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Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

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Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#151

Post by take_a_breath »

hyko wrote: post #116
take_a_breath wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy makes no sense. It’s not a business to consumer issue. The problem is Apple running their own marketplace and inconsistently applying the rules they have created for that marketplace. If the hotel opened a food court and treated the vendors like this, it might be an apt analogy.

Well, let’s use the food court analogy then: whoever owns the food court is permitted by law to set whatever rental prices they choose for their tenants (provided they aren’t discriminating against people based on certain characteristics). They don’t have to be consistent, because the food court is their property and they have very wide discretion over how it is used. Fair? No. Legal? Yes!

I think it’s legality is up for discussion (that’s the discussion people are currently having). Because your analogy still falls short because the hotel now opened their own stall in the food court and is competing in the marketplace.

What are they doing with the proprietary data from other marketplace competitors?

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#152

Post by simion314 »

bartread wrote: post #81
simion314 wrote: post #37

Would it be more fair that - developers paid a hosting subscription for their app - pay for bandwidth used by the app downloads - pay for each update review - optional pay for promotion - Apple would not block legal content, just put it under a new category of stuff Apple disaproves but is legal. This would fix a part for the issues with stores, Apple can't say that they are hosting your app for free anymore or that…

You understand that this would kill free apps, and strongly disincentivize many startups and other small shops from developing for the app store? This, in turn, would devalue the entire iOS ecosystem and likely hurt Apple's revenue.

Are there "free" apps? I mean you already pay for a dev account 100$ , so say i am an open source project, I already have to pay for dev account, for a Mac device so there is no free stuff. Apple could be kind and offer free hosting for open source projects and if someone affords to pay for a doman and webhosting to have their installer hosted there they could also pay the same amount for hosting on Apple servers.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#153

Post by newbie578 »

hyko wrote: post #74
shafyy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you should put more time in understanding how the basics of economics and works to understand why monopolies or duopolies are bad for societies. I'm sure there are some great online lectures to be found on economics 101.

No offence taken, we are all students :) Monopolies (and duopolies, where there is collusion ) can be bad for society, which is why we have specific exceptions in law to deal with them. Apple doesn’t hold a monopoly position in the smartphone market. In fact, they don’t even hold a majority position in the smartphone market. This is like going after Dr Pepper with antitrust...it’s never going to happen.

You should check your facts then :) As of May 2020, iOS is 52% of marketshare in North America ;) https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/north-amer...

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#154

Post by Hamuko »

selykg wrote: post #128
jbrooksuk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple have (freely) provided Basecamp a platform to grow their business via the App Store, whilst giving Apple (effectively) nothing in return. It's not free though, is it? You have to pay $99 a year, and purchase Apple hardware to develop and test software for their platforms. Basecamp, who hire 50+ people most likely all run Apple hardware, so that's tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars to Apple over th…

How far do you think $99/yr goes in the grand scheme of things? Cost of servers, cost of bandwidth, cost of maintenance of the App Store backend services and development of future features, technical support for developers, Xcode development, App Store review time, etc I would hazard a guess they make nothing on that $99 at the end of the day. The cost is merely to be a gate to prevent anyone from submitting terrible…

>Cost of servers

How much does each individual server cost per registered paying developer?

>cost of bandwidth

If the bandwidth cost is so high, why doesn't Apple charge for it separately? And also, how much bandwidth does it actually require to deliver these applications? The HEY app is 31 megabytes. For $99, you can get 1100 GB of S3 egress. I honestly doubt that your average developer is amassing nearly that much traffic in a year.

>cost of maintenance of the App Store backend services and development of future features

Is funding the upkeep of the App Store fully on third party developers? It's a product that's sold as a part of the iPhone. And according to some speculation, $1,249 iPhone XS Max made like $500 of profit after parts, labor, R&D, admin, and other associated costs.

>technical support for developers, Xcode development

I'd also argue that this is something that shouldn't be fully paid by third party iOS developers. Having a way to develop applications for a platform is a pretty basic requirement.

>App Store review time

We should ask DHH if he feels like he's getting $99/year worth of value from this.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#155

Post by simion314 »

IncRnd wrote: post #104
simion314 wrote: post #37

Would it be more fair that - developers paid a hosting subscription for their app - pay for bandwidth used by the app downloads - pay for each update review - optional pay for promotion - Apple would not block legal content, just put it under a new category of stuff Apple disaproves but is legal. This would fix a part for the issues with stores, Apple can't say that they are hosting your app for free anymore or that…

That's absurd. The app store is not a service to developers but to consumers that Apple uses in order to have a working ecosystem.

As a consumer you have no choice to use a better AppStore, or to grab your apps/movies/music and move to a better provider. So IMO Apple is doomed to be regulated, maybe it is not to late to be more fair with the developers.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#156

Post by hyko »

newbie578 wrote: post #142
Okkef wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could downvote you. What apple is doing is much worse than microsoft ever did, and they deserve to get a big antitrust lawsuit against them. Just because their own rules say 'everybody owes us money' doesn't mean that it's legal.

You are absolutely right. I real feel disappointed I cannot downvote him. People are so deluded by Apple fanaticism and "free market" that we shouldn't even touch a monopol with a stick.

I’m no Apple or free market fanatic, I’m just explaining that these attacks are going nowhere under our legal and financial system. They are pipe dreams that come round every twelve months or so, and will remain that way unless we radically change the nature of legal property. This particular one is out of the hey.com marketing budget, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#157

Post by belltaco »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #127
fierarul wrote: post #13

Maybe the pandemic finally offers enough motivation for EU and US to make a strong decision about this. The (smart)phone market, for many people the only computing device they own, is utterly dominated by 2 monopolies under Apple and Google. The CEOs should get a medal and all the honours for providing society this good platforms then promptly forced to allow separate AppStores on equal footing.

The PC market, for many people the only computing device for a long time, is utterly dominated by Microsoft. But no one has ever done anything about that.

What? Did you forget the US and EU anti-trust actions? The browser choice screen and the $1 billion fine over it? The forced opening up of Office file protocols and SMB specs?

Also they aren't taking 30% forcibly of every single program that runs on Windows.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#158

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jw1224 wrote: post #144
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does Apple need revenue from Basecamp (or any content provider)? They don't have any cost whatsoever associated with this content deliver. You already paid for the phone, $$$. The network isn't theirs; Apple takes zero part in the content delivery. Apple provides no content; that's all Basecamp. This is just Apple noticing money being changed hands, and inserting themselves into the process so they can extract a…

> Why does Apple need revenue from Basecamp (or any content provider)? They don't have any cost whatsoever associated with this content deliver I see it partly as a response to the fact that the industry is moving from one-time purchases to subscription-billing. Apple were always able to make their cut from the one-off sale of a $34.99 premium application. Now that the app is available for a $2.99/month subscription…

Apple doesn't have to recover it, as a cost to something they don't have any part in.

They could take a cut of housing sales too, for all the sense that makes. I can see them in front of congress now: "But Apple isn't making the billions we once did! We neeeeed this money!"

Apple sells $25 phones for $1000. That's their business. Trying to make their business, taking a cut of other people's business, is egregious.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#159

Post by threeseed »

oauea wrote: post #138
threeseed wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, Google, Twitter etc all offer advertising products targeted at app installs. So if you imagine a fictitious world where anyone could just install apps off the web then you would need to buy ads through the main 3 players above to get any visibility. Just like how it works today for SaaS or eCommerce products. And given that we know roughly how much CPC and volume is for certain keywords e.g email app then i…

What on earth are you talking about? I'd just host the .ipa on my website and tell my existing users to install it. Easy and done. Instead in this insane reality I have to pay Apple $100 every year for the privilege of distributing an app to my already existing user base.

I am talking about the cost of acquiring customers.

It's great that you have these existing users but almost all developers don't. And so when people say that 30% is expensive often it's because the are ignorant of how much it costs most businesses to acquire customers.

And I have to pay to develop apps for most platforms so pretty confused why you feel like this is somehow unusual.

Re: Apple sends a letter to Hey: Change your app or get out of the App Store

#160

Post by hyko »

IncRnd wrote: post #145
hyko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren’t Apple’s rules–they’re ours. It’s the parameters of a free marketplace and flows from the idea of legal ownership of property. Apple has a minority share of the smartphone market, so antitrust does not apply. Antitrust a specific remedy to prevent monopolistic abuses. If I build a high end hotel and the fee is $10,000 a night to stay there, you can’t apply to the Supreme Court to have your bill reduced. I…

>> Apple has a minority share of the smartphone market, so antitrust does not apply. That's literally an Apple to Oranges comparison. Market share is not a requirement for illegality under the Sherman Act, as an example.

This made me smile :D
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