Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
111–120 of 408 posts
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#112Can anyone provide a link to context on what OP is talking about, for those who don't know it? I don't understand what Apple is actually doing from this tweet/thread. Are they are somehow managing to force even payment links from ordinary web sites in an ordinary web browser (Safari?) to go through them as payment processor? (How?) Or is this a new rule for app store apps (what is the new rule?) Or a new payment stru…
Tim Sweeney is mad about having to pay Apple's App Store commission. Developers for many years believed that by having their own "payment processing" they could pay nothing to Apple. However the district court ruled that Apple is entitled to collect a commission because it wasn't just for "payment processing," it was for its intellectual property. They are just doing it in a convoluted and less efficient way as a res…
> Tim Sweeney is mad about having to pay Apple's App Store commission
Tim Sweeney should also be mad about having to pay a quarter of a billion dollar fine “for tricking users into making unwanted charges” [1].
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#113Go no further than to know who is tweeting it, Tim Sweeney, sue-er of Apple for taking 30% for App sales
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#114Apple collects the rent from the apps that exist withn their walled garden. Epic employs behavioural specialists tasked in making their games addictive and coerce user into spending with micro-transactions. I do not want to take a side in this fight.
Bad entities can point out when other entities behave badly. You don't have to like either of them.
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you're not forced to use UE. you are forced to pay Epic 5% of sales (if your game makes more than $1 million), so pretty much like Apple (fees are lower of course)
But again, you have the choice of not using Epic. You can use Unity, or any other game engine, or even make your own if you're so inclined. With Apple, you don't have a choice if you want to be on iOS (which has close to 60% marketshare in the US). And I'm not arguing that apple needs to reduce the fee. They can charge whatever they want for their IAP system. But, other companies that have software/services that are…
iOS is not a market segment. Smartphones is the segment and so you do have a choice. The courts have already ruled that Apple doesn't have a monopoly in their segment.
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds even worse for Apple. If it’s too easy to make an in-app purchase, why don’t they make it harder to complete one by adding password requirement for payments through their App Store? Of course they won’t do that because it hurts /their/ bottom line. Following this logic, letting people complete payments outside of Apples control should absolve Apple of the legal liabilities between payments made between th…
a) They always require your password for in-app purchases unless you disable it. b) People have been conditioned over 15 years to treat all app purchases as being managed by Apple. So they expect refunds, disputes etc to be done in the App Store. This is changing. And so it's completely reasonable to clearly inform users about this. Because we have a long history of IAP being a major addiction vector.
>They always require your password for in-app purchases unless you disable it.
No they don’t. Biometric only is the default for all IAP/in app subs.
Android is the only one who makes you enter a password to subscribe, because Google is incompetent.
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
the same could be said of any game developed on Unreal and required to pay an (admittedly lower) percent to Epic
You have a choice to use a different engine to build your game (including rolling your own). You don't have a choice to not use the app store to distribute your iOS app.
Yes, you do. You have the choice to put your App on Google Play or host it yourself and make it available for Android.
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#118Apple must allow alternate payment modes without imposing a gatekeeper tax. It must be consistent without exceptions (i.e. not just Amazon). The issue is not the gratuitous fee, it is the lack of choice. iOS is more ubiquitous than macOS yet more restrictive--it cannot last. This entitlement is so restrictive -- it just seems vindictive. Apple's market share and success means additional responsibility. The argument t…
I will risk an avalanche of downvotes and steel man Apple's argument. :) Have you ever gotten stuck with a monthly fee for something that's hard to cancel? It's a real pain the butt, no? But that never really happens on Apple devices, because Apple makes it incredibly easy to cancel subscriptions. You don't have to call anyone, you don't have to struggle with a bad website -- you just click cancel on your phone and i…
Apple doesn't have dark patterns? Tell that to my credit card bills
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#119Apple must allow alternate payment modes without imposing a gatekeeper tax. It must be consistent without exceptions (i.e. not just Amazon). The issue is not the gratuitous fee, it is the lack of choice. iOS is more ubiquitous than macOS yet more restrictive--it cannot last. This entitlement is so restrictive -- it just seems vindictive. Apple's market share and success means additional responsibility. The argument t…
I will risk an avalanche of downvotes and steel man Apple's argument. :) Have you ever gotten stuck with a monthly fee for something that's hard to cancel? It's a real pain the butt, no? But that never really happens on Apple devices, because Apple makes it incredibly easy to cancel subscriptions. You don't have to call anyone, you don't have to struggle with a bad website -- you just click cancel on your phone and i…
> One of the main reasons I buy things from Apple (on my device) and Amazon (if it's a physical good)
You don't have a choice, from Apple. With Amazon you can buy your Purina and flip-flops off a third-party, but where else do you buy a calculator app for iPhone?
The problem with this steelman is that giving third-parties more options should change nothing for you. If you're ideologically opposed to anyone that doesn't use Apple's or Amazon's fulfillment system, it doesn't matter where the competitors are anyways. In a post-sideloading world you'd keep using Apple's App Store the same way millions of Android users never enable Developer Mode. Both sides get what they want.
Re: Apple's bad faith 27% tax on web purchases
#120If it was just a tax, it'd be bad enough. But Apple's in-app payments solution is severely lacking in terms of features and capabilities. Just some of the problems: * You cannot issue a partial refund. * Actually, you can't refund a customer at all. Customers have to contact Apple to request a refund and it's entirely at their mercy of their whims. * If Apple declines the refund for whatever reason, you and the custo…
Also
* You cannot generate human readable / human memorable coupon codes to distribute to your users, like NEWYEAR24 etc.
Instead, the codes are long random gobbledygook, single use only, and they can’t be redeemed within the app — only in the App Store itself.
It’s like they made this difficult and useless on purpose.