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Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

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Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#391

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

thebean11 wrote: post #381
NationalPark wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s tons of value in a unified payment system, which is why it’s app developers who were unhappy, not users. For instance, ease of cancellation of recurring fees is enormous. You can bet that’s going to get harder as developers get more control. And anyway, The app developers have no motivation to charge you less, the market already bears the fees, they just want to capture that profit for themselves. Personally…

> why it’s app developers who were unhappy, not users IIRC, Epic was offering their in game currency more cheaply outside of the App Store, which Apple didn't like. I bet plenty of people would use an alternate payment method to save money..right now they don't have that choice.

It was pretty genius from Epic, they knew they'd get banned, but it instantly showed how the consumer is harmed by this behavior (pay more, get less).

Every mobile game with a cash store would instantly give you a discount to go through a different provider.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#392

Post by madeofpalk »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #386
madeofpalk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear here (and this fact doesn't really detract from your point) - Apple Pay is very different to Apple's In App Purchases. Apple Pay can be used anyhere, and it could still be used if a company rolls their own purchase system on their website that they link to from the app. Apple only gets a very minor % cut of Apple Pay transactions, from the bank, compared to Apple IAP where Apple gets 30% from the dev…

Apple would also likely drop their cut from 30% overnight. Maybe not to 3% like Paypal, but low enough where companies would have to think.

For context, Netflix was getting 15% in some markets and that was not enough to keep them on IAP.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#393

Post by selykg »

jerrycruncher wrote: post #342
selykg wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. I'm very careful about what I pay for anyway. If you want me to pay for your product it needs to be something that brings me real value. Even then I limit myself, as I only have a certain amount to spend anyway, so you're competing with other products for my limited amount of budget. Apple's IAP makes it incredibly simple to cancel service. It's consistent as well, which means I don't have to keep hunting th…

The ability to simply cancel any subscription without clicking through increasingly desperate "Don't go!!!" nag screens is easily worth an extra 30% for me, too.

Yup. As a consumer, Apple's IAP and Apple Pay driven experience is pretty darn good. I wish their business didn't revolve around subscriptions as much, but at the very least it does make purchasing really easy as a consumer.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#394

Post by wlesieutre »

acdha wrote: post #376
wlesieutre wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple’s offerings are quite polished so I don’t think they’ll fall out of favor Any iOS devs care to weigh in? Apple's system could just as easily be a godawful mess. No personal experience but I've seen people online complaining about how StoreKit sucks. They've had in-app purchases since 2009 and no competitive pressure from other SDKs, because they can block them with app store policy instead of needing to offer…

I'm just speaking from the user experience: I know that there are issues with the App Store's model for upgrades, trials, etc. so those are valid considerations but if you're just using an app it is really convenient to that you can buy something securely with a tap and a double-click and have zero problems getting a refund or canceling a subscription. Basically I'd expect successful competitors with Apple to be comp…

Yeah, I would be perfectly willing to set up subscriptions through Stripe if they gave me a way to manage all those subscriptions in one place.

My worry with the "anti-steering" requirement being removed is that every company will redirect me back to their own website with their own payment system, and I'll have to manage all of them individually, or phone up their call center to try and get anything cancelled.

Easy to avoid by not subscribing to anything, but every app seems to be trending that way.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#395

Post by manquer »

bberenberg wrote: post #68
socialist_coder wrote: post #35

This will certainly get appealed and bogged down even more in the legal system, right? What are the chances this actually happens? And when? Secondly, this is such an easy way to increase your take by 20+% that I would imagine almost every publisher is going to be offering their own payments platform, not just the biggest ones like Epic.

It will be interesting to see how many small companies figure out that tax and general compliance is worth every penny that Apple charges them. Smart ones will opt for a seller of record approach, but many will get burnt.

Stripe provides a lot of tooling ( more than apple) for compliance. Apple is hardly the only payment provider which simplifies payment processing for small developers.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#396

Post by Spivak »

travoc wrote: post #310
eropple wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies will want it, but I'm not sure users will. Apple does a really good job of warning me, I feel, and centralizing subscription cancellation etc., and that's huge. Like, if I have to go to your app--or worse, your website--to cancel a subscription? I'm gonna just not use your stuff, because I'm going to forget about it until you whack me for another year or whatever.

You would really pay a 30% premium on all your digital purchases just to be warned about a subscription expiring next year? You might be an edge case.

I mean everyone's assuming that non-IAP subscriptions are going to be 30% cheaper but I don't really buy it. If the market has proven that someone will pay $10 for a thing, suddenly offering it for $7 seems like a bad business move.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#397

Post by falcolas »

BackBlast wrote: post #138
coldcode wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user, I have zero desire to use some random payment gateway, using Apple makes my life easier, I can reasonably trust Apple not to let someone steal my money, how am I supposed to trust 50 different gateways? Also if people move away from giving Apple any money for the App Store, I expect the annual fee to increase to make up for it, and might Apple make you pay more if you don't use Apple's gateway? I don't see…

Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything to use Apple payment gateway? Do you love it that much? At the end of the day, services have to provide value. If your customers don't want to pay for your services, they do not value them. That's a dangerous position for any company to try to maintain. The mobile software industry generally has been chaffing at the fees for quite some time now, these are the warning s…

> Are you willing to spend 27% more for everything

This makes what is, IMO, an unjustified assumption: that competition in the payment scene will drive prices down for the same item based on payment method.

Instead, I think we'll see the same thing we see with the cash/credit card split: The same price regardless of your payment method, with price differences lining the publisher's pockets.

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#398

Post by cblconfederate »

dannyw wrote: post #339
cblconfederate wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says they can't prohibit developers (so they must allow) adding links to non-IAP. OTOH it doesnt force apple to allow any link, they can still filter which payment providers are allowed

Violating an injuction via a technicality will land you in court again.

Would it be a violation?

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#399

Post by selimthegrim »

hnra wrote: post #373
bobthepanda wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fair amount of companies makes their subscription cancellation actively hostile in an effort to not get people to do it. To give an example, though you can subscribe online, the NYT requires you to call during only certain hours to a customer service line where you get badgered and questioned like you’re trying to cancel a cable subscription. If the US mandated that you need to provide equivalent means of subscript…

I just checked my NYT account I can cancel from the website? I only have a digital subscription however.

The exception to their statements above is if you use Apple Pay however

Re: Court issues permanent injunction in Epic vs. Apple case

#400

Post by toast0 »

wvenable wrote: post #295
toast0 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laptops use mobile cpus, but desktop oses and software. PC based tablets are kind of weird, but iOS/Android mobile OS based tablets are more or less phones with big screens and no/limited calling features.

"Desktop OS's and software" is an arbitrary definition. Smartphones are just computers that make calls. Steve Jobs even famously said that the iPhone ran "OS X" when it was first launched.

It is somewhat arbitrary; yeah, smart phones can run whatever, but practically, they don't.

For many reasons, the vast majority of people stick with the OS a device ships with, and mobile OSes are directed towards app stores and limited filesystems, and desktop OSes are directed towards applications (with a side of app stores) and visible filesystems and what not.

You can run Android on a desktop PC, and you can (if you try really hard) run desktop Windows on a phone or a game console, but that's not how the devices are generally sold, and that's not how the devices are generally used. Apple sometimes claims their tablets are as useful as a computer running a desktop OS, but they don't provide Xcode for the iPad, do they?

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