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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

#221
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers? Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver the binary of its app. Basecamp can’t be said to be ‘freeloading’ on Comcast. Basecamp would come back and say ‘well, we pay our developer fees’ but developer fees don’t differentiate whether Apple has to maintain app updates for hundreds of downl…

I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't host basecamp...

I was making an analogy from when comcast was charging "transit fees" to netflix for instance. In the end, the customers are paying twice.

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

#222
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers? Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver the binary of its app. Basecamp can’t be said to be ‘freeloading’ on Comcast. Basecamp would come back and say ‘well, we pay our developer fees’ but developer fees don’t differentiate whether Apple has to maintain app updates for hundreds of downl…

Comcast also doesn't restrict all its users to exclusively acquire software from the Comcast Store™. Apple does.

remember when comcast was blocking/throttling netflix until they paid?

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wow, so you moved the goalpost from "nobody discovers apps in the App Store" to "not every app is featured in the App Store".

Wow, not really. The point is that the vast majority of apps are never featured and you know it.

Everybody that’s paying the 30% still has to do their own marketing. Discovery through the app store is absolute shit. You’re trying to argue that getting lucky enough to be featured covers everybody that’s paying the 30%. It doesn’t.

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

#224
post #79
post #3

> We understand that Basecamp has developed a number of apps and many subsequent versions for the App Store for many years, and that the App Store has distributed millions of these apps to iOS users. These apps do not offer in-app purchase — and, consequently, have not contributed any revenue to the App Store over the last eight years. They literally have paid 8 years of Developer Program fees for supporting the AppS…

Yeah, Apple keeps pushing this narrative that they are giving away a free service to developers that don't accept payments. It costs $99 a year to put anything on the App Store. And if Apple is really that concerned about free distribution, I'm sure they could set up an AWS-like pricing model where there's a set price for data transfer, updates, maybe even push notifications.

Business program is $249 IIRC

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

#225
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple would say tough potatoes and point out that billions of users worldwide are very satisfied with such a deal. You also very rarely hear stories of malware / fake apps on the Apple store.

But basically all apps on phones are dystopian now. If I could block apps from network access, including apple apps, then that would prove they're not playing both sides.

You literally can disable cellular access for every app on the phone, including Apple ones.

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and between Android and iOS, Apple and Google have captured ~98% of global the smartphone market in 2018. Apple accounts for roughly 47% US market share to Google's 52%. Apple's app store generated 33 billion of the total 57.4 billion in revenue in 2018, with Google taking the rest. They both operate app stores in very similar models, and both of them clearly need attention. Just because two competitors happen t…

This comment is all over the place. So now it's gone from Apple being a monopoly to it actually being a duopoly that is impossible for third parties to compete in. Even though there are plenty of app manufacturers with their own stores e.g. Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei etc.

Samsung and Xiaomi don't offer stores as distribution channels to 3rd parties. They offer an app on both Google and Apple's app stores to facilitate installing their own software.

I'm not as familiar with Huawei, so I'll go look. But basically - I don't find this a compelling counterpoint. They have a helper app to install their own content, still regulated by Apple and Google's distribution channel - That does not an app store make.

And yes - My stance since the beginning has been that both Apple and Google are actively working to keep the status quo around software distribution and app monetization.

Further, they both pretty clearly have divided the content space.

Google - Focused on free apps as a channel to push ads, with less care on quality

Apple - Focused on higher quality apps with a higher price tag.

They've managed to capture an incredibly large market (70 billion in 2018) of which they simply get to suck 30% with no chance of competition.

They also happen to charge exactly the same rate for their services (30%) which I'm sure you'll also take as a clear sign they aren't cooperating in this market...

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

#227
post #212
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In qemu.

Is this legally possible without software piracy? Can you link me to instructions? Does apple have documentation anywhere?

IANAL.

https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

I don't know if Apple has documentation somewhere.

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