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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

#651

Post by amelius »

nevir wrote: post #469
remus wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think apple's 30% cut is excessive, but I don't think this line of argument helps. We should discuss the points on their merits, not based on who's making them and how much money they have.

Here's a little story / timeline from 2009-2010 (from my perspective as a dev on Kindle for iOS): * we submit the Kindle app ...including an in-app bookstore... to Apple for initial app review (Note: multiple ebook readers with in-app bookstores are already on the app store at this point) * several weeks pass with no response * Apple announces in-app purchasing (to be released several months later) * Apple rejects ou…

Again, if you're against government regulation, then you haven't seen a company regulate a market.

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

#652

Post by jdkoeck »

maccard wrote: post #573
jdkoeck wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, it’s crazy people defend Apple on this. Apple is not just providing a payment platform, it’s forcing you to use it. As a developer, you should be free to use any payment platform you want in your app, like on the web. Let the user decide. End of story.

> Let the user decide. End of story. The value proposition of iOS is that the app store is the place to go, and that my experience will be seamless. I want a centralised place to manage my subscriptions. Here's an example: I subscribed to NYT Cooking in the web a few years back. I went to cancel only to find out that I have to phone them. If I subscribed on an app store it would have been one click and done. I'm actu…

Your point is moot because Apple forces you to use its own app store, where using their payment platform is mandatory. If there were alternative app stores, I would have no qualm with this restriction. Let Apple's store compete with others, it will come out on top if it's really the best.

The larger point is this: in a free market, if you have a bad experience with a product (like NYT Cooking in your example), you can bring your business elsewhere. That's how it works, and that's what Apple is interfering with.

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

#653

Post by HatchedLake721 »

nolok wrote: post #644
ben_w wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. True. > 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. I'm old enough to have developed software before the App Store existed, and remember that everyone was very excited both buy it…

The problem is not that 30% is too high or too low, the problem is that it shouldn't be a % but a flat fee structure, like every other services ever. If you have an app tomorrow that sells for $10 to 10k people you owe Apple $30k, now you manage to up your price to $30, same work same size same everything, but suddenly you now owe Apple $90k ? That's called a tax, not a fee. Doing so wouldn't stop apple from having a…

> like every other services ever

Apple didn’t invent a marketplace.

Please have a look how other online and offline marketplaces work and how they monetize access.

You can look at anything from Salesforce, Shopify, to Microsoft, Epic Store, PlayStation and your local Target store.

Hint - it’s not a flat fee structure.

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

#654

Post by poszlem »

andersa wrote: post #373

It'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.

What a wild take. Epic doesn't care about me either. What difference does it make? Are we supposed to judge if something's right or wrong based on who's doing it, rather than what they're actually doing?

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

#655

Post by nolok »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #653
nolok wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not that 30% is too high or too low, the problem is that it shouldn't be a % but a flat fee structure, like every other services ever. If you have an app tomorrow that sells for $10 to 10k people you owe Apple $30k, now you manage to up your price to $30, same work same size same everything, but suddenly you now owe Apple $90k ? That's called a tax, not a fee. Doing so wouldn't stop apple from having a…

> like every other services ever Apple didn’t invent a marketplace. Please have a look how other online and offline marketplaces work and how they monetize access. You can look at anything from Salesforce, Shopify, to Microsoft, Epic Store, PlayStation and your local Target store. Hint - it’s not a flat fee structure.

What makes you think I agree any more with any of these ?

But as a user I'm able to buy my pc games, my groceries or my music from another store. Apple prohibits me from doing that.

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

#656

Post by mattdesl »

Can’t a developer just add a message to their website to circumvent this link tax? “Open this again in any regular browser to receive a 27% discount.”

I don’t see anything that prohibits this: https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...

Apple cannot (or, per antitrust law, should not) tell a developer how to design and sell their merchandise in their web based storefronts.

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

#657

Post by [deleted] »

nevir wrote: post #469
remus wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think apple's 30% cut is excessive, but I don't think this line of argument helps. We should discuss the points on their merits, not based on who's making them and how much money they have.

Here's a little story / timeline from 2009-2010 (from my perspective as a dev on Kindle for iOS): * we submit the Kindle app ...including an in-app bookstore... to Apple for initial app review (Note: multiple ebook readers with in-app bookstores are already on the app store at this point) * several weeks pass with no response * Apple announces in-app purchasing (to be released several months later) * Apple rejects ou…

[deleted]

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

#658

Post by cryptonym »

norman784 wrote: post #646
andersa wrote: post #373

It'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.

As a user I don't care for the 30% cut, what I care is to have a centralised payment method and subscription system, I don't have energy/time to keep with different subscriptions in each service/app and knowing that there are bad actors, they will do whatever possible to make hard to unsubscribe (like a few years ago the NYT, where you could only unsubscribe by phone and was very hard even so). But if even when using…

That's a fair statement, you may like Apple payment even if it adds 30% to whatever you are buying. What is not fair is forcing everyone into this.

If I'm selling content, why couldn't I give customer the choice between:

- Paying the 30% Apple cut and benefiting from everything you like about this

- Buying directly, cheaper, without Apple cut (or maybe with a tiny cut if that make any sense, removing only 3pt is a joke)

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

#659

Post by dns_snek »

ribit wrote: post #575
dns_snek wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to do distribution or payment processing? Take care of it yourself. Yes! That's exactly what everyone wants. > Joe the indie developer instead is dead in the water. No, Joe the indie developer will happily use one of the most popular alternative app stores that fits their needs and doesn't rip them off with fees.

> No, Joe the indie developer will happily use one of the most popular alternative app stores that fits their needs and doesn't rip them off with fees. What would these be? Last time I checked, the "champion of the people" Epyc charges 12% and pushes the charges for some payment methods onto the buyer. And it seems like they still haven't turned profitable, even with their bare-bones store model. Stripe (one of the m…

The lack of competition and alternative options is the core issue here. Free market competition will figure it out, that's the simple answer.

One developer might be operating on effectively infinite margins and opt to stay in the Apple app store for visibility and most familiar experience.

Another might participate in an alternative app store that charges a review fee, a distribution fee but doesn't charge anything for in-app purchases except baseline payment processing fees.

Yet another might be operating on razor-thin margins and/or doesn't need to participate in an app store for visibility, they might sell their app directly through their website and roll their own payments and distribution.

> Stripe (one of the most popular payment processors) will take 9% from a 5$ purchase just for payment processing.

We might as well treat this as 0 when discussing alternative options since it's an inescapable fact of selling things anywhere (cash and crypto aside)

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

#660

Post by fenomas »

nevir wrote: post #469
remus wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think apple's 30% cut is excessive, but I don't think this line of argument helps. We should discuss the points on their merits, not based on who's making them and how much money they have.

Here's a little story / timeline from 2009-2010 (from my perspective as a dev on Kindle for iOS): * we submit the Kindle app ...including an in-app bookstore... to Apple for initial app review (Note: multiple ebook readers with in-app bookstores are already on the app store at this point) * several weeks pass with no response * Apple announces in-app purchasing (to be released several months later) * Apple rejects ou…

Another random app store anecdote: way back when (2010?) Adobe made a feature where you could publish flash content as an iOS app. Like you build a flash game, hit publish, and an .ipa file comes out. So the feature goes into open beta, and a bunch of flash devs make iPhone apps, they work fine, they get accepted into the app store, users are using them, everybody's happy.

Then a few days before the feature was scheduled to leave beta and be formally supported, Apple changed the app store terms to disallow it, by requiring that apps be "originally written" in certain languages like objective-C or C++. Nothing to do with what the app did or how it worked, and no definition for what "originally written" specifically meant. And there were lots of other technologies for building apps by then, so of course they all freaked (though AFAIK Apple never actually enforced the new terms for anything besides flash).

Anyway shortly afterward Adobe reverted the app-publishing feature, and then a few months later Apple quietly reverted the terms to what they were before.

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