101–110 of 671 posts
This is good for smaller developers, but it doesn't really seem to solve the actual problem? All the people who are willing to go to war with Apple and have teeth are making way more than that…
Yes but many of the larger players who are willing to go to war use the 'its not fair on smaller developers' argument against them. This really slaps down the ability to use that.
Great move! 30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal. Though it should be 15% for everybody, no artificial caps. Moreover, I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal. Today being rejected by Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individual…
Not it isn't a case for anti-trust. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
The judge in the case agreed.
> Judge says the 30% rate is the industry rate— references Steam, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have the same rate.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/09/28/judge-so-far-not-...
Apple are effectively an affialite for your app i.e. they drive traffic to your app through their store.
Most affiliate style relationships the affiliate will receive 30% of whatever is made. It not only these companies it in almost every industry. e.g. Gambling Affiliate deals typically have 30% of whatever the customer loses on the site.
I really do not like Apple. I don't like the app store policies. But 30% is not a case for anything.
Wow. That's amazing. That's a 20% increase in revenue for those eligible. I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue. If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax. 999k --[-15%]--> 849k 1000…
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It can be a problem in practise since the rules aren't fairly or consistently enforced. Look to recent issues with iSH being approved and rejected. Edit: as others have pointed out iSH isn't the best example of this.
While I agree the rules are often inconsistently enforced, and I'm a fan of iSH, I think the real surprise is it was ever approved in the first place, as it seems to clearly be violating the "spirit of the law" regarding Apple being pretty clear they don't want apps that allow arbitrary binary execution. iSH tried to circumvent this with a technicality, and it seems to have initially "worked", but I think it's a poor…
What Apple is really trying to do is prevent apps from changing their behavior after they review them in a silent way to bypass the usual process. The real issue here is that their guidelines don't reflect this and this confuses the reviewers (and evidently commenters here on Hacker News). What needs to happen here is Apple clarifies their guidelines so that we don't have rules that can be inconsistently enforced.
(If you need more to convince you, I'll point you at the stuff I wrote when that was going on: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/).
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Except Unreal Engine actually delivers some value for their cut.
The Apple software/hardware ecosystem delivers no value?
This aurgument is the same as Comcast claiming Netflix is a "free loader" on their network because Netflix was not paying Comcast...
hello, Comcast's customers pay comcast for the use of the network
In the same way, Apples hardware and iOS software are paid for by the END USER of the phone, users pay a HUGE and Excessive cost for these phones, why on earth then should Devs pay a second time
Like with last mile broadband, this is double dipping, in other contexts that would be considered fraud
Antitrust process is probably the biggest known innovation accelerator in XXI century
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Yep. Apple should have handled this like tax brackets: The first million gets taxed 15% and anything beyond that gets taxed 30%. I wonder why they're not doing that and creating all kinds of weird edge cases that will encourage hacky workarounds. I guess they didn't want to lose out on the first million from those who are above the first bracket.
From the annoncement: "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year."
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This is not aimed at solving your problem, this is aimed at helping us small developers build a more sustainable business on the App Store. We will ultimately build more apps and invest more time in supporting and improving our current apps.
> this is aimed at helping us small developers I doubt this was the aim. It suspect its aim was to fend off all this scrutiny on their App Store business. Who knows whether it'll work in avoiding attention from law makers and regulators, but this will do nothing to address the developer's concerns and problem with the App Store.
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Unless you're competing with something Apple is planning to bring out (parental control apps before screen time stats, etc). I don't think I'm competing with Apple at all today, but who knows what they're planning for their next features?
Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry? As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free , on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions),…