Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something .
The real issue isn’t Apple’s commission, it’s the lack of choice.
Allowing app installations outside the App Store, as on macOS, would immediately subject Apple’s pricing to market pressure. The fee would drop on its own, without regulation.
Macs have allowed apps from "untrusted" sources for decades - and they’re doing just fine. So no, this isn’t about security. It’s about control and monopoly.
When you plug in a non-Apple USB cable to charge your iPhone, or use a third-party phone case, or use Anker power bank .. do you wish you had none of these choices, but only use whatever Apple branded cables, and phonecase and power banks existed? If you want to buy Apple cables because you think it is better, sure - that's great. But preventing ugreen cables from working makes no sense. You shouldnt say 'buy a diffe…
Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market. If you don’t like the charging options of an iPhone, don’t buy an iPhone. If you don’t like the OS of a Pixel, don’t buy a Pixel. If the consumer is choosy and doesn’t like the options available then there is a market opportunity for new entrants.
"Free market" doesn't mean consumer rights go for toss. "Free market" also means a level playing field for everyone, which is why we have things like standardisation (e.g. USB-C) to make it easier for other businesses to compete. A monopoly or duopoly is not a "free market". Once a monopoly or duopoly emerges, it becomes an artificial moat to prevent competition and as "free market" has ceased to exist in such a situation, it is incumbent to change the rules to make sure a "free market" exists again and competition can thrive. (And ofcourse, all this has to be done without ignoring the rights of other stakeholders in the society).
As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me to install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent others from producing equivalent competing devices via patents (i.e. government granted monopolies), zero. It's not that it's not worth something, it's that they're abusing their patents and monopoly to extract further compensation after I already bought the device.
Mobile apps mobile app fraud empties life savings accounts. I agree there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't been working. Installing an app shouldn't eliminate 30 years of life savings.
How is this related to app store fees? No, paying a 30% fee on all transactions does not make you 10x safer than paying a 3% fee
Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something .
The real issue isn’t Apple’s commission, it’s the lack of choice. Allowing app installations outside the App Store, as on macOS, would immediately subject Apple’s pricing to market pressure. The fee would drop on its own, without regulation. Macs have allowed apps from "untrusted" sources for decades - and they’re doing just fine. So no, this isn’t about security. It’s about control and monopoly.
Exactly this. There is no way not to choose the App Store, regardless of the price. Apple goes further by making users believe alternatives are "less secure" and what not (which is not true) so it's not just about distribution, it's also a battle of perception. Even if Apple's App Store tax is 0.00, it would still be unfair and have negative impact on consumers due to the limited choice of apps and experiences they can get.
Sideloading, AKA "installing software on your device", is something PCs have been handling just fine for decades. It's fine to warn the user when they're going off the beaten trail, but do not lock them in a cage to prevent them from doing so. If they ignore the warnings and get scammed because they are unable to identify reputable software from disreputable software, they learn a life lesson. Life goes on. There sho…
There are entire classes of people who have simply given up on PCs and only use a phone, so I would call that substantial evidence that PCs have NOT "been handling [it] just fine." For these folks, PCs are a total failure; a dead end. A danger zone to be avoided at all costs.
Thank you for your concern, but I need a phone, not a device to manage dementia. I don't see why nobody should be allowed to have the former just because a few people need the latter.
As if the App Store had any sort of those guarantees. I know of people have been scammed via WebView wrappers that purported to be some benign app to pass app store review, which were then pointed at fake exchange websites afterwards. GitLab which was hosting their C&C mechanism took action faster than Apple or Google did to take down multiple scam apps across multiple different developer identities, but the scammers…
WebView wrappers don't have any more ability to siphon data out of the phone than any other app. Scammers can always scam users if they can trick them into entering data into a website. There's nothing anyone can do about that (besides blocking web access).
So... what's the point of all the onerous restrictions in the first place?
I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!" For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done for profit.
That's not really a meaningful comparison, either. If you assume every engineer makes ~300K at Apple, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is "Apple loses ~7K engineers for 1 year", which seems a bit more than a slap on the wrist as you are suggesting.
I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!" For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done for profit.
2 days of global revenue is not a good baseline for breaking a single country.
Comparing against their UK revenue is probably a better metric ?