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Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

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Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#351

Post by paulie_a »

pentae wrote: post #226
paulie_a wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I am sick of websites asking me to enable notifications. Apps asking me to allow notifications. At the end of the day, rarely is the app worthy of that sort of interruption. I've absolutely never seen a website that can justify. But they will still somehow notify you about enabling notifications. Companies have a delusional vision that their particular product is that important to their users. It isn't.

For many social media, dating, discussion forum apps where users want to be notified of DM's or replies to their threads push notifications is essential. Just because you don't think its valuable for you doesn't mean users shouldn't have the choice.

Social media has little value and hilariously enough dating apps are actually incredibly terrible with notifications. The average website or app though will annoy the fuck out you. Those have absolutely no need for implementing it. A notification to rate the app, a notification reminder to use the site, a notification to...

You listed the very limited set of notifications that are useful. and while there could be a couple more, everyone else should stop asking and doing it

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#352

Post by dehrmann »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #282
dehrmann wrote: post #99

The Apple Tax is especially hard on Spotify since Apple launched Apple Music (previously, Spotify passed the 30% on to customers, but $13 vs $10 for similar services doesn't work). Both services are $10 per month. It's well-publicized that Spotify pays out 70% to labels, leaving nothing to run the service. Full disclosure: I used to work for Spotify. My personal take on the fee was that 2%-3% is the floor (credit car…

Can I ask why you left Spotify? Do you think they're in serious financial trouble?

Career growth; I was in a small office for over three years.

No, I don't think they're in financial trouble. Their CFO, Barry McCarthy, is a pro--he took Netflix public.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#353

Post by clairity »

jarjoura wrote: post #295
sah2ed wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be hard pressed to find any credible source for your conviction. Apple's privacy stance is what Steve Jobs believed in, and what Tim Cook has stuck with, because they know that leaving privacy-based decisions up to third-party developers never ends well. Here are excerpts from Jobs 2010 interview with Walt Mossberg [0]: “Silicon Valley is not monolithic,” Jobs responded, “We’ve always had a very different view…

Very good find, but SJ was using a slight-of-hand here. While true, privacy has always been a feature of Apple products, this was said during the Amazon iBooks lawsuit when Apple suddenly added this 30% in-app purchase restriction. SJ was obsessed with control more than privacy and believed developers would make a mess of his beautiful iPhone. Every decision always started from that angle. No, I believe privacy that…

probably a typo: "sleight of hand" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleight_of_hand)

as for your point, i don't think it was an either-or situation. i think both jobs and cook considered both control and privacy (among considerations like litigation, as you mention). jobs seemed more overtly a control freak though (not that that's always a bad thing).

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#354

Post by dang »

dirkgently wrote: post #297
rconti wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even if you DON'T show up as featured, maybe you're one of the 10 vetted apps that do what yours does, instead of 1 out of 100 on the Play Store. I think that's what's being discussed here.

> you're one of the 10 vetted apps that do what yours does, instead of 1 out of 100 on the Play Store. 1. Citation needed (because looks like you are pulling these numbers out of your ass). 2. And by your argument, looks like people have more choices on Android. Who would have thought?!

Please don't be a jerk on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines so often that I've banned your account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#355

Post by makecheck »

electic wrote: post #203
sandofsky wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is simply not true. As a small app developer, I can tell you first hand that Apple only promotes and supports larger apps in the ecosystem. We’re a two person shop. We’ve taken zero funding. We’re nowhere near Fortnite revenue. Apple has done an outstanding job promoting us. Last month they gave us our first Today tab feature, and at any given time we can be found in several lists.

I am really happy for you. Genuinely. But most apps do not share your fate no matter how well designed, performant, or useful. I am actually fine if Apple doesn't do any sort of discovery or promotion of our apps. Just don't charge 30 percent then.

One of the things I find strange is that the features last so long. They appear to be...weekly? If so, that means about 50 apps PER YEAR in a slot, out of possibly millions?

That just seems silly. They should at least be rotating through a list of a few hundred apps per day.

Also, as a consequence I am quickly bored by browsing the store. Top-10 lists virtually never change. Featured lists seem like the same 3 apps forever. And a “See All” link that shows nothing more than the same 3 apps from the front page is just insulting. Apple needs much, much, much more in their featuring.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#356

Post by etse »

sah2ed wrote: post #319
etse wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business. It seems perfectly compatible for Jobs to make those statements about privacy after weighing the cost for Apple to implement robust cloud infrastructure and services, and (potentially) deciding Apple would just not compete in that space. It's like Google finally conceding it won…

> (I honestly don't expect to be able to cite any sources regarding Apple's decisions based on their level of transparency into their business. If that's the case, wouldn't it be better to not, you know, not speculate? Anyone can come up with a plausible sounding reason for x once there is some evidence of y, but it doesn't change the underlying fact that it is all a conjecture -- drawing conclusion(s) from incomplet…

I'm not sure where you're going with not speculating and "better". What is wrong with a conjecture? Aren't some conjectures out of the set of all conjectures going to be right?

Also, how is an interview complete information?

I also pointed out later that I don't see the information you provided as refuting what I said, but compatible with it. From your response, it seems reasonable to ask what refuting is happening here.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#357

Post by etse »

addicted wrote: post #322
etse wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who is convinced Apple is focused on privacy because its cloud tech is really far behind Google and privacy was a path largely ignored in a data driven world? Don’t get me wrong—I like that they pursue the privacy angle but if the company’s strengths allowed them to compete with modern web/ads services companies, I think they would not have focused on privacy as much.

Even if that’s the case, rewarding Apple for that decision is still the right thing to do because in a free market, companies will make decisions where they earn the most money. If the company that out of selfish reasons is promoting privacy makes the most money, other companies will also shift to a more privacy oriented business model rather than business models which rely on selling people’s information.

Right, I would hope it encourages more consideration for privacy in other business as well. I wonder though if people with privacy concerns will turn to non-profits or other orgs instead of companies. For instance, lots of people on Hacker News will voice support for Firefox, but dish dirt on Brave or even Chromium.

That said, more consideration of privacy as part of product development practice in business, even if non-businesses may end up winning more from this, is a good thing.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#358

Post by notSupplied »

I'd like to debunk two arguments I hear frequently in defense of Apple's 30% cut:

1. They created the iPhone hardware and OS platform on which all apps stand on top of. Surely one who builds the most expensive infrastructure on which so many rely on deserve to tax the economic activity they've enabled.

The problem with this argument is that the enablement actually flows in both directions. Remember the last battle between Mac and Windows in the 90s? Mac was the losing horse because "Windows had all the important software". Office was the killer app back then and the Mac version was gimped. All the cool games were on Windows, and hell, during the days of peak Internet Explorer, Mac users could hardly browse the web properly. The tables have turned today, but the past tells a story of how much the software ecosystem contributes to the platform, not software as freeloaders on the platform.

2. The AppStore is much more secure. Apple's curation protects users from malware much more effectively than Google Play and overall app quality is higher

The issue I have with this argument is one of "who pays for this?" I'd argue the consumer should and has already paid for this via premium prices and the handsome hardware margins of iPhones. This is a benefit that goes directly to the users after all, so they should be (and already are) paying for it, not app developers.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#359

Post by ndnxhs »

kkarakk wrote: post #269
freedomben wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the reviews helpful, tho I take them with a grain of salt. It's true there's a lot of garbage tho. So many reviews like this: > 1-star > Used to be awesome but has a bug I don't like now! > This app used to be amazing but now I want some feature that it doesn't have. Rating this 1-star as a way to strong arm the developer into adding my favorite feature. By the way I'll forget to come back and update this revi…

Paying customers asking for feature via review is part of the reason why the review system is great. if you just want to make passive income by creating an app that does one thing in one particular way that's fine but you should be upfront about the deal. not being upfront about not providing feature updates or rather extensions should mean a worse review imo

Its useless for other users to read. A 1 star review could mean "I was paid to review this", "I don't know how to use computers so I will blame the app" "some very obscure feature no one uses isn't in the app" or "the app is genuinely bad quality".

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#360

Post by rahkiin »

freedomben wrote: post #201
dan1234 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What monopoly does Apple have? They don’t have a majority share of any platform. Any app makers not happy should boycott the platform and just release Android apps. Of course, they’d also need to avoid the Google Play store as they have pretty similar rates to the App store[0] [0] https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

As I mentioned I'm not following this case really at all, but some initial thoughts from your comment are that while Apple doesn't have a monopoly on smart phones, they do have a monopoly on what software users can run on the phones and tablets they make (so if you define platform as "smartphones" then no monopoly, if platform is "iOS" then yes monopoly). On the Android side of things, Google doesn't have near the sa…

Microsoft got into trouble because Windows had a very dominant market position (80%+)

iOS does not because there are more Android devices than iOS devices.

Regarding your first part about apple having a monopoly on what runs on an iPhone: so does Samsung on fridges/washing machines/ovens, or almost any other embedded system for that matter. My router-maker also does not allow me to put different software on my router, and I can’t run software that hasn’t been allowed explicitly by Microsoft/Sony on an Xbox/Playstation.

This is ‘whataboutism’ but why is it only an issue for Apple devices but A-OK and ‘normal’ for every other example?

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