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App stores, trust and anti-trust

ben-evans.com

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Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#71

Post by simion314 »

alex_t wrote: post #42
simion314 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have an ebook store and want to give iOS users a nice experience when buying books Apple will make the books more expensive with 30% and on top of that if I want to give my users information that they have the option to buy cheaper from my website I can't , Apple is preventing their users to get informed/educated on how to get cheaper stuff because this information costs Apple money. Btw you can have apps that d…

> If I have an ebook store and want to give iOS users a nice experience when buying books Apple will make the books more expensive with 30% and on top of that if I want to give my users information that they have the option to buy cheaper from my website I can't , Apple is preventing their users to get informed/educated on how to get cheaper stuff because this information costs Apple money. Well i go back to my argum…

Sure, if is not the excuse that the wall garden if for the user safety or for the user privacy and in fact it makes things more expensive for the user and it prevents user getting informed then we change to the excuse that is Apple hardware and Apple can fuck their customers as long as is legal and PR is good enough,

You are defending Apple not allowing developers to present their customers a simple text information, at least for now your banking apps are not taxed by Apple.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#72

Post by tempsy »

scarface74 wrote: post #68
tempsy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given that the average tenure for a rank and file at a tech co is like 3 years, no i don’t think a significant number of them really think they want to see a tiny number of big tech cos maintain their monopoly so their RSUs go up 15% a year

Amazon’s stock doubled in a year.

yes so have a lot of tech stocks - i’m obviously talking about a normal year - not one where the Fed prints $3T in a few months and creates the first stock bubble to happen in a recession lol

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#73

Post by panpanna »

danudey wrote: post #64
panpanna wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the $99/yr app store fee they already pay?

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Epic's $99 doesn't cover the cost of Apple actually hosting and distributing Fortnite and its updates to users.

Well, Apple TOS forbids them using their own servers for updates (which btw Facebook ignores and gets away with)..

But what would be a fair price? Given how cheap bandwidth and storage is would $50,000 suffice? Surely that's closer to apples real costs than 30% of hundreds of million dollars they want now?

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#74

Post by simion314 »

scarface74 wrote: post #52
simion314 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have an ebook store and want to give iOS users a nice experience when buying books Apple will make the books more expensive with 30% and on top of that if I want to give my users information that they have the option to buy cheaper from my website I can't , Apple is preventing their users to get informed/educated on how to get cheaper stuff because this information costs Apple money. Btw you can have apps that d…

Can I put a book in your hypothetical ebook store without giving you a cut?

If I made such a store I would use the web hosting model, you have a super cheap plan and if you want more feature you pay extra, I would care about your sales similar on how web hosting do not care about what you sell from your website.

Why is web hosting so cheap and you have so many options? Because of competition, allow competition with at least 5 stores and you will see different prices and features.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#75

Post by alex_t »

simion314 wrote: post #74
scarface74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I put a book in your hypothetical ebook store without giving you a cut?

If I made such a store I would use the web hosting model, you have a super cheap plan and if you want more feature you pay extra, I would care about your sales similar on how web hosting do not care about what you sell from your website. Why is web hosting so cheap and you have so many options? Because of competition, allow competition with at least 5 stores and you will see different prices and features.

Let's say running an ebook service, that cost cost you some money, a portion of your profit will go into building this shop, that will also be used by another party, because you have millions of users and a good trusted brand. in order to sell on that market you sell a some subcription based like a web hosting.

Party B, after using your premuim service, decide he will use your service just as a frontstore, sending your customer to his own website to complete purchase.

in your opinion that is a fair situation?

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#76

Post by mvanbaak »

panpanna wrote: post #53
alex_t wrote: post #36

I am trying to understand why is this business model from apple not acceptable, from my point of view the way apple makes money on the apple store is with the 30% fees on transations. In exchange they give out tools, libraries and services for free. Do i get that wrong? with that in mind isnt the request of Epic something like: "We want access to all your platform and tools for free?"

> Do i get that wrong? Yes. > We want access to all your platform and tools for free? Well, they do pay the $99 annual fee + cost of a Mac required for submitting to the store :) More seriously, you are wrong because Epic/Spotify/etc don't mind giving apple money when they use their payment infrastructure _but_ want to be able to also use their own infrastructure and sell things 30% cheaper. And yes, for companies wi…

You are missing the fact that epic is not a payment provider. So if they dont pay apple the 30%, they will have to pay stripe or adyen or any other psp. Most of those ask 0.25$ + 2% per transaction. For a fortnite skin of 0,99 or even whole apps that cost 0,99 that 30% is lower than the costs of other psp’s. And apple provides a lot more than just payments for that 30%. They handle disputes and refunds etc. and the handle all the money exchanges with sales is other countries etc

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#77

Post by simion314 »

alex_t wrote: post #75
simion314 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I made such a store I would use the web hosting model, you have a super cheap plan and if you want more feature you pay extra, I would care about your sales similar on how web hosting do not care about what you sell from your website. Why is web hosting so cheap and you have so many options? Because of competition, allow competition with at least 5 stores and you will see different prices and features.

Let's say running an ebook service, that cost cost you some money, a portion of your profit will go into building this shop, that will also be used by another party, because you have millions of users and a good trusted brand. in order to sell on that market you sell a some subcription based like a web hosting. Party B, after using your premuim service, decide he will use your service just as a frontstore, sending yo…

Yes, my web hosting is not jealous if I pay them 100$/year and I do sales of 1 million. If say my site generates too much traffic then I will have to upgrade the CPU,HDD etc. They make money when I am successful and use their resources. I can always change the web hosting and still reach my existing customers where with Apple I can't reach my existing customers if Apple kicks me out(see Epic)

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#78

Post by alex_t »

simion314 wrote: post #77
alex_t wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say running an ebook service, that cost cost you some money, a portion of your profit will go into building this shop, that will also be used by another party, because you have millions of users and a good trusted brand. in order to sell on that market you sell a some subcription based like a web hosting. Party B, after using your premuim service, decide he will use your service just as a frontstore, sending yo…

Yes, my web hosting is not jealous if I pay them 100$/year and I do sales of 1 million. If say my site generates too much traffic then I will have to upgrade the CPU,HDD etc. They make money when I am successful and use their resources. I can always change the web hosting and still reach my existing customers where with Apple I can't reach my existing customers if Apple kicks me out(see Epic)

I dont think that is a fair comparison, you took away all the issues with branding, your customer dont really care if you are hosting a website yourself or aws or anything else, probably most of them wont even know what that means.

If you want to start to sell ebooks (or anything really) you get an advantage by placing it in a well known store, you can prove me wrong but i think that is a fair statement.

So it is really hard for me to accept as fair a situation where you could build a store, build the brand reputation, host other people product and not get a compensation.

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#79

Post by amelius »

scarface74 wrote: post #50
amelius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about: one developer puts a "launcher app" in the App store, and all the other developers use that to launch their apps?

That’s also against the rules.

And how about: one developer creates a web-browser with some features that will make it start fast on certain web-apps that don't use javascript but only wasm, while other developers create apps for that browser?

Re: App stores, trust and anti-trust

#80

Post by scarface74 »

simion314 wrote: post #77
alex_t wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say running an ebook service, that cost cost you some money, a portion of your profit will go into building this shop, that will also be used by another party, because you have millions of users and a good trusted brand. in order to sell on that market you sell a some subcription based like a web hosting. Party B, after using your premuim service, decide he will use your service just as a frontstore, sending yo…

Yes, my web hosting is not jealous if I pay them 100$/year and I do sales of 1 million. If say my site generates too much traffic then I will have to upgrade the CPU,HDD etc. They make money when I am successful and use their resources. I can always change the web hosting and still reach my existing customers where with Apple I can't reach my existing customers if Apple kicks me out(see Epic)

You’re not talking about web building. You’re talking about an online store.

If I get kicked off of Epic’s platform. Where do I go?

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