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Yes but I think what tomlagier is saying is that the "right" thing to charge for is the payment processing (he also mentions app screening), as opposed to charg

Yes but I think what tomlagier is saying is that the "right" thing to charge for is the payment processing (he also mentions app screening), as opposed to charging for the privilege of being allowed to run on Apple devices. Otherwise you get into all these issues that are potentially "wrong," at least from the perspective of people who agree with the general concept of antitrust law. It's not just whether something is extremely valuable. App store as a "retail space" wouldn't be so valuable if you could easily buy iOS apps in other app stores. From the perspective of an iOS device owner, Apple has a monopoly on the retailing of apps.

zaroth 6y ago
Apple isn’t just providing payment processing. The entire development environment and SDK, app hosting, install and update, services like Data Sync (whatever they call it), Push notifications, etc. If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA.
- robbrown451 6y ago
  "Apple isn’t just providing payment processing" I didn't say they were. I said Apple's role is comparable, in that it is not deserving of automatic 30% of revenue. It may be a lot of services, but it still doesn't cost a lot per user and per app, especially when compared to what a brick and mortar retail store does. And it certainly doesn't make sense for an app like Netflix, which is comparatively expensive per month because of how much use it gets, how much bandwidth it consumes, and all the licensing and production costs. Imagine if Netflix had to pay 30% to Apple. Netflix gets away with not paying that 30% because they have leverage. But smaller apps can't. Sounds to me like exactly what antitrust is for. "If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA." If they wanted to (or were forced to by antitrust action), they could allow third party services to do all those things, and for them to interoperate. They choose not to because they make ungodly amounts of money the way they do things now.

zaroth 6y ago

Apple isn’t just providing payment processing. The entire development environment and SDK, app hosting, install and update, services like Data Sync (whatever they call it), Push notifications, etc. If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA.

robbrown451 6y ago
"Apple isn’t just providing payment processing" I didn't say they were. I said Apple's role is comparable, in that it is not deserving of automatic 30% of revenue. It may be a lot of services, but it still doesn't cost a lot per user and per app, especially when compared to what a brick and mortar retail store does. And it certainly doesn't make sense for an app like Netflix, which is comparatively expensive per month because of how much use it gets, how much bandwidth it consumes, and all the licensing and production costs. Imagine if Netflix had to pay 30% to Apple. Netflix gets away with not paying that 30% because they have leverage. But smaller apps can't. Sounds to me like exactly what antitrust is for. "If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA." If they wanted to (or were forced to by antitrust action), they could allow third party services to do all those things, and for them to interoperate. They choose not to because they make ungodly amounts of money the way they do things now.