US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by carlosjobim » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 12:51 PM UTC

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.

Flat fee services are starting to seriously attack percentage based services in the marketplace right now. Sirvoy for hotel bookings, Ticket Tailor for event ticketing, not to mention buy-and-sell marketplaces everywhere. I expect percentage based services to be murdered during this economic recession, as businesses do what they can to survive – including cutting completely useless costs.

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

#712

Post by hospitalJail » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 12:55 PM UTC

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.

Its completely obvious Apple has some sort of mind control going on. Its insane to see society is okay with this.

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

#713

Post by hortense » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 12:57 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #690

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.

> 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 Apple stock is the most widely held stock by American 401k's and forms the basis of retirement investments for middle class Americans more than any other stock

Wouldn't that be Microsoft? It's worth 2.9T, vs Apple's 2.84T.

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

#714

Post by Mikho » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

The real problem with the Apple Tax — it ruins value-chain and makes it uneconomical

For every value created a customer receives there is value captured by a company paid by this customer. Let's say a company creates a service valued as 1X by the customer and the customer pays 1X for that. This balance guarantees accessibility and interest among many customers.

Apple tax demands for a customer to pay 1.43X for the same value of 1X (0.43 = 30% of 1.43). It means that the balance is ruined and customers do not get enough value for what they pay. In value, they still get 1X despite paying for 1.43X.

There is a price elasticity curve that measures how many clients a company loses after each step of the price increase. In other words, a company gets significantly fewer customers due to the increased price at the same time, it’s unable to benefit from an additional 0.43X customers paid. A drop in the revenue is significant. At the same time, the company needs to increase its marketing budget effectively decreasing its margin even more. That makes business unsustainable.

Imagine what a decrease in purchases a product gets if its price is increased by 43%. This ruins all economic assumptions of a business.

Not to mention that if it has any network effect, significantly fewer users result in a degraded experience for all users.

I'm considering using PWA for the next mobile app and not investing in native iOS development. Even 50% fewer users due to PWA installation is better than being a lifetime slave to Apple which extorts 43% of what a company gets after Apple TAX from a user.

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

#715

Post by burnerburnson » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

4pkjai wrote: post #433

55555 wrote: post #402

Google should update the Chrome TOS so that they get 30% of all sales placed through Chrome, regardless of payment processor used. They're missing out on trillions of dollars and all they have to do is update their TOS!

A lot of businesses spend more than 30% of their products cost on Google Ads. I know plenty of people who sell something for $20, and spend $30 on Google Ads to get that user to their site.

What does that have to do with anything? Using Google Ads is not a requirement of having your website be accessible through Google Chrome. It's not analogous to this situation at all.

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

#716

Post by zzbzq » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #649

sofixa wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and by the relatively low fees of only 30%. 30% is low compared to what? Mafia extortion rates?

When the App Store was new, the web hosting for my indie shareware games was about 30% of their net revenue after the payment processor and marketplace fees. The payment processor (cheapest PayPal (U.S. Accounts), most expensive American Express/Optima International[0]) and marketplace (Kagi[0]) fees were on top of that hosting fee , and cost anywhere from (1.9 to 5.0)% + $0.30 (payment provider) plus 2.5% + $1 (mark…

I don't understand what hosting fees have to do with apps. The app store seemed to be more or less a ripoff of Facebook's (now long defunct) app store, back when Facebook was a web-based app-of-apps, and AFAIK Facebook apps were free plugins.

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

#717

Post by joshspankit » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

There’s a lot to talk about but I’m calling this out as trivial, easy, and in bad faith:

> No redirecting, intermediate links, or URL tracking parameters are allowed.

It’s 100% clear to me that the link they let you use will be a redirected intermediate link through Apple’s servers, probably with tracking params (and at the very least with OS-level tracking).

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

#718

Post by JimDabell » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

fenomas wrote: post #660

nevir wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sched…

> So the feature goes into open beta, and a bunch of flash devs make iPhone apps, they work fine

We tried this at work at the time. They absolutely did not work fine. The best I can say about them is that they ran, mostly.

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

#719

Post by jim180 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:10 PM UTC

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #570

ribit wrote: post #499

Earlier 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…

The threshold is 10k€ in the EU. So, way less than 500k

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

#720

Post by honeybadger1 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:14 PM UTC

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…

Honestly this is the only thread of comments that really get to the meat and potatoes of why Apple can be evil although while making good product. Their evil must be curbed as they go out of their way with certain actions to completely punish their customers and partners.