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

Where do you get this number for Stripe ?

Right now, in the EU, the standard fee (before negotiation and volume consideration) is 0.25ct + 1.5% which will work out to about 26.5% cut for a 1-euro payment that is the worst-case scenario currently possible in the App Store as far as I am concerned.

They sell added services but there is no obligation for them and I figure most developers wouldn't care for them. The most expensive it can get is for international payment with currency conversion: 0.25ct + 3.25% + 2%. I don't know exactly how they do the fee calculation, but for a payment of 1, you would get a cut of about 30% max. Apple definitely does NOT provide the same service, since they do not allow international payment in their different localized app stores and they don't do currency conversion (they will let the bank charge you for that, which will get MUCH more expensive).

And the stripe number becomes much better with bigger price because of the fixed transaction fee. If you sell an app for 5$, the minimum you would have to give Apple would be 75 cents (the 15% they will allow under certain conditions) when the maximum you would pay to stripe would be 51 cents, or about 10.25%. Realistically most developers that do not have the scale to operate a fully custom system will address one or 2 big regional markets (with mostly shared language, culture and currency) and they would be just fine with the standard offering of stripe that would bring the cost to around 6.5%. While setting up everything would be a bigger hassle, for most developers that make enough money to live off it, that's a no brainer. Even if we argue that Apple provides more value than the base stripe and push to 10% cost everything included, for a dev making 100K in sales, it's already "free" 5K coming their way.

Many seem to mistakenly think that Apple allows dev to sell their app worldwide with very little hassle. Not only this is not true since many apps are actually region locked for whatever reason and cannot be purchased in a different market (it happens to me all the time, especially with apps from the US or from Germany) but Apple does not realy simplify the process of localisation, marketing, and proper tax declaration in each relevant market. Apples gives you pretty sales statement with everything you need, but any decent system will do that, you still need to do the actual work of compliance if you are big enough or care enough to follow the laws.

There are some argument to be made about the benefits of Apple integrated solution but it is only relevant for cheap software that are impulse buys precisely because they were cheap enough. The higher the price of the software the less relevant Apple solution is. Especially considering the inflexibility and dumb "categories" they push everything into. And if you have to push subscription or in-app purchase nonsense like they currently do, the economics are even better for external solution.

It's super easy to avoid all of this drama: Do not buy an iPhone. Almost any other phone will allow you to download and install arbitrary programs from any source that offers them. It's quite wonderful.

It amazes me that people would rather force apple to open up through dubious court cases than simply buy a different device.

Big minds think about systems. Small minds think about individuals within the system, like corporations or people, because they can't comprehend the bigger picture or even that one exists.

The people who think Apple is evil because of their size are simply not systems thinkers. They have an illogical view of the world in which the little guy is always right simply because they are the little guy, and thus the big guy must be wrong. It's very similar to the Amerika thing you said. If you don't think about the system Apple or America operates in, it's really easy to hate them.

Which is not to say one can't be a systems thinker and still think this was a bad decision or that Apple is given too much power or does things that are unethical or bad for consumers or whatever else. I totally concur that the government should require Apple and Google to allow sideloading, payments they're not involved in, etc BECAUSE I am thinking about the system and how having two corporations own the device our world runs on is a bad one. And how there's essentially no way for governments to mandate a third viable mobile OS into existence.

But the people who say "I can't believe you'd side with Apple" phrase it that way because they are not thinking of the system. They're thinking small. They think making ad-hoc decisions about individuals within the system is appropriate because they can't think any bigger. If they could, they'd lay out the argument as I just did (and, as many, many people in here did too) or something that was less about the individual.

There's been a lot of this on display (not so much here) in what people say about the whole Israel/Hamas situation too. It's not so much what they say (systems thinkers don't agree anymore than anyone else) but how they say it that tips it off.

I suspect the number of app Developers is quite smaller than that 10%.

I support Apple not because they need my support, but because the supporting argument aligns with my principles. I believe that the entire App Store ecosystem belongs to Apple, and that none of us have any right to dictate what Apple does with it. It's theirs in the same way my organs are mine. Just because it happens to be massively successful doesn't change this. I'm not a negative utilitarian.