Apps can be free or cost money. If they cost money, Apple can take a cut.
Apps can sell anything they want that’s part of the app (game levels) and must then use in-app purchases.
All other sales both physical and non-physical (media, tickets, parking, ...) you can sell how you want.
Are these terms really that absurd?
If you want to use Apple's discovery and distribution system, you pay a cut.
If you want to train your customers how to install on their own, you pay nothing, but have to distribute the app yourself.
The DOJ needs to force Apple to allow this, because they've unfairly strong armed their way into being middle-man for over 40% of Americans for all of the computing they do.
If we think the tech industry needs less vertical integration to be healthier (imagine if Samsung made cheaper iOS phones), we simply can do it, passing laws as needed.
What about the actual selling of iPhones counts as "unfair strong-arming"? No one's getting their arms twisted to buy a phone they don't want.
I only think the payment terms for developers and customers are bad.
Apple taking 30% (or trying) from every app is bad for everyone.
Nobody is complaining about Apple taking a cut from the Mac App Store.
Personally, it's nobodies place to dictate how much Apple charges. The main complaint is over Apple's monopoly over the channel for getting apps onto your mobile device.
Buy an iPhone for %15 off price if you use Apple's App store or buy it at full price if you don't use Apple's App store.
As in, let Apple subsidize the cost of the phone with the app store, I suspect a significant number of people would go for it even with just a five percent price drop.
The problem currently isn't that Apple is charging what they do for the App store, the problem is they are in effect selling customers of their hardware for that amount.
The original idea, which worked for a few years, was that 30% of the for-fee apps helped cover the costs of the free apps. For the first few years, Apple operated their App Store at a loss, and aimed for break-even.
I think subscriptions is ultimately what broke that model.
If you don't like the price, use (or create) an alternative.
a) Being able to provide a free app with a subscription you can not buy in the app because of the 30% with IAP you're required to use
b) The ability to purchase tokens/credits in a game to then purchase other stuff.
So it wouldn't resolve the current major fights IMO.
What happens if Apple takes a 30% cut of the app revenue, but you book the class offline (say, via web). But then you view via your iPad?
Another example might be the various learning apps. I purchased a Coursera class via the web, but then I added via my iPad -- does Apple get a revenue from this?
Maybe you e-mail a receipt that happens to list the paper's contents for 'quicker delivery'.
Apps that allow you to sign up / subscribe to a service in the app must have an equally prominent and easy way of cancelling / unsubscribing in the app. No additional steps can be required (ie no calling a retention specialist).
Sounds crazy, I know.
With the macbook pro's flimsy hinge ribbon cable and delicate butterfly keyboard that both broke way too quickly, they seemed to be trying to pull the "well, people won't use it for more than x years before they ewaste it!" method, and failed pretty spectacularly.
It worked until organizational entropy caught up with Apple. It's all fine and dandy when they make changes that are consistent, if not totally intuitive at first, but now the low hanging fruit has been picked and the only way to get promotions is to push for stupid projects like "fixing the keyboard."
Larger companies bring larger revenue. They get juicy discounts. I acknowledge the situation with smaller devs, but the comparison is extreme - billion dollar company vs. a single developer. How do you reconcile these?
Every enterprise software has volume licensing even though the cost of distribution is negligible. Is an App store different? I argue its not, but open for discussion.
With Stripe, I can get 1.9% or even lower transaction fees if my volume is $2M+ annually. Usually for poor small companies, they have to pay 2.9%. So sorry for small companies :-( but that's how the world works. There is a lot of emotion behind arguments on HN when it comes to Apple. It is mob thinking and bandwagoning, I am not impressed.
Edit: Sorry, I was referring to another comment. My mistake.
The anti-Apple argument has been that the policy hurts smaller developers and is being applied unfairly.
This at least validates the latter argument while suggesting truth to the former.
Regardless, it's an interesting development.
If you poison the well, and it's just by one actor, do you not think that's enough action to warrant a response?
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2020/09/25/apple-pausing-its-30-ios-cut-...
Kind of takes the wind out of the, "same rules for everyone...level playing field" argument.
the first is just based on economies of scale etc
Probably both. Businesses will get 100% of the money, and Facebook may get some more users.
EDIT: Just to clarify, FB doesn't take a cut of the money earned, so the Apple 30% was coming out of money that would have gone to the businesses.
FB doesn't take a cut of the money, they take all of the data. Strangely enough, the latter is probably more profitable/valuable than the former.
Maybe once Apple allows a default web browser to be set, I will finally get this ability on my phone. I might even build my own web browser!
Source: I work on a shopping app similar to Amazon's Prime Now but for a different country.
Something funny. When you sell on Amazon, they take a 15% cut.
Source: Also work on software for Amazon sellers.
Either way, it would seem to help Epic's case.
This news sounds like Apple taking some more time to think things through and come up with better plans (plans for itself and payment plans for developers on its platforms) before the judiciary or lawmakers cripple its systems way beyond its tolerance for changes.
There will be more permanent “concessions” coming soon, without admitting in any shape or form that the current system doesn’t make sense and is exploitative for some/many developers (not Facebook, which I believe with its vile history, can easily eat the commissions if it really cares about its users).
When companies are privately owned and highly concentrated, you get two sets of rules: one for the weak and one for the strong.
