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Generally aside from games , them taking a 30% cut is generally the profit margin for most software companies. So unless of you can survive year 1 with funding

Generally aside from games , them taking a 30% cut is generally the profit margin for most software companies. So unless of you can survive year 1 with funding of some kind, or are making side hustle apps, you have to wait till next year to get that 15% increase in subscription revenue. So you pay 30% + cost of user acquisition + all other costs and hope that you can profit. Definitely not developer friendly. Then there’s the issue of rejecting apps, pulling it when they want, building out the functionality themselves or buying a competitor and pushing their own version. Forgot to include Apples return policy for digital products is very hurtful for developers too, there’s been hundreds of articles on it, you literally can get anything digital for free if you contact Apple support and say you want a refund... LinkedIn subscriptions, game products, anything.

enos_feedler 7y ago
If Apple didn't spend billions per year over the last 15 years on research & development, marketing, retail, etc to put those devices in hands of your target market, with readily available payment methods and the trust to buy things online, how would most companies even begin to build a business? If you ship bits and bytes, then I think this is fairly owed. Whenever I hear these gripes it makes me wonder why developers feel so entitled. Is it because we all came from a previous world where the PC was a more open platform for distribution? Apple is just a business. Do business with them or don't.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  People were building and distributing software for decades without giving apple 30%. It's just a phone. Smartphones existed before the App Store, too. It provides useful services but it's not the virgin mary and it's not some profoundly new invention: They just did a bunch of things previous apps had done, did them well, and slotted them all together. Things that existed before the app store: * Store performing payment processing (steam, for example) * Same storefront for purchase and install * Automated updates * User reviews * Content submission and distribution (steam again, along with basically every other app store) * Code signing Things that appeared other places around when the app store got them, if not earlier: * IAP * Subscriptions It's totally reasonable for Apple to put all this stuff together and decide it's a good enough package to charge you for it. It's also totally reasonable to think 30% is too much, and to think it's absurd that everyone is required to put up with their arbitrary rule enforcement. If you're paying Apple for a service it's not "entitlement" to expect it to actually be good.
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    Required to put up with arbitrary rule enforcement? You think I walk out of the store with a case of beer for the price I want to pay? That's just called business. You list a bunch of inventions here but that isn't want creates value for end users. It costs money to put this technology into the hands of end users which are the costs I highlighted. Apple has a right to capture that value as they see fit.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      "Apple has a right to capture that value as they see fit" is a big statement to make without a foundation behind it other than "it cost them money". R&D for an automobile costs a lot, especially if you factor in the decades most manufacturers have spent refining their manufacturing and technology. Does that mean Ford should be able to legally require me to buy all parts and service at authorized dealers only? Because most countries' laws disagree with you for reasons I think should be obvious. Hardware with bundled software has for whatever reason escaped the realities that apply to physical goods so far, even though it has obvious problems. Now we have tractors that refuse to be repaired without dealer authorization (yay DRM) and we have app store lock-in where anyone who wants to install apps on their phone has to have daddy's permission. If that's the ecosystem you want, so be it, and it's perfectly reasonable for Apple to charge for access, but that doesn't make it good. If you love the free market you should love the idea of a paid product needing to live up to its cost.
      - enos_feedler 7y ago
        Yes, if Ford believes that their customer's independent decisions about parts and service could lead them down a path that makes you more sour about Ford as a brand and degrade/ruin your relationship with Ford as a consumer. This could easily happen in the wild west of unauthorized parts and service. I think the laws are wrong in this case and compromises a company's ability to maintain that brand relationship. Are there undesirable consequences to this? Yes, but they can be sorted out one-by-one.
      - enos_feedler 7y ago
- blueboo 7y ago
  How can you find that convincing? I think it's too far to claim that if it weren't for Apple, we wouldn't have smartphones with paid apps.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    Smartphones with paid apps predated the iPhone by years. Apple just were the first ones to really nail the whole App Store model on mobile.
    - rstupek 7y ago
      And my recollection was it wasn't easy to sell apps on those phones without the phone ISP gatekeepers getting involved
  - enos_feedler 7y ago
    I'm saying if it weren't for Apple's closed loop, you wouldn't have a fragmentation free channel to billions of prospective customers. This is clearly getting even stronger with SwiftUI's ability to target across their product space (TV, Watch, Phone, Tablet, Computer). I am talking merely from a technical one, leaving aside the obvious financial disparity between Apple and the "other guys" (which I don't even think you can group into "Android" at this point it's such a mess)
scarface74 7y ago
Or you can just have subscriptions outside of the App Store....

enos_feedler 7y ago

If Apple didn't spend billions per year over the last 15 years on research & development, marketing, retail, etc to put those devices in hands of your target market, with readily available payment methods and the trust to buy things online, how would most companies even begin to build a business? If you ship bits and bytes, then I think this is fairly owed. Whenever I hear these gripes it makes me wonder why developers feel so entitled. Is it because we all came from a previous world where the PC was a more open platform for distribution? Apple is just a business. Do business with them or don't.

kevingadd 7y ago
People were building and distributing software for decades without giving apple 30%. It's just a phone. Smartphones existed before the App Store, too. It provides useful services but it's not the virgin mary and it's not some profoundly new invention: They just did a bunch of things previous apps had done, did them well, and slotted them all together. Things that existed before the app store: * Store performing payment processing (steam, for example) * Same storefront for purchase and install * Automated updates * User reviews * Content submission and distribution (steam again, along with basically every other app store) * Code signing Things that appeared other places around when the app store got them, if not earlier: * IAP * Subscriptions It's totally reasonable for Apple to put all this stuff together and decide it's a good enough package to charge you for it. It's also totally reasonable to think 30% is too much, and to think it's absurd that everyone is required to put up with their arbitrary rule enforcement. If you're paying Apple for a service it's not "entitlement" to expect it to actually be good.
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  Required to put up with arbitrary rule enforcement? You think I walk out of the store with a case of beer for the price I want to pay? That's just called business. You list a bunch of inventions here but that isn't want creates value for end users. It costs money to put this technology into the hands of end users which are the costs I highlighted. Apple has a right to capture that value as they see fit.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    "Apple has a right to capture that value as they see fit" is a big statement to make without a foundation behind it other than "it cost them money". R&D for an automobile costs a lot, especially if you factor in the decades most manufacturers have spent refining their manufacturing and technology. Does that mean Ford should be able to legally require me to buy all parts and service at authorized dealers only? Because most countries' laws disagree with you for reasons I think should be obvious. Hardware with bundled software has for whatever reason escaped the realities that apply to physical goods so far, even though it has obvious problems. Now we have tractors that refuse to be repaired without dealer authorization (yay DRM) and we have app store lock-in where anyone who wants to install apps on their phone has to have daddy's permission. If that's the ecosystem you want, so be it, and it's perfectly reasonable for Apple to charge for access, but that doesn't make it good. If you love the free market you should love the idea of a paid product needing to live up to its cost.
    - enos_feedler 7y ago
      Yes, if Ford believes that their customer's independent decisions about parts and service could lead them down a path that makes you more sour about Ford as a brand and degrade/ruin your relationship with Ford as a consumer. This could easily happen in the wild west of unauthorized parts and service. I think the laws are wrong in this case and compromises a company's ability to maintain that brand relationship. Are there undesirable consequences to this? Yes, but they can be sorted out one-by-one.
    - enos_feedler 7y ago
blueboo 7y ago
How can you find that convincing? I think it's too far to claim that if it weren't for Apple, we wouldn't have smartphones with paid apps.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  Smartphones with paid apps predated the iPhone by years. Apple just were the first ones to really nail the whole App Store model on mobile.
  - rstupek 7y ago
    And my recollection was it wasn't easy to sell apps on those phones without the phone ISP gatekeepers getting involved
- enos_feedler 7y ago
  I'm saying if it weren't for Apple's closed loop, you wouldn't have a fragmentation free channel to billions of prospective customers. This is clearly getting even stronger with SwiftUI's ability to target across their product space (TV, Watch, Phone, Tablet, Computer). I am talking merely from a technical one, leaving aside the obvious financial disparity between Apple and the "other guys" (which I don't even think you can group into "Android" at this point it's such a mess)

scarface74 7y ago

Or you can just have subscriptions outside of the App Store....