An app store monitoring your revenues and the size of your business is a bad sign.
Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
221–230 of 671 posts
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need to distribute on Steam. While it can bring legitimacy to an indie, alternatives exist. Not so with the App Store. Steam wants to disincentivize big companies making their own distribution, which is why they have the regressive split.
> You don't need to distribute on Steam. [...] alternatives exist. Sure, if you want your business to go bankrupt. Itch? I love the place but good luck supporting your business with the number of sales you’ll make if you’re only available there. Epic? GoG? Humble? Those are curated stores; you have to be invited in; you can’t just choose to sell there. And even if you could, they still don’t have anything even remote…
Minecraft didn’t distribute on Steam, they managed just fine.
Neither does Fortnite come to think of it.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#223I’m seeing a lot of positive comments on HN about this: to me it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part. They hope to significantly reduce the pressure on politicians to take a close look at their App store practices by significantly reducing the absolute number of developers suffering the full impact whilst taking the minimum possible hit to their revenue. This has nothing to do with “doing the rig…
And/or are you cynically interpreting this as a piece of PR to rake in the karma? Nearly every act by every person or institution can be interpreted as a cynical attempt to curry favor. Who gets the benefit of a doubt and who gets condemned?
At least condemn those that have a history of malice. Innocent as default does not work for businesses PR. Especially not for FAANG.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#224How about personal accounts (using John Doe instead Acme Inc)?
Also, I'm new to App Store, does it mean they hold your money for (up to) a year so they can decide which bracket you fall into?
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#225Wow. 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…
It's progressive. You pay 15% on first million you make. 30% on amount thereafter. EDIT: It looks like I am wrong, ignore me.
Are you sure you're wrong?
The relevant sentence seems to be "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year." (emphasis mine)
Apple takes the comission as you go, so it sounds like they take 15% of each sale until you hit $1M, and then 30% for every sale after that.
The next year they'd take 30% right from the start though, so a good year followed by a bad one would be unfortunate.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#226Looks nice but it doesn't solve my fundamental problem: 1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app 2. Apple rejects it -or- 2. Apple approves it 3. I ship a new update 4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively. I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can…
At least review process is better than Google's because when we rejected on Play Store we can't get any feedback from Google. They send a template email which says the "problem maybe A or B, check what you have changed". Apple provides screenshots and human written explanation on rejection. I have even talked on the phone with review team several times to discuss the problem. Yes, it sucks that the update may be reje…
Feels a bit like whataboutism. Especially since Apple is worse than Google now.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#227I think a lot of companies would sell digital services in-app with such a percentage that are not considering it now. So it could be a net win for Apple in the end. But I'm also thinking about the lackluster state of the Mac App Store, which is getting more important now with M1 Macs running iOS apps but also all platforms supporting Catalyst apps. Apple could use some momentum for it's larger screen devices (tablets…
Writing is on the wall for the Mac App Store. It’s pretty obvious that now M1 macs run iOS apps that Apple is hoping to make the norm running iOS apps therefor making sure they get their rent payments.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#228Wow. 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…
it's exactly like the freelancer tax brackets in Italy. Everybody jumping through hoops (and or not declaring stuff) to remain under the threshold of 60k/year (was 30k/year). Otherwise tax rate doubles.
In Germany we have "cold progression", so stacking tax brackets. If you earn 35.000€ it's something like (random numbers):
0-9000€ [0%] -> 0€
9000-20.000€ [10%] -> 1100€
20.000-40.000€ [15%] -> 3000€
Total = 4400€
So if you're in the 15% bracket you pay 4400€ which is actually 12.5% in total, and not 5250€ (15%) as some people seem to believe.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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),…
When Apple added Screen Time, they banned other competing apps.
If I recall correctly, the apps they banned were doing things like abusing the VPN function to capture all traffic from the phone, and using that as their mechanism for blocking certain websites (or maybe it was MDM they were abusing...?).
It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.
Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program
#230Let me know when I can make Apps without giving Apple $2000.
As a note I feel especially bad for the (global) poor who can't access 100% of humans because Apple charges luxury pricing.