211–220 of 361 posts
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I am waiting for that research paper titled "What came first for Apple - the money or the user experience?". I can imagine Apple's thinking here - if we can squeeze every 3rd party service to adopt our 30% cut, then (1) we'll add more to our bottomline and (2) people will have a better UX (or more precisely can go back to their old smoother and better UX). Question is - did I get the order right?
The 30% "apple tax" on their App Store is not a major way that Apple makes money (more on this in paragraph 2). This leads to the conclusion that Apple is not attempting to hobble stores that undercut them: they simply like using their control of the store ecosystem to maintain the quality, simplicity, and consistency of the experience that allows them to provide to their customers, with the nice side effect of givin…
In the long run where does the App developer get to make any money? On app sales alone? You cannot survive by making a one off sale to your customers, and apps that seek to generate more income through in-app purchases need to pay fees that are equivalent to what they would do through credit cards or whatever.
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It's nothing so sinister as that. It's actually more simple: they're protecting their own users from being ripped off, by being charged a premium because they're iOS users. It has some negative effects but as a user it makes you feel safer buying something through an app if you know you're not being charged more than you would if you did it through the same supplier's website.
>It's actually more simple: they're protecting their own users from being ripped off, by being charged a premium because they're iOS users Apple is trying to protect their own users from being ripped off by Apple? That's some _really_ twisted logic there. That rule is in place to safeguard their 30% cut. I don't see how the user benefits from having to pay 30% extra instead of getting a 30% discount on the same suppl…
Is anyone really surprised? This is what happens if you give a single company so much control over your use of devices. It'll only get worse, we all know that, right?
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The problem is Dropbox isn't exclusively an iOS app. So you can sign up for Dropbox directly and they get 100% of the fee or you can sign up through Apple and they get 70%. That might be more than their entire profit. They can't even make iOS purchases more expensive even if perhaps someone like you might pay 30% more for the privilege of a single payment provider. The fact is that Apple is the one that requires apps…
> So you can sign up for Dropbox directly and they get 100% of the fee or you can sign up through Apple and they get 70%. That might be more than their entire profit. (Emphasis mine) Sounds like it might be time to find a new business plan, then.
What Apple is doing seems to be completely legal and completely disgusting (and not at all new). Given that there's no ground for legal action, here are a few things we, developers, can do: 1. Don't work for Apple . This one is really the easiest to implement, there's more then enough fine alternatives in the Valley. 2. Don't develop for Apple . Unfortunately, not really an option for most mobile developers. So, the…
Now, I don't think that other companies are inherently more moral than Apple. That would be a foolish assumption. It's just that one company dominating an entire market is bad for almost everyone.
If you develop mobile apps, only having one channel of distribution / platform is such a high risk. I don't understand developers that only target one platform.
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So... they have a monopoly on the end of the market where there is money? Why is this a distinction?
You can't have a monopoly on a portion of a market. The clue is in the first two syllables.
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I believe the pricing restriction only applies to In App Purchases. The iOS edition of your app is unique to iOS so it stands to reason to price it independently. Sell a subscription to your service in the app? Then it needs to be the same price as on your website. It's protecting customers, not Apple.
It's protecting customers, not Apple. That's one way of looking at it. Another is that it protects Apple from having their users find out that 30% of what they're paying gets nowhere near the person they think is getting all the money.
I do not believe keeping the price equal to other helps the consumer, it's simply Apple keeping developers from charging the 30% straight to the consumer. I believe it would be interesting if they let this restriction slide. Perhaps the advantage of simple purchasing makes up for an increase in price. Convenience is also worth something, as supermarkets have found out.