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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

#701

Post by mdhb »

toyg wrote: post #685
fenomas wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sched…

Apple is very much a subscriber to the Darth Vader School of Business: "I'm altering the deal; pray that I don't alter it any further."

You would think that as the web platform is starting to pick up things like WASM and many new capabilities that there are an extremely large set of apps all of a sudden where you would be insane to think about

- writing it in a different language that only really runs on one operating system

- pay $99/yr for the privilege

- at any point and for any reason you can be cut off from reaching your audience

- you have to pay them 30% of your revenue (not profit) for any money your application makes

- you can’t make updates in a timely manner

- you have close to zero avenues of recourse if you disagree with any of this

- the deal can change at any time and you don’t get a say in it.

Why the fuck would anyone choose that option in 2024 if they didn’t have to? It’s no wonder Apple went out of their way to try and cripple the web for over a decade now, it was only legal action from the EU that forced them to staff Safari properly about two years ago.

And even now, they still take any opportunity they can to make it look unattractive such as hiding the ability to install a PWA deep in a series of unrelated menus.

That’s a hostage taking business. Get out of that ecosystem if you can

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

#702

Post by remon »

toyg wrote: post #679
remon wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the wrong argument to make and a perfect example of why internet discussion is becoming harder. None of what you said matters. It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. The open question is if they're in a position where there's no reasonable alternative for developers and/or consumers which you can make a…

> It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. Ah yes, loan sharks are perfectly legitimate businessmen too, then. > The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint I personally find sadder that there are people who just rationalize away the utter lack of morality in modern capitalism. "Why…

Are you being intentionally obtuse? Those two things are, again, completely unrelated. As a person I do feel capitalism in its current form results in demonstrably unethical practices, and I do think Apple overcharges for the value they bring to the table in the specific case of their 30% cut. That's a subjective ethical and moral assessment of Apple as a company.

But that's not the topic at hand, and strawmanning one problem by pulling in another is just lazy. Ruling on this will not just affect Apple but any company with a similar modus operandi in the future, including smaller more ethical companies. Why people have trouble keeping legislative challenges (what you can do) and moral challenges (what you should do) apart is beyond me. You can have more than one opinion in your head at the same time.

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

#703

Post by remon »

toyg wrote: post #679
remon wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the wrong argument to make and a perfect example of why internet discussion is becoming harder. None of what you said matters. It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. The open question is if they're in a position where there's no reasonable alternative for developers and/or consumers which you can make a…

> It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. Ah yes, loan sharks are perfectly legitimate businessmen too, then. > The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint I personally find sadder that there are people who just rationalize away the utter lack of morality in modern capitalism. "Why…

And yes, loan sharks are legitimate businessmen in the US. Not most other places mind you because *there's legislation preventing it*. You're conflating "can" and "should" consistently, much like most other people in this thread. It's just not a moral business. Much like gambling isn't, selling addictive unhealthy products isn't, and so on. It's legal though, and if you want to change it vote for people that can turn that into law. Welcome to democracy.

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

#704

Post by Mutjake »

Probably an unpopular opinion, but as an Apple user it is okay for me to pay 30% extra (which I often do instead of using Android and getting certain apps for free), so I avoid having to sideload Epic/Facebook/whatnot stuff from their own mandatory app store + having the hassle of figuring out if there's a subscription model and how difficult it is to terminate, how to handle refunds, what darkpattern analytics are included in the appstore binary etc. etc.

If you need certain amount of money per user for the product to be profitable, raise the price to account for Apple's cut. But please do not force me to install app stores from companies which have their lifeblood in data brokering my life. At least I have an understanding with Apple that if they go haywire with that stuff (like it was close with the whole CSAM scanning debacle which damaged my trust in Apple and I started considering alternatives) they will lose my hardware purchases as well.

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

#705

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

remus wrote: post #379
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.

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.

The merits are centered around the outcomes, which in this case are the consolidation of wealth by a few who don’t need it from the many who do. What other merits are more meaningful than the observable outcomes of the practice?

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

#706

Post by clankyclanker »

Fluorescence wrote: post #676
rickdeckard wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing part is that Apple's maneuver was to effectively destroy the wholesale model in favor of an agency-model, and orchestrate all major publishers to charge more for ebooks just so they can earn their 30% commission from it. Apple actively engaged as facilitator to help publishers raise prices on the whole market, for a 30% cut. The result was that books previously available for $9.99 were suddenly sold for $…

To highlight the untold level of harm Apple caused, I now realise this event stopped me reading for years. I loved ebooks and my reading went way up. They were cheaper than paperbacks and cheap enough that I was making curiosity and impulse purchases. The problem with digital sales is that unlike a bookshop, I could not browse and take a book from the shelf and start reading and get hooked. Once ebooks suddenly jumpe…

Agreed, I only picked up reading again after finding Libby.

(A short story about how cheating the user with exorbitant prices results in the exit of your audience.)

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

#707

Post by remon »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #689
toyg wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does not matter how much money a company makes or if you personally think they're charging too much for a service. They're allowed to. Ah yes, loan sharks are perfectly legitimate businessmen too, then. > The fact that this is the second highest upvoted comment is a rather sad datapoint I personally find sadder that there are people who just rationalize away the utter lack of morality in modern capitalism. "Why…

Why do companies charge extra to businesses for the same product? Should they? See the SSO tax

There's plenty of good reasons to charge different amounts for the same services. There's nothing immoral about that. People can simply say no to making the purchase for the price offered to them. Again, this is completely besides the point of the Apple case.

In Apple's case there are no reasonable alternatives and no practical way to say "no" to the service if you want any business at all. That and that alone should be the issue at hand. What Apple is doing should not be legal on that ground. Either they allow third party stores, or they adjust their cut to a level that can reasonably argued is aligned with the value they're adding to the publisher of that app or service. Now they're in "we can charge whatever because we're the only route to getting your product on Apple products" land, and that's just not where we want to be.

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

#708

Post by marcus0x62 »

Fluorescence wrote: post #676
rickdeckard wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing part is that Apple's maneuver was to effectively destroy the wholesale model in favor of an agency-model, and orchestrate all major publishers to charge more for ebooks just so they can earn their 30% commission from it. Apple actively engaged as facilitator to help publishers raise prices on the whole market, for a 30% cut. The result was that books previously available for $9.99 were suddenly sold for $…

To highlight the untold level of harm Apple caused, I now realise this event stopped me reading for years. I loved ebooks and my reading went way up. They were cheaper than paperbacks and cheap enough that I was making curiosity and impulse purchases. The problem with digital sales is that unlike a bookshop, I could not browse and take a book from the shelf and start reading and get hooked. Once ebooks suddenly jumpe…

Jobs was deeply cynical about ebooks, claiming early on that Kindle would fail because “people don’t read anymore”[0].

There’s some level of irony in the fact that the most successful product from the guy who wanted to build a “bicycle of the mind”[1] ended up being something more like the floating chairs in Wall E.

0 - https://www.wired.com/2008/01/steve-jobs-peop/

1 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8

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

#709

Post by mattdesl »

ing33k wrote: post #694
mattdesl wrote: post #656

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 .

Yeah, but will it matter ? It's a mobile native world. That's why distribution matters.

If that messaging is allowed, it is a huge change from before, where external links for taking payment was not allowed at all within an app. A lot of users will probably opt for the 27% discount if given the choice.

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

#710

Post by d4rti »

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…

KDP from Amazon will always take a 30% or greater cut.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200644210

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