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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#501

Post by enos_feedler »

zepto wrote: post #493
dlubarov wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Sweeney is Epic's majority shareholder, so if you believe his actions were harmful to shareholders, doesn't that contract your stance that he was motivated by greed?

More than 90% of Epic is owned by Sweeney and TenCent. No other shareholders are significant. TenCent controls Epic’s access to the Chinese market. Together, they decided to put Epic’s customers in harms way.

Agreed. But those aren’t the only shareholders. They took action that will ultimately damage the others (when this whole thing plays out). Do you think every shareholder is in agreement with this move?

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#502

Post by zepto »

enos_feedler wrote: post #501
zepto wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than 90% of Epic is owned by Sweeney and TenCent. No other shareholders are significant. TenCent controls Epic’s access to the Chinese market. Together, they decided to put Epic’s customers in harms way.

Agreed. But those aren’t the only shareholders. They took action that will ultimately damage the others (when this whole thing plays out). Do you think every shareholder is in agreement with this move?

No, I just don’t think the potential harm to minority shareholders is a good argument for Sweeney’s greed which can be evaluated in other ways.

I don’t think Epic will prevail, but I respect the investors right to make a bet on Sweeney if they so choose. They can sell their stake if they like.

Not so the customers, who Epic could clearly have protected but chose not to for publicity reasons alone.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#503

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive elephant in the room here, not a few crumbs thrown to small developers.

It's not just the rate that's anti-competitive, it's that these two companies have stifled competition in mobile app distribution for over a decade now.

There is no viable competition in this space because Google and Apple never allowed for real competitors to the App Store and Play Store to exist. You have to use the App Store to distribute mobile apps on iPhones and iPads, and if you want automatic updates, background updates or batch installations/upgrades on Android, you have to use the Play Store.

These days, if you want to install an app whose developers didn't pay the Apple tax, macOS will make the app appear radioactive, and as if it is either broken or malicious. Same goes for Android, where apps distributed outside of the Play Store invoke scary warnings, and are hindered when it comes to automatic updates, background updates, or batch installs.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#504

Post by HeavyStorm »

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…

Agree. It is _too little, too late_, as they say. 15% is still a very high fee, and we all know that this is a movement to improve public opinion in light of recent events.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#506

Post by heavyset_go »

bobthebuild123 wrote: post #251
pja wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Google literally has multiple alternative app stores currently active.

You can't implement background installation of apps, automatic upgrading, or batch installation or upgrades of apps on Android outside of the Play Store. The competition is intentionally hobbled.

If we look at market share for mobile app distribution, the vast, vast majority of it goes to the App Store and the Play Store. The competition isn't even a blip on the radar.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#507

Post by tonyjstark »

One thing missing, deeply missing is priced updates. This would enable developers to earn continuously by maintaining and improve their apps. It would also reduce the incentive to produce throw-away apps. Lately it would it make less needed to shoehorn subscriptions into apps.

I welcome the 15% change but it's more PR than actually helping. More helpful would also be better tools to increase visibility in the App Store.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#508

Post by ROARosen »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #484
ROARosen wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both Google and, especially, Apple have spent millions of dollars, hours, and effort to create their respective App Stores and the people and tools needed to run them Both Google and especially Apple have also spent millions of resources and money, making sure they are the only app store in use (by default). They could have spent some of those millions creating a set of rules for independent app marketplaces to be…

> creating a set of rules for independent app marketplaces How is this any different?

This implies - of course - that they will allow other app marketplaces to begin with.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#509

Post by ethbr0 »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #488
ethbr0 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tens of billions of dollars building out their respective ecosystem presents a tremendous opportunity to developers That's... one way to look at it. Another way is that they'd be spending even more if there were more healthy competition in the alternative app store market. Amazon is incentived to run an Android app store now, in the same way Microsoft was incentivized to maintain an ARM build of Windows: it's not a…

> Another way is that they'd be spending even more if there were more healthy competition in the alternative app store market. This simply isn't true. Android is much more open yet app spend is way lower compared to the smaller marketshare iPhone. An open app market means a flood of free apps which means less money spent. Good Devs will absolutely lose in this scenario. Outsourced sweatshop devs will do everything ch…

Was referring to they = Google, spend = Google's funding of Play Store development and infrastructure (in context to parent's comment)

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#510

Post by balfirevic »

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…

> by significantly reducing the absolute number of developers suffering the full impact whilst taking the minimum possible hit to their revenue

When you put it like that, it sounds pretty good!

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