Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 851 posts

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#221

Post by CPLNTN »

ilovwindows wrote: post #108

30% of a revenue is extortion. Why should an app developer pay that fee? It's like owning almost half of a business. Apple is the most developer hostile company.It charges $100 every year to devs for developing apps to it's platform. And additionally charge another 30% of their business. The worst thing is apps cannot use third party payments, why? Some people argue it's for security. I disagree. It's greed. Tim Cook…

> Take away all the apps from iPhone and what is it? A brick Saying that Apple needs devs more than devs need Apple is as stupid as saying the opposite. Is the same chicken/egg game. They both coexist and no one can exist without the other. Do you really think that dev can just trash iPhone apps and send a middle finger to Apple? I’ll tell you why it’s BS: 1 - iPhone users are more willing to pay for an app than android users. Given that Google take the same cut, you are just going to shoot yourself in the foot having less users. 2 - The iOS market share even if not as big as the android one, it’s still huge compared to what WS Phone was at its peak. Do you really think your app is that important that the average user is gonna buy and entire new phone (with an OS that he potentially never used) just to use your app? 3 - If you think ALL the devs can leave Apple, to invalidate pt 2, you are delusional. The moment you leave the store, another dev is just gonna eat your user base and profit from it.

The success of the platform always goes around the user base, not the developers. Developers make money from users, so the developers follow the user, not the other way around.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#222

Post by woogley »

candiddevmike wrote: post #93
slver wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple lags behind Chrome in some features which curiously directly benefit Google. It's not slow, it's not broken. It's a great mobile browser. So stick to reality and not bunch of made up "what ifs".

PWAs and web based push notifications only benefit Google?

Well you can't send push notifications without a Firebase account ... https://stackoverflow.com/a/41829063

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#223

Post by geodel »

truth_ wrote: post #187
crazygringo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Apple has to maintain this rule because otherwise developers will implement workarounds to avoid charging in the App Store altogether. Remember when eBay charged a commission on the sale price but not shipping? Suddenly $50 items became $1 with $49 shipping -- so eBay had to charge the commission on the shipping too even though it didn't seem "fair". Same here -- every app would turn free, and charge t…

This is bull. Apple deserves a "rent", and not a "cut". They are providing infrastructure and services, and they deserve a minimum rent for these, which they already take. But Apple should not take cut on every purchases made through the app. It makes no sense. AWS does not take a "cut" on every Netflix subscription bought. They just charge for the storage and traffic. This is how App Store should function.

Do Netflix customer have to keep AWS components updated on their client device to keep Netflix working fine? Because app customers have to depend on App store vendors for OS and other components.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#224

Post by hnlmorg »

truth_ wrote: post #187
crazygringo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Apple has to maintain this rule because otherwise developers will implement workarounds to avoid charging in the App Store altogether. Remember when eBay charged a commission on the sale price but not shipping? Suddenly $50 items became $1 with $49 shipping -- so eBay had to charge the commission on the shipping too even though it didn't seem "fair". Same here -- every app would turn free, and charge t…

This is bull. Apple deserves a "rent", and not a "cut". They are providing infrastructure and services, and they deserve a minimum rent for these, which they already take. But Apple should not take cut on every purchases made through the app. It makes no sense. AWS does not take a "cut" on every Netflix subscription bought. They just charge for the storage and traffic. This is how App Store should function.

AWS pricing is extremely thorough and not at all comparable with Apple's App Store:

- AWS charge you on bandwidth used, Apple don't charge developers for the number of downloads

- AWS charge you on compute time, Apple don't charge you for ongoing use of their services beyond one initial charge for app submission

- AWS charge you for storage, Apple don't charge you for storing your app

I'm not a fan of Apple's App Store terms any more than the next person, but the GP's comparison to eBay is a hell of a lot more apt than your comparison with AWS.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#225

Post by pkulak »

mthoms wrote: post #205
crazygringo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Apple has to maintain this rule because otherwise developers will implement workarounds to avoid charging in the App Store altogether. Remember when eBay charged a commission on the sale price but not shipping? Suddenly $50 items became $1 with $49 shipping -- so eBay had to charge the commission on the shipping too even though it didn't seem "fair". Same here -- every app would turn free, and charge t…

Apple requires developers to offer sign-in with Apple if they use other sign-in systems (like FB). They could have the same requirement with payments. Users should be given the option of using Apple's system if they want to . After all, It's Apples' argument that their payment system is light-years better for consumers. If true, then users will naturally gravitate towards Apples' payment system. Right? This would res…

But then if you force every option to be priced the same, despite how much it costs the developer, then you're distorting everything again.

For example, I can pay $0.99 to buy a game using Square or Apple, but Apple takes a 30% cut and will give me a full refund if I don't like the game. I chose Apple every time, but not because it's "better", it's just better for me and I'm not the one paying for it.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#226

Post by ericlewis »

truth_ wrote: post #187
crazygringo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Apple has to maintain this rule because otherwise developers will implement workarounds to avoid charging in the App Store altogether. Remember when eBay charged a commission on the sale price but not shipping? Suddenly $50 items became $1 with $49 shipping -- so eBay had to charge the commission on the shipping too even though it didn't seem "fair". Same here -- every app would turn free, and charge t…

This is bull. Apple deserves a "rent", and not a "cut". They are providing infrastructure and services, and they deserve a minimum rent for these, which they already take. But Apple should not take cut on every purchases made through the app. It makes no sense. AWS does not take a "cut" on every Netflix subscription bought. They just charge for the storage and traffic. This is how App Store should function.

Rent would go up and there would be basically 0 actually free apps anymore. It’s already hard to pay 99$ a year for many people. Now you have to pay some larger number and your app may never make money. It’s always an achievement just to get your 99$ back anyway.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#227

Post by abecedarius »

crazygringo wrote: post #165
wccrawford wrote: post #4

Other news on this has quotes from Tim Cook saying that they'd have to find a way to track purchases on IOS and bill developers so that Apple still gets their cut when using other payment processors. For me, this is way over the line. If they want to charge developers to be on their store, fine. I don't have a problem with that. And charging for using them as a payment processor makes sense. Charging for using Apple…

Unfortunately, Apple has to maintain this rule because otherwise developers will implement workarounds to avoid charging in the App Store altogether. Remember when eBay charged a commission on the sale price but not shipping? Suddenly $50 items became $1 with $49 shipping -- so eBay had to charge the commission on the shipping too even though it didn't seem "fair". Same here -- every app would turn free, and charge t…

'has to'?

App store policies were not handed down on stone tablets on Mount Sinai. Charges that better track the incremental costs are not a logical contradiction.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#228

Post by ReptileMan »

ajconway wrote: post #139
smnrchrds wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this time after time, that when the question of Apple store comes up, a top-rated comment always makes a comparison with game consoles to argue it is all fair. I don't personally believe the comparison makes sense, but many on HN do. So I am going to ask, how is this different from PS/Xbox/etc? If the game consoles still 'own' the device after you have bought it, e.g. when PS disabled Linux installation f…

Not many companies are in the business of being fair or moral, usually it's about making money. Lawmakers have the power to force companies into being more fair (for whatever definition of "fair"). On the comparison between Apple and Sony, — objectively there is no difference except that they work in different markets and the devices they sell have slightly different purposes. If as a result of all of this Apple is f…

Since the console gaming have already gotten the worst parts of the pc gaming, I don't think that bringing the positives to consoles is as threatening as you think.

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#229

Post by rdedev »

merrywhether wrote: post #191
rdedev wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this argument. How can an alternative app Store affect the quality of the Apple app Store ? The alternate app Store is not gonna come installed by default. No one is gonna mistake the alternative app Store for the apple one. Apple is gonna make sure of that. Apple can even put up loads of warnings and dark UI stuff when installing an alternate app Store to dissuade the "noob" users.

Hypothetical progression: Epic sets up alternative App Store which becomes the only source of Fortnite 2.0, which is popular enough to drive installs of new alt store. Some other newly-popular viral app comes along (probably a social app that causes its users to exert pressure on their social group to join) and gambles on going with the Epic store only, piggybacking on Fortnite’s beachhead. Repeat. This process norma…

Another comment mentioned this. The fragmentation issue that comes up with multiple app stores. I agree that it is an issue that can come up. Pretty sure epic is trying for something like this in android.

But it dosent take away from my point that an alternative store does not affect the quality of apps in the main store.

As for an alt store becoming normalized I feel that users will only install the necessary app from the alt store and not anything else. A lot of alt stores tried to set themselves up in android but didn't succeed. I think it mostly comes down to incentives. Apple can easily change them to make sure no other store gets the upper hand

Re: Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

#230

Post by celsoazevedo »

notriddle wrote: post #81
celsoazevedo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, when Apple decides to block some app (eg: certain VPN apps in China) for reasons that aren't in your interest, you're screwed. Being able to use a different app store (which may or may not be as "curated" as Apple's own store) or to simply download the app from the devs website and install it doesn't seem to be a problem for Android users. Or for Windows, Linux and even macOS (eg: is it that bad be…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27221083 Apparently, yes, it is a problem.

They're trying to defend their own store and business model... of course having a more open system is a problem.

After years of "there are no viruses for mac", I find it funny to see an Apple exec saying that his own family members have been infected by malware on macOS.

Post reply on HN