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Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

reuters.com

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Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#231

Post by johnnyanmac »

dagmx wrote: post #158
johnnyanmac wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's still equivalent. I just think apple was smart knowing most people are comfy in the walled garden and won't throw up a fuss. Similar to Unity, these pricing ding the smaller people the most. But unlike Unity, the bigger players aren't joining the protest. I guess I was just foolish thinking businesses would at least think in the middle-term of "what if we want our own storefront one day ". I guess the EU…

How are they equivalent other than a fee existing at all, and how is that different than a revenue share that Epic do? Apple hasn’t added a new fee to existing devs. The reason you see apathy is that this doesn’t negatively change the status quo. It provides new options. Granted they might not like the terms of the new options , as you clearly don’t. But nothing has been taken away from them in the process. It is com…

If you had any plans at all to maybe think of an alternative app store, it's equivalent. You have an expectation from a competitor who allows this and IOS instead will charge you despite not using their own store. Pricing that is worse than staying in the walled garden.

If you were apathetic/supportive of Apple and would stay on the App Store anyway, nothing changes. And I suppose a lot of businesses are in this group.

>But nothing has been taken away from them in the process. It is completely unsurprising that there is apathy.

Yes, that's my core problem. But the last two years should have taught me thst companies aren't looking in the long term these days. Epic is, sort of. if only because they have no option given their whole kerfuffle.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#232

Post by johnnyanmac »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #209
johnnyanmac wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's still equivalent. I just think apple was smart knowing most people are comfy in the walled garden and won't throw up a fuss. Similar to Unity, these pricing ding the smaller people the most. But unlike Unity, the bigger players aren't joining the protest. I guess I was just foolish thinking businesses would at least think in the middle-term of "what if we want our own storefront one day ". I guess the EU…

> Unity, these pricing ding the smaller people the most I don’t think that’s true. A very small proportion of smaller developers might have been disproportionately affected but Unity was just complete garbage at communicating the changes (not trying to downplay the retroactive bit, no excuse for that). Most people just didn’t bother reading the fine print or calculating the actual fees themselves and just looked at t…

>A very small proportion of smaller developers might have been disproportionately affected

I don't think it was a small portion. The main point was that the lowest cost plan was horrible and a ploy to get you to buy Unity Pro. If you weren't a free (as in freedom) app, it as a complete negative to be on the base plan.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#233

Post by johnnyanmac »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #224
johnnyanmac wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That the first "app store" approved is built on predatory free to play gaming money is also a problem. That's how 70% of apple's revenue is gained. AKA, the biggest players who are capable of advertising their own store without visibility from the default mode of purchase. I'm sure eventually we'll get FDroid equivalents on IOS, but Apple is still playing coy as of now. So nothing but the deepest pockets will challe…

> That's how 70% of apple's revenue is gained That’s factually incorrect and a completely absurd figure. The make way more money from device sales

Forgive me, I forgot an important word there:

70% of Apples app store revenue comes from game MTX. This is pretty much public record thanks to Apple v. Epic.

I completely get why they are in their death thoes, but as you said: they have other lucrative revenue streams anyway. So I hope the EU keeps slamming down on them.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#234

Post by talldayo »

throwAGIway wrote: post #144
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed, and they saw that software of sufficient quality can't be funded merely by sales of these devices... Yes it can. Apple is lying to get more money, nothing more.

Show me one example?

iCloud, Apple Music, Safari, the App Store, Apple News and AppleTV are all arbitrarily limited to bolster Apple's service revenue.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#235

Post by talldayo »

throwAGIway wrote: post #177
sadeshmukh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can sideload on Android no? I've sideloaded a few apps that I needed and there really are no problems.

Try it without having Google services on that phone. Most apps and especially the essential ones are dependent on unmodified phones with Google services.

> Most apps and especially the essential ones are dependent on unmodified phones with Google services.

There are no "essential" apps that prevent you from running Android without Google services. There are certainly some nice features that require it, but you have been capable of using de-Googled Android for close to a decade at this point.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#236

Post by ffgjgf1 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #232
ffgjgf1 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unity, these pricing ding the smaller people the most I don’t think that’s true. A very small proportion of smaller developers might have been disproportionately affected but Unity was just complete garbage at communicating the changes (not trying to downplay the retroactive bit, no excuse for that). Most people just didn’t bother reading the fine print or calculating the actual fees themselves and just looked at t…

>A very small proportion of smaller developers might have been disproportionately affected I don't think it was a small portion. The main point was that the lowest cost plan was horrible and a ploy to get you to buy Unity Pro. If you weren't a free (as in freedom) app, it as a complete negative to be on the base plan.

IIRC you weren’t affected if your revenue was under $100k and you couldn’t use the free version before the change anyway if it was over that. I might be wrong but I’m almost sure that that proportion was close to zero.

> it as a complete negative to be on the base plan.

With the changes if you didn’t get pro after surpassing the revenue it would have gotten price but that wasn’t even an option previously.

I think it was actually a significant improvement for some people in that position:

- the cap was now per game/project instead of company

- you could still surpass the previous cap a bit and save some money by paying for install instead of immediately being required to get pro.

Everybody just seem to ignore that/ didn’t notice it because Unity did such a garbage job explaining the changes.

(I’m not really defending them, they only had to introduce this few because they almost literally burnt billions between by pointlessly buying random companies and going on some deranged hiring spree for no reason..)

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#237

Post by Dylan16807 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #221
Dylan16807 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when there's DRM getting in the way of the natural right to mess with your own belongings. Cars have traditionally not had that, and I think it should not be allowed.

Physically, Apple does not hinder you from doing anything you want with your device. If you take out the chips and put in other components, that's your business, not Apples. If you manage to hack the software on the Apple chip to work exactly as you prefer, Apple cannot do anything. But what hackers are demanding is that Apple alter their software to work exactly as they want and assist them with this, even though mo…

First off, not putting in DRM is less work. And user control over keys is not hard. They wouldn't need to make anything worse.

But really it's about reasonable fit-for-use regulations. That burger needs to be edible. The restaurant has to follow fire codes, even though that takes extra work. Both of those are orders of magnitude harder, as a percentage of cost, than letting the user control their own device. An even closer comparison is a rule that Tesla has to work with other chargers, which would be a good rule if it doesn't already exist.

DRM is a special new thing that didn't traditionally exist, and we shouldn't let it be used as a way to remove the ability to tinker. It's almost as bad as physically hindering.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#238

Post by burnerthrow008 »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #202
burnerthrow008 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that China’s domestic requirements don’t require Apple to become a non-profit. If the EU’s requirements are actually as many HN’ers would like them to be, Apple will have no reason to sell iPhones in the EU.

Apple still makes significantly more money from selling the actual iPhones than from the App Store. This such an obvious fact that anyone even mildly interested in the topic (i.e. commenting here and making such strong, yet silly, claims) surely must know..

If that were true, Apple wouldn’t care to poke the bear.

If you were honest, you would read Apple’s SEC filing, which show that (globally) about 43% of Apple’s profits come from Services, while 57% comes from hardware. You could just admit that you don’t understand the difference between revenue and profit. I’m sure you’ll move the goalposts and claim that’s “significantly” more.

The EU wants to zero out Services revenue, while simultaneously removing Apple’s brand value (a curated “walled garden”, where app developers can’t take too much advantage of customers).

The alt stores in the EU will be a race to the bottom of which one allows developers to abuse customers the most. Why would any app stay on Apple’s store when alt stores allow more invasive privacy violations? And then when the app ecosystem on iOS looks like Android, what possible reason could you have to buy an iPhone?

So, yes, the EU very much wants Apple to be a non-profit.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#239

Post by burnerthrow008 »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #206
burnerthrow008 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like more a problem for the Europe than for Apple

No, it’s still a problem for apple because they won’t leave. Even in the absurdly inconceivable (to an extent that it’s not even worth discussing) case that they did losing a significant proportion of their revenue would be a much bigger problem for them than the EU.

Less than 20% of Apple’s net income comes from what they call “Europe”, which actually includes Africa and the mid-East.

If Apple pulled out of the EU, which isn’t even all of the European continent much less the “Europe” reporting region, they would probably take less than a 10% hit. Significant, but not a showstopper. I don’t know where everyone gets this idea that pulling out of the EU would kill Apple.

Re: Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe

#240

Post by burnerthrow008 »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #201
DEADMINCE wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if it's too much, they will just pull out of the EU and sell to Europeans via online only. EU citizens will still be Apple customers, just without any EU protections. To be fair, the EU is being a bit ridiculous sometimes. Apple decided not to compete in the EU because of the restrictions, and the EU seemingly wanted to penalize that decision also.

So instead of losing 5% or so of their revenue in the EU they’d rather lose > 80-90% seems like a smart business decision… In any case (not quite the same but gives a glimpse into their mindset) they have zero issues with kowtowing to authoritarian regimes like those in Russia or China

> So instead of losing 5% or so of their revenue in the EU they’d rather lose > 80-90%

They would directly lose ~40% of profit. Additionally, there’s no reason to buy an iPhone if it just works like an Android, so Apple would be competing with Samsung hardware on price instead of on having a superior customer experience. So there go the other ~60% of profits.

So, yes, pulling out of the market completely starts to look like a rational business decision.

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