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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#241

Post by benhurmarcel »

mkl wrote: post #207
Heliosmaster wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really? It's not progressive [1]? This page suggests it is: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/italy/individual/taxes-on-perso... (Yes, this is a foreign third party so may be wrong; I can't read Italian.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax (See the Computation section for how the higher rates only apply to the higher portions of a person's income, with their lower portions taxed less.)

He's talking about freelance people. This link is for employees.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#242

Post by coward8675309 »

Dahoon wrote: post #223
coward8675309 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So had Apple done this but told no one it wouldn’t be PR — and you’d be praising them right now? Would they be allowed to tell the affected developers?

The FAANG are random assortment of companies that share little in common aside from being large. Facebook and Google monetize eyeballs but in very different ways. Amazon is a logistics and retail and PaaS powerhouse. Netflix streams movies. Apple sells hardware and services and, in stark contrast to Facebook and Google, temperamentally despises performance advertising. Google and Apple (and Microsoft and Salesforce and Nintendo and…) have walled garden marketplaces.

Apropos a dubious assertion the grandparent made, Google and Apple are also the driving forces behind the two most feature-filled web browsers that enable ever more sophisticated web apps to run on smartphones outside of their walled gardens at no charge.

So, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions to make a company a FAANG, aside for assisting with the construction of a snappy acronym, and what are the conclusions that flow from those conditions that justify your assuming every one of their acts is best assumed to have been done in bad faith?

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#243

Post by coder543 »

cwhiz wrote: post #134
gtsteve wrote: post #21

Looks 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…

This isn’t a problem exclusive to Apple anymore. Google has implemented some draconian nonsense this year to the point where I ended up distributing my Android app as a PWA. I had no problems with Apple. Apple gets all the headlines, and certainly gets more chatter on HN, but they aren’t alone in this bullshit. As an example... Fortnite was also banned by Google.

I really, really wish that Apple would support push notifications for PWAs that have been added to the home screen.

Without push notifications, PWAs are not really viable and Apple knows it. Apple wants developers to use the App Store and be subject to their fees and review process.

At least Google supports push notifications for PWAs, making them a legitimate alternative on Android.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#244

Post by benhurmarcel »

woahAcademia wrote: post #230

Let 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.

If you're talking about the price of a Mac to develop the app, it's true but not nearly that high. You can go for a Mac Mini, or second-hand.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#246

Post by pja »

indigochill wrote: post #213
pja wrote: post #173

I’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…

It's along the same lines of what Microsoft did when they were being investigated as a monopoly: throw a bone to smaller developers (or in Microsoft's case, kids in school) which actually just grows their market share (in Microsoft's case, kids learn to use Microsoft products and take that to work, in Apple's case, more devs see profitability in the Mac garden). > Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive ele…

Appoogle are a duopoly. You can’t get significant sales on mobile phones without going through their respective App Stores, which both charge 30%. What a coincidence!

Your comparisons with book publishers are specious: if I write a book today I can go to any of a number of publishers, none of whom have any kind of control over access to readers. Or I can even self-publish and sell direct.

Jailbreaking is a complete irrelevance in market terms: It’s effectively impossible to sell on Apple devices without paying Apple’s tax & very difficult to sell on Android devices (which Google controls via carefully written contracts with mobile phone manufacturers) without paying Google 30%. We have anti-monopoly + market collusion laws for good reasons. It’s about time they were enforced.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#247

Post by archildress »

I just feel that there's always this discussion about "X% isn't fair because $reason" (insert Apple's market cap, free cash flow, stock price, etc.) But what I'm yet to see is any kind of mindful analysis of what a "fair" fee is without the emotion attached to the discussion.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#248

Post by ocdtrekkie »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #194
pja wrote: post #173

I’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…

> to it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part. Oh please. Has it ever occurred in the history of the world that the selfish motives of two different parties aligned? i.e. Apple gets good press for helping smaller developers and the smaller developers get increased revenues. It happens all the times, and it's called "good business". You can keep waiting for Apple's App Store executives to cover them…

If Apple didn't fear either Epic's lawsuit or Congressional action, or both, they'd never reduce their app store cut, for anyone, ever.

This announcement means Apple knows that neither public opinion nor the law is on their side and they're about to lose really, really big. And they're hoping if they can flip this around a bit and get control of the narrative, they can convince regulators they will self-regulate... while continuing to get a third of the revenue from all the most lucrative developers.

Google's new Gmail privacy settings fall in the same boat: They'd rather lose data from a small portion of their users if it might deter the government from taking away all of it.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#249

Post by coward8675309 »

IshKebab wrote: post #235
coward8675309 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This is clearly a direct result of Epic's lawsuit. I wouldn't consider it a cynical attempt to curry favour if they had done it a year ago.

Or clearly a result of Covid. Or clearly a result of Republicans’s and Democrats’s newfound love of using tech companies as punching bags. So many single, all-encompassing theories that clearly fully account for every act.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#250

Post by HatchedLake721 »

toyg wrote: post #179
HatchedLake721 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because by suggesting Apple pay developers to make apps and not the other way around you either don't know history, how markets and distribution work, or you're making a joke. You strategy played out very well in pre 2008 days with Windows Mobile. It also played out very well for Microsoft paying developers to create apps for Windows Phone, before Microsoft admitted defeat and left the phone market they were in since…

Once you get the foam out of your mouth, you could go and check how the various console markets were bootstrapped. Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well. Windows Mobile was undone by a number of mistakes (like rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch), paying developers was not one of them. > about the 15% Yeah, about that. As it is, it’s monopoly rent (and before you bring up consoles - yes,…

It's very kind of you, but there's no foam coming out of my mouth. Thank you.

Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?

> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.

Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?

I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?

People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.

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