they should provide some actual services instead of | just trying to collect a 30% tax on everything that happens | on a iPhone. | Apocryphon wrote: | > The day that Services division no longer reports 20%+ YoY | growth could well be one when Apple stock faces the reckoning | like FB/Meta. | | Is that what happens to a piece of software after it has | eaten the world? | galangalalgol wrote: | Yes, ironically, a piece of software that becomes used by | everybody, or at least everyone it ever might be used by, | becomes worthless in the eyes of investors, because merely | tracking with population growth would be seen as a sign of | a dying business. This leads to self destructive behaviors | as the product tries to monetize itself in unpleasant ways | and expand into non-core competencies. Dropbox is an often | sited example. | Apocryphon wrote: | The evolution of a tech company into a utilities company. | infogulch wrote: | What if you planned a complete software product lifecycle | and create a pool of talented teams / organizational | modes that can adopt stewardship of the software at | various life stages with the goal to smoothly transition | between stages without harming users or workers? | | Lets say it looks like this for the sake of argument: | stage - organizational mode - goals | Idea / Proof of Concept - individual or team - prove the | idea out Growth Software Product - startup - | carve a space for the product, grow its useful user base | to a target number, transition to Utility Utility | Software Product - utility - maintain the project and | optimize costs and delivered value, transition back up to | Growth or down to Archived Archived Software | Product - library / anthropology - tell the story of the | project, minimize costs, make it available to a wide | audience, organize its community, transition back up to | Utility | | The idea is to have a pool of teams and organization | templates where you aim to "pass the baton" between modes | depending on the lifecycle stage of the software, and | individual teams and orgs are rewarded based on how they | meet their objectives including delivering a seamless | transition to the next stage. | Apocryphon wrote: | That's very well thought out. Sadly feels overly | aspirational when just "keeping the lights on" is often | underrated and neglected in many companies. Maybe | eventually a good business will have the foresight to | think of their organization in terms of different | lifecycle stages. | infogulch wrote: | Thanks. I agree that today's profit-oriented | organizations are generally unsuited to act out this kind | of product-centric methodology. Maybe future nonprofits | or DAOs or something could pull it off. | colejohnson66 wrote: | What about Facebook. They have over 2 _billion_ accounts | supposedly and Wall Street still invests in them | (ignoring this past week). | disillusioned wrote: | > (ignoring this past week) | | How can you ignore this past week when this past week is | _directly related_ to their account growth falling off a | cliff because of the exact over-saturation of the market | we're discussing here? | rhizome wrote: | > _merely tracking with population growth would be seen | as a sign of a dying business_ | | If this isn't a perversion within capitalism I don't know | what is. Heck, a market failure of capitalism itself. | | "There's nothing worse than making something everybody | uses." | mminer237 wrote: | Yes, they're not valued on making $10 billion per year. | That P/E means it would take 24 years to make your money | back. They're valued so highly because they're growing and | it's expected that in ten years, it'll $30 billion per | year, cutting your return time. If growth ends, then this | overvaluation corrects itself. | jbay808 wrote: | 24 years to earn your money back works out to a 2.9% | annual rate of return, which is a little bit above both | the 20 and 30 year treasury yields (~2.23%), reflecting a | small but positive risk premium for a big blue-chip | company that is generally seen as a low-risk investment. | | This looks like another example of how low interest rates | cause stock valuations to run up until their long-term | yields end up only slightly higher than bond yields. | Investors expecting that rapid growth to continue might | be disappointed. | Apocryphon wrote: | Zero-Interest rate policy explains the world | | https://www.readmargins.com/p/zirp-explains-the-world | gogopuppygogo wrote: | I honestly prefer to use Apple payments and Apple "Hide My | Email" as I'm sure a non-trivial number of users do. If they | could just refocus on making developers prioritize that flow | for users over outside payment systems (e.g. create a flow | requiring users to agree to disclose their private | information to the app maker and third parties in order to | use an outside payment system) then they'd keep most of their | customers in the Apple ecosystem and keep the payment | processing. | | The fact they are trying to keep a stranglehold on this | revenue seems penny wise and dollar foolish. Clearly | regulators are gunning for them and it's not long before they | lose this and don't get to set the standard. | Dylan16807 wrote: | > I honestly prefer to use Apple payments and Apple "Hide | My Email" as I'm sure a non-trivial number of users do. If | they could just refocus on making developers prioritize | that flow for users over outside payment systems (e.g. | create a flow requiring users to agree to disclose their | private information to the app maker and third parties in | order to use an outside payment system) then they'd keep | most of their customers in the Apple ecosystem and keep the | payment processing. | | It's pretty good stuff. | | But they seem to be admitting that the payment processing | is only worth a 3% cut. And you wouldn't charge apps for | the email hiding. | wayoutthere wrote: | They're charging the apps for distribution, which is a | lot of infrastructure and a lot of human-driven process | that doesn't come for free. There are good platform | reasons for not allowing alternate distribution methods. | | There are no wholesale prices for digital goods so they | get tacked on as fees. All Apple is really doing is | asking developers to give their customers an all-in price | that they'll display. You as a developer are free to | raise your prices 30% on iOS, and many in fact do. | | Every segment of every market does not need to be | relentlessly competitive. Apple's App Store rules are | obvious, and if you don't like them, you're free not to | develop for their platform (which itself is the product | they sell to their consumers; not your app and of which | the iPhone is only one component). | | You are not entitled to be profitable any way you want; | you have to find a niche in the market that's profitable | and if you can't make money on iOS, the market solution | is to just do something else. Countries -- especially | relatively small ones -- that try to legislate around | this are just as likely to be seen as more trouble for | Apple than they're worth to have an official presence in. | AniseAbyss wrote: | If Apple had confidence in the superiority of their service | they would not be afraid of someone undercutting them. | [deleted] | softwarebeware wrote: | I think 30% is only unreasonable if apps in their ecosystem | start to leave. Honestly, when the marketplace votes by staying | on the platform at 30%, then it doesn't matter how ridiculous | it seems to some of us, they're going to keep doing it. | threeseed wrote: | It's 15% for developers making up to $1m a year. | | That's pretty reasonable compared to other distribution | channels. | fxtentacle wrote: | There's no place to leave to. | | Or if you mean developers abandoning support for iOS and Mac, | then yes, that is precisely what we did. | Razengan wrote: | How many of your users left you? | short_sells_poo wrote: | They are doing everything they think they can get away with. I | agree that ethics and morale should factor into corporate | decision making, but at this level I'd argue that corporate | decision making is purely an optimization game between profits | over various horizons. | | If they think this maximizes their payoff, they'll do it. I'm | 100% certain that they realize that this may/will invite | further lawsuits and have factored this into their | calculations. | thathndude wrote: | Precisely. Let them reap what they plant. | withinboredom wrote: | Apples? | Hokusai wrote: | Or not. Short term bonuses are key, achieving quarter goals | is extremely important, that the company crashes and burns in | 10 years may be someone else problem. | | Big corporations are giants with clay feet. From inside one | can see the real humans behind the curtains. | | So, you could be right and its a long term strategy, but it's | also possible that they are just thinking about their next | bonus. | echelon wrote: | > Imagine if in the past Apple would have had to pay 30% of | their gross to Microsoft in order to be allowed to run their | software on Windows. | | iPod wouldn't have happened and Apple wouldn't exist today. | Apple relied on the fact that most of its customers used | Windows and that they got to transact for free on the platform. | Heck, they didn't even need Microsoft's approval to offer | iTunes downloads. | | Think about all of the small businesses and startups that are | getting snuffed out today by Apple's aggressive over- | harvesting. | | Some non-trivial percentage of Apple's $3T market cap owes | itself to a system of feudalism and mafia-style tactics rather | than innovation and product sales. Imagine of those dollars | were instead represented just about anywhere else. | blihp wrote: | When they eventually lose a major lawsuit, any 'record setting' | settlement or judgement is likely to be a tiny fraction of the | profits they were able to reap in over a decade of bad | behavior. Name a single multinational company in the last 20 | years where the consequences were more than a fraction of the | profit they made from their bad behavior. | [deleted] | ROTMetro wrote: | You just made Apple's point though. The Microsoft ecosystem of | flexibility introduced so much variation that lots of people | moved to Apple BECAUSE of it's enforced uniformity. Microsoft's | ecosystem of flexibility allowed their system to be abused and | exploited by bad actors more easily resulting in people MOVING | to Apple to get away from this. If you want flexibility, | develop for Android or Windows. You don't have a right to have | access to people who moved to Apple for the express purpose of | living in a managed ecosystem that just worked and simplified | their lives. Everyone is talking about the developer's rights | but no one is talking about end users, many of whom choose | Apple for the very reason this is trying to negate, even if | they couldn't articulate it as such. | [deleted] | spideymans wrote: | You're not wrong, it what does this have to do with App Store | commissions? I (an end user) would be quite happy to see iOS | remain a restricted environment for developers, while also | lowering App Store commissions, such that more business | models will be competitive on iOS. | passivate wrote: | There is absolutely nothing is preventing Apple from creating | an easy to use 'checkout' process that pretty much every | single e-commerce websites have. Developers can choose to | integrate with Apple payments, pay pal, square or whoever. | Its no different than Amazon. Users can check a payment | processor as a default and never be bothered. In my opinion, | this is simply Apple being a bully, for commercial reasons, | not technical, or UX ones. | Hokusai wrote: | > many of whom choose Apple for the very reason this is | trying to negate | | I already use apps in iOs that bypass the store to transfer | money, pay for train tickets, parking, etc. Many people in | Sweden likes Swish and probably will be ok with being able to | choose it for all their transactions. | | I could be wrong, but I don't think that there is data to | support the opposite either. | oaiey wrote: | The industry could build platforms which are both safe and | flexible. They just do not want it. Some for keeping their | revenue other for sticking to backward compatibility | anm89 wrote: | They have armies of economists, lawyers, and accountants. Do | you really think that they are naive and you simply understand | the situation better than them or do you think it's possible | that they've run the numbers? | readams wrote: | They have provided a convenient breakdown for their invoices: | | 3% payment processing | | 27% monopoly rent | threeseed wrote: | For developers making up to $1m a year: | | 3% payment processing | | 12% cost of channel | sfe22 wrote: | Other payments processors charge 30c + 3%, so it would be | interesting to see how it would work here for smaller | payments | IncRnd wrote: | It's pretty straightforward, assuming that you have the | standard charge amount correct. (I don't know) | | Between the two approaches, the costs break even when 30c = | .27*cost. | | Apple's 27% exceeds the 30c whenver the purchase costs less | than $1.11. 27% of .99 is 26.73c. | | So, this is a strong case Apple has calculated the other | processor's charges for all app sales of .99 or less. It | seems they are trying to charge more than normal processors | for all micro-transactions. | Dylan16807 wrote: | 5c + 5% is also standard for smaller payments. | Razengan wrote: | > _Apple should focus on selling hardware and be happy to | facilitate those payments that people - and application | developers - voluntarily process through their system._ | | Why don't you apply that to the Xbox, PlayStation, etc.? | | > _All this stupid taxation of other peoples ' businesses_ | | Exactly. Stop trying to overthrow Apple from the ecosystem they | built. | keleftheriou wrote: | Steve Troughton-Smith on Twitter[1]: | | > Absolutely vile. This says everything about @tim_cook's Apple | and what it thinks of developers. I hope the company gets exactly | what it deserves. Everybody on their executive team should be | ashamed, and some of them should not be here when it's all over. | We all see you. | | > We've been told that if Apple ever asked its employees to | betray their principles, they'd leave. In a similar vein, | everybody, top to bottom, involved in planning, editing, | implementation of everything in this document should leave Apple. | You betrayed us. | | 1: | https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/14895589519056691... | viktorcode wrote: | Pretty strong word, betrayal. | | Someone on 9to5 Mac suggested Steve to put his money where his | mouth is, i.e. pull his own software from App Store, before | demanding from Apple employees that they leave the company. I | think that's a good advice. | irskep wrote: | So he should destroy his business? Seems like extremely | terrible advice. | dagmx wrote: | Their second tweet doesn't make sense. How does his feeling of | betrayal mean that the employees betrayed their principles and | should therefore leave? | | That's a projection of his own belief in the way it should work | onto the beliefs of thousands of employees who may not share | his thoughts on the matter. | traveler01 wrote: | I got an iPhone in August. Their I've never seen such a crappy | and expensive AppStore before and I'm a longtime Android user. | | And this won't improve it, apps are very expensive for they do, | phone is pretty much a closed up black box which apparently is | easily hackable if you manage to find the security holes. | viktorcode wrote: | Good thing iPhone holds resale value for longer than an Android | phone, so you can just ditch it. | philliphaydon wrote: | I don't see any difference in prices between android and iOS. | They are both expensive. But the quality of apps on android is | definitely lower. | Hamuko wrote: | I hope that the Dutch demand a breakdown on that commission to | see where it goes, if it's not just a number that they pulled out | of their ass. | | Surely they wouldn't put hosting and approval processes there if | free apps don't pay separately for those? | jacquesm wrote: | It will be smacked down hard is my prediction, because clearly | Apple is trying to argue that they have an innate right to | other parties' business income. It's the Mafia model: you have | a partner in the business who wants a sizeable chunk of your | gross without doing anything for it. | tomjen3 wrote: | Of course they don't, those businesses are free to develop | their own phones and not pay Apple at all. | | Now maybe 15 percent is a more reasonable price, but Apple | developed the phone, apple developed the SDK, apple made it | available to everybody, heck Apple even developed the | computer language used. | | This is all available for anybody for a fixed percentage, | which means that it scales pretty well with how much you make | and it cost you nothing more than 100 dollars a year if you | don't charge people. | Spivak wrote: | This comment section is rich coming from a group that does | thing like massively charge more for "enterprise plans" | that are are basically nothing except SSO. You charge based | on how much the person on the other side wants your stuff, | not how much it costs to provide it. And businesses moving | a lot of product on iOS definitely want it more. | myspy wrote: | But when you use the store, you need to pay for using and | maintaining the store, which is the other 27%. Why would you | expect to upload apps in the store and let them be downloaded | for free? | 7steps2much wrote: | You need to pay 99$/Year for a developer account though. | That's very much not "for free" | | I would argue that 99.9% of apps on the app store ever get | to the point where 99$ a year is even remotely the cost | incurred by Apple. | Spivak wrote: | This makes no sense, say apple drops the $99 developer | fee. The 30% commission is suddenly justified? | sofixa wrote: | You pay for it via the developer account. Isn't that what | it is for? | Hamuko wrote: | No developer can upload anything to the App Store for free. | You need to pay $99/year for access. | jacquesm wrote: | Because that is the model that Apple has chosen for. If the | downloads can be priced or can be free that is Apple's | choice. Then they should raise the minimum price for | distribution. | | Distribution is a one-time expense, and it does not entitle | you to a 30% cut of services that use Apps as endpoints. | It's a mob move, taxation because you are powerful enough | to harm another business, not because you have contributed | to the business. | maccard wrote: | > Distribution is a one-time expense | | No, it's not. Distribution requires ongoing storage and | bandwidth costs. | | > It's a mob move, taxation because you are powerful | enough to harm another business, not because you have | contributed to the business. | | This is just flaming. Apple absolutely have contributed | to the business. They provide hosting, storage, | versioning, a marketplace, storefront reviews, developer | tools, various high-availability services (auth being one | of them). We can argue all day how much that is worth, | but it is definitely worth some number greater than 0, | otherwise people would just ignore the platforms. | jacquesm wrote: | Explain please how distribution is tied in to the unknown | price point at which the other company proceeds to do | business? | | Or are you arguing that the 30% cut is used to subsidize | the remainder of the free apps? | | You really should bone up on anti-competitive behavior | before accusing people of flaming. | | People are forced into this model, the alternatives have | been degraded to the point that they no longer function | for all intents and purposes you _have_ to distribute | your app through Apple. | maccard wrote: | This is a much more reasonable comment than your original | coment. | | > Explain please how distribution is tied in to the | unknown price point at which the other company proceeds | to do business? | | This is not what you said, you said it was a one time | expense. Those two statements are not the same. | | > Or are you arguing that the 30% cut is used to | subsidize the remainder of the free apps? | | You're putting words in my mouth here. I'm not arguing | the 30% cut is used to subsidise the remainder of the | apps, I'm arguing that free apps still have distribution | costs. | | > You really should bone up on anti-competitive behavior | before accusing people of flaming. | | I stand by my accusation of flaming - just becasue you | have a point doesn't mean it couldn't be made in a better | way. | | > People are forced into this model, the alternatives | have been degraded to the point that they no longer | function for all intents and purposes you have to | distribute your app through Apple. | | That I don't disagree with one bit, and if your initial | comment had said that rather than " It's a mob move, | taxation because you are powerful enough to harm another | business, not because you have contributed to the | business." I wouldn't have commented on it. | viktorcode wrote: | You expect there should be no profit, and the whole commission | therefore must cover some costs? That was the line of argument | of Epic in court; it didn't go well. | xuki wrote: | Apple ran out of people to sell iPhone to and they're turning | into a service company to keep the stock price flowing. Infinity | growth is cancer. | viktorcode wrote: | Last quarter results say they didn't. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | See also them exempting themselves from the cross-app tracking | thing. | | Personally, I predict that they'll need to either give up on | service revenue growth, or roll back on these changes. | | This will occur as the next big f2p games will find it much, | much harder to monetise profitably without being able to | measure/optimise at a user level. | | It'll be interesting to see what happens here. | ksec wrote: | >Personally, I predict that they'll need to either give up on | service revenue growth, or roll back on these changes. | | There is no need to give up on service revenue. Before 2016, | my expectation of future Apple Services was growth from | AppleCare and iCloud. Today, Apple put $10 per devices to | services revenue for OS, Map and other Software. Apple could | hike the price and move those to services. For example iPhone | price hike but with 2 years AppleCare by default. | | Nearly 80% of App Store revenue are from Gaming. There is no | reason why Apple cant separate Game into a different Store | and continue to charge 30% off it. That would have protected | 80% of App Store revenue alone. EPIC wouldn't be happy, but I | am sure most people couldn't care less. Gaming are not the | fabric of our modern society ( I am sure there will be people | who disagree ). | | Then it is the Apps and Services. Which is not only just a | revenue problem but a power play problem. Why does Apple get | to dictate which business it is allowed on their platform | when it holds 60%+ of usage in US / UK market. I have an app | for my restaurant, but Apple refuse to host it. While QSR | next door get to use Apps and customer are flying in. Under | which law does Apple gets to discriminate small business? May | be that is fine by US standards, I can assure you this wont | fly in EUR. And where are business and developers going to | complain? And how is Apple responding? If you watch every | speech, interview or answer Tim Cook gave, it is obvious he ( | representing Apple ) doesn't think they have a problem at | all. And the biggest problem in the world is not | understanding there is a problem. | | It is sad those who were on Steve Jobs side are all gone. | Phil Schiller, Katie Cotton, Jony Ive, Scott Forstall, Bob | Mansfield, Ron Johnson. And only Tim Cook and Eddy Cue left. | There may be not of people with high intellect at Apple, but | very little with intuition. | | "Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than | intellect, in my opinion," - Steve Jobs | Apocryphon wrote: | You're forgetting Craig Federighi! | | One wonders if he's in line for succession after Cook. And | how he'd do in the captain's seat. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | > Nearly 80% of App Store revenue are from Gaming. There is | no reason why Apple cant separate Game into a different | Store and continue to charge 30% off it. That would have | protected 80% of App Store revenue alone. EPIC wouldn't be | happy, but I am sure most people couldn't care less. Gaming | are not the fabric of our modern society ( I am sure there | will be people who disagree ). | | Yes, exactly. And how do those games monetise? | | They target a small number of people who spend absurd | amounts of money on in-game purchases. FB (and Google, but | that's not relevant on iOS) have tools that allow a | marketer to optimise towards this event. If you can't | measure which people actually purchased, it gets much more | expensive to spend loads of money acquiring users on iOS | (relative to Android). | | Therefore, while Apple are fine now, I suspect that they'll | see far less growth from in-app purchases from games in the | future, which will hold back their services revenue. | | Hence my comment, they'll either roll this back or give up | on service revenue growth. | | It doesn't really matter to me (no longer in the industry) | but it'll be interesting to see what they choose. | ksec wrote: | Yes, I know Mobile Gaming is the reason why Internet ad | revenue are up, it is pretty much a whole cycle where IAP | gets money and these company use percentage of them for | advertising, the cycle repeat until a point it dies and | they will make another game using other IP. | | But do less effective ads necessary means less spending | on Games? I am going to assume there will be other form | of discovery. The whales will just go somewhere else and | spend it. Or am I missing a link here somewhere? | | I do see you point of how service revenue and the game | and ads are tied together. Probably need sometime to sit | down and think deeply about it. | dandanua wrote: | > Infinity growth is cancer | | But every shareholder of any corporation wants exactly that. | Moreover, Tesla proves this can be achieved largely on promises | (look at the capitalization/revenue). | Jyaif wrote: | > Each month, developers will have to send a report to Apple that | lists their sales. Apple will then send out invoices for its | commission, that must be paid within 45 days. | | LOL! | | Apple has no way of knowing how many sales actually occurred in | the app, so they have to trust the developers to report the | correct number. How the tables have turned :-) | dsnr wrote: | They though about that too, they will provide an API, that the | developer has to call before redirecting the user to the | external payment provider. So they can approximate the amount | of sales the app generates. It's in the article. | 7steps2much wrote: | Would be too bad if the developer just doesn't do that right? | haar wrote: | Apple review your apps before approving them onto the App | Store. | | You can opt to not follow their rules, and they can opt to | not approve your app. | denni9th wrote: | Unfortunately code that did that would probably not pass | the App Store review process. | post_break wrote: | My app has a 90% bounce rate Apple, sorry! | rosndo wrote: | Fraud is a crime you can go to prison for. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | Probably apps with low numbers of sales will be punished in | rankings, with low numbers of sales it means your users don't | really like you. | grenoire wrote: | Does that mean I can buy my app into the rankings by paying | more in commission? | bryanrasmussen wrote: | I mean maybe I am being cynical here, but it was implied | that developers could just under-report their sales without | negative effects, in order to fight that possibility I | might suppose that Apple would increase positioning of apps | in the Netherlands that reported high sales, under theory | that they were 'better'. | grenoire wrote: | Apple is basically a local tax authority now. For the... Apple | tax, y'know? | brimble wrote: | As a user, a huge part of their value proposition is that | they act as a private regulator, to good effect. | | It's the libertarian dream of paying companies to be your | private regulatory enforcement agency (see Friedman and | others). | | Then they tax companies for access to their little haven of | sanity. | | I'd prefer the government just regulate out all the plainly- | bad behavior that goes on in the software industry, but | lacking that... I prefer to retain this option. | | I wish their cut were lower but that they levy a "tax" makes | a certain amount of sense, given the circumstances. | lnxg33k1 wrote: | s/local/global | Longhanks wrote: | Except you can always opt to not use, develop for or deploy | onto Apple devices. Just use Android if you're uncomfortable. | lnxg33k1 wrote: | Do you think that your approach to life would have made a | better world than it is now? If we said like "Don't worry | about companies throwing shit into the rivers, just buy | bottled water", or "Don't worry about workers rights just | find a better job", "Don't worry about purchases, just buy | from a different company", like we need to make sure that | the system can thrive, that small businesses can develop | without being blood sucked, we are all at stake of making | sure that the system as a whole can grow and not only the | fruit company and its stakeholder, so no we don't have a | choice of ignoring fruity shit, we need to make sure that | what they can do is regulated to let every one work and | fairly earn, I am fairly annoyed by this libertarian brain | damage trying to make everyone reading more stupid, you | want to let apple get away, then do that use apple and set | up a direct debit so that they can keep exploiting you, for | the rest of us with opposable thumb, we're going to try to | make sure that regulators regulate | sunderw wrote: | And if I'm uncomfortable with Android, what should I use ? | I have the choice between being abused by Apple, Google or | having no apps because no one bothers developping apps for | Linux phones. | hexo wrote: | Extortion practices. | mensetmanusman wrote: | It would benefit Apple if they had to compete with other payment | processors. Competition sharpens the product. | Traster wrote: | This is great, because it serves as a basis for what Apple can be | forced to reduce their commission to. What Apple has said here is | "The cost of the payment processing is 3% and the rest is our | commission", which obviously opens the door to legislators then | saying "Well, you said the costs of payment processing is 3%, | that's what we'll cap your commission at". | kmlx wrote: | this makes absolutely no sense. | | apple never said 30% is just payment processing. they claim the | infra, the testers, the approval etc etc costs a lot. so now we | know it's 27%. which is absolutely normal. | | should any app use their proprietary apis, without their | explicit approval? of course not. the phone might be yours, but | the code running on it a hard no. | | but at the end of the day it's all politics so i normally | assume the worst: a worse overall end-user experience because | some companies spent more on lobbying than others. | huhtenberg wrote: | > now we know it's 27% | | Bah, we most certainly don't. | | They pulled that number completely out of their ass, just | like the previous 30%. The only rationale behind it is | because they could get away with it. | musicale wrote: | > They pulled that number completely out of their ass, just | like the previous 30%. | | As recently as 2019, 30% was pretty common: | | https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report- | steams-30-cut... | 8note wrote: | the testers and approval costs are per app though, not per | transaction. the infrastructure is per download. | | what cost does apple incur per iap on somebody else's | payments service? | musicale wrote: | Clearly the incremental platform fees of Apple, Nintendo, | Sony, etc.) amortize both capital and operational expenses, | and also enable those companies to make tons of money. | | The assumption that Apple only has to pay for | infrastructure when people are downloading things is | incorrect. Data centers still incur ongoing operations and | maintenance costs even if they're fully paid for and | nobody's downloading anything. | olliej wrote: | Yes, it shows that payment processing is 3%, and the remaining | 27% has _nothing do to with payment processing_ | | Why do people insist on acting like the platform commission is | a payment processing fee? No one says that about the platform | commissions by Xbox, Playstation, Twitch, Patreon, ... | endisneigh wrote: | Should all businesses be capping their fees to their costs? | | If so, then that implies no profit. If no profit, why bother? | moonchrome wrote: | Because it enables/sells the rest of their ecosystem and | right now they are in a position where they are just rent | seeking on their market position. | gruez wrote: | >they are just rent seeking on their market position. | | No, they're providing a service and charging for it, just | like anyone else. | TheCoelacanth wrote: | What "service" are they providing? Not stopping you from | using someone else's payment processor? | PeterisP wrote: | The big question here is why should Apple be entitled to any | fee whatsoever if a user wants to buy something from a vendor | without using Apple's payment infrastructure? Users should be | free to transact directly with vendors without involving | Apple if they don't want to involve Apple (which the court | case approved) and if they aren't involving Apple, as in this | case, a demand for a "commission" on non-Apple transactions | is anticompetitive and should be prohibited by law. | lolinder wrote: | The fight over alternative payment methods is fraught with | misunderstandings. Apple has _always_ stated their | intention to collect the 30% regardless of what payment | method you use, because as far as they 're concerned it's | _not_ a payment processing fee. They view it as a platform | fee that you pay for access to iOS, the App Store, and | other services, and so far regulators and governments have | agreed with them on that. | | What's changed here is that Apple has now set a number to | the "payment processing" portion of their fee. This gives | them a way to cave on alternative payments while still | retaining the bulk of their profits. | 13415 wrote: | Not bothering would be the equivalent of the app store | closing in this case, which would mean that iPhones would | have to be open. So that would be the ideal outcome (except | for Apple). | Guest42 wrote: | It's rather tiresome for people to alternate between general | and specific in order to be argumentative as opposed to | staying on topic and contributing to the issue at hand. | | No, the poster isn't implying that all businesses should be | capping their fees. That's absurd. However, Apple is not all | businesses and regulation is structured in a way that has a | number of conditions. I for one am glad that the department | of insurance makes my car insurance affordable and that when | I purchase water it's not from a private equity firm. | endisneigh wrote: | > No, the poster isn't implying that all businesses should | be calling their fees. That's absurd. | | That's literally what they said | | >> "Well, you said the costs of payment processing is 3%, | that's what we'll cap your commission at". | [deleted] | yokoprime wrote: | For payment solutions, yes. You don't see VISA charging 30% | on top of each transaction. | endisneigh wrote: | Nothing is stopping you from just using a web app and | collecting money with a cheaper method and not having an | app on the Apple app store, though. | | If it's so bad, don't do it? | clusterfish wrote: | Nice whataboutism, except Mobile Safari is intentionally | crippled to not support PWAs well. | endisneigh wrote: | Nobody said anything about PWAs. Your app can be a pure | web app. | | If you don't want to do that then pay the fees. Simple as | that. | lolinder wrote: | Apple has always argued that the 30% is not a payment | processing fee. It's the App Store fee, which until today | has _bundled_ their payment processing fee with fees to | cover their other expenses (and make them a tidy profit). | | The argument over alternative payment methods has always | struck me as odd for precisely this reason--throughout the | Epic case Apple has made it clear that if they allowed | alternative payment methods they would _still_ charge the | 30% fee for the other services. | | Is 30% (or 27%) too steep for what the App Store provides? | Probably. But fighting over the 30% as a payment processing | fee is a huge misstep, because regulators will _always_ | take Apple 's side on that question. | olliej wrote: | I don't see apple doing that either. This article says very | clearly that the payment processing fee is 3%. | LordDragonfang wrote: | It's not 30%, but a very large portion of VISA's profits | comes from the fees they charge; VISA's fees are not capped | to their "costs" of operating. VISA exists as a literal | precedent that you can profit off a commission for a | financial transaction. | | The issue in question isn't whether Apple should be allowed | to profit, it's whether they should be allowed to abuse | their effective monopoly position to set their commission a | literal order of magnitude higher than any other processor. | clusterfish wrote: | In EU credit card fees are capped by law, and the duopoly | is surviving just fine, just with less obscene profits. | Should do the same with mobile app stores. | dathinab wrote: | Hm, does that mean they implicit accepted that 3% is a maximum | price for a payment system to not count as profiteering? | | And hence 27% is the price for the service of forcing you to use | their app-store, sorry I mean non well working scam scanning, | sorry I mean sup-par mac only build tools, ah wait I mean | download cost, ... or maybe their sometimes abusive and often | non-well working moderation, ah no that can't be it either. Maybe | it's subvention the hardware cost as a iPhone only costs... | wait... Why does it seem like profiteering no matter how I try to | look at it?? | | Jokes aside, in app payments are basically only monetary | processing. Now you can claim that in app-payments are subvention | reduced up-front payments. But that only holds up up to some | degree of average per-active-user payment. But at least the more | revenue rich phone games to quite a bit above that. | jacquesm wrote: | 3% sounds about right. That's the order-of-magnitude fee | charged by commercial payment service providers (1 ... 5% in | practice). | etchalon wrote: | This is exactly what I'd expect from Apple, and Google, and any | platform provider. | | It makes the point that their fee isn't about credit card | processing. | | I suspect, baring specific language in the law baring the | practice, Apple, Google, etc. will force their commissions no | matter what other allowances they're asked to make. | endisneigh wrote: | What I don't understand is - if you don't like the fees, why | don't you just not use it? If you make money after the fees then | isn't it worth it compared to the alternative? | | If people actually just stood firm against the fees then viable | alternatives would manifest. | ApolloFortyNine wrote: | Good luck running a business where (in the US) you lose 50% of | potential customers instantly, and those 50% will tell everyone | else to use x because it's available on both platforms. | | It's really the 50% shouting on social media that hurts the | most. Instead of maybe recommending your app, they will | recommend one of your competitors that support both. | vorpalhex wrote: | Yeah, if you don't like the fee, just make your own phone | hardware, your own processor, your own screens, your own OS.. | | The same way when automakers tried a similar game and then.. | the government stepped in, slapped the tar out of them with | regulation, and told them to play nicely with third parties or | lose the ability to do business. | | Or when utilities had natural monopolies were preventing | competition and.. then the government put strict regulations on | them, set pricing rules and allowed significant control of | them. | | The answer is that if the two dominant parties have managed to | keep out competitors and basically engage in collusion, the | government should correct the situation. | abletonlive wrote: | > Yeah, if you don't like the fee, just make your own phone | hardware, your own processor, your own screens, your own OS.. | | So should companies not be rewarded for making an awesome | system so they can charge these commissions? I mean Amazon | and Microsoft can't blame Apple for their failure to produce | phones people want to use...they certainly had the resources, | and still do. | vorpalhex wrote: | They are.. by selling a phone. You didn't get your iphone | for free. Apple makes money off the hardware - more money | than it does the app store. | abletonlive wrote: | So you're arguing that because apple makes a profit from | the initial sale of the phone...they shouldn't _also_ | make a profit from the services they provide for that | phone (such as maintaining an app store and the | infrastructure for that app store)? | | That's a bold position to take. What makes you feel | entitled to that? Did apple ever sell iPhones as a one- | and-done purchase? I'm pretty confused about how you're | justifying this argument. It seems to me that you think | all developers have some kind of entitlement to make a | profit off of Apple's ecosystem without Apple making a | profit from an ecosystem they risked a lot to build, | because Apple is already making a profit off the iPhone. | Am I following that correctly? | aspenmayer wrote: | > Did apple ever sell iPhones as a one-and-done purchase? | | Yes, the original iPhone 2G. It didn't even have App | Store on launch version of iOS. In fact, Cydia, the | original jailbreak app store, existed on iOS before the | official App Store. Saurik can speak to any fees for paid | apps featured on Cydia. I remember an SMS app that | allowed reply from notifications that I bought through | Cydia, but I forget the name, maybe biteSMS? Most apps | were entirely free, and Cydia supports adding arbitrary | repositories. | | So, arguably, the original app purchasing experience on | iOS was free and open source. Apple and their App Store | couldn't compete, and thus the war against right to | compute and jailbreaks. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydia | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_Store_(iOS/iPadOS) | abletonlive wrote: | So you basically agree all phones since the original | iPhone are not sold as one-and-done purchases? | | I just don't understand where developers are coming from. | Let's say I build a wildly successful theme park. It's | the best theme park in the world and only a couple other | theme parks exist that is as fun as my theme park. | | Because I'm so good at building theme parks, do you have | some kind of entitlement to put your ride in my theme | park and charge people money to ride it? | endisneigh wrote: | You can make a web app which can be run on the same phones | with no fees. The vast majority of apps can be implemented as | web apps. | | Comparing utilities, based on physical constraints, with | digital goods doesn't make any sense. It doesn't require any | effort to make a web app relative to the status quo. | | Furthermore your example doesn't make any sense because you | make money with Apple and pay a fee - you're not paying for | nothing. Natural gas, for example, has constraints around | distribution and collection. These don't exist for apps. | | Ironically, if more developers just made web apps instead of | going to app stores it would not only make their apps more | accessible as they are inherently cross platform, but would | likely lead to the creation of a web App Store to resolve the | distribution problem. | vorpalhex wrote: | Except your PWAs won't run or be very nerfed on Safari | because it is missing and has been missing all of those | APIs for many years. | | You could just install Chrome.. oh wait no, no you can't. | Apple won't let you. | endisneigh wrote: | So what? It's an option. If more people take it, it will | get better. Stadia is literally a web app on iOS, for | example. | astlouis44 wrote: | This. Especially with the advent of technologies like | WebAssembly, WebGPU, and WebXR, developers can now | distribute real-time 3D applications like games universally | via the open web, without having to sacrifice 30% to a | walled garden. | vorpalhex wrote: | Do those APIs work on safari, the only browser you can | have on iOS? | | No. No they don't. Oops. | kmlx wrote: | > Yeah, if you don't like the fee, just make your own phone | hardware, your own processor, your own screens, your own OS.. | | no, you just need a webapp. | astlouis44 wrote: | Yup. Wish more developers would realize this. | vorpalhex wrote: | I wish more developers would realize Safari doesn't | support most modern browser APIs. | kmlx wrote: | it depends how modern, but most are there. we develop | primarily on safari and see no issues. | post_break wrote: | How many options do you have for gas, water, or power where you | live? If I don't like the $18 a month fee for my gas bill, | before I use a single ccf of natural gas can I just not use it? | | If I don't like the app store fees can I just not use it? You | see what I'm getting at? | endisneigh wrote: | Silly comparison - natural gas prices are regulated, but | furthermore you don't make money from your natural gas | payment inherently. | | You only pay Apple store fees if you make money. Your | comparison is dumb. Charge more to your users and be done | with it a all of your Apple competitors are bound by the same | rule. | post_break wrote: | If I make an app that Apple doesn't like, I can't put it on | my iPhone. I literally cannot put my own apps on my phone. | Or install apps from developers outside of the app store. I | can do so on my computer, why not my phone. "well just | switch to android" isn't a good excuse. | endisneigh wrote: | You can make a web app that works on safari, which runs | on iPhones. So your entire point is wrong. | | Do you think this site you're on is originally an iPhone | app? | post_break wrote: | Ahh yes, you want a native app on your phone? I can offer | a website instead. | formvoltron wrote: | Why would the Dutch allow this? | hn_version_0023 wrote: | This is usury, full stop. | notsrg wrote: | I'm shocked those defending the Apple tax aren't considering the | fact that businesses are just offloading that tax onto consumers | making things artificially more expensive for iOS users. Even | worse, when you do this you can't communicate _why_ this is the | case or tell people you can use the web for cheaper so users feel | like you 're just scamming them. | yokoprime wrote: | This is the very reason why I always check if a subscription | can be purchased outside of the app store before even | considering buying it there. Its usually more expensive as an | in app purchase. | flatline wrote: | More expensive as a one-time cost, but managing subscriptions | through Apple allows you to pay once for a recurring | subscription then cancel and use it for the remainder of the | purchase period. Even one unintended renewal will wipe out | whatever discount you got from a direct purchase. | badwolf wrote: | I follow an almost exact opposite flow. If I'm on a | site/service that has a subscription, I check if they take | in-app subscriptions and use that. | | I have no desire to deal with endless dark patterns to get me | to not cancel a subscription. | Osiris wrote: | That just shows that Apple doesn't have to have a monopoly | to compete. They can offer better features, services, etc | that people may be willing to pay more for. | | Not everyone pays for the extended warranty when they buy | electronics/tools but some do because they find value in | it. | jjeaff wrote: | Unfortunately, they don't have to actually offer better | services. Because they already have the customer base | signed up with cc on file, they simply have to not be | terrible. Then, no one will even try out individual | subscription services because they already have good | enough with apple defaults. | ninkendo wrote: | I think a more apt analogy would be: I'd pay a premium to | shop at a store where there aren't any pushy associates | trying to get me to buy an extended warranty in the first | place. | wingworks wrote: | ^ This! At least here in New Zealand almost all perks of | "extended" warranties are useless, as pretty much all | things you buy here are already covered under our | consumers guarantee act. | rootusrootus wrote: | Nothing is free. An extended warranty is an insurance | policy, the purchase price for it is the premium. It's | pretty much the same for the original warranty. It may be | included in the purchase, but it's still just an | insurance policy that the manufacturer has rolled into | the price of the product. | | So when you have strong regulation like a consumer | guarantee act, it just means everything you buy is priced | higher to account for it. | wingworks wrote: | Very true, which is why it's such a scam to sell extended | warranties here in NZ, as you get almost no value for it. | Yet allot of the big retail chains still do it. | heartbeats wrote: | This is ... not true, though? | | Consumer goods are more expensive in most of Europe, | sure, but that's because of VAT - after adjusting for | VAT, the price is usually the same. | | This makes sense if you consider that customer protection | usually covers (1) returns and (2) defective goods. | Returns are not exactly a cost to the retailer - they can | still sell the merchandise, and replacing defective goods | obviously only applies if you stock them. If you weren't | selling bad goods, you wouldn't have that problem. | FpUser wrote: | I do not pay a premium and have no problem telling pushy | "associates" to go eff themselves. | ninkendo wrote: | Good for you. | smoldesu wrote: | If that were true of most customers, Apple could easily | allow other storefronts, since nobody would be inclined | to use anything but their service. Without competitors | though, there's no way to determine if Apple's offerings | really are competitive. | asiachick wrote: | I'd pay a premium to shop at a store where I could buy | something quickly. Vs Apple stores where first I have to | flag down someone, then they go tell me to stand at some | table and wait, then 5-10 mins later someone comes to | help me and ask too many questions, then they say in 5-10 | mins someone will bring out the thing I wanted. And | finally I can buy >:( Even ordering online for pickup my | stuff wasn't at the pickup counter and they had to call | into the back room. That might be fine if it was | unannounced but they made choose a 15 minute window to | pickup. You'd think they'd prep for that window. Instead | of waiting until the pickup time I could have just gone | to the store without the preorder and waited a similar | amount. | [deleted] | LiquidSky wrote: | > making things artificially more expensive for iOS users. | | It's not artificially more expensive, I'm happy to pay for the | service and reliability offered by the App Store. | | >users feel like you're just scamming them. | | Users feel that way because so many subscription services ARE | trying to scam them. As a commenter said below, subscribing | through the App Store provides a simple, reliable way to manage | your subscriptions and guarantee a cancel if you want without | having to deal with whatever dark pattern bullshit apps | normally throw up at you. | | Choose to pay less and enjoy a world of endless unreliable, | shitty apps and shady practices if you want, I'm happy to pay | not to. | sircastor wrote: | I'm willing to bet that when developers are able to sell | directly without the 30% add on, that it'll be a short time | before they start selling at the same price and taking the 30% | for themselves. | xuki wrote: | Exactly. I didn't see any indie developers drop their price | when Apple reduced the commission to 15% for the first | million. | viktorcode wrote: | > making things artificially more expensive for iOS users | | Do you have examples of software that costs more on iOS than | elsewhere? | bspammer wrote: | YouTube Premium costs a third more to purchase through the | iOS app than it does through their website. | zamadatix wrote: | Apple has restricted the ability of an app to point this out | so it's not as well known as it should be. Subscriptions are | the easiest to compare because you can order the exact same | thing two ways on iOS (in app or web) and there it's easy to | see just look at Netflix or YouTube or Spotify for obvious | examples of apps avoiding the cost or costing more if you pay | the Apple tax. | | It's a bit silly this needs to be defended by example though, | where else do people think the 30% cut on stuff subscription | is coming from? Certainly not a 30% margin cut or 30% for | payment processing, it's ~27% Apple tax apparently. | duck wrote: | Not the OP, but it could be very well inflating the costs | elsewhere as well so you wouldn't be able to see differences | across platforms. | paraph1n wrote: | There are several examples listed in this article: | https://www.forbes.com/sites/shaharziv/2020/07/08/heres- | why-... | Kique wrote: | Not sure if it's still the case, but Spotify would charge me | $12.99 through Apple and encouraged me to switch to paying | them directly for $9.99 | jeffybefffy519 wrote: | Netflix, spotify... you dont have to look far | jiscariot wrote: | If I recall, the amount Netflix is paying to Apple for a | cut of subscriptions, is comparable with their AWS bill | year over year. Absolute madness. | vini wrote: | I noticed that in games here in Brazil, in Hearthstone, a | card game from Activision Blizzard a 40 cards pack cost | 279,90 BRL ($52) in the iOS app, if you buy in the PC app | it'll cost 99 BRL ($18), almost 200% increase, crazy. | orasis wrote: | That's not really true. Consumers have a fixed willingness to | pay and professional app publishers are good at discovering | that number, so there really isn't much passing costs onto the | consumer. | notsrg wrote: | The company I work for literally charges 30% more for iOS | users lol. | Spivak wrote: | And if your iOS users actually pay it then you're a fool to | not charge 30% more to your non-iOS users as well. | clusterfish wrote: | Um, no, cost of doing business affects the equilibrium | market price. There's no Apple tax outside of Apple's | walled garden, so everyone competing outside of it has | lower costs and can thus offer lower prices (outside of | the walled garden). If you don't, your competitors will, | and you'll lose customers. | Spivak wrote: | So yes, in the broadest possible abstract, sure. But | we're talking about the sale of digital goods here. What | market for game coins, app features, digital content w/e | is so intensely price sensitive, apparently fungible | enough that switching apps doesn't matter, but then also | not at all actually price sensitive since the mostly | arbitrary distinction to the consumer "what brand is your | phone" means you can charge 30% more? | | Like I totally believe you, I'm actually just interested. | lolinder wrote: | > then also not at all actually price sensitive since the | mostly arbitrary distinction to the consumer "what brand | is your phone" means you can charge 30% more | | This distinction isn't arbitrary at all. They're | effectively different markets. iPhone owners make more | money and spend more money than Android users. | | There have been a number of surveys that have shown this, | here's one: | | https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iphone-users- | spend-... | | And an older one, but from a bigger source: | | https://www.businessinsider.com/the-median-income-for- | iphone... | AnthonyMouse wrote: | > Consumers have a fixed willingness to pay and professional | app publishers are good at discovering that number, so there | really isn't much passing costs onto the consumer. | | Prices are set by supply and demand. If you take a 30% cut | out of the supplier's revenue, you get fewer suppliers and | the price each one can charge goes up because the customer | can't switch to a competitor who was driven out of business | by the high fees. | lewisflude wrote: | Seems fair to me, 27% commission implies 3% for card handling | fees, to level out to the same 30% developers would have to pay | doing things the intended way. | | All this talk of using "alternative payment systems" just seems | like a way to skirt around paying Apple commission. | Hamuko wrote: | I thought that the justification for the 30% commission was the | tightly integrated payment system, and not just the fact that | you can install the app in the first place. | lewisflude wrote: | That's definitely one aspect of it, but I've always thought | most of that fee is simply for the "privilege" of being a | part of the Apple ecosystem, being mostly profit for Apple | with a portion going towards the hosting, distribution of the | App, search/discoverability aspect. | | I can definitely see why this fee and it's associated lock-in | upsets many consumers and developers. It's clearly a divisive | issue right now, and I am unsure we'll see any resolution to | the overall narrative until the EU/US forces Apples hand. | matheusmoreira wrote: | There should be no Apple commission in the first place. | lewisflude wrote: | I think the big sticking point is whether smartphones are a | generic, standardised thing that requires some level of | guarantees for the end consumer on accessing software of if | each smartphone is one of many products in a broad category | that all have different restrictions and limitations. | Essentially the "you have a choice, just use Android" | defence. I'm not saying which one is correct here, just that | this seems to be the specific fork in the road between | differing opinions. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > whether smartphones are a generic, standardised thing | that requires some level of guarantees for the end consumer | on accessing software | | I certainly believe so. Computing freedom should be | guaranteed by law. | neximo64 wrote: | They're signalling that other methods or payment are fine, but | they're entitled to that commission of 30% (- processing fees i | guess) | | If people thought the lawsuits were about the commission they're | wrong, they were about forcing Apple's method of payment, but | even after you get through that they still feel they are entitled | to the commission. | | You might have your opinions about whether thats right or wrong, | but Apple's approach was to look as both as 2 different things | whereas everyone seemed to see them as the same. And thats what | they took advantage of. | jacquesm wrote: | They are as much entitled to that commission as the Mafia is | entitled to theirs. | | It's a ridiculous demand. It is a pretty American way of | thinking that the courts order is about the payment system | rather than because of the commission when clearly, if the | commission weren't there companies would not be looking for | alternative payment systems to begin with. It's ignoring the | spirit of the ruling. Prediction: this won't end well for Apple | and it will cost them plenty of goodwill in NL. | martimarkov wrote: | They kinda are entitled - you are build for their OS, using | their APIs and SDKs, targeting their customers. | | All that needs to be funded somehow plus as I always say - | nobody has forced engineers to build iOS apps. | | An example: what if US engineers dislike the privacy laws of | the EU and start asking to get them removed because you know | their app wants to track and stalk ppl without their | knowledge. | | Maybe not the best example but I hope you get the point | Isinlor wrote: | It's very likely that EU laws will not allow this type of | tax anyway. | | EU is specifically drafting legislation for gatekeepers in | Digital Markets Law. | | https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal- | content/en/TXT/?qid=16081168... | | Gatekeepers like Apple will have specific obligation | according to Article 5: | | (b) allow business users to offer the same products or | services to end users through third party online | intermediation services at prices or conditions that are | different from those offered through the online | intermediation services of the gatekeeper; | | (c) allow business users to promote offers to end users | acquired via the core platform service, and to conclude | contracts with these end users regardless of whether for | that purpose they use the core platform services of the | gatekeeper or not, and allow end users to access and use, | through the core platform services of the gatekeeper, | content, subscriptions, features or other items by using | the software application of a business user, where these | items have been acquired by the end users from the relevant | business user without using the core platform services of | the gatekeeper; | | And Article 6: | | (c) allow the installation and effective use of third party | software applications or software application stores using, | or interoperating with, operating systems of that | gatekeeper and allow these software applications or | software application stores to be accessed by means other | than the core platform services of that gatekeeper. The | gatekeeper shall not be prevented from taking proportionate | measures to ensure that third party software applications | or software application stores do not endanger the | integrity of the hardware or operating system provided by | the gatekeeper; | | (k) apply fair and non-discriminatory general conditions of | access for business users to its software application store | designated pursuant to Article 3 of this Regulation. | neximo64 wrote: | None of these stop the % commission they merely say it | has to be applied fairy and equally. The fees aren't a | gatekeep since everyone has the same treatment and no one | is being 'gatekept' | Isinlor wrote: | The law will require to allow third-party app stores. If | Apple decides to impose 27% tax on everything sold in the | third-party app store then I'm sure other EU competition | laws will kick in. As Apple will be explicitly using | their power to make direct competition non-viable. | | Also, EU does not need to spell everything explicitly. | The law will give the EU Commission a lot of executive | power to respond to this type of shenanigans from | gatekeepers. | | Article 7, compliance with obligations for gatekeepers, | paragraph 2: | | Where the Commission finds that the measures that the | gatekeeper intends to implement pursuant to paragraph 1, | or has implemented, do not ensure effective compliance | with the relevant obligations laid down in Article 6, it | may by decision specify the measures that the gatekeeper | concerned shall implement. (...) | | Article 10, updating obligations for gatekeepers, | paragraph 1: | | The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in | accordance with Article 34 to update the obligations laid | down in Articles 5 and 6 where, based on a market | investigation pursuant to Article 17, it has identified | the need for new obligations addressing practices that | limit the contestability of core platform services or are | unfair in the same way as the practices addressed by the | obligations laid down in Articles 5 and 6. | simondotau wrote: | None of that gets around the fact that the 27% can be | defined as the licence fee for intellectual property. | There's no principle of capitalism that allows someone | else to compete with you on the sale of your own goods. | jacquesm wrote: | A good start for interpreting EU law is to let go of the | US literal view of the law and to start looking at the | intent of the law. That's a much better predictor for how | EU courts will rule. | neximo64 wrote: | I am from an EU country, and studied law. It doesn't work | the way you're saying in court. | jacquesm wrote: | Ah, the appeal to authority. To me your just another | anonymous commenter on HN. Really, I couldn't care less, | every lawsuit has lawyers on both sides and half of them | will lose their case, but will maintain that their | customer was right all along and that they will now | appeal and then when they run out of appeals they quietly | slink off into the dark with their money. | | EU anti-competitive law has been tested in court time and | again by the big telcos and as a rule they have lost | every time they tried to get smart with words. | | Apple will - I predict - fare no different. | neximo64 wrote: | Whilst my appeal may be to authority yours is based on | what you feel is right and wrong and that isn't the same | as how the law works. In fact it's built to work against | what a consumer feels to what that is fair. You might not | like it but fair is tilted towards the large company not | the consumer in the EU, especially when it comes to a | company making profit. | | The big telcos btw always win, but always makes the | consumer happy. Have looked at Orange do this countless | times. | | Why don't you tell me about how happy you feel the EU is | green, and then i'll tell you how happy European | companies are 'green' now includes natural gas. Both | sides win I suppose. | jacquesm wrote: | > The big telcos btw always win | | You are factually incorrect, if you really did study law | you likely did not finish the course. | Jensson wrote: | EU already forced visa and mastercard to lower their | fees, this is exactly the same kind of scenario. EU | doesn't tolerate giant companies making themselves into a | bottleneck so they can extract more money from the | economy. | sofixa wrote: | > All that needs to be funded somehow plus as I always say | | You pay for that privilege, in the form of a yearly | developer account, so that's a _very_ poor excuse. | simion314 wrote: | >They kinda are entitled - you are build for their OS, | using their APIs and SDKs, targeting their customers. | | The fix is super obvious, Apple selling shit in my country | uses my country population and wealth, so 30% tax on each | sell, NOT on profits, We could use the Apple Tax against | Apple, if they don't like it they are not forced to sell | the products in my country. | lostlogin wrote: | > We could use the Apple Tax against Apple | | Just using the tax system against big tech would be a | start. It's ludicrous how little tax gets paid once the | stupid dodges have been played. Fix those holes and have | them pay what the small players pay. That alone would | satisfy me. | Dylan16807 wrote: | > you are build for their OS, using their APIs and SDKs, | targeting their customers. | | Which takes us right back to "Imagine if in the past Apple | would have had to pay 30% of their gross to Microsoft in | order to be allowed to run their software on Windows." | | I'm apple's customer, _and_ I 'm these apps' customer. None | of them own me. Apple's not doing any meaningful referring, | it should be possible to opt out of any referring they do, | and building for an OS should not cost these fees. | thathndude wrote: | You choose to do business with Apple, knowing the terms | of the deal. At a certain point that's determinative. | Apple doesn't have a majority user base in the US. Google | is ready and waiting for defectors. | candiodari wrote: | This is excellent news. You see, I work in networks. I | (helped) write the driver that is used on the carrier | side of 4G networks, and it's open source, so, like | Apple, I retain the copyright. A driver that you have | undoubtedly used to order pizza. My code is the | "platform" you used to pay that pizza! I am entitled to | compensation, and apparently 30% ... wow. Great news! | | I'll have 30% of everything you ever paid over your phone | now. | | Remember, you CHOSE to pay using "my" infrastructure, so | it's only fair that I be compensated for that. | | Or is your point that these rules only apply to massive | US corporations? | etchalon wrote: | You say this as if there aren't deals between patent | holders and platforms that are based on revenue | percentages. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Patents are quite different from infrastructure. And | critical patents are normally kept from charging very | high rates by multiple mechanisms. | etchalon wrote: | There are infrastructure agreements which function on | revenue basis too. | | Critical patents have some limitations, but only because | of agreements which were reached in the establishment of | specific standards. | | If you own the IP, you get to decide how you're | compensated for it. | smcl wrote: | > They kinda are entitled - you are build for their OS, | using their APIs and SDKs, targeting their customers. | | I don't think "my ball, my rules..." applies here, | especially since this is all happening as a result of them | responding to a regulator in the first place | (https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/24/apple-netherlands-dating- | apps...) | jacquesm wrote: | Oh I got the point alright: a large US entity (who by hte | way is an expert at dodging taxes themselves) believes that | they can ignore a court ruling by playing word games and | are entitled to a 30% tax on all of the income peripherally | generated if their eco-system was touched at some point in | time. It's ridiculous. | | As for that privacy law: that pertains to EU data subjects. | So it isn't 'not the best example' it is a terrible | example, especially given that the ruling here is very | similar in nature. | harperlee wrote: | > you are build for their OS, using their APIs and SDKs | | Already paid by the user. You are building for the user. Do | you pay the house builder for the poster you nail in your | wall? | | I only get that argument for the actual store, since there | is a curation service being provided. But the OS? No way. | If anything, apps in an OS ecosystem give more value to the | OS; the OS owner should be paying for that ecosystem, not | demanding payment. | simondotau wrote: | > Already paid by the user. | | Right! So as soon as I've bought one game built with | Unreal Engine, I've paid for the engine and should get a | discount on all other games which use it. | | I'm the customer. I can decide when the company is fairly | compensated. | ducttapecrown wrote: | Well, you probably would pay the house builder for the | poster you nail in your wall if the house builder stored | and delivered the poster that was built with tools the | house builder provided. Your analogy does not apply. | | For your second point, apps vary in value and I'm sure | that there are times when Apple pays somebody to put an | app on their store. | kouteiheika wrote: | > They kinda are entitled - you are build for their OS, | using their APIs and SDKs, targeting their customers. | | So do you also think that Microsoft is entitled to 30% of | every developer's income if they want to release an app for | the Windows platform? After all they're building for their | OS, using their APIs and SDKs and targeting their | customers. | simondotau wrote: | They did exactly that for their Xbox platform. | | The fact that Microsoft _chose_ to do otherwise with | Windows isn't a particularly strong argument. | sva_ wrote: | I know that Apple's Terms say that you can't explain to your | users, that they have to pay some 30% "Apple Tax" for in-app | purchases. But could you just say something like "30% mobile | phone app fee", to go around it, while making it clear to the | user why they're paying this amount? I feel like it would be | illegal for Apple (or Google Play) to prohibit developers from | breaking down costs like that? Like I don't get it. | smoldesu wrote: | Fortnite did this, which lead to them being removed from the | App Store shortly thereafter. | | [0] https://www.ithinkdiff.com/fornite-mega-drop-offers- | discount... | xuki wrote: | Fortnite also allowed alternative payment methods. I think | that's the main reason why they were removed. | gjs278 wrote: | lolinder wrote: | They _do_ prohibit developers from breaking down the costs like | that. This is the guideline they would cite you for: | | > 3.1.3 The following apps may use purchase methods other than | in-app purchase. Apps in this section cannot, within the app, | encourage users to use a purchasing method other than in-app | purchase. | | Yes, it should be illegal for them to prevent you from breaking | the cost down, but they have historically interpreted this | statement that way. | sva_ wrote: | I suppose you could read it like that. I think consumers | should have a right to know what they're paying for. One | should be able to say that you pay x for hosting, y for | software development/maintenance, and z for the platform | offering the app for you. I don't see how anything against | this could prevent someone from breaking it down like that. | But here we are. | pixl97 wrote: | We need to make it a state law first, that fees like this | cannot be hidden. Have CA or someone else large do it. | klelatti wrote: | Problem for Apple is that if it charges less then it shows that | it can run the store for less than 30% in total - and what is | true in NL is true everywhere else - which is not helpful for | them in antitrust actions. | | Burning goodwill and brand value while they do it though. | thathndude wrote: | We know they can run it for way less because they disclose | numbers in their earnings, and the Epic litigation turned up | emails from Phil talking about this issue and going down to | like 10%. | | The issue is what's the recourse and remedy? Go to | Google/Android, which charges a comparable fee and tends to be | less valuable? | | Folks are getting their money's worth on Apple's ecosystem. But | they somehow feel like they should just be getting more, just | because. But apple doesn't have a monopoly. They just have a | good product. | baxtr wrote: | I have an app in the App Store and pay 15% commissions, since we | are below 1 mn USD in sales. In exchange, I can roll-out my app | in 175 countries and have not deal with local authorities re | taxes etc. | | For me, that's a pretty good deal. I could never do this on my | own. Any other provider would probably take the same cut for that | kind of service. | vkou wrote: | How much revenue do you earn in the lower 170 of those | countries, and does it exceed 15%/30%? of the revenue you earn | in the upper 5? | samwillis wrote: | There is a massive difference between 15% and 30%. The latter | could never be justified, I think the former probably could be | with the services that Apple offer as a vendor (particularly | for small businesses). But it still feels too high. | | The 27% in the article is just mad, I think they could justify | 10% when not using their payments, maybe. But it would be | better to have an opt out where there is a set rate for app | approval (this could easily be hundreds of dollars) and a | download cost for app/data delivery and storage. | jacquesm wrote: | PSPs typically charge between 1 and 5% depending on the | amounts, the kind of transaction and the risks involved. | samwillis wrote: | Quite right, however I do think Apple offer slightly more | than just payment processing. If we say transaction costs | are 3%, do I think apple can justify an additional 26%? No. | Do I think they can justify 12% for the validating of apps, | providing marketing tools in the App Store, data storage | and distribution? Maybe yes, it still feels a little high. | | It's why I would like to see it broken down as line items | and for them to make it optional to just pay the costs of | each service directly rather than them charging a % cut. | schmorptron wrote: | 12% is the number Epic Games arrived at for their game | store, which they heavily used to pressure steam. How | realistic it really is for all of the services SteamWorks | offers and how much of that 12% would change in the | future once tencent loss-leader funding runs out remains | to be seen, but based on the current (games) market it | seems like a reasonable number, especially at the scale | apple operates at. | jacquesm wrote: | If it would be valuable enough then people would not be | trying to avoid this particular part of their service. | samwillis wrote: | True, and I fully support the push back against the fees. | Hopefully they will end up lowering them to a point where | everyone is happy. | thathndude wrote: | This whole fight is a bunch of billionaires slinging mud at | each other and trying to win over the court of public opinion, | which is largely not affected. | | The drop to 15% took too long. But it's here now. If the Epics | of the world want to enlist/manipulate the suffering of the | "little guy," they really can't anymore. | sofixa wrote: | > The drop to 15% took too long. But it's here now | | Only thanks to the Epics of this world. | thathndude wrote: | Maybe so. But it wasn't due to developers leaving or | putting market pressure on Apple. If developers feel so | cheated and abused by Apple why not go to the US majority | platform of Android? They don't because Apple presents them | tremendous value. They just want more of the pie. Nothing | wrong with that. But let's call it what it is. | sofixa wrote: | There's also a big power disbalance - a developer | complaining about Apple's policies and rent seeking is | completely at their mercy and mind find their account and | apps blocked for "violating their ToS" or some other | reason. Yes, the Apple platform is vastly more profitable | for developers because most Apple customers are | accustomed to spending money ( as opposed to the Android | market which includes everything from $/EUR 100 headsets | from obscure brands like Wiko to $/EUR 2k premium Samsung | or whatever devices - the latter might be okay on | dropping $/EUR 10 on app, the former certainly wouldn't). | madeofpalk wrote: | > Any other provider would probably take the same cut for that | kind of service. | | Too bad we'll never know because Apple prevents the competition | on their platform! | [deleted] | baxtr wrote: | That's an easy one. Let's look at the other big ecosystem | Android. There we have a couple of alternate stores like | Amazon's. They take 30% as well? I am not sure why it should | be different with Apple. | | Maybe, just maybe, running a well-curated app store is just | something that is expensive. | tsimionescu wrote: | > Maybe, just maybe, running a well-curated app store is | just something that is expensive. | | Are you trying to claim that Apple and Google are each | running a "well curated" app store? | abletonlive wrote: | Apple's app store is the best app store that I've ever | seen. Please point me to a better one? | ambicapter wrote: | I'll bite, show me an example of a "well curated" app | store to your standards. | bsagdiyev wrote: | Definitely not the App Store with all the trash and scam | apps allowed. | Apocryphon wrote: | F-Droid is right there. They're niche, but that further | underscores that even a group of open source volunteers | can maintain a well-curated app store. | abletonlive wrote: | There's like less than 10,000 apps on that store. You're | comparing apples to oranges. | Apocryphon wrote: | Comparing apples to pomegranate seeds, surely. But | perhaps that's the point. If third party app stores were | allowed, they needn't all be shoddy wannabe Apple App | Stores run by rival tech giants trying to publish as many | apps willy-nilly to cut into Apple's market. Instead, | perhaps there could be many boutique curated app stores, | some non-profit even, that aim to cater to specific user | experiences. | | The benefit is that it could be a solution for the app | discovery issues that currently come from having a single | App Store with a single search interface. Users with | specialized interests or needs can subscribe to smaller | third party app stores as they see fit. There would be | competition in app discovery. More customization in user | experiences. Variety in editorial control. | | It's a bit akin to reversing the current state of the web | where giant closed sites such as Facebook or Google are | single-entry points, and going back to the past where | there were web communities and webrings. A Neocities for | apps would be neat. | [deleted] | viktorcode wrote: | Has nothing to do with the costs. 30% is the de-facto | default revenue sharing scheme, and developers are well | accustomed to it. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Has nothing to do with the costs | | A price that has nothing to do with costs is a monopoly | rent; in a competitive market marginal prices are driven | down to marginal economic costs by competition. | shkkmo wrote: | Android has several free stores, inclusing ones that | support open source software. | vorpalhex wrote: | F-droid is free. | | Is f-droid magic? | | The Kindle store doesn't take 30%. | searchableguy wrote: | Android has plenty of free stores and with v12, those | stores can also update apps automatically. It's going in | the great direction. | | I use 3 different stores on my phone for example. | | Of course, an average person doesn't need that many. I use | fdroid for sensitive apps (I can verify an app build there | compared to playstore) and some developers provide apps | without google services framework on froid as an | alternative to their playstore version. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | Nah, it's because Apple and Google are a cartel with | respect to app fees. | | Like, 30% is a _crazy_ amount to take, at the scale they | operate at. | NicoJuicy wrote: | Stripe does taxes and is way cheaper. 10% of apple's fee or | smthg | HatchedLake721 wrote: | Stripe doesn't do taxes. Only recently they added ability to | calculate how much tax you legally need to charge in some | jurisdictions. Filing the right taxes in those countries is | still your responsibility. | mrtksn wrote: | "Does tax" is a bit too broad: | https://stripe.com/docs/tax/registering | | They help you collect taxes but they don't manage the tax | payment processes. You will still need to create a company in | France or register for VAT in France, understand the French | accounting and laws, them pay the French taxes if you sell to | people in France, for example. | | It's also only 35 countries. No match for what Apple does. | viktorcode wrote: | Bigger developers who pay 30% can do that on their own. Hence | the legal lobbying to make platform gatekeepers to cede some | ground. | jacquesm wrote: | At your level that makes sense. But if you were more successful | there would come a point at which you would be better off to | process your payments yourself and you should be free to do so. | Because then you would be doing all the work rather than Apple. | | Apple is not a government, they should not be able or allowed | to levy taxes. | baxtr wrote: | How do you think big apps started? | jacquesm wrote: | That is not the kind of argument that works in an anti- | competitive setting. | | The fact that I went to your school does not give you a | right to a chunk of my lifelong income, the fact that you | once sold me a tool doesn't either and so on. | | If there is no performance there is no right to invoice. | The only entities that can do that legally are called | governments, which - incidentally - Apple is doing their | damnest to not pay taxes. | baxtr wrote: | Of course it does, when you get big by visiting my school | and knowing this before. | | It is just absolutely ludicrous to get big on the back of | a giant and then to start complaining. Just get big | without it that is what you wish. | | Re tax evasion: EVERY mid-sized company in Europe that I | have worked for has elaborate tax evasions schemes in | place, mainly by having other entities in countries like | Luxembourg. | | It's the fact that the EU tolerates places like | Luxembourg an Ireland that this happens. No one talks | about it because it's just better for headline to go for | the big Californian names. | jacquesm wrote: | Well, I hope you pay your mom 30% of your income then | because you got big on the back of her work. | | Seriously though, how you get started is immaterial, you | should be free to change service providers, especially | service providers that are price gouging you when you | feel that you can no longer justify their cut. | | As for the tax avoidance (not evasion, that's an | important distinction here), yes all the big guys do it, | but that does not make it right and if Apple were to | actually pay their taxes I would see that as them at | least understanding the pain of having to pay a good | chunk of your income every year. | | I pay _my_ taxes and contribute to my community through | them, Apple siphons off a very large chunk of the worlds | wealth into the pockets of a very small number of | shareholders and now wants to argue that they have an | unassailable claim to 30% of the income of other | companies. And I strongly disagree with that. | | If they charged between 1 and 5% for their service that | would be fine by me, but it would still not give them an | automatic right to this fee, they would have to compete | with everybody else. | | Anti competitive behavior has one clear and common thread | running through it the world over: an element of abuse | and that is clearly present here. | baxtr wrote: | Unfortunately, my mom died a couple of years ago, so no I | don't pay anything :) | | I believe we have a fundamentally different world view, | so I am not sure if it makes sense to continue debating. | | I believe in meritocracy. Apple put hard, hard work into | building an ecosystem of 1.8 bn active devices. I believe | they are entitled to reap the benefits and not let any | upstart compete with them as they wish. | tsimionescu wrote: | > Apple put hard, hard work into building an ecosystem of | 1.8 bn active devices. I believe they are entitled to | reap the benefits and not let any upstart compete with | them as they wish. | | So you don't believe in meritocracy, you believe in | perpetually inherited wealth. | | Meritocracy would mean that, at any point in time, | whoever is the best at doing something should rise to the | top. Maintaining someone else's advantage because they | were the best at some previous point in time actively | works against a meritocracy. | | This is like saying that nobility is a form of | meritocracy, as Queen Elizabeth II's great great great | grandmother put hard, hard work into building an empire, | so she should now entitled to reap the benefits, not let | some upstart president of a colony compete with her as | they wish. | jacquesm wrote: | If you believe in a meritocracy then you should see the | irony in that you are defending a de-facto monopolist and | their rent-seeking behavior, which is an abuse of power. | | The rent seekers are the inheritors of a machine that | they themselves did not build (the shareholders of | Apple), and who are taking away a good chunk of income of | those whose products people wish to use, a sure sign of | merit. | simondotau wrote: | Calling it a tax doesn't make it a tax. | jacquesm wrote: | You are right, it isn't a tax. It is graft. But the effect | is much the same. | simondotau wrote: | Is the license fee on games for PS4 or Xbox a tax or is | it graft? | Aulig wrote: | There's merchants of record like Paddle.com that do the exact | same thing (handle taxes on software sales for you) and they | charge 5%. And that includes payment processing fees they have | to pay to Paypal etc. So with Apple's scale, they could easily | offer this service at below 5% commission. | onion2k wrote: | _For me, that 's a pretty good deal. I could never do this on | my own._ | | No one is saying Apple shouldn't offer the service, or that | it's not a good service, or even that Apple shouldn't charge | 15%. If you think Apple do a good job and offer value for money | then you should use their service and pay what they charge. | | The only thing people want is the opportunity to use a | competing service. That's it. | thathndude wrote: | Google Play Store. What am I missing? | onion2k wrote: | It doesn't work on iOS. | zepto wrote: | Don't use iOS then. That's always a choice. | vorpalhex wrote: | Cool, let me install linux or android on my iphone then. | stale2002 wrote: | It is also our choice to use anti-competition laws, to | require Apple to not engage in anti-competitive | practices. | | If you don't like it, then feel free to vote for | something else (but if you lose the vote, thought luck), | or move to a different country. Your choice. | colinmhayes wrote: | My phone does not have the Google Play Store | martin_a wrote: | F-Droid is a thing. And I think it's gaining popularity, | too. | HatchedLake721 wrote: | What people and what competing service? | | People as in consumers? 99% of Apple consumers don't care | about this drama. They just want to click and install an app | that's safe, vetted, and no one will steal their credit card. | | Same as I don't care when digitally buying PlayStation games. | I don't care how much Sony charges developers to be on their | marketplace, and I don't want to use alternative stores with | additional places where I have to put in my credit card or | ask for refunds. | leoedin wrote: | Consumers might start to care if it means every app is 20% | cheaper. | simondotau wrote: | As someone who has had to deal with subscriptions on apps | on my wife's phone, "20% cheaper" but outside of the | Apple payment ecosystem sounds way more expensive. | onion2k wrote: | _99% of Apple consumers don't care about this drama._ | | At the moment there's no point in caring. You don't have a | choice, so why worry about it? | | You have to remember that you, as someone who doesn't care | about alternative stores and wouldn't switch, aren't the | market for an alternative store. This is about _other | people_ and _their_ freedom to choose. Arguing that the | Apple iOS store works for you and therefore it should work | for everyone else is not how free markets work. | HatchedLake721 wrote: | If Apple iOS store doesn't work for you, there's Google | Play store. Free market has nothing to do with how | software is loaded on a hardware. | | There were more options in the past. | | There was Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, | Nokia, Symbian, etc. | | But when Apple came to market, they made such an | excellent device, along with great developer and consumer | experience, that developers agreed for 30% cut and most | decided to ditch developing for other platforms, and | consumers decided to ditch other now "shitty" phones | where they couldn't download their favourite apps for. | | Microsoft released great phones, but still had issues | with software. They tried solving that with throwing | money at developers, but developers still didn't want to | develop for Windows Phone. | | Developers played crucial part in the last 10 years to | form the market where we are today. | | And suddenly in 2022, after playing on the same terms for | the last 10 years, an access to a marketplace with 1+ | billion active users needs to be a free, basic human | right that everyone cries for. | tomjen3 wrote: | Would I be free to choose to pay for your App through | Apple? Or would the developer have the choice, and I end | up having to call them to end the subscription the way so | many news papers require you to? | tsimionescu wrote: | Can you currently pay for gas through Apple? Or for your | Netflix account? Or for installing Mentor Graphics on | your Mac? | | Why would a business transaction between you and a third | party necessarily involve Apple being a payment option? | HatchedLake721 wrote: | Because Apple given the third party access to you via a | marketplace. | | And you are a participant of this marketplace, because | Apple spent billions on R&D and ended up being so good, | that developers and consumers abandoned other platforms | in droves. | | Apple also smoked previous multibillion competitors | (BlackBerry and Nokia) into shame, and they're now part | of history and MBA lectures on how a young and innovative | player can kill your slow and boring business in a short | time. | | That's why Apple is a market leader, with the best | vertically integrated hardware and software devices, as | well as a marketplace with billion people that both devs | and consumers eagerly want to be part of. | | The same marketplace developers agreed to join by paying | up 30% of revenue 10+ years ago, while abandoning Windows | Phone and others, and playing part in the shaping the | market where it is today. | | And suddenly developers cry wolf that it's a basic human | right to have access to a marketplace with 1 billion | people for free, which they played active part in | building. | tsimionescu wrote: | Apple forces me to use their marketplace to do business | with any third party selling software for _my phone_. | | It is not "giving access" to third parties, it is | restricting them from accessing _my phone_ unless they | use Apple 's preferred software distribution method. | | The fact that they were in the right place at the right | time with the right fashion and right look and feel to | capture this market does not entitle them to perpetually | profit from it. And I do say "happened to", because the | iPhone had nothing other than chance going for it, and it | was simply an idea whose time had come. Several others | were developing smartphones at the same time, such as | Nokia, LG, and Google's Android. Apple had better and | faster execution, much better marketing, and luck. | HatchedLake721 wrote: | ... sorry but I'll get out here. | | I really don't like people downplaying other peoples' and | companies' success that went through sweat and tears, | calling it "nothing but chance, simply an idea whose time | had come... with a bit of luck". | | Yes, just chance and luck a company few days away from | bankruptcy became the worlds most valuable business worth | 3 trillion in ~20 years and keeps producing world and | industry changing services and products. | | Not hard work and brilliant execution, just chance and | luck! /s | | Makes me sad really | bredren wrote: | These are fair points, I am curious how you perceive the | existing wireless industry in the United States. | | It seems to me that Verizon and others are in a state of | perpetually profiting their consolidation of companies | that were in the "right place at the right time." | | Would you agree with this? If so, do you think these | companies are making outsized profits given lack of | entitlement? | | How would you craft policy that would cover not just the | Apple but other companies like wireless carriers? | | Separately, you mention Mentor Graphics above. Did you | mean to refer to chip-level design tool software? | passivate wrote: | That is a facetious argument. Just because the majority | doesn't care doesn't mean the issue isn't important. We | don't decide importance of things just based on a vote - we | can use also use reason, logic, empathy, etc. | withinboredom wrote: | Wait, so you didn't buy the $60 ten year old game | digitally? You went to the GameStop down the street and | bought it used for $10? /s | | There are alternatives there. | throwaddzuzxd wrote: | > 99% of Apple consumers | | That's 5 million people who do care then, considering 500 | million iPhone users (which is a conservative number). | ambicapter wrote: | Jailbreak your iPhone, put a competing service on it. | celsoazevedo wrote: | Is jailbreak supported by Apple? | tinus_hn wrote: | 15% is really low, considering you can pay using discounted | iTunes cards. Typically in the Netherlands you can buy them | with 15% extra credit, which is about 13% off. | | So you can almost take money from Apple by buying these cards | and spending them on your app. The only problem is taxes. | mongol wrote: | Good for you it is a good deal. The problem is that it is the | only deal. | mrtksn wrote: | Exactly. It literally enables level playing field for smaller | developers who can't simply incorporate in 175 countries and | navigate through the rules, regulations of taxes. | | The value that Apple provides for the smaller developers is | immense, you don't actually see small developers complaining | about Apple(with exception to those who were sherlocked maybe) | but you see multi billion corporations pretending to be | advocating for the little guy. | | I'm very annoyed by all this, I'm afraid that they will win and | solo developers will lose any chance to make it big without | getting screwed by large publishers. | | Can you please stop saving the small developers from Apple? | Thank you. | MilaM wrote: | And yet somehow indie devs have managed to sell software for | macOS for decades before the invention of the Apple App | Store. Only the larger software shops are atually running | their own payment and licensing backends. Most use payment | providers like Paddle or Fastspring. There are also other | distribution channels like SetApp for expample. | | One thing that Apple has made very easy for devs are In-App | Payments. But I think you can argue if that is such a good | thing for Apple's customers. | mrtksn wrote: | macOS app ecosystem isn't really thriving and the | regulatory complexities arrived after the Internet matured. | | Something being possible isn't the same as being good. | Selling 1000 copies at %30 commission(it tends to be around | %50 once you ad stuff like VAT) is much better than selling | 10 copies at %1 commission. | | I also think that from the users perspective it's much | better to have one place where you manage all your | payments/subscriptions/downloads etc. That can be solved | through some kind of unified purchasing interface though. | MilaM wrote: | I'm not saying that App Store distribution is useless. | But I think vendors should have a choice. If Apple's | system is so superior, they have little to worry about. | mrtksn wrote: | The problem is, small developers won't have access to all | the options - especially the good options - that the big | companies would have. | | Currently, if you you manage to make a great app or game | you have access to the exact same processes as the Epic | or Microsoft. | pritambaral wrote: | > ... you have access to the exact same processes as the | Epic or Microsoft. | | No you don't. Netflix and Amazon got special deals | (before the whole Epic saga) [1] [2]. From partial | waivers of the Apple Tax, to Apple-run editorial | promotions, to bundling! | | "The emails could serve as evidence that for lucrative | and powerful partners, Apple seems to be willing to make | concessions." | | [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/5/22421734/apple- | epic-netfli... | | [2]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206400/apple- | tax-amazon-... | jacquesm wrote: | > you see multi billion corporations pretending to be | advocating for the little guy. | | And they are. | | The little guys won't stand up to 30% of their gross taken | but the big guys can and do. As a result after all the | lawsuits have run their course Apple will be charging a much | lower fee in the hopes of regaining their payment processing | marketshare. | mrtksn wrote: | How do you decide that %30 breaks the business but %15 is | fine? Can I see your math please? | jacquesm wrote: | This is not an argument made in good faith so I will | ignore it. | mrtksn wrote: | Please don't ignore, I'm curious how I will not stand a | chance at %30 but it's fine at %15. | | I want to know if this is your gut feeling or do you know | something concrete. | | Thanks. | jacquesm wrote: | I just look at what other payment service providers | charge, they are between 1 and 5% based on volume, risk, | transaction size. | | There is _plenty_ of competition in the payment | processing space. | | When you take the card companies' cut into account the | fees are even lower for the transaction processing. | simondotau wrote: | Suggesting that what Apple does is equivalent to a | payment processor is ridiculous. I suggest looking at | Epic v Apple and how that argument went down in court. It | was embarrassing to witness. | jacquesm wrote: | Yes, agreed they are more like a mob running amok in a | neighborhood but for the moment I'll give them the | benefit of the doubt and looking at it purely as a | transaction processor. | | I wonder how all of those defending Apple in this thread | would respond if they jacked up the prices to say 75%. | And why stop there? | simondotau wrote: | I was hoping for a serious conversation. | mrtksn wrote: | How do you pay your taxes in UK, Turkey, Poland, USA, | Japan, China, Australia and the rest of the 175 | countries? How do you handle the regulatory requirements | in each country and how do you navigate through the trade | agreements? | jacquesm wrote: | If you don't know the answers to these questions, why are | you even active in this thread? | | I've been running an international business for a couple | of decades and this has never been a problem at all. | mrtksn wrote: | I'm asking you to enlighten me. Currently I don't have to | deal with any of these, Apple handles all that for me, I | like that and that's why I'm active in this thread. I'm | defending a service that I see value in but maybe you can | shine a light and demonstrate that all these can be | handled for cheaper and easier than using Apple's service | that charges %15 to %30. | | I'm asking legitimate question, I'm puzzled by your | dismissive tone. How do you sell software and services in | 175 countries for less work and commission than Apple's | service? | | Good for you that you are running international business | for a couple a decade know, would you share some of that | knowledge? | | Thank you. | jacquesm wrote: | That it works for you is fine. You obviously have no | incentive to look further than what works for you and you | are fine with paying 30% for a service that is not | competitive but that is convenient. | | If you were a bit larger that equation would change. Your | first step would then be to use a commercial payment | services provider such as Stripe, Adyen or any of the | others to process the transactions for you (rates: 1 to | 5%), possibly falling back to Apple in case their | coverage doesn't perfectly overlap. Then at an even | higher level of transactions you could choose to do the | payment processing yourself. | | It's pretty simple, really. And as for taxes: that too is | something that you can arrange in different ways, | depending on where your main place of business is | registered. | | My dismissive tone is because it appears that you want me | to do a bunch of homework for you while at the same time | arguing that there is nothing to be concerned about in | 10's of comments in this thread. You have already made up | your mind and seem to use questions as a way to argue | rather than that you are really interested in the | answers. I predict that as a result of this response you | are going to come up with another set of questions for me | to answer or a new set of arguments that move the | goalposts away from your previous claims. | | But the essence of my response is: anti-competitive | behavior can not be argued for by utility to some subset | of the customers. The phone company provides a lot of | value. But if they behave in an anti-competive way, for | instance by price gouging customers on something that | costs them peanuts such as roaming then they deserve to | be smacked down, even if some people will argue that you | could of course buy a different phone for every country | as an alternative, and so those roaming charges are | acceptable because they are cheaper. That misses the | point entirely. | mrtksn wrote: | > If you were a bit larger that equation would change | | Right. | | Can you please stop saving smaller developers from Apple? | Thanks! | | PS: You maybe need some homework too. Essentially, Stripe | etc. doesn't handle anything else that processing your | payments(Maybe that changed or will change in the | future). They have list of countries that they support | and links to the governing bodies, you are on your own to | figure out how to sell in these countries. There are some | companies that handle stuff like that but you don't | simply pay 99$/year and start using them, there are also | publishers that will do it for you but they are much much | more predatory and restrictive that Apple. So please, if | you have something that you know say it, instead of | passive aggressively attacking my character. If you are | business genius you say you are, it would be much nicer | of you to share some of that with those who know less | instead of throwing generalised assumption and saying | things like "go do your homework". | jacquesm wrote: | Nobody said that you can't do business with Apple in any | way that you want. | | Your arguments in this thread are based on some kind of | extrapolation that is not warranted. | | As for what Stripe and other PSPs do: I'm intimately | familiar with that stuff. You are free to do your own | marketing/sales/payment processing/whatever but you | should not be forced to deal with any particular party, | including Apple at some price that they set. | | Note that if Apple would charge regular PSP fees we | probably would not be having this discussion and _you_ | would be making more money. | mrtksn wrote: | I'm glad that you are intimately knowledgable but your | original claim was that %30 is a bad deal and large | corporations are in a mission to help small developers | agains Apple. | | Then when I press you to show some calculation, you admit | that you actually need to be "a bit bigger than a small". | Essentially, what you say that all you need is a dream | and a few million dollars in the bank. Thanks, great | advice. | | You keep repeating that you know a lot and I am sure you | do but your arguments fall short of actual information. | You keep saying things that "you need to learn" which I | tolerate and try to be respectful despite I really don't | enjoy being patronised. | | Besides, I want to note that the real issue for me is not | the %30 or %15 or whatever cut Apple takes. The real | issue is that Apple/Google/Amazon or any other company | can cut you off if they want. At this point, I think | these services must be regulated like utility, i.e. | businesses that depend on these must be guaranteed to be | treated equally and fairly. Apple is has done fine for | the most part but IMHO what we need is rights, not all | that BS about making Apple change their software to | accommodate something. | jacquesm wrote: | 30% is a bad deal because it was a one-sided affair. | | Let's see your reaction when they crank it up to 50%, 70% | or even more. Your arguments are going to be exactly the | same, right? | | > At this point, I think these services must be regulated | like utility, i.e. businesses that depend on these must | be guaranteed to be treated equally and fairly. | | This is _exactly_ the crux of this court case. Apple is | abusing its position, it has turned itself into a utility | and there is no way to opt out and switch to another | utility. | emteycz wrote: | There isn't going to be any reaction because they can't | crank it up to 50 or 70 percent because developers would | leave. Which means it's not a monopoly. | Jensson wrote: | Developers wouldn't leave, the apple app store generates | so much revenue that it would be much more profitable | than android even if they lost half of it. What would | happen is that governments all over the world would | quickly rush to regulate Apples power away, that is what | Apple is worried about and why they lowered it for small | developers to 15% already, they aren't worried about | competition here. | tsimionescu wrote: | Do you think that a 99% tax/commission would be fine? If | not, how do you decide that 99% breaks the business, but | 30% is fine? | | The answer of course is that different businesses have | different margins. For some, even paying 99% commission | to Apple would not break the business, as they have such | great margins that even getting 1% of each sale would | still leave them profitable. For others, even a 1% | commission is too much, as they have such low margins | even losing 1% of sales price makes them unprofitable. | | For any set price, some business models are excluded from | the App Store, for better or for worse. | harshitaneja wrote: | This 15% happened after all the outrage. Yes, all these mega | corps don't care about the little guy but apple allowing | third party options doesn't take away from their ability to | continue to provide the services to developers who see value | in apple's payment services. | mrtksn wrote: | Are you a developer? Can I see your apps? I'm curios about | your business model where selling coins or unlocking | premium features at %30 commission instead of %15 breaks | your business to the point that incorporating in 175 | countries is more desirable. | harshitaneja wrote: | I develop. No, 30% doesn't break my business majorly | because my business model is not around app sales but I | agree with your point that for most 15 and 30 won't break | the business. But you are presenting a false dichotomy. | Why are we assuming if apple doesn't offer these | services, a third party won't as well? And I am not | proposing that apple stop offering its payment and other | distribution services but rather that third parties be | allowed to do the same. | mrtksn wrote: | There's nothing desirable in dealing with multiple 3rd | parties to reach your customers instead of one that is | essentially providing equal service at equal price to | (almost)everyone. | harshitaneja wrote: | And I am not advocating that any one takes away that from | you, just for us to have a choice. | pritambaral wrote: | > providing ... service | | The mafia also provides services. You don't just pay them | and get nothing in return. Of course, there, as here, you | really have no choice but to pay; and to pay ridiculously | inflated rates. | | > ... at equal price | | Not true. Apple's price is zero. Sucks if you're | competing with them, then. Maybe we should all be | thankful Apple at-least let's you compete, even if with a | handicap. Unlike the mafia. | albertopv wrote: | So why is Apple so scared by competition? Why denying other | payment services at all? | mrtksn wrote: | > Apple so scared by competition | | That's a loaded question. | | I don't think they are scared, it's just easier for them to | collect their cut when the payments flow through their | systems. It also enables them to do really good customer | service and this helps them sell more iDevices. Purchasing, | refunds, cancellations are all handled by Apple and are | accessible from a single place and that makes for a superb | customer experience. | | Let's not forget that companies are not charities. When | they are charities, they register as such. | tsimionescu wrote: | You make no sense. _No one_ is arguing Apple should stop | offering this service to developers. | | However, Apple shouldn't be allowed to monopolize the market | for mobile apps (or "oligopolize" it together with Google, if | you want to be extremely pedantic). There should be other | _options_ for these types of services. | | If Apple offers the best case for your business: Great! Keep | using Apple. If someone else's business doesn't need | availability in 175 countries (say, they are a taxi app | operating in one city), perhaps they should be able to choose | some other payment processor who won't demand 30% of every | in-app purchase for offering _them_ the exact same service as | Stripe. | hraedon wrote: | The problem is that they _aren 't_ offering the same | service. The payment processor is not maintaining the | ecosystem or doing anything outside of the relatively | narrow scope of accepting payments and maybe dealing with | taxes. | | Even if you think Apple's (and Google's, and Microsoft's, | and so on) cut is too high, the idea that the entirety or | even the bulk of the value that they offer is strictly in | facilitating transactions is incorrect. | MilaM wrote: | This is a valid argument. But it's not like devs are completely | on their own outside of the App Store. There are at least two | other companies that provide payment and licensing services to | software vendors like Fastspring or Paddle. I only know these | companies as a buyer software licenses. Never had any problems | with them. But I can't say how it is to deal with them as a | software vendor. | Aulig wrote: | I use Paddle as a seller and it's an amazing experience. No | VAT hassle (both paying it and displaying prices correctly on | my website) and super easy integration on my website | (comparable to Stripe). Plus you get a bunch of payment | methods at once (Apple Pay, Paypal, credit card, bank | transfer,...). A great experience all around for a fair price | (5%). | HatchedLake721 wrote: | What Paddle and Fastspring offer is what Apple values at 3% | of the 30% fee. | | This is about access to marketplace with 1+ billion people | for a vertically integrated device that cost billions of R&D | money. | | Same as if you want your SaaS to be on Shopify or Salesforce | store. You'll pay a cut to be there. Because Shopify and | Salesforce offer you access to their customers to install | your app in 1 click. | danuker wrote: | As a consumer I do not want to enter an ecosystem where 30% of | any software entering my device is leeched away into by an ever- | increasing monopoly. | | As such, I use second-hand Android devices with Lineage OS, and | get my software from F-Droid. | homarp wrote: | is your bank app on F-Droid? | xxs wrote: | I use a standard web for banking. Works on anything. | YaBomm wrote: | sofixa wrote: | It probably isn't, but bank apps usually are free so it | doesn't matter. | YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: | Most bank apps don't work properly anymore on rooted phones | or custom roms. | bmicraft wrote: | I didn't have a problem with them since Magisk got so | good at hiding itself which has been at least 3 years | gkbrk wrote: | Sounds like a job for regulations if an essential service | like banking can keep users out on such arbitrary terms. | | I think only one of the banking apps I use check for | rooted phones, and it only uses that to warn the user | once on app install and never again. | YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: | Is it just a warning? Mine explicitly teels me that if | anything happens to the bank account they won't be liable | because I used the app on a rooted phone. | viktorcode wrote: | Regulators can't force banks to provide service in an | unsafe environment, which a rooted phone essentially is. | kevincox wrote: | s/don't work properly anymore/refuse to run on/ | danuker wrote: | Indeed. They want to correlate the user through their | Google account. | danuker wrote: | No. I only use web banking. | NicoJuicy wrote: | Oh well, they will claim you can use pwa's as recently announced | in 2007. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_web_application | | No surprise here. They will literally block/slowdown progress | every way they can. | jacquesm wrote: | Courts are not amused by such tricks. | NicoJuicy wrote: | But apple isn't a monopoly since you can add a website to | your start screen. | | We are just behind on features and it's a "highly technical | issue" | | ;) | jshen wrote: | I've been an Apple fan for a very long time, but I bought my | first windows laptop ever this past year because of the direction | Apple has been going with things like this. I really wish the | alternatives to iPhones, Apple watches, and tvOS weren't so much | worse. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-02-04 23:00 UTC)