941–950 of 958 posts
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I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.
Most likely Apple subs will increase in price. This was the case for Netflix/Spotify for a while until Apple banned the practice (7.99 direct, 9.99 via IAP.)
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You'll get no argument from me that Apple's system is pretty good from a consumer standpoint — that's the primary reason why I predicted that it'd remain popular. It's really nice knowing that you can nuke a subscription without getting some dark patterns trying to talk you out of it. On the other hand, it's really easy to imagine that you'd see something like “$9.99 IAP; $7.99 direct from Epic/Amazon/Google/Netflix/…
They're not allowed to offer it lower price direct.
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Apple would not allow you to open that Stripe form in a web view before, so we don’t really know what consumers prefer. I think you’re also underestimating the degree to which normal people hesitate before putting in credit card details on a web form - almost everyone has heard stories about difficult cancellation processes, stolen card databases, etc. Services like ApplePay offer assurances that almost certainly res…
There’s no need to try reasoning things out from first principles. People have been buying online for decades now, and all the experience shows most consumers are indifferent and clueless. If you don’t believe me, ask a non-tech-sector family member what they think Apple Pay is.
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You're right that the analogy was not quite right. Here's a better one. Facebook creates a virtual world where 50% of the population choose. Apple creates a different virtual world which the other 50% choose. If you simply look at the boundary/entrance you can say there's freedom of choice. But whether you choose apple or Facebook, there's 0 competition once you're inside that world. Further, once you've established…
That’s not really it though, HN like most websites are 100% HN once your inside their walled garden. That’s the normal situation, nobody complains because McDonalds happy meals only contain toys sourced by McDonalds. In the past it’s only monopolies where companies dominate positions gave them leverage that was an issue, otherwise consumer choice was upfront and that worked. Xbox, iOS, and Windows are platforms that…
All of what you listed are easily substituted, and not very impactful to somebody's life.
The same games exist on Xbox and Playstation (95% overlap). McDonald's is a buy one time product, where you can easily choose on a given day to go to BK or Wendy's. You buy an iphone, you aren't going to just buy an Android the next day if Apple raises costs. Isn't it obvious how different these are?
You can bet that if Microsoft charged any third party apps on windows 30% of their revenue they would have been regulated long ago. You really think otherwise?
I don't understand the Apple defenders. Encouraging actual competition within the platform is the pro business stance. Competition is the basic element that makes capitalism work.
You don't have competition if cost of switching is high, it's that simple.
Platforms with sufficient impact on people's lives, and sufficiently high cost of switching will be regulated to require competition. It's as simple as that, though fanboys will kick and scream for the next few years until it passes into law. It's the obvious outcome, and china is already paving the way on legislation.
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> Besides did everyone forget they can call their credit card issuer and suspend payment? This does not get you out of your contractual obligation to pay, if you have one. You could end up getting an annoying surprise from a debt collection agency a few years down the road. An important thing that Apple was able to provide that a credit card processor suspending payment can’t is to force the vendor to let you actuall…
Apple can't remove contractual obligations either. Any subscription which requires serious amount of money (enough to make a lawsuit worthwhile) should be very carefully managed. Otherwise calling collections is a very bad deal for the vendor who will be penalized by the credit company and by the courts and by bad PR.
They can’t remove them, but they can prevent them from existing in the first place. It’s their platform, and they can and do make it a requirement that the app vendor’s subscription contract conform to a standard where ending the subscription from within Apple’s subscription management UI actually terminates all future obligations for the customer. This is why many subscriptions that are otherwise quite hard to end and involve deliberate inconveniences like requiring calling in during business hours can just be cancelled from the subscription page if they were started via the app.
> Otherwise calling collections is a very bad deal for the vendor who will be penalized by the credit company and by the courts and by bad PR.
This is just not correct. Vendors do this all the time, credit companies don’t care and have no policies against it, since it’s the customer’s responsibility to have a legal justification to tell the credit company to refuse charges, and the PR blowback is demonstrably nonexistent.
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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.
I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.
However Apple does vet apps and focus on security somewhat (altho Google's project 0 seems to do a better job at finding bugs for Apple), however 30% is far too much even for what Apple are offering their customers.
In an ideal world, Apple customers need to be told: "you will be charged extra buying through Apple to help pay for the protections/quality that our platform offers you".
However, Apple explicitly disallows both telling users that they're being charged more and why, and that they could get it cheaper elsewhere.
Regardless of whether Apple are still allowed to charge x%, the first step it to get Apple to allow developers to tell the customer about other payment options and for Apple to explain to their customers why it costs more, then customers can make the decision for themselves.
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Epic tried to put Fortnite back on the app store in Korea. Apple refused.
Good. Epic knew full well what they were doing was in breach of contract, and that the consequence would be termination of their account. And the court has just confirmed that this is correct, valid, and appropriate. Enjoy your worthless banned developer account, because that’s what Epic wanted to happen and that’s what did happen exactly as everyone expected. As they say: play stupid games…
Apparently the Sherman Antitrust Act only applies to a service if it strictly cannot be replicated otherwise.
In other words, since iOS allows the installation of and does not control the distribution of "web apps", it therefore has the right to control the distribution of "native apps"
It doesn't matter that web apps don't have access to most of the iPhone's API, it doesn't matter that they can't send notifications or run in the background, it doesn't matter that they can't run fullscreen or in 64bit, what matters is that they get an icon on the homescreen, they thereby fit the definition of an "app" so technically Apple does not entirely control app distribution on iOS
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This wouldn't be an issue if credit card providers offered a standardized system for making subscription charges. When you sign up, you'd pre-authorize them to charge your card a certain amount per time period. You could revoke the authorization through your credit card company's website, along with your other subscriptions. If the service wanted to change the price, they'd need a you to re-authorize it.
If they were doing that, they should also overhaul the whole system so you're never giving your credit card number directly to the sites. Similar to how if I use OAuth to log into a site, that site never has a chance to see my password.