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US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
581–590 of 1001 posts
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#582There'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…
How are they possibly in compliance? The judgement was about Apple's "steering practices", not just allowing 3rd party payment processing.
They're clearly making Apple's in-app purchases the preferential choice by prohibiting developers from using anything but a single plain text link, and scaring users with strongly worded warnings.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#583The solution is very simple for me. Stop participating in the native app ecosystems.
The way I see it, you get 2 major pieces of value out of these. First, they serve as a B2C marketing channel. Second, they provide access to certain native hardware features & OS integration.
The first point is difficult to contend with, but HN and Twitter seem to serve as a fine counterpoint.
For native hardware access, I'd recommend just trying it in your browser right now. You'd likely be surprised what works in 2024 on iOS/Safari clients. We've been shipping just a webapp to our customers for the last 3-4 years now. We do 2D barcode scanning, signature capture, etc. without any difficulty these days. You DO NOT need a native app to access camera, location, etc. you may find some friction with the web, but you just have to work through it and have patience.
Watching founders obsess over App Store presence and its requisite taxation is a bit of a red flag for me regarding the effectiveness of their business model. The open web exists - why haven't you even tried it yet? Seems to me it's easier to complain about how unfair things are on twitter than it is to iterate into a viable business.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have difficulty following this argument, especially the "stealing" part. App Store does not just randomly take money from the devs. App Store also provides a service. They do world-wide payment and VAT processing, refund processing, discovery, distribution, user login management, APIs, distributed cloud storage, etc. It costs money to run these things. As a small-time developer, I think this is a great deal for 15%…
It's actually annoying that the refunds and VAT are handled. For small international developers, under 500K per year spread out over several states & countries, often they don't have to pay VAT in most international places, so they lose an extra 20-22%. For instance most US states won't require you to pay VAT under 100K revenue if you are from another country. Same for refunds & subscription management, often clients…
This is a great point and I think it illustrates the drawbacks of centralized store. I think an argument can be made that App Store is an important part of the developer experience and as such they are entitled to have a voice in what features it should prioritize.
The thing is, I fully agree that the model has to change and adapt. There has to be more transparency, more accountability, and these stores have to improve in a way that best fits the interests of the developers and the users. I just don't think that third-party stores or unrestricted side loading will do anything like that — in fact, I fear that they will make things considerably worse.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#585It's incredible that there are actually people in this thread arguing in favor of Apple. You don't need to defend the trillion dollar company. They are not your friend, they do not care about you, your work or your life. All they do is steal 30% from society that could be used for more productive purposes than make a few people who already have everything even richer.
> It's incredible that there are actually people in this thread arguing in favor of Apple It's incredible to me that people arguing against apple here don't realise that they're arguing to allow another billion dollar company to do what they want, and that their own opinion is the only one that could possibly be valid If you want an open ecosystem with alternative app stores, head on over to Android. The value of iOS…
Regardless, it is a phenomenon here that negative words on Apple - justified or not alike - attract numerious downvotes without comments, just for the sake of it.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#586Imagine a world where laws forced Apple to enable feature an Apple-compatible version of the Play Store alongside the App Store and vice versa. Likewise with Kindle and any other developer that wants to adhere to a legally mandated App Store API.
How would that not be a net positive for the mobile device ecosystem?
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#587Some perspective: we sell on Amazon as a 3rd party seller. Amazon takes about 9% of the sale price of our products as their commission (it’s actually 12%, but includes credit card processing). To which you might be inclined to reply, “Ah, but 9% is a reasonable commission, so that’s okay.” But we sell physical goods, which cost money to produce. It’s typical for our products to have 20-25% gross margins. So as a shar…
Amazon customers are still available on other platforms. They use credit cards and they can put their details into any site, and I imagine most of them frequently do. Their shipping address is also accepted by every company. iPhone users don't carry a second Android phone, and their purchasing decision has committed them to only buying on the App Store for at least a few years at a time. And the crazy part is they ar…
I'm not quite getting your point.
The parent seems to be saying that when you take the difference between physical and digital goods into account, that Amazon is leaving him with a similar slice of the revenue.
You seem to be arguing that he has alternatives to Amazon.
However, you also seem to be making the point indirectly that the motivation for selling on Amazon, and why businesses sell in the App Stores, is that they want the additional sales that come from targeting those marketplaces.
Isn't then there little real distinction from selling products on Amazon (where you could sell elsewhere, but dramatically fewer would see and purchase your product) or the App Store (where you could make a web app and sell elsewhere, but dramatically fewer would see and purchase your product)?
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> At this point the only reason I keep an iPhone is I really like my Apple Watch
With LTE smart watches starting to get good, the dream for me is to just lose the phone. Hopefully whatsapp makes a client for the watches someday and I will have everything I need without all the distractions.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#589It's incredible that there are actually people in this thread arguing in favor of Apple. You don't need to defend the trillion dollar company. They are not your friend, they do not care about you, your work or your life. All they do is steal 30% from society that could be used for more productive purposes than make a few people who already have everything even richer.
The lords and churches of the past wouldn't even dare to ask as much as 30% of revenues in our feudal past.
It’s 15% for the commoners (<$1M) and I’d believe that in feudal times.
Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the difference is that amazon is not a platform. You sell on Amazon because it is where everyone is and they did that by burning lots and lots of cash to ensure everyone margins cannot be larger than a paper atom. Now that they're trying to capitalize on it they're becoming worse as a store and I can't remember last time I used them (in NL). If you buy an iphone there is no one to compete, Apple does not have…
> If you buy an iphone there is no one to compete This. The problem is not the 30%, the problem is that iPhones do not have an option to buy apps from, lets say a Amazon Store or Epic Store.
That has been the style of argument made to regulators so far.
However then people get shocked that Apple says ok, we've rolled out the ability for third party app stores, we still review all the apps before signing, and the store owes us a 20% commission.