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Cynically: because they can. Benefit of the doubt: Apple provides a great deal of value for app creators in the form of documentation, development software, a

Cynically: because they can. Benefit of the doubt: Apple provides a great deal of value for app creators in the form of documentation, development software, a distribution network, payment provider, etc... all of which costs money.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
If they can charge anything, aren't they leaving money on the table-- why only 30%? To be clear, I would personally disagree with an increase, but I ask in the context of running a maximally profitable business.
- simcop2387 6y ago
  Not necessarily, there's a breaking point where it can't be profitable anymore to be on Apple's platform if they charge to much. That needs to factor in the money that people have to spend and the margins of the businesses making programs and services for the platform. If they charged say 70% and expected the businesses to just raise their prices then all the sudden any in app purchases and subscriptions become incredibly expensive on Apple's platform. That will drive away users from both the services and from Apple devices shrinking the size of the market for everyone there. If they existed in a vacuum (no android, no way to do out of app purchases, etc.) then things may look very different. That's the point where they'd be explicitly using their monopoly power to control prices. They can still be doing that before that point of course but it'd be very easy to prove in that hypothetical.
weaksauce 6y ago
> the form of documentation their documentation is some of the worst out there. android on the other hand has some of the better documentation. that said i prefer apple products but as a dev their docs are woefully bad. basically just a dump of the class header comments and not enough conceptual documents coupled with some information is mentioned in the wwdc videos and basically nowhere else. The richest company on the planet could use to hire some technical writers.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

If they can charge anything, aren't they leaving money on the table-- why only 30%? To be clear, I would personally disagree with an increase, but I ask in the context of running a maximally profitable business.

simcop2387 6y ago
Not necessarily, there's a breaking point where it can't be profitable anymore to be on Apple's platform if they charge to much. That needs to factor in the money that people have to spend and the margins of the businesses making programs and services for the platform. If they charged say 70% and expected the businesses to just raise their prices then all the sudden any in app purchases and subscriptions become incredibly expensive on Apple's platform. That will drive away users from both the services and from Apple devices shrinking the size of the market for everyone there. If they existed in a vacuum (no android, no way to do out of app purchases, etc.) then things may look very different. That's the point where they'd be explicitly using their monopoly power to control prices. They can still be doing that before that point of course but it'd be very easy to prove in that hypothetical.

weaksauce 6y ago

> the form of documentation their documentation is some of the worst out there. android on the other hand has some of the better documentation. that said i prefer apple products but as a dev their docs are woefully bad. basically just a dump of the class header comments and not enough conceptual documents coupled with some information is mentioned in the wwdc videos and basically nowhere else. The richest company on the planet could use to hire some technical writers.