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Apple, Epic, and the App Store

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Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#481

Post by tomComb »

harryf wrote: post #391
cromwellian wrote: post #352

"But Apple needs to fund the App Store. XCode, payment processing, reviewers, it all costs money". Yes, very little in comparison. Apple made $50 billion in revenue from the App Store in 2019. $50 BILLION. The data centers costs to serve up this are miniscule in comparison. Apple could build 50 datacenters PER YEAR EVERY YEAR for that revenue. Reviewers? A staff of 10,000 fulltime reviewers paid $200k per year would…

This is a great picking apart of Apples justification but I think the issue that most irks everyone who’s not apologizing for Apple is where did this magic number 30% come from? Which market forces created it? Here on HN most of us probably feel that product manager at Apple licked their finger, felt the wind and said “Yeah 30% seems about the most we can get away with” And what irks even more is once Apple set the p…

When Apple announced Apple news it was widely reported (there is no official figure) that they were demanding and getting a 50% cut.

Gawd I hope the web can remain competitive with the proprietary platforms!

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#482

Post by zem »

askafriend wrote: post #308
schoolornot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call a spade a spade. Not even the mafia extorted businesses for 30%. I'd argue an act of digital eminent domain is in order. Imagine being a store owner and having to give a 30% kickback to your landlord.

> Call a spade a spade. Not even the mafia extorted businesses for 30%. What do you call Steam, Xbox, Nintendo, Best Buy, Game Stop, Playstation, Microsoft...

rent seekers. why, what do you call them?

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#483

Post by jpindar »

three_seagrass wrote: post #424
acomjean wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. The game is free, "V-bucks" you buy, I think you just get character/weapon skins that aren't required. I don't love the setup, but since kids are hanging out on fortnite having it free lets everyone who wants into that world.

I think they're referring to swapping in funny money to obfuscate customer ability to estimate the costs. It's similar to how slot machines require tokens, but I don't think that's quite gambling. The gambling part comes in with loot boxes, where you're essentially paying to roll the dice to get something of value.

Fortnite doesn't have loot boxes.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#484

Post by Despegar »

pests wrote: post #444
misnome wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but that's outside of Fortnite. Inside Fortnite they have a monopoly on selling items, right?

The core point your parent was trying to make is that Fortnite is not an open market. No one but Epic provides goods to the Epic store. Apple allowing third party developers is the distinction being made.

Apple's platforms aren't an open market either. They allow third party developers to develop for their platforms, subject to you agreeing to their terms.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#485

Post by elondaits »

three_seagrass wrote: post #424
acomjean wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow. The game is free, "V-bucks" you buy, I think you just get character/weapon skins that aren't required. I don't love the setup, but since kids are hanging out on fortnite having it free lets everyone who wants into that world.

I think they're referring to swapping in funny money to obfuscate customer ability to estimate the costs. It's similar to how slot machines require tokens, but I don't think that's quite gambling. The gambling part comes in with loot boxes, where you're essentially paying to roll the dice to get something of value.

It's not just obfuscation... you can only buy set amounts of V-Bucks, which not always match with the cost of the skins, etc.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#486

Post by sudosysgen »

kmeisthax wrote: post #363
sudosysgen wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes me think, what prevents me from putting a lens in front to the projector and directly imaging the projection into a camera sensor? Modern cameras can record lossless 48bpp equiv. video in 4K, it would pretty much be a 1:1 copy given sufficiently sophisticated optics. Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason why no one is ripping movies using Prima Cinema projectors and commodity grade hardwar…

Well, there's some practical considerations - getting the refresh rate sync'd up, avoiding or filtering moire patterns out, getting the colors and such just right, things like that. However, it's possible enough that most theater projectors already have DRM restrictions that shut the system down if you start fiddling with the image path. The password to authorize an image path change is only handed out to supervisors…

Modern cameras will actually automatically sync their shutter rates to any flickering light sources. As for colors, they are designed to let you apply lookup-table based corrections by providing huge amounts of color information you can correct later.

Crucially, this approach wouldn't trigger anything because all of the equipment would work outside of the projector. You would add the lenses and camera aligned and just after the projector. In effect, the system would take the place of the screen in the image path. I don't know of any protected image screen that can detect tampering.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#487

Post by scarface74 »

cromwellian wrote: post #352

"But Apple needs to fund the App Store. XCode, payment processing, reviewers, it all costs money". Yes, very little in comparison. Apple made $50 billion in revenue from the App Store in 2019. $50 BILLION. The data centers costs to serve up this are miniscule in comparison. Apple could build 50 datacenters PER YEAR EVERY YEAR for that revenue. Reviewers? A staff of 10,000 fulltime reviewers paid $200k per year would…

So now we are telling companies what they should make?

We know that margins aren’t 64% - it’s right in their financial statements.

The costs to run the Apple store should be included as a sunk platform cost of the phone just like OSX. The cost to run the store is marginal. The cost to serve up an additional developer app, to review an additional app, and to let someone buy one, is an insignificant fraction.

Would Apple be in their right to charge $25K fee to use their SDK? We would they be within their right to charge a bandwidth fee like Amazon does with the Kindle?

Should all software companies only charge nominal fees because the cost of an additional customer is low?

The cost of credit card transaction is around 3% + $0.25/transaction. While of course that’s much less than 30% for anything over $1.00, most of the revenue from the App Store comes from crap like Candy Crush with in app purchases of gems. Especially since the major players like Netflix and Spotify don’t allow in app purchases.

Let’s not pretend that the money is coming from indy developers selling useful products - most of it is coming from the tokens and loot boxes bought by whales.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#488

Post by notriddle »

projektfu wrote: post #426

I think it’s absurd that you can neither buy a kindle book from the iOS kindle app nor the Amazon app. How user unfriendly! And yet, Apple runs their own digitsl bookstore... since there’s no way to remove 30% revenue from apple’s own venture, they’re using a monopoly position to monopolize another market. Oh, but Apple isn’t a monopoly because there’s Android. Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly? You could alw…

Windows still has 87% market share on desktop and laptop web browsing statistics. It was higher at the time that trial took place, and cell phone web browsing wasn't as popular back then. iOS still has less than half of the smartphone market.

p.s. Right to Repair laws ought to make it illegal for Apple to prevent users from installing third-party software on the iPhone. This talk of them being some sort of "monopoly" is totally irrelevant.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#489

Post by scarface74 »

naikrovek wrote: post #373
bttrfl wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following your logic, Fortnite's add-ons should clearly be free since the cost to make and sell them is minuscule in comparison to 400M Epic made in April alone [0]. [0] https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/epic-games-shareholders-s...

You may not know how to follow logic. No one is saying that Epic are doing bad things in order to maintain their monopoly position. Epic doesn't have a monopoly on any market. People ARE saying that Apple are doing bad things to maintain their monopoly position, and others are justifying that by saying that "running a business is expensive" as if that justifies a monopoly or monopolistic actions.

But you did say that Apple should lower costs because their marginal cost is $0. The same is true for Epic.

Re: Apple, Epic, and the App Store

#490

Post by sudosysgen »

josephcsible wrote: post #288
sudosysgen wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes me think, what prevents me from putting a lens in front to the projector and directly imaging the projection into a camera sensor? Modern cameras can record lossless 48bpp equiv. video in 4K, it would pretty much be a 1:1 copy given sufficiently sophisticated optics. Which leads me to the conclusion that the only reason why no one is ripping movies using Prima Cinema projectors and commodity grade hardwar…

The movies are probably watermarked, so they'd know who leaked them, and then sue the leakers for all they're worth.

Indeed. There are, however, ways around that.
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