Apple, Epic, and the App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#221

Post by TACIXAT » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #74

cschneid wrote: post #27

The Hey saga emphasized that Apple has multiple products interacting in a single app store. * Screened apps - Apple only lets "safe" apps into the store. * Discoverability - Apple in theory lets users find apps that they didn't know about before. Customer Acquisition * Payments - Apple makes it easy to accept payments, for their 30% fee. One or all of those are useful and great. Where I have an issue is when they use…

> That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w/ google's similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don't want. Hey didn't want to accept payments via apple, but Apple's market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to. In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting…

I don't own a Walmart. I do own a phone. I'm largely restricted with what I can do on my phone.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#222

Post by x3c » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:04 PM UTC

eyesee wrote: post #149

nemothekid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume their costs are just, Credit Card Fees, Infrastructure Fees (Bandwidth, Storage), Reviewers Salary. Not sure this adds up to 30%. I think the real reason is that when the Apple store was started, they looked around at the current prices for "software distribution". Retail was like 70%, and other app stores; for example the Danger Hiptop / T-mobile Sidekick charged 60% for their apps store, and the carriers w…

CC processing fees may exceed this. Just using Stripe [1] as an example, 2.9% + 0.30 per transaction means $.329 for retail CC pricing. Surely Apple gets a discount, but it's price of competitive alternative that matters. Part of the problem with this whole market is that we're talking about zero marginal cost goods. Taking away frictional costs of transaction, distribution and support, the economic argument is for p…

What about other countries where micro transactions are not that expensive... eg. UPI of India.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#223

Post by syshum » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #123

Despegar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nope. If a person "owns" a piece of hardware, it should be legal to jailbreak it without any consequences (except perhaps lack of support for 3rd party software) and companies that sell products that build off of jailbroken products should be 100% legal. All of those things are true today. The question was: >Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? And the answer to that is: obvious…

Correct. It's been perfectly legal since 2010. >The U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled on Monday that consumers who circumvent digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved applications—a practice often colloquially known as “jailbreaking”—for noninfringing reasons should be exempted from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). https://www.macworld.com…

That exception is for Smart Phones, and I think has expired even

This would not apply to something like Prima Cimea, nor a John Deere Tractor, or 1000's of other things.

Also the wording of the exception bu LoC was very open to interpretation and not as powerful as people commonly think

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#224

Post by cvs268 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

romanoderoma wrote: post #119

vageli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w/ google's similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don't want. Hey didn't want to accept payments via apple, but Apple's market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to. In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting…

Because you can buy the same exact item on Zalando and put it on fire if you want to Imagine if you could buy shoes only at Walmart because you bought the shoe rack there.

That's some Ai-powered "Smart Shoe-Rack" with blockchain technology, running on some kubernetes clusters with 5G connectivity right there!

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#225

Post by x3c » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:05 PM UTC

benbayard wrote: post #38

orliesaurus wrote: post #14

Okay this is going to sound stupid but maybe someone else feels like me about it: I don't understand why Apple has to take such a big chunk from transactions of in-app purchases? Similarly Google. Why 30%? Why not 5%? That feels like it would be more honest. Is it just because "they can"?

Part of the reason is that Apple & Google don't charge credit card processing fees. So for a $1 app, 30% is ~ their cost. Of course, that logic doesn't scale to things like $9.99/mo subscriptions and the like. Apple could take out credit card processing fees and then charge 5%, but up until now they haven't had a reason to change. Perhaps we will see change here, who knows?

That logic doesn’t scale of for other countries that have friendly micro transactions platforms..

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#226

Post by d1zzy » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

GeekyBear wrote: post #123

Despegar wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nope. If a person "owns" a piece of hardware, it should be legal to jailbreak it without any consequences (except perhaps lack of support for 3rd party software) and companies that sell products that build off of jailbroken products should be 100% legal. All of those things are true today. The question was: >Should closed hardware (that owns its entire stack) even be legal to sell? And the answer to that is: obvious…

Correct. It's been perfectly legal since 2010. >The U.S. Librarian of Congress ruled on Monday that consumers who circumvent digital protections on smartphones to install unapproved applications—a practice often colloquially known as “jailbreaking”—for noninfringing reasons should be exempted from prosecution under the anti-circumvention section of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). https://www.macworld.com…

Yes, the "consumers" should be exempted, not anyone selling solutions to do this or just giving them up for free. Which essentially means that unless you are an uber hacker that does this for their iPhones, nobody else can do it. It's pretty pointless in practice.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#227

Post by codyb » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:07 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #81

smnrchrds wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On every discussion about this topic on HN, there has been at least one but typically many more commenters saying they love the walled garden and they would pay a premium for it. They trust Apple so they are OK with paying them 30% more instead of paying the app developers directly. They would never dare recommend Windows or Linux or Android to their parents but they would happily recommend them to get iPhones and iP…

First, I embrace your choice to not go with a locked down, un-free device. That is entirely within the spirit of being a hacker. Second, I very much argue that if there was no app store, consumers would pay 30% less. The app store and ecosystem provide something for developers, and if you remove the app store, the developers either do it for themselves, or pay somebody else to do it for them. Of course, if there was…

Hmm... I'm pretty tech savvy I'd say, but I don't think there's anyway the benefits I'd gain outside Apple's wall garden would compare to the ecosystem I live in now.

Apple's rent seeking a bit with the App Store, but I have faith in their privacy protections, that they'll continue to support my devices for a long time after purchase, and that they'll be fairly prompt with security updates to all my devices.

And cobbling together the connections between ear phones, watch, phone, computer and TV would be quite tedious, probably no where near as smooth, and a pain in the ass to upkeep.

At the end of the day, besides my computer, I don't really give a hoot about side loading apps from different app stores, or I dunno... customizing things more I guess? I'm not really sure.

There is the possibility increased app store competition (say, if it was ruled anti-competitive to only allow Apple's App Store on Apple Products) would make Apple's App Store better though. Discovery can be kind of a pain in my opinion.

So, I'm not opposed to there being more app stores, but it'd probably take a fair amount of nudging to get me to actually try one.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#228

Post by arsenico » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

smnrchrds wrote: post #45

baby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Who?

On every discussion about this topic on HN, there has been at least one but typically many more commenters saying they love the walled garden and they would pay a premium for it. They trust Apple so they are OK with paying them 30% more instead of paying the app developers directly. They would never dare recommend Windows or Linux or Android to their parents but they would happily recommend them to get iPhones and iP…

I'm curious, how many apps do you have installed on your phone, and how many of them are paid ones? Especially, ones using subscription models? Less than 10, or dozens?

I have over a dozen and I really appreciate the ability to manage (or at least view) those in one place. Managing my non-app (website) subscriptions is quite a mess.

And it is only one advantage of the walled garden. I don't have to think much when I install an app - is it from the developer, or someone has tampered with it?

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#229

Post by pwinnski » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

orliesaurus wrote: post #14

Okay this is going to sound stupid but maybe someone else feels like me about it: I don't understand why Apple has to take such a big chunk from transactions of in-app purchases? Similarly Google. Why 30%? Why not 5%? That feels like it would be more honest. Is it just because "they can"?

At launch, Apple operated the App Store hoping to break even, and 30% wasn't quite doing it at first.

On a $.99 app, they still might not. I mean, they might, given economies of scale, but barely. Free apps incur costs with zero compensation. If all apps cost 99 cents, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. If Apple were still operating the App Store at break-even, I don't think we'd be having this conversation.

Apps with IAPs that are $9.99, that's a lot of extra profit. Apple might argue that they help offset all of the free apps, but obviously a company like Epic is going to feel singled out.

Apple is no longer only trying to break even with the App Store. They have openly stated that it is profitable, and that they want it to be more so. Epic and others with higher-than-99-cents sales don't like giving up so much, and I can't say I blame them.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#230

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #135

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actual harm => consumers end up paying more for the apps because the app developers have to increase their price to cover Apple's cut (which is more like a shakedown). So what? All markets work like this. Food prices go up whenever there fuel prices increase, so the grocery store increases the cost to cover the higher cut taken by the supply chain. Apple created this entire market - they could've been far more anti…

> So what? All markets work like this. Food prices go up whenever there fuel prices increase If it were a monopoly then anti-competitive practices, that would result in price increases, would be illegal . > Apple created this entire market It doesn't matter if they created the whole market. That is completely irrelevant to the legality of anti-competitive practices. Now, they are a monopoly, and they are no longer to…

It's not a monopoly. There is an alternative which dominates the market share. This simply is not a monopoly.

> Apple absolutely has market dominance over apps that are sold on the iphone.

This is just wrong. This would hold true if no alternative exists. There currently is not an app the iPhone offers that isn't matched in functionality anywhere else.

This doesn't pass basic legal sniff tests.