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

protocol.com

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

#201

Post by majewsky »

kjakm wrote: post #93
threeseed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are vastly overstating the importance of apps. Apple could easily remove the App Store tomorrow, sign deals with a dozen or so companies e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Snap, Google, Microsoft etc and they would still sell devices.

I think if you think back to 2007/8 and people had the choice of Android with millions of apps and a higher priced iOS ecosystem which only has some high profile apps so few people would choose iOS that it would quickly become a waste of money for FB/Twitter/MS to build their apps for it and it would die.

In 2007/8 people were buying iPhones despite them not having an app store at all.

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

#202

Post by majewsky »

projektfu wrote: post #188
garyrichardson wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the cheeky thing to do is charge $100,000 for the in app version. It’s technically there but even if someone clicked it almost no cc would allow the charge through.

If apple’s store provides value they should be able to capture some at a higher price point. Charge $149 for it on the store, $99 on Android and web subscriptions. Get some of that sweet “apple tax”

AFAIK it's also against App Store policies to charge different prices in the app and outside.

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

#203

Post by kjakm »

majewsky wrote: post #201
kjakm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you think back to 2007/8 and people had the choice of Android with millions of apps and a higher priced iOS ecosystem which only has some high profile apps so few people would choose iOS that it would quickly become a waste of money for FB/Twitter/MS to build their apps for it and it would die.

In 2007/8 people were buying iPhones despite them not having an app store at all.

There was no App Store for the first year, which I believe is a time when Android didn't exist. An app-less iPhone would not be able to compete with an app-store backed Android.

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

#204

Post by mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE »

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.

But you can download an .EXE file from anywhere and run it on your Windows computer (don't try that at home!). No any Store required. Hell, you can even write a program yourself and run it, completely free, imagine that!

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

#205

Post by kristianc »

majewsky wrote: post #197
stephenr wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They provide all the infrastructure to deliver the iOS app binary, receive notifications, etc.

Only because Apple set it up like that. For example, you could presumably have an app store that is only a lightweight directory of signed URLs and hashes, where the developers have to host the blobs themselves.

There’s no reason why Apple would do that though: you’re a hosting outage on some shitty VPS box away from the download button not working when you click the button, and the URLs are then discoverable on the open internet for anyone to be able to download at will. Or an indie developer hosts on S3, the app becomes wildly successful, and the developer is unable to pay the AWS bill.

I don’t know why people expect Apple to be the kind of company that would behave in a way that is antithetical to itself and in many ways it’s own customers out of a puritanical devotion to ‘openness’. Most of these ‘Apple could’ changes would cripple the product.

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

#206

Post by megous »

oauea wrote: post #176
jmisavage wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xcode comes with an iOS simulator so you don't need hardware, but it would be a bad idea not to test on an actual device.

How do I run xcode on Linux or Windows?

In qemu.

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

#207

Post by ryanwaggoner »

wayneftw wrote: post #196
threeseed wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nobody finds apps through the app store. They find them on Google and click a link that opens the app store.

This is ridiculously false. Discoverability on the App Store could be much better, but anyone involved in App Store marketing will tell you that you get a huge boost by being featured. For example, this article claims 800%: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/20/ios-11s-new-app-store-boos...

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

#208

Post by libertine »

threeseed wrote: post #100
libertine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple gives you one on a silver platter and for a pretty fair cost per acquisition compared to other channels. For the Apple system, isn't that the only available channel to sell and distribute apps? It's not like there are other alternatives, or am I missing something?

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…

Assuming you only rely on paid media, yes, you'd need to pay for visibility (arguably through one or more of the 3 main players you've mentioned), or invest in other forms of earned and owned media.

But paid media is a small fraction of the marketing mix when it comes to sell and distribute a product - doesn't matter if it's software or a physical product.

Being unreasonable or not should be up to anyone of evaluates the distribution/sale/communication channel. But I'd limit this fee to be for the "access" to the only distribution channel - because you don't have a guarantee of clicks/impressions/downloads or any media KPI for that fee.

The CPC of a paid keyword is a subset of many subsets of media alone.

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

#209

Post by wayneftw »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #207
wayneftw wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody finds apps through the app store. They find them on Google and click a link that opens the app store.

This is ridiculously false. Discoverability on the App Store could be much better, but anyone involved in App Store marketing will tell you that you get a huge boost by being featured. For example, this article claims 800%: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/20/ios-11s-new-app-store-boos...

Great! So, I am guaranteed to get featured in exchange for my $100 per year developer license and a 30% cut of my sale price?

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

#210

Post by projektfu »

majewsky wrote: post #202
projektfu wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If apple’s store provides value they should be able to capture some at a higher price point. Charge $149 for it on the store, $99 on Android and web subscriptions. Get some of that sweet “apple tax”

AFAIK it's also against App Store policies to charge different prices in the app and outside.

If that's the case I don't see where it's clearly stated, unless they consider that to be a "rip off".

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#bus...

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