Tim Cook’s Fortnite trial testimony was unexpectedly revealing • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by ninjinxo » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

verall wrote: post #461

ninjinxo wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam does take a cut for microtransactions, very likely force price parity, and put the developers under NDAs: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1ogbo7/will_mo...

They take a cut for microtransactions that they process, but you are free to use your own service. They do require price parity. That link doesn't seem related at all.

>you are free to use your own service

Do you have any sources on how restrictive valve are or have been with that, or is that just speculation? Can developers default to their own payment systems and bypass valve's, or is theirs required to take a secondary, less-accessible option (when it's even allowed)?

From the same thread, the mtx cut taken was a dealbreaker for redfall studios, so it certainly sounds like they didnt get the option for their own mtx transaction service: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1ogbo7/will_mo...

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

#492

Post by grishka » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

anonymouse008 wrote: post #479

grishka wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they own the hardware They don't — the users bought it, it's theirs now. It should be illegal to restrict hardware like this.

So when you buy a vehicle, you should be allowed to run any custom OSS on the hardware?

Why not? It's your property. Though it's your responsibility to not endanger other people with your actions.

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

#493

Post by sciprojguy » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #453

slver wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it isn't always laziness.

Sometimes it's politics (I had a colleague leave a job because the new director of development mandated they rewrite their flagship enterprise apps in React Native because he got a song and dance from a React Native trainer/consultant and wouldn't listen to the people who knew what they were talking about).

Sometimes it's different priorities (a meetup buddy of mine some years ago had to write apps in PhoneGap because "We're in the oil bidness, not the app badness").

It isn't always "the best allocation of limited resources", either. Apart from having to do extra work to make the UX close to native (which isn't trivial), using a "cross platform" solution means you've just included a giant third party dependency that you don't control or maintain. Call it FUD if you want to, but in the forty-odd years I've done programming/development that's never been a good bet. If resources are really limited, the best bet is to have a decent design and very clear (reasonable) expectations and pay someone good to execute them.

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

#494

Post by GeneralTspoon » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

anonymouse008 wrote: post #460

GeneralTspoon wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah this is still the case AFAIK - very annoying. I believe their recommended workaround was to have 2 separate merchant accounts with different fee structures and group your products accordingly.

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

#495

Post by grishka » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #486

grishka wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is what they're talking about when they say that productivity gains have gone only to the wealthiest. Buying an album digitally, when every single step in the production and distribution of that album have become an order of magnitude cheaper (outside of labor costs, which somehow remain flat no matter what), costs the same as it did 50 years ago. Every part of application distribution has become cheaper, so you…

So what? Why does the price have to remain the same despite technological advancements that are totally capable of reducing it to almost zero? It's as if we suddenly discovered a way to produce unlimited amounts of food, for free, anywhere in the world, but food manufacturers would start raising a stink about how important it is that people would still starve.

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

#496

Post by anonymouse008 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #483

anonymouse008 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when you buy a vehicle, you should be allowed to run any custom OSS on the hardware?

I believe that you are already allowed to do whatever you want on your property but if you want to drive it on public roads you need to comply with some minimal safety standards imposed by the state.

At what point do we look at the internet as public roads? With the recent ransomwares, the line appears to be shifting.

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

#497

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

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…

"When questioned by Epic Games lawyers, Cook declined to answer a question about whether Apple's iPhone competes with Google's Android in the operating system market."

Let us rephrase the question. Does iOS compete with Android in the operating system market.

"Customers don't buy operating systems. They buy devices," Cook said."

True. Operating systems can be had for free. Customers generally do not buy them (as a separate item), but they do choose them, when they are allowed to do so.

What if customers had the option to buy Apple devices without Apple's choice of operating system pre-installed. Apple would never let customers have that choice. A million excuses.

"Tech" companies, as well as Microsoft and Apple, remove choice. Users pay nothing for the OS. Someone else pays (OEMs in the case of Microsoft). The OS is pre-installed. Choice is removed. No different than a "default setting" (e.g., "default search engine" for which Google paid $1B to Apple in 2014). The friction to change a pre-installed OS or default setting is too great for most customers. The companies know this and exploit it.

Cook suggests that if the customer wants another OS, one that allows a wider variety of apps to be installed, then she can buy a different device. How is that for interoperability.

The OS, when controlled by an intermediary such as Apple, is a means of control over users (as well as developers). Any argument that theroretically the most safe, secure and private OS by design is one that the user cannot fully control is unconvincing. If a customer wants privacy against Apple or its business partners, for example, iOS is not designed to offer that.

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

#498

Post by BenjiWiebe » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

anonymouse008 wrote: post #479

grishka wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they own the hardware They don't — the users bought it, it's theirs now. It should be illegal to restrict hardware like this.

So when you buy a vehicle, you should be allowed to run any custom OSS on the hardware?

rusEFI.com

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

#499

Post by izacus » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #249

oblio wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are consoles sold as general computing devices?

This is irrelevant - the law makes zero distinction between "general purpose" and "specific" computing devices. They're all computers.

Can you cite this "law" you're talking about?

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

#500

Post by altncatchfire » Sun, May 23, 2021, 8:51 PM UTC

gigel82 wrote: post #489

robertlagrant wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions in revenue on $99/year? Is 1% of the planet a paid up iOS developer?

Math much? 20 million (that's 3-year old numbers [1]) apple developers. Probably a lot of them on the $299 enterprise plan, but let's assume they're all using the $99 one. 20mil * $100 = $2 billions. QED [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/04/app-store-hits-20m-registe...

To be fair, the 1% isn't off either.

The figure available was "billions". For ease of calculation, say it was 7b. That means if each developer pays $100 and total revenue was 7b, 1% of the world must be a developer. (1% of 7b * $100 = $7b)

Also, by your own figure, 20 million is already ~0.25% of the world population.