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Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

865 points by rydre 6y ago

bivvo 6y ago
hypocrite much?
- sjnu 6y ago
  Have they been making a moral argument that they deserve a cut?
deleted 6y ago
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pjc50 6y ago
What's the corresponding deal for Google Music on iOS?
- hortense 6y ago
  Google Music is 30% more expensive when purchased via iOS. If that seems insane, it's because it is.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    To be honest this seems perfectly reasonable. I think we should pass on costs to the consumer more often. In North America you can make up to 5% back on purchases by using credit card. This is because the store pays a fee. I don't see why this shouldn't be paid by the consumer. This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use. I think the long term effects would be better in both cases if the fee was visible like Google Music is doing.
    - jonny_eh 6y ago
      > I think we should pass on costs to the consumer more often. That's not the insane part. > This is because the store pays a fee Note: It's not 30%
      - google234123 6y ago
        How much do you think stores mark up goods?
    - chongli 6y ago
      This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use. Cash isn't free for stores to handle either. They need to pay employees to count up the cash at closing time, put it in the safe, and periodically distribute cash to registers so they don't run out of change. Additionally, stores typically contract with security companies to pickup and deliver cash to/from the store and the bank. Maybe the costs from above are not identical to the fees for credit card transactions, but they may be close enough that it's not worth it for a store to charge different prices and incur the overhead from that. Some stores do however offer discounts for using cash. The examples I can think of off the top of my head are family-run Chinese take-out restaurants. These tend to have family members counting and handling cash, so they may have less overhead, or they may be too small to warrant hiring a security company to make cash pickups.
      - kevincox 6y ago
        Those are good points, and maybe I picked a bad example. But my point is if that Apple claims that the security and convince is worth 30% we should let the market decide. This is to an extent what Google Music is doing and I think it would be healthy if more companies did this.
        frosted-flakes 6y ago
        A common argument is that Apple is effectively a monopoly, in which case "the market" can't decide. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this viewpoint, but Android and iOS are two separate markets because the cost of switching between them is so high, users are subjected to so much lock-in that switching is almost not an option, and users can only use one market at a time. The difference is that while Apple has a monopoly on iOS with its app store, Google does not have a monopoly on Android with the Play Store because of the existence of competing stores (Galaxy Store, F-Droid, sideloading APKs etc.). There are analogies to be drawn with game consoles, but there are some key differences: game consoles are not general purpose computing devices necessary for everyday life; users can own multiple consoles at once; there are more than two competitors; and the cost of switching is relatively low.
  - natch 6y ago
    Sounds like a common math mistake. Wouldn't it have to be 42.857143% more expensive to make up for giving Apple a 30% cut of the total? Or is Google just throwing up its hands here? Or is their math that bad? Or maybe my math is bad, I don't know.
    - benhurmarcel 6y ago
      The Apple fee is 30% on the first payment (so 42% more expensive), but afterwards it's 15% for a continuous subscription (18% more). Averaging it to 30% and rounding doesn't seem too crazy.
      - natch 6y ago
        >The Apple fee is 30% on the first payment (so 42% more expensive) "so" But that doesn't necessarily follow, unless it actually is a 42% higher number than a known reference number for the price of the same subscription service and period on another platform.
bzb3 6y ago
I don't understand what the screenshot is trying to convey.
- g_p 6y ago
  This seems to be a support screenshot of the Apple Music app, running on Android. In it, it's asking for the user to enter payment information directly, rather than using Google's payment platform. The significance of this is that Apple is coming under fire lately for their policies around "everyone must use our built-in payments platform" so we can extract 30% of the value of anything you do on our platform that makes money. And indeed, the EU Commission have opened an investigation into Apple on antitrust around this and Apple Pay.
  - jjice 6y ago
    Link about the antitrust if anyone was curious: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/16/21292651/apple-eu-antitrust-investigation-app-store-apple-pay https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/16/21292651/apple-eu-antitru...
- em500 6y ago
  This is a screenshot of the Apple Music app on Android. The point is that any music app on iOS with a screen like this would kicked out of Apple's app store.
deleted 6y ago
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anaganisk 6y ago
Unless google has a similar rule, which states DIY in app purchase solutions aren't allowed, I dont see what's the fault of Apple here? What kind of a business wants to give away free money? I don't see hypocrisy unless they're breaking TOS.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  I don't follow why breaking the TOS is required to qualify for behaving in a hypocritical manner.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > I don't follow why breaking the TOS is required to qualify for behaving in a hypocritical manner It very much matters if this is to be used as precedent by Spotify in its legal proceedings against Apple.
- billylo 6y ago
  Google does have a similar rule. https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/ https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/
  - jfk13 6y ago
    And it has an exception for "digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players)".
- factorialboy 6y ago
  It's hypocritical because of the very fact their Apple's own terms and conditions enforces the monopolistic "your 30 percent belongs to us" rule.
- AnotherGoodName 6y ago
  Yes absolutely. As with the exceptions on iOS (Netflix is outside the iOS payment system) i suspect it's a case that certain apps are large enough that kicking them off the store for not paying the 30% tax isn't feasible. >Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/ https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/
sprayk 6y ago
Isn't taking payment this way against the terms of one or both of the app stores?
- jfk13 6y ago
  Not in this case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564770
partiallypro 6y ago
The rich irony of this being that Apple has been cracking down on this behavior in the App Store. There was just a segment on it this morning on CNBC from the BaseCamp founder.
- Closi 6y ago
  And are actively in a lawsuit with Spotify about this very thing
- g_p 6y ago
  And the EU has opened an antitrust investigation on this precise topic (and on their reserving the NFC hardware for their own payments service, which also extracts a fee, as I understand). This strikes me as textbook antitrust matters, that traditional laws are actually equipped to deal with. It doesn't seem legal to be the marketplace, and a provider on that marketplace, while granting yourself a 30% subsidy and building your own business based on the taxes collected by the other providers. Apple's crackdown, combined with the timing of this, is rather convenient (well, inconvenient for them).
Closi 6y ago
Something that they don’t allow Spotify to do on their own platform - how convenient!
- votepaunchy 6y ago
  If Spotify is charging 30% fees to artists do we discount their argument?
  - criley2 6y ago
    Spotify doesn't 'charge fees to artists', they charge fees to listeners and advertisers, to create a revenue pool, to pay out to artists. And while that payout pool is roughly 70% of revenue, meaning they keep roughly 30%, the other point to be made there is that in the US the Copyright Royalties Board sets the repayment %'s, not Spotify, and they are increasing.
    - Hamuko 6y ago
      Doesn't Spotify pay the labels/rights holders, who then in return pay the artists (discounting self-published stuff)?
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
        So pop songs usually have a recording artist / performer (i.e. the actually famous person whose name you know), and a songwriter/composer (the person behind the scenes who crafted the notes and lyrics). Sometimes they're the same person, sometimes there are many people credited for each. The takeaway here is that there are two separate pieces of intellectual property generated - the copyright (the songwriter's creation, the notes and lyrics), and the master (the actual recording of the song). In the U.S., the money from a Spotify stream goes to whomever is the legal owner of the copyrighted work, just like FM radio. The owner of the recording master does not get paid. When an artist signs a record deal, they usually give the label both the songwriting copyrights and ownership of the master, in exchange for some percentage of the profits generated by each. Super big name artists occasionally have the ability to throw around their weight and retain some ownership, but this is very much the exception rather than the norm.
tracerbulletx 6y ago
People keep writing about businesses like they are surprised they aren't moral entities with consistent moral logic. Businesses take whatever action or position they can to maximize their results. The more power the business has, the more they can leverage that power to get what they want. This should just be the default assumption at this point and we should talk about if that is ok for society, not keep feigning surprise at the offense of the day.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  This faulty logic is deeply ironic, since it's an expression of irrational negative emotion, which is what it's accusing others of. It's so common and so unchanging, I can paste an old comment I wrote about it (just substitute "corporations" for "wealthy and powerful people"): The "why are people surprised" line is a huge red flag for me that a person is not arguing in good faith. Accusing people of being "surprised" as an implication of naivete seems to be a very common tool of redirection when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful. I'm not sure why such a particular angle became so common, since it seems so obvious to me that what they are calling "surprise" is indignation/anger. It seems to be exaggerated from the general notion that the stronger a reaction is, the newer it is, but obviously that's faulty. I may hear the same story of wealthy and powerful people behaving badly every day, but it doesn't make the behavior any more acceptable with each occurrence, and so my anger does not subside, no matter how un-surprised I am.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Well said. This is something I've been noticing a lot lately but you put it into words better than I could have.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    > when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful well, i'd usually be just as surprised as the parent that people on this site are still getting surprised by it, and i sure as hell am not defending the company doing this. all publicly traded companies should be considered amoral by default. if they take moral action, then they dont do it because of morality. they do it either because they wish to portrait themselves as moral for publicity or they have another way to profit off of it. the thing which would surprise me is that people still dont expect that. in this particular case i'm not surprised though. hn readers are extremely positive of apple, no matter what apple does.
davidg109 6y ago
Agree with comments. Apple is about shareholder value, like it or not. They are not a non-profit agency.
- factorialboy 6y ago
  So what if underage slave labor is employed? Share holder value #1.
  - jrockway 6y ago
    There is clear law on that issue: https://oag.ca.gov/SB657 https://oag.ca.gov/SB657 Right now, there is no law that app stores have to be open, or that they have any certain policies. Certainly, there is appetite for that law. Another comment says that Google Music costs 30% more on iOS, but Apple Music costs the same on both platforms. That is never a good look, but it is not clear that it is illegal. A law could be passed to make it illegal, however.
    - davidg109 6y ago
      Yes to this. Here’s where I agree Apple aren’t angels.
  - davidg109 6y ago
    Last time I checked, underage slave labor is illegal? Kinda, sorta different. But good try.
dgellow 6y ago
Could someone give more context? The screenshot isn't telling that much...
- cfn 6y ago
  The point is that lately Apple has been applying their own rule that disallows payment workarounds resulting in a few of high profile (for HN) cases. On the other had it seems Apple itself is using the same type of workarounds for their apps in other platforms (Google's in this case).
rydre 6y ago
Boycott WWDC everyone. Trillion Dollar companies don't play by the fair rules. Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google Play's 30% cut. Apple has accused Match, Epic, and Spotify of wanting a 'free ride' while taking one themselves.
- g_p 6y ago
  Apple's claims of a "free ride" frankly seem ludicrous. There seem to me to be 3 issues at hand here. 1. The magnitude of the 30% charge, and the level of justification this has. 2. The ability for Apple to itself be a provider/competitor to those on the marketplace, such that they are not paying this 30% fee (and can immediately be 30% cheaper). 3. Whether Apple should be allowed to run a marketplace that operates on a whim, unwritten and ever-changing rules, informal policies, and no significant judicial remedies - if Government tried to retrospectively change the rules on you, you can sue them, and win. Apple can decide to eject you from its platform at its whim, and you are forced to accept this to use the platform.
- evan_ 6y ago
  or go to WWDC and just make this the topic of every Q&A
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    "Apple" is not a single monolithic entity. The engineers who will be working their asses off to create and present WWDC have absolutely nothing to do with the business decisions of the App Store. Do not bully them, and do not waste the time of other participants who will have genuine engineering questions.
    - wildfire 6y ago
      Those engineers enabled this outcome. It is perfectly reasonable to ask why they facilitated immoral actions. There is a code of ethics all computing professionals should use to consider their actions. https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics#:~:text=The%20Code%20includes%20principles%20formulated,understanding%20and%20applying%20the%20principle https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics#:~:text=The%20Code%20incl....
rvz 6y ago
The roles of arrogance and loophole finding has changed recently. Apple (2020) has become Microsoft (1998) and Microsoft (2020) has become Apple (1998).
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  There are similarities but Apple never had a ~90% lock on computing infrastructure.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    They were smart enough to target the 90% of profits rather than market-share.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Yes, though both strategies produced ungodly profits.
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    Microsoft never had a 90% lock on computing infrastructure. They had it on desktop and laptop computers, which is a subset.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      And close to that on servers. It was a time after the demise of Netware but before the ubiquity of the Internet. A distinction without significant meaning.
jayp1418 6y ago
We need to stop using android and iOS and move to pinephone and librem
- imladyboy 6y ago
  Feel free to
- mattl 6y ago
  I tried the last time with OpenMoko. Sadly, those things amount to little more than feature phones because they're just not powerful enough.
  - morganvachon 6y ago
    I'm not a fan of Purism, the company behind the Librem phone, but it's fairly capable hardware for the price. The PinePhone is arguably even better hardware for the money, but it isn't quite ready for prime time on the software side. Gone are the days where a $300+ device is too weak or slow to use daily. A better tactic would be to purchase one of the few Android devices that are fully compatible with either Replicant or LineageOS, or a phone that can run Sailfish.
    - mattl 6y ago
      An iPhone SE is $400. I know Apple have a lot more R&D money than Purism, but it doesn't even feel comparable. I don't want to run Android. If anything I'd have two phones: an iPhone and a Pinephone.
      - jayp1418 6y ago
        Makes sense or have nokia feature phone with kaios and pinephone
        mattl 6y ago
        I still want a smartphone.
gamblor956 6y ago
Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyers for wasting the court's time proclaiming X...and then legally bar you from asserting X in those proceedings, or related proceedings. Courts are generally okay with some form of alternative arguments, (i.e., I didn't do Y, but if I did Y it was legal for me to do so), but they absolutely will not accept contradictory arguments by the same party (It's okay for me to do Z but I won't allow others to do Z in the same situation).
- jessriedel 6y ago
  Can you link to something that goes into more details about this principle, or give us some search terms? Stated as broadly as you have done, it doesn't sound right to me.
  - jerf 6y ago
    Judicial estoppel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_estoppel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_estoppel or the alternate name the article give, "estoppel by inconsistent positions". More generally, the thing known as "common law": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law Note that "common law" does not mean "law that is common", at least not on an international scale; it is a specific legal system. As the Wikipedia article says, there are several others. A super super high-level summary is that common law systems take more account of intent and precedent, whereas civil law systems tend to interpret the law exactly as written. A common law judge is more able to look at a litigant and take into account any sort of hypocrisy of their positions whereas I think a civil law judge in this situation would be more likely to simply take the case as is without such external considerations. But, let me again emphasize, that's a super-high level summary.
    - jessriedel 6y ago
radley 6y ago
Wait, doesn't this demonstrate collusion? The two predominant mobile platforms have conspired to exclusively reduced pricing.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Yes, but it seems that people want to use this to take potshots at one camp, while sitting in another camp that is just as guilty.
  - radley 6y ago
    We can't fix one without fixing both platforms. Historically, it's been hard to make a monopoly case against Apple. Collusion could be easier to prove with a duopoly.
archildress 6y ago
Given the strong emotions around the topic, I've been a bit afraid to ask this question - is what Apple does really that different than traditional retail? In FMCG there are difficult hurdles to jump over to get on the store shelves. The stores don't have an obligation to put anyone's product on the shelf. They can also module what the cut of the revenue is. I'm not sure I have an opinion on what Apple is doing, but isn't it worth asking if it's really that unique in the economy? I welcome feedback on if I have a major blind spot here.
- g_p 6y ago
  I think the difference here is that Apple is the only retailer for someone to install an app onto an iOS device. It prohibits anyone else from setting up a retailer, through policy-based (not technical) restrictions. You cannot install an app on an iOS device, except from their store. Apple won't let you install an alternative store. Therefore their app store is a monopoly store, and should be regulated as such. (Is the argument being levelled against them.)
  - votepaunchy 6y ago
    Well, Walmart is the only retailer in a Walmart store. Only Walmart is permitted to retail in a Walmart store.
    - mmastrac 6y ago
      But Walmart isn't the only store to go to in meatspace. If you have an iOS device, you get the Walmart of apps and only the Walmart of apps. This is the problem.
      - Spivak 6y ago
        But you're choosing a definition of the world that's too narrow -- "if you've already decided to go to Walmart then Walmart is the only store that can sell at Walmart." Why isn't "the world" the smartphone market where there are plenty of options?
villgax 6y ago
Biggest oof
dsjoerg 6y ago
I don't understand why people are putting moral dimensions on this business conflict. If you don't like Apple's platform or business practices, don't use it. All the users and developers are there by choice. Their alternatives were worse. And Apple didn't make them worse. I was active in the mobile development world starting in 1999. It was awful. Would I like it if Apple took a lower cut? Sure. I would prefer a 5% cut. Do I want world's governments coming in and imposing more terms on these markets? No. Businesses respond to the expressed preferences of consumers and other businesses, whereas world governments have, in practice, far weaker accountability mechanisms.
- echelon 6y ago
  > If you don't like Apple's platform or business practices, don't use it. This isn't an option! There are no alternatives. Most people do computing on their smartphones today. Apple has prevented web from being a first-class native construct on their devices. There's no technical reason web couldn't have a native-like experience with native windowing, sensor access, persistence, multithreading, and WASM speed. Google and Apple just don't like that software distribution idea because the gravy train they have set up is so sweet. > All the users and developers are there by choice. I strongly beg to differ. > Their alternatives were worse. Thanks largely to Apple. > Do I want world's governments coming in and imposing more terms on these markets? No. Thousands of us do. The answer is a robust web distribution model where web gains native capabilities (and sandboxing). First class web apps would be portable between Apple and Google and there would be zero gatekeeping tax or threat of removal for doing something either company doesn't like. Mozilla needs to get on this. And we need to harp on our legislators to make it happen. It's how all of this should have evolved in the first place. Think about all the wasted human and innovation capital it takes to implement the same app twice for two different platforms! It is so incredibly expensive to maintain two wholly different apps. And then they have the gall to take 30% on top. The real cost is far steeper. I'm not mad. I'm enraged. It's such a waste and we should be building more innovation instead of jumping through hoops.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    > Their alternatives were worse. Thanks largely to Apple. I don’t recall anyone willing to take on the mobile networks in the US other than Apple. HP/Dell/Microsoft/Palm/Blackberry were all willing to let mobile networks interfere with the device and lock them to various networks.
crazygringo 6y ago
Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument. Google sets its own policies for its own app store. If Google approved this, all it means is Google approved it. Apple similarly sets its own policies for its own app store. It's totally free to set totally different policies, and disapprove of things that Google approves. I still think Apple's policies have huge problems, but this particular example is apples and oranges, unfortunately.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  > Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument. Hypocrisy is a very powerful argument, especially in court.
  - NineStarPoint 6y ago
    It only become Hypocrisy if Apple starts to argue google isn't allowed to require them to use google payment/isn't allowed to boot them from the play store for trying to circumvent rules. Without any action from google, it's impossible to say whether Apple is being hypocritical or not here.
mmcclure 6y ago
It's very relevant to note that Google Play's terms around in-app billing[1] are far more liberal than Apple's. > Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases: > Payment is solely for physical products > Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players). That second note is critical here and the example quite literally describes the exact situation here as an exemption. [1]: https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/ https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/
- reagank 6y ago
  But the second doesn’t apply - you can’t listen to Apple Music with a different app, you have to use their app.
  - hellcow 6y ago
    You can listen to it in a browser. You can use an iPad. There are many ways to use Apple Music that do not involve an Android app.
    - mmcclure 6y ago
      This, but to take this even further, MusicKit and the Apple Music APIs even allow for 3rd party Android apps to play back purchased content.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - kick 6y ago
    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/musickitjs https://developer.apple.com/documentation/musickitjs MusicKit JS lets users play songs from Apple Music and their Cloud Library inside your JavaScript app. When a user provides permission to access their Apple Music account, your JavaScript app can create playlists, add songs to their library, and play any of the millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog directly in a browser, with no ...
bonestamp2 6y ago
Good. The fact that all of these marketplaces take a 30% draw is egregious. The hypocrisy is almost inconceivable when Apple demands 30% of my revenue, but they're intolerant when Google wants exactly the same thing from them. Apple would kick my app out of their store if I did that. I say "good" because hopefully this is the first major crack in this racket. As Apple has now admitted, a marketplace is not worth a 30% cut. I hope this helps build an Antitrust case against Apple, Google, Amazon, etc for the outrageous rake they're taking in their marketplaces.
selykg 6y ago
I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this is such a huge deal to people. Opinions are fine, everyone can have one but I always see Apple's payment options as a massive win as a consumer. 1. Subscriptions are easily monitored from a single page. 2. Before subscriptions renew I get emailed, not all services do this, shame on those that do not and a magic renewal transaction goes through without notifying you first 3. Trusting a single entity (Apple) with payment is easier for me to stomach than giving my credit card info to a dozen or more different sites/services manually 4. The user experience is vastly better using Apple's solution than having to enter all of my billing info by hand each time or with Bitwarden even which can get things wrong often enough I always have to double check. As a developer you gain the advantage of users being able to easily purchase, and users have a credit card assigned to their Apple ID making purchases incredibly easy. I'd argue, without proof anyway, that this probably results in purchases you'd never get otherwise due to how easy and seamless it is. The 30% cut is a lot, but I think in general there are big benefits for users, maybe the developers don't see it that way, but as a user I would NEVER use something other than Apple's payment solution in the App Store. So if you're asking for that option and I seen you were charging more for it through Apple's solution and less through some other service I'd immediately not pay for your app. Simple as that. You'd basically lose me as a potential customer. Edit: because apparently line breaks are fun
- jsnell 6y ago
  So you talk about how great paying through Apple is for both parties. But you want the developers to be forced into it, rather than have a choice. If it's so beneficial to the developer, why would they choose not to make that choice. (Answer: because it actually isn't.) And then when it comes to the benefit to the customer, it turns out that you actually don't value paying through Apple either: you're only interested in paying through them if it's also the cheapest option. All of these conveniences are not worth even one cent to you when the rubber hits the road.
- evan_ 6y ago
  In the case of Hey they don't want to have ONLY App Store subscriptions, they want to support people who don't use iPhones. That means they'll have to set up a whole extra infrastructure for dealing with app store subscriptions on top of the infrastructure for dealing with their own subscriptions. That's a non-trivial amount of work and ongoing support they didn't want to do.
NietTim 6y ago
And the funny thing is that this very thing would not be allowed in Apple's App Store.
jamil7 6y ago
Slight thread hijack. I believe Apple deserves all the developer backlash it's currently receiving, I hope it helps them turn themselves around. I say that as someone who actually enjoys using and developing for the platform(s). What would it take to get them to take notice of these issues? Mass app store strike? Can a sizable group of developers push app store updates with a blank screen and some demands laid out? It doesn't (and won't) even need to get past app store review for someone to take notice, get some high profile players on board who have a beef with Apple already (Basecamp, Spotify)... Or pull their apps altogether?
cheesecracker 6y ago
In the kindle app on iPad, it is not possible to buy kindle books. Apple only allows shopping via it's own payment schemes, presumably so that they can take the cut. In that light, it seems rather funny that they do that on Android. Maybe it is their way of saying "see, you should be more restrictive".
intopieces 6y ago
So Google takes a 30% cut? Meaning, Apple’s cut is the market rate?
- hu3 6y ago
  Google gives you choice. You're not locked into their app store.
  - intopieces 6y ago
    Isn’t this what PWAs are for?
actuator 6y ago
I really don't understand why people are defending Apple on this. It seems shameful of a $1.5 trillion company to do this to developers. Even more so when they themselves don't abide by their philosophy. They are extracting out a competitive advantage from this on other services like Spotify or Netflix( even without this they have a big one at app discovery and pre installs on iOS). Kudos to Google for allowing the developer to choose the app store/payment method. Are you guys really fine with living in a world where one/two companies own everything you consume? This sounds like an antithesis to the hacker culture I would associate at least HN crowd with.
- baxtr 6y ago
  Imagine for a second distributing an app in 175 countries around the globe including all the tax details. I think it's fair to participate on such a global platform and a price for it.
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    Apple apparently believes that whether that's a fair price should be up to the publisher to decide when publishing apps for Android, but it doesn't believe that the publisher should get to decide that when publishing on the App Store.
  - actuator 6y ago
    The whole issue is about choice. If what Apple is offering you is worth the 30% cut they ask for, you will pay it. If it is not, you should be free to use your own method and take care of the details like tax yourself. Cross platform things anyway have to solve this problem on their own.
    - HatchedLake721 6y ago
      Yes, that worked out very well in 00’s with windows mobile. /s People don’t understand the power of consumer friendly digital experience
zaroth 6y ago
This looks like the free market at work to me. Google policy explicitly permits apps like Apple Music to charge for subscriptions outside the App Store and for them to not allow taking subscription payment through the App Store. Apple has a similar policy for “Reader” apps on their own App Store for apps which are used to access content that you subscribe to, which Apple reasons that “Hey” does not qualify for. That’s why Spotify and Netflix don’t pay 30% to Apple for their subscribers. So I find this “gotcha” wrong on two levels. First, it isn’t inconsistent because Apple and Google are perfectly free to set policies on their own stores, and secondly, in fact they have similar policies for music subscription apps on both stores. If app makers find the Android policy preferable, more app makers will choose to develop for Android and their ecosystem could be better of for it. In fact it doesn’t work that way because due to a combination of demographics and possibly software usability factors, users spend about 50% more money on the Apple’s store than on Google’s.
- fastest963 6y ago
  Spotify definitely pays 30%. See https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ I assume that Hulu also pays the same 30%.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    Thanks for the correction. It looks like Netflix also had at one time been paying substantial fees to Apple, and then I see articles from 2019 saying they turned off IAP, but if I look on the App Store right now I can see IAP for Netflix is listed... so I'm definitely confused about the policy. > Spotify pays Apple a 15% fee for only about 0.5% of its paid members, according to Apple's response to Spotify's complaint about App Store fees. So Apple gets approximately 0.075% of Spotify revenue through App Store fees. Here's what Apple's site actually says about their Reader policy; > 3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase. So Reader apps don't get free IAP. It's not clear if they must offer IAP, but certainly it seems at some point both Spotify and Netflix tried to get away from it, but it seems to be back just looking live now at the App Store. There's also some recent developments where Apple is letting Amazon / Prime Video sell/rent movies and shows by billing your Amazon account in the app now, where-as earlier this year you would have to go through the browser to make the purchase. [2] I know that I personally only subscribe to Spotify because I listen to it on my iPhone. I've never even tried to use it on a desktop. I also subscribed to Spotify through their website, not through the App Store. I securely downloaded the Spotify app for free, from Apple servers, using an Apple SDK, and get regular automatic updates to the app using Apple's platform. [1] - https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fires-back-spotify-pays-fees-on-less-than-1-percent-of-members/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fires-back-spotify-pays-fees... [2] - https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prime-video-ios-app-store-cut-exempt-program-deal https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prim...
6510 6y ago
Cant everyone do the Netflix "trick"? Or will small players get banned for it? https://www.pcmag.com/news/netflix-doesnt-pay-apples-ios-tax-anymore https://www.pcmag.com/news/netflix-doesnt-pay-apples-ios-tax...
- rhodysurf 6y ago
  Thats what the Hey! email app tried to do and they got denied by App Review saying users must be able to use the app without paying if there is no payment option in the app.
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    Which is absolutely, positively, pathologically insane behavior. Apple is a DISTRIBUTION platform, it is NOT analogous to the building where a business is housed. They have NO RIGHT to claim 30% of a company's business. If the app is not moving money, Apple has no right to claim a piece of it.
- city41 6y ago
  This is the trick Basecamp tried, and Apple blocked them. It seems you can only get away with the trick if Apple views your app as also being beneficial to them.
  - csharptwdec19 6y ago
    Doubly hilarious considering they are doing the same... Almost envisioning the meeting: A: "Hey, how should we get around giving google a cut?" B: "..." A: "Cool. Let's go ahead and make sure we block that behavior in our system while we're at it."
artembugara 6y ago
I want to see Basecamp's team faces right now
dang 6y ago
Is there a better source for this? A screenshot and an indignation comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564731) are poor initial conditions for a thread, but this thread seems to be doing well despite that, so I don't think we need to demote this submission, but it would be better to find an article to change the URL to.
- actuator 6y ago
  It is not super clear from this but is mentions choosing your payment method and using your Apple id: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-apple-music-on-android/amp https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-apple-music-on-android/...
  - dang 6y ago
    That article probably doesn't match the topic of this thread closely enough, so changing to it would probably just add confusion.
newbie578 6y ago
Why are people still defending Apple even after all these obvious examples surfaced? Spotify definitely explained it the best. timetoplayfair.com The current status quo needs to change, Apple and Google are duopols, and they need to be reeled in. Imagine if you were a mobile developer and overnight Google accidentally banned you without reason. Your entire life is thrown upside down, and you don't have a way to fix it except accepting it like you aren't worth anything.
seccess 6y ago
For context: This seems directly related to the discussion that went on with the Hey iOS app yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552760
riclad 6y ago
Google allows sideloading apps, I can go to a website, download an app without going near the play store. Apple does not allow apps to be installed without going to The official app store
imchillyb 6y ago
Apple's attorneys were the first parties queried before this strategy was attempted or implemented. Apple implemented the strategy. QED They're not worried.
graiz 6y ago
I would love to see the help article that references this image. Hot-linking the image is interesting but without the context of the help page I don't know what to think. Anyone have a link, screenshot or wayback machine?
realtalk_sp 6y ago
@dang Other submissions related to Apple and Hey are not sticking to the front page (or within the top 50 submissions) even though they are highly trafficked in terms of upvotes and comments. Could you please explain why this is happening? I want to believe I'm mistaken here but it seems like they're being nuked to prevent discussion on the topic (perhaps because it veers towards being critical of Apple).
- kalleboo 6y ago
  They try to avoid the front page of HN becoming all about a single topic (this applies to any topic not just about Apple)
bookmarkable 6y ago
Who cares.
ferbass 6y ago
My house, my rules, your house my rules
shuckles 6y ago
In these discussions, the focus seems to be on the cost to Apple for providing App Store as a service (billing, fraud prevention, tax compliance, etc.). However, presumably there is a reasonable argument to make that developers should compensate Apple for creating iOS itself as a platform. There are many platform capabilities developers argue for as a fundamental right. Spotify has said Apple must make Siri extensible for voice control, others have wanted SPI to be API. All this work is meaningful investment, both financial and technical. Are there proposals for a more incentive aligned business model for Apple as a platform provider? Would it make sense for Apple to, e.g., charge a percentage of all of Tile's hardware sales? After all, Apple dedicates resources to maintain the location and bluetooth APIs Tile depends on. Is it sufficient to say all these benefits must be capitalized into the cost of an iPhone purchase? But what about the customer who's overpaying for Tile's theoretical support who never uses the product itself? Maybe a better business model would lead to a world where there is less speculation ahead of WWDC: the developer's needs and Apple's finances are so aligned that we can guarantee the new support they're ready to announce!
josdriod 6y ago
If there’s one thing missing from digital music services like Apple Music, it’s the ability to quickly learn more about a song or album without leaving the Music app. With physical media, these sorts of details were relatively easy to find via liner notes and cover booklets, but the information has never been integrated well into the <a href="https://www.joshdriod.com/waptrick/">Apple https://www.joshdriod.com/waptrick/">Apple Music service</a>.
wdb 6y ago
So developers need to follow Apple's rules in the App Store but they can't be bothered to follow Google's rules in their store. Crazy

865 points by rydre 6y ago

bivvo 6y ago

hypocrite much?

sjnu 6y ago
Have they been making a moral argument that they deserve a cut?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 6y ago

What's the corresponding deal for Google Music on iOS?

hortense 6y ago
Google Music is 30% more expensive when purchased via iOS. If that seems insane, it's because it is.
- kevincox 6y ago
  To be honest this seems perfectly reasonable. I think we should pass on costs to the consumer more often. In North America you can make up to 5% back on purchases by using credit card. This is because the store pays a fee. I don't see why this shouldn't be paid by the consumer. This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use. I think the long term effects would be better in both cases if the fee was visible like Google Music is doing.
  - jonny_eh 6y ago
    > I think we should pass on costs to the consumer more often. That's not the insane part. > This is because the store pays a fee Note: It's not 30%
    - google234123 6y ago
      How much do you think stores mark up goods?
  - chongli 6y ago
    This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use. Cash isn't free for stores to handle either. They need to pay employees to count up the cash at closing time, put it in the safe, and periodically distribute cash to registers so they don't run out of change. Additionally, stores typically contract with security companies to pickup and deliver cash to/from the store and the bank. Maybe the costs from above are not identical to the fees for credit card transactions, but they may be close enough that it's not worth it for a store to charge different prices and incur the overhead from that. Some stores do however offer discounts for using cash. The examples I can think of off the top of my head are family-run Chinese take-out restaurants. These tend to have family members counting and handling cash, so they may have less overhead, or they may be too small to warrant hiring a security company to make cash pickups.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      Those are good points, and maybe I picked a bad example. But my point is if that Apple claims that the security and convince is worth 30% we should let the market decide. This is to an extent what Google Music is doing and I think it would be healthy if more companies did this.
      - frosted-flakes 6y ago
        A common argument is that Apple is effectively a monopoly, in which case "the market" can't decide. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this viewpoint, but Android and iOS are two separate markets because the cost of switching between them is so high, users are subjected to so much lock-in that switching is almost not an option, and users can only use one market at a time. The difference is that while Apple has a monopoly on iOS with its app store, Google does not have a monopoly on Android with the Play Store because of the existence of competing stores (Galaxy Store, F-Droid, sideloading APKs etc.). There are analogies to be drawn with game consoles, but there are some key differences: game consoles are not general purpose computing devices necessary for everyday life; users can own multiple consoles at once; there are more than two competitors; and the cost of switching is relatively low.
- natch 6y ago
  Sounds like a common math mistake. Wouldn't it have to be 42.857143% more expensive to make up for giving Apple a 30% cut of the total? Or is Google just throwing up its hands here? Or is their math that bad? Or maybe my math is bad, I don't know.
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    The Apple fee is 30% on the first payment (so 42% more expensive), but afterwards it's 15% for a continuous subscription (18% more). Averaging it to 30% and rounding doesn't seem too crazy.
    - natch 6y ago
      >The Apple fee is 30% on the first payment (so 42% more expensive) "so" But that doesn't necessarily follow, unless it actually is a 42% higher number than a known reference number for the price of the same subscription service and period on another platform.

bzb3 6y ago

I don't understand what the screenshot is trying to convey.

g_p 6y ago
This seems to be a support screenshot of the Apple Music app, running on Android. In it, it's asking for the user to enter payment information directly, rather than using Google's payment platform. The significance of this is that Apple is coming under fire lately for their policies around "everyone must use our built-in payments platform" so we can extract 30% of the value of anything you do on our platform that makes money. And indeed, the EU Commission have opened an investigation into Apple on antitrust around this and Apple Pay.
- jjice 6y ago
  Link about the antitrust if anyone was curious: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/16/21292651/apple-eu-antitrust-investigation-app-store-apple-pay https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/16/21292651/apple-eu-antitru...
em500 6y ago
This is a screenshot of the Apple Music app on Android. The point is that any music app on iOS with a screen like this would kicked out of Apple's app store.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

anaganisk 6y ago

Unless google has a similar rule, which states DIY in app purchase solutions aren't allowed, I dont see what's the fault of Apple here? What kind of a business wants to give away free money? I don't see hypocrisy unless they're breaking TOS.

happytoexplain 6y ago
I don't follow why breaking the TOS is required to qualify for behaving in a hypocritical manner.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > I don't follow why breaking the TOS is required to qualify for behaving in a hypocritical manner It very much matters if this is to be used as precedent by Spotify in its legal proceedings against Apple.
billylo 6y ago
Google does have a similar rule. https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/ https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/
- jfk13 6y ago
  And it has an exception for "digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players)".
factorialboy 6y ago
It's hypocritical because of the very fact their Apple's own terms and conditions enforces the monopolistic "your 30 percent belongs to us" rule.
AnotherGoodName 6y ago
Yes absolutely. As with the exceptions on iOS (Netflix is outside the iOS payment system) i suspect it's a case that certain apps are large enough that kicking them off the store for not paying the 30% tax isn't feasible. >Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/ https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/

sprayk 6y ago

Isn't taking payment this way against the terms of one or both of the app stores?

jfk13 6y ago
Not in this case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564770

partiallypro 6y ago

The rich irony of this being that Apple has been cracking down on this behavior in the App Store. There was just a segment on it this morning on CNBC from the BaseCamp founder.

Closi 6y ago
And are actively in a lawsuit with Spotify about this very thing
g_p 6y ago
And the EU has opened an antitrust investigation on this precise topic (and on their reserving the NFC hardware for their own payments service, which also extracts a fee, as I understand). This strikes me as textbook antitrust matters, that traditional laws are actually equipped to deal with. It doesn't seem legal to be the marketplace, and a provider on that marketplace, while granting yourself a 30% subsidy and building your own business based on the taxes collected by the other providers. Apple's crackdown, combined with the timing of this, is rather convenient (well, inconvenient for them).

Closi 6y ago

Something that they don’t allow Spotify to do on their own platform - how convenient!

votepaunchy 6y ago
If Spotify is charging 30% fees to artists do we discount their argument?
- criley2 6y ago
  Spotify doesn't 'charge fees to artists', they charge fees to listeners and advertisers, to create a revenue pool, to pay out to artists. And while that payout pool is roughly 70% of revenue, meaning they keep roughly 30%, the other point to be made there is that in the US the Copyright Royalties Board sets the repayment %'s, not Spotify, and they are increasing.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Doesn't Spotify pay the labels/rights holders, who then in return pay the artists (discounting self-published stuff)?
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      So pop songs usually have a recording artist / performer (i.e. the actually famous person whose name you know), and a songwriter/composer (the person behind the scenes who crafted the notes and lyrics). Sometimes they're the same person, sometimes there are many people credited for each. The takeaway here is that there are two separate pieces of intellectual property generated - the copyright (the songwriter's creation, the notes and lyrics), and the master (the actual recording of the song). In the U.S., the money from a Spotify stream goes to whomever is the legal owner of the copyrighted work, just like FM radio. The owner of the recording master does not get paid. When an artist signs a record deal, they usually give the label both the songwriting copyrights and ownership of the master, in exchange for some percentage of the profits generated by each. Super big name artists occasionally have the ability to throw around their weight and retain some ownership, but this is very much the exception rather than the norm.

tracerbulletx 6y ago

People keep writing about businesses like they are surprised they aren't moral entities with consistent moral logic. Businesses take whatever action or position they can to maximize their results. The more power the business has, the more they can leverage that power to get what they want. This should just be the default assumption at this point and we should talk about if that is ok for society, not keep feigning surprise at the offense of the day.

happytoexplain 6y ago
This faulty logic is deeply ironic, since it's an expression of irrational negative emotion, which is what it's accusing others of. It's so common and so unchanging, I can paste an old comment I wrote about it (just substitute "corporations" for "wealthy and powerful people"): The "why are people surprised" line is a huge red flag for me that a person is not arguing in good faith. Accusing people of being "surprised" as an implication of naivete seems to be a very common tool of redirection when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful. I'm not sure why such a particular angle became so common, since it seems so obvious to me that what they are calling "surprise" is indignation/anger. It seems to be exaggerated from the general notion that the stronger a reaction is, the newer it is, but obviously that's faulty. I may hear the same story of wealthy and powerful people behaving badly every day, but it doesn't make the behavior any more acceptable with each occurrence, and so my anger does not subside, no matter how un-surprised I am.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Well said. This is something I've been noticing a lot lately but you put it into words better than I could have.
- 411111111111111 6y ago
  > when people are defending something perceived by others to be immoral or otherwise harmful well, i'd usually be just as surprised as the parent that people on this site are still getting surprised by it, and i sure as hell am not defending the company doing this. all publicly traded companies should be considered amoral by default. if they take moral action, then they dont do it because of morality. they do it either because they wish to portrait themselves as moral for publicity or they have another way to profit off of it. the thing which would surprise me is that people still dont expect that. in this particular case i'm not surprised though. hn readers are extremely positive of apple, no matter what apple does.

davidg109 6y ago

Agree with comments. Apple is about shareholder value, like it or not. They are not a non-profit agency.

factorialboy 6y ago
So what if underage slave labor is employed? Share holder value #1.
- jrockway 6y ago
  There is clear law on that issue: https://oag.ca.gov/SB657 https://oag.ca.gov/SB657 Right now, there is no law that app stores have to be open, or that they have any certain policies. Certainly, there is appetite for that law. Another comment says that Google Music costs 30% more on iOS, but Apple Music costs the same on both platforms. That is never a good look, but it is not clear that it is illegal. A law could be passed to make it illegal, however.
  - davidg109 6y ago
    Yes to this. Here’s where I agree Apple aren’t angels.
- davidg109 6y ago
  Last time I checked, underage slave labor is illegal? Kinda, sorta different. But good try.

dgellow 6y ago

Could someone give more context? The screenshot isn't telling that much...

cfn 6y ago
The point is that lately Apple has been applying their own rule that disallows payment workarounds resulting in a few of high profile (for HN) cases. On the other had it seems Apple itself is using the same type of workarounds for their apps in other platforms (Google's in this case).

rydre 6y ago

Boycott WWDC everyone. Trillion Dollar companies don't play by the fair rules. Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google Play's 30% cut. Apple has accused Match, Epic, and Spotify of wanting a 'free ride' while taking one themselves.

g_p 6y ago
Apple's claims of a "free ride" frankly seem ludicrous. There seem to me to be 3 issues at hand here. 1. The magnitude of the 30% charge, and the level of justification this has. 2. The ability for Apple to itself be a provider/competitor to those on the marketplace, such that they are not paying this 30% fee (and can immediately be 30% cheaper). 3. Whether Apple should be allowed to run a marketplace that operates on a whim, unwritten and ever-changing rules, informal policies, and no significant judicial remedies - if Government tried to retrospectively change the rules on you, you can sue them, and win. Apple can decide to eject you from its platform at its whim, and you are forced to accept this to use the platform.
evan_ 6y ago
or go to WWDC and just make this the topic of every Q&A
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  "Apple" is not a single monolithic entity. The engineers who will be working their asses off to create and present WWDC have absolutely nothing to do with the business decisions of the App Store. Do not bully them, and do not waste the time of other participants who will have genuine engineering questions.
  - wildfire 6y ago
    Those engineers enabled this outcome. It is perfectly reasonable to ask why they facilitated immoral actions. There is a code of ethics all computing professionals should use to consider their actions. https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics#:~:text=The%20Code%20includes%20principles%20formulated,understanding%20and%20applying%20the%20principle https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics#:~:text=The%20Code%20incl....

rvz 6y ago

The roles of arrogance and loophole finding has changed recently. Apple (2020) has become Microsoft (1998) and Microsoft (2020) has become Apple (1998).

mixmastamyk 6y ago
There are similarities but Apple never had a ~90% lock on computing infrastructure.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  They were smart enough to target the 90% of profits rather than market-share.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Yes, though both strategies produced ungodly profits.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  Microsoft never had a 90% lock on computing infrastructure. They had it on desktop and laptop computers, which is a subset.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    And close to that on servers. It was a time after the demise of Netware but before the ubiquity of the Internet. A distinction without significant meaning.

jayp1418 6y ago

We need to stop using android and iOS and move to pinephone and librem

imladyboy 6y ago
Feel free to
mattl 6y ago
I tried the last time with OpenMoko. Sadly, those things amount to little more than feature phones because they're just not powerful enough.
- morganvachon 6y ago
  I'm not a fan of Purism, the company behind the Librem phone, but it's fairly capable hardware for the price. The PinePhone is arguably even better hardware for the money, but it isn't quite ready for prime time on the software side. Gone are the days where a $300+ device is too weak or slow to use daily. A better tactic would be to purchase one of the few Android devices that are fully compatible with either Replicant or LineageOS, or a phone that can run Sailfish.
  - mattl 6y ago
    An iPhone SE is $400. I know Apple have a lot more R&D money than Purism, but it doesn't even feel comparable. I don't want to run Android. If anything I'd have two phones: an iPhone and a Pinephone.
    - jayp1418 6y ago
      Makes sense or have nokia feature phone with kaios and pinephone
      - mattl 6y ago
        I still want a smartphone.

gamblor956 6y ago

Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyers for wasting the court's time proclaiming X...and then legally bar you from asserting X in those proceedings, or related proceedings. Courts are generally okay with some form of alternative arguments, (i.e., I didn't do Y, but if I did Y it was legal for me to do so), but they absolutely will not accept contradictory arguments by the same party (It's okay for me to do Z but I won't allow others to do Z in the same situation).

jessriedel 6y ago
Can you link to something that goes into more details about this principle, or give us some search terms? Stated as broadly as you have done, it doesn't sound right to me.
- jerf 6y ago
  Judicial estoppel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_estoppel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_estoppel or the alternate name the article give, "estoppel by inconsistent positions". More generally, the thing known as "common law": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law Note that "common law" does not mean "law that is common", at least not on an international scale; it is a specific legal system. As the Wikipedia article says, there are several others. A super super high-level summary is that common law systems take more account of intent and precedent, whereas civil law systems tend to interpret the law exactly as written. A common law judge is more able to look at a litigant and take into account any sort of hypocrisy of their positions whereas I think a civil law judge in this situation would be more likely to simply take the case as is without such external considerations. But, let me again emphasize, that's a super-high level summary.
  - jessriedel 6y ago

radley 6y ago

Wait, doesn't this demonstrate collusion? The two predominant mobile platforms have conspired to exclusively reduced pricing.

heavyset_go 6y ago
Yes, but it seems that people want to use this to take potshots at one camp, while sitting in another camp that is just as guilty.
- radley 6y ago
  We can't fix one without fixing both platforms. Historically, it's been hard to make a monopoly case against Apple. Collusion could be easier to prove with a duopoly.

archildress 6y ago

Given the strong emotions around the topic, I've been a bit afraid to ask this question - is what Apple does really that different than traditional retail? In FMCG there are difficult hurdles to jump over to get on the store shelves. The stores don't have an obligation to put anyone's product on the shelf. They can also module what the cut of the revenue is. I'm not sure I have an opinion on what Apple is doing, but isn't it worth asking if it's really that unique in the economy? I welcome feedback on if I have a major blind spot here.

g_p 6y ago
I think the difference here is that Apple is the only retailer for someone to install an app onto an iOS device. It prohibits anyone else from setting up a retailer, through policy-based (not technical) restrictions. You cannot install an app on an iOS device, except from their store. Apple won't let you install an alternative store. Therefore their app store is a monopoly store, and should be regulated as such. (Is the argument being levelled against them.)
- votepaunchy 6y ago
  Well, Walmart is the only retailer in a Walmart store. Only Walmart is permitted to retail in a Walmart store.
  - mmastrac 6y ago
    But Walmart isn't the only store to go to in meatspace. If you have an iOS device, you get the Walmart of apps and only the Walmart of apps. This is the problem.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      But you're choosing a definition of the world that's too narrow -- "if you've already decided to go to Walmart then Walmart is the only store that can sell at Walmart." Why isn't "the world" the smartphone market where there are plenty of options?

villgax 6y ago

Biggest oof

dsjoerg 6y ago

I don't understand why people are putting moral dimensions on this business conflict. If you don't like Apple's platform or business practices, don't use it. All the users and developers are there by choice. Their alternatives were worse. And Apple didn't make them worse. I was active in the mobile development world starting in 1999. It was awful. Would I like it if Apple took a lower cut? Sure. I would prefer a 5% cut. Do I want world's governments coming in and imposing more terms on these markets? No. Businesses respond to the expressed preferences of consumers and other businesses, whereas world governments have, in practice, far weaker accountability mechanisms.

echelon 6y ago
> If you don't like Apple's platform or business practices, don't use it. This isn't an option! There are no alternatives. Most people do computing on their smartphones today. Apple has prevented web from being a first-class native construct on their devices. There's no technical reason web couldn't have a native-like experience with native windowing, sensor access, persistence, multithreading, and WASM speed. Google and Apple just don't like that software distribution idea because the gravy train they have set up is so sweet. > All the users and developers are there by choice. I strongly beg to differ. > Their alternatives were worse. Thanks largely to Apple. > Do I want world's governments coming in and imposing more terms on these markets? No. Thousands of us do. The answer is a robust web distribution model where web gains native capabilities (and sandboxing). First class web apps would be portable between Apple and Google and there would be zero gatekeeping tax or threat of removal for doing something either company doesn't like. Mozilla needs to get on this. And we need to harp on our legislators to make it happen. It's how all of this should have evolved in the first place. Think about all the wasted human and innovation capital it takes to implement the same app twice for two different platforms! It is so incredibly expensive to maintain two wholly different apps. And then they have the gall to take 30% on top. The real cost is far steeper. I'm not mad. I'm enraged. It's such a waste and we should be building more innovation instead of jumping through hoops.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  > Their alternatives were worse. Thanks largely to Apple. I don’t recall anyone willing to take on the mobile networks in the US other than Apple. HP/Dell/Microsoft/Palm/Blackberry were all willing to let mobile networks interfere with the device and lock them to various networks.

crazygringo 6y ago

Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument. Google sets its own policies for its own app store. If Google approved this, all it means is Google approved it. Apple similarly sets its own policies for its own app store. It's totally free to set totally different policies, and disapprove of things that Google approves. I still think Apple's policies have huge problems, but this particular example is apples and oranges, unfortunately.

jonny_eh 6y ago
> Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument. Hypocrisy is a very powerful argument, especially in court.
- NineStarPoint 6y ago
  It only become Hypocrisy if Apple starts to argue google isn't allowed to require them to use google payment/isn't allowed to boot them from the play store for trying to circumvent rules. Without any action from google, it's impossible to say whether Apple is being hypocritical or not here.

mmcclure 6y ago

It's very relevant to note that Google Play's terms around in-app billing[1] are far more liberal than Apple's. > Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases: > Payment is solely for physical products > Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players). That second note is critical here and the example quite literally describes the exact situation here as an exemption. [1]: https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/ https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/

reagank 6y ago
But the second doesn’t apply - you can’t listen to Apple Music with a different app, you have to use their app.
- hellcow 6y ago
  You can listen to it in a browser. You can use an iPad. There are many ways to use Apple Music that do not involve an Android app.
  - mmcclure 6y ago
    This, but to take this even further, MusicKit and the Apple Music APIs even allow for 3rd party Android apps to play back purchased content.
  - deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- kick 6y ago
  https://developer.apple.com/documentation/musickitjs https://developer.apple.com/documentation/musickitjs MusicKit JS lets users play songs from Apple Music and their Cloud Library inside your JavaScript app. When a user provides permission to access their Apple Music account, your JavaScript app can create playlists, add songs to their library, and play any of the millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog directly in a browser, with no ...

bonestamp2 6y ago

Good. The fact that all of these marketplaces take a 30% draw is egregious. The hypocrisy is almost inconceivable when Apple demands 30% of my revenue, but they're intolerant when Google wants exactly the same thing from them. Apple would kick my app out of their store if I did that. I say "good" because hopefully this is the first major crack in this racket. As Apple has now admitted, a marketplace is not worth a 30% cut. I hope this helps build an Antitrust case against Apple, Google, Amazon, etc for the outrageous rake they're taking in their marketplaces.

selykg 6y ago

I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this is such a huge deal to people. Opinions are fine, everyone can have one but I always see Apple's payment options as a massive win as a consumer. 1. Subscriptions are easily monitored from a single page. 2. Before subscriptions renew I get emailed, not all services do this, shame on those that do not and a magic renewal transaction goes through without notifying you first 3. Trusting a single entity (Apple) with payment is easier for me to stomach than giving my credit card info to a dozen or more different sites/services manually 4. The user experience is vastly better using Apple's solution than having to enter all of my billing info by hand each time or with Bitwarden even which can get things wrong often enough I always have to double check. As a developer you gain the advantage of users being able to easily purchase, and users have a credit card assigned to their Apple ID making purchases incredibly easy. I'd argue, without proof anyway, that this probably results in purchases you'd never get otherwise due to how easy and seamless it is. The 30% cut is a lot, but I think in general there are big benefits for users, maybe the developers don't see it that way, but as a user I would NEVER use something other than Apple's payment solution in the App Store. So if you're asking for that option and I seen you were charging more for it through Apple's solution and less through some other service I'd immediately not pay for your app. Simple as that. You'd basically lose me as a potential customer. Edit: because apparently line breaks are fun

jsnell 6y ago
So you talk about how great paying through Apple is for both parties. But you want the developers to be forced into it, rather than have a choice. If it's so beneficial to the developer, why would they choose not to make that choice. (Answer: because it actually isn't.) And then when it comes to the benefit to the customer, it turns out that you actually don't value paying through Apple either: you're only interested in paying through them if it's also the cheapest option. All of these conveniences are not worth even one cent to you when the rubber hits the road.
evan_ 6y ago
In the case of Hey they don't want to have ONLY App Store subscriptions, they want to support people who don't use iPhones. That means they'll have to set up a whole extra infrastructure for dealing with app store subscriptions on top of the infrastructure for dealing with their own subscriptions. That's a non-trivial amount of work and ongoing support they didn't want to do.

NietTim 6y ago

And the funny thing is that this very thing would not be allowed in Apple's App Store.

jamil7 6y ago

Slight thread hijack. I believe Apple deserves all the developer backlash it's currently receiving, I hope it helps them turn themselves around. I say that as someone who actually enjoys using and developing for the platform(s). What would it take to get them to take notice of these issues? Mass app store strike? Can a sizable group of developers push app store updates with a blank screen and some demands laid out? It doesn't (and won't) even need to get past app store review for someone to take notice, get some high profile players on board who have a beef with Apple already (Basecamp, Spotify)... Or pull their apps altogether?

cheesecracker 6y ago

In the kindle app on iPad, it is not possible to buy kindle books. Apple only allows shopping via it's own payment schemes, presumably so that they can take the cut. In that light, it seems rather funny that they do that on Android. Maybe it is their way of saying "see, you should be more restrictive".

intopieces 6y ago

So Google takes a 30% cut? Meaning, Apple’s cut is the market rate?

hu3 6y ago
Google gives you choice. You're not locked into their app store.
- intopieces 6y ago
  Isn’t this what PWAs are for?

actuator 6y ago

I really don't understand why people are defending Apple on this. It seems shameful of a $1.5 trillion company to do this to developers. Even more so when they themselves don't abide by their philosophy. They are extracting out a competitive advantage from this on other services like Spotify or Netflix( even without this they have a big one at app discovery and pre installs on iOS). Kudos to Google for allowing the developer to choose the app store/payment method. Are you guys really fine with living in a world where one/two companies own everything you consume? This sounds like an antithesis to the hacker culture I would associate at least HN crowd with.

baxtr 6y ago
Imagine for a second distributing an app in 175 countries around the globe including all the tax details. I think it's fair to participate on such a global platform and a price for it.
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  Apple apparently believes that whether that's a fair price should be up to the publisher to decide when publishing apps for Android, but it doesn't believe that the publisher should get to decide that when publishing on the App Store.
- actuator 6y ago
  The whole issue is about choice. If what Apple is offering you is worth the 30% cut they ask for, you will pay it. If it is not, you should be free to use your own method and take care of the details like tax yourself. Cross platform things anyway have to solve this problem on their own.
  - HatchedLake721 6y ago
    Yes, that worked out very well in 00’s with windows mobile. /s People don’t understand the power of consumer friendly digital experience

zaroth 6y ago

This looks like the free market at work to me. Google policy explicitly permits apps like Apple Music to charge for subscriptions outside the App Store and for them to not allow taking subscription payment through the App Store. Apple has a similar policy for “Reader” apps on their own App Store for apps which are used to access content that you subscribe to, which Apple reasons that “Hey” does not qualify for. That’s why Spotify and Netflix don’t pay 30% to Apple for their subscribers. So I find this “gotcha” wrong on two levels. First, it isn’t inconsistent because Apple and Google are perfectly free to set policies on their own stores, and secondly, in fact they have similar policies for music subscription apps on both stores. If app makers find the Android policy preferable, more app makers will choose to develop for Android and their ecosystem could be better of for it. In fact it doesn’t work that way because due to a combination of demographics and possibly software usability factors, users spend about 50% more money on the Apple’s store than on Google’s.

fastest963 6y ago
Spotify definitely pays 30%. See https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ I assume that Hulu also pays the same 30%.
- zaroth 6y ago
  Thanks for the correction. It looks like Netflix also had at one time been paying substantial fees to Apple, and then I see articles from 2019 saying they turned off IAP, but if I look on the App Store right now I can see IAP for Netflix is listed... so I'm definitely confused about the policy. > Spotify pays Apple a 15% fee for only about 0.5% of its paid members, according to Apple's response to Spotify's complaint about App Store fees. So Apple gets approximately 0.075% of Spotify revenue through App Store fees. Here's what Apple's site actually says about their Reader policy; > 3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage, and approved services such as classroom management apps), provided that you agree not to directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods are not designed to discourage use of in-app purchase. So Reader apps don't get free IAP. It's not clear if they must offer IAP, but certainly it seems at some point both Spotify and Netflix tried to get away from it, but it seems to be back just looking live now at the App Store. There's also some recent developments where Apple is letting Amazon / Prime Video sell/rent movies and shows by billing your Amazon account in the app now, where-as earlier this year you would have to go through the browser to make the purchase. [2] I know that I personally only subscribe to Spotify because I listen to it on my iPhone. I've never even tried to use it on a desktop. I also subscribed to Spotify through their website, not through the App Store. I securely downloaded the Spotify app for free, from Apple servers, using an Apple SDK, and get regular automatic updates to the app using Apple's platform. [1] - https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fires-back-spotify-pays-fees-on-less-than-1-percent-of-members/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-fires-back-spotify-pays-fees... [2] - https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prime-video-ios-app-store-cut-exempt-program-deal https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prim...

6510 6y ago

Cant everyone do the Netflix "trick"? Or will small players get banned for it? https://www.pcmag.com/news/netflix-doesnt-pay-apples-ios-tax-anymore https://www.pcmag.com/news/netflix-doesnt-pay-apples-ios-tax...

rhodysurf 6y ago
Thats what the Hey! email app tried to do and they got denied by App Review saying users must be able to use the app without paying if there is no payment option in the app.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  Which is absolutely, positively, pathologically insane behavior. Apple is a DISTRIBUTION platform, it is NOT analogous to the building where a business is housed. They have NO RIGHT to claim 30% of a company's business. If the app is not moving money, Apple has no right to claim a piece of it.
city41 6y ago
This is the trick Basecamp tried, and Apple blocked them. It seems you can only get away with the trick if Apple views your app as also being beneficial to them.
- csharptwdec19 6y ago
  Doubly hilarious considering they are doing the same... Almost envisioning the meeting: A: "Hey, how should we get around giving google a cut?" B: "..." A: "Cool. Let's go ahead and make sure we block that behavior in our system while we're at it."

artembugara 6y ago

I want to see Basecamp's team faces right now

dang 6y ago

Is there a better source for this? A screenshot and an indignation comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23564731) are poor initial conditions for a thread, but this thread seems to be doing well despite that, so I don't think we need to demote this submission, but it would be better to find an article to change the URL to.

actuator 6y ago
It is not super clear from this but is mentions choosing your payment method and using your Apple id: https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-apple-music-on-android/amp https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/use-apple-music-on-android/...
- dang 6y ago
  That article probably doesn't match the topic of this thread closely enough, so changing to it would probably just add confusion.

newbie578 6y ago

Why are people still defending Apple even after all these obvious examples surfaced? Spotify definitely explained it the best. timetoplayfair.com The current status quo needs to change, Apple and Google are duopols, and they need to be reeled in. Imagine if you were a mobile developer and overnight Google accidentally banned you without reason. Your entire life is thrown upside down, and you don't have a way to fix it except accepting it like you aren't worth anything.

seccess 6y ago

For context: This seems directly related to the discussion that went on with the Hey iOS app yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552760 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23552760

riclad 6y ago

Google allows sideloading apps, I can go to a website, download an app without going near the play store. Apple does not allow apps to be installed without going to The official app store

imchillyb 6y ago

Apple's attorneys were the first parties queried before this strategy was attempted or implemented. Apple implemented the strategy. QED They're not worried.

graiz 6y ago

I would love to see the help article that references this image. Hot-linking the image is interesting but without the context of the help page I don't know what to think. Anyone have a link, screenshot or wayback machine?

realtalk_sp 6y ago

@dang Other submissions related to Apple and Hey are not sticking to the front page (or within the top 50 submissions) even though they are highly trafficked in terms of upvotes and comments. Could you please explain why this is happening? I want to believe I'm mistaken here but it seems like they're being nuked to prevent discussion on the topic (perhaps because it veers towards being critical of Apple).

kalleboo 6y ago
They try to avoid the front page of HN becoming all about a single topic (this applies to any topic not just about Apple)

bookmarkable 6y ago

Who cares.

ferbass 6y ago

My house, my rules, your house my rules

shuckles 6y ago

In these discussions, the focus seems to be on the cost to Apple for providing App Store as a service (billing, fraud prevention, tax compliance, etc.). However, presumably there is a reasonable argument to make that developers should compensate Apple for creating iOS itself as a platform. There are many platform capabilities developers argue for as a fundamental right. Spotify has said Apple must make Siri extensible for voice control, others have wanted SPI to be API. All this work is meaningful investment, both financial and technical. Are there proposals for a more incentive aligned business model for Apple as a platform provider? Would it make sense for Apple to, e.g., charge a percentage of all of Tile's hardware sales? After all, Apple dedicates resources to maintain the location and bluetooth APIs Tile depends on. Is it sufficient to say all these benefits must be capitalized into the cost of an iPhone purchase? But what about the customer who's overpaying for Tile's theoretical support who never uses the product itself? Maybe a better business model would lead to a world where there is less speculation ahead of WWDC: the developer's needs and Apple's finances are so aligned that we can guarantee the new support they're ready to announce!

josdriod 6y ago

If there’s one thing missing from digital music services like Apple Music, it’s the ability to quickly learn more about a song or album without leaving the Music app. With physical media, these sorts of details were relatively easy to find via liner notes and cover booklets, but the information has never been integrated well into the <a href="https://www.joshdriod.com/waptrick/">Apple https://www.joshdriod.com/waptrick/">Apple Music service</a>.

wdb 6y ago

So developers need to follow Apple's rules in the App Store but they can't be bothered to follow Google's rules in their store. Crazy