Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#221

Post by JustSomeNobody » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

black_puppydog wrote: post #66

So, never having bothered with Apple hard-/software I am a bit confused... A developer can't just set a price for something? But then out of the first 10000 natural numbers, Apple semi-arbitrarily select a set of 900 "known-good" numbers that work well for prices? Like, as if the other numbers are somehow bad prices? If you charge someone $7,43 for something, the ghost of Steve Jobs will start haunting you? That's, l…

> A developer can't just set a price for something?

Are you crazy? And miss out on yet another opportunity for Apple to rub their stank on something?

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#222

Post by thewataccount » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:27 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #165

We changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge... to a third party article I just googled. If there's a better third-party article, we can change it again. Yes, HN has the rule "*Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ), but corporate press releases are so awful…

Respectfully I disagree with this.

The article you linked is mostly just a copy+paste of the apple page, with a few paragraphs removed.

I personally don't think going from the direct news source -> random news source you just googled that copy+pasted most of it anyway is worth doing.

> but corporate press releases are so awful to read that I increasingly think we need to make them an exception.

Is it really that much better if they just removed 2~3 paragraphs? They added nothing of value other then trackers and ads.

I do ask seriously - does removing 2~3 paragraphs really make it that much better?

Are we really going to move to having one person (no offense) to arbitrarily change the URLs from the official news source to a random one from your google search results?

tl;dr - doing this removes the benefits of first hand reporting, has effectively no different content, and you appeared to have randomly selected one that offers no clear benefit in it's content.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#223

Post by not_a_shill » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

foota wrote: post #213

alexandre_m wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of all of that seem sketchy to me. It sounds like the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide. Does the same logic apply for other virtual good such as digital music elsewhere?

It's really the opposite, it's a form of price discrimination. There's a theory of surplus in economics, which is the extra benefit that someone gets from a transaction above what they would have been willing to pay. If I buy a game that I would have paid $100 for for $50, then I have a "$50" consumer surplus. One the other end, if the producer was willing to let that game sell as low as $40, then they have a produce…

>Now, you could call it subsidizing in that there are probably products that wouldn't be brought to market without the NA market to pay for them, but that's not really "subsidizing".

That's every product ever made for profit by a developer in a 1st world country. It's still essentially subsidizing even if you don't like the optics of the word.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#224

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

kaba0 wrote: post #220

sokoloff wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Ferrari is a 100% monopoly supplier of Ferrari engines.

The only difference is that you can choose two kinds of evil for something required for everyday life, while you can live without a car or choose from several different ones. Owning the former platform is great power that shouldn’t be unilaterally controlled by a private company.

My parents get by entirely fine without a mobile device (smart or feature). It's convenient, but not required.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#225

Post by taftster » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

lilyball wrote: post #201

dang wrote: post #165

We changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge... to a third party article I just googled. If there's a better third-party article, we can change it again. Yes, HN has the rule "*Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ), but corporate press releases are so awful…

Looking at the original press release, I much prefer it to this third-party site. All the third-party site really did was remove a tiny bit of fluff, but it's having intermittent loading issues and is absolutely covered in ads if you aren't using an ad blocker. It also removes some of the actual content!

I mean, basically the web sucks right now. Classic rant incoming: There's definitely a need that sits between boring PR release and ad-filled regurgitation. You can't tell me that heaps of ads are actually helping the monetization of content, we're on the other side of the slippery slope. Thank goodness for adblock, I guess.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#226

Post by simonw » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #194

simonw wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could do that, but then users in some countries would have to pay 0.693 of their local currency or whatever. Why should the US be the only country that gets friendly looking prices?

I'm an American. I routinely buy things in GBP, EUR, and JPY and the amounts convert to an arbitrary number in USD. So what? It is displayed to me as 9.99 EUR. I understand I'm not going to have a nice, pretty .99 at the end of my credit card transaction.

I would expect that the vast majority of human beings very rarely buy anything in a currency other than that of their own country.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#227

Post by yamtaddle » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

asadlionpk wrote: post #14

MBCook wrote: post #11

I wonder if more apps will go for, say 50¢, instead of free + $1.00 IAP. I miss the pre-IAP days.

Isn't this IAP model better for both users and makers?

It might be if they had better filters. IAP being used to effectively turn a demo into a full, paid version is one thing. Or IAP for some limited number of expansions in a game. IAP being used for "consumables" or to nickel-and-dime every feature is something else. But it's hard to distinguish between the two uses when browsing the store—and that's a big part of the reason I hardly game at all on iOS, browsing their games to sort wheat from chaff is too much of a chore and their games section in particular is a horrible mess because IAP exists and their filtering options suck. Problem goes away if the apps are simply paid or free, no IAP. Or if they'd create more categories for various uses of IAP, and let you filter by them.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#228

Post by decadancer » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:37 PM UTC

lzaaz wrote: post #192

decadancer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a bad practice. I'm Russian and Steam games are (were) 1.5x-2x times cheaper for Russia compared to Europe and Americas, even before regional passes. I don't know whether that was responsiblity of devs or storefront, but it seemed quite a fair and profitable practice, because the price point you are willing to pay for a game (or an app) is different for people from different economical and cultur…

This is fair. OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), which has shafted poor countries-it's disgraceful that a Swedish costumer pays the same price for an iPhone than a Portuguese costumer while making several times as much money every month.

That's kinda messed up. ALL hardware?

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#229

Post by jameshart » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

richrichardsson wrote: post #167

jameshart wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am old enough that when I was a kid in the UK there was still such a thing as a halfpenny (pronounced: ha'penny). Although please note: I am not that old; this was ½p - half a 'new penny', i.e. 1/200 of a pound sterling, and not to be confused with the old ½d, half of an old penny, which was 1/480 of a pound (or two farthings). Predecimal currency was well before my time. By over half a decade, in fact. But anyway,…

Just to add a data point about the pronunciation; the way you've written it leads me to read it as "har-penny", which I imagine is valid, however we pronounced it in my family as "hay-penny".

Sorry, that is indeed the intended pronunciation. In fact even briefer than that: more hayp’ny.

Just wanted to really get across that most importantly, the l and f are definitely both silent.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#230

Post by sofixa » Tue, Dec 06, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

lzaaz wrote: post #192

decadancer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a bad practice. I'm Russian and Steam games are (were) 1.5x-2x times cheaper for Russia compared to Europe and Americas, even before regional passes. I don't know whether that was responsiblity of devs or storefront, but it seemed quite a fair and profitable practice, because the price point you are willing to pay for a game (or an app) is different for people from different economical and cultur…

This is fair. OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms), which has shafted poor countries-it's disgraceful that a Swedish costumer pays the same price for an iPhone than a Portuguese costumer while making several times as much money every month.

> OTOH, you have the single European market (the EU forces games, apps, hardware, etc to be sold at the same price everywhere in the EU in practical terms),

That's not true, where are you imagining this from? Hardware certainly doesn't cost the same, at the very least there are different VAT levels, but also pricing is adapted to the local market (literally just checked, i can get an Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 for 300€ less in Bulgaria compared to France). Software I'm unsure how to check, but Netflix costs varies by county.