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Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

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Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#141

Post by anilgulecha »

earthnail wrote: post #137
para_parolu wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s fair. Apple doesn’t have to provide services to businesses

Not until alternative stores become competitive. Realistically they have such a monopoly thar you end up in a chiclen and egg situation. Their monopoly is so large that noone wants to distribute via small alt stores, meaning alt stores never get large.

A chicken and egg problem is highly unlikely. Here's a few probable situations:

1) A fdroid equivalent pops up, which them becomes a collection of fantastic open source apps, and soon develops a strong user base.

2) Google launches play store for iPhone, which will on day 1 get millions of users.

3) Meta launches metaStore, which so the only way to get Facebook, threads, Instagram and WhatsApp. This becomes the fastest growing store in a matter of a week.

One may personally not like this world - but imo it's a better world than the one we have - personally for (1) to exist.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#142

Post by close04 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #116
johnnyanmac wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear a proper cointerargument, and not a dismissal.

When Y Combinator gives $10,000 for a 7% stake in the company, the company goes from being "worth" $130,000 before the money to being worth $140,000 after, and they have $10,000 more in their bank account. Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00. When an app store takes a 30% commission on sales, every dollar the company earns afterwards increases their bank account by $0.…

> Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00.

Wouldn’t this be true also if YC owned 100% of the company? On the other hand from that point on, from every dollar the company is worth YC gets 7%.

You need to know what is (or will be) bigger and more critical for your success, the investment worth 7% of your company, or the 30% Apple takes from your app. Either of these numbers can be millions or $0.

I’m very much for alternative storefronts and letting people choose. Android already proved this works just fine and most people still go for the official store. But I don’t think the argument above paints a clear, unbiased picture.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#143

Post by labcomputer »

echelon wrote: post #121
matheusmoreira wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want. This the answer. The app store monopoly doesn't really matter, the real tyranny is needing Apple's cryptographic blessing to run software on our own computers. This should be literally illegal. Restore our computer freedom and their app store rent seeking becomes irrelevant.

> > But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want. The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings. And apps should no longer have to use first party payment rails, first party authentication/sign in rails, or be forced to jump through review or upgrade hoops.

I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad for you.

Happy because you have nobody in your life in a vulnerable position to be taken advantage of the inevitable malware that will be installed on their device as a result of your wish.

Or sad because those people are most likely to be grandparents or elderly aunts and uncles. Perhaps you never even got to know them.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#144

Post by labcomputer »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #95
zdw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"much worse for customers" is relative. While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent. I do agree…

Android also has permission prompts to allow access to files and location and such. Either way, I would be fine with this, if there were a big, red, and scary button with a warning in iOS to turn the coddling off. I bought a phone, so I own it. If I choose to, there should be a way to let me control the hardware. Even Android phones don't have this, with bootloader unlocking disappearing. To be fair, there's a layer…

But, like, why fight your tools?

Why not just accept that iOS has coddling, and that your preferences are better served by the competition? As you said, Android has permission prompts. They have folding phones. Android phones regularly beat iPhones in camera quality measurements, for example.

What does Apple have that you actually want?

For me, I liked the walled garden and I put up with the rest because of it. If you don’t like the walled garden, I can’t understand wanting an iPhone.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#145

Post by kortilla »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #101
ianbutler wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dynamics of 7% of ownership and 30% of ongoing revenue are vastly different. So different in fact that the comparison doesn't hold water.

I'd love to hear a proper cointerargument, and not a dismissal.

Ownership doesn’t cost the company anything.

30% of revenue cuts off the flow of money immediately even long before the company is profitable.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#146

Post by labcomputer »

bloomca wrote: post #112
zdw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"much worse for customers" is relative. While in no ways perfect, Apple's walled garden gets rid of a huge amount of the enshittification found on other platforms, and makes it so that downloading a random app is relatively safe and unlikely to nuke your phone, steal your data, etc. Yes all the "allow access to location/photos/etc." are annoying, but at least the user has some level of control and consent. I do agree…

"Allow access" is pretty orthogonal, I don't know how it all works in mobile OSes, but I assume everything is virtualized there, so you can't just access whatever you want without user granting a permission (e.g. through a file picker system component). You can also ship sandboxed apps on Desktop without the store (although I am not sure on how hard it is to auto-update them, usually stores handle that part), at leas…

Well, some of the permissions include things like “allow the app to track the user for advertising purposes”. There isn’t a technical way to enforce that with virtualization and sandboxing.

You can enforce it by booting misbehaving apps from the app store... but that only works if there’s one app store.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#147

Post by MindSpunk »

JimDabell wrote: post #71
maximus_01 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are really trying to say that for a startup trying to build software, say a productivity app or whatever, they should consider launching their own hardware device? They are very different things and would basically make indie development impossible (or really any software company that can't raise hundreds of millions to billions)

> would basically make indie development impossible We aren’t talking about indie development though. People like to paint a picture of a small, scrappy startup or beleaguered solo dev being held back by Apple’s crushing 30%, but that isn’t the case. Unless you are earning more than a million dollars a year through the App Store alone, you don’t pay 30%, you pay 15%. And if you earn more than that, you still only pay…

Let's run the numbers for indie development.

Say you're a team of 3. Your game takes 2 years to develop. You spend on salary for 3x2 years. You've spent ~$600,000 so far. Let's assume you haven't had any other sources of operational costs like software licenses for your art tools (3D modelling, 2D drawing, music production, sound production, game engine), marketing expenditure, development hardware, outside contracting, and a number of other things.

If you pull $800,000 in the first year Apple will take $120,000. Your net profit is $80,000. Apple has taken over half your profit.

If you pull $1,200,000 in the first year Apple will take $210,000. I'm going to assume that Apple still only takes 15% on the first $1million. Your net profit is $390,000. About a third of your profit has gone to Apple now.

The carve-out for small revenues is not some panacea. Fixed cost overheads for small teams will swallow the platitude very fast. Video games is a high risk, hits based industry. Apple's tax adds the most risk to small ventures, the kind of ventures that are going to produce innovative high risk content, making them even more risky adding more difficulty to acquiring finance.

So if we want to talk about Apple's 15% it's actually worse.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#148

Post by labcomputer »

mrandish wrote: post #83
foobarian wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grandma: Help me, Joey! After the neighborhood kid helped me install the coupon code app (he said something about expert mode, he is very smart!) my phone runs slow and crashes. :-( Me: ...

There are many ways to deal with any scenario like this, all of which don't involve the device manufacturer locking ALL device owners out of ANY control over the hardware they own. For example, you can be the administrator on Grandma's device and block access to third-party app stores which cannot be overridden by anyone (including the device manufacturer) without your credentials. Alternatively, you could delegate t…

> No one is saying you can't keep choosing Apple's walled-garden app store as the only store provider or that you shouldn't be able to block any or even all app stores

Err.. Isn’t that exactly what the EU is saying?

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#149

Post by CGamesPlay »

close04 wrote: post #142
CGamesPlay wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Y Combinator gives $10,000 for a 7% stake in the company, the company goes from being "worth" $130,000 before the money to being worth $140,000 after, and they have $10,000 more in their bank account. Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00. When an app store takes a 30% commission on sales, every dollar the company earns afterwards increases their bank account by $0.…

> Every dollar the company earns afterwards also increases their bank account by $1.00. Wouldn’t this be true also if YC owned 100% of the company? On the other hand from that point on, from every dollar the company is worth YC gets 7%. You need to know what is (or will be) bigger and more critical for your success, the investment worth 7% of your company, or the 30% Apple takes from your app. Either of these numbers…

Yes, that was my conclusion as well.

> The percent doesn't really matter (if YC took 30% ownership or app stores took 7% commission), the comparison doesn't really make sense either way.

Re: Y Combinator files brief supporting Epic Games, says store fees stifle startups

#150

Post by jterrys »

jmull wrote: post #45

I think Apple should mostly be allowed to run as crappy an App Store as they want. But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want. (Ground rules all app stored would have to follow based on technical, security, and legal concerns would be fine too, IMO.) Of course Apple would never go for that, so we'll end up with whatever mess legal processes can wring out of them.

I agree with you in principle.

But I also, I guess, kinda just have a dumb thought about this whole ordeal. Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us. Not for any other reason that would shield us from harm or prevent risk, but rather because the corporation's products are so successful a lot of people use them too much! But wait! That's not actually true because there's enough products on the market that we don't actually need to use this product...but we like it because its incrementally the best and the chat bubbles are blue and applications run better and seem higher quality (which is a selling point of the product we are now actively dismantling but I digress...)

I know its tiring to use food cliches, but imagine if like, I make a business selling apple pies and my apple pies are incredibly successful and everyone eats them all the time and now all of a sudden I need to also guarantee that my business can make cherry pies because my apple pies sell so damn well. But truth is, its not really about the apple pies at all. It's about my baking trays. We actually just want to make sure that the baking trays of my business are now capable of also cooking for cherry pies even though that's got nothing to do with my fucking business. I sell apple pies. I'm so confused

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