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Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

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Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#31
post #11

Seriously curious, what percentage is “fair”? Or is the issue you can’t side load this app without going through the App Store?

I think none. Apple is clearly nickel and diming their own customers at this point. Now you're not only paying Apple for your iPhone, and Apple services, but you're also stuck paying them extra every time you buy a service from your iPhone. It's stupid and greedy. Like where do we draw the line?

I think the current system is too much in Apple's favor, but I imagine they do have to spend a decent chunk of change curating the app store, validating submissions, hosting the apps for download, and maintaining the security infrastructure for developers to sign their apps and users to have confidence in them. This is all value added for developers.

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#33

Seriously curious, what percentage is “fair”? Or is the issue you can’t side load this app without going through the App Store?

Well, Google charges 30%. Microsoft (for the XBox, not sure about their store) 30%. Sony (PS4) 30%. Steam was 30%, but this is dropping. Nintendo's is well protected by NDAs, but reportedly 15-30%. 30% is pretty close to a standard when you're providing the storefront and control the hardware.

In Canada, Bell charges 80$ for a smartphone plan with 30GiB of data; and TELUS charges 80$ for a smartphone plan with 30GiB of data; and Rogers charges 80$ for a smartphone plan with 30GiB of data.

If you don't want to spend as much, you can go with their discount brands. Virgin Mobile Canada (Bell subsidiary) charges 45$ for 3GiB of data; and Koodo (TELUS subsidiary) charges 45$ for 3GiB of data; and Fido (Rogers subsidiary) charges 45$ for 3GiB of data.

One one to look at it is that the market rate for the smartphone plan with 30GiB of data is 80$ and the market rate for 3GiB of data is 45$. Another way is that it is an oligopoly situation. Having lived in Canada for a long time, I know it's the latter. Apple/Google/etc store markup situation seems similar enough that I am inclined to believe it is a case of oligopoly too.

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those apps are not distributing content, I haven’t installed Fanhouse but from looking at their website it seems that you can consume the content you’re paying for through it.

So Netflix?

It’s a subscription service and you’re not paying for individual content a-la-cart? We can play wack a mole all day and find special carve outs by Apple but “what about-ism” isn’t the (or their) point, it’s did they expect this to happen or not. Surely they knew at some point the tax man would come with absolute certainty so crying (hyperbolic) foul now is… disingenuous.

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#35
Just curious, if Apple is so bad, why do people build apps for it? Browsers are very robust now a days. I have never built a iPhone or Android app, never needed to. Browsers now a days I imagine can get you atleast 90% of the way. Why go to Apple if you can build a webapp. And it is cross platform so you do not have to maintain a separate Android app.

What am I missing?

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#36

Serious question, why does everything require an app? Why can't the same thing be accomplished via the mobile web? I get so tired of being prompted to install apps when you could just *show me the damned web page*. Anything that requires speed can be done via webassembly, and sure, anything like games can ship a native app.

I think people are used to just scrolling to an icon on their home screen and tapping on it, and companies like Apple/Google don't really like the idea of PWAs because they lose control over the developers and walled garden ecosystems they have created

Developers will optimize for what feels natural to the user, i.e. installing an "app" which doesn't require typing an address in the browser or scrolling through bookmarks

Also some companies from the developer side will want that extra user control that you don't have in the browser, for example to track them more, play unskippable ads, or access to some native features on the phone which are not available in web apps

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#37
post #5

This will keep happening as long as people keep agreeing to Apple's terms and building on their platform. I wouldn't touch Apple's platform with a 10 foot pole. Nothing here is new. It's getting harder to sympathise with developers who keep doing it.

I'll give you the counterpoint. I'm very happy to spend money on apps and services that I like. However, I'm only going to do it through Apple's platform, for a variety of reasons. If you don't want to build on Apple's platform, that's completely fine. I won't be a customer. And maybe that will change the system, I really don't know.

The issue is that this customer you're describing doesn't exist. It does provide a marginally higher amount of friction to use a non-native payment method, but there aren't any users out there cancelling their Netflix subscription because now Netflix gets 100% of the proceeds instead of 70%. At that point, you're inadvertently sabotaging the very company that you're trying to support, because your hardware manufacturer decided that they need to tax your software, too.

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#38

Serious question, why does everything require an app? Why can't the same thing be accomplished via the mobile web? I get so tired of being prompted to install apps when you could just *show me the damned web page*. Anything that requires speed can be done via webassembly, and sure, anything like games can ship a native app.

It's hard to do photo/video/media integration on a web page. There no good way to interact with the filesystem to share content, start a livestream, etc. UIKit also make it pretty easy to create layouts that work well on your phone with swiping gestures.

I am an app developer that would love to move to a mobile web app but those are the problems that I am running into at least. If web assembly can accomplish all of that then I just am not well educated enough to use it instead.

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#39

Just curious, if Apple is so bad, why do people build apps for it? Browsers are very robust now a days. I have never built a iPhone or Android app, never needed to. Browsers now a days I imagine can get you atleast 90% of the way. Why go to Apple if you can build a webapp. And it is cross platform so you do not have to maintain a separate Android app. What am I missing?

Some simply cannot avoid it because Apple does not implement all necessary functionality for all kinds of apps in Safari and does not allow other browser engines that do on iOS.

Re: Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

#40

Just curious, if Apple is so bad, why do people build apps for it? Browsers are very robust now a days. I have never built a iPhone or Android app, never needed to. Browsers now a days I imagine can get you atleast 90% of the way. Why go to Apple if you can build a webapp. And it is cross platform so you do not have to maintain a separate Android app. What am I missing?

A native app has access to way more marketable data than a browser page. Why do you think all the big sites keep on pushing you to install their app?
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