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Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing

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

#451

Post by clusterfish »

Despegar wrote: post #354
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…

>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 services makes sense. Developers have been so steeped in propaganda about "payment processing" that they have no idea what the 30% commission is for. A court or regulator could force Apple to allow t…

They make billions from that 30% cut, and the only reason they can do that is because they disallow all other payments, or even a mention in your app that you can pay elsewhere. They would never be able to charge that much if they allowed any competition, which is exactly why they need to be regulated to allow it.

They can't charge a cut of revenue unless they monopolize payment processing, so if as you say they start charging for developer tools, if they charge too much of a flat rate for those, many developers will rightfully walk away, so no, they can't make obscene profits like they're doing now without controlling all payments in iOS apps.

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

#452

Post by frosted-flakes »

commoner wrote: post #449
frosted-flakes wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you still choose Apple's payment processor of it meant paying 30% more than third-party payment processors that don't charge a fee?

It's actually 42.9% more. 1 / (1 - 0.3) = about 1.429.

Yeah, I was thinking it was something like that, just couldn't be bothered to figure it out.

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

#453

Post by fauigerzigerk »

slver wrote: post #282
sciprojguy wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long-time iOS developer here who does not want cross-platform dreck to become the standard. UIKit and SwiftUI are deep frameworks that let you build really great user experiences (if you're willing to put in the work to learn them), and Apple spends a ton of time and money making sure they can work together and build an iOS app that looks and feels like an iOS app, not someone's crappy "web site in a native wrapper"…

I'm honestly glad to see one dev who cares about their craft and not just "I wanna spit some HTML and boom, it's on all phones". HN is mostly frequented by developers, and it's so frustrating to see how many of them are outright lazy and don't think about UX but rather about how to get quickest from point A to point B. Rest assured most phone users are with you all the way. But again, we wouldn't know it reading deve…

What you are ignoring (and in a pretty condescending way if I may say so) is that the best allocation of limited resources in the interest of users is not always to create scores of native client apps and device integrations. It's not all laziness.

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

#454

Post by fnord123 »

pjmlp wrote: post #292
fnord123 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They planned to (or started putting the frog in the port with some lukewarm water) and got heavy push back from their partners. This is what precipitated Valve to make the Steam Machine. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

Which was a failure, because other than Valve and a couple of gamers, no one cares.

What was a failure?

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

#455

Post by frosted-flakes »

azinman2 wrote: post #432
kmonsen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would more be like if food safety inspections were optional, but only restaurants that opt in would be allowed to show a sign they were inspected either physically or on their web page. It would be trivial to be able to check for this. Door dash would show a sign saying which restaurant is safe to avoid being sued after an incident. If you think restaurants and food safety is a good analogy it’s not a good argumen…

Except now there isn’t just 1 inspector, but many. And you have to figure out which you trust. Now imagine there’s a very popular restaurant, but it uses an inspector you don’t know if you trust. But you want to eat the food because all your friends are already there… so you’ll go. This is exactly what would happen— various companies once they reach a certain size will just want to have their own store because either…

Apple could still limit the APIs that are available to developers.

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

#456

Post by notafraudster »

Closi wrote: post #374
hnlmorg wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Sto…

> - AWS charge you on bandwidth used, Apple don't charge developers for the number of downloads Their point is that Apple could charge based on bandwidth used, and that this could be more fair for some developers. > AWS charge you for storage, Apple don't charge you for storing your app I would be pretty happy with Apple charging for app storage if it was at S3 rates - it would amount to almost nothing.

It's clear that any change to the equilibrium would have winners and losers.

We can scope out who those are likely to be: free applications which provide some useful educational service would lose; currently they provide no revenue (beyond the token developer fee). Banking, rewards, credit, etc. applications (applications which interface consumers with their pre-existing accounts for CRUD-style management purposes) would lose. They provide no revenue. Subscription products with very low conversion rates would lose if their free:pay user ratio exceeds, say, 10:1 -- or some other breakeven point with respect to money saved by ditching Apple's payment stuff.

It would also hurt applications like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram where the product is completely free and monetized by advertising Apple currently doesn't take a cut of.

It's clear the winners are mostly extremely popular multi-billion dollar applications where the app portion is a pretty thin layer and they charge all or most users to subscribe on an ongoing basis. Fortnite doesn't exactly have a subscription, but it relies on fairly frequent impulse purchases and monetization of free users.

I don't think it's straightforward to imagine the world would be better or worse if the basis for billing changed to something like cost basis.

My overwhelming reaction to this trial is that it seems like both sides have fairly good reasons to prefer things the way they prefer things, but it's not clear to me why a court should essentially vacate a particular business model or contract. When courts intervene to strike broad classes of contract provisions (for example, to allow or disallow mandatory arbitration provisions), typically it's because there's an obvious public interest. Here the interests seem private on both sides, and it doesn't seem obvious to me that end consumers will either be harmed or helped by what's being asked for. Which seems like the kind of territory courts traditionally run away from.

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

#457

Post by oblio »

5560675260 wrote: post #425
oblio wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, nice, can I do any of that offline?

Well, you've asked if it's possible, not if it's practical and convenient under any circumstances.

I can't edit my comment. Console vendors don't envision consoles as general computing devices, which kind of tends to end any sparky comments one might make on the topic.

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

#458

Post by grishka »

jedberg wrote: post #430
tarsinge wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the cut when software was published physically and sold in a store? 30% is not a lot for being in a store.

Depends on how you look at it. I used to work in a store that sold software in the 90s. The publisher would sell us the game wholesale and we'd charge retail. So they would sell it to us for $22.50 and set the retail price at $29. So in that sense it was a 22% cut, because we only kept 22% of the sale price. But in most cases the publisher didn't make the game. They were a middleman who took a game from a studio and…

Except physical distribution is expensive by its nature. It involves producing and moving around physical objects — that's material and labor per copy.

App store, on the other hand, is a digital distributor. Making a digital copy is so cheap it could as well be free. And even then, not all app developers publish on the app store because they want or need its distribution services. There are many developers who would happily arrange the distribution of their apps themselves, with their own infrastructure they already have anyway, but they have to publish on the app store because that's the only way onto millions of iOS devices.

I'll say it again: it should not be legal for a hardware manufacturer to retain any kind of control over hardware after it's been sold.

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

#459

Post by clusterfish »

derefr wrote: post #401
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…

> But charging them simply because they make money while on a device that an end-user owns? What Apple are trying to do is to make back the CapEx of developing the OS frameworks developers are relying upon. Those frameworks often make up a non-negligible fraction of an app's USP, i.e. they're partly why the developer is making money. Apple see whatever slice of market value their OS frameworks added to the developer'…

Who the hell needs an OS or a device that can't run third party apps? Their devices are nothing without those. Those frameworks aren't optional frills for the sake for developers' benefit, they're basic functionality that end users already paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for. End users paying is how it always worked on desktop too before they spread this monopolistic poison there too.

It's amazing how far people will go to justify a monopoly squeezing everyone it deals with just because they have a good brand and make nice products.

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

#460

Post by anonymouse008 »

GeneralTspoon wrote: post #397
thekyle wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most credit card processors charge something like 30 cents + 2.9%. On large purchases that's about 3%, but on smaller transactions (like those usually used in mobile apps) that 30 cents dominates and could end up being about 30%. So from that perspective Apple's 30% cut could be a good deal in some cases.

It's not a "good deal" in any case.... The minimum purchase price on iOS is $0.99, so at worst you'd be paying basically the same rate (~30%). But most payment processors offer separate pricing for micro-transactions (e.g. Paypal is 5% + $0.05 IIRC). Which works out at around 10% for a $0.99 transaction. And actually - Adyen offer much better pricing than the "Stripe rate" of $0.30 + 2.9% in the first place.

A few years ago when making a micro transaction app, PayPal only allowed one type of fee structure — either the 5% or the 2.9%.

Meaning you couldn’t segregate low tickets from high tickets and get the most optimal fee - your whole merchant account was one fee or the other.

‘Twas quite a PITA

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