Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341

Post by WWLink »

_gabe_ wrote: post #263
samtheprogram wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t daily driven Android since at least the iPhone 3GS, according to your comment. There’s a reason they’re able to charge 30%, have a dominant market position in the US, and people continue to release apps for iOS (and prioritize launching there over Android). You’re also not the customer in this situation — you’re talking not as a developer but as an end-user without any mention of a subscription service th…

> There’s a reason they’re able to charge 30%, have a dominant market position in the US, and people continue to release apps for iOS (and prioritize launching there over Android). I keep seeing this line of thinking in the comments (some may say these comments are conforming to a specific line of thought). When is the last time you used a modern android (Galaxy, Pixel, etc)? And really used it, not just tried to use…

The tribal war thing over android vs iOS makes me laugh. It really is ridiculous.

I have an iPhone XS and a Galaxy Fold 4, and have bounced around between android phone and iPhones over the years. I won't deny that there are some things Apple does better, but it's far from a night-and-day difference.

The most shocking thing to me was playing around with a budget phone once, it was a like $150 motorola I bought for a family member. After setting things up on it, I seriously felt like I was missing almost nothing compared to my iPhone XS.... that i paid $1000 for...

At this point the only reason I keep an iPhone is I really like my Apple Watch.

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

#342

Post by TillE »

selectodude wrote: post #330
willsmith72 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements. They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year. They char…

>They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year. Would they? There are plenty of storefronts that sell games on Windows, yet Steam is the dominant one and charges, you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue. Epic charges 12 percen…

> you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue

There is one interesting difference, which is that Steam charges a one-time $100 per game, rather than annually. It's very slightly cheaper in the long run, which is nice if you just want to distribute a completely free game on Steam, or if you're a part-time game dev with low sales.

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

#343

Post by pottertheotter »

foooorsyth wrote: post #280
justinclift wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It'll probably need to be another lawsuit since it's in the developer agreement. Mind you, you can be blocked from doing needed Apple dev stuff (eg sign binaries, etc) until you've manually logged into your Apple account and clicked on the "I accept" button whenever they change terms. This happened to us (sqlitebrowser.org) in recent weeks, as our CI just stopped working one day. It turns out there was a new develo…

>There's literally no choice but to sign the things - regardless of terms - if you want your users to have software that runs. This gets to be a real nightmare in large organizations with multiple Apple Dev Portal admins, some of which may not even be authorized to sign legal documents on behalf of the company.

It’s a pain even in small orgs. There are some things only the account owner can do. You can make someone else an admin with every possible authorization, and if the person who set up the account is tied up or out of office, a whole dev team and testing can be stopped.

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

#345

Post by sidkshatriya »

Amazon sells its Kindle books outside the Apple App Store. Once purchased, the book is available to view in your Kindle app. My guess is that Amazon doesn't pay Apple any $ for books sold there.

How is this current practice of Amazon consistent with the (new?) rules in which all sales taking place even outside the store will attract commision from Apple ?

It is because Kindle does not offer ANY sales at all through its own Apple app ? Some other reason ?

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

#346

Post by willsmith72 »

selectodude wrote: post #330
willsmith72 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements. They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year. They char…

>They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year. Would they? There are plenty of storefronts that sell games on Windows, yet Steam is the dominant one and charges, you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue. Epic charges 12 percen…

if that were true then

1. they wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep their not-monopoly

2. the app store would be operating at-cost, with no margin

i think everyone agrees they have a margin, the question is how much. right now i think apple could make a profit with a 10% of revenue, and most likely at 5%. now they've done the hard work of creating an entire market, and invested huge sums to get there, so maybe they deserve a markup on that

but that's the beauty of startups and capitalism. a new product can skip steps, learn from your mistakes, work without your tech debt and bloated organisational dysfunctions, and disrupt your industry. it happens in every industry, and no company is immune. apple will fight to keep things as-is with everything they've got, but capitalism will win.

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

#347

Post by Gabrys1 »

zamadatix wrote: post #214
judge2020 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add, I'm not sure what legal basis there is for "you're charging too much". My only guess is filing against Apple and Google jointly for being a duopoly, but Epic has made it extremely hard to do something like this because of their existing jury trial against Google which gives a lot of concessions to third-party app stores in terms of functionality.

"You're charging too much" seems unlikely to be the actual argument presented though. Something along the lines of the scare message, still not actually allowing it to be handled via in app flow like a first party payment, and intentionally making a 3rd party choice potentially impossible to compete vs a 1st party choice by arguably hiding part of the processing fee margin in the overall fee would be the kinds of arg…

I think the percentage charged is very relevant though.

And the fact the developer is to hide the fee and not list it on the receipt (subscription: $10, Apple tax: $3)

And the fact you cannot charge less for the same service if you sold it outside the platform (as you'd like to do as you didn't need to collect the Apple tax).

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

#348

Post by furyofantares »

sidkshatriya wrote: post #345

Amazon sells its Kindle books outside the Apple App Store. Once purchased, the book is available to view in your Kindle app. My guess is that Amazon doesn't pay Apple any $ for books sold there. How is this current practice of Amazon consistent with the (new?) rules in which all sales taking place even outside the store will attract commision from Apple ? It is because Kindle does not offer ANY sales at all through i…

To me it reads that you can place a link in-app to the out-of-app purchase, and purchases made through that route are subject to the fee.

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

#349

Post by buffington »

knubie wrote: post #320
sircastor wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people think of the App Store as a bazaar that Apple runs on its property, and it’s a 15-30% charge to setup a tent and sell your wares. Others think of it as Apple’s general store where they carry your app as a product, and you pay 15-30% for a place on the shelf. The concept that Kroger (for instance) has a monopoly of customers in its own store is ridiculous. There are other stores, and other bazaars. What an…

I think a better analogy would be something like installing aftermarket parts for for your vehicle.

Could you actually describe this? How would that be a better analogy?

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

#350

Post by mvdtnz »

throwaway290 wrote: post #281
threeseed wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic should have sued over the size of Apple's cut, not it's right to take a cut Epic charges 5% for Unreal Engine. Apple offers developers significantly more than just a games engine.

The most famous Epic game is (or was until this legal battle) played on iOS more than on any other platform, that's in Epic's own complaint. So who built iOS? Why so many people use it? How come they are willing to pay for games instead of pirating them? Looks like whoever developed iOS and all the hardware it runs on and the ecosystem that makes it appealing for rich users is actually providing Epic a ton of value a…

I've seen you make this claim twice in this comment section. Fortnite is not on iOS.
Post reply on HN