601–610 of 671 posts
Very cool.. Black hat on. Wouldn't it make sense to create a parent company which own various child companies each of which runs a single app ?
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…
> there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser This is true, but perhaps not as many as some may think! Progressive Web Applications can now do quite a lot on mobile and tablets, with a notable exception of push notifications on iOS. They are an increasingly interesting option for those whose use case allows it. https://simplabs.com/blog/2020/06/10/the-state-of-pwa-suppor...
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 Sto…
It's better to leave basic updates for OS changes, security, etc free but charge for new features as in-app purchases. Unfortunately most users expect free upgrades for life for their $2 purchase so this makes life very hard for non-game developers.
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Android is hobbled, as well. The only way to implement automatic upgrading, background installation or batch upgrading/installation of apps is via the Play Store. Not only that, but most people have no idea how to side load apps, and Android doesn't make it easy. Both Google and Apple have kept a stranglehold on the mobile app distribution market for over a decade now.
> Not only that, but most people have no idea how to side load apps, and Android doesn't make it easy. I completely disagree. I'm not sure how they could make it much easier without defaulting to allowing it. Download the APK, open it, click install (or if the setting disallows it, follow the prompt to change the setting).
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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…
I'm not arguing that either is good, but I think there is a fundamental difference. Apple is reacting to the threat of regulation, which is at least theoretically aimed at protecting small business owners. Valve is fundamentally competing for the business of large companies that actually can afford to forego the exposure Steam offers.
I'm not sure that the App Store's position is as stable as Steam's, either. I don't really have a clear sense of what impact it would have on their sales if Humble Bundle could sell iOS games.
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Because they sell your digital soul to advertisers.
Which is exactly what would happen if there were third party app stores. It would be a race to the bottom where they all ended up with zero margins but where your data is sold to third parties.
there already are lots of third-party android app stores, if you look at the variants of android packaged and shipped on new-in-box phones in mainland china.
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> When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%. Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC. EPIC can afford such a low rate because they are flush with cash from Fortnite and Unreal Engine dominates the professional game engine market. EPIC are trying to buy their way into the market, if it works then steam…
> Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC. Your list is companies being paid an affiliate rate. If I start linking companies that don't do affiliate stuff, they charge a lot less. Which is to say that 30% could be a reasonable amount if you had any choice in the matter of what services you want to purchase from apple. > It was never 90% rate. Apple has h…
I listed like for like companies.
> In 2013 it was 10 billion.
> People made apps in 2013, even though 70% of 10 billion is less than 10% of 80 billion.
> They'd make apps for 10% of 80 billion and they'd definitely make apps for 25% of 80 billion.
I don't think you understand how percentages work. You are comparing the total amount of revenue available to the revenue share per purchase. That just isn't a valid way of comparing the two.
> Everyone standing up and refusing those billions of dollars in solidarity is more outlandish than anything I've said.
If they raised the rate soo high that it was unreasonable then yes the would be a mass exodus.
> It's much easier for a fee to be "worth it" than to be "reasonable".
Now you are just playing semantics. I think we will leave this here.
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> When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%. Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC. EPIC can afford such a low rate because they are flush with cash from Fortnite and Unreal Engine dominates the professional game engine market. EPIC are trying to buy their way into the market, if it works then steam…
My personal comparison is between the HumbleBundle store and the HumbleBundle payments widget. The rake on the former, where HumbleBundle brings the customer? 25% The rake on the latter, where the game dev embeds the widget on their own website & HB handles the payments infrastructure for them? 5% For App devs able to drive customer engagement directly themselves, Apple is effectively taking an extra ~20% of profit f…
The core problem here is that Apple is still disallowing users from side-loading / installing iOS apps from outside of the official App Store. My question: what is stopping us from demanding a legislative solution that requires Apple to open up the iOS platform to allow installation of apps outside its sanctioned ecosystem? With ARM Macs now on the market, the hardware architecture / software differences between thei…
> What is stopping us from demanding a legislative solution that requires Apple to open up the iOS platform to allow installation of apps outside its sanctioned ecosystem? Apple is already tying two products together (App Store commissions and iOS). I think the answer is to have a court opinion declare that app store commissions are not naturally related to iOS. It shouldn't be too hard to prove this given that third…
And it's completely unrelated to any commissions from the App store.
If you read more of the wikipedia article, you'll see Apple and Microsoft come up - but either entirely different issues that are wholly unrelated to their App Store pricing.