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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

#371

Post by notSupplied »

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

No it is not, it incentivize users to leave inaccurate information as a form of making feature requests. An app that is highly useful and crucial to a users work flow, but is missing a certain feature is a 4 star to this user, but some people leave a 1-star to draw attention to the one feature they really want. A user who passionately wants a feature to be implemented clearly values this app more than 1 stars worth. The users who do this are holding the app rating hostage and I find this behavior utterly unethical.

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

#372

Post by max76 »

pas wrote: post #318
max76 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the $99/yr bar of entry. That, combined with the more rigid review process, keeps the App Store's average app quality higher than the Play Store's.

It makes a lot of apps simply impossible to exist. (Indie dev made an app for themselves catering to a niche, also wanting to put up their app for free.) This trade off is typically okay for iFolk though.

If the market isn’t sigficanlty large so that 144 people will pay 99 cents a year for the app (the minimum requirement to cover the developer’s cost) than the application is probably not tested and developed to a high enough standard that I want to run it on my cell. I consider my cellphone production hardware, and treat it as such.

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

#373

Post by max76 »

wolco wrote: post #255
scarface74 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple has thus done the world a favor. The last thing we need is more cross platform not quite native apps... But as far as $99, between my $300 a year Linux Academy subscription, $144 a year JetBrains Resharper subscription and the money I spend on Udemy, $99 a year is nothing.

You are my target customer. Willing to throw away hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on licenses and willing brag about it.

If you consider spending money on software licenses a waste of money than you should consider getting out of the business of writing liscenced software. In general I find it’s unhealthy to work on products you don’t believe in.

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

#374

Post by marco1 »

They dropped in-app subscriptions on Android as well in May 2018. But why?

Unless I’m mistaken, the Google Play Developer Policy allows you to use a different payments provider, such as Stripe, in a case like Netflix or Spotify’s:

> Developers […] must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases: […] Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself […]

Source: https://play.google.com/intl/en/about/monetization-ads/

At least in the past, Skype has been doing exactly that, for example.

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

#375

Post by jen729w »

notSupplied wrote: post #364
filleduchaos wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you ignore the biggest glaring difference both things are the same.

We should consider one other party: your credit card provider. I've always believed that they should be the ones providing subscription management, because scummy "hope they forget to cancel!" business practices exist offline too, so Apple could never become the central place for managing all of your subscriptions.

Funny you mention that. I have a friend who works as a 'think up interesting new products' person for one of Australia's big 4 banks. On their list of stuff to try is some way of centrally managing your subscriptions for you.

No idea how they'd pull it off – do you have to set up relationships with every provider, globally?! – but it's certainly an interesting idea. The number of subscriptions we have is only going in one direction.

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

#376

Post by mhh__ »

max76 wrote: post #141
stemuk wrote: post #136

Personally I feel like the most ridiculous part about the App Store is Apples so called "developer program". Charging 99€ a Year for a nearly nonexistent service is absurd, especially since they are already taking the 30% cut. I am a flutter developer myself, so technically I could publish all my apps on iOS and Android with minimal changes. But since Apples developer program would eat up a significant portion of my…

I like the $99/yr bar of entry. That, combined with the more rigid review process, keeps the App Store's average app quality higher than the Play Store's.

What difference does it make? Average app quality is surely a pointless metric given that people tend to spend their own money carefully (Or at least I do, I've spent £10 total on apps in my life)

Some people were up in arms about crap being pushed onto Steam, and it had no long term effect (Before or after anything was done about it)

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

#377

Post by etse »

sah2ed wrote: post #361
etse wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

OK, here’s your original claim about what you were convinced about Apple’s strategy with respect to competition from web/ads companies like Google: “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?” I pointed to the explanation given in 2010 by the founder/CEO of Apple, regarding their stanc…

I think there's some misunderstanding about what I'm saying, but unfortunately, I don't think clarification will make this discussion any more fruitful for either of us. I'm sorry, I think it's best for me to disengage for now.

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

#378

Post by scarface74 »

pentae wrote: post #185
scarface74 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how websites have abused push notifications I don’t blame them. A happy medium would be only to allow push notifications for websites that the user has saved to their home screen.

That could work. Though i'd argue by now users know what they know what they are getting themselves into when accepting a push notification - and the notifications pane in settings for disabling them has been working just fine.

It would keep expectations more consistent. A website that was saved to the home screen would be a signal that the user wanted to treat it as an app. When they delete the website from their home screen, they would stop getting notifications. Apple could even manage website notifications in that case in the same settings screen as apps.

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

#379

Post by dirkgently »

dang wrote: post #354
dirkgently wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Good riddance.

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

#380

Post by tkxxx7 »

sjwright wrote: post #187
pentae wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except 1Password is a huge and very well known product, and it could be argued that the software takes places outside the app and therefore is exempt from IAP.

AgileBits are a very small private company with just one noteworthy product and fewer than 100 employees. Calling them "huge and very well known" is objectively absurd.

> Except 1Password is a huge and very well known product

> AgileBits are a very small private company

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