Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#391

Post by tankerdude » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 7:26 AM UTC

compostable wrote: post #299

tankerdude wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Untrue. Chinese restaurants in the SGV are tough. 3 stars in LA crushes 5 stars in other cities in the US. And yes, I’ve lived 10 years in the Bay Area and the Chinese food pales in comparison.

Hmmm, we are going to have to check your credentials. In your opinion what is the best Chinese restaurant in either LA or SF?

Dim Sum: Joy Luck Palace (Sunnyvale). LA, the one that’s very good is Five Star Seafood (SGV off of Del Mar). 888 in Valley a little east of that place. Don’t go to Elite, Ocean Star, or mission, IMO. They are kind of on par with Jou Luck Palace. Koi Palace(Daly City) and Flower Lounge(Millbrae), Mayflower(Milpitas) I would stay away from.

Seafood: Newport Seafood(SGV). The restaurants listed above are decent for the Bay Area with Mayflower a notch or two below.

Best Taiwanese street food: Sin Ba La (Arcadia). Southland Flavor Cafe(Cupertino)

Lastly, in LA, the 626 Night Market is lots of crazy street food.

(Bistro Na is great too.)

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#392

Post by e_proxus » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 7:26 AM UTC

javagram wrote: post #20

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #10

Doesn't Valve take 30% from games on Steam? But they're complaining Apple taking 30% is too much? I also don't really think the Apple/Google fee is that unreasonable. Considering the resources, tools, marketplaces, tutorials, payment processing, all the other All dev stuff they provide in general. Yes if your app goes big, they make a lot of money. But for every big app there's something like 9 that fail completely (…

Valve takes 30% of direct sales through steam but allows developers to generate and sell separately steam keys where they get a 0% cut, as I understand it. For instance when you buy a game on humble bundle and get a steam key for it, valve makes nothing off that transaction. Unless Apple and google start allowing sales outside their stores I don’t think steam is comparable.

There's a bigger difference: Steam competes on "open" platforms (i.e. the major OSes), where "open" means anyone could launch a competing service (and I fully expect another one to challenge Steam in the near future considering the way Steam is heading).

No one can launch a competing app service on iOS. Apparently you can on Android, but I'm not sure why no one succeeded yet. Maybe the same reason as no one succeeded yet replacing Steam either, you need some kind of critical mass and that takes time to build.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#393

Post by amrrs » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 7:29 AM UTC

nielsbot wrote: post #351

michaelchisari wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Los Angeles has serious grade inflation across the board wrt social ratings. Their yelp reviews are completely unreliable, everything is 4 or 5 stars. I'm used to Chicago where even a great restaurant can have 3 stars because everyone is so picky, and the 4 or 5 stars are reserved for the truly extraordinary.

My opinion is that everyone should get rid of 1-5 stars in favor of "thumbs up/thumbs down" ratings... Wonder if there's any research to support this suggestion...

Youtube realized it once https://youtube.googleblog.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-r...

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#394

Post by e_proxus » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

p1necone wrote: post #356

ksec wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Absolutely terrible search We have much more powerful CPU, In-Memory DB and SSD, Searching within a comparatively small dataset that is the App Store is a solved problem more than a decade ago and much more so now. Instead we got a appalling App Store search. It could simply mean one thing, Apple just doesn't care.

Note: I only have experience with android, I don't know what state the ios store is in. My gut feeling based on how search and navigation is structured in the play store (a few broad categories, no option for sorting, seemingly arbitrary "algorithmic" surfacing of apps) is that crippling navigation in this way is probably better for their bottom line (in the short term at least) and for gathering ad revenue. It mirro…

This is spot on. The only incentive the app stores have is to optimize search for results that will likely yield the best income, i.e. suggest apps that a certain user is most likely to pay for (or buy micro transactions in). The whole thing is just one gigantic F2P platform in disguise, if you want to be cynical.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#395

Post by singularity2001 » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

forty wrote: post #125

I read that Apple recently (June) added this to their rules: "Multiplatform Services: Apps that operate across multiple platforms may allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired elsewhere, provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app. You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your gener…

Hopefully that's the last straw for anti-trust agencies to chime in.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#396

Post by ksec » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 7:59 AM UTC

foepys wrote: post #358

ppeetteerr wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards take up to 5% and they only cover the transaction.

The EU capped it at 0.3% for credit and 0.2% for debit cards.

And in US it is no where near 5%, even AE, and the volume Apple is processing they likely have a lower rate than the normal 2-3%.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#397

Post by tetrep » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 8:16 AM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #370

Bekwnn wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, Unreal Engine 4 charges only 5% gross on revenue exceeding 3,000 USD per quarter. Epic's CEO tweeted about these markets taking 30% where other transaction facilitators only take 2-5%. https://mobile.twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/89831654549... It feels like in tech there are a ton of leech-like companies attempting to leverage their way into middleman positions and then rest on their laurels while…

Calling Apple a transaction facilitator is a ludicrous way to try to downplay what they actually do. They aren’t just a transaction processer, that’s the cheapest and easiest part of their job. They also host petabytes of apps in hundreds of geographically dispersed and localized app stores, and covers all bandwidth for distributing and updating those apps. And unlike google Apple actually reviews every release of ev…

And Apple forces you into this exchange. You can't ask them to simply host a product page like Amazon and leave everything else to you, the app developer.

There's many good UX reasons why Apple does this, but you can't seriously think that they're charging app developers anything reasonably close to the cost Apple incurs because they have literally no incentive to do that; they have a monopoly on iPhone users (much as Google does de facto for Android users).

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#398

Post by ksec » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 8:20 AM UTC

neivin wrote: post #131

ksec wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the scale Apple operate None of what you stated above is worth anywhere near 10%, let alone 30%. And for the last few points, they are covered by the Hardware cost which in Apple case cover the software as well. ( Where Windows and Android are covered by other means ) And I don't think you are actually disagreeing with your parents at all. Because all the services they provided and as you have listed are now consi…

> worth anywhere near 10%, let alone 30% Let's throw more arbitrary numbers around...

But it is not. The total revenue projected this year for App Store is roughly $50B. I would bet $1000 the average credit card processing fees world wide for is lowered than 2%. With China, EU, AUS, and Japan all has much lower cap on it. The whole yearly revenue for the one of the largest CDN Akamai is only $2.5B. Not only s Apple's data requirement less than Akamai, they now also operate their CDN. There is absolutely no way the Apps Store storage and delivery cost more than 500M to operate, even if Apple were using Akamai.

Given the economy scale advantage, Apple are likely to break even at 4%. So even at say a 5% running cost, Apple is making 25% Net Profits. Giving them 10% of App Store revenue is already a 50% margin business.

Like I said again and again, the physical world roughly the same or more than that. But it has a bigger operational expenses and rent. We cant argue with property prices or Rent, it is the fundamental of how our modern society creates a thing call money. But in a non physical world, Apple and Google needs to demonstrate how this 30% is worth while, rather than pure money grabbing. Google has a much better excuses because its App Store profits will be needed to continue and fund the development of Android Operating System.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#399

Post by tonyedgecombe » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 8:24 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #119

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% seems a lot when BlueSnap/Avangate/FastSpring provide most of the same services for 6-8%. Of course Apple would argue that they are connecting you to their customers. When there are a million apps in the store I'm not sure how true that is.

Apple also has a large and growing editorial staff writing articles and highlights for their App Store; it's virtually becoming a house magazine. So being in their store potentially offers exposure and marketing for free that's immensely valuable. (Whether it's 30% valuable is debatable, of course. Personally I think they should drop it from 15%/30% to 10%/20%, but "Apple: always more expensive than you think they sh…

potentially is the key word here.

If you are basing your business on getting exposure in the App Store then you are building it on shaky foundations.

Re: Apple and Google Face Growing Revolt Over App Store ‘Tax’

#400

Post by tonyedgecombe » Thu, Aug 23, 2018, 8:31 AM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #24

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% seems a lot when BlueSnap/Avangate/FastSpring provide most of the same services for 6-8%. Of course Apple would argue that they are connecting you to their customers. When there are a million apps in the store I'm not sure how true that is.

But Apple's customer base is more valuable, which is why people still publish there despite the cost. Apple and Google aren't selling infrastructure, they're selling an audience.

That's fine, it makes sense to me that you would develop for Apple before Android because those customers are more affluent and willing to spend on software.

However I question whether the App Store is connecting you to those customers in any meaningful way when there is so much competition in there. Sure if you are lucky enough to get to the front page then you can do OK but most don't.