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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#451

Post by zepto »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #424
zepto wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s neither cynical nor doing the right thing. It’s small positive move, but I don’t expect it to change anything for most developers. The 30% is really not the elephant in the room. What makes it so hard to make money on the App Store is the speed at which knock offs can appear. The App Store supports deep work that is hard to copy and work where there is a backend with network effects. For everything else…

If someone is submitting something that can be knocked off really quickly, maybe the problem is that they're submitting something that there isn't a good market for.

Yes, that is implied by what I’m saying.

A lot of people complain about how hard it is to make money on the App Store. Typically we hear only about the 30% as if that is the cause of people’s woes.

Clearly the 30% is a factor, but there are other more significant factors that determine success.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#452

Post by dan1234 »

andybak wrote: post #153
cwhiz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Fortnite was also banned by Google. I think the main reason this wasn't as newsworthy is that sideloading it was trivial for Android users. Untick a warning and install it yourself.

Obviously not that trivial considering Epic added Fortnite back to the Playstore after seemingly giving up on getting people to side load it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/22/fortnite-...

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#453

Post by ksec »

Let's run some numbers,

Roughly 80% of App Store Revenue are from Gaming. I would not be surprised if 95%+ of those Gaming Developers does not fall into Sub $1M Annual Revenue. What is left are Apps which many falls into this category. Even if half of the remaining 20% of App Store revenue fall into Sub $1M AR, Apple is only looking at a maximum of 10% hit from its Total App Store revenue.

This is even better than my idea of splitting Game into a separate Game Store and retain its 30%, while letting App Store with 15%. This new system gives all the incentives to low revenue developers which really needed the help, without sacrificing more revenue than needed.

Although I really wish they had done this earlier, and now it is looking more like damage control than anything. And it still doesn't fix their App Store review process becoming increasingly hostile. Along with many other complains.

Edit: I am reading into it, it seems like once you cross the $1M this year your next year will remain on the 30% bracket. And only if your next year revenue drop below 1M will you be move back to 15% the year after.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#454

Post by draugadrotten »

grishka wrote: post #319
phn wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it hard for the regular joe to pirate apps is a big part of apple's allure me as a developer. Your app/game won't be 24h on the play store without the apk popping up on some random site, ready to be downloaded. I don't see a way to do proper sideloading without opening this avenue. Maybe a mac os style notarization scheme, but apple gets a lot of flack for that too.

You can't have it both ways. Either it's as closed as iOS and apps can't be pirated, or it's as open as Android and it's possible to pirate apps. Restrictions on what can be installed and user's ultimate control of their own device are mutually exclusive. That said, I'd choose to have control, even as an app developer. Piracy is a fact of life.

There many benefits of the closed model:

One benefit is that if an app is successful but expensive, it opens up for competitors to undercut by price. With piracy, many users would rather pirate the expensive #1 game than to run the lower cost #1938 game. With such a closed system, users will choose cheaper applications and it will help #1938 to rise to #45.This is very good for indie developers.

Another benefit is for the consumers. When developers overprice their software, and users can pirate - they might. Then the developer blames lack of sales on piracy. However, when piracy is impossible, the developer can't blame piracy and must seek the true cause of poor sales, be it a high price or lack of quality.

There's a lot of coverage already on the negatives with a closed store.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#455

Post by fooey »

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…

I call it review roulette

Something around 1 out of 10 updates to our app gets rejected for some random old core feature. So far it's always been resolved, but it's nerve wracking every single time.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#456

Post by zaroth »

ethbr0 wrote: post #404
zaroth wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon made a bunch of poorly performing and uncompetitive Android phones, and then bailed before doing the hard work of actually differentiating their product. The results are totally expected and if anything demonstrate the market is competitive, not anti-competitive. Users don’t want an “alternative App Store market”. They want a place where they know the apps they download won’t steal their data or crash their de…

What would be the hypothetical characteristics of an anti-competitive app store market, to you? I.e. what would you look at and say "That's anti-competitive"?

There's almost a infinite number of things they could do that would be illegal that you might also call 'anti-competitive'.

IMO, as long as there are viable competitors to Apple, and as long as Apple is not colluding with its competitors, Apple should be able to implement any lawful policy on its own device that it chooses.

Apple can't violate its existing contracts with its customers or developers (e.g. threatening to kick off all Unreal Engine apps, e.g. lock customer data unless a ransom is paid). Apple can't use App Store policy to commit crimes, like extortion (e.g. offering to buy an app developer, and saying they will ban them from the store or increase their commissions to 50% if they don't accept the buyout).

As long as their policies have a justifiable and legal business purpose (whether you personally agree with the policy is irrelevant) that's applied consistently (within human limits of consistency) they should be free to make their own product however they want, and charge what they want for it.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#457

Post by dnh44 »

coder543 wrote: post #336
leadingthenet wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple wants developers to use the App Store and be subject to their fees and review process. As do I, an end-user of Apple's platforms.

You’re welcome to use App Store apps... I don’t see the problem. Safari PWAs protect your privacy better than native apps, because Safari trusts no one. The App Store review process is trying to find a malicious needle in a haystack because iOS by default trusts native apps more than it should, due to the existence of that nebulous review process. Apple is slowly locking down native apps with each successive iOS vers…

You make good points and I've learned something about PWA's, thanks. You also acknowledge that it's in Apple's interest to push native, which is absolutely true. The only thing I would disagree with is that you think "Apple just needs to give PWA developers [...]" when Apple does not "need" to do such a thing at all.

This isn't just for the cut Apple takes from App Store sales. It's also about differentiating their operating system and hardware from competitors products too. Operating system and hardware matter a lot less if the battlefield is the browser. So I think the argument that native apps are key and essential to Apple's existence is a sound one.

Google for example is pulling in a totally different direction, towards a world where only Chrome matters. In China, it appears that WeChat won that battle already.

I think it's great having so many different and opposing visions for what computing may look like. It would be a great tragedy if we ever ended up in a situation where there was only one remaining vision of what computing should be (unless maybe it was RMS's vision, which I think would be pretty good).

Because of that, I think it would be a mistake for Apple to act against its own interest by giving PWA's any kind of breathing room.

Also I may be wrong, but I suspect that users don't really care for or about PWA's, and that the only people who want push notifications for PWA's are PWA developers.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#459

Post by ksk »

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…

>Both Apple and Google are fully within their rights

Who defines what those rights are? I don't agree with this dictatorial definition of rights. This mindset needs to change.

I don't want Microsoft "owning" Windows and banning Firefox and Chrome because its their "right".

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#460

Post by ksec »

jclardy wrote: post #117
karolkozub wrote: post #47

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…

You are almost correct - it goes by the prior years income, but based on the 30% cut. Meaning if you sold 1m in products you would still be in the 15% bracket next year. You would need ~1.43m in sales to be "Moved up" the next year (It gets more complicated with subscription revenue already having a 30/15 cut depending on the user's subscription length.) It works out to this (Using 1m in sales as the cutoff to simpli…

Thank You for the explanation. This is increasingly reading more like a dick move for PR than anything else.

Why cant it just be simple where your First $1M will be 15% bracket regardless of total sales.

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