511–520 of 627 posts
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So what is the platform?
If I had to guess it would be something like Slack, Shopify, Squarespace or some other SaaS platform that needs to meet the needs of a hugely diverse customer base.
The concessions Apple & Google made to "stave off regulation" are informative in themselves: It also agreed to let developers inform their users about payment options outside the App Store, using the email addresses that users gave them. Google said that it would only take 15 percent of developers' first million dollars instead of 30 percent. Combined with "competition for monopoly" elements like paying Telcoms not t…
Once upon a time, flip phones had 'app stores' also maintained by a solo telecom.
A possible outcome of this regulation: all Android and iOS payments get disabled in South Korea, paid apps become unavailable.
Because it's one or the other. If they lose their monopoly position of being the only app store in the platform, does that mean they can start treating the store like a store and selling in it however they see fit?
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Can you suggest why that would be relevant? It's not like the software license model of general purpose computers is enforced under law.
It would be evidence in antitrust proceedings to demonstrate that Apple is not aligning itself with the game console market but with the personal computer market.
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Indeed, though here we're talking about developers literally including Apple proprietary code in their build process.
Actually not really. Developers are just calling into code that the user already paid for when they bought the device.
Furthermore, whether you paid for a thing is not relevant. What matters is whether the license conditions are satisfied. You can pay for a boxed copy of Red Hat Linux, but that doesn't absolve you of the responsibilities under the GPL.
And finally, licensed Apple intellectual property is absolutely contained within the binary of your iOS application.
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So... they are paying money to the government that they aren't required to?
They do that to pay proportionally less (not zero) and the countries they are paying proportionally less to are interested in being the fiscal hosts of those multinationals.
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30% was highway robbery from the start. Pure and simple. It was merely a less awful deal than most other indie commission models, with sites like Kongregate and their ilk demanding >80%. Against that kind of flaying and skinning, 30% was an improvement! I've said it before. A very good agent, who actually works for their client and arranges them with repeat lucrative contracts, gets 15%. App stores, as gatekeepers to…
30% was the iTunes deal for apps. On iTunes songs were all 99 cents and Apple got 30 cents.
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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.
What's the difference between that and the current situation (forced to used Apple's payment system)? Isn't Apple just forcing everyone to use what suits them best?
The Mac App Store gives a hint at what would happen if there was any choice. The amount of software actually available for the Mac is far, far greater than what’s listed in the store. Furthermore, while some quality and notable apps are still in the Mac App Store, many well-known apps are not there. The number of lousy apps is also extremely high every time I go to search or just look at the front page, to the point…