5 ms·

Is it wrong of me to think "vote with your wallet" and don't buy an iPhone?

musicale 6y ago
More like don't develop for iPhone or Android. OP seems to be suggesting that developers organize against the de facto app store duopoly. > Google does exactly the same thing
- valuearb 6y ago
  Apple is paying developers nearly $30B a year, that dwarfs all these minor complaints fir most developers.
  - wilshipley 6y ago
    That $30B number is meaningless on its own. You don’t know how many people it’s going to or how it’s divided amongst them. Also, they’re not paying us at all. They’re taking 30% of our gross for the privilege of having an entry on their store, and then they run ads against us.
  - syshum 6y ago
    WOW, that is a gross reversal of the sales model. I thought Apple had a warped sense of their role but here you believe that Apple is entitled to 100% of the sales from the developers apps, and are graciously paying the devs 70% of money Apple is entitled to, instead of the reality that Apple is taking 30% of the revenue from Developers for the "privilege" of access to consumers that already paid apple thousands of dollars. Apple is a Payment processor, that is the service they provide. a "Fair" amount for a payment process is maybe 5%, not 30%
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Apples App Store service does far more than payment processing, and it’s disingenuous to compare them to one. They host and distribute petabytes of data. They have a large team hosting and maintain marketing sites for developers in dozens of languages all over the world. Another team develops and distributes mobile apps for store access in all those languages. They have a large team providing developer support and developer tools. They have a thousand employees screening app submissions for malware to help ensure customers feel safe buying your apps from the App Store. They have hundreds of employees marketing the store and promoting developers. They do all these things for free if you distribute free apps. So he developers have distributed hundreds of terabytes of free apps without paying a dime. Clearly Apple makes a profit from the App Store, but also clearly it wouldn’t be able to remotely cover these costs at 5%, their break even is closer to 15%. Developers long for the day some government or court will force Apple to reduce their profit share, but as a iOS developer I warn those devs to be careful for what they wish for. Apple taking 20% or less is a recipe for developers getting nickel and dimed by Apple. They will start charging hosting and bandwidth fees, submission fees, support subscriptions, etc, etc, and Apples profitability will be back where it was. Free app devs and small developers however will take a huge step backwards.
      - _qulr 6y ago
        Oh dear lord. Hosting and data are so incredibly cheap. I have my own web site that hosts vastly more data than my App Store listing, and it only costs around $10 per month. Moreover, there are other places on the web where you can host apps and data for free: Github for example. The App Store is also FULL of scamware. As an iOS developer yourself, you should know that App Review is a complete joke. The point of App Review is actually to protect Apple's "intellectual property" more than anything. It's not to protect the users. We know that App Review only has time to spend a few minutes at most on each submission. I've contacted App Store "support" several times; it's slow, crappy, probably low paid. Mostly canned responses that show only limited reading comprehension abilities. As for "free" (to download) apps, everyone still has to pay the $100 per year developer program fee, and free apps still have to compete against iOS App Store Search Ads of other developers, so clearly Search Ads are a way of Apple generating revenue even from those.
      - jaclaz 6y ago
        >Clearly Apple makes a profit from the App Store, but also clearly it wouldn’t be able to remotely cover these costs at 5%, their break even is closer to 15%. So, in their simplicity, they only apply a mere 100% markup on costs, if I get this right.
      - syshum 6y ago
        >>They have a large team providing developer support and developer tools. Many devs would disagree with you here, Apple Dev support while better than Google is not much better. It is normal large faceless company with impersonal legal responses not customer service >>They host and distribute petabytes of data. ... They do all these things for free if you distribute free apps ... Ohh cry me a river... They made that choose so they could CONTROL the echosystem, they then can not turn around and claim this a bullshit justification for their fee extortion. They do not give anyone the option to use anything other than apple for app distribution so no I will not give them points for this >but also clearly it wouldn’t be able to remotely cover these costs at 5%, their break even is closer to 15%. Show me the money.... Show me the citation for that claim >>Developers long for the day some government or court will force Apple to reduce their profit share I long for the day when the government or courts ban Close ecosystems and stop allowing companies treat a product they SOLD to customers as if they still own it there by merely renting it out
  - dgellow 6y ago
    Depends how that money is distributed among developers. If only a few actors are being paid massive amounts, then complaints are perfectly valid.
unnouinceput 6y ago
No. I do the same. When enough of us will do then they'll listen, but by then will be too late. Until then this crap will continue.
- musicale 6y ago
  I assume you're rocking a GNU/Linux smartphone then? ;-) Or did you just go for a feature phone, or a vintage Blackberry/webOS/Windows/Firefox phone? (rip)
  - unnouinceput 6y ago
    Actually I don't have a smartphone at all. And for those rare occasions where I need WhatsApp or smartphone only apps, I use an Android emulator. And yeah, I understood your question is a sarcasm, don't worry, was not lost on me.
saagarjha 6y ago
Yes, because the alternative is only slightly better in that regard.
fsflover 6y ago
It can only work if you buy/develop for GNU/Linux phones.

More like don't develop for iPhone or Android. OP seems to be suggesting that developers organize against the de facto app store duopoly. > Google does exactly the same thing

valuearb 6y ago
Apple is paying developers nearly $30B a year, that dwarfs all these minor complaints fir most developers.
- wilshipley 6y ago
  That $30B number is meaningless on its own. You don’t know how many people it’s going to or how it’s divided amongst them. Also, they’re not paying us at all. They’re taking 30% of our gross for the privilege of having an entry on their store, and then they run ads against us.
- syshum 6y ago
  WOW, that is a gross reversal of the sales model. I thought Apple had a warped sense of their role but here you believe that Apple is entitled to 100% of the sales from the developers apps, and are graciously paying the devs 70% of money Apple is entitled to, instead of the reality that Apple is taking 30% of the revenue from Developers for the "privilege" of access to consumers that already paid apple thousands of dollars. Apple is a Payment processor, that is the service they provide. a "Fair" amount for a payment process is maybe 5%, not 30%
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Apples App Store service does far more than payment processing, and it’s disingenuous to compare them to one. They host and distribute petabytes of data. They have a large team hosting and maintain marketing sites for developers in dozens of languages all over the world. Another team develops and distributes mobile apps for store access in all those languages. They have a large team providing developer support and developer tools. They have a thousand employees screening app submissions for malware to help ensure customers feel safe buying your apps from the App Store. They have hundreds of employees marketing the store and promoting developers. They do all these things for free if you distribute free apps. So he developers have distributed hundreds of terabytes of free apps without paying a dime. Clearly Apple makes a profit from the App Store, but also clearly it wouldn’t be able to remotely cover these costs at 5%, their break even is closer to 15%. Developers long for the day some government or court will force Apple to reduce their profit share, but as a iOS developer I warn those devs to be careful for what they wish for. Apple taking 20% or less is a recipe for developers getting nickel and dimed by Apple. They will start charging hosting and bandwidth fees, submission fees, support subscriptions, etc, etc, and Apples profitability will be back where it was. Free app devs and small developers however will take a huge step backwards.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      Oh dear lord. Hosting and data are so incredibly cheap. I have my own web site that hosts vastly more data than my App Store listing, and it only costs around $10 per month. Moreover, there are other places on the web where you can host apps and data for free: Github for example. The App Store is also FULL of scamware. As an iOS developer yourself, you should know that App Review is a complete joke. The point of App Review is actually to protect Apple's "intellectual property" more than anything. It's not to protect the users. We know that App Review only has time to spend a few minutes at most on each submission. I've contacted App Store "support" several times; it's slow, crappy, probably low paid. Mostly canned responses that show only limited reading comprehension abilities. As for "free" (to download) apps, everyone still has to pay the $100 per year developer program fee, and free apps still have to compete against iOS App Store Search Ads of other developers, so clearly Search Ads are a way of Apple generating revenue even from those.
    - jaclaz 6y ago
      >Clearly Apple makes a profit from the App Store, but also clearly it wouldn’t be able to remotely cover these costs at 5%, their break even is closer to 15%. So, in their simplicity, they only apply a mere 100% markup on costs, if I get this right.
    - syshum 6y ago
      >>They have a large team providing developer support and developer tools. Many devs would disagree with you here, Apple Dev support while better than Google is not much better. It is normal large faceless company with impersonal legal responses not customer service >>They host and distribute petabytes of data. ... They do all these things for free if you distribute free apps ... Ohh cry me a river... They made that choose so they could CONTROL the echosystem, they then can not turn around and claim this a bullshit justification for their fee extortion. They do not give anyone the option to use anything other than apple for app distribution so no I will not give them points for this >but also clearly it wouldn’t be able to remotely cover these costs at 5%, their break even is closer to 15%. Show me the money.... Show me the citation for that claim >>Developers long for the day some government or court will force Apple to reduce their profit share I long for the day when the government or courts ban Close ecosystems and stop allowing companies treat a product they SOLD to customers as if they still own it there by merely renting it out
- dgellow 6y ago
  Depends how that money is distributed among developers. If only a few actors are being paid massive amounts, then complaints are perfectly valid.

unnouinceput 6y ago

No. I do the same. When enough of us will do then they'll listen, but by then will be too late. Until then this crap will continue.

musicale 6y ago
I assume you're rocking a GNU/Linux smartphone then? ;-) Or did you just go for a feature phone, or a vintage Blackberry/webOS/Windows/Firefox phone? (rip)
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  Actually I don't have a smartphone at all. And for those rare occasions where I need WhatsApp or smartphone only apps, I use an Android emulator. And yeah, I understood your question is a sarcasm, don't worry, was not lost on me.

saagarjha 6y ago

Yes, because the alternative is only slightly better in that regard.

fsflover 6y ago

It can only work if you buy/develop for GNU/Linux phones.