401–410 of 944 posts
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> Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. We can say this to any company, "$X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits", but it doesn't really make any sense. Making profits is what makes a company a company instead of a non-profit organization.
I think it's a little known fact that societies don't exist for the benefit of companies. It's actually the other way around.
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What is absurd is finding yourself paying 30% on every digital item purchased on a smartphone app. It would never even occur to us that Microsoft takes a 30% margin on Steam, yet that is what happens on webtoon apps.
Remember when software was sold in a box with a paper manual in a store? Before App Store and steam, retailers and publishers of games and software also took their share of the revenue from the work software developers created. Their cut wasn’t small. If the government stepped in to regulate the sales of software (to protect developers and consumers?) do you think: A) apps will cost less B) the government won’t want…
[1] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/12/app-store-and-japanese-co...
Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales Revenue $32 B Operating Costs $7 B [1] Estimated Profit $25 B Operating Margin ~78% [1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs. Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were…
Regulating the fees for one central app store is no solution.
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That's what Apple already doing: applying arbitrary categories and charging arbitrary amounts of money because "transaction costs and platform or something". 1. Where the hell is the notion of "using the platform for free" even coming from (it's coming from Apple of course). I didn't know that iPhones are free, or that dev fees are waived for everyone. 2. Why the hell can't I use a different payment processor tham Ap…
For interactive entertainment, I see no moral obligation for Apple to adopt any particular policy unless all major digital game store operators (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Valve etc) are subject to the same requirements. For all other apps, I agree that alternative payment processing should be permitted for one-off transactions. And I can agree for subscriptions as well, provided the developer can meet a high standar…
Why? iPhones are not gaming consoles.
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Developers are a tricky market for this because they could realistically move to different platforms if stuff like this started to happen. Or at least work on remote machines. If gaming on Macs ever became popular though this would be a real risk.
Apple fans on the other hand are not a tricky market. They swallow whatever Apple gives them. It doesn't matter if they are developers or not.
Apps bad. Web good. Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?
Since app distribution is not a fair market anymore, it needs to be regulated. Either the fees have to go down close to cost or alternative app stores should be allowed. And not the malicious compliance version of it (as Apple is trying in the EU).
Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales Revenue $32 B Operating Costs $7 B [1] Estimated Profit $25 B Operating Margin ~78% [1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs. Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were…
> Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. We can say this to any company, "$X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits", but it doesn't really make any sense. Making profits is what makes a company a company instead of a non-profit organization.
Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales Revenue $32 B Operating Costs $7 B [1] Estimated Profit $25 B Operating Margin ~78% [1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs. Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were…
> Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits. We can say this to any company, "$X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits", but it doesn't really make any sense. Making profits is what makes a company a company instead of a non-profit organization.