401–410 of 627 posts
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Are you ready to pay 30% premium for using Apple payment system?
Well, if it makes it easy to cancel a subscription or get a refund. Sure. And yes, if I don't need to use Paypal I am happy to pay a 15-30% premium. I am worried that using other payment systems make it much harder to achieve that.
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Managing all subscriptions from one location is great, but Apple already exempts themselves from cancelling subscriptions without losing time remaining. I expect most of these to go away as processors compete for app business.
> Apple already exempts themselves from cancelling subscriptions without losing time remaining. That hasn’t been my experience - do you have a cite for that?
They should unbundle. At the moment, doing business on the app stores entails so many things, but they can break them apart and allow developers to purchase them individually: 1. Put your app on the store. (but only reachable via direct link) 2. Have Gapple verify that your app does not represent any obvious security threat. (or else warn users upon install) 3. Make your app appear in search. (organically) 4. Make yo…
Apple released their phone in 2007, the App Store in 2008, and in-app payments in 2009. During that time their marketshare was fairly small, and it didn't start to really grow until they expanded availability to the Verizon network in 2011.
Right at launch of the App Store, Apple announced its sales commission would be 30%. Then they extended that same fee to in-app purchases a year later. At the same time they set the rules that third-party app stores were not allowed, and that third-party payment processors could not be used.
I'm mentioning all of this history to make this point: Apple made these rules when they were not a monopoly by any definition. They released these products, with these rules, into a free market and let the market (both users and developers) decide which products to use and which products to develop for.
Now, obviously, between 2007 and 2021 the iPhone has been a wild success. Its platform has grown in users and developers every year.
So in terms of the framing of "market abuse", at what point between the launch of these rules and now did Apple cross that threshold between free-market competitor who can legally control their own platform to monopolist abusing its power?
I'm asking this question not just to make a point, but because I think it will be instructive for future companies to understand where in the growth curve the rules they started with can potentially cross over into being "abusive".
In the end it was bound to happen, consumers always lose to special interests, even if app devs don’t want to admit they are one.
Really, this is a "loss" to consumers how?
With sensitive data flowing through a lot more companies, it’s going to be a shit show, it’s just a matter of time.
Good. I've been saying this awhile, most notably when Apple (of course followed by Google) introduced a discount on commission for smaller developers. This is completely backwards. I know why they did it. They wanted some positive PR that didn't cost them anything. Thing is, it's the larger publishers who are going to lobby regulators and challenge things in court. It's those same publishers who already have their ow…
That's exactly it, so many users are afraid that this will mean every random app you download will have a credit card entry field. Nope. Those random apps will still benefit from the simplicity of the system IAP, one tap, auth, done. The ones asking for a credit card will drop in ratings and search results. The big players are the ones that will switch, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc. And beyond that, competitor…
Apple can always require an Apple Pay option for any app in its app store which collects payments. And honestly it'd probably be okay if they require devs to charge users the same amount regardless of how they pay.
The issue is that they ban other options entirely, which reeks of monopolistic anticompetitive behavior.
Just let devs tell their users about Apple's 30% cut, then let devs give users an option to pay however they want.
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The Mac App Store came after there was a thriving ecosystem for Mac apps online/organically and without a middle man, and it provided close to zero value for developers on top of that. I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.
I think there is still value in the comparison, but you are absolutely correct. Any comparison must include this huge caveat - the Mac had a third party software ecosystem for over 20 years, well before OS X or a Mac App Store came along. There simply was far, far less historical incentive to adopt the macOS App Store than there was on iOS, which of course mandated the App Store from the beginning. As a thought exper…
- every app has their own licensing system
- I have to keep track of emails, license key files, logins and other bullshit manually instead of having it synchronized automatically at application install. Not to mention I have a boatload of shop accounts that have collected my payment and other personal data (e.g. postal address) and whom I have to trust now that they keep their data secure enough to not have it stolen.
- for subscription stuff, I have to update payment details for an awful lot of individual shops instead of having one single place
- refund policies vary wildly, as is tax compliance for foreign companies
I agree that Apple and Google must be reined in - 30% cut are absurd rip-offs, and the fact that stores can censor legal content (e.g. anything marijuana/tobacco/drug related or adult content) is troubling - but the central store model does have advantages.
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I don't think you'll lose this. It will be like "sign in with aplle" — you will be able to use different purchase algorithms, or apple pay.
Except that there’s an incentive to force users into using other services. If the choice is left to developers, each developer will choose what suits him best.
Isn't Apple just forcing everyone to use what suits them best?
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Just wow. > Of course this should force them into binding arbitration and otherwise challenging the discount should void that discount. So you want apple and google to act as even more monopolistic bullies ... I see that you're taking this position as what you would do if you were Apple or Google, not what is the best course of action for all stakeholders. But you then opine that this is justified because the status…
> How many other apps or services went under (or were never made in the first instance) because Apple decided that their business needed to pay them a 30% cut of everything. Probably very few apps fit this. This rule basically only applies to digital goods, which are "free" to manufacture. There is some fixed server/dev costs, but its practically "free" to serve n+1 users. This applies especially true to games where…
These missing smaller players are the deadweight loss from the cut. You either need the scale to cover your fixed costs from a reduced revenue stream, or a revenue stream which avoids the 30% (like ads).
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Sometimes I try to imagine what the app store rules would look like if apple had to abide by those same rules for all of their own apps. I imagine the rules would be much more lenient, app review a lot less error prone, and developers would be chafed far less by those golden handcuffs. Pretty sure apple’s developer documentation would still be bad though.
I work on a platform that provides its subscribers with a store for 1st and 3rd party apps/solutions built on that platform. Every app delivered on this store must go through the same review process whether it's internally built or not. This has led to healthy innovation on the app store and deep empathy for the 3rd party developer. To be fair, it is possible to ship components that are part of the core platform outs…