Yeah, I wouldn't call it out and out collusion. If the first store did 20%, it's likely all the stores would have followed suit on that price point. 30% is likely the most they can take that people will tolerate.
They could take 70% or 95% and there will still be posts saying that the market is 3.5 billion people and 5% isn't bad because Apple/Google do all of the marketing.
Please, be careful throwing this kind of idea out there, people at Apple/Google, who obviously have run out of ideas long ago, may be reading this.
How is that fraud? "Everyone, buy this product and return it to the store for a full refund," doesn't sound like fraud to me. It doesn't result in personal or financial gain to the people perpetrating it, either. edit: so who is in trouble here? The person calling for people to do it with their twitter following or the twitter followers? I'm not saying that buying the app and returning it is not fraud if you entered…
You would be fraudulently filling out the request form - unless Apple has a "Reason for refund: For the Lulz" in its drop down box. You would also probably committing some sort of credit card fraud by enacting a transaction in bad faith. I think the form is definitely fraud but I wouldn't be surprised if Visa went after you for something as well, they need to actually process all those charges and charge backs and it…
If I say the product wasn't useful to me, that's going to be completely true.
The iPhone is an Apple product. The App Store is an Apple product. The libraries and development tools needed to create iOS apps are Apple products. Traditionally the company that develops a product gets to decide what features that product has. There are various laws that require a product be safe to use, is not misrepresented and does what it is advertised to do, but beyond that there are very few actual features o…
It's different when TV manufactures put Dolby in charge of advertising and supporting the feature. Then charge them a cut of their profit, with little to no recourse or dispute mechanisms. Besides that, it could be argued that running software is the feature. What software does is not a feature of the iPhone. Like a recipe is not a feature of a stove. We are buying the device, it's a tool, and we should control how i…
A stove is not a satisfying example. The recipe in this case is developed using Apple's kitchen utensils and delivered in a recipe book printed by Apple. There are entanglements between Apple and the Developer that go beyond the "tool vs method" abstraction. Some of these are forced on the Developer.
So, they do have an incentive to let the iTunes fraud continue. Seems like a couple times a year one of my families accounts is hacked, they spend $100s and we have to dispute. We get the money back but it's costly to the devs at 30%
I would assume fraud would be fully refunded, no? This is more about legitimate Apple-sanctioned returns, not fraudulent transactions. I may be wrong, but I hope I'm not lol
I'm glad that Apple can't remotely delete apps from my device. It would be somewhat dystopic if they had that capability.
But they could make the refund wait until you do! It wouldn't be foolproof in case of backups but it would be a lot better than an honor system.
That's true; that would be the better solution. Requesting a refund before deleting the app would give the user an error message telling them to delete it.
People keep talking about 30% cut but it's actually more than that if you look outside of U.S.
Apple takes more than 30% cut for in-app purchases made in other countries. For example, an in-app-purchase (IAP) you sell in USD for $15.99 is translated to 1249 Indian Rupees and you get a proceed of 741 Rupees which is only 59%. So Apple keeps the rest 41%. Today's (when I wrote this) exchange rate shows approx. 76 rupees for 1 USD so the amount they charge the user is pretty accurate but Apple put so much wiggle room in their favor. This is true for other currencies as well.
I think this is part of what is holding back iPad software. You can't charge $100 for Sketch and lose $30 when someone asks for a refund. Apple designed this around $1-$10 apps where losing $2 at volume is fine. What is worse, is that Apple doesn't remove the app from the user's device. When you get a refund of a paid app it is on the honor system for them to delete it. It is removed from their account, so they can n…
I'm glad that Apple can't remotely delete apps from my device. It would be somewhat dystopic if they had that capability.
Does this mean if there's a developer I don't like, I can buy their stuff and refund it to arbitrarily cost them money at no cost to myself and there's nothing they can do about it? That seems ... not great, especially these days. What happens when mobs of internet morons decide review bombing isn't sufficient and realize Apple will help them cause direct financial harm instead?
I think this is part of what is holding back iPad software. You can't charge $100 for Sketch and lose $30 when someone asks for a refund. Apple designed this around $1-$10 apps where losing $2 at volume is fine. What is worse, is that Apple doesn't remove the app from the user's device. When you get a refund of a paid app it is on the honor system for them to delete it. It is removed from their account, so they can n…
Wow, well they got their money and don't care about developers.
The family plan settings on an account are certainly not an example of getting it right. You can share a library, have multiple linked accounts, but the instant any one of those accounts fires up a game all other accounts are locked out of the entire library. Not just the game that is currently running, but the everything. Valve missed the entire point of having a family account setup and every time I mention this I…
It's not close to an ideal solution, but I've started working around this by distributing all new games I get between three different accounts, all part of the same family. That way playing a game only renders 1/3 of the library unavailable to others, instead of all of it.
If the games you play are single-player (mine are), then simply run steam in offline mode to play your games. That way anyone sharing your account is unaffected. You can also use shady steam_api.dll replacements to not tell Steam you're playing at all (I'm actually quite glad something like this exists, I've been locked out of shutdown activation servers and other dead platforms in the past)
Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations, in the common law of torts, occurs when one person intentionally damages someone else's contractual or business relationships with a third party causing economic harm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
Yes, but you need to serve notice to the offending party, which might be hard if they are not a US person... likewise collecting damages, etc
There might be something subtly illegal here - but I assume Apple would just refuse to honor the refund if they thought it was fraudulent - so it wouldn't be up to Apple to collect damages - it'd be up to the other party to collect their refund (assuming they can legally compel Apple to pay up)