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Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

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Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#311

Post by hn_check »

makecheck wrote: post #55

What ultimately made me pull out of the Mac App Store was the fact that publishing with Apple meant “app with customizations to accommodate stupid rules”, and $EVERYWHERE_ELSE meant “upload and be done with it”. If you haven’t checked lately, the Mac App Store is a pathetic ghost town for the most part. On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, a…

"On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, and you’d see a similar ghost store."

This earned a serious out loud laugh. Are you actually being sincere?

An app store that is widely trusted, and that has been the most successful, most profitable venue for independent developers in history (by a magnitude) is going to be abandoned because you, the developer, find it a hassle? Epic Games, as one example, has made far more from the App Store than any other platform...yet it's their target? LOL.

Uproarious stuff. Reading through these various absurd, fully detached from reality comments (I most like the highly upvoted fan fiction nonsense - "I have a super successful app on the App Store and I'm abandoning it because the Android Play Store is such a greener pasture" -- everyone pretends that the Play Store doesn't have virtually the same policies)

Some developers of fringe stuff might abandon it, and every other developer would welcome your departure. The rest of us will enjoy a trusted, lubricated, very successful platform.

Sidenote - everyone always goes on about the 30% cut. Right now my Costco has iTunes cards for 85 cents on the dollar (e.g. $85 for $100 gift cards, and clearly Costco is getting a cut of that amount). This deal is fairly regular, and gives buyers a sense of "value", and fills up lots of grandparents storage until birthdays and Christmas roll around. And then another few billion appear in developer accounts. What a crime.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#312

Post by bostik »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #282
bostik wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% cut from one-off payments is highway robbery. On top of that... > They're handling [...] payment processing. That has a tone-deaf shade. This piece of news is particularly volatile because Epic and Apple are now going to court over Apple expressly forbidding a developer doing their own payment processing. These are mafia-like tactics. I've said it before: 30% is way, way too much. A very good agent gets 15%, and…

> During feudalism 1.0 the peasants were raked for 10%.[0] > 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithe Since tithes are paid to the church and not the state, this immediately implies the peasants were paying more than that. Historical tax rates are low, and so is historical productivity. For example, you can read old instructions to tax collectors saying "take everything they don't need to survive -- but no more than th…

In a way we associate tithes only with churches, but as the first sentence of that Wikipedia page states: "[...] paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government."

However, I think you bring up a much more important point, which deserves highlighting - the confiscation of surplus. The feudal lords at least understood that a starving peasant is not going to produce much surplus. Whereas we live in our respective modern societies and see concepts such as "working poor" as perfectly normal.

IMO the world is seriously bent when people who work their arses off still have to rely on charities to sustain themselves at all. Something is being confiscated but it sure isn't surplus.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#313

Post by LoSboccacc »

rubber_duck wrote: post #5

Really at this point Apple control over app store is anti-competitive (and Google over play store), having to rely on community outrage to get stuff like this turned is ridiculous. They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking - force app stores to treat all apps equally according to store defined guidelines (including store owners apps) - any submissions have to be r…

> They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking

as long as there are alternatives, it's the user choice to get into the walled ecosystem. people enjoy the ease of mind of it, and while I'm not among them, I can say I find the play store and the 'apk downloaded from somewhere' experiences both grating compared to the apple store.

a curated store has it's appeal, and it's value. is it 30%? that is for the customer to decide, not the legislator.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#314

Post by gizmo »

hn_check wrote: post #311
makecheck wrote: post #55

What ultimately made me pull out of the Mac App Store was the fact that publishing with Apple meant “app with customizations to accommodate stupid rules”, and $EVERYWHERE_ELSE meant “upload and be done with it”. If you haven’t checked lately, the Mac App Store is a pathetic ghost town for the most part. On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, a…

"On iOS I guarantee that if the App Store had even one alternative, many apps would do the same and bail on Apple, and you’d see a similar ghost store." This earned a serious out loud laugh. Are you actually being sincere? An app store that is widely trusted, and that has been the most successful, most profitable venue for independent developers in history (by a magnitude) is going to be abandoned because you, the de…

My experience with Apple's subscription/payment system in the app store is pretty awful, and I'd much rather buy from a vendor directly, like I do with Spotify/Netflix/Amazon. The refund system on the app store is terrible. Apps you've paid for get updated automatically to something unusable with no recourse. As a software vendor being at the mercy of an unaccountable review process is a nightmare.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#315

Post by scarface74 »

microtherion wrote: post #289
scarface74 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studio/movie regulation was overturned....

… and this actually happened about two weeks ago: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.527174... I wonder how familiar the people espousing an expansive view of antitrust law here on HN are with the actual administrative and judicial state of antitrust enforcement.

Well looking at the loss of fake internet points. Plenty. I even got a downvote for posting the fact above...

That the consent decree was lifted.

It’s strange because every time that the government has done anything with regard to tech, HN users are in universal disagreement - rolling back net neutrality, a DMCA, COPPA, trying to weaken encryption, finding out everything the government was doing based on the Snowden leaks, etc.

But yet they still for some reason want the government to be more involved.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#316

Post by JimDabell »

cageface wrote: post #184
axlee wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does developing for iOS impacts your personal choice of phone hardware? I develop windows and MacOS software, but I am running Fedora.

A freelance iOS developer that doesn't use an iPhone is going to raise a lot of eyebrows.

I did exactly that for years and nobody cared at all.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#317

Post by mijoharas »

vidarh wrote: post #274
mijoharas wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was this regulation? I'm unaware of it

Primarily the Paramount case[1] and agreements entered into by the studios as a consequence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic... .

Thanks! Seems to be quite a landmark case I wasn't aware of.

Interesting, but possibly not surprising that it's now been overturned.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#318

Post by parasubvert »

rdslw wrote: post #269
parasubvert wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those pricing tactics are standard retail practices when dealing with large chains (“we will not be undersold”). This is why most items have an MSRP: to provide transparency across all retailers. With software it’s of course easy to say that it’s a different product in different platforms. Which is why Apple used legal licensing to make Apps feel more like traditional products. Arguably this makes easier for consumer…

Nope. Lets stick to the ‘no lower pirce than apple store’. This is very and clearly anti competitive tactic. Only side (apple) with significant leverage can use it. In every other situation it is not possible. And to make it clear: this point is anti competitive, while you re completly skipping this topic concentrating on apple vs developer, because it harms (increases of price) consumers. Multiple datapoints on this…

I disagree.

“No lower price” is not anti-competitive, it’s a common retail policy, and traditionally has been viewed as pro-competitive as it stops predatory pricing tactics.

It also implies the existence of a marketplace of dealers for iOS apps: there is none. The marketplace is among two different platforms vying for users.

ISVs are free to exclusively support one platform or the other. Google could lower their cut to 15% as incentive. The fact that they don’t do this is testament to Apple’s platform ability to attract customers that actually spend money.

Fundamentally this is about retailer policies and a reseller has every right to reject your product if it doesn’t want to represent it. 30% markup isn’t unreasonable when looking at actual retailers with a mix of products that have markups that vary from 5-100%.

What you want is Google and Apple’s platforms to be declared utilities where their platforms are state-regulated businesses that are forced to create a marketplace of retailers and are forced to have a 3rd party agency determine app admission guidelines across stores. This is far beyond the reach of antitrust law and will require legislative solutions.

Two tiers of completion would now exist: among retailers and among platforms. The cut % in some cases will go down. It is however debatable this will lead to overall lower consumer prices or a better consumer experience. The platforms are now entrenched for a generation and can’t make major changes except by 3rd party permission. All these new agencies need to be funded, and this raises the supply chain cost. The new admission guidelines might be worse or better. The retail experiences will be confusing as none will be default. The MSRP of software will be confusing (unless it’s mandated that ISVs publish one).

All of this to solve the problem of ISVs that want to build and sell the same product on two platforms and want to be able to take more of the retail margin for themselves?

Hard pass. I’d much rather see time, energy, and capital be allocated to entrepreneurs that may topple this regime by making a better alternative.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#319

Post by parasubvert »

fastball wrote: post #292
parasubvert wrote: post #153

I find the group think here to be incredible, and you all will likely be very disappointed when the legal system winds up supporting Apple. Regulating retailers because you don’t like their cut is price controls, which is completely contrary to a free market, and ultimately undermines the end user experience of having a trusted, secure store. Perhaps Google or Apple’s power is so strong as to warrant regulation - but…

The problem is that vertical integration and market penetration has really changed what it means to be anti-competitive in the modern world. Apple has built a vertically-integrated flywheel. Customers do not have choice. Their choices are between iOS and Android, which isn't much choice at all. And if you already have bought into either ecosystem, you have even less choice without resulting in significant cost to you…

This is assuming that iOS and Android are “permanent platforms” and should be regulated + enshrined as utilities by a new generation of anticompetitive law.

As a former Atari, Commodore, and IBM user, I find this to be an argument that doesn’t understand the history of tech platforms and the dynamics of competition.

People really forget that the world existed prior to 2008, and are convinced “this time is different”. It really isn’t.

Be careful what you wish for.

Re: Apple apologizes to WordPress, won’t force the free app to add purchases

#320

Post by romanoderoma »

scarface74 wrote: post #128
7tsfmCAusrQ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is, they don't then lie to the public and to Congress about it, as Apple and Tim Cook have now done.

So now you expect Congress to force Apple to sell you an iPad at the same price it sells to a corporation that buys 1000s? Of course Apple is going to make a deal with Amazon when Amazon can offer it another sales channel.

> So now you expect Congress to force Apple to sell you an iPad at the same price it sells to a corporation that buys 1000s?

I honestly expect the congress to remove Apple powers as gatekeeper

If the Apple Store is the only store for iOS devices, they have to allow any app in and let the authorities handle misbehaviour

Apple is not a National State, so it shouldn't act as the ruler and dictator of the State.

I expect congress to force Apple to remove control over what's inside the box.

If I buy a product on Amazon when I open the box I can find a lot of promotional material put there by the manufacturer and sometimes even discount codes for affiliated businesses or coupons for other online stores, Amazon can't tell them to remove it or go elsewhere

Apple should allow promoting the product inside the apps as well

That's what I expect from the country that sell itself as the land of the free (and champion of free market)

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