11–20 of 387 posts
Makes me think that at some point showing a restaurant menu with prices is soon going to get the ire of Apple for suggesting an offline monetization that they aren’t a part of.
Really at this point Apple control over app store is anti-competitive (and Google over play store), having to rely on community outrage to get stuff like this turned is ridiculous. They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking - force app stores to treat all apps equally according to store defined guidelines (including store owners apps) - any submissions have to be r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly). Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite i…
It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…
It they charged 3% for customers you bring and 30% for customers they bring, your point would be more valid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly). Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite i…
It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…
But that's only a problem because customers are used to searching in that app store (and that's because it's the only one on the platform).
If there was no app store, customers would search on the web, and it turns out that Google Web Search and Bing don't refuse to link to sites that don't give them 30% commission on sales.
Of course PPC ads cost money, but obviously app stores don't let you be a top result on arbitrary searches for free (since obviously that's a limited resource, so it's impossible to do that), so that seems a spurious comparison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your post here exemplifies why apple's behaviour is so problematic - you're left trying to adhere to a set of rules that even Apple can't manage to enforce consistently and correctly, facing the risk of having to pay an unexpected 30% tax on sales (and effectively have to raise prices accordingly). Hopefully this logic is enough to get Apple in bother during their antitrust suits and Investigations - it seems quite i…
It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…
It's a tax if you bring the customer and do all the work. Which most app developers do. It they charged 3% for customers you bring and 30% for customers they bring, your point would be more valid.
I'm glad that Apple backed down this time. > What’s more, Mullenwag told us that he had previously offered to strip other mentions of the paid plans out of the app (even workarounds like when a user views a preview of their own WordPress webpage and then navigates to WordPress.com), only to have those suggestions rejected by Apple. Having to remove those kinds of work-arounds is part of what bugs me about apples cont…
Consider that they backed down only when it became a popular news story at exactly the worst time for them to have it (because of Epic).
Really at this point Apple control over app store is anti-competitive (and Google over play store), having to rely on community outrage to get stuff like this turned is ridiculous. They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking - force app stores to treat all apps equally according to store defined guidelines (including store owners apps) - any submissions have to be r…
One of the biggest issues with Google play store review is they won't actually tell developers which rule they're breaking, as you point out. This is so incredibly developer-hostile that the fact developers keep using the play store pretty much helps make the case they're acting in an anticompetitive manner. It certainly is interesting to note Google removed the title "Non-competition" from clause 4.5 of their develo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not a tax on sales. It is the cost of using their channel to market. If you host the app yourself on your website then how are people going to discover it. For most developers they would buy ads or invest in content or influencer marketing. Those marketing costs are your channel to market and obviously aren't a tax. It's hilarious watching so many people on HN discuss this topic who are completely naive and ign…
It's a tax if you bring the customer and do all the work. Which most app developers do. It they charged 3% for customers you bring and 30% for customers they bring, your point would be more valid.
There are millions of app developers and you are saying that most of them are doing customer acquisition external to the App Store ?
Because I just did various searches for note taking and productivity apps on my phone and no one is buying ads. From my experience only the larger app developers invest in their own customer acquisition whilst the rest all rely on app discovery.