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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

#331
post #39

There's a strong chance this will be shot down as "bad-faith" compliance. Rumor is Epic will quickly contest it [Update: confirmed] https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/174740814726057173...

A "bad faith" claim essentially admits Apple is in fact in compliance.

It's the weakest objection you can have, and typically would only be sufficient to get relief in very, very specific circumstances where the unfairness could be proven (as intended). But this case involves broad policies for millions of developers, and it's perfectly compliant with permitting other payment processors.

So: there's almost no chance it would be "shot down" on those grounds.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#332

Apple does provide a lot of value with the App Store. But when I compare it to my business (saas), adding stripe + aws is about 12% of sales. I feel for my App Store brethren. It would be hard to accept 30%

Unless you make over $1M/year, the commission for small business is 15%.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#333

Am I getting this right? Say I use Stripe as my payment processor. Stripe takes 2.9% + $0.30, then Apple takes 27% so I'm at 29.9% + $0.30 being taken out of however much I charge for my app? For a $10 app, $0.30 is 3% putting the fee at 32.9%. For the privilege of paying 2.9% more, my users get to see a scary privacy message and when I bill the customer a year later for a subscription, there's a 20-30% chance that t…

As a user, if I go to buy something in an app and it asks me to punch in my credit card number or sign in to some payment processor instead of just the usual "double click to apple pay", there is a very high chance i will just change my mind.

What if you got 30% discount? 2 minutes of work. If that didn't work Apple wouldn't spend so much effort fighting this.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure that's a direct comparison. Back then sure you could get shareware but mostly the market was paid boxed software. I can't find a direct source but I remember hearing brick-and-mortar retailers would take even more than 30% of sales. And Visual Studio sure wasn't free. Everything was different though, you'd be paying for your OS upgrades too which doesn't happen on iOS. I agree 30% is crazy, but the marke…

> but the market on iOS they're enabling has to get paid for somehow

How about paying for it with the massive profit they make selling the devices?

As far as I can tell, the only reason Apple’s doing the whole rent-seeking App Store business is “because they can.” Upside is all that money, downside is the developers kinda hate you.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#335
Maybe I missed it

But how will they actually know how much money developers are making via external web purchasing? Audits?

In my opinion working with both Apple and Google's billing libraries is pretty painful. Many developers use third parties to make it easier like Qonversion or RevenueCat. These all have to go through Apple and Google respectively

If you can just have a web page to do it, that seems easier actually. You can just save if the user is paid or not directly in your backend after they make a purchase

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#336

Am I getting this right? Say I use Stripe as my payment processor. Stripe takes 2.9% + $0.30, then Apple takes 27% so I'm at 29.9% + $0.30 being taken out of however much I charge for my app? For a $10 app, $0.30 is 3% putting the fee at 32.9%. For the privilege of paying 2.9% more, my users get to see a scary privacy message and when I bill the customer a year later for a subscription, there's a 20-30% chance that t…

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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#337

I've got to say, Apple definitely lost me on this one. This feels bad enough that despite having an iPhone since the iPhone 3G, I'll likely jump ship when I need to upgrade unless they make a U-turn on this move. EDIT: Wow, getting downvoted for saying Apple is losing me as a customer with this move is surprising. I don't understand how people on Hacker News of all places want conformity of thought. I switched from u…

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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#338

This feels like a straw that breaks the camel's back kind of moment. Apple has gotten away with a tremendous amount (being an astonishingly greedy company. All companies are de facto greedy, but Apple is just next level in its egregious entitlement), but there is simply zero way this stands. And FWIW, I'm an Apple fan and find Tim S a completely unsympathetic character. But seeing the hilariously absurd lengths that…

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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#339

To see why Apple’s mandatory commissions are absurd, compare phones to desktop computers. There is no fundamental difference between the two. So, why is it okay to install whatever you want and pay for it directly on desktops, but on phones it is not? The “better security” argument just doesn’t make sense in this context.

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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#340

Apple does provide a lot of value with the App Store. But when I compare it to my business (saas), adding stripe + aws is about 12% of sales. I feel for my App Store brethren. It would be hard to accept 30%

What is your business?
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