It's incredible that there are actually people in this thread arguing in favor of Apple. You don't need to defend the trillion dollar company. They are not your friend, they do not care about you, your work or your life. All they do is steal 30% from society that could be used for more productive purposes than make a few people who already have everything even richer.
At this point, it's worth remembering that one of the points on which Epic lost was Apple's right to take a cut of transactions.
I found this discussion of the Apple v. Epic ruling to be informative:
as discussed in the findings of facts, IAP is the method by which Apple collects its licensing fee from developers for the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission.
Indeed, while the Court finds no basis for the specific rate chosen by Apple (i.e., the 30% rate) based on the record, the Court still concludes that Apple is entitled to some compensation for use of its intellectual property.
https://stratechery.com/2021/the-apple-v-epic-decision/
The judge hinted here and there that Epic should have sued over the size of Apple's cut, not it's right to take a cut.
But use of said IP is required because Apple forbids side-loading. Therefore Apple App store is a monopoly. So hopefully the court result will in the end help get the Apple App store shut down / opened up.
Some people think of the App Store as a bazaar that Apple runs on its property, and it’s a 15-30% charge to setup a tent and sell your wares. Others think of it as Apple’s general store where they carry your app as a product, and you pay 15-30% for a place on the shelf.
The concept that Kroger (for instance) has a monopoly of customers in its own store is ridiculous. There are other stores, and other bazaars.
What analogy would you use to describe this situation that clarifies your position?
Not OP, but sticking with your store analogies, I would use the following:
Apple represents the town government, and the App Store is the only general store in the entire town; other stores have been banned. Don't like it? You're free to pack up and move to another city!
The reason I'd characterize it this way is that changing phone platforms is nontrivial. It's not as simple as just going to another store that day.
The reason I'd characterize it this way is that changing phone platforms is nontrivial.
I'm sorry, but how is it "nontrivial" to change phone platforms? Google says it's easy and all you need is a cable to get the best experience: https://www.android.com/switch-to-android/
Maybe it's "easy", but it's a lossy process. You lose all your purchased iOS apps, and have to manually buy the same apps (assuming they're available) on Android. If you watch the "See the steps" video, the fine print notes that Google can only "transfer" free apps that have direct equivalents (that is, released by the same developer) on the Play Store.
Your iMessage history disappears; Google can't transfer that to your Android phone. They claim to be able to transfer SMS/MMS history, which surprises me: I'm not sure how they accomplish that. I'm sure there's a ton of other user data that they also can't transfer. (Speaking of iMessage, any group chats you were in are now broken.)
Google of course has an interest in telling people that switching is easy and painless. It's not, though.
I agree it’s lossy in some way. Most of the popular apps with purchases are tied to a login, so there’s a step of logging in again but the app is free to download.
Everything else you mention is part of the nature of changing operating systems: software incompatibility / unavailability. That never has and unfortunately never will be solved. It’s hard enough to keep old software working on new releases of the same OS.
Don't forget that getting Apple to stop intercepting your text messages is always a problem. I know a bunch of people who decided to try and switch to android, but they weren't getting their text messages and just went back to an iphone inside of a week.
Do you believe them?
You shouldn't. It's a marketing page.
No it's not. Did you even read it? There's a big button that says "Read the guide" that keeps you on the page and tells you what to do. The FAQ even links to this: https://support.google.com/android/answer/6193424?visit_id=6...
Or that Apple APIs and SDKs are Apple writing at least half of everyone’s apps for them. They manufacture all the pieces, and people can arrange them differently. Playing Apple 30% is recognizing that a good chunk of the code running in any app is developed and maintained by Apple.
By imposition of the platform. If people could choose to use apples SDK for 30% or react native 3000 revenge of the javascript for free, they would not bat an eye and go for the latter.
React Native is a (sophisticated) Javascript wrapper around Apple's platform.
So I guess you support browser makers taking a 30% cut, too?
I think a better analogy would be something like installing aftermarket parts for for your vehicle.
Could you actually describe this? How would that be a better analogy?
The iPhone is like a vehicle (car, motorcycle, John Deere tractor, etc). iPhone apps are like after market vehicle parts.
As a vehicle owner I'd like to be able to have a choice whether I want to install OEM parts or after market parts. The after market parts might be cheaper, or have features that the OEM parts lack. I would like to be able to purchase these parts without a 30% markup that goes to the car manufacturer.
As an iPhone user, I'd like to be able to install apps on my iPhone without having to pay the iPhone manufacturer a 30% markup.
I realize that this analogy doesn't directly address the issue of whether Apple has a monopoly on the market of iPhone apps, but it's how I think about it as a consumer.
How about if you go to purchase a house, but one of the HoA agreements is that you only shop at Kroger.
And the only roads in and out of your neighborhood leads directly to a Kroger. And there's barbed wire fencing surrounding your neighborhood. Meanwhile, deliveries being made to Kroger from distributors may only use Kroger-branded trucks, which cost at least 20% more. Oh, and that truck may only be serviced by Kroger-approved mechanics. Those mechanics can only buy parts from Kroger. Any totaled truck can't be parted out by mechanics and MUST be recertified by Kroger.
That analogy doesn't work, unless Kroger is the only grocery store that's permitted to exist.
There are no other stores, or other bazaars. If you want to sell an iOS app, your only option is the Apple App Store.
Apparently the courts don't believe this is a monopoly, presumably because you can also choose to toss your iPhone and buy an Android phone instead. I disagree with that reasoning; to me that's like if Whole Foods also exists in addition to Kroger, but if you want to switch to Whole Foods, you have to get an expensive operation to swap out your stomach, because the groceries at Whole Foods don't work with the stomach that works with the groceries at Kroger.
Apparently the courts don't believe this is a monopoly, presumably because you can also choose to toss your iPhone and buy an Android phone instead.
You also have the entire internet, no tossing required.
The concept that Kroger (for instance) has a monopoly of customers in its own store is ridiculous. There are other stores, and other bazaars.
I'm not making the argument from a legal perspective, but from a reality perspective, I think that's a very poor analogy to the way operating systems (and "platforms" generally) work.
The very nature of operating systems is that they have much more control than a simple store. For example, if you want to switch from Kroger to Safeway, just go to Safeway. There are almost zero switching costs. I actually was strongly considering switching from Android to iPhone solely to get iMessage access (that's a whole different ball of Apple anti-competitiveness, but I digress...) But in the end, even after buying the iPhone, I decided to give it away as a Christmas gift because I just couldn't stomach how painful switching would be after a decade-plus history on Android: I'd lose all my Android apps, I'd lose all the easiest access to things that live in Google's ecosystem, I'd lose my day-to-day familiarity with my phone, etc. To be clear, I'm not saying that's impossible, but it's just a much higher burden that deciding to go to a different grocery store.
Note the government has often developed special laws for "platform businesses", for example railroads, telecoms, etc., understanding the unique positions these companies are in when it comes to controlling the larger economy. I wish they would regulate operating system platforms in a similar manner.
I like to think this via car analogy: you have similar ecosystem with car infotainment system platforms, but there the cost of switching is often minimum tenfold. Game consoles are an analogous platform to phones with similar pricepoint in switching costs. Of course phones are much more present in our daily lives for the most part of the population. But I suppose the similar burden would easily hit those platforms if legislation would be imposed, and it would come with both upsides and downsides depending on one's viewpoint.
Using Kroger as an example is interesting because, there is, in fact, a currently ongoing review of M&A activity in the grocery store business to prevent situations that harm customers.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/15/1224401179/kroger-albertsons-...
Apple's App Store is more akin to a Company Store[1] where you live in a town owned by the company you are utilizing for your lifestyle and their store is the only place you have available to shop. It was a scandal in the past as it's unfair to consumers while also being unfair to producers. The argument of "well you can just move/buy a different phone" did not hold up very well with society.
This unethical model is not any better in our modern world.
Even if you're side-loading, you're still using Apple IP.
Every single framework and the OS itself up to the Mach OSS Kernel is Apple IP.
It would be entirely unfeasible to run anything on an iPhone without some Apple IP. You'd be looking at an Asahi Linux for iPhone.
SCOTUS has ruled[0] that use (including implementation) of APIs is fair use, and does not constitute copyright infringement if the author of those APIs wishes to place restrictions on them.
A developer writing an app for iOS can use the APIs provided by Apple without agreeing to license them.
(Granted, you can't get your app into the App Store and onto iPhones/iPads without agreeing to whatever Apple wants you to agree to. Which... is part of the problem.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
This was about the interface not the implementation. What’s the cost of rewriting the entire iOS framework stack?
Probably not that much considering the past, present and future totals of a 30% cut across all developers lmao. We're talking about a LOT of money here. There's a reason Apple is a "trillion dollar company" and it's not because they're putting in anything even close to as much as they take out.
If it were possible to run unsigned code on the average iDevice (and Apple's framework/drivers disabled for unsigned code) then this would have already been done, a long time ago.
“Not that much” as in a billion dollars? Ten billion dollars? 100 billion dollars?
Nobody has been able to build a new browser engine in 25 years. So what would be the dollar estimate of a similarly complex UI framework along with high quality device drivers, development tools, services frameworks like iCloud, etc.?
You're assuming someone is going to do it once?
If that one person does it and lets everyone use it, will they do it for free or should they charge for it, perhaps as a percentage of revenue of the developers and applications who use the code?
How have they leveraged this argument against the idea that the user who purchased the device has some level of right to use the IP on the phone they purchase? Phrase this question another way: if I were to write and sell some application for the iPhone through my personal website, which requires users phones to be jailbroken, would my application and business be in violation of, specifically, US intellectual property law? Assuming I perfectly side-step other more obvious illegalities like trademark law.
Here's another caveat: assume the bundle I distribute is dynamically linked into the underlying operating system, such that I'm definitely distributing nothing except my own code that I wrote. Or, similarly: I ship nothing but my own code, plus a script I wrote the purchaser has to run to statically link the package with iOS libraries present on their Mac.
You can publish your iOS source code and let your end-users compile and load the app onto their own devices, and do so without paying any commissions to Apple.
If you were to compile it yourself such that the end-user device would need to be jailbroken because it lacks the necessary digital signatures, IANAL but I think this would be totally fine on your part, and the end-user would be protected by the jail-breaking exception to the DMCA;
> Jailbreaking and Unlocking Smartphones and Tablets
Since 2010, the DMCA has allowed users to jailbreak their smartphones in order to execute lawfully obtained applications unauthorized by the phone manufacturer. Last week’s announcement reaffirmed the rationale that using unapproved applications on smartphones is fair use and limiting users’ ability to execute such applications hinders choice and impairs innovation.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/latest-dmca-exemptions-r...
Your customers can't actually do this without downloading XCode and agreeing to its license agreements. Just downloading XCode is an impossible ask, to say nothing of compiling and deploying to a phone.
This is a non-solution.
Who's paying for this IP, then?
The consumer, who bought the device? Surely the cost of development of said IP is in total recouped from device sales? The device doesn't work without said framework.
The developers who provide a reason to buy the device? Why should they be forced to use a monopolistic platform only because Apple's marketing has successfully clouded consumers' heads?
Humans are terrible at actually boycotting, but I'd love to see what would happen if 90% of app store devs pulled their apps from app stores. Would people buy as many iPhones? Ooooh, now we realise the value proposition that devs are _offering_ Apple, not taking from them.
My guess is users would only notice if a few dozen developers were gone, and the rest of them make apps that are only a little bit better than web apps if that.
Watch and Mac are more or less failed developer platforms (how many native 3rd party apps exist for them?) yet are also both huge businesses just with Apple apps.
Their IP is baked into the hardware and circuits.
Therefore a monopoly, by design at every level.
Even if you're side-loading, you're still using Apple IP.
Many free apps on the store who can get away with charging outside do it. Uber, Banks, etc...
Why can they use Apple's IP for a flat $99/yr and others don't? It's not a fair system. Paid apps are essentially subsidizing the free ones.
An OS without any apps is a barren asteroid. Cool for a few minutes but not a place to stay.
Apple is also benefiting from developers IP, as they enrich their value proposition.
Should Intel or AMD get a cut from any app (including Open Source) on Windows and Linux? Should MS get a cut of every app you run on Windows?
You buying the device compensates Apple IP. Commonly their marketing showcases heavily third party apps.
Somehow it's not unreasonable for third parties to "use" another company's IP when designing aftermarket accessories for physical products, even when those base products themselves are patented.
What makes the iOS situation different? Aren't apps essentially "digital accessories"?
Therefore Apple App store is a monopoly.
Not under US law according to the very court case being discussed.
Why are people still making this claim when the judge literally concluded otherwise and then a panel of appeals court judges confirmed her ruling?
Judges can be wrong. The justice system has many checks and balances but ultimate rule over certain court cases isn't one of them.
Because it's not unreasonable to disagree with the law. The judges may be applying it correctly, and correctly following the process for determining that the market is all mobile apps, and not just iOS mobile apps, but it's reasonable for people to disagree with that on first principles.
Because the case shows that the law needs to be updated, not that the app store isnt a monopoly.
Epic should have sued over the size of Apple's cut, not it's right to take a cut
Epic charges 5% for Unreal Engine.
Apple offers developers significantly more than just a games engine.
The most famous Epic game is (or was until this legal battle) played on iOS more than on any other platform, that's in Epic's own complaint. So who built iOS? Why so many people use it? How come they are willing to pay for games instead of pirating them?
Looks like whoever developed iOS and all the hardware it runs on and the ecosystem that makes it appealing for rich users is actually providing Epic a ton of value and profit, but Epic doesn't want to pay for it. I wonder who's greedy here
(Also it's insane how we just accept that Epic with its massive profits and margins is the one who wants to get a discount from Apple, if anything they should be charged double what small business single person devs pay.)
I've seen you make this claim twice in this comment section. Fortnite is not on iOS.
Fortnite was previously on iOS, at least until the events and lawsuit referenced in the main link. It’s kinda literally the entire point of the legal battle.
I don't get where the equivalence of "iPhone user" and "rich person" comes from.
It's $1000, most people have acess to that kind of money, even if they need to finance it and even if it is a terrible financial decision for them to buy one, many still do.
What you describe is the epitome of gatekeeping.
Epic developed a cross-platform game that runs on half a dozen platforms. The appeal of the game is exactly because of that. And you claim that Epic should pay 30% to Apple, because "we are friends with rich people".
Not to mention that the "is actually providing Epic a ton of value and profit" claim is completely bollocks. Can you point to any iOS-exclusive games that matter out there? Ah, right. They don't exist. Because there's (comparatively) very little money in iOS gaming.
To see why Apple’s mandatory commissions are absurd, compare phones to desktop computers. There is no fundamental difference between the two. So, why is it okay to install whatever you want and pay for it directly on desktops, but on phones it is not?
The “better security” argument just doesn’t make sense in this context.
So, why is it okay to install whatever you want and pay for it directly on desktops, but on phones it is not?
On desktop you have similar stores like Steam. The store takes a 30% cut from all sales on the platform and they require apps on the platform to use their payment processing so that they can take that cut.
The difference between Windows and iOS here is that third party stores can be installed without being limited to PWAs or requiring hacky workarounds like AltStore.
Why does Apple have the sole app store on the device? Well it's because it ensures they have a closed platform that they fully control. They made this app platform so it's up to them to decide how open it should be from a range of first party only to fully open to any app from the internet. It's up to Apple to decide what kind of openness will allow them to provide the most value to users. Apple designs their app platform from the hardware all the way up to the operating system and libraries for developers to use. Apple has created a great app platform that brings value to a lot of users.
PC platform: Steam doesn't care if (case in point) Eagle Dynamics allows direct downloads from their website of DCS World - in fact they embrace it, by offering account linking APIs.
So on PCs, unlike on iOS, users can buy their content as they choose.
And it's not as if Microsoft forces everyone to use their (exceptionally crappy) store either.
Indeed there are many free-to-play games on Steam with micro-transactions that are not required to give Valve a cut.
They are required to for in game purchases, but they are likely too small for Valve to care else have a custom agreement with Valve.
I believe the rule you're talking about only applies to literal in-game transactions - i.e. the binary you put on steam cannot itself implement a non-steam wallet. But there's no business rule against selling in-game content elsewhere, like apple is doing.
I claimed Steam was similar. I did not claim that they share all of the same policies.
Steam is not comparable because it is not a first-party platform.
TFA is about Apple's policy on purchases that happen outside the app. It used to ban even linking to them; now it allows that but it wants a cut. Steam doesn't do anything similar - it has no rules about purchases outside the app.
Just to be clear, in the DCS World example you do have to make a choice between using Steam for the game download and purchases, or to use the Eagle Dynamics website/downloader directly. External modules purchases do not import to the Steam account, IIRC.
My point was probably that Steam doesn't force users to only use their platform.
To further illustrate the non lock in culture, you can do a transfer of content from Steam into your Eagle Dynamics account if you want to change the account type.
I'm guessing that seasoned DCS players like the direct account method (more frequent sales, for one), whereas beginners are more likely to discover it through Steam.
(iRacing also has a similar relationship with Steam, although in that case Steam only managed the subscription - not the car/track purchases.)
Steam. ... they require apps on the platform to use their payment processing
That's not true at all. Steam literally lets you sell steam keys for your game from other stores, and takes no cut from those sales.
It is true. Other stores are not your app.
You might have meant something else, but what you wrote is:
they require apps on the platform to use their payment processing so that they can take that cut.
Which is not true. Both steam apps and in-game content for steam apps can be sold in other stores with steam's blessing, and steam expressly supports developers to bypass their payment processing (by offering steam keys and account integration).
My statement was specifically referring to the app itself. The app is what has to use steam wallet and not something else. Selling a steam key on a website is not selling it in the app. The requirement applies to the app and not the website for the app.
Set app selling aside - I only mentioned that because it's a counterexample to your original post as stated.
What TFA is about is selling in-app content from external stores. Apple used to ban that entirely, and now wants a revenue share for it. Steam has never done either - they explicitly support it (via account integration). The two are not similar.
Steam has a literal button on your library's page to add any game you have already installed and the definitely don't charge you 27% to do that.
That button does not give that game a store page, a discussion form, etc. That is not what I am talking about.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this whole post, but isn't it about having to pay 27% even when you don't use the store?
Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements.
If you want to compare it to desktop computers, great! Compare it to the macOS App Store which… takes a 30% commission.
Whether or not you personally agree that 30% is a reasonable fee, you can't simply deny that operating the app store costs money and resources. Further, it isn't unreasonable for them to try to recoup those costs or even to make some profit off of providing the service.
Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store.
Isn't that a forced situation though, unlike with macOS?
With macOS anyone can throw an application on a website (GitHub, etc) and the users can download the application and run it.
To get rid of the scary warnings, there's even a $99 dev membership that can be used to sign the macOS binaries.
iOS developers don't have any choices to host their binaries elsewhere though.
The EU "allow side loading" thing might allow for some improvement there (hopefully), but I'm not sure.
It's been a while but I'm pretty sure signing and notarizing is required on macOS now, without disabiling SIP. At least for things downloaded from a browser. My interpretation is that $99/year is required if you want to avoid your users needing to use the terminal.
Right-clicking an app bundle and clicking open gives you the option to run the app even if it's not signed and notarized by Apple.
This doesn't work if the app is quarantined.
If they’d simply allow the same on iOS, I’m willing to bet that essentially all of their lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny would disappear overnight.
Ahhh. I thought that there was still a button in "System Settings" -> "Security" (or similar) that let users launch an unsigned app anyway.
But it could indeed have been removed in some macOS version without my noticing. :)
It's not required. I made a macOS app recently and no way in hell am I paying that $99/year. People are still able to run it. But there is a scary warning.
On my own Mac I keep gatekeeper disabled.
You can still run an unsigned binary using right-click menu > Open.
Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements.
They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year.
They charge 30% and restrict other installation methods because they can, but you cannot justify it based on those costs.
I firmly believe this model isn't going to last. If it didn't hurt Apple's bottom line so much, PWAs would be far more prevalent already than they are, and that's right now. In 10-20 years, this thinking will be gone. They just have to milk it as a long as they can for the shareholders.
It's their hardware, for now they can do what they want. Most consumers didn't even know about the 30%, and probably still don't. Guess who it benefits to keep that under wraps? Or convince the world they need an expensive app store to vet their apps before downloading them?
(And don't say "there's nothing like a native app experience". It's completely irrelevant. If there was a will to build it, the UX would be identical)
They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year.
Would they? There are plenty of storefronts that sell games on Windows, yet Steam is the dominant one and charges, you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue. Epic charges 12 percent and loses money on every transaction. It might actually cost somewhere between 12 and 30 percent to make it a profitable and sustainable venture.
if that were true then
1. they wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep their not-monopoly
2. the app store would be operating at-cost, with no margin
i think everyone agrees they have a margin, the question is how much. right now i think apple could make a profit with a 10% of revenue, and most likely at 5%. now they've done the hard work of creating an entire market, and invested huge sums to get there, so maybe they deserve a markup on that
but that's the beauty of startups and capitalism. a new product can skip steps, learn from your mistakes, work without your tech debt and bloated organisational dysfunctions, and disrupt your industry. it happens in every industry, and no company is immune. apple will fight to keep things as-is with everything they've got, but capitalism will win.
you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue
There is one interesting difference, which is that Steam charges a one-time $100 per game, rather than annually. It's very slightly cheaper in the long run, which is nice if you just want to distribute a completely free game on Steam, or if you're a part-time game dev with low sales.
But they don't allow alternate app stores.
If there is no fundamental difference, then did you just define the market as all phones, tablets, and pcs? If so the the iPhone is a small minority and can’t possibly be forced to change anything, right? You can just replace your iPhone with a pc if you want to install things?
Both phone and desktop consumers can install third-party apps on their devices. From this point of view, there is no fundamental difference. Yet, on desktops, people are free to install freely, but on the iPhone, Apple controls all third-party installations.
Compare phones to game consoles.
There is no fundamental difference between the two.
Are the input devices the same? The screens sizes? The situations you use them? The means of network connectivity? The social conventions around them?
There are tremendous differences between phones and desktop computers. Really the only way that they’re not different is that they’re both Von Neumann machines. But that describes so many things around us these days that it’s a distinction without a difference. By the same virtue a modern television is no different.
It's OK because that's just how it worked out.
One platforms norms developed before the internet and one developed after.
Some perspective: we sell on Amazon as a 3rd party seller. Amazon takes about 9% of the sale price of our products as their commission (it’s actually 12%, but includes credit card processing). To which you might be inclined to reply, “Ah, but 9% is a reasonable commission, so that’s okay.” But we sell physical goods, which cost money to produce. It’s typical for our products to have 20-25% gross margins. So as a share of what’s left after accounting for the cost to produce and transport our products, Amazon’s commission is similar to Apple’s App Store fee.
Just something to think about if you want to argue that a 30% commission is too much for facilitating a high trust purchasing environment with customers who are ready to spend money.
Oh yeah, and you’ll never guess what Amazon’s policy is about steering customers off of Amazon.
I think the difference is that amazon is not a platform. You sell on Amazon because it is where everyone is and they did that by burning lots and lots of cash to ensure everyone margins cannot be larger than a paper atom.
Now that they're trying to capitalize on it they're becoming worse as a store and I can't remember last time I used them (in NL).
If you buy an iphone there is no one to compete, Apple does not have to play the low margins game because there is no other game in town. Amazon does not take 9% if you sell somewhere else and does not care if you sell cheaper elsewhere, Apple does.
If you buy an iphone there is no one to compete
This. The problem is not the 30%, the problem is that iPhones do not have an option to buy apps from, lets say a Amazon Store or Epic Store.
That has been the style of argument made to regulators so far.
However then people get shocked that Apple says ok, we've rolled out the ability for third party app stores, we still review all the apps before signing, and the store owes us a 20% commission.
Yes, people are shocked. Apple's provisional approach to legislative compliance isn't working, their indifference towards public opinion is what brought antitrust regulators onto the scene in the first place.
Their App Store monopoly is the most literal definition of anticompetitive bundling in the 21st century; they're tying the primary product (Apple hardware, software, APIs, etc.) to a secondary product (the App Store) that can be offered from multiple competitors.
They haven't rolled out the ability for third party stores.
Which is, in this context, like Amazon taking 9% if you buy something from Ebay.
Amazon does not take 9% if you sell somewhere else
So we do sell on other e-commerce platforms and you’re never gonna guess what their fee structures are.
(Basically the same as Amazon’s)
I know a few vendors who sell on Amazon. With advertising, they end up paying close to 60% of the selling price to Amazon.
How can Amazon pricing be so competitive if the cut is so large for third-party vendors?
"third-party vendors" on Amazon includes a galaxy of drop shippers that do little more than create product pages and let Amazon and the actual manufacturer sort out everything else between them, such as logistics, delivery, returns, etc.
a) Amazon pricing in general isn't competitive. I regularly use geizhals.at, a price comparison website, and Amazon rarely is the cheapest option.
b) I don't know if parent poster was talking about FBA (fulfillment by amazon) sales or not. If they are, then Amazons cut includes shipping and storage costs, which for low value items are often more than the stuff costs itself.
1. Because you don't know how much vendors actually pay for the products
2. Because some products might be sold at breakeven price to attract and retain customers
3. Because some products might be loss leaders to attract and retain customers
There's plenty of digital goods with low margins that apple forces a 30% cut.
e.g. Spotify, Twitch, Patreon etc. Most of the funds go to the creator. Completely breaks the model when Apple forces a 30% cut of gross.
That being said, i'd also argue Apple's app store is a complete monopoly on iPhones. Iphones and app stores are such an essential part of life, they deserve to be neutral a la internet neutrality. Not sure how we all become pro internet neutrality but somehow suffer Apple's 30% tax.
I don't think you can sign up for Spotify using in-app-purchase. Once you're in the app it says:
"You can't upgrade to premium in the app. We know, it's not ideal"
You have to go to their site to upgrade your account. Apple gets a 0% cut of Spotify's subscription revenue
I believe that is a special deal that apple made them which does not apply across the board.
Apple will approve apps that prevent sign-up in the app. The problem is that they will deny you the ability to even tell the customers where to go to sign up. Notice that the message displayed in the Spotify app doesn't have a link, doesn't even mention that you can sign up on their website. The customer has to infer that that is what's going on -- good on Spotify for using "premium" as a trigger word because Apple rejects apps that contain the words "purchase" and "subscription" _anywhere_ in your app if you're not using IAP. We were rejected once because those words appeared in an error message sent from the server.
Amazon customers are still available on other platforms. They use credit cards and they can put their details into any site, and I imagine most of them frequently do. Their shipping address is also accepted by every company.
iPhone users don't carry a second Android phone, and their purchasing decision has committed them to only buying on the App Store for at least a few years at a time. And the crazy part is they are paying the Apple Tax even for services like Spotify that they might primarily consume on other devices. You can't make a store that ships to Apple users - only Apple can.
I'm not quite getting your point.
The parent seems to be saying that when you take the difference between physical and digital goods into account, that Amazon is leaving him with a similar slice of the revenue.
You seem to be arguing that he has alternatives to Amazon.
However, you also seem to be making the point indirectly that the motivation for selling on Amazon, and why businesses sell in the App Stores, is that they want the additional sales that come from targeting those marketplaces.
Isn't then there little real distinction from selling products on Amazon (where you could sell elsewhere, but dramatically fewer would see and purchase your product) or the App Store (where you could make a web app and sell elsewhere, but dramatically fewer would see and purchase your product)?
Companies like Amazon and Apple are free to set prices, but there are rules about being a monopoly and what that entails. Amazon is not a monopoly, it just has a dominant position. Apple has used technological means to make itself a monopoly.
Web apps are not a real alternative. Firstly, an app you can only use on a desktop is a non starter for almost every use case. So you need a mobile layout. Now, some features like background audio and video are not available as a web app. Some are less reliable like user sessions, timers, push notifications and offline behaviour. Technical innovation is not possible due to the standards based approach - for video calls you have to use WebRTC for example, for games you have to use WebGL. Some features like notifications, vibration, were delayed by Apple until users were trained to only accept native apps. There's others like battery status, Apple Watch, Settings pane that I don't know the exact status, but I'm sure App Store gets an advantage there too.
That’s just the commission on the sale itself. It doesn’t count FBA or advertising fees which in practical terms are often necessary. After all is said and done, Amazon is usually taking much more than 9%.
Yeah, exactly, but I wanted to compare like for like: just the commission on the sale. You can also pay for ads on the App Store, which would be in addition to Apple’s 30% take.
Are they toasters? Because I hear there might be some competition.
But genuinely, your comments enrich this sort of thing. I love your input.
Just a note that for my business (and many others) Apple takes a 15% cut
Apple will lower their cut to 15% if you earn less than $1 million USD/year across your app businesses, or if you sell subscriptions and your subscribers persist for longer than 1 year (so 2nd - Nth year of subscriptions are split at 85/15)
Not defending the size of their commission, but in practice it does vary from the 30% that is commonly quoted
Google should update the Chrome TOS so that they get 30% of all sales placed through Chrome, regardless of payment processor used. They're missing out on trillions of dollars and all they have to do is update their TOS!
Apple has thankfully figured out that there's good money in online sales so they'll in fact get a cut if you buy stuff on Safari, although only if you use Apple Pay and even then they only get a miniscule 0.15% (or less) cut. I imagine this is because they don't have the technology to skim off all transactions yet and laws prohibiting excessive processing fees.
Does there exist a payment processor that takes zero cut?
In the Netherlands there are payment processors with a fixed cut like 15 cents.
Mollie?
Yes for ideal. Not for CC of course because of the duopoly of visa/mastercard
That's only cheaper for payments in excess of 100EUR
UPI in India has 0 fees, currently doing about 52% of all digital transactions in the country.
That’s amazing. Wish we had an equivalent in the US.
I have dreamed of starting a credit card/payment processor company that does this, giving users instant discounts everywhere they use it. Retailers will bend over to move people away from paying % fees.
The problem is that it is extremely capital intensive to get it off the ground.
Apple Pay is not a payment processor, it's a mechanism for delivering payment information to a payment processor.
I'd argue 0.15% is a huge cut for the service they're offering. With Apple Pay the payment is still being processed by the card scheme, the merchant's acquirer, their bank and the user's bank. Each of these charge fees and Apple's cut likely comes out of the user's bank's cut, since they are the ones co-operating with Apple to get their cards onto Apple Pay. In the EU, this fee called interchange fee is limited to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Imagine if Apple managed to negotiate for 50-75% of that. That would be ludicrous in my eyes.
A lot of businesses spend more than 30% of their products cost on Google Ads.
I know plenty of people who sell something for $20, and spend $30 on Google Ads to get that user to their site.
Pretty much every VC backed startup for the past 15 years uses that model. Startup success is in a large amount "who can use internet ads the best".
But at least there are alternatives, even if Google is dominant in the space.
What does that have to do with anything? Using Google Ads is not a requirement of having your website be accessible through Google Chrome. It's not analogous to this situation at all.
Those businesses operating at a loss are a tiny fraction of the "real economy", even though they may be giants in the future.
This is the same strategy that Apple pursued for dating apps in the Netherlands, after a court there forced them to allow third-party payments a year or two ago. Their argument is that the 15/30% is a general fee for use of their infrastructure (App Store, etc), and so they'll subtract the approximate cost of payment processing if you're handling it yourself but you'll still have to pay the rest of the fee to them.
Although I think this sounds extremely petty-bullshit of them, in part because that flat 3% is basically calculated to make this cost more for developers who do this overall, the court in the Netherland did go along with it. So we'll have to see how it'll work out under US courts now.
(I feel that them charging some sort of fee for the App Store isn't entirely unreasonable, though this seems too high -- we can debate the actual amount that'd be acceptable. It's the lack of an alternative via sideloading that makes this egregious.)
What’s the egregious bit? Because Apple were so successful with their product they should have a cap on how much they capitalise?
Do you get upset at business class in airlines? Or cinema food being so expensive? Isn’t this the point of capitalism?
Leaving aside the potential for a critique of capitalism as a whole... it depends on what you compare it to, right? (Or, I don't get upset at the existence of business class, but I do get upset at excessive nickel-and-diming with fees in coach.)
I'd tend to think of the Mac as the most-direct comparison point, where there's the App Store but also where a developer who wants to handle everything themselves can.
That’s why I took it to another industry that is clearly charging a fee that is unrelated to its costs.
Capitalism says: the market will figure it out.
Given Apple does not have a monopoly. I don’t see how any of this is a problem. If they want you to sacrifice your first born child in order to publish an app on their App Store. That’s okay. Just don’t publish your app to their phone.
that is unrelated to its costs.
Are you serious? airline companies is not a good place to be when it comes to margins and making a profit. Business class subsidizes air travel "for the rest of us". Even then, they still often depend on government subsidies to make ends meet. You say business class is a fee not related to their costs? you really don't understand how unprofitable airlines would be and how cheap air travel currently is. In France it's cheaper to take a plane from Montpellier to Paris than it is to take the train!
Meanwhile Apple is one of the highest margin company in the entire world. To put things into perspective, Apple has a /cash reserve/ of 162 billions USD. They have far more money than they even know how to spend. The 30% on in app purchases is definitely not because they need to recoup their costs in any way, shape, or form.
You are proving my point. So what they charge in business is unrelated to their cost. They are paying for a lot more than they are getting. Exactly my point.
So “having a good business model” is punishable?
The first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia article [1] are enough to hint that capitalism is not necessarily about free markets. Many capitalists would like to have a monopoly on the market they are in or make the rules of the market. Only a few succeed. Apple mostly succeeded especially if we think that one of markets they are in is selling iOS apps developed by third parties.
Their argument is that the 15/30% is a general fee for use of their infrastructure
No Apple's argument is that this is a fee for everything e.g. SDKs.
As well as being a highly lucrative distribution channel.
I felt a lot could be covered under "etc", I'll admit. :D
It's the same thing here in Korea. I'm implementing a 3rd party payment processor for a client right now - same 27% fee. However, the revenue is "self reported". Allegedly, most companies lie.
You lie until you get big enough that it warrants an audit.
I'm an app designer and was able to get my PWA to look very native. This is my way to avoid the app store fees which are absolutely ridiculous. Apps take up too much storage space anyways.
I’m extremely familiar with the iOS native components (I even made some of them originally). I’d like to see your PWA to see if your claim is true.
Sure thing but you have to buy my product first! My approach was blending iOS and Android. For example I like the hamburger menu for user adoption (very Android) but I like SF symbols light forms and weight. So there is a blending of forms. Modals and context menus behave as you would expect. I didn't do any blurred backdrops. Lastly, a pwa in fullscreen mode removes the URL bar even through it runs with chrome!
Paste the link to your product?
Sure it's www.petpages.app
Do you do IAP? Stripe or paypal is just slightly more inconvenient than Apple pay. Does not being in an app store hurt your marketability at all?
What is IAP? Stripe was very easy. It does hurt my marketability you are correct.
Oh in app purchasing. No my product is entirely dependent on the user purchasing a physical product. There's no IAP. Possibly in the future if users want something that is an upsell then I could see that happening. But I would have to hear it from users and by that point they would already be in my app-store-less ecosystem
What did you miss in functionality vs a native app?
Definitely. No haptics sadly. I didn't do any blurred backdrops or glassmorphic surfaces. I didn't implement material ripple effects. I increases tap targets beyond native iOS and Android specs.
I've got to say, Apple definitely lost me on this one. This feels bad enough that despite having an iPhone since the iPhone 3G, I'll likely jump ship when I need to upgrade unless they make a U-turn on this move.
EDIT: Wow, getting downvoted for saying Apple is losing me as a customer with this move is surprising. I don't understand how people on Hacker News of all places want conformity of thought. I switched from using Microsoft products to Apple when Vista came out. Microsoft lost my trust by that point and Macs were a viable alternative. Despite having a Macbook, iPhone, and an Apple Watch it seems like Apple is starting to lose me with this move.
You haven’t daily driven Android since at least the iPhone 3GS, according to your comment. There’s a reason they’re able to charge 30%, have a dominant market position in the US, and people continue to release apps for iOS (and prioritize launching there over Android).
You’re also not the customer in this situation — you’re talking not as a developer but as an end-user without any mention of a subscription service that you pay more for because you’re on iOS, or mention of an app you want to side load.
And, you might switch back to iOS after experiencing Android. Your comment says basically nothing, except that you got rattled by reading the news. It doesn’t have to do with “conformity of thought”.
Also, editing to complain about downvoting is just asking to get more downvotes.
There’s a reason they’re able to charge 30%, have a dominant market position in the US, and people continue to release apps for iOS (and prioritize launching there over Android).
I keep seeing this line of thinking in the comments (some may say these comments are conforming to a specific line of thought). When is the last time you used a modern android (Galaxy, Pixel, etc)? And really used it, not just tried to use your friend’s Android for a few minutes and then gave up?
I kept reading all these comments about how superior iPhones are on Hacker News. So after having used a MacBook (and being very happy with it over the past year) I bought an iPhone 14 to see if the iPhone also lived up to the hype. It doesn’t. It’s literally the same as an Android. There are no significant differences.
The gestures are a difference, but I kind of hate that about iPhones. You’re just supposed to somehow know these from tribal knowledge or reading something from some random thread (just violently shake the phone to undo typing, very intuitive!). After a couple months of use, I’m finally almost as good at using an iPhone as I was at using my Android. And once again, there are no significant differences. Of course, there’s a learning curve when you switch. But that should be expected. Give it 2 months, and then the devices will feel identical. They’re different, but in the end, they’re pretty much the same.
Edit: and btw, the same exact line of thinking can be used for Android. There’s a reason Google sets their App Store fee at 30%, and Android leads the market globally, and people continue to launch apps on Android.
The tribal war thing over android vs iOS makes me laugh. It really is ridiculous.
I have an iPhone XS and a Galaxy Fold 4, and have bounced around between android phone and iPhones over the years. I won't deny that there are some things Apple does better, but it's far from a night-and-day difference.
The most shocking thing to me was playing around with a budget phone once, it was a like $150 motorola I bought for a family member. After setting things up on it, I seriously felt like I was missing almost nothing compared to my iPhone XS.... that i paid $1000 for...
At this point the only reason I keep an iPhone is I really like my Apple Watch.
At this point the only reason I keep an iPhone is I really like my Apple Watch
With LTE smart watches starting to get good, the dream for me is to just lose the phone. Hopefully whatsapp makes a client for the watches someday and I will have everything I need without all the distractions.
Forgive the unrelated reply, but can you actually downvote on this site? I only have an up arrow next to everything.
You can downvote comments after accruing a certain amount of karma (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)
I’m not leaving the app to pay…
Apple already forces you to sometimes, for example if you want to buy a Kindle e-book.
Amazon forces their users to leave the app, not Apple.
It's understandable they don't want to pay the mafia.
The trillion-dollar Amazon is also the mafia of online shopping. No reason to give them any sympathy.
touche!
Once side loading finalizes (couple of years?) the predatory 27-30% fee will come down really fast. F Apple for this monopoly bs. From the anti-repair shenanigans to their locked down ecosystem. It’s all designed to pump as much money from the consumer AND developers inside the wall.
There's no way Apple will capitulate on sideloading in the US. It's clear they are going to go every inch as far as the law allows to guarantee their 30%. They will strictly geofence sideloading to the EU, and they may even try to resist even more strongly by challenging DMA enforcement in court as long as they can before complying. And they'll probably pull more shenanigans like this to try to impose the 30% even on third party app stores.
Why would they? Most iPhone users still won't install third-party stores, so, in practice, if you want to exist, you need to sell through the App Store.
Google allows third-party stores and side-loading, but they're still able to charge a 30% cut on the Play Store.
I personally make use of third-party stores and side-loading on Android, but I don't personally know anyone else who does.
I am willing to make a bet that even when side-loading becomes available, it does change much.
You can side-load on Android, and the Play Store's commissions are on par with Apple's.
The mistake here is believing that either Store is competing for developers. They are not. The stores compete for users, and they charge developers a fee for access to those users. Most users prefer the safety and convience of Play, or Steam, or Apple's iOS store.
So long as user's are primarily using Apple's store, either through defaults, habits or choice, Apple won't have to change much.
Can someone give me the TLDR of this questions answer..
If I have a web based saas currently where I charge customers $300 a month.. if I were to make an iOS app for them to use, would apple want a % of that?
If you allow them to subscribe in the iOS app, then yes. Just don’t offer that option.
In my limited experience, payments for such services are handled outside the iOS app. Simultaneously you're prohibited from directing users to make a purchase on your website and it's up to you to fit this square peg in a round hole, usually through cryptic messages which vaguely remind your users that they have to buy the subscription elsewhere, wink wink.
As I couldn't find the nice page about the IAP policy that I read and found quite clear ~4 years ago (you should verify, don't trust people on the Internet): the old rules prior to the Epic and other court cases would say "Only for those users that set up payment while using the app." From what I gather, the current rules would be more lax, but the old can then serve as an upper bound.
The main rules were:
1) A user making a payment that has any effect on app functionality (this is very broad) from inside your app must go through Apple IAP (paying 30% commission). There were some exceptions, but mainly think buying physical goods - Apple isn't forcing the use of IAP for EBay or Amazon retail.
2) You may not link to, or even mention other payment methods.
Really it comes down to: if there is any difference in what the app will do for a user before and after they pay money then that money paying must go through Apple and then Apple will give it to you (minus 30%). So what a lot of apps did is just open to a login screen. No sign up button, no link to your homepage, heck, no links anywhere. The downside is that users have to know about your app from at least one more channel than searching on the App Store, but that's not a very high bar. Probably less common if you're B2B, but for B2C a lot of them would pay their subscription through Apple if possible, the experience is great: one central place in system settings showing all your subscriptions with easy cancellation buttons and enforced standard refund/proration semantics.
Can’t a developer just add a message to their website to circumvent this link tax? “Open this again in any regular browser to receive a 27% discount.”
I don’t see anything that prohibits this: https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
Apple cannot (or, per antitrust law, should not) tell a developer how to design and sell their merchandise in their web based storefronts.
Yeah, but will it matter ? It's a mobile native world. That's why distribution matters.
If that messaging is allowed, it is a huge change from before, where external links for taking payment was not allowed at all within an app. A lot of users will probably opt for the 27% discount if given the choice.
I think if what youre selling is just app based content apple could sue and force an audit. Like if the product is just a subscription to the mobile app they could claim that all revenue received from that is subject to the fee. But if youre selling a more general subscription that can be used on different platforms I think this would work.
The solution is very simple for me. Stop participating in the native app ecosystems.
The way I see it, you get 2 major pieces of value out of these. First, they serve as a B2C marketing channel. Second, they provide access to certain native hardware features & OS integration.
The first point is difficult to contend with, but HN and Twitter seem to serve as a fine counterpoint.
For native hardware access, I'd recommend just trying it in your browser right now. You'd likely be surprised what works in 2024 on iOS/Safari clients. We've been shipping just a webapp to our customers for the last 3-4 years now. We do 2D barcode scanning, signature capture, etc. without any difficulty these days. You DO NOT need a native app to access camera, location, etc. you may find some friction with the web, but you just have to work through it and have patience.
Watching founders obsess over App Store presence and its requisite taxation is a bit of a red flag for me regarding the effectiveness of their business model. The open web exists - why haven't you even tried it yet? Seems to me it's easier to complain about how unfair things are on twitter than it is to iterate into a viable business.
I think it's not that easy, Telegram tried very hard but got forced into apple restrictions in web browsers, you can read many complaints about it from the founder
Exactly how was telegram forced? Are they trying to operate in both pools at the same time?
I am under no legal contracts with Apple, aside from any EULAs I may have clicked through for iOS, etc.
The question isn't whether founders have tried the open web, but whether they can reach their customers there. Myself, I feel that as a developer and a power user I'm far enough removed from "regular" users that I don't know the answer to the question, I only know it's important to ask it.
For everyone who thinks Google is some paragon of cooperation and openness as compared to Apple, they just got slammed in court effectively attempting to call their platform open while paying off companies to stay in the Play Store in a very similar case to Epic v. Apple. In fact, this was Epic v. Google. Why did Google lose and Apple largely win?
Because Apple had always said their platform was closed and were up front about it.
Google, on the other hand, called their platform open and then engaged in anti-competitive behavior to get the benefits of a closed ecosystem.
You might not like Apple’s approach, but at least they’re up front and honest about it.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/alphabet-loses-googl...
I don't judge people's policies and actions based on what they say about them. I judge based on the policies and actions themselves.
Apple is demonstrably more closed (which IMO makes them worse) than Google on this axis. What they've both said about their platforms is irrelevant to me.
This is pointless whataboutism, they're both bad. Google is more open as a platform, but sucks in many other ways and Apple doesn't get points for being anti-competitive to begin with.
There's nothing "honest" about deceiving your customers and hiding a 30% fee with NDAs.
Apple specifically forbids developers from mentioning the 30% cut in their apps. That means either the users pay more, the developers lose money, or they do what Netflix did and just force the user to figure out how to sign up (because you can't direct people to the site either). Apple has completely draconian rules that very specifically leave users in the dark about how app store revenue works. They are in no way transparent with 99% of their customers.
For me, the glaring issue here is not whether 27% is fair or not. Rather, it's the absence of an alternative method to do so without relying on Apple's "services."
Naturally, there can be endless debates about whether this is acceptable or not. However, the reality is that there is a striking disparity between the iOS's model and that of Android, PC, or even Mac.
The main problem is censorship by apple on the "app" store... everything else is smoke and mirrors, including money.
Its far worse than that. Apple clearly abuses its market place "railroads" to control shipments of apps "oil" from its competitors, mainly Kindle and Spotify. Of course while offering the same apps at a much higher margin for themselves.
It's literally the same problem that led to antitrust in 1890.
Amazon sells its Kindle books outside the Apple App Store. Once purchased, the book is available to view in your Kindle app. My guess is that Amazon doesn't pay Apple any $ for books sold there.
How is this current practice of Amazon consistent with the (new?) rules in which all sales taking place even outside the store will attract commision from Apple ?
It is because Kindle does not offer ANY sales at all through its own Apple app ? Some other reason ?
Based on my reading, Apple’s cut of non-IAP purchase only applies if you sign up for the new StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement, and the cut only applies for purchases through the Entitlement link.
To me it reads that you can place a link in-app to the out-of-app purchase, and purchases made through that route are subject to the fee.
Yes Apple is obviously engaging in rent seeking behavior to profit off developers. But do they deserve to do so?
First they invented the smart phone and App Store. That gives them a right to rent seeking by most people’s standards for a particular period of time. It’s why we have patents. Perhaps you think 16 years is a long time but then Mickey Mouse’s patent expired recently.
Second they managed to stave off competition and still maintain a large market share. Smartphones had a large number of companies get into this business, including all of big tech at one point (remember fire phone?) and yet Apple has not barely managed to survive, instead it dominated. That has to count for something. The real problem is this society instinctively sides for the little guy and against the big guy. Sometimes that makes sense, but just like you wouldn’t try to change the rules to reduce the amount Roger Federer earns, there’s no sense in trying to hobble a winning dominant company like Apple. Even as a developer (who’s never worked for Apple), I think developers should just deal with it even if it sucks because I prefer a society where winners get to win. If your product is good enough, you can make users work to pay you and still be a market leader (think Netflix or Kindle store, both of which I buy from my browser).
"First they invented the smart phone and App Store"
No they did not. The first iPhone was released on June 2007 and Apple had no intent to give anybody else the ability to develop any app for their phone. In fact Steve Jobs was vehemently against any app store.
Apple only introduced app store on the second year of its first iPhone launch, one day before release of new iPhone 3G.
Other types of smart phones and app stores existed before Apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator
For me the issue is that in a perfect scenario, you would be able to adjust your pricing to 30% more and see whether the market could bear it. But Apple ties developers to fixed pricing tiers which doesn't allow this. Maybe the battle should be for removal of these fixed tiers
I think all developers should start charging 30% more (op top of the price for which it sells on website.) if user is purchasing via In App Purchases. Slowly all users will come to know that if you buy on web generally it's cheaper and they will change their behaviour and IAP sells will drop significantly.
And I'd guess Apple would make a clause for that, if they don't have it already to ban that kind of behaviour.
but that might not happen because of how onerous the rules are for non-IAP. it's an awful user experience, 1) the link isn't where you normally buy, 2) you are warned about leaving, 3) you get switched to a different app, 4) you then got to log in, 5) you got to find what you wanted to buy because no such information was carried, and 6) you got to fill out your card and billing information. Unless you are buying something very expensive, it simply won't be worth it. Especially for subscriptions.
I always hated native apps and found them to be very high friction, both as a user and as a developer. I have no idea what's wrong with people. Why are people so keen to install untrusted, intrusive software onto their devices when they can access them in the safety of their browser without downloading anything. When I was younger, people were very careful about what software they installed on their machines, you'd have to be insane to opt to install some software if you could just run it directly from a browser. Aside from a few niche use cases where the app needs access to device sensors, it really doesn't make sense.
With Apple, I feel like people are under some kind of spell. I cannot relate to their behavior. It's ironic that they've become exactly what they were claiming to be working against in their 1984 advert. It's has become some kind of big brother mind control operation.
iOS user and a developer here. I actually feel the opposite. With native apps, there are OS level restrictions to accessing certain resources and sensors on the device so I feel safer in a native app than a browser.
App makers (and often users!) want dedicated buttons for services or apps they use on their phone home screens or menus. Apple has put considerable effort into having a standardized workflow that most users understand when it comes to installing a mobile app on their device: you access it through their App Store.
I would love for Progressive Web Apps to be normalized, and PWAs can do a lot, and you can also get a button for a PWA on your home screen, but the process to do so is odd/cumbersome, requires explanation for inexperienced users, which is not something that most companies that want a well-positioned mobile app are willing to tolerate.
And while PWAs on iOS can access some sensors, the API support is limited[0] and in some cases not supported at all. Not being able to capture links to properly direct users into installed PWAs, not being able to provide install prompts, background sync, etc. are considered serious limitations to people who are used to those luxuries available to actual iOS apps.
Apple does provide a lot of value with the App Store. But when I compare it to my business (saas), adding stripe + aws is about 12% of sales. I feel for my App Store brethren. It would be hard to accept 30%
Unless you make over $1M/year, the commission for small business is 15%.
What is your business?
Apple just admitted that 3% is the reasonable cost for bandwidth and service related to an online storefront and that their margin is huge.
No, 3% is just Apple accounting for credit card processing fees. It will end up costing developers roughly the same whether they use alternative payment methods or not, which is obviously Apple's plan.
How is it non-app store purchasing if Apple still gets the commission?
If Apple gets commission, the sale took place on Apple's cyberturf, all of which can be identified as being their app store.
The user's Apple device where they made this purchase is effectively a branch location of the that store.
It's malicious compliance. It's non-app store purchase but Apple still gets to keep a 27% net cut. Had Apple made no commissions on those sales it would have still been super onerous but at least then people can "buy" the degraded experience if there is a savings to be had for the customer.
So I'm about to embark on a submission process for an iOS app that has a subscription currently, and I'm wondering if any app store pros can give advice, especially in light of this.
The app is a reddit-like site where you subscribe for an amount you choose (say $10/mo), the site takes a $1 cut, and the remaining $9 gets distributed between everything you upvote that month (creators get sent this money into their stripe connect account).
How much does Apple take as part of this? Do they take 27% of the $1/mo server fee, or 27% of the $10/mo total (thus taking away from money users would be sending from each other)?
It's a weird situation because it ends up being a subscription-based digital wallet, and I'm unsure how these are treated or what the right approach is when submitting the app.
Until you hit $1million in revenue, it’s 15%. And it’s 15% on all the money you collect. Because these are digital services and not physical products, Apple takes their cut. You will need to factor that into your business model.
It doesn’t matter how you distribute the money on your end. While you can definitely reflect the exact amounts involved to your customers, it might be wise to convert incoming money to something else, perhaps simply “credits.”
Caveat: I am not a mobile dev, I don't really have skin in the game here. I stay away because App & Play store sound like nightmare environments to do business with faceless entities and automated bans without appeal.
It really seems to me the best way around this is:
- Don't sell on the Apple store at all with no alternative (likely same for Google if your particular gripe is the 30%). Stick with web.
- Push more PWAs to your customers. Sounds like Apple is finally opening up a bit on that front? Maybe the EU antitrust will open the doors wider.
- Sell ONLY on Apple (and again Google), then 15-30% is your norm, and you won't feel the "loss" of not having a middleman.
The argument about 30% being standard and OK to me only makes sense without the $99/yr license in place, and if only comparing to other locked down platforms. E.g. with Steam, there's plenty of ways to distribute via Steam and still have them take a lower cut, or you have other stores you can sell on. It's only the consoles that have the same kind of locked-down environment, but even then those are explicitly niche devices whereas phones are general-purpose.
You have skin in the game as a consumer
The real problem with the Apple Tax — it ruins value-chain and makes it uneconomical
For every value created a customer receives there is value captured by a company paid by this customer. Let's say a company creates a service valued as 1X by the customer and the customer pays 1X for that. This balance guarantees accessibility and interest among many customers.
Apple tax demands for a customer to pay 1.43X for the same value of 1X (0.43 = 30% of 1.43). It means that the balance is ruined and customers do not get enough value for what they pay. In value, they still get 1X despite paying for 1.43X.
There is a price elasticity curve that measures how many clients a company loses after each step of the price increase. In other words, a company gets significantly fewer customers due to the increased price at the same time, it’s unable to benefit from an additional 0.43X customers paid. A drop in the revenue is significant. At the same time, the company needs to increase its marketing budget effectively decreasing its margin even more. That makes business unsustainable.
Imagine what a decrease in purchases a product gets if its price is increased by 43%. This ruins all economic assumptions of a business.
Not to mention that if it has any network effect, significantly fewer users result in a degraded experience for all users.
I'm considering using PWA for the next mobile app and not investing in native iOS development. Even 50% fewer users due to PWA installation is better than being a lifetime slave to Apple which extorts 43% of what a company gets after Apple TAX from a user.
Don't forget the $100 tax just to be part of ecosystem. I paid that twice but didn't get the apps approved. Learnt my lesson.
Maybe I missed it
But how will they actually know how much money developers are making via external web purchasing? Audits?
In my opinion working with both Apple and Google's billing libraries is pretty painful. Many developers use third parties to make it easier like Qonversion or RevenueCat. These all have to go through Apple and Google respectively
If you can just have a web page to do it, that seems easier actually. You can just save if the user is paid or not directly in your backend after they make a purchase
> Developers are required to provide a periodic accounting of qualifying out-of-app purchases, and Apple has a right to audit developers' accounting to ensure compliance with their commission obligations and to charge interest and offset payments.People seem to be very poorly informed and are up in arms over the 27%.
This is directly part of the underlying court decisions.
While the courts haven’t explicitly stated a percentage, and the initial judge questioned the percentage, it was made clear by both the district court as well as the appeals court that Apple can still charge a commission even when payment takes place outside of Apple’s IAP system.
The courts consider it payment for Apple’s IP that’s directly tied to the sales, not IAP:
“In essence, Apple uses the DPLA to license its IP to developers in exchange for a $99 fee and an ongoing 30% commission on developers' iOS revenue.”
The district court even went as far as to outright state Apple’s entitlement to a commission, despite hemming and hawing about the exact rate (and ultimately not making a decision on it):
“Even in the absence of IAP, Apple could still charge a commission on developers. It would simply be more difficult for Apple to collect that commission”
“Indeed, while the Court finds no basis for the specific rate chosen by Apple (i.e., the 30% rate) based on the record, the Court still concludes that Apple is entitled to some compensation for use of its intellectual property.”
“Apple is entitled to license its intellectual property for a fee, and to further guard against the uncompensated use of its intellectual property. The requirement of usage of IAP accomplishes this goal in the easiest and most direct manner, whereas Epic Games' only proposed alternative would severely undermine it. Indeed, to the extent Epic Games suggests that Apple receive nothing from in-app purchases made on its platform, such a remedy is inconsistent with prevailing intellectual property law.”
“Suffice it to say, IAP is not merely a payment processing system, as Epic Games suggests, but a comprehensive system to collect commission and manage in-app payments.”
The appellate court echoed these sentiments, if not outright making stronger statements about this, while at the same time complaining between the lines that the district court wanted its cake and eat it too by insisting that the anti-steering provisions are not kosher while simultaneously stating that it would be too cumbersome for Apple to retroactively audit sales to collect their commission.
Either way, the long and short of it is that Apple collecting a commission from developers using third party payment processors has the blessing of the courts.
Even when the district court in particular isn’t entirely happy with the rate of the commission while simultaneously not willing to make an official determination on the rate because Epic never fought the rate, rather the existence of the commission itself.
Now that SCOTUS has declined to look at it, this situation, including the blessing to collect a commission even when using third party payment processors, is the law of the land.
It’s very interesting to read through the threads. I’m seeing two sides of the argument but clearly the majority here are not happy about what Apple is doing or anyone who tries to stick up for it. I hope people continue to share their perspective. Even if it is not popular to the HN crowd because I appreciate a balanced discussion.
Are there any details of how Apple actually collects that money? Self reporting? Only Apple Pay? What’s the process like?
This feels absurd to the point of comedy. The only thing missing is a monkey’s paw curling its finger and some ominous voice “Epic, be careful what you wish for”.
It really feels like Apple keeps making these unforced errors. While they're working to hype up their new product launch coming up, giving prominent tech journalists early access / hands-on demos to stir up some good press, they pull shit like this completely destroying any good feelings people may have about the brand.
I don't get it. Absolutely greedy and (seemingly?) short-sighted.
I designed and built my PWA. You just have to define a manifest and set an empty service worker. Boom now your mobile responsive app is a PWA. PWA can look exactly like native app if you are careful with the design. There are navigation patterns that users expect. Make sure to dial in the information hierarchy and design modals correctly. Use familiar iconography and use type that works at small point sizes. This is basic mobile design regardless of platform.
Firefox hooks into the Android type display settings. I would like to see chrome support this. It really adds to the app feel.
When you make a PWA you have to remake native components. Material Design 3 Web Components is not done yet. Apple has nothing for you so just set your border radius to 17px or whatever they use. Backdrop filter blurs.
You don't get the advertising from the app and play store. You don't get discoverability. However, discoverability is a marketing function. If your acquisition costs are under 30% of your product fees then there is no reason why you can't drive users to your mobile optimized website.
I hope the US copies EU regulation and puts a stop to this BS. Imagine a world where the companies hoarding capital and talent have to actually compete rather than sit back and collect rent.
Apple isn't a company, it's an economy
What we need is a third-party appstore, for BOTH platforms (iOS and Android), that offers curated titles and filtering options users actually want (e.g. like by "ad-free" and "no in-app purchases").
If something like that had been in incubation and available for lawyers to draw on for their arguments I wonder if it would have impacted the case (especially when judge says things like "failed to prove the existence of substantially less restrictive alternatives").
The Play Store takes exactly same 15%/30% commission from their developers as the App Store that everyone here is venting about. The key thing is how their payment processing discounts work.
The Play Store offers a 4% discount on the commission for alternate payment processing only in India or South Korea [1]. In comparison, Apple is doing a 3% discount, but only in the US. Perhaps this will expand further to compete for discounts between the two stores?
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
[3% discount]
Apps that use the StoreKit External Purchase Link must continue to offer in-app purchases as an option.
This is worthless. I cannot believe a court allowed Apple to get away with such a useless remedy.
The browser paradigm may be the most open platform we have. I can go to any website, download whatever I want and not pay tax to some central authority.
I can inspect the dom, scripts run on my device, the network. Set adblockers and script filters.
None of those freedoms are available on smartphone apps. As a dev you pay the trillion dollar mega corps, as a consumer you also pay to them.
The app paradigm could have been as open as the web, but we voted with our dollars for a walled garden with 30% tax.
This is absolutely outrageous. I simply cannot believe people still support this awful company.
Apple's policies for external purchases are hilarous. The only goal is to be punitive.
For the External Link Account Entitlement that "reader” apps can use to link to purchase flows off-app, Apple forbids offering IAP in the same app. Why? Because they think this will discourage adoption.
For the new StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement that other apps can use for the same exact thing, Apple requires an IAP alternative. Why? Because they think this, too, will discourage adoption.
The first thing that should be regulated is the app search functionality. Randomized results for a given query, max. 1 ad supported first entries per page.
All this to allow you to process the payment yourself. This is just the industry standard 3% payment processing fee.
If Apple collects a commission here, then why doesn't it collect one on advertising in the app?
Imagine a world where laws forced Apple to enable feature an Apple-compatible version of the Play Store alongside the App Store and vice versa. Likewise with Kindle and any other developer that wants to adhere to a legally mandated App Store API.
How would that not be a net positive for the mobile device ecosystem?
I see lots of comments about potential alternatives to 30%. But the only way to really find new optima is to mandate App Store competition. Force Apple and Google to expose the exact API that their app stores are using and allow the laws of economics to determine the outcome. Even under these conditions, only mega corporations and organizations could compete with Google and Apple, so it’s not utopia, but way better than what we’ve got.
Why not just force apps to collect payment through a money order sent on the 2nd Thursday of each month between 1 and 2pm. Sounds about as compelling.
There’s a lot to talk about but I’m calling this out as trivial, easy, and in bad faith:
No redirecting, intermediate links, or URL tracking parameters are allowed.
It’s 100% clear to me that the link they let you use will be a redirected intermediate link through Apple’s servers, probably with tracking params (and at the very least with OS-level tracking).
And Apple wonders why Android has 70% market share (and growing)
Exactly what I thought. Makes total sense.. 3% for payments. I’m surprised anyone is surprised as this is what was discussed many times
As an end user this isn’t great. One of the great things about Apple subscriptions is how easy it is to see them all in one place and to cancel them.
I used to get all riled up about these assholes but then took a step back, looked at my own usage (which I believe is typical for the majority) and realized I didn't purchase an app (or did an IAP) in over 5 years.
So let them burn through their goodwill and suck the gambling whales dry, why do I need to get my blood pressure up over their greed...
Apple will continue to collect 12 to 27 percent comissions ... Apple is the best / ultimate troll. Hilarious.
Why not merely raise prices if the cut Apple takes bothers you so much?
Related ongoing thread:
US Supreme Court declines to hear appeals in Apple-Epic Games legal battle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39014642 - Jan 2024 (162 comments)
This made sense earlier when the app store started, now with abundant bandwidth and reduced cost of hosting, and increase in number of developers/apps and other player/markets, they should reduce it to 5%. It is like how we treasured 5 mb internet on mobile devices, now we use that in a sec.
One interesting thing to me is that apple has now put a price tag on their payments processing: 3% (being the discount of this 27% vs the normal 30%). Their payments are pretty convenient, i'm surprised they don't consider it worth eg 4-5%.
So they're basically saying that their SDKs (+ distribution) are worth 27% of sales.
I wonder if one could make the argument in court that if you don't use their SDK, eg you use react native or flutter, you shouldn't pay 27%. Yes, i know those frameworks still use apple's SDKs, but they commoditise them such that you might make the argument these SDKs aren't worth any more than any other sdk such as android.
(I'm skipping distribution in my argument too, for simplicity's sake)
I don't understand this at all. How is this an improvement? This is effectively an in-app purchase just done through the browser instead. There seems to be no difference.
People should completely abandon app development and make PWAs instead.
"Supreme Court rebuffs Apple's appeal on app payments" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39021897
Does apple still charge people annually to develop apps for apple ?
Because charging people to charge them again to make Apple useful seems abusive.
Utterly ridiculous for Apple to do this. It's so consumer unfriendly.
This only shows that users still don't fully own their phone.
Should Apple let an alternative way to install ios ipados app first, and then mention about devs benefiting from their user base?
I am not that happy with this.
From a legal perspective and the size of Apple I understand why this happened and for the most part I fully agree with the legal arguments.
I went with Android for a well over a decade and it was fun. So many things I could do with it and so many ways to fiddle with it even rooting it. My nerd in me like that.
I had an iPhone for a while and the lack of customizations and fiddling was quite annoying, switched back, then a few years ago I went and got an iPhone for reals (I mean fully knowing what I was giving up).
I was tired of all the Android problems. I didn't enjoy fiddling anymore I had no longer an interest in rooting it. and I was pissed off about 6000 different Android implementations and how older phones lost Android updates quickly leaving plausible security vulnerabilities.
(I suppose Google phones get all the updates for a long time). and usually, one vendor would make their own "enhancements" to the OS anyways.
I became the enemy and embraced the walled garden, the shitty game of move your new app icon around and around to try to fit it where you want it, more expensive hardware/cables etc. In my opinion there is less shit in the app store as well.
As long as the sideloading and whatever else does not impact my phone as long as I dont do it myself I am fine with it. It it leads to more vulnerabilities and other problems for everyone I dont like it.
It is not the 100% great mobile phone. (hello my classic BB), and at times inconvenient but I prefer a nice walled garden and limits on what I can do.
I also prefer all my family and friends to be on the iPhone, if and only if I know I will be providing endless technical support
"uh you need to fix my cellphone!" > ok.,. what phone do you have? Well its a model XXX from YYY company about 4 years old. > Do you know what version of Android its running? ¹ Sure its the VVV version customized for YYY but it has not been updated for over year. > Buy an iPhone.
another day
"uh you need to fix my cellphone!" > ok.,. what phone do you have? " uh it is an iPhone 10" > great. > what is the problem?
¹ In real life there is no way the people I provide with unwilling endless technical support would have even a small inkling of what OS it is running. but it fit the made-up dialog.
How do I contact Lufthansa customer service USA? @(Lufthansa Phone Number USA) https://feedback.azure.com/d365community/idea/9f174428-f6b4-...
Probably an unpopular opinion, but as an Apple user it is okay for me to pay 30% extra (which I often do instead of using Android and getting certain apps for free), so I avoid having to sideload Epic/Facebook/whatnot stuff from their own mandatory app store + having the hassle of figuring out if there's a subscription model and how difficult it is to terminate, how to handle refunds, what darkpattern analytics are included in the appstore binary etc. etc.
If you need certain amount of money per user for the product to be profitable, raise the price to account for Apple's cut. But please do not force me to install app stores from companies which have their lifeblood in data brokering my life. At least I have an understanding with Apple that if they go haywire with that stuff (like it was close with the whole CSAM scanning debacle which damaged my trust in Apple and I started considering alternatives) they will lose my hardware purchases as well.
"...the StoreKit External Purchase Link Entitlement (US) to include a link to the developer’s website that informs users of other ways to purchase digital goods or services."
https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
I'm guessing Apple were required to provide developers with Alternative Payment options and not 'a link to a webpage that informs users'...
Yes, there's a very real sense in which the world is better for having had Apple than not. They have made technological life more beautiful.
For that reason, people seem strangely committed to defending them through their rent-seeking period.
Apple cannot be both a good company and a monopoly.
As their users, we should not accept the false framing and false choice their management presents of either monopolistic control of the mobile ecosystem or endless spam and a Wild West free-for-all.
I do not understand why people's hearts are still drawn to Apple as the company of Steve Jobs, when it is clearly something very, very different today.
It’s clear that countries are going to need to legislate this. Existing anti-trust laws are insufficient.
Links cannot be placed directly on an in-app purchase screen or in the in-app purchase flow.
This and the other rules amount to effective evasion of the ruling. If the link isn’t allowed under almost all circumstances, it’s hard to see how Apple is complying in good faith.
Unfortunately we only have to pick between iOS and Android devices. Android devices are generally less expensive and maybe you have more freedom in some particular situations. Apple devices have better CPUs.
What I would like to see instead is more competition in the OS market and the hardware to be like PCs: you buy whatever device you like and install whatever software you want from wherever you want.
So as a customer, if you give Apple lots of money for a phone, you also give them the right to milk you more through app store and commissions. Developers aren't bringing money from home to pay Apple, they are paying Apple from what end users pay.
I hope Apple will be forced to allow third party app stores and sideloading apps.
This thread has a lot of weird turns I'd not expect.
"All they do is steal 30% from society" - objectively it's for providing a service, an infrastructure, a very solid user market, a very solid developer experience (you have to build for a limited number of iOS versions, you don't have to test on a gazillion devices with different flavors of Android), a slightly higher income userbase, and a few others.
Seeing the whole thing simply as "theft" boggles my mind, especially coming from people working in or around this industry.
I'm kinda confused so I asked bing
The difference between self employed and employed is that123:
Self-employed workers work for themselves as sole proprietors or independent contractors, while employees work for an organization under a contract of service.
Self-employed workers have more control over their work, but also more risks and responsibilities, while employees have more stability and benefits, but also more restrictions and obligations.
Self-employed workers pay their own taxes and expenses, while employees have their taxes withheld and their benefits provided by their employer.
Apple also withholds VAT for the "employee".
Don't get me wrong, legally they are not employees. The interesting thing is how much it is like employment. You work for a single company, you have to do as told, they can fire you at any moment. When that happens you wont be able to sell to your customers because they are not your customers.
"Entitlement"
Interesting terminology.
And you wonder about the corrosive influence of billionaires giving lavish vacations to SCOTUS judges and senators who accept gold bars from foreign governments affects legal rulings or legislation presented spoon-fed by lobbyists. Of course the Apple mafia will still get a cut of something they don't deserve because the law and the legislature are on their side.
I also think apple's 30% cut is excessive, but I don't think this line of argument helps. We should discuss the points on their merits, not based on who's making them and how much money they have.
Here's a little story / timeline from 2009-2010 (from my perspective as a dev on Kindle for iOS):
* we submit the Kindle app ...including an in-app bookstore... to Apple for initial app review
(Note: multiple ebook readers with in-app bookstores are already on the app store at this point)
* several weeks pass with no response
* Apple announces in-app purchasing (to be released several months later)
* Apple rejects our app: we have to give them a 30% cut of all sales through the app, or remove the store and all references / external links to it. We chose option 2.
* Apple forces the other ereader apps to remove their stores or go with IAP. Several (most?) just gave up and pulled their apps entirely
* Apple negotiates agreements with most of the major book publishers that if they want to sell books on iBooks, ebooks must be listed at the same price on ALL stores, and have a 30% margin
* Apple launches in-app purchasing and the iBooks store (with the iPad announcement, IIRC)
...aka even if we (or any other ereader app) wanted to sell books via our app, the terms Apple set forth effectively meant that ALL profit from those sales must go to them (and we would have to eat the bandwidth / service costs on top of that)
Another random app store anecdote: way back when (2010?) Adobe made a feature where you could publish flash content as an iOS app. Like you build a flash game, hit publish, and an .ipa file comes out. So the feature goes into open beta, and a bunch of flash devs make iPhone apps, they work fine, they get accepted into the app store, users are using them, everybody's happy.
Then a few days before the feature was scheduled to leave beta and be formally supported, Apple changed the app store terms to disallow it, by requiring that apps be "originally written" in certain languages like objective-C or C++. Nothing to do with what the app did or how it worked, and no definition for what "originally written" specifically meant. And there were lots of other technologies for building apps by then, so of course they all freaked (though AFAIK Apple never actually enforced the new terms for anything besides flash).
Anyway shortly afterward Adobe reverted the app-publishing feature, and then a few months later Apple quietly reverted the terms to what they were before.
Apple is very much a subscriber to the Darth Vader School of Business: "I'm altering the deal; pray that I don't alter it any further."
You would think that as the web platform is starting to pick up things like WASM and many new capabilities that there are an extremely large set of apps all of a sudden where you would be insane to think about
- writing it in a different language that only really runs on one operating system
- pay $99/yr for the privilege
- at any point and for any reason you can be cut off from reaching your audience
- you have to pay them 30% of your revenue (not profit) for any money your application makes
- you can’t make updates in a timely manner
- you have close to zero avenues of recourse if you disagree with any of this
- the deal can change at any time and you don’t get a say in it.
Why the fuck would anyone choose that option in 2024 if they didn’t have to? It’s no wonder Apple went out of their way to try and cripple the web for over a decade now, it was only legal action from the EU that forced them to staff Safari properly about two years ago.
And even now, they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.
That’s a hostage taking business. Get out of that ecosystem if you can
That isn’t true. It takes two taps. You tap the share button, then you tap Add to Home Screen. That’s it. That’s not “hidden deep in a series of unrelated menus”. It’s a top-level option.
And don’t complain about the “share” button – that’s just a bad name for what iOS users understand as the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. It makes total sense if you are an iOS user, don’t be misled by what people call it. People tap it when they want to “do something” with what they are looking at. It’s exactly the button you’d tap if you wanted to add a PWA to your home screen.
Go and find a random person on the street and ask them to install a website on an iOS device and watch what happens.
It is absolutely set up in such a way that normal people not only can not do it but don’t even know it’s possible.
I should be able to trigger an install prompt as a developer at a minimum.
Would you say that Apple are deliberately hiding how to bookmark a website and that people are unable to do that? Because you do that the same way too.
How about printing? Does Apple have a secret motive to stop people from printing? Because you do that the same way too.
The share button is the “Send/Put/Open this somewhere else” button. That’s just how iOS works. It’s not a devious plan. It’s a standard platform convention.
This is not currently part of any web standard. It was implemented unilaterally by Chromium and hasn’t been accepted by any other rendering engine yet. It’s explicitly not on a web standards track:
https://wicg.github.io/manifest-incubations/
I don’t understand why you’re acting purposely obtuse here.
They have a multi billion dollar incentive here along with a long history of actions all clearly focused on protecting that revenue stream at the expense of the web platform.
I’m making an argument that like any other application delivery platform I should have a clear and standard way for my users to install my software.
The reason we don’t currently have that is largely tied up in Apple yet again with the exact same incentive structure as every other time they pulled shit like this.
Do you want to try that reply again in a less insulting way? Perhaps consider the possibility that people can have a legitimate difference of opinion with you without it being a stupid act?
Im not trying to be insulting but this also isn’t a legitimate difference of opinion scenario.
You tried to do a weird gotcha by claiming that the ability to install a web app is no different to print a webpage and implied that I was seeing conspiracies where there were none to be found.
I’m saying that the thing I’m talking about has a very clear difference when it comes to incentive structures and I know you’re aware of it because we are in the middle of a discussion about it.
So I don’t know what other conclusion to draw here other than you’re pretending to not understand the difference.
You are claiming that it’s literally impossible to honestly disagree with you; that the only possibility is that I’m deliberately acting the fool? Do you really believe that?
I feel like you’re getting more worked up here than the situation requires.
If you took offence at the original comment where I said you appeared to be playing games by ignoring something I’m sorry.
I am however asking that you present some kind of rebuttal rather than trying to make this a thing about polite discourse on the internet.
I made specific points, you came in talking about unrelated points, I pointed out that your reasoning had a major hole in it and now we are in a conversation nobody wants to be a part of.
Let’s just say we both understand why an install prompt and printing a web page aren’t the same thing because I think we covered that ground already.
To get it back on track, I’m saying that they don’t belong together and that when you listed all that other random set of actions people could do that appear in the same screen that this illustrates the point I’ve been trying to make from the start.
If the argument is “oh that’s just iOS, it’s totally innocent and how could you ever seen anything nefarious there” then make that argument but as discussed, it has major holes.
I’m not getting worked up, I’m refusing to accept direct insults. It’s possible to do that without getting worked up. This place is supposed to be better than this and you’re falling short. If people don’t push back on behaviour like yours this place will be dragged down into the muck. Insults should not be tolerated here.
And telling people they are getting worked up when they complain about you insulting them, in itself, additionally insulting and inflammatory. Don’t do that.
You didn’t accuse me of playing games, you accused me of “acting purposely obtuse”. You’re saying that I’m pretending to be a moron because my argument is far too stupid for anybody to really believe. You don’t get to put me in the catch-22 of either taking your insults without complaint or getting accused of being worked up. It’s entirely reasonable to reject your replies calmly until you stop being insulting.
I already did that. You called it a “weird gotcha” and ignored it. I suspect you missed the point because you were so sure I was pretending to be an idiot. You are free to go back and read it again. If you still don’t understand it a second time, ask for clarification instead of throwing insults around.
Just to be clear… your argument is or isn’t “That’s just iOS and there’s clearly nothing nefarious about it”?
That’s my good faith understanding of the point you’re making at the moment so I will try one final time…
Do you care to address the incredibly specific point I’ve made repeatedly that that line of reasoning has a huge hole in it which you seem to be ignoring no matter how often I ask you to acknowledge it.
I wasn’t ignoring it. I was refusing to respond to replies with insults. I have been very clear about that.
No.
Your argument is:
Let’s deconstruct that to three assertions:
- It’s deep in a series of menus
- It’s in an unrelated menu
- It’s being purposefully hidden by Apple.
I have pointed out several things:
- It’s a top-level item in a very commonly used menu.
- It belongs in that menu.
- Other items in that menu are also there for the same purpose.
- Apple has no incentive to hide those other items.
So right away, we can get rid of the first assertion. It’s not deep in a series of menus. That’s just plainly false, as anybody who has an iPhone near them can verify. It’s a top-level item in a primary menu. It’s a single tap away.
Next we move on to whether it belongs there or not. As I repeatedly point out, the “share” button actually exposes a whole lot more than just sharing. I’m not even certain “share button” is its official name, I think it might be called “action button” or something. You can consider it the “put this somewhere else button” because that’s what it actually means, even if the name doesn’t roll off the tongue. That’s the platform convention. That’s how iOS users perceive it.
Want to send it to somebody? Tap the button. Want to open it in a different app? Tap the button. Want to save it somewhere? Tap the button. That’s what the button is for. You are looking at something and you want to put it somewhere.
What else is in that menu? You can save a document to files. You can print it. You can bookmark it. You get a list of other apps you can open it with. You can add it to a note. You can copy it to the pasteboard. These all fit the same theme. You are looking at something and you want to put it somewhere.
Does “I want to put this PWA on my Home Screen” fit there? It absolutely does. That’s exactly where I’d locate the feature. You are looking at a PWA, and you want to put it somewhere. So tap the put it somewhere button.
So no, it’s not in an unrelated menu. So the second assertion goes.
Finally, is Apple purposefully hiding it there? Well, showing that it belongs there should be enough to disprove that, but there’s also more. What else is in that menu? Let’s skip over sharing to eliminate quibbling over “but those belong there”.
Saving a file isn’t sharing. Printing isn’t sharing. Bookmarking isn’t sharing. Opening in another app isn’t sharing. Adding it to a note isn’t sharing. Copying it to the pasteboard isn’t sharing.
Are all of those purposefully being hidden by Apple where users won’t look for them? How does hiding “Add to bookmarks” have a “multi billion dollar incentive” behind it? How does hiding “Copy to pasteboard” “protect Apple’s revenue stream”? Why would Apple even implement these features in the first place only to hide them?
They aren’t being purposefully hidden. They are all there because they all do the same sort of thing – the same thing that Add to Home Screen does. They take what the user is looking at and put it somewhere.
And users use this menu all the time. It’s not some obscure part of Safari you’ve got to dig to find. The average user has probably scrolled past Add to Home Screen thousands and thousands of times.
If Apple were trying to hide this functionality, this is the very last place they’d put it. They’ve put it somewhere that a) is accessible with a single tap, b) makes sense conceptually, and c) will be seen by users all the time. So the final assertion is no good either.
And like cpuguy83 pointed out elsewhere in the thread - this has been how you add a site to your home screen since day one, when Steve Jobs was telling everybody that web apps were the only way to build apps for the iPhone. At that point PWAs didn’t even exist. And that’s the spot they chose for it back then – before native apps were even allowed by Apple, when Apple wanted everybody to build web apps and add them to their home screens. It completely contradicts the idea that this is a hiding place where they don’t want people to see it. That’s where they chose to put it when it’s incontrovertible fact that they wanted people to use it.
I think they gave you a clear answer to the difference:
The Web Standards Committee has decided the correct way for the web to work is that there is an expectation that a user understands how to bookmark something and can elect to do so if they choose. They don't make a part of any web standard a developer being able to ask a user to add a bookmark. So not just Apple, but on the standard web, developers don't have the install rights you are saying they should have. It's hard to argue it's a conspiracy by Apple when a standards body outside Apple has defined how it works.
Maybe enough users don't know how to bookmark on iOS. Could Apple do more to make sure they know how? Yes. But I don't think we should change the web to allow websites to ask to create bookmarks because Google Chrome thinks its a good idea.
Based on your comment I think there might be some misunderstandings here.
That committee you are talking about isn’t actually independent of Apple. They are a part of it.
Historically Apple have repeatedly used those exact committee bodies as a way to shut down a whole range of things that would bring the web platform closer to iOS in terms of capabilities.
The point about the bookmarking is also a bit hard to follow. I don’t know if this is getting a bit abstract or something so I’ll just restate my main argument.
Apple have repeatedly tried to make sure the web wasn’t able to compete with iOS and actively worked to get as much lock in on their platforms as possible. They have a terrible track record in terms of interoperability and as I stated numerous times in this thread they have an obvious reason for doing so.
The only point I saw them concede any ground towards a more consumer friendly and away from an overtly anti-competitive approach was specifically when serious talk of antitrust litigation emerged from the EU.
At that point they had a miraculously coincidental change of heart and began a hiring spree for Safari so they could try and close some of the more nefarious gaps with interoperability so they could point to it as evidence that they shouldn’t be fined billons of dollars and have new restrictions placed on them.
I am claiming that that looks like the text book definition of a conspiracy and you need to understand the arguments about installability in that wider context and the point you’re making about bookmarks is in no way relevant to what I’m talking about.
That’s not what’s happening, neither for this specific case nor in general.
There are three major rendering engines: Blink by Google, WebKit by Apple, and Gecko by Mozilla.
It’s an ongoing theme that Google will write a spec. and implement it in Blink, then Apple and Mozilla will either reject it outright or not express interest, and then people come along and accuse Apple of “holding back the web”. This has happened with Web Bluetooth, with Web USB, and more.
In this particular case, the ability to trigger installation prompts from a PWA was originally part of the manifest spec. But it got removed because nobody was keen on implementing it as-is except for Google. That’s how it ended up in the non-standard manifest-incubations instead.
Now there’s a chance that further work will be done on it in manifest-incubations to the point where Mozilla and Apple think it’s worth implementing. If consensus is reached it could become a web standard in future. But just because Google implemented something by themselves does not mean that “Apple are holding back the web”. Google are not the sole arbiter of what constitutes the web platform and Apple and Mozilla aren’t obligated to implement whatever Google wants. This is a case of Google promoting something by themselves, not Apple holding something back. Mozilla and Apple are in agreement; Google are the ones acting unilaterally.
There is no single organisation that has done more to push the mobile web forward than Apple.
Go and ask a random person to install a website on any OS, and watch what happens
You do understand that the main thrust of my argument here is that it doesn’t have to be like that correct?
I should be able to prompt the user to install and it would just work.
I'm not receptive to allowing websites to prompt me for any reason whatever after observing everyone's behavior for the last two decades.
That’s very interesting but we aren’t designing the web around your personal set of preferences so I don’t know if it’s particularly relevant to the conversation.
I’m sure when it arrives like other APIs that require certain permissions you will be able to disable it and live in peace.
Indeed. The (collective) you are designing the web around maximum profit to stakeholders. People's interests and preferences don't come in to it.
Respectfully what are you even talking about…
How did we get from “I think app install prompts should be a thing so the web is on a level playing field with operating systems” to me somehow being responsible for the ills of capitalism?
I literally said you should have an option to opt out and your response was an impassioned speech about “the will of the people”.
It's not just my preference. People would want a nice and easy button to install a webapp to their homescreen. People would not want alert boxes from every website they visit. The latter will happen along with the former.
I cannot disable these things when Apple has a profit incentive. I haven't been able to make the dumb Game Center thing permanently quit appearing. I guess they don't have a profit incentive, here, huh? So the result is that people who understand how to turn it off, will turn it off. Most everyone else will be trained to hit no instantly. A few people will have hundreds of webapps on their home screens like the browser bars of yore.
For the record; I completely agree that side loading should be possible with minimal barrier and it would be nice if web apps were more discoverable and integrated. But preventing websites from nagging people with a system-level iOS prompt is a feature.
No, I don't
No, you shouldn't. Not until you prove that you can actually make proper prompts and not turn the web into what it is today: a collection of in your face modals, calls to action, popups etc.
I don’t even understand the “no I don’t understand the thing that you just said” response here.
I’m not sure where to go here if I’m supposed to be responsible for your sense of reading comprehension.
iOS has "app clips" which websites can (and absolutely do) prompt you to use.
As for how to save a webpage to your Home Screen, that literally hasn't changed except maybe to have it together with other on-device interactions. It has been there since before there was even an App Store. It's not hidden in any way and never has been. It was demoed on stage by Steve Jobs.
The App Store is a scam, for sure. But Apple has not been crippling the web... at least not in the way you claim here (only one browser on the platform is sucky, but that's a different discussion).
> But Apple has not been crippling the web
Well, they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago.
IIRC, there are also some limitations in what web apps launched from the home screen can actually do, which are not in regular Safari - but I've not looked at this in a long time so I could be wrong.
What I do remember very clearly is that the common consensus, as reflected in data from app developers, is that people just don't know (or don't want to use) the "pin to home screen" feature. One could argue that Apple should, maybe, sprinkle on that feature a bit of the effort they lavishly pour on emojis, so that more people could be enticed to use PWAs. That would go some way towards reassuring developers that they are not slaves to the AppStore.
It’s entirely different. After Microsoft killed the competition and gained >90% market share, they disbanded the Internet Explorer developer team for five entire years.
Apple releases a new major version of Safari every year like clockwork and pushes people hard to update.
What data? The internal data I’ve seen across ~500 community apps is that when given a choice, two thirds of people use the iOS app, a quarter of people use the Android app, and about 10% use the PWA. And that’s across all users, including desktop.
“Don’t know” and “don’t want to use” are two entirely different things.
If people preferred PWAs and it was just down to Apple holding them back, there wouldn’t be any such thing as an Android app; people would just use PWAs on that platform instead. People don’t install PWAs because they don’t want to.
> Apple releases a new major version of Safari every year like clockwork and pushes people hard to update.
That's largely a byproduct of their attempt to keep support costs low by forcing yearly upgrades of the entire OS. Other browser makers release 10 times more often (literally!). When you're 10 times slower than everyone else (while being 10 times wealthier...), I think it's legitimate to say you're dragging your feet. The fact that they're not as atrociously bad as Microsoft was at its worst, doesn't mean they are not bad.
> “Don’t know” and “don’t want to use” are two entirely different things.
Come on now - discoverability and education are things. If Apple wanted to, they would make that feature so easy and promote it so heavily, that everyone would do it or at least know how to do it.
> If people preferred PWAs and it was just down to Apple holding them back
Don't strawman me, I never said that. I said that Apple is not making any effort to change a status quo where consumers are not keen on the feature, which tallies with your experience. There is nothing stopping them from aiming their reality distortion field at the feature, as a service to developers.
They aren’t ten times slower than everybody else. You can’t measure progress by counting releases.
They aren’t though. Take a look at the Interop 2023 dashboard:
https://wpt.fyi/interop-2023?stable
Or just read through the WebKit blog:
https://webkit.org/blog/
They are getting loads done.
Your exact words were: “they definitely drag their feet on keeping Safari up to date, not unlike what Microsoft did with Internet Explorer 20 years ago” and my point is that it’s very unlike that.
They picked up the slack only after they were shamed multiple times, including by websites like https://issafarithenewie.com/ (which now reflects their progress, very honestly). A brief look at items from the last several years will return lots of pretty bad press.
> They aren’t ten times slower than everybody else.
Just to mention one, WebRTC took 7 years to go from the first Firefox implementation to Safari. Chrome had it less than 2 years after FF, so I guess not 10x but 3x-4x - still a very significant lag, which is definitely not explainable by lack of resources.
You’re replying to me here suggesting that they don’t cripple the web by providing an example of another proprietary thing that they control and has zero interoperability with any other devices.
I don’t know what to do with that argument other than to use that exact same set of facts to support my own point.
Also, that’s a nice historical fact that Steve Jobs once did a demo on stage years ago but my point was that nobody knows how to do it in real life or that it’s possible.
I’m explicitly making the argument that this isn’t a coincidence but is very much on purpose.
So you are saying they are crippling the web because they don't allow websites to add themselves to your home screen through a button on the page. OK. I'll cede this is to drive people to the App Store where they can get their cut.
I just want to be clear here that when I made that claim it was in no way just because of that but was a decade of actions (or largely inaction) where they made sure that the web platform would be missing lots of functionality that app developers would require to consider the web as a viable option for their software business.
Honestly, the average person probably couldn’t find an app in app store without direction.
This was the topic of Steve Jobs' infamous "Thoughts on Flash" memo, which was essentially a blueorint for the coming iOS App Store walled garden strategy.
We tried this at work at the time. They absolutely did not work fine. The best I can say about them is that they ran, mostly.
This may be the funniest and saddest thing I've read all year.
So $MEGACORP abuses their absolute monopolistic position in the market to underhandedly negotiate with book publishers and force their hand into working the way $MEGACORP wants: in order to gain access to $MEGACORPs completely dominated (but technically not a monopoly*) audience who wishes to buy books in a convenient way online, book publishers must bow down to $MEGACORP and pay the tax. Meanwhile, everyone else who sells books through alternative avenues is decimated because the audience only wants to buy books through $MEGACORP.
And you can replace $MEGACORP with both 'Apple' and 'Amazon', and it is 100% factually accurate. Beautiful. It's fucking turtles eating turtles all the way down.
It's not really comparable because Amazon never did anything to try to stop anyone from buying books through any other channel. The platform they do own, AWS, unlike the iphone, is perfectly open to competitors to Amazon's retail business.
Unless you count selling books at a loss to hurt their competition.
It's a less direct form of market manipulation and one that doesn't usually meet the US's legal standards for antitrust, but it's a strategy Amazon loves to use.
A quick google search doesn't turn up many good sources on that allegation. The best I could find says that they do make a small profit but at a much lower margin than bookstores, which makes sense given Amazon's business model. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/07/13...
That article lists one example which "likely still turns a small profit", and contains allegations from other groups that Amazon is selling some books below cost.
That small margin above wholesale in the article's example is probably still effectively selling at a loss when you account for overhead of running the store, shipping, etc. It certainly would be for a smaller competitor.
Either of those represents a price that a competitor whose only business is selling books cannot compete with. Amazon can offer these prices as a loss leader because of their position in other markets, not because it has found a more optimal way to run the business of selling books.
News articles are for clicks. If they could find an example of selling at a loss, they would have used that because it would get more clicks. The fact that they couldn't find one tells me that the allegations are likely to be false. The fact that googling "Amazon selling books at a loss" didn't turn up massive amounts of articles from anti-tech media companies also tells me that. The fact that selling books at a loss to drive out competition (which is, in fact, illegal) is not even mentioned in the anti-trust complaint against Amazon tells me that the allegations are false.
It's mentioned in the lawsuit which described how Apple orchestrated the publishing industry to raise its prices for Apple to have room to mandate a 30% share [1]
Amazon was selling eBooks at $9.99, for Apple it was an issue because they couldn't ask a 30% share from publishers AND compete at $9.99 because Amazon achieved that price due to wholesale volume-deals, and likely not with a 30%+ margin.
Publishers wanted Amazon to increase sales-prices from $9.99, but due to their wholesale model they couldn't dictate that. Even when they increased wholesale prices, Amazon kept their sales-price of many NYT bestsellers at $9.99 making a loss (probably to drive eReader growth).
Quote: "Amazon continued to sell books at $9.99, losing money, even when publishers increased the wholesale price of books they were giving the online giant."
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-and-apple-fix...
Neither does Apple. Amazon prevents all of their sellers from selling their goods at any sort of discount anywhere else (including through direct-to-consumer channels).
It's not apples-to-apples comparison. Here's a better one ... Amazon will gather competitive metrics from sellers on their marketplace (i.e. their 'partners' and 'costumers') and then launch a competing product, undercut them on price, rig their search (to prioritize their product) and ultimately drive them out of business.
Apple is bad, but their terribleness is limited to the Mac-iOS ecosystem ... Amazon is way worse.
Nobody in the digital-marketplace business is a Good Guy. Unfortunately, sometimes we need two sets of scumbags to fight it out to find some decent compromise for society as a whole. See also: Miranda rights, VHS vs Betamax, etc.
This must be f*cking really hard with our culture. I for once can say that I have been reading less because Amazon's recommendation algorithm keeps throwing at me books with trendy covers that make me cringe. And same with the blurbs. Sometimes, if I manage to go over my cringe reaction to those two things, the book under it is actually good. Therefore, I get a feeling authors and publishers feel they need to imitate the crowd and make the book look childish from the outside, in order to mollify The Algorithm.
Have you tried storygraph?
Piracy: it's the only sure way out!
Indeed - the irony was not lost on me of someone from Amazon complaining about Apple's anti-competitive behaviour. The difference is that what Amazon does is not limited to the book publishing space and a particular device. Amazon forces ALL of their sellers to normalize prices for all customers an all platforms.
‘Funniest thing in a fortnight’ sounds less impressive.
You’re comment is actually funny, the OPs just makes one sad and frustrated.
And the losers at the end of the day, are the consumers. Amazon & Apple are still making money hand over fist.
The missing part is that Apple's maneuver was to effectively destroy the wholesale model in favor of an agency-model, and orchestrate all major publishers to charge more for ebooks just so they can earn their 30% commission from it.
Apple actively engaged as facilitator to help publishers raise prices on the whole market, for a 30% cut.
The result was that books previously available for $9.99 were suddenly sold for $12.99
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-steve-jobs-and-apple-fix...
I just looked and the last Song of Ice and Fire audiobook is 41€ in Apple Books. That is hilariously insane. I could perhaps pay that for all of them but for 1 — the others are basically the same price. That's 200€ for the set.
There are weirdly other audiobook versions that cost only 29€ so I wonder what's the story here.
What do you think it would cost?
It's a professional reading/acting out a full book in a professional studio, with at least an editor, a production team, a corrector. And the market for audiobooks is still very minuscule.
Is this really surprising? Production costs for a single audiobook are _significantly_ less than something like a movie, but the audiobook is more than double the cost of seeing a movie?!? I straight up refuse to buy audiobooks based on the price alone. Ebook prices are bad enough, but audiobook prices are ludicrous.
Movies amortize their cost over a much, much larger audience than books do. A book that sells a 100,000 copies is a fairly successful book. A movie that sold 100,000 tickets is a complete flop.
Then add on top that Audiobook sales-volume in total is still smaller than book-sales, that Audible controls the majority of the US Audiobook sales, while the majority of consumption is actually their monthly subscription tier (which probably doesn't pay much at all). Then Audible takes a revenue-share of 30~50% depending on content, publisher and author also want to earn money,...
Then the audiobook of "A song of fire and ice" is apparently 33 hours and 46 minutes, which is more than 3 times the average length [1], so just the narration production-cost is 3 times higher than the average audiobook.
So overall there's not so much left to make a profit, leave alone break-even.
[1] https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-statistics/
If a band of professional musicians can put out an album with original music and multi-track mixing for $10, a pre-written book with a single voice performer and minimal production crew shouldn't cost multiples of that.
I can watch the whole (insanely expensive to produce) TV series for $16/month.
Audiobooks are just expensive in general. A song of Ice and Fire is $39 in Audible on android (well it's on sale now for $27). Sadly $20-40 is a fairly normal price for a audiobook.
And many other folks will keep wondering what the story is for 41€!
My bad puns aside, thank god for libraries. Otherwise these stories would be truly lost to the rich.
To highlight the untold level of harm Apple caused, I now realise this event stopped me reading for years.
I loved ebooks and my reading went way up. They were cheaper than paperbacks and cheap enough that I was making curiosity and impulse purchases. The problem with digital sales is that unlike a bookshop, I could not browse and take a book from the shelf and start reading and get hooked.
Once ebooks suddenly jumped in price and absurdly became more expensive than paperbacks, I was done, and didn't buy a book for years. You might try and argue this was irrational, but when I feel I am being scammed, my wallet stays in my pocket. I will indeed cut off my nose to spite an asshole.
Jobs was deeply cynical about ebooks, claiming early on that Kindle would fail because “people don’t read anymore”[0].
There’s some level of irony in the fact that the most successful product from the guy who wanted to build a “bicycle of the mind”[1] ended up being something more like the floating chairs in Wall E.
0 - https://www.wired.com/2008/01/steve-jobs-peop/
1 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8
Agreed, I only picked up reading again after finding Libby.
(A short story about how cheating the user with exorbitant prices results in the exit of your audience.)
I did my first iOS development about a couple of years ago. Question, how in the world do you tolerate the storyboard XML files? One small change in XCode results in so many line changes. PRs are impossible to review with any confidence.
That's a big argument for SwiftUI, which replaces storyboards.
But if you must use them, keep each storyboard small enough it's only going to be used by one dev at a time to avoid conflicts, and then combine trusting the GUI won't make stupid XML plus some automated UI tests to make sure functionality isn't damaged by e.g. a button being deleted.
SwiftUI does not replace storyboards. It replaces UIKit(/AppKit).
You can build UIs without storyboards/Interface Builder in UIKit just fine. And writing your UI in code indeed easily solves the whole versioning conflicts issue that storyboards have.
So no, not a big argument for SwiftUI, but instead for writing UIs in code.
SwiftUI vs. UIKit and IB vs. code are two entirely separate discussions.
But yes, I totally agree, if you must use storyboards, keep them as small as possible.
Unless I've missed something, by doing the latter it automatically also does the former?
Eh, perhaps the examples I've worked with of that were especially egregious (it's certainly possible given some of the other things very very wrong with that code), but my experience of such a codebase was very much not fine.
I have worked with lots of codebases using UIKit constraints in code. These were non-trivial apps (200k lines of code). You can create wrappers of your own to simplify things or use libraries like Snapkit. It works and there's no need to use Storyboards.
The bad codebase I'm thinking of was 120 kloc. But I'll take your word for it being possible to do better than that example, one example is merely an anecdote.
I think they want to make the distinction that SwiftUI is not necessarily to replace Storyboards, although it will replace them.
UIKit works okay in code. But unless you have experienced people actively laying groundwork, it's IMO more likely to be a mess than SwiftUI. Even the explicitly declarative part, Autolayout, will only be understood by like 10% of the team and the rest are kinda winging it. Using Autolayout outside of Storyboards makes it less declarative, so it is then more conducive to programmer error (like non-idempotent updates).
Do everything programmatically. Especially because the XML is not (last I checked) compile-time validated against the symbols it is using.
Answer: Don't use storyboards.
Weird, this sounds super illegal, and anti-competitive, considering Apple has its own competing bookstore that's not subject to these fees.
The US courts thought so, too.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/...
So Amazon won (and consumers lost), where we could have had Apple win (and consumers lose).
There was little to cheer about whatever happened.
That fine of 0.016% of their market cap will really show them!
In retrospect, yes, the consequences of what happened are now very obvious, but at the time, whilst there were a fair number of people sounding the alarm across the blogosphere, most people didn't care because the iPad was a hit, and the Apple reality distortion field was at its peak of effectiveness.
The situation is farcical and feeling sad for Apple or Amazon shouldn’t happen. Consumers lost whatever the outcome.
Completely agreed.
Sorry but I can't find much sympathy for anything Amazon related when comparing with Apple. In my book they're both predatory.
They are not sports teams.
We should be rooting for better outcomes for consumers. Not picking between which megacorp is less bad.
I will argue that pointing out the hypocrisy of a megacorp complaining about the anti-competitive behaviour of another magacorp, when it engages in the same type of behaviour but at a much bigger scale, is a pro-consumer move.
Perhaps the stance to take is that it was bad for consumers in the long-term, because monopolies aren't a good thing.
Well all the same things would apply to any independent ebook store, it would just hurt them massively more than it does Amazon..
This doesn't affect only Amazon, it affects also all smaller online book stores
Don’t forget the kicker, that IAP at the time was unable to support more than a few thousand SKUs! And (iirc) that pricing, naming, etc for everything would’ve needed to be done through their atrocious web app.
Not exactly doable for the ‘everything store’.
Oh, lol, I totally forgot about those technical limitations! We couldn't even have done it if we wanted to.
Also hi :) long time!
Apples behaviour vis a vis the App Store is the textbook definition of monopolistic practices. It’s beyond the pale these stories. The only reason I can think it continues is because there are a lot of AAPL holders in Congress.
That's also what Amazon does, except with everything.
It's terrible what Apple is doing, but is peanuts compared to what Amazon does.
Honestly this is the only thread of comments that really get to the meat and potatoes of why Apple can be evil although while making good product. Their evil must be curbed as they go out of their way with certain actions to completely punish their customers and partners.
KDP from Amazon will always take a 30% or greater cut.
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200644210
That sounds a lot like price fixing and the same thing that Amazon is being grilled on with FBA
Again, if you're against government regulation, then you haven't seen a company regulate a market.
Its not based on how much money they have. Its how they've managed to accumulate the money - by gouging devs.
This is a biased view that disregards basic available metrics. Apple is a hardware company. Developers are instrumental to its devices success and a point can be made that 30% might be too high of a fee. On the other hand many of those developers wouldn’t have a job in the first place if it wasn’t for Apple creating the App Store.
I find it interesting seeing the arguments here on how Apple should keep its large cut for years after it's become sustainable, but when mentioning the idea of giving copyrighted artists any sort of royalty (it'd be far, far, far from 30%) for training LLMs that the argument shifts back to "well they got paid already".
So, how long does Apple get to reap the rewards of their old accomplishments from 18 years ago? how long should such works be benefited from before we shift the dynamics back to being "a public commons"?
Do you account for the fact that it might not be the same people making both arguments? Most websites’ readerships are not monoliths and even on HN there are plenty of people with different perspectives, and who are not necessarily vocal in the same threads.
That’s an interesting argument, but it’s usually not discussed with any nuance. Basically there are several layers:
- are we entitled to Apple opening their platforms? (AFAICT the opposite would be a first though the EU seems to be going that way)
- is Apple entitled to profit from the App Store in principle? (Some people are arguing that they are not, but they are a fringe; Epic lost their argument about that)
- is 30% too much? (But then, where is the line? It’s more or less the standard for closed platforms
Where would you put your “public commons”? Did this ever happen?
What someone is "entitled" to is an opinion. AFAIK, Courts do not adjudicate opinions, they decide if a law was broken in the context of the existing legal framework. These are arbitrary systems we set up to help us flourish as a society. If it is no longer doing that, we should change it.
50,60,80% cut would still be legal, but there is no way Apple can get away with that. What Apple is entitled to is going to be based on peoples feelings and opinions, and the amount of pushback generated. Its good to generate push-back on things you don't agree with.
I don't. It's possible to (dis)prove this with comments but that would be a bit invasive (ironically enough) without doing a lot of work to anonymize the dataset I gather and prove sufficient random sampling. It's possible for admins to (dis)prove this through voting habits, but not for me to bring about such evidence.
All I can say from here is that so far, there's a local sample of one reply to me that seems to indeed think this way.
The "commons" in this case would be the OS. I don't think we've ever historically had another OS as locked down as hard IOS. Game consoles come the closest to this, but are ultimately ephemeral; no gaming OS store has lasted (i.e. been officially supported. I cannot submit a PS3 game today even if I wanted to) as long as IOS, and I don't see IOS closing anytime soon.
On top of that, there is the argument on IOS being a general OS compared to games being specialized; no one de facto seems to desire doing much more than consuming media on consoles (consoles don't even have proper web browsers these days). So that's another factor to consider when determining what is a "major OS" and if/when it should be opened up if closed down.
These seem to be questions that are slowly being asked in formal channels. So I suppose these are all TBD. But if you want my sample of 1 answers:
- At some point I do think a "major OS" should become a commons for those who seek to publish through it. Microsoft was dinged 30 years ago for much less and Apple has way more control and restrictions now than MS ever did.
- Apple is entitled to profit from the App Store, but isn't entitled to be the only store able to distribute apps on its platform. Again, MS was considering this with Windows 8 and 10 and it was an absolute disaster. Another aspect of an "existing commons" trying to close up in a way that MS in theory feels entitled to but in a way that would hurt consumers and developers.
- the 30% is definitely a question to ask and not one I have a particularly strong answer on. I feel this is where the invisible hand should take charge, so it comes down more to "would the audience take a lower cut if they were able to find an alternative (which may or may not include themselves)?". So my concern here is with providing alternative options and seeing if the market shifts rather than throttling existing rates.
There are multiple people on here, who say different things.
Agreed, While there may be people who think they're defending Apple "on principle", I hope those folks also realize that there is no "principle" that is ingrained in nature. We're all just making up rules, laws, taxes, as we go along. Just because a law or article of constitution is old, doesn't make it any more 'natural' than others.
There is no "right" of any student for their debt to be forgiven, but we want to do it anyway. Apple has taken advantage (as have others) of a ridiculously broken tax code, availed of the strong US legal system, property rights, etc. How about we shift the balance back?
Those artists learned the same way generative AI did, by ingesting copyrighted art. I couldn't care less about that unless the AI companies are somehow preventing people from purchasing from those artists or taking a cut out of their sales like Apple does with the app store.
I definitely do not hold that belief, and you are saying that about the only company that values and pays artists decently among the FAAMG
They are a hardware company. By the same token, can you imagine a car company controlling the fuel you put in your car, the tires you buy, the repair shops you use, the radio stations you can listen to?
Or a printer company controlling the ink you put in your printer? Unthinkable! Oh, wait...
Yes, and that's why printers are nearly universally reviled as exploitative. Even people who aren't keyed in on why open source is important all understand the ink costs more than it should.
> can you imagine a car company controlling the fuel you put in your car, the tires you buy, the repair shops you use
Assuming a slightly generous definition of "the fuel you put in your car," you've just described a lease.
Or the purchase of a German car.
That may be, but IMHO its impossible to be completely neutral on this issue. All analysis is somewhat compromised and biased based on subjective weightage to historical facts, etc.
To be fair, roughly half of Apple's money is made from hardware. The app store is extremely lucrative and apparently 70%+ of their revenue from the App store is just leeching off of mobile games, but Apple can definitely survive without the app store if push came to shove.
BUT, I will also mention that part of its market capture comes from all the charges on devs even before the rev share. You need apple equipment to develop, and they (apparently) don't sell server racks anymore for businesses to scale off of, nor any legitimate form of emulation. You have a small cost per year to have a developer account, and a cost to submit your app for review. Then if you care about visibilty they have their own ad discovery program you can pay into.
So I did disagree with a brief judge statement about how "It's possible to skirt around Apple's innnovation for free...". Apple controls and charges for the entire pipeline, even before you launch the app.
They charge you to submit an app? Is this new? When I worked as an iOS developer this was not a thing but that was many years ago.
You pay 99 per year. But this definitely doesn’t cover their cost. The review process is very labor intensive on their side
As someone who has developed a commercial app and spent time on the app store - their review process is a joke... there are non-compliances all over the store and I suspect a lot of their review process is highly automated.
Yeah just because it's labor intensive doesn't mean it's good.
Im sure both App stores have lot of automated tests. But I've submitted a lot of apps and the feedback from Apple is much more specific and from humans.
I agree it's very annoying, often complaining about things that are explained in submission notes.
But if I submit and do around 5-10 updates per year that seems highly unlikely it covers their salary cost.
Most of their review is for their own interests so they should foot the bill.
Their priority is to ensure every dollar gets taxed and to block features they want to monopolise. The idea that it is a service to developers that they should pay for is insulting.
It depends how often you submit. Also they do it mostly in cheap labour countries.
And it doesn't have to conver the cost really. It's not a service to developers like developer support would be. It's more an impediment due to its randomness.
Would you pay a drunk rich person $99/year, so that you can publish a community newsletter to your local town or sell custom decals to your state's car enthusiasts club? Who then randomly decrees your newsletter is not allowed, forgets why, then slurs THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER and bans you yelling "I'm everybody safe, keeping!"
In this case, who exactly are they protecting, the townsfolk or car enthusiasts that you have an independent relationship with?
Would this scenario seem like a good idea to agree to? If no, why is the app store/walled garden model an appropriate use case at all/how is it substantially different?
you are trippin
The review process is only there to give Apple a fig-leaf to remove apps at will without recourse.
However it’s so inconsistent and arbitrary that it hardly ever mattered.
Not really, I put in a feature to record the screen and all they did was launch the app, click a button and then auto approve
No they don’t
Oh no, those devs would have certainly passed the difference on to the consumer.
I agree that Apple should take some cut but 30% is predatory and excessive.
They can get 99% provided they allow the users the freedom to download and install apps from wherever they want.
This
I don't care about the fee for using their services, I care about the fact that I'm forced to use their services
Apple charges 15%. The only developers who pay 30% are the ones earning over a million dollars a year through the App Store. Even then, they get charged 15% if it’s a long-term subscription.
People also need to remember how it was before in the CompUSA or telco provided phones. The retailer or marketplace would take > 30% margins closer to 50% and to get on a pseudo-smart phone before the current smart phone era one had to ask the AT&T's and Verizon's very nicely. But now one can build apps now and publish and just pay the 30% comission or 15% on subscriptions after the second year and look at the explosion in the app marketplace.
We don't need to remember that, good riddance and great that they were disrupted. How do you disrupt this market though?
I honestly think Apple will need to be compelled by law verdict or congress to open up the appstore or allow other appstores and have some sort of cap on fees charged -- I dunno.
The ideal would probably be what Steve envisioned before the AppStore was a thing and that's basically PWAs. But I think it's been alleged that Apple is arbitrarily nerfing Safari to prevent PWAs on iOS running as well as native applications -- though I've no source.
How to effectively "disrupt" the appstore model is a billion dollar question I'm not sure of. What I do know is that the Tim Sweeny's et al of the world are hypocrites in that they just want to create their own rent-seeking AppStores and charge their own commissions and skirt around paying the platform anything for being on the platform. This is akin to wanting to be in a supermarket and put your kiosk inside and sell your product to the supermarket's customers without some sort of financial agreement between you and the supermarket.
It's just imessage. If imessage falls, so will the iPhone.
The courts don't take stuff like "social compliance" into account when evaluating something like the iPhone, so it all looks rosy. In reality, it's incredibly difficult to be a social young person in the US without an iPhone. Which naturally spreads to families becoming "iPhone families".
All of it just comes down to messaging though.
I view such companies as Trolls under the Bridge (i.e. appstores) that connect the app developers and the users.
Why shouldn't who's making a claim and their money be relevant? Monopolies (and near monopolies) are a bad thing for free markets.
I think it's kind of the same argument. if you can justify an excessive marketplace tax for a company that "wins" in a wins a winner take all market dynamic then you get a $Trillion company. not sure how you get one without the other.
If merit was a highly pondering factor of income, coal miners would be extremely rich and no annuitant would exist out there.
No, we can factor in who’s making them and how much money they have.
That's often true, but it's not a hard-and-fast rule, because we also have to look at the capabilities of the two combatants. It's why you would probably/hopefully assist the underdog who was being bullied.
We're talking about the wealthiest company in the world who can obviously afford to run out the clock on the court system and bury an opponent with legal fees. There's a monster difference of offensive capabilities, even if we realize that Epic is a sizeable company; in this case, Epic is really standing in for every other tiny company or one-man shop in the App Store, and we should thank them for doing that.
Here’s a very simple example. Search ChatGPT in the App Store. The top result is an ad that’s not ChatGPT but looks extremely similar. The top 10 results are basically intended to look as much like the ChatGPT in name and logo as possible.
Ostensibly this 30% cut is supposed to prevent things like this from happening, as Apple argues it uses that money to keep the App Store clean from fraudulent or misrepresenting apps, among other things. There is a much touted “review” process that is supposed to be partially funded by the 30% cut.
So if that isn’t really happening, what, pray tell, is that 30% going towards? It isn’t making the App Store a better experience
The merits are centered around the outcomes, which in this case are the consolidation of wealth by a few who don’t need it from the many who do. What other merits are more meaningful than the observable outcomes of the practice?
I have difficulty following this argument, especially the "stealing" part. App Store does not just randomly take money from the devs. App Store also provides a service. They do world-wide payment and VAT processing, refund processing, discovery, distribution, user login management, APIs, distributed cloud storage, etc. It costs money to run these things. As a small-time developer, I think this is a great deal for 15%. At the price levels of most small apps it would cost more to use a payment processor + hiring an accountant, not to mention the extra work involved in setting up and maintaining these things. For behemoth like Epic — sure, the "Apple tax" hurts, they'd rather gouge their customers without Apple's involvement. But frankly, I don't see any reason to punish one multi-billion corporation just so other multi-billion corporation can make more money. I care primarily about the interest of the small-time developers.
And this is the point that should be made more often IMO — App Stores (and Apple bing one of the first ones) have democratized software development by making the barrier of entry extremely low. Anyone with some talent or idea can go and write an app, without any additional financial risk. App Store is based around sharing your success. The relatively few successful devs carry the costs to keep that barrier of entry low to everyone. And I really don't want that to change.
On a serious notes, what are the alternatives? What exactly is your argument? That Apple should be charging nothing? Ok, then they also shouldn't be providing any services. You want to do distribution or payment processing? Take care of it yourself. Epic would love this of course, Joe the indie developer instead is dead in the water. Or are you arguing that Apple is charging too much? Well, there are solutions to that as well. They could charge for services individually for example, but that again hurts the small developer, because trying out things starts costing them money.
Frankly, my idea would be to split the App Store into a separate commercial entity and make it nonprofit. I am sympathetic to the argument that the Store itself is not a product but is used to support and create value for Apple's ecosystem. I do think that the devs should pay for running the store, and I like the current success-based model and it's low barrier of entry for new devs, so basing the fees on actual operating costs seems like a good compromise. Of course, similar considerations should apply to other stores as well.
Again, it’s crazy people defend Apple on this. Apple is not just providing a payment platform, it’s forcing you to use it. As a developer, you should be free to use any payment platform you want in your app, like on the web. Let the user decide. End of story.
The value proposition of iOS is that the app store is the place to go, and that my experience will be seamless. I want a centralised place to manage my subscriptions. Here's an example:
I subscribed to NYT Cooking in the web a few years back. I went to cancel only to find out that I have to phone them. If I subscribed on an app store it would have been one click and done. I'm actually still subscribed to it.
Why is your choice more important than my choice?
Your point is moot because Apple forces you to use its own app store, where using their payment platform is mandatory. If there were alternative app stores, I would have no qualm with this restriction. Let Apple's store compete with others, it will come out on top if it's really the best.
The larger point is this: in a free market, if you have a bad experience with a product (like NYT Cooking in your example), you can bring your business elsewhere. That's how it works, and that's what Apple is interfering with.
Why does the free market arugment apply on apple's ecosystem but not the mobile ecosystem? There are alternative app stores with alternative ecosystems - if you have a bad experience with your iPhone, replace it with an Android and use the open ecosystem there.
Because the entire mobile market is a duopoly and asking someone to switch platforms that they might have invested 15 years of their life into isn't reasonable. Think of all the data, hardware (smart watches, tablets, trackers, speakers, smart home gadgets), app & in-app purchases that one would have to forfeit to switch platforms.
They explicitly carved out their own market by making it a tightly integrated walled garden that's closed to outside integration, it seems hypocritical to now claim that users are free to leave at any time. They're not and that's by design.
How come it's reasonable to force someone who _doesnt_ want the app store to be opened to competition to change?
I don't want the Meta store where Meta decide what level of API access their apps get). I explicitly choose the iOS ecosystem _because_ of this. If you want the alternative, you have a choice right now with Android. If this changes, then I _dont_ get a choice. Your choice removes my only option of a curated app marketplace in favour of a marketplace that will allow for billion dollar companies to set their own rules on how I interact with their apps, rather than me delegating that to one trusted gatekeeper.
Are you asking why we have antitrust laws?
And they shouldn't! Users should have full control over what data their apps can access, how often, with optional spoofing where it makes sense to stop apps from gating functionality behind invasive data collection. This should be an OS-level feature, not (poorly) enforced by the app store.
Apple's superficial review process isn't going to spot malicious abuses of your data unless it's plainly obvious.
How so? You can continue using whichever marketplace you trust. Meanwhile your privacy and security should be technological, OS-level guarantees. You don't need Apple's app store to stop apps from stealing your banking information. You need a secure operating system (which iOS advertises itself to be) which employs sandboxing and that offers fine-grained permissions which users can freely grant, deny, or spoof.
you're putting words in my mouth here.
No. I get to use whichever marketplace the publisher decides to use. Epic aren't going to publish on the App Store (see Fortnite on PC), Meta are going to publish on their own store. 37signals are going to use their own store. I currently can use a marketplace I trust. If iOS opens to allow other stores, then those stores either need to be curated by Apple or the store apps are sideloaded and have wider permissions. I don't want Meta's store with those permissions, I'm fine with using WhatsApp and not giving them my location.
You hit the nail on the head. The market of mobile platforms is in a state of "market failure": no real competition, because mobile platforms are not "homogeneous" (that is, it's hard for a buyer to change platforms). The market of mobile platforms being thus "monopolised", you need regulation to enforce proper competition.
Right, so you'd use the app store by choice, so why should Apple force you to?
The first move that will come out of this will be a Meta store for "all your meta products". You won't have the choice of Instagram on the App store or Instagram on the Meta store, you'll have Instagram on the Meta store.
This won't be a choice for users, this will be a choice for large developers.
So just follow your own supposed ethos and don't use Meta products?
Yeah that's perfectly reasonable. Of course it makes everything easier. It's also practically impossible to compete against which is what gives apple this unfair advantage, making their 30% cut obscene. They're making it due to being first, technical issues aside.
Apple provides the OS and SDKs developers need to make their app function at all.
Users do not care how much it costs a developer. They want it to be easy to see and cancel subscriptions all in one place. The web’s myriad of payment systems is the opposite of a good user experience, meant to only fatten the pockets of developers by making it difficult to cancel.
This is a ludicrous statement. The users are the ones paying for it.
That 15-30% going to Apple isn’t going to go back to app users. Don’t pretend this is all about developers wanting to give users a discount.
It actually is, there are plenty of services where you can pay 30% less if you go through their site instead of Apple's app store.
Do you believe businesses don’t take their margins into account when pricing their products?
I'm all for letting the user decide. But what you are proposing is not letting the user decide.
If Melinda wants to use the Facebook app, but the Facebook app is only available on the Meta store, then Melina is forced to use the Meta store. This is not giving users choice. This is replacing one corp-backed store by multiple corp-backed stores. The user loses.
The only way how this would be a choice is if the same app, with the same basic functionality was available on all stores. Then the user would really have the choice which store to use. Or if there were alternative apps on different stores. Good luck with that given the current monopoly markets.
Melinda should be able to choose to have a business relationship with Meta. The Meta store, aka a trivial hosting/payment service, would be part of that Meta offering. She should not however only be allowed to have an Apple(Meta) relationship where Apple gets to tax and restrict Meta for it's own commercial benefit.
An "App Store", when it is not used as a rent-seeking choke-point, is a nothing-burger, it's a simple website to buy and download an app, yet you are trying to claim some great horror if this website was run by Meta not Apple. Please. It's nonsensical.
Right. So you are saying that Meta has the right to implement their services and platforms in any way they see fit, and the user has the right to choose between using those services under Meta's conditions or not using them at all. But Apple has no similar right to their own services, platforms, or SDKs, and is forced to let Meta harness their platform and user base while expecting no compensation? And this apparently makes sense to you? What you are proposing is the dictatorship of the developer. This completely throws the idea of proprietary platforms and SDKs out of the window.
By the way, I couldn't care less if Meta has their own shop or not, and I don't see any horror in that, they decide how to best run their business, not me. But I take an issue with claims that Meta running their own exclusive show somehow creates more user choice (which is the direction the commenter I was replying to was heading towards)
I can barely parse what you say it's so unhinged.
It's such a bizarre belief that a product sold by Apple remains "their platform" once in the hands of a consumer. The only thing they still "own" is copyright IP. They sold a product. They don't get to legislate user actions. Their power over the device post sale, that they use to extract rent, is entirely artificial.
This is quite funny, because I feel the same about what you are saying. The way I understand you is that a seller of the product should grant any third party extensive access to that product, so that the third party can modify and implement their own services in any way they see fit. Frankly, this is completely shattering the idea of business relations as we know it. By your logic no proprietary store or platform SDK should ever exist (e.g. console SDKs should be free for all developers). What's more, extending this argument software itself should be moldable at will (I bought the app, I have the right for it to be modified in any way I please).
I mean, it's not that I would oppose this ideology in particular, it just sounds a bit radical. We'd have to change quit a lot of things for it to be feasible.
Yes! That's exactly what everyone wants.
No, Joe the indie developer will happily use one of the most popular alternative app stores that fits their needs and doesn't rip them off with fees.
What would these be? Last time I checked, the "champion of the people" Epyc charges 12% and pushes the charges for some payment methods onto the buyer. And it seems like they still haven't turned profitable, even with their bare-bones store model.
Stripe (one of the most popular payment processors) will take 9% from a 5$ purchase just for payment processing. This doesn't include tax processing or any other stuff, all that you have to pay extra. A customer wants a refund? You are eating the cost.
I just don't understand how any of this stuff people are talking about is realistic. I am not aware of a single commercial payment processing solution that will end up under 12-15% for small charges, while offering much less value to both the developer and the user compared to App Store. And I don't understand why people expect that this solution will suddenly magically pop up if Apple allows alternative stores.
The lack of competition and alternative options is the core issue here. Free market competition will figure it out, that's the simple answer.
One developer might be operating on effectively infinite margins and opt to stay in the Apple app store for visibility and most familiar experience.
Another might participate in an alternative app store that charges a review fee, a distribution fee but doesn't charge anything for in-app purchases except baseline payment processing fees.
Yet another might be operating on razor-thin margins and/or doesn't need to participate in an app store for visibility, they might sell their app directly through their website and roll their own payments and distribution.
We might as well treat this as 0 when discussing alternative options since it's an inescapable fact of selling things anywhere (cash and crypto aside)
You know what? I actually agree with this! If alternative stores would really offer competition, then it's indeed something worth investigating. The problem is that I doubt that we will see alternative stores much. We will have a Meta store that sells FB-relevant services, an Epic store that sells Fortnite, an MS store that sells MS Office experience, an Adobe store that sells Adobe subscriptions, etc. Basically big corps making their own bubbles to improve margins.
If all these stores are regulated instead (transparent rules for all, no corp-only stores, strict privacy regulations), sure, I'm all for it! But that's not where the suggestions are going, so far most of the comments are along the lines "Apple should not be allowed to do this, everyone else should be allowed to do everything". Unfortunately, many "fairness initiatives" end up with some other big corp creating a soft monopoly (just look at google who de facto control the web standards just because their engine has 90% of the market share)
Where do you get this number for Stripe ?
Right now, in the EU, the standard fee (before negotiation and volume consideration) is 0.25ct + 1.5% which will work out to about 26.5% cut for a 1-euro payment that is the worst-case scenario currently possible in the App Store as far as I am concerned.
They sell added services but there is no obligation for them and I figure most developers wouldn't care for them. The most expensive it can get is for international payment with currency conversion: 0.25ct + 3.25% + 2%. I don't know exactly how they do the fee calculation, but for a payment of 1, you would get a cut of about 30% max. Apple definitely does NOT provide the same service, since they do not allow international payment in their different localized app stores and they don't do currency conversion (they will let the bank charge you for that, which will get MUCH more expensive).
And the stripe number becomes much better with bigger price because of the fixed transaction fee. If you sell an app for 5$, the minimum you would have to give Apple would be 75 cents (the 15% they will allow under certain conditions) when the maximum you would pay to stripe would be 51 cents, or about 10.25%. Realistically most developers that do not have the scale to operate a fully custom system will address one or 2 big regional markets (with mostly shared language, culture and currency) and they would be just fine with the standard offering of stripe that would bring the cost to around 6.5%. While setting up everything would be a bigger hassle, for most developers that make enough money to live off it, that's a no brainer. Even if we argue that Apple provides more value than the base stripe and push to 10% cost everything included, for a dev making 100K in sales, it's already "free" 5K coming their way.
Many seem to mistakenly think that Apple allows dev to sell their app worldwide with very little hassle. Not only this is not true since many apps are actually region locked for whatever reason and cannot be purchased in a different market (it happens to me all the time, especially with apps from the US or from Germany) but Apple does not realy simplify the process of localisation, marketing, and proper tax declaration in each relevant market. Apples gives you pretty sales statement with everything you need, but any decent system will do that, you still need to do the actual work of compliance if you are big enough or care enough to follow the laws.
There are some argument to be made about the benefits of Apple integrated solution but it is only relevant for cheap software that are impulse buys precisely because they were cheap enough. The higher the price of the software the less relevant Apple solution is. Especially considering the inflexibility and dumb "categories" they push everything into. And if you have to push subscription or in-app purchase nonsense like they currently do, the economics are even better for external solution.
It's actually annoying that the refunds and VAT are handled.
For small international developers, under 500K per year spread out over several states & countries, often they don't have to pay VAT in most international places, so they lose an extra 20-22%. For instance most US states won't require you to pay VAT under 100K revenue if you are from another country.
Same for refunds & subscription management, often clients will ask you, but you have zero control with Apple. Let alone 60 days before being paid, where stripe does it in a few days.
The threshold is 10k€ in the EU. So, way less than 500k
Yeah EU is stricter, but for lot of my clients US is a large market, without they themselves being in the US. If you are EU based then it's cheaper to pay EU tax and not US tax.
This is a great point and I think it illustrates the drawbacks of centralized store. I think an argument can be made that App Store is an important part of the developer experience and as such they are entitled to have a voice in what features it should prioritize.
The thing is, I fully agree that the model has to change and adapt. There has to be more transparency, more accountability, and these stores have to improve in a way that best fits the interests of the developers and the users. I just don't think that third-party stores or unrestricted side loading will do anything like that — in fact, I fear that they will make things considerably worse.
The problem is that we place a responsibility on competition in the market to favor consumers by reducing prices and preventing companies from having excessive margins. Allowing a single marketplace means there's no competition, and we're not sure if 15% is a fair rate at all.
I could make the assertion that I'd be able to provide everything that Apple does, but with a much lower cut, but this can't be put to the test because there's no way for me to start another app store that iPhone users can access. I suspect a lot of the arguments for the 15% cut will change once we have alternate app stores offering the same things Apple does, but with a much lower cut. You'll then see app developers with skin in the game, and we'll know if everyone actually really thinks Apple does this better or if they'd rather have the extra money from other app stores.
Do you really think that there will be more competition? I fear what will happen is that the big corps will set their own stores to distribute their own apps, and that's pretty much it. The user won't see any difference in pricing. The small dev will be hurt because each store will make less money and will likely implement price increases to compensate.
We don't have to speculate - the desktop OS world has exactly this structure - an open ecosystem with a first party app store that ships with the OS, but the ability for other app stores to exist or even for developers to ship their products independently.
In practice you still see a decent amount of activity on the official app store, along with some other major app stores, and a relatively small amount of independent distribution. There's still a good amount of small independent developers shipping apps (both on the stores and independently), and there's not a ton of evidence of price increases - in fact there's a very large amount of free software being distributed.
Desktop marker and smartphone software markets are very different. There are many more small utility apps for the smartphones for example, while desktop is more open. Discoverability in particular is a huge issue for a small desktop app developer. I don't think comparing to desktop is a good example. On the other hand, desktop app market does illustrate the point I am making — big corporations running their own "stores" to the user disadvantage. And don't let me start about horrible installers that companies like Adobe or Microsoft ship which will change your system configuration and litter your filesystem with random crap.
The alternative is Apple allows side loading so that you can buy software independently of the App Store , and sellers can distribute independently of the App Store.
I am ok with side loading. Of course, side loaded apps would need to be sandboxes for security reasons and should not be allowed to access basic services like calendar, contacts or iCloud.
The alternative is “competition”.
In any case, I don’t see how any of this affects you since you’re happy paying Apple the fees. You can keep doing so as others pursue other options once they’re available.
Well written. It can be argued that Apple also develops the OS and UI libraries which the apps run on/with, which is also providing something.
True.
I'm old enough to have developed software before the App Store existed, and remember that everyone was very excited both buy it finally being introduced to iOS, and by the relatively low fees of only 30%.
You're free to argue that 30% is too high, or even that the 15% for small developers is too high, that this is rent-seeking by Apple and only made sense when they were also a small company… but I think this is also true for the businesses trying to convince everyone that it matters, and I think they would like to charge the same sticker price while collecting the difference for themselves.
The problem is not that 30% is too high or too low, the problem is that it shouldn't be a % but a flat fee structure, like every other services ever.
If you have an app tomorrow that sells for $10 to 10k people you owe Apple $30k, now you manage to up your price to $30, same work same size same everything, but suddenly you now owe Apple $90k ? That's called a tax, not a fee.
Doing so wouldn't stop apple from having a separate, "pay 30% all inclusive" fee, and it wouldn't stop them from "if your app is free you have no fee" (beside the xcode sub fee).
Apple didn’t invent a marketplace.
Please have a look how other online and offline marketplaces work and how they monetize access.
You can look at anything from Salesforce, Shopify, to Microsoft, Epic Store, PlayStation and your local Target store.
Hint - it’s not a flat fee structure.
What makes you think I agree any more with any of these ?
But as a user I'm able to buy my pc games, my groceries or my music from another store. Apple prohibits me from doing that.
Yeah but technically nobody is forcing anyone to use Steam. Yet pretty much all the games are published there and the market has decided that the 30% fee is "fair" (AFAIK they can get away charging even more than Apple on average because there is no 15% tier?)
There is competition for Steam and stores like Epic offer at 12% tier. Developers make substantially more money per sale on Epic than Steam.
And the thing is, 30% cut is pointless for Steam. They have more money than they could ever spend. There is no budget at Valve. They just spend whatever they want and do what they want.
They rob hardworking small developers of real money that they need to support themselves all so billionaire Gabe N can enjoy the extreme excess of his valve palace
And Epic admitted that 12% is unsustainable.
The rest of your comment is baffling to me.
I assume you're neither a shareholder or employee of Steam.
But you count their money, you decide for them that their own money is pointless to them, you somehow know how much money they earn, and based on that make assumption it's more than they could ever spend (even though you admit yourself there is no budget at Valve).
And how long is "ever" in "than they could ever spend"? 1 year? 5 years? 20 years? 100 years?
I very much dislike people who count other people's money, I don't know if it's their own jealousy or greediness. But you on top of that also somehow came to the conclusion that their own money is pointless to them, and then accuse them of robbing people.
And this is about marketplace for PC games, a wild west of side-loading and land of free for all.
But somehow Steam is robbing developers.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Epic has not admitted that 12% is unsustainable, and the suggestion that it has is so detached from reality that it colors the rest of your comment as being extremely unreliable.
You should double check your sources because you fell for low-effort low-intelligence fake journalism. What Sweeney said was that 12% was not viable in developing countries due to high finance costs. https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/109102593910919987...
You dislike people who count private profit margins?
I dislike low-information consumers who simp for corporations based on literal fake news.
Be better, shame on you.
It's ironic for you to call me "low-information consumer" and "shame me" when you don't even look further than the first Google result to Tim Sweeney's tweet.
Epic Game Store is unprofitable and losing money. There were financial documents released in Epic vs Apple about Epic Game Store becoming possibly profitable in a few years and accumulating 1 billion loss before the end of this decade.
I like how you honestly believe that saying "% cut is pointless for Steam", "they have more money than they could ever spend", "they just spend whatever they want and do what they want", "they rob ... so billionaire Gabe N can enjoy the extreme excess of his valve palace" is counting profit margins.
To bring you back to reality, you're not counting profit margins, because you have no access to their financials. You're making stuff up and talking emotional nonsense like you have a personal grudge and accuse other people and companies of robbing people.
edit: can't reply to your comment below. wishing you all the best with your future trap laying for incompetent repliers
Steam's 30% is still a huge improvement on the overhead involved in brick and mortar physical sales. But if a developer doesn't want to pay the 30% they can always sell their game from their own website - and some do[1]. Most developers seem to think that the 30% is worth it though.
[1] https://fractalsoftworks.com/preorder/
Edit: Something I neglected to make explicit is that the PC is an open platform. If you don't want to sell through Steam you have tons of other options, including self-publishing. If you want to get your game on a PS5 or an iPhone, you have to go through Sony or Apple and they take a similar cut of your revenue.
While true, I think these examples are sufficient to dispute calling it a "tax".
"Excessive" or "monopolistic", if you like, but not really a tax.
It doesn't matter if you personally agree or not how marketplaces monetize.
It's up to the people who created these marketplaces to charge what they feel is fair and/or financially sustainable for the value they provide.
If it wasn't worth it for the sellers, these marketplaces wouldn't exist today.
But they do, and they thrive.
If you have a secret sauce how to build a sustainable billion people marketplace after spending billions on it without charging sellers access to your customers, please do it and show the world how it should be done.
Yes, because that's their product, their philosophy and the experience they want their customers to have.
And they do that for 15 years already.
You knew that and still bought the iPhone. As have hundreds of millions of others.
And it still is one of the most popular, highest rated consumer devices in the world for over a decade.
So it's not a deal breaker for consumers, is it?
Is a flat fee structure?
Basic: $39/mo
Shopify: $105/mo
Advanced: $399/mo
I mean the sellers side of the marketplace, not buyers.
https://shopify.dev/docs/apps/store/revenue-share
B-b-but-
We can take them all down. We should. Doesn't matter if it's Valve or Steam or Google or whoever. It's only better for consumers and clearly we've let it slide to the point where even us usually cynical HN peeps are apparently willing to defend this predatory and anti-consumer behaviour.
Apple can do what they want. I want them to be able to do what they want because I'm from America dammit and companies in non-critical segments of the economy like video games and phones should be able to do what works for them. Ain't called the land of the free for nothing.
Personally I don't like these practices -- it's all cuz of the walled garden, locked down aspect of it all. But luckily I'm also free to continue avoiding the heck out of Apple devices. They make nice hardware so that sucks that I miss out on that, but I'll take the trade off that I get to install whatever apps I want on this here Android phone of mine.
Flat fee services are starting to seriously attack percentage based services in the marketplace right now. Sirvoy for hotel bookings, Ticket Tailor for event ticketing, not to mention buy-and-sell marketplaces everywhere. I expect percentage based services to be murdered during this economic recession, as businesses do what they can to survive – including cutting completely useless costs.
I hate Apple like the next enlightened guy, but then banks and credit card companies should also charge a flat fee for their services. This isn't the case and probably never will be, however. But their fee is much more reasonable than Apple's fee.
There is a lot wrong with banks. In many cases people try to dip in a % when it should be flat. However, with credit the risk is proportional to the loan.
30% is low compared to what? Mafia extortion rates?
When the App Store was new, the web hosting for my indie shareware games was about 30% of their net revenue after the payment processor and marketplace fees.
The payment processor (cheapest PayPal (U.S. Accounts), most expensive American Express/Optima International[0]) and marketplace (Kagi[0]) fees were on top of that hosting fee, and cost anywhere from (1.9 to 5.0)% + $0.30 (payment provider) plus 2.5% + $1 (market place for ≤$25), which makes those two items combined also more than 30% for any item sold for less than $5.08-5.77.
Hosting fees are of course cheaper today, more so when bulk bought (I think more than enough to compensate for games today getting into the 100GB range when my shareware was 10s of MB).
I'd hope that payment providers are also.
But at the time, it looked amazing.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20090903044400/http://www.kagi.c...
I don't understand what hosting fees have to do with apps. The app store seemed to be more or less a ripoff of Facebook's (now long defunct) app store, back when Facebook was a web-based app-of-apps, and AFAIK Facebook apps were free plugins.
Apple hosts the apps, doesn't charge devs or customers anything for bandwidth used when downloading them. At the time the store launched, this was a big part of my overall costs, which Apple covered in full from their take.
I forgot that ever existed, so I searched for it. Looks like FB's was announced about 4 years after Apple's App Store?
But it doesn’t allow developers to host the apps themselves, so they are being forced to pay for a service they don’t need.
At the time it was low compared to any retail software distribution. If (a big if) a developer could get on a carrier App Store (they existed) it was much more than 30%.
Go back and watch the keynote. Developers cheered because 30% was so much lower than any other stores available at the time.
It's a small amount compared to retail; it's a large amount compared to a download; and it's infinitely larger than the 0% platform royalty required by IBM-compatible PCs.
That 0% platform royalty was on top of the $300 flat fee for the Windows operating system (or however much, I never ran Windows myself), whereas iOS is technically free (no fee for major updates). You’re paying for the OS/platform one way or another.
Very few people bought Windows separately, its price was bundled with the hardware sale just like it is with iOS. This is a completely moot point.
You could try to argue that Apple give more value by supporting longer, but then again you would be completely wrong (some hardware manufacturer are not super good at supporting their stuff for the very long term, but windows in itself has a support timeline way beyond anything Apple ever did...)
I've yet to see an HN hate thread about the trillion dollar company Google and its Play Store, with the same fees, stealing 30% from an even broader part of society.
You clearly not been looking hard enough; Google, rightly, gets hated on way more than Apple. My experience tends to be that on HN apple can do no wrong.
Google gets mild-mannered, disappointed commenters sighing about how they've messed up search, the web, and has no product/customer support. When Apple comes up, people get on their soap boxes with expletives about how society and the world is fundamentally being ruined. The tone just isn't comparable at all.
you must have missed the soapboxes on how google cannot properly support products anymore (The "google graveyard") and especially any topic touching on Youtube.
But sure, for Android topics they get off lighter because devs do technically have F-Droid as an option, or simply hosting an APK on version control for user s to find. There are ways to get around Google's barriers even if they have a steep financial penalty. Apple gives no official way without voiding your warranty (I don't even think rooting your Android these days void you).
You can install only some types of apps from third party stores or sideload them. Many apps like banking apps require using Google Play Services and if you use a third party ROM like LuneageOS or Huawei HarmonyOS, good luck with installing certain apps.
well yes. That's more on the dev than google though. No one is forcing Chase to stay on Google Play and go so far to not work if you sideload it. Or maybe Google is and that will be rounded into all the other stuff happening in courts.
They are important apps, but they are relatively few that go that far.
I don't think so.
The main difference is that most people use one of the google products directly or indirectly, regardless of their attitude towards the company.
In comparison it is easier to not use Apple products if you don't like the company.
And thus people like you who own an Apple device feel targeted for their choice of using Apple and thus see it as more aggressive and powerful. It is as simple as that. You can find this pattern in every kind of domain, I see people replying with anger and/or passion to any criticism on their car, motorbike or bicycle brands. They naturally feel compelled to defend their brand of choice because they actually feel targeted as owner of it, because it feels like their own discernment is targeted indirectly.
True. But regardless if the commenter is right or wrong, anger is not the proper answer. If the commenter is right, you have some thinking to do. If he's not, you shouldn't care.
Well I guess we need some people at the other extreme to balance out all the Apple-is-the-messiah types.
I'm being glib, here, but I think that's a fairly normal effect. If people's opinions about something are generally pretty boring, average, and uncontroversial, few people will feel the need to stir the pot and adopt extreme views.
But seeing others unquestioningly, unapologetically drooling over something, without allowing any sort of criticism, just eats at some people so much that they need to adopt the completely opposite position and find any reason to brutally criticize.
Human nature is weird.
Why do we need to balance that? If people do believe Apple is Messiah, they do that at their own loss. Why should I care?
You're definitely not looking in the right places then. I've seen Microsoft, Google, twitter, Mozilla, you name the company; coming under fire and everyone piling on. When apple gets criticised in the same way (few and far between that it is), you get an army of apologists out in force ready to die to defend all that apple does.
I've never come across a company that instills that sort of blind faith in its users.
My personal stance is I don't trust any of these companies and will come to threads to be informed about whatever privacy/security/monopoly practices these companies are trying to bypass/do this week for their own profit. I have no allegiance, they're all as bad as each other. In my experience apple is able to do more and gets criticised less.
A recent example was Google implementing something in chrome apple had implemented ages ago in safari. You actually had people saying is was ok for Apple to do it but not Google.
They defend their choices. But do that in an almost religious way.
And is not something that is particular to Apple. Try to criticize Under Armour or New Balance in front of someone wearing it.
The iOS vs Android flamewar has a clear winner on hn
While most people do install apps through the Play Store, Google doesn't lock down their platform to make it the only option. I have one alternative store (F-Droid) installed, and also have a couple apps side-loaded.
Google's 30% isn't the only option on Android. Apple's 30% is the only option on iOS.
Regardless, Google gets plenty of flak here for a variety of things, including how they run the Play Store.
Also, Google doesn't have a developer fee. How's that Apple both have 30% commission and a "membership" fee - https://developer.apple.com/support/enrollment/
Unfortunately, many corporations only leave the choice of Windows or Macos. Open source operating systems are treated like 3rd class passengers..
Google does have a developer fee. It’s a one-off fee rather than a yearly fee, but they do have it.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Developer fee for the Play Store yes, but no developer fee for using the open stores (although I'm well aware that in certain environments it is disallowed to use other than the Play Store) or developing local apps.
I really don’t think it’s about side-loading, principles of freedom, the spirit of hacking, etc. HN’s full of indie app developers trying to make money. They know iOS users more often pay for things so it’s their target audience.
I doubt existence of F-Droid is even a drop in the bucket of fee savings for those developers on Android. Otherwise, Google would do something about it to get their cut.
Au contraire I believe Google is the most hated company on HN by a mile and half. We see this play out IRL even with their anticompetitive lawsuit outcomes
Both Apple and Google do nasty things. Other companies, too.
This thread is dedicated to Apple's own wrongdoings. If Google does nasty things, that doesn't mean Apple should get a pass.
Most people here care about consumers, not about companies, especially about monopolistic companies.
Apple allowing alternate payment methods with a fee discount in the US, as Google does in other countries, is a wrongdoing?
Consumers don’t care about the fees developers pay.
It's not a fee that the developers pay. It's a fee that the customers pay.
First visit? Welcome!
Google doesn't force you to use Google Play and Google doesn't force devs to pay them. (Also they are still hated as well)
There are threads pretty much daily about how evil Google is.
The only difference is that you don't need to own an expensive Google device and pay $100 per year to develop for the Play Store, the 30% criticism applies as well though.
What's incredible is the idea that an argument or a point of view is somehow invalidated purely because it happens to side with the trillion dollar company. This is in the same vein as "this cause is supported by teh evil Amerika, hence it must be evil" line of thinking, typically espoused by self-declared anti-imperialists (who are often mere anti-US-imperialists).
I do wonder what percentage of Apple stock is owned by pension funds and the like, i.e. The Regular Person, once you unwind the levels of indirection (mutual funds, index funds, ETFs, etc). It is surely a double digit percentage, but high, low? No idea.
Pretty high. The S&P 500 has ~7% apple stock which means many peoples retirement accounts have several percentage points of apple stock.
So Apple takes 30% of your money from one hand and gives you back 3% with the other?
"Apple" takes and gives nothing. "Apple" is a collective figment of imagination of its shareholders, which people typically picture as dastardly moneybags living in mansions, but often forget to also picture, like, themselves, in retirement.
So we should let every company charge 10000% what they currently do, because some of the shareholders might be relying on extra dividends for retirement. Hmmm.
Indeed, we absolutely should "let" them. We should let them charge whatever they wish, we should let them sink or swim, and we should apply our laws to them fairly and equally, including antitrust legislation.
More like the opposite.
If you had $1,000 invested in Apple around ten years ago (a reasonable amount in a retirement fund), you'd have made around another $8,500 by now.
While if you'd spent $1,000 on apps and subscriptions over 10 years, Apple would have taken $300.
So Apple would take $300 of your money from one hand and give you back $8500 with the other.
That's a difference almost 3x larger than the difference you suggested... but in the opposite direction!
What's incredible is how people waste their tiny amount of personal energy defending their exploitation by a corporation that has vastly more resources than them and objectively does not need their help.
Apple is probably the poster child for effectively using marketing to brainwash their customers into identifying with them in a cult-like manner. That cult was close to the only thing sustaining them through the 90s.
It's because people are defending the principle, not Apple.
I think Apple is wrong, but I don't think they're wrong because they're successful - in fact I think saying Apple is wrong because they're successful is against the concept of objective reality and not appropriate for HN.
The idea that Apple are wrong because they're successful is the same awful thinking that advocates for violence or systemic discrimination against people based on their skin color (because they're considered 'successful') and is abhorrent.
None of this matters. Only the substance of the defence matters. It either makes sense, or it does not.
Nobody here is trying to help Apple by posting on HN. They're just discussing their viewpoints on how Apple operates and its policies around taking commission on purchases. That's what this entire message board is about - talking about tech and the like.
If they're wasting their time by posting in defense of Apple, you're doing the exact same thing with your response - neither is going to have any actual impact on the world, so either posting is a waste of energy or it's not. There's no valid argument that posting in defense of Apple is a waste of energy but posting attacks on Apple is a useful and productive thing to do.
93% of stock wealth is held by 10% of Americans; the amount of Apple held by The Regular Person is relatively miniscule.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38958534
I suspect the number of app Developers is quite smaller than that 10%.
It's invalidated because a real-world alternative already exists (Android sideloading) and hasn't required Google to hold everyone's hand or to use their toll roads to distribute the product.
And the Play/Android store is still wildly successful.
It's not incredible it is just a different view point. In your second paragraph you take a utilitarian point of view in which case the size of an organization is irrelevant so long as it produces a net gain for society.
An alternative view values human freedom and autonomy. From this perspective the size of an organization is relevant - a large enough organization can impose its will on individuals who don't wish to associate with it.
Neither viewpoint is wrong, but acting as if the one you prefer is somehow more correct or objective is.
Claiming that Apple is "stealing" their cut of commission is definitely wrong.
Does this make them a better company? You are allowed to not like the way a company does business but still own an ETF that profits from their success. I still would never own an Apple item out of principal. Their marketing, hype and fanboyism are their prime success factors it feels like.
It's funny but since the rise of the iPhone I feel like society has gone straight downhill, not that they have been the only player in the smartphone game, but they sure have profited well, are the biggest drain in the industry to the home developers that contribute to their ecosystem. They pay 0 tax and aren't contributing to the better of society through computing while convincing half the population they are protecting them, etc. It's a scam.
Like many large corporations, they aren't ANY better and will plead that it is due to 'competition' while being ahead of the food chain and able to lead in any way they choose.
No, they aren't better, nor are they worse, they just are. Evaluate their behaviour on the merits of their behaviour, not based on their size or what kind of image their PR efforts have successfully projected into our brains (they're all about amazing design! and the other guys motto is don't be evil! and these guys over here have "open" in their name and they're basically like a non-profit with lofty, humanity-altering goals!).
You're welcome to project general failings of society onto the emergence of the iPhone (but not Android because Google maybe isn't nearly as evil I mean it's in their motto). And there's tons of hype and fanboyism associated with their products. But they are good products. After ditching Windows back in 2008, I've haven't yet had a compelling reason to switch OSes again in my career as a software engineer. Their higher-end devices are absurdly priced but my employer buys them for me, maybe that's why.
Who said "purely"? The arguments in favor of Apple here are invalid for a number of reasons. OP is just saying you don't need to bend over backwards to defend them, they're not an underdog anymore and haven't been for over a decade.
Not to mention, Apple has been known to be too controlling and take it too far, to levels that are unfair enough to garner major public disapproval.
Their anti-developer/consumer moves are worthy of backlash, especially since Apple isn't likely going to change their positions without enough of it.
Big minds think about systems. Small minds think about individuals within the system, like corporations or people, because they can't comprehend the bigger picture or even that one exists.
The people who think Apple is evil because of their size are simply not systems thinkers. They have an illogical view of the world in which the little guy is always right simply because they are the little guy, and thus the big guy must be wrong. It's very similar to the Amerika thing you said. If you don't think about the system Apple or America operates in, it's really easy to hate them.
Which is not to say one can't be a systems thinker and still think this was a bad decision or that Apple is given too much power or does things that are unethical or bad for consumers or whatever else. I totally concur that the government should require Apple and Google to allow sideloading, payments they're not involved in, etc BECAUSE I am thinking about the system and how having two corporations own the device our world runs on is a bad one. And how there's essentially no way for governments to mandate a third viable mobile OS into existence.
But the people who say "I can't believe you'd side with Apple" phrase it that way because they are not thinking of the system. They're thinking small. They think making ad-hoc decisions about individuals within the system is appropriate because they can't think any bigger. If they could, they'd lay out the argument as I just did (and, as many, many people in here did too) or something that was less about the individual.
There's been a lot of this on display (not so much here) in what people say about the whole Israel/Hamas situation too. It's not so much what they say (systems thinkers don't agree anymore than anyone else) but how they say it that tips it off.
This is how all businesses work. If there was no way to make profit then businesses would not exist. Apple spent billions of dollars creating an app platform with a clear monetization model that did not get in the way of them accumulating a lot of valuable apps and users. Developers are not forced to make apps for the platform nor are users forced to use the app platform. Other app platforms can impose lower fees and developers are free to release exclusively on those platforms if they wish. Apple hopes that the developers willing to tolerate the 15/30% fee for what the developer gets in return will be good enough to make their app platform competitive to users compared to others.
It's not just defending a trillion dollar company, it is defending the right to set your own prices.
I don't want their platform forced down my throat. On my PC I can download and install software from wherever I see fit. Had I not being a MacBook Pro user for the time being, I would have a chance to upgrade RAM and SSD without paying twice on the damn device.
If anything, I consider Apple being an anti consumer company. What is good for them, is not good for the end user.
That being said, their devices do have some advantages.
Why did you buy a Mac then? You clearly knew the drawbacks, so I'm interested to hear, in this competitive market where both Windows and even Linux machines are now available, what made you decide to buy a Mac?
Battery life.
When you made the choice to buy your MacBook because of the better battery life were you at any point lied to about the disadvantages?
Additionally, if you're not aware the RAM on SOC is a fundamental tradeoff because of physics. Hardwiring it into the SOC is a BIG part of the battery life improvements that you have stated you prefer.
As a consumer the whole point of buying a computer is to get access to its app platform. It's not forced down your throat it just inherently is a part of the device's identity.
Ummm no? This is a weird take. I want a device to run software, I do not care about their app platforms per se. I have a macbook and barely use the apple store. If they prevent me from running any software apart from through their platform, that is a problem for me.
Without an app platform there would exist no software.
The app platform is more than just the store. If you can install an app without the apple store, that app has to be able to run and actually do stuff somehow. The way it is able to run is the app platform.
If you do not want to run software using Apple's hardware and Apple's software then Apple is effectively out of the picture. Apple won't prevent you from running apps on a different app platform like Android.
Something is not moral just because it makes a profit or because it is legal, and revenue is also not profit. And I think if a company operates outside societal norms, which I think Apple with regards to European societal norms, it should expect to get regulated to fit those norms again. Maybe the US is too dysfunctional to do this any more, but the purpose of government should be to align the laws and regulations with the morals of the people being governed.
My bank generates revenue by offering me a service in return for my money, not by monopolizing access to my money and then charging people who want to sell to me for the honour of allowing me to buy their goods and services.
Very few companies that I deal with as a consumer have similar business practices, and the ones that do, like Visa and Mastercard, is also something I think should be cracked down upon.
There are many things the EU messes up in my opinion, but cracking down on this clearly immoral business practices is not one of those as it aligns 100% with my morals even though I'm incredibly pro "free" market (i.e. pro minimally regulated market, as every person who has ever been pro "free market" is).
Well, maybe Apple should open a bank. You just gave them ideas. :)
They already operate as a bank, they just offload the legal/annoying part of it to others and focus on selling the sum of its customers' purchasing power
If that is the only way they can make profits while aligning with the norms of the societies they operate in then sure, more power to them.
Yes, but it is for supporting developers and enterprises.
As a user I don't care for the 30% cut, what I care is to have a centralised payment method and subscription system, I don't have energy/time to keep with different subscriptions in each service/app and knowing that there are bad actors, they will do whatever possible to make hard to unsubscribe (like a few years ago the NYT, where you could only unsubscribe by phone and was very hard even so). But if even when using third party payment systems they need to integrate with Apple subscription API and you can cancel/track in one place then I'm fine with that.
That's a fair statement, you may like Apple payment even if it adds 30% to whatever you are buying. What is not fair is forcing everyone into this.
If I'm selling content, why couldn't I give customer the choice between:
- Paying the 30% Apple cut and benefiting from everything you like about this
- Buying directly, cheaper, without Apple cut (or maybe with a tiny cut if that make any sense, removing only 3pt is a joke)
Because it's Apple's marketplace and Apple's customers.
They spent billions on hardware, software, R&D, marketing and operations.
Why would they give another business a free access to a billion of their customers?
You want to earn money of Apple's customers? Then pay Apple a revenue share of the money you get from their customers.
That's how pretty much any marketplace works in the world.
From your local Target to Salesforce/Shopify/PlayStation/Epic Store/Steam/etc.
I don't think that's equivalent. If you buy a Ford car, you aren't forced to buy tires from the Ford dealership. You're not a "Ford Customer" beholden to the Ford Motor Company when it comes to everything related to the car. If you buy a Dell desktop you aren't forced to buy all software through a Dell marketplace. I'm sure if these companies could, they would, and apple can and so they do. But is that the world we want? Sure, in a totally "free" market apple should be able to do want ever they want. But are we more interested in freedom for corporations or freedom for people? Would things be better for everyone if we used the power of government to prevent these anticompetitive practices? Why can't apple offer good reason for iPhone users to buy software through their marketplace and take the 30%, all the while allowing users to choose to download software outside of the marketplace?
This is rapidly changing with Tesla first. Outside the tires not much you're going to get after-market except from Tesla.
You always have the option to not buy a ford, or not buy an iPhone.
And you're convinced that this is good for us?
That's true and is not something most people are happy with. This model is being pushed on us by billionaires.
The inability to unsubscribe should be fixed in the law, not by granting a payments monopoly for all users of a specific operating system or phone model.
It should be, but I’m not holding my breathe for the US to suddenly start ancting like a functional government (and there are probably other countries where a legal fix is less likely as well). Until then companies are free to offer private alternatives to users who find that to be a valuable service.
The question with the App Store is, are customers allowed to choose?
Even taking your second part as given without addressing the actual complexity here: then how about you accomplish that FIRST? Because I've heard a lot of "we'll break this hack that makes things work suboptimally but better than nothing and then fix it properly in law later" over the decades and 99% of the time it breaks the hack and then surprise surprise never ever gets the "fixed in law" part, leaving us worse off without the gain. I'm all in favor of passing some laws in this area that'd accomplish stuff more efficient with fewer perverse incentives on all sides. I'd like to see users have the option by law to control their root key stores, to require standard secure APIs for subscriptions so that multiple 3rd parties can offer central management and users can cancel without any interaction with what they're subscribing to, for long basic price linked warranties required by law, local use and ad free data control options by law, but also for manufacturers/devs to be protected by default from liability etc. It'd be great to fix a whole lot of stuff.
But until that happy day happens I'm less inclined to just mindlessly bash down what we have and a lot of people are pretty happy with and seems to have struck an ok if far from ideal compromise. I mean, killing upgrades alone makes me hate the app store, but still fix first.
Nobody is complaining about that. Apple can freely put whatever price they want for their payment/subscription services. It’s a good product even, albeit with an outrageous price.
People are upset that developers are forced to use that product, and now with this news: pay an extortion fee on a 3p transaction that doesn’t concern Apple.
I'm not advocating for PayPal, but PayPal does all the stuff that Apple does and they don't charge a 30% cut. I've been contributing to a freeDNS Service managed by PayPal for the last 10-15 years. I noticed the annual renewal was coming up and thought it was time I bump up my contribution, so I went into PayPal and did it.
This guy also hates taxes.
So where can I vote out apple if I am unhappy with the 30%?
Not everything you pay money for is comparable to taxes.
Don’t develop for iOS.
That is not voting.
That is the equivalent of telling someone who doesn't like the current dictator to "go live in the desert".
Remember: I did not bring up the bad analogy. Someone abusing their quasi-monopolistic position to charge high fees is not the same as a tax. This was the point of my post. And sure we can pretend it is the same and bend reality till it fits, but that seems to me more like an idological expedition, than an insightful exploration.
That is voting in a modern democracy. You put your eggs into Android, iOS, and/or one of the less popular candidates. Or you don’t get into the mobile space at all.
Just because you don’t like the options doesn’t mean it’s not voting.
It's not democratic voting because in a democracy a vote is made to decide the direction for the entire voting-audience. The path the majority considers to be for the greater good, in which everyone will participate then.
Here the voting audience will be split in different paths which will all continue to exist, and a person changing his mind will have to leave behind things HE/SHE accumulated and contributed on this path.
If that would be like democratic voting, it would mean that if you decide to change your vote from one election to the other, you have to return your entire income and acquisitions you made during the ruling of this party, to start building your life again on the other path (--> "if you don't like it, go live in the desert")
Actually it is. How do I stop paying taxes, if not by living in the desert?
You vote with your wallet.
I agree when it's a healthy market. But when the choice is between relinquish most control over your own device or relinquish most of your privacy, maybe it's time to regulate the market?
In the EU this is happening on both fronts:
- The GDPR has Android phone manufacturers to ask consent for different ways of using your data and being able to remove data. This is starting to work, on a Samsung phone Samsung/Google will ask you separate consent for using your data for diagnostics, ad targeting, etc. It's not perfect yet, but regulatory pressure is giving people privacy back.
- The DMA will force Apple to allow side-loading and alternative payment methods without taking a cut.
Once this has all played out, we'll still have a duopoly, but at least users and third-party developers are better protected.
Voting with your wallet just means that those who have the most money are “most correct.”
Sorry but that’s not a society I want to continue living in.
There needs to be strict regulations and maybe apple needs to be broken up. Owning the hardware and App Store has already shown have abusive they can be. They need to divest or spin off one of them into a new company or we can pressure politicians to do this for us.
That 30% doesn't fund the schools or the roads, it's just a fee. Completely different.
This is exactly the wrong argument to make and a perfect example of why internet discussion is becoming harder.
None of what you said matters. It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. The open question is if they're in a position where there's no reasonable alternative for developers and/or consumers which you can make a strong case for. That line of argument would not be affected at all by how much money Apple makes, their cut or if they're spending their money in a socially productive way.
The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint on issues related to internet based conversation where opinions consistently trump fact or reason.
> It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to.
Ah yes, loan sharks are perfectly legitimate businessmen too, then.
> The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint
I personally find sadder that there are people who just rationalize away the utter lack of morality in modern capitalism. "Why screw others? Because we can! Woot!" is even worse than "greed is good".
Why do companies charge extra to businesses for the same product? Should they? See the SSO tax
Companies should be free to compete on various variables, which include price for their services. But there is no competition for the Apple AppStore on Apple devices, it's a captive market. At that point, it's not competition but exploitation; and exploitation surely is a Bad Thing.
We used to be taught that one of the Bad Elements of feudal life was that the local lord could impose arbitrary taxes to use a road or a bridge, with no recourse for people and tradesmen. Now we are at the same point in the digital world.
Apples argument, which has legally worked so far, is the competition is at the ecosystem level. The iPhone and App Store are all parts of the whole. If someone doesn't like they can go to a competing ecosystem. Think game console, not computer.
There's plenty of good reasons to charge different amounts for the same services. There's nothing immoral about that. People can simply say no to making the purchase for the price offered to them. Again, this is completely besides the point of the Apple case.
In Apple's case there are no reasonable alternatives and no practical way to say "no" to the service if you want any business at all. That and that alone should be the issue at hand. What Apple is doing should not be legal on that ground. Either they allow third party stores, or they adjust their cut to a level that can reasonably argued is aligned with the value they're adding to the publisher of that app or service. Now they're in "we can charge whatever because we're the only route to getting your product on Apple products" land, and that's just not where we want to be.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? Those two things are, again, completely unrelated. As a person I do feel capitalism in its current form results in demonstrably unethical practices, and I do think Apple overcharges for the value they bring to the table in the specific case of their 30% cut. That's a subjective ethical and moral assessment of Apple as a company.
But that's not the topic at hand, and strawmanning one problem by pulling in another is just lazy. Ruling on this will not just affect Apple but any company with a similar modus operandi in the future, including smaller more ethical companies. Why people have trouble keeping legislative challenges (what you can do) and moral challenges (what you should do) apart is beyond me. You can have more than one opinion in your head at the same time.
> Are you being intentionally obtuse?
For someone lamenting the state of discourse on the internet, you seem to have a problem with avoiding ad-hominems. You also seem to rabidly post multiple items at speed. Please calm down and refrain.
> Ruling on this will not just affect Apple but any company with a similar modus operandi in the future,
Absolutely - and absolutely, anyone creating a digital platform should be forced to follow better rules than what we have at the moment. The market alone will produce exploitative monopolies, and this is what we're seeing with Apple. If the letter of current antitrust laws doesn't touch them, the spirit definitely does.
> Why people have trouble keeping legislative challenges (what you can do) and moral challenges (what you should do) apart
Because it's in the cracks between those concepts that Bad Things for society tend to happen; which is why we have laws to reconcile them where the market fails to do so on its own. In this case, we have large companies effectively establishing exploitative and feudal relationships with smaller businesses and consumers, extracting parasitical rents. This is a Bad Thing and should be fixed.
Including your other comment:
> And yes, loan sharks are legitimate businessmen in the US.
No, they are not. You need licenses to lend money in the US, and to get those you have to follow extensive rules and regulations put in place precisely to make it illegal to be a loan shark. Some businesses get close to the limits of such rules (payday loans etc), and that is a political item - precisely because they get very close to be something that is Bad for society.
> if you want to change it vote for people that can turn that into law
Absolutely, and people do. EU representatives are running with this, and Apple is slowly being subject to more and more scrutiny (together with Google, Amazon, and anyone else with a digital marketplace). People understand that what these businesses are doing is Bad for society in the long run, so if they can't reign themselves in on their own, they will have to be reigned in by the law.
And yes, loan sharks are legitimate businessmen in the US. Not most other places mind you because *there's legislation preventing it*. You're conflating "can" and "should" consistently, much like most other people in this thread. It's just not a moral business. Much like gambling isn't, selling addictive unhealthy products isn't, and so on. It's legal though, and if you want to change it vote for people that can turn that into law. Welcome to democracy.
Stealing? I see it as fee for an exchange to access to a huge market of wealthy people (one that can afford an iPhone probably can afford your app). Where entry barrier is extremely low. If you make 100 sales, you don't have to pay much, if you make huge profits off the platform you make huge payments to the platform owner.
They shouldn't have the right to be the gatekeeper in that relationship.
The wealthy people own the hardware, the devs own the app. Why does apple get the legal right to demand money in that transaction when it would be better for everyone if they weren't involved
When you buy an Apple device you don't control the hardware or the software on it. Apple does.
That should be illegal.
I agree.
So what about people like me? I buy an iPhone because Apple gatekeeps the apps.
I grew up in the age of torrents and Kazzaa and am tired of spam, malware, bloat, anti virus, etc. I want my phone to be an unbreakable toy, not a computing device.
So you use exclusively the Apple store, problem solves?
iPhones are not expensive enough to signal you are rich, most people are able to buy one, the question is if it makes financial sense to do so.
If I afford something doesn't mean I should buy. I grew up being poor and I earn my living working hard. Throwing money is not a good option for me.
Also, in what world affording a damn phone does make you rich?
I wouldnt defend 30% specifically but surely they should get some cut or share. What is the right number? 1%? 50%? I don't know.
Kind of an odd take. They take a cut because they provide a service. They are not stealing. I guess lump me in with the defending apple crowd if you want to but to think they would or should charge nothing for their service feels... silly.
only in tech...
can you imagine if selling a replacement bulb for a ford headlight required you to pay 30% to ford.
only in tech can this be considered fair.
I’ve got very bad news for you.. what do you think happens when Ford solicits bids for headlamps? Sure “you” don’t pay something to Ford. But Ford absolutely gets its cut
that's not nearly the same thing, stop it.
Seems to me the range of what a credit card charges would seem sensible. I.e. 3-7%.
Alternatively charge 30% but be forced to allow side-installing Apps. That way developers can decide if they want the convenience and reach of the AppStore or not.
Yes this exactly
I don't care whether they charge 10%, 30%, or 100%
I do care that there's no alternative to NOT using their services & paying their fee
Does windows deserve 30%? what about your isp? Or your motherboard manufacturer? What about nvidia? Should every single company providing you software or hardware take a cut, or only apple?
We should own our own computers
Pretty much every middleman or service provider in every industry takes a cut, whether by charging you more than they paid or a fee for their service. For some reason people think software is uniquely exempt from this transaction. Nvidia and your motherboard manufacturer already charged you for the product they provided and you also paid for the fee Dell or Newegg charged on top. Your isp is charging you a fee for uninterrupted service. Apple is charging developers for hosting apps and developing tooling.
They should as much as Mozilla gets for the online transactions carried out on its browser.
It's very likely that people posting on Hacker News may hold equity in a company like Apple, may have their primary form of income derived from that company or may be able to attribute their sizeable wealth to its growth.
It is no surprise that people will come to the defense of this giant when you stop to consider this. Apple doesn't have to care about them, it already has.
I am of the opinion that there should be some sort of disclosure of financial interest.
Pretty much everyone that invests in the public equity markets holds equity in Apple. In fact, Apple would be most public market investor’s biggest holding (or 2nd biggest due to Microsoft’s recent increases) via index funds.
Even if you are not invested in public equity markets, you can be exposed to them via local and state government’s pension fund investments, because if those do not perform as projected, then your taxes have to make up for it.
With the caveat that if you just invest in indexed funds, if Apple does worse than before, probably some competitor does better than before, and it might compensate. If you just own AAPL stocks on the other hand...
Maybe so, but I never found this line of argument particularly convincing.
The investments people have in Apple are often insignificant compared to the rest of their income or wealth.
Also, buying shares in the public market is like a bet. Instead of changing your opinion to agree with the bet you could simply bet the other way. Or you could bet that your own political activism will fail. Betting on an outcome doesn't mean you prefer that outcome. It can also be hedging.
The people who really do have something riding on Apple's success are employees getting stock options. And yes, I would also like to know whether someone is an Apple employee when they are commenting on these subjects.
Developers are affected by Apple's policies and success in very complex ways and can legitimately take either side on these questions.
Disclosure: I have an app in the App Store that made me ~£100 in the previous fiscal year. I also have £3000 in a NASDAQ 100 ETF. Apple's share of that is ~£270.
Not everybody who has a different opinion than you is a paid corporate shill or spy from Russia or China. If you seriously harbour these thoughts, you should be careful with where they can lead you. Group schizophrenia has become the most common issue among the population in industrialised countries, it seems everybody is suspecting everybody nowadays. And not only suspecting, but outright accusing, just on a hunch and without any evidence.
Please note that I was not paid by Apple to write the comment above.
They probably do care a lot about developers staying on their platform. The 30% is only from companies making more than $1 million. Otherwise you can qualify for 15% small business program.
I don’t need them to be my friend or to care about me but as a share holder I want them to succeed. So far their R&D has proven valuable to me as both a consumer and share holder.
I don’t care if a few people who already have everything get richer. Since I believe the company is doing great things and I think it still has a bright future ahead I get to share in that upside too. And so can you if you want to.
Do they care though? As a developer, I either play by the rules and get access to their massive, lucrative market or I just don't. Its not like the investment developers and Dev companies make into their ecosystem can be just moved elsewhere - its all a sunken cost.
Do you really think they wouldn’t care if developers left their platform? They care because it’s beneficial to them. I don’t expect anything else from any corporation including the ones who’ve employed me.
They don't need to care about developers - they cannot leave.
It's amazing to me that people in this thread still don't understand free markets. You are free to use Android, or Amazon phone. Or Graphene. Or one of the many others.
Apple preventing 3rd party software not paying the apple tax from running on their phones is not "free market". The only reason they can get away with this is because of laws that protect their market from 3rd parties.
…what laws?
Apple restricts third parties almost entirely through technical measures.
Jailbreaking to bypass the technical measures is legal.
It may have finally been settled now as legal? I know in the past it was considered a violation of DMCA, circumventing technical countermeasures.
Looks like the lawsuit was settled not decided, and Apple is free to sue it's next victim.
I don’t care about trillion dollar company. I care about my experience. App Store purchases and subscriptions are a good experience for a user. I’ve never had problems canceling subscriptions, or getting refunds.
Ok, but the argument is that people should have options, not that you should stop using the Apple store.
I am afraid that some developers will drop Apple payments all together and I will have to type my credit card info inside of low-quality apps. Currently I just press ok after a Face ID.
Why do you install low quality apps?
It's incredible to me that people arguing against apple here don't realise that they're arguing to allow another billion dollar company to do what they want, and that their own opinion is the only one that could possibly be valid
If you want an open ecosystem with alternative app stores, head on over to Android. The value of iOS to me is the app store and related ecosystem.
Regardless, it is a phenomenon here that negative words on Apple - justified or not alike - attract numerious downvotes without comments, just for the sake of it.
Honestly, I've found nuanced discussion on this topic in any direction attracts downvotes, and reddit-tier comments like the one I replied to float to the top. It's a pity as the quality of the discussion here is usually above this.
I'll just tell all my potential customers to buy a new phone before buying my app. That'll work.
Steal? What you want the App store to be free and become the Android Play Store which is utter garbage and hostile against small and mid developers?
I prefer F-Droid. It would be nice if iOS could have something like that too.
You know I hear this argument a lot, but had a revelation recently. Everything people are saying about apps and the app store could apply equally well to web browsers and webpages. After all there are plenty of malicious webpages out there that can do bad things, but we decided that it is fine, that's a risk we as society are willing to take. The alternative is to allow large organizations like the state and corporations to tell us what we can and can't do with devices we own and what we can or can't look at.
In conclusion "Information wants to be free."
They are shackled by their shareholders (of which I am counted).
They could make the app store free, while policing it better, if they wanted to! They sell hardware and then they chose to sell developer access to that hardware and also chose to insert themselves between users and apps. The iPhone would be a better product if they focused on selling hardware rather than rent seeking every level of the transaction.
They deserve a cut for doing work but then they also don't allow anyone else to do that work (alternatives).
"They are not your friend, they do not care about you"
I beg to differ. As a blind user relying on accessibility, Apple was actually the first company that decided that accessibility should be an inherent part of the OS, not just an expensive add-on. Since the iPhone, blind users can just buy the product and turn speech output on, without having to install expensive extra software as was the case with Windows, for instance.
So keep your generic accusations for yourself, they are far from correct.
This is a great result. That being said, I wouldn't bet they did that just because they cared about you in a friendly way.
If it's not driven by ROI, it can only be empathy and «do the right thing»
Who said there is no ROI? Apple is no charity, they probably found another way to generate profit out of it (brand reputation, more sales, you name it). It might be better than previous situation, profit was generated in a terrible way. Still doesn't mean you owe them something nor they are being particularly "nice" with you.
If cutting it was a way to generate high profit, finance and shareholders would probably ask for this to be removed quickly. For instance, in the last vote they refused assessments on social and environmental issues.
The lords and churches of the past wouldn't even dare to ask as much as 30% of revenues in our feudal past.
It’s 15% for the commoners (<$1M) and I’d believe that in feudal times.
IIRC the standard for serfs was 2-3 days of labor per week (in some cases during harvest even up to 5), for a 6 day workweek. Add various random fees and rents and that's way more than 50-60%.
Of course everything improved massively after the plague. So it depends on which part of the middle ages we're talking about.
I can understand some perspectives of the Apple-defending crowd. Apple being the popular yet closed-end-to-end platform experience does kind of provide a level of balance in the industry that wouldn’t exist otherwise. I personally think it’s silly to look at Amazon or Google as an example of openness.
I think it’s also kinda weird to label Apple as a monopoly unless you mean a monopoly on revenues. They seem to actively swerve away from getting over 50% share of anything.
They realized that getting over 50% marketshare paints a target on their back, whereas what you want is 50% of profitable money in the market.
If BMW sell 10 cars with $1 margin, Jaguar sell 5 cars with $2 margin, and Ferrari sell 2 cars with $40 margin, the latter took home 80% of profits with 11% marketshare. Then Ferrari just work their hardest to make sure that their customers cannot change car without a lot of effort, effectively coopting (or rather enslaving) them forever.
That keeps antitrust law at bay in practice, while egregiously breaking it in spirit.
I often defend Apple. I don't want to defend Apple on this current topic: I think taking a cut of out-of-app physical purchases/subscriptions is ridiculous and should be legally challenged.
However...
If you're gonna argue that, you have to inspect the edges of this position. Are you willing to let go of your own shares? Or the interest on your pension (or equivalent), which comes via the roughly the same route you're arguing against. If you own your own company, do you share most/all profits with your staff (rather than pay a wage), or your shareholders? This is all wrapped up together.
IMO, To make such a claim, you need really to argue against the system these "rich people" operate in as much, if not more than, the individual cases.
This is not the same, there a degrees of unethical behavior. We should collectively try to give more meaning to these degrees instead of jumping to first principles.
Taking your example, there is a difference between taking a cut or underpaying your staff or severely underpaying them or perhaps not paying them at all or perhaps forced labor or perhaps outright slavery.
Apple stock is the most widely held stock by American 401k's and forms the basis of retirement investments for middle class Americans more than any other stock
Wouldn't that be Microsoft? It's worth 2.9T, vs Apple's 2.84T.
Apple Vision Pro is coming out soon, with the same terrible rules for app developers.
We should put out an open letter to Apple that we will collectively ignore that product until it contains more favourable terms.
Great idea, I was totally planning to spend $3500 on a first gen gadget but now you've convinced me not to
Ikr. That's a big incentive to be evil! Special snowflakes will vouch for you no matter what
I haven't done any defending, but I reject the idea that it's a ridiculous idea to do so. I choose (almost always) to defend people on the basis of whether they are right or wrong (by some measure), emphatically not due to some expectation of return on investment because they 'care about me'. Also, no one is defending Apple because they think 'the trillion dollar company needs defending' -- they're doing it, presumably, because they just so happen to have an opinion on the matter that aligns with Apple's.
Who is definitely not my friend is third party app developers who want to side load their trash spamware on to my phone.
Every single platform out there is a dumpster fire of fraudulent and abusive software and products aggressively pushed by deception with every trick or vulnerability they can find exploited.
The App Store works just fine for me as a user as is. I don’t care at all what software you want to install on my phone or what access you feel entitled to.
I support Apple not because they need my support, but because the supporting argument aligns with my principles. I believe that the entire App Store ecosystem belongs to Apple, and that none of us have any right to dictate what Apple does with it. It's theirs in the same way my organs are mine. Just because it happens to be massively successful doesn't change this. I'm not a negative utilitarian.
What about their customers? Am I allowed to speak up for their freedom to engage in consensual commerce? Or is that craven of me as well?
What a wild take. Epic doesn't care about me either. What difference does it make? Are we supposed to judge if something's right or wrong based on who's doing it, rather than what they're actually doing?
"a few people" being everyone with a retirement plan, 401k or any equivalent around the world, i.e. the vast majority of people in developed countries
if anything, taking from smaller companies to give to megacorps is a net benefit for "the common man", since the former will generally belong to founders/VCs/private equity in which they have no stake, and the latter are owned by everyone with exposure to the MSCI World :)
You need to learn the difference between defending an entity and defending an argument.
The line of thinking you're expressing here is what leads to questioning free speech and privacy absolutism.
That’s a strawman if I ever saw one. Apple is morally entitled to licence their products however they’d like, because property rights. If you don’t like it, then nobody is forcing you to give them your business.
I'm going to use this post as a reference for what I believe to be one of the least logical arguments I've ever seen on a technical forum. Congratulations.
Its completely obvious Apple has some sort of mind control going on. Its insane to see society is okay with this.
Keeping the tax at more or less the same rate on outbound links is incredibly brazen, even by Apple standards.
If the EU DMA does eventually force them to open the platform to competing stores it’s going to be very hard to defend the different policies in different markets, especially as I assume Epic will push aggressively to have Fortnite and the Epic Games store on iOS in those markets as early as possible to force the conversation.
the ironic thing is that the way you describe apple is the way 99% of people outside of hackernews would describe the people of hackernews (or tech ppl in general).
"B-b-but Google and others do it, too!"
I'd like to quote a passage from Reamde by Neal Stephenson: "So what are you going to do?" Yuxia asked. "Maybe tag along. Like escorting a drunk president home after a long night in the bar." "Didn't you say you had to make a phone call?" "I have been trained by the United States government," Seamus said, "to do more than one thing at a time."
I don’t like what apple is doing here, and am not inclined to defend it.
However, I am inclined to complain about this type of rhetoric. If invalid criticism are being made, it is appropriate to correct those criticisms, even if the criticisms being made are criticisms of some vile person or organization.
It's super easy to avoid all of this drama: Do not buy an iPhone. Almost any other phone will allow you to download and install arbitrary programs from any source that offers them. It's quite wonderful.
It amazes me that people would rather force apple to open up through dubious court cases than simply buy a different device.
People can defend Apple purely for "Someone is wrong on the Internet!" reasons. We're mostly not Homo Economicus Machiavelli who only do things for considered reasons.
(I agree that the 30% is probably bad for society though)
Apple is a lifestyle brand and some people act pretty threatened when that brand is criticized.
I think you can be unhappy with the 15/30% price cut, yet objectively see little wrong with it, given current capitalistic economies and legislation. There are many other large companies with huge margins that, in your words “steal from society”. Alphabet’s is over 20%, for example, and it’s very hard to avoid them when advertising online. Microsoft likely makes money on Xbox game sales, too.
In capitalism 101, Apple created a market and a shop, so they can set the rules. If they demanded too much, developers would move away, their venture would collapse, iPhones would become less popular, etc.
I think you’ll find that selling ice cream at Disney theme parks similarly is expensive for ice cream vendors. They’ll either demand a cut on revenues or charge a lot for the right to sell stuff, and be picky about who can sell what at their venues.
Large retail companies such as Walmart won’t technically take a cut if you want them to sell your product, but they’ll negotiate lower prices from you, require you to take back any unsold inventory, etc.
In summary: ‘we’ currently allow all kinds of huge companies to play by different rules than small companies and individuals.
For me, the main issue is whether iOS needs special handling because of its success, and if so, what special handling.
The first, for me, is “yes”; smartphones are different enough from theme parks, Xbox and Walmart to handle them differently. The second I’m less sure about.
For example, yes, I’d like to have the option to side-load stuff, but also think Apple should have control over what their iPhone product stands for.
They currently ban apps selling drugs, for example. Requiring them to support third party stores that may have such apps might harm the image of their iPhone product. Because of that, I think we should allow them (but not necessarily be happy with) to put up a firm warning whenever you try to install a third party app store, even though that would put them on unequal footing with Apple’s store.
Maybe, the best solution would be to make Apple’s App Store a non-profit with a monopoly on selling iOS apps, with Apple keeping the right to specify what can and cannot be sold there (keeping that a true non-profit would be hard, though. Some non-profits manage to hoard lots of money over time, their CEO’s ‘deserve’ large salaries, etc)
Oh grow up. It’s so naive to think there’s no time, effort or money in building what they have. That there’s no ongoing costs. That it doesn’t take thought.
They should build it and you should just get it for free.
Is 30% reasonable? Should there be some taper once your app is in maintenance mode? No, and yes.
I don’t see any reason from either side of this argument frankly. They’ve built a wonderful think that provides immense value, and we all benefit.
They should be more flexible in their pricing model, and you should understand that actual people spent hundreds of thousands of hours of their lives to deliver it to you, and charging for that isn’t stealing.
Of course they care about you. They hope you are healthy and in a good shape so you can work more to earn more money and give them their share.