My feeling is that this is a half measure and any half measure allow for the "freedom of interpretations". AAPL will put a lot of road blocks around external purchase links (result of recent ruling). I expect apps that will use external purchase links to be scrutinize a lot more, unexpectedly take off from the AAPL app store for made-up reasons and myriad of other road blocks around the ruling. You know, AAPL needs it's 30% cut.
US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#22[flagged]
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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#23This is not new. The 27% fee has been around for over a year now I think, may have been announced in 2021 even, for markets outside the US that already mandate this. I've seen these screens already in apps.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#24[flagged]
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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#25So Apple will be collecting 27% (instead of 30%) for... what exactly? They might just get away with something as crass in a vacuum, but given that the DMA will go into effect very soon, there will be a point of reference in a similar economy, and I don't think it'll be pretty for Apple. US regulators (federal or state; I could see something equivalent to GDPR and CCPA) will be taking a very close look.
> So Apple will be collecting 27% (instead of 30%) for... what exactly? Off the top of my head... - Bandwidth - Running the App Store for users - Marketing the App Store - App review - Security efforts to keep malware off the store - Making App Store optimisation tools for developers There's a lot of moving parts to this. You could argue that none of this is necessary if you sideload, but distribution is worth a lot…
If that's true (and I even believe that it is to a large extent!), there should be no problem for Apple to let its value proposition stand for itself and allow some competition.
Besides that, that list is very bundled. What if I e.g. want the convenient subscription payment processing, but want to (or need to) bring my own CDN for most content? What if I want their marketing and am willing to pay for it, but prefer my own payment processing?
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#26Demanding a 27% commission for transactions taking place entirely outside of Apple infrastructure is obviously a finger in the eye, but I'm not entirely sure whose eye yet. Epic? The court? The FTC? The developer community? All of the above?
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#27So Apple will be collecting 27% (instead of 30%) for... what exactly? They might just get away with something as crass in a vacuum, but given that the DMA will go into effect very soon, there will be a point of reference in a similar economy, and I don't think it'll be pretty for Apple. US regulators (federal or state; I could see something equivalent to GDPR and CCPA) will be taking a very close look.
> So Apple will be collecting 27% (instead of 30%) for... what exactly? Off the top of my head... - Bandwidth - Running the App Store for users - Marketing the App Store - App review - Security efforts to keep malware off the store - Making App Store optimisation tools for developers There's a lot of moving parts to this. You could argue that none of this is necessary if you sideload, but distribution is worth a lot…
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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#28wow! Looks like Apple finally caved. This is a huge win for the developers, despite that pesky warning. They can still ask users to circumvent apple pay/in-app purchases and get away by not giving a revenue cut to Apple.
Contractually, developers are still required to pay 27% commission to Apple (or 12% for the small business programme). i.e. Apple are only removing a 3% payment processing fee here. They say it'll be hard to actually audit this, and it will, and many developers may manage to get around it, but technically that's a breach of contract and they could be removed from the store for it, so I'm sure many won't risk it.
What about sketchy apps with subscriptions, are those still managed via Apple? As an end user, I like the fact I can just cancel through Apple instead of having to find my way around a 3rd party site that is trying its best to prevent me from unsubscribing.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#29They want a 27% commission on sales made from those links and the right to audit companies' accounts for compliance. https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1747406430054097099 It's beyond a joke. Between that and the payment processing fees, you're no better off. In fact, you get all of the same costs but none of the benefits of Apple's app store native payment infrastructure.
It seems a lot more egregious that anything Microsoft did in the 90s. While MS tried to push their own products and lock out competitors, they never tried to take a massive cut of all the software on their OS. The level of sheer FU everyone chutzpah is pretty impressive.
They're indeed making quite a joke out of antitrust at this point.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#30A 27% cut will make a 3rd party payment service a non starter for all but the biggest app.
For small players a 3% savings isn't worth the administrative overhead of paying apple separately.
Apple is begging for another lawsuit over this.