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We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

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Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#51

Post by dijit »

sschueller wrote: post #33
perlpimp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially that they keep the 30% if someone refunds your app. If it would be 15% or less okay, but 30% and keep the proceeds? Seems to be sort of straddling the legality line.

Apple Does not refund the fee? That's insane! On top of that I need to pay apple $100 per year to keep my app in the store. Even PayPal has been refunding the transaction fees (at least until recently).

Not sure about the App Store, but I think the parent was talking about steam.

Steam does not refund the 30%.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#52

Post by millstone »

dchest wrote: post #20
viraptor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And dont get me started on paying for updates! I think this really depends on implementation. Paying for bugfixes? No, thanks. Paying for a major version bump like new ms office where you don't really need to upgrade and will be supported anyway? Sure.

What about paying for compatibility with the latest macOS? Of course, no user would like to pay for that, but the reality of Apple universe is that developers have to spend a lot of time fixing compatibility issues caused by Apple.

What example do you have in mind? Compatibility updates ought to be free point releases.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#53

Post by ncr100 »

cstrat wrote: post #2

Firstly I want to say that as a user I hate using the Mac App Store - mainly for all the reasons posted there. There is one large benefit which is often forgotten. When I use the App Store I don't need to worry about your website/database getting hacked or leaking my personal data/credit card information. This is mostly avoided by indie developers using Stripe or some other popular payment gateway, but it is still a…

This could be fixed by your Bank or VISA with e.g. virtual credit cards.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#54

Post by buboard »

pjmlp wrote: post #35

> Apple takes 30% and that is not sustainable to run a company and pay salleries Yet plenty of other companies do business on this model. And where are they going to go? GNU/Linux? Good luck making a sustainable business selling desktop software there.

Windows?

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#55

Post by jdnenej »

dijit wrote: post #50
taurath wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple taking 30% of that... for what? Payment processing is a 4% thing. It’s in the app developers interest to make it not have errors. It’s just for access to the market. That is the only value Apple truly brings, outside of the brand and a privacy commitment

People get hung up on apple having a 30% entrance fee, but that didn't come out of nowhere. I work in the video games industry and access to steam or other first parties (Sony/Microsoft) is 30%, no negotiations. You could argue that first parties such as sony/microsoft have subtle costs involved such as printing of disks, but that's paid for before market by the publisher. The thing you pay for is: content distributi…

The amount of value steam provides on top of payment processing and distribution is immense. Valve basically single handedly created Linux gaming. Their client is so many years ahead of everything else with the forums, workshop, broadcast streaming, streaming to your tv, gamepad support and gamepad virtualisation as well as a mountain of developer side APIs for things like inviting friends to games.

Apples 30% would seem a lot more fair if it was possible to side load and install alternative app stores

In comparison apples offering is little more than "we have a huge captive audience on a proprietary system. Pay us or miss out on half of the market"

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#56

Post by panpanna »

dijit wrote: post #50
taurath wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple taking 30% of that... for what? Payment processing is a 4% thing. It’s in the app developers interest to make it not have errors. It’s just for access to the market. That is the only value Apple truly brings, outside of the brand and a privacy commitment

People get hung up on apple having a 30% entrance fee, but that didn't come out of nowhere. I work in the video games industry and access to steam or other first parties (Sony/Microsoft) is 30%, no negotiations. You could argue that first parties such as sony/microsoft have subtle costs involved such as printing of disks, but that's paid for before market by the publisher. The thing you pay for is: content distributi…

You have to remember what these store are replacing.

In case of Sony/Nintendo you pay togt access to their closed hw and ecosystem (for much less than 30% by the way). In case of apple you pay to be included in a catalogue but you can also sell directly to customers.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#57

Post by millstone »

pojntfx wrote: post #28
askafriend wrote: post #21

I'm sorry but as a user, I trust my relationship with Apple more than I trust random third party devs. As a user, I want Apple to lock down the system and make things hard for developers. As a developer, I empathize with my perspective as a user and build products that take this into account.

As a user, I want my system to use containerization for me to not worry about where I get my apps from. You know, like Flatpak does it. This isn't really an argument for modern OSes such as desktop Linux anymore.

apt-get and yum and pacman and the rest do not enforce containerization.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#58

Post by panpanna »

tzury wrote: post #17

If you run your company smart, then publish your software in both places, your own website and AppStore. Users who trust direct relationship with you, will download directly, enjoy better prices (30% commission omitted) and rapid updates. At the same time you will not lose a whole marketshare of users for which AppStore is the "go-to" address for buying software. You can then skill up your SEO capabilities and optimi…

I think this is explicitly forbidden by app store rules.

It is definitely the case for the iOS app store anyway.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#59

Post by millstone »

croh wrote: post #4

Apple's popularity is over-hyped and manufactured by PR teams same like KPOP. Company ONLY cares for money, nothing else. Worst part of it is selling security as feature. As it is mentioned in last few weeks somewhere here, Chinese users data is being managed by Chinese firm from last year but apple announced it in last month SILENTELY. Sadly nobody wants to talk against apple. You get downvoted immediately. http://v…

That link is five years old and does not mention China.

Re: We are leaving the Apple App Store and all its problems

#60

Post by Illniyar »

They kind of bury the lead here. They can't have their app on the appstore because:

" While we still updated our applications in time, Apple did not review them for the AppStore, and instead rejected them first for a crash (sigh!), and later for requiring UI changes, including showing a Save As panel for each generated file. Now this may not sound like much, this is a serious issue for a document scan application which easily generates hundreds of files in an hour, and thousands of files a day, with file names automatically generated, either thru counters, or advanced auto-id features, such as barcodes."

Even if Apple later took back the rejection I bet this was the last straw.

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