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

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

#251

Post by JamesSwift »

duxup wrote: post #98
timbre1234 wrote: post #38

Give me an option to search for "no ads" in an app, or give me nothing. I've simply stopped buying iOS apps because I'm done with the ad loads.

This might not be what you want but Apple Arcade has slowly become the place I search for games. Quality of games is very high. No ads, no IAP. As a parent it is also handy for the same reasons as far as the kids devices go.

It really is a great offering, especially when rolled into a family plan. Lots of high quality games on apple TV as well. Only problem is the OS limitation so I can't use a lot of older iPads I have lying around.

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

#252

Post by armchairhacker »

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…

I see your reasoning but I disagree. HN articles don’t need to be unbiased. The reason being, if you want a more neutral take, just take a look at the HN comments.

HN submissions are usually primary sources, and the HN comments are where you have the discussion. Sometimes even the top voted comment is just a summary of the actual submission, but rephrased to be less biased or more clear. If HN can’t point out the buried lede or explanation and get it upvoted then there’s a larger problem, but in practice I don’t find this to be the case (though maybe I’m wrong).

Does the article provide anything which the HN comment section wouldn’t?

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

#253

Post by crgt »

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…

Support for pricing tiers above 1k for one big thing.

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

#254

Post by lzaaz »

sofixa wrote: post #230
lzaaz wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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€ le…

You can buy it directly from Bulgaria to save 300€ then. It would be illegal for the shop to tell you you have to pay more for buying from another country.

>Software I'm unsure how to check, but Netflix costs varies by county.

If it does (I don't think so, the minimal differences are because of VAT) you can subscribe from another European country (using a VPN or whatever) and Netflix can't ban you or block you from using it (like they would if you bought the subscription from a third world country for example)

Is it fair that both Finland and Italy pay 7.99€/month for the basic plan?

(This is why I said "in practical terms")

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

#255

Post by 015a »

fckgw wrote: post #88
015a wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with most of what Musk does; but if this is the kind of innovation that requires a team of highly compensated tech employees and warrants a press release; something is actually, seriously wrong with efficiency in companies like Apple, and maybe he's actually right that Twitter, or many companies, could run better on far fewer employees.

Companies can do more than one thing at a time.

That's my point; that clearly they have so many people and so few actual problems to solve that they're worried about adding more discrete numbers rather than solving this problem significantly more efficiently.

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

#256

Post by mr_toad »

miskin wrote: post #144
oakesm9 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, yes

Interesting thing is that there is no way (that I could find) to buy apps in AppStore for my VAT registered company in a way that I could receive invoice with company details and all necessities to be able to get VAT refund. They seem to pretend they are always selling to private persons and this is not necessary, yet there are many business apps and I am quite sure for business app VAT on 10,000 Eur app would hurt.

Apparently invoices can be obtained by contacting customer support.

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

#257

Post by dagmx »

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…

The site you picked ironically is failing to load for me on Safari in iOS, likely because I have an ad blocker enabled. It just keeps going into a reload loop.

I would second everyone else’s sentiment that going with the official PR statement is better , especially because Apple are really good about fast loading pages without ads, and none of these other sites provide new information that’s not in the press release.

Additionally many of the third party sites are really bad for accessibility, whereas the official Apple one is excellent for those who need readers.

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

#258

Post by greiskul »

not_a_shill wrote: post #223
foota wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From popular internet knowledge, games are more expensive in Australia then NA (Including digital distribution). Would you say that Australia is subsidizing games for Americans?

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

#259

Post by cush »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #149
JonathonW wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple uses price points rather than having developers explicitly specify prices because they're currency-independent: you specify a price point and Apple chooses appropriate prices for each of the ~175 different storefronts where your app could be available. Apple then periodically adjusts the international prices as exchange rates fluctuate, to keep them in parity with the US prices at the same tiers. The alternativ…

You would think a company like Apple could easily build a system that updated exchange rates daily and could do the simple math on any price. Having "price points" seems arbitrarily and stupid.

The fact that is seems stupid from the point of view of the creator is irrelevant. It's not about the creators, it's about the users. Apple simplifies incredibly complex systems into good user experiences.

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

#260

Post by Strom »

SllX wrote: post #239
pasc1878 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EUR price includes VAT, Americans have this odd thing of quoting prices without tax which tends to be illegal elesewhere. OK the US does not have a sales type tax on digital goods,

There’s a reason for that: we don’t have VAT like you do. Here’s an example: a base model iPhone 14 is $799. If I go to the Downtown San Francisco Apple Store, it is $868.12; if I go across a bridge to the Berkeley Apple Store it is $880.90; if I go from there across a different bridge to Corte Madera it is $870.91; if I go back through San Francisco down to the neighboring county to the Hillsdale Apple Store it is $…

European states have different VAT rates too. A company advertises 999€ and then depending on the state it can be either 832,5€ + 166,5€ VAT or 839,5€ + 159,5€ VAT or 799,2€ + 199,8€ VAT etc.

In the case of Apple they sometimes do this and other times not. So for example the iPhone 14 is 999€ in both Germany and Austria, even though they have 19% vs 20% VAT rates. However in Finland which has a 24% rate the iPhone 14 is 1039€.

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