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Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

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Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#691

Post by shagie »

forty wrote: post #684
falafel_muncher wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most developers will happily just opt for Apple's system if the rates make sense The _buyer_ experience with Apple's IAP is mostly good, but I would argue that the developer experience is downright horrible. Working with subscriptions and IAP receipts is clunky. You can only use one of about 100 SKUs, which makes it difficult to offer discounts and customized pricing at the higher price tiers, where the gaps betwee…

Thanks for the explanation. They must be talking about UX indeed. I have implemented subscription using many APIs (stripe, PayPal, processout, Apple, Amazon, Android...) And Apple is by far the shittiest. And you cannot even refund your own customers...

> And you cannot even refund your own customers...

I was looking at StoreKit earlier today and saw https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transacti... as part of it. I realize that this is new with iOS 15... but there's something there now.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#692

Post by mrtksn »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #687
mrtksn wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must be non-profit and doing it as charity. Totally not as a PR stunt for the upcoming Apple vs Epic thingy.

Their costs are lower, so they offer it at a lower price to encourage more people to buy it. While still having a higher profit per unit! That's normal business behavior. Why would it have to be "charity" or some kind of fake "PR stunt"?

Right, companies have fixed profit rate and they lower the price when the costs go down. Got it, thanks. Great business tip!

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#693

Post by sneak »

easton wrote: post #595
sneak wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get the phone number you used to create the Apple ID? Mint?

Unless something has changed in the past year since the last time I've made an Apple ID, they don't verify the phone number. For 2FA, you can also give it an email address. And I'm almost certain I've used a Google Voice number with an Apple ID before with no qualms.

For at least a year creating a new Apple ID requires verifying the phone number by providing Apple with an integer code sent to the number.

Getting a Google Voice number requires a Google account. Creating a Google account requires a phone number (which you must maintain access to, because they will periodically reverify it).

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#694

Post by endisneigh »

skohan wrote: post #665
endisneigh wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s common sense property right? Isn’t it common sense to not buy a toaster expecting it to be a server even though they both have circuit boards and technically can both compute ? Still don’t get why don’t you just buy things that advertise the functionality you want.

A toaster is clearly not a general purpose computer. Should a car manufacturer be able to dictate which destinations you're allowed to reach with it?

Why isn’t a toaster a general purpose computer? There are toasters with wifi, touchscreens and other functionality.

As for your car question - why not? No one would buy such a crippled device. The problem would resolve itself.

If a car manufacturer sold a car without a steering wheel that self drove, perhaps people would buy the car in spite of the limitations. What they shouldn’t do, is buy a car advertised without a steering wheel and then complain that it doesn’t have one.

https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Cooking-R180-High-Speed-St...

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#695

Post by shagie »

jwlake wrote: post #433
sudhirj wrote: post #223

Think Apple has already seen the writing on the wall - both S. Korea & the US are now probably going to push back against the IAP restrictions, and they can / should do a couple of things, which might actually increase revenue. 1. Cut down the IAP commission to 15% for everyone. 2. Cut down the commission to 5% for those who pay for a Business Account, say at $5,000 a year. The thing is no customer wants to use any c…

Apple's system does not allow a developer to refund a purchase. Seems like the height of half-assed.

With iOS 15: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/transacti...

> Call this function from account settings or a help menu to enable customers to request a refund for an in-app purchase within your app. When you call this function, the system displays a refund sheet with the customer’s purchase details and list of reason codes for the customer to choose from.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#696

Post by weixiyen »

dntrkv wrote: post #401
travoc wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.

That 30% covers a lot more than just processing payments.

I assume by that you mean the developer tools to create apps in the first place.

Apple is free to not make developer tools anymore, that's their choice. Nobody is forcing them to. They do it b/c apps make the iPhone better. In fact an iPhone without apps is pretty useless.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#697

Post by tshaddox »

summerlight wrote: post #659
tshaddox wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You answered why there might be enough money to subsidize developers. Apple has a lot of money, there's no question about that, but I was asking why they should subsidize developers (or why we should expect them to).

I think you don't understand the answer. When customers buy iPhone, they already paid a plenty amount of money for accessing third party apps via App Store since it's so essential and inherently indivisible value from iOS and iPhone, in favor of Apple's argument. Apple may not be obligated to subsidize developers with direct cash, but to pay operational expenses for App Store since there is no alternatives. Otherwise…

I don't really see why there would be any expectation of that from the legal system or for ordinary people, other than that Apple obviously shouldn't drastically reduce functionality of iPhones which they have already sold. But again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Apple might stop having an App Store altogether, or that the outcome of any of these legal battles would be that iPhone users would have significantly reduced access to third-party software. You're just talking about who ought to pay for the costs of distributing third-party software to iPhones.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#698

Post by spywaregorilla »

trollied wrote: post #670
spywaregorilla wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The physical game store isn't charging X% for payment processing. They're charging X% to get your product in front of customers.

> They're charging X% to get your product in front of customers. Oh, right. The app store doesn't also do that?

No not really. Can you imagine gamestop demanding a cut of dlc purchases because a physical game was originally purchased in their store?

These are separate concepts.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#699

Post by gwoplock »

danShumway wrote: post #512
simonh wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Making Apple products work well with other Apple products isn't lock-in. Cool. iMessage works perfectly well with SMS, which is the only true open messaging standard, and therefore will work with anything else that interoperates with SMS. Job done.

Job done well enough that internal emails at Apple said, "the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage"? Come on. Apple's VP of software engineering would not be debating Android support in internal emails if SMS worked "perfectly well".

I agree that Apple not bringing iMessage to Android is lock in and very purposeful. But I don't think (at least not initially) it's because it works better than plain old SMS. I think there is quite a bit of social pressure to have "the blue bubble" especially in middle/high school.

Most of the iMessage features, text, video, pictures and "reactions/tap backs" work over SMS. The only real feature missing is delivery and read receipts but most people in my experience have read receipts turned off. Apps also don't work but I've yet to see someone actually use that feature.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#700

Post by chongli »

trollied wrote: post #670
spywaregorilla wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The physical game store isn't charging X% for payment processing. They're charging X% to get your product in front of customers.

> They're charging X% to get your product in front of customers. Oh, right. The app store doesn't also do that?

Retail stores have a finite and very small amount of shelf space. Publishers pay a lot for a significant percentage of that shelf space devoted to their product.

The App Store has effectively infinite space. There are so many products and search is so broken that it's extremely difficult for users to discover your product.

Rather than comparing the experience to brick and mortar stores a more apt comparison would be to throw your products in a landfill, junkyard, or extremely large flea market and expect your users to find them. Would you pay high commissions to a junkyard for tossing your product in a pile "somewhere in the back"?

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