I like Apple forcing use of in-app-payments, I like Apple giving me subscription control to make canceling easy. I like Apple blocking app tracking and forcing design constraints.
That said, the 30% weakens their entire argument about this and is a racket. If they want to charge a yearly deployment fee or something fine, but 30% of a company's income via IAP? That's obnoxious and anti-competitive, particularly in cases like Spotify where they directly compete and undercut them in the same market.
Apple is skimming a tax off the top and they're forcing everyone to pay the toll. It weakens their entire argument. I wish they would stop, because I think a world with multiple stores and such would be a huge pain and customers would suffer because of it.
If you think it's a pain to have 15 streaming services or 10 different game distributors all with their own shitty incentives - it'd be that on the phone.
I don't understand this argument at all.
You're almost certainly taking more risk driving in a car than downloading an app, yet you're probably willing to embrace the full degrees of freedom of the roadway.
We shouldn't be afraid to use computers. Security is possible without an app store.
Apologizing for Apple's exploitive system is doing us all a disservice. It's making it harder to do business, launch a startup, use your own device, refurbish your device, and compute freely.
Technology wasn't always a locked-in time share. We're witnessing a hostile takeover. An invented scam, sold to us by the Jobs and Ballmers of the world.
The Apple and Google stores make us serfs in their kingdoms. We're renting, not owning.
Your choices are impinging upon my freedoms. The more people that accept this, the more companies are willing to take.
A Department of Justice breakup is looking like the only solution at this point.
Your liberty is not at stake here, nor any real detriment to your quality of life really. The more companies take, the more opportunity for disruption there will be.
A Department of Justice breakup is certainly the easiest and most immediately gratifying solution. It is hardly the only solution, and in my mind I am certain it is the wrong solution.
Would you say the same if the car market suddenly coalesced into a duopoly and the car companies become very restrictive? Would you defend only them being allowed to do basic repairs in the interest of safety? One going as far as saying you need to buy their tires or tires from companies that pay them tribute or the car won't start, their seat covers unless you manage disable some weird detection, etc The other allowing such stuff just making it a pain. Would you then say a company just needs to pop up and meet this demand? Despite all the stuff involved and the size of cars would be a lot lot easier. Because at least cars don't necessarily need an ecosystem, userbase and developer community outside of the company to get of the ground and get sales.
As soon as you apply these things the other industries they start sounding ridiculous and hilariously anticompetitive but with phones people for some reason have come to accept it.
Yes it is.
iOS controls a sufficient part of US revenue that wider ecosystem effects on what is permitted speech come directly from the app store terms, or at least in some cases about trying to second guess the inconsistently applied, arbitrary and vague as hell App Store rules.
We've got direct testimony from all sorts of app makers that what speech they do and do not censor on the platform (especially around sex, impacting the fundamental liberties and safety of sex workers, queer communities, artists and educators) is directly because their business is such that they need to watch the terms of the app store.
We've seen examples in China of Apple blocking apps that literally lead to people failing to escape authoritarian governments and them disappearing, quite possibly to their death.
Liberty is the fundamental reason that a singular control of what software can be run on mobile device is a thing too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Competition law is probably the most expedient route to fix it, but a centralised app store should be a criminal act on it's own merits.
You don't have to drive on the highway either, so I assume you're fine with having that freedom removed too.
Yes, you do. If you want to reach 50% of Americans, you're forced to build and distribute an app on the App Store.
Try building Netflix without an iOS app.
Try writing a new social media app and not building for iPhone.
Pick any modern vertical without an iPhone app. You just can't do it. Apple is the new AOL for a lot of folks.
You immediately surrender 30% to reach 50% of your customer base, and on top of that, you have to dance to Apple's arbitrary rules and app approval release trains.
1. This is not how technology should work.
2. Apple's fees are extortion.
3. This is using monopolistic advantage to strong arm an entire industry.
I like local control, I think urbit is cool and hope they succeed. I'm a little disturbed by the need for mighty and how we've ended up in a such a messy state of things with modern computing.
It's not about reducing risk or scam apps really - it's about Apple being able to incentivize user-benefiting behavior that ad-driven business models corrupt. Maybe we wouldn't need this in a world that had more CCPA laws with teeth, I'd be happy to live in that world, but we don't.
At least with Apple I have the option to buy hardware from a company with aligned incentives that gives a shit.
Apple isn't doing this out of their own good heart! They've built one of the largest monopolies in the world.
Is it okay for one megamonopoly to tax everyone else simply because they reached market penetration first?
Let's fix our laws. This is utterly unfair.
You and Apple are conflating "App Store" and "Content Filter".
We can have multiple App Stores and multiple types of content filters. It doesn't need to be like the current situation, with Apple in full control over everything.
It’s not content filtering that I care about, it’s the ability for Apple to enforce standards around usability and features that are better for their users.
Without control of the store they lose that leverage.
App devs will just ship outside of it and include all the tracking they want. It’ll also block Apple from being able to require things like Apple ID or Apple Pay support which provide direct benefits to users, but can run counter to what app devs want.
Others like to go base jumping from some mountain in the Alps.
Shouldn't both be possible? Or do we want a Mickey Mouse in the Alps telling us to go back for our own safety?
Yes it does. Because otherwise you will need to install tons of app stores to install all the apps you currently use.
For instance, I would have to install the Epic store to install Fortnite. Now that’s two apps (the store app plus Fortnite app) and then I’d be less confident about the level of quality and security that the added store provides.
It is this particular situation that seems very hard to overcome from a regulatory perspective. So one you allow multiple app stores, the specialness that people like me have for our trusted devices disappears.
Most likely it is in the interest of majority of consumers conditioned to this type of control. I realize that it is a benefit for older computer illiterate people. It completely sucks for people like myself.
>"10 different game distributors all with their own shitty incentives"
That's one classy way of describing business approach. Yes they're shitty in a way that they're there to help you part with your money and everything else is but a fluff around it. You just forgot to add Apple itself to that group.
It's a benefit for computer literate people too.
- IAP allows easy tracking of subscriptions and cancellation. You don't have to call and argue with a retentions rep for an hour to cancel a service.
- Apple restrictions on tracking limit abuse from ad driven business models.
- Apple can require features like Apple ID to be implemented alongside FB connect or whatever. Apple ID has privacy friendly features for users like obscuring your email via a relay. This would never be implemented by app devs because hiding your email is counter to their incentives. If they could deploy outside of the store to avoid these constraints they would.
Apple's interests are aligned with their users. The reason they can get away with charging 30% is because Apple's users don't care about all the shitty anti-user things Apple blocks app devs from doing.
The reason I care about the 30% is because it worries me that they will be forced to allow side-loading or multiple stores and lose their leverage over app devs. If they lose that leverage we as Apple users will lose these benefits, and for what?
Because you literally don't get people in autocratic regimes killed because the single choke point of software that might enable them to escape detection is removed. Because you remove Apple's rampant discrimination against some kinds of speech and the people that effects. Because Apple attacks businesses with any involvement in sex whatsoever.
Sure, maybe. I do not care as I personally do not feel any benefit. I am most likely in minority but that does not mean I have to tailor my opinions.
Not even really criticizing Apple / Google. I want my phone to be able to function as normal Windows / Linux PC except that its phone capability would be able to function even if the rest of the OS is crashed. Such product simply does not exist outside of half baked attempts and I am not willing to waste my time/money on those.
The end result is that my current smartphone is mostly just a phone with couple of off-line apps like GPS and apps to install firmware to various gizmos like a drone. I do not even have data plan.
Apple has done a lot to revise the App Store charging policy over the last few years, and I think they deserve credit for that. Also their hosting of free apps for only a nominal developer registration fee is a huge boon to users and a lot of iOS developers.
So I don’t think those criticisms are entirely accurate or fair. I am ok with regulators looking into this though. Apples revisions to their charging structure probably wouldn’t have happened without the threat of regulatory review. It’s important they be held accountable. However Apple invested many, many billions of dollars to develop the technologies in iOS over many decades and took huge commercial risks. iOS and these devices are their product and they have the right to decide how they work and what features they have. Those who don’t like that do have alternatives. The fact is an awful lot of people do like the way Apple does things.
That's still pretty extreme imo when you control the only store and you directly compete with them/undercut them.
> "Also their hosting of free apps for only a nominal developer registration fee is a huge boon to users and a lot of iOS developers."
They charge a fee for it, I wouldn't consider it nominal - the ecosystem of apps also obviously benefits apple.
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I'm a huge Apple fan which is why I find this racket irritating, it worries me that it'll blow up in their face and we'll end up worse off.
I'd probably charge a (low) flat annual fee for app store distribution and that's it. Apple should be focused on making money with great products, not taxing devs they force through their channel.
Keep the rules, lose the tax.
Regulators don’t (yet I suppose) care about this because of opportunity cost. If I’m making $3/user/mo off your $10 subscription and I decide to enter the market and compete with you at then every user I steal and every user if not for me would have gone with you costs me $3/mo plus cost of providing them service. So if I’m able to still undercut you then either I’m ridiculously more efficient than you or you have fat margins.
Neither of these are true so something else is going on here. Either I’m bleeding money and this is some strategic play in which case it might be unfair for different reasons, or the market is segmented and we actually have two different customer bases with insignificant cross pollination.
How many Spotify users paid through their App though? I'd imagine it would only be a tiny fraction.
They also started to prevent apps that don't have IAP for subscriptions.
> ...that app developers be allowed to provide consumers with information about alternative payment options...
The only thing I really like about Spotify is spotify connect. I don't understand why none of the competitors have anything competing. It's the key selling point for Sonos
That’s when they’re actually in violation of monopoly and consumer protection laws. Consumer harm is part of it.
Like for example, consider their restrictions on third-party browser engines, JITs, etc. Are you happy about all those choices too?
That's probably technically 'most', but it's not the large sector that matters.
Also 15% is still quite high.
That 15% includes the 1-3% creditcard processing fee. They also take care of VAT and multi currency for your customers.
It has been this way since November, and it seems like either nobody noticed, or they seem to still enjoy quoting the 30% number. If you make more than $1mil a year you probably can afford to deal with that. You're also probably putting significantly more bandwidth off Apple's servers than an app that's had 100 downloads.
Unity does a similar thing, but it's free for up to a certain income, pay after that.
I personally would like to see that reduced to 10%, but at least Apple responded to the constant criticism that 30% was ludicrous.
From Apple:
• Existing developers who made up to $1 million in 2020 for all of their apps, as well as developers new to the App Store, can qualify for the program and the reduced (15%) commission.
• If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.
• If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can requalify for the 15 percent commission the year after.
Source: https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-ap...
And for the entirety of the following year.
This is most stark with their recent announcement of supporting paid podcasts. Particularly because of the anonymization around sign-in with Apple, the podcaster doesn’t actually get to know who their subscribers are. Want to have special rewards or a subscriber only discord channel or forum? Too bad! If any of your biggest fans first started donating through Apple Podcasts you’ve got a big hassle in the way of verifying who they are. Got a weird customer service problem that you’d like to address with a personal touch or maybe offer some store credit or a special reward to make up for it? Once again, too bad. There is no capability to do that.
