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> Why is it unethical to charge a fee to developers who want to distribute their software through an app store that Apple owns? Developer don't necessarily wan

> Why is it unethical to charge a fee to developers who want to distribute their software through an app store that Apple owns? Developer don't necessarily want to distribute their software through that app store, they are forced to do that if they want to sell their software to people who happen to use that operating system. Operating system and app store are distinct products, but app store exclusively gatekeeps the functionality the user can achieve through the operating system they bought. If app store was a standalone offering that aimed to benefit the user, there shouldn't be any problem allowing multiple competing app stores people paid for the convenience of vetted and curated apps and letting the market forces decide the winner. That is obviously not happening. Therefore, strongarming the ecosystem and stifling market dynamics is the unethical move here. Less competition, less innovation, less user benefit, less developer income (which translates into even less innovation) etc is the price everyone pays in aggregate in order for Apple to exact its rent, which goes to their idle pile of cash or comes back to humanity as a 0.002 grams lighter iPhone++ next year.

reaperducer 6y ago
So you increase the price of your app by 30 to make up for Apple's cut%. It's called business. It happens all the time in every single industry. If a business' property taxes go up, that cost is passed on to its customers. Why do people think that because something is on a phone that it should be any different?
- twicetwice 6y ago
  That's also not allowed. I think Hey would be fine charging $142 a year for a subscription in their app, with a little note below saying "you can get this for $99 on our website, the difference is Apple's cut." In fact, if I understand it correctly, the price in-app has to be the same as the price anywhere else. They're literally not allowed to do what you're suggesting and pass the cost of Apple's fee on to consumers.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    You just Charge everyone the same and don't tell the customers that they're paying Apple's cut. Just like Hey doesn't tell its customers what percentage of its fee goes to the water company, or the electric company, or to company travel. This is how business works.
    - twicetwice 6y ago
      So Hey should boost their prices everywhere, even on their own site, to $142, so that they can make up Apple's cut? Which is what Apple demands. I don't think that's reasonable. I think that you and I are broadly in agreement. If Hey were allowed to charge $142 in their iPhone app, and $99 on their website, I'd think that was much less ridiculous than the situation as it stands today.
- acituan 6y ago
  > It's called business. It happens all the time in every single industry And we call those situations market failures. Besides, in this case the market failure is due to a monopolistic mechanism, which doesn't happen "all the time in every industry". If we are going to do markets, let's do it properly. Increasing price %30 causes a corresponding decrease in the demand, and in aggregate this can cause a decrease in the total profit. The fact that the developer is forced to set a new price point this way is a source of inefficiency for the entire app economy. Besides forced price increase is not the only harm done by the monopoly of the App Store. As this website exemplifies, it has monopoly over ontological decisions (whether a certain type of app can exist or not), over design decisions (signups, in app purchases etc) and whatnot. These are further points of inefficiency or outright failure. Apple might or might not be doing a good enough job making the best out of these decisions, but the bottom line is we don't have a choice of another player emerging with potentially better choice-making and therefore a better app store.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > we call those situations market failures. To the extent that this situation is a "market failure", it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences. > in this case the market failure is due to a monopolistic mechanism Apple only has a "monopoly" on their own app store because they built it. Users are not being forced to use iPhones; they choose to because they believe iPhones give them better value overall than the alternatives. That's called free market competition, not monopoly.
    - acituan 6y ago
      > it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences. By definition market failures can't be fixed by market dynamics. That is why state does tons of interventions/regulations to make it work. > That's called free market competition, not monopoly. No. Vertical integration means there is no free market at the integration point to begin with, which integration of a software application store with a physical phone is. We are talking about a $50bil/year market that is not free.
pdonis 6y ago
> If app store was a standalone offering that aimed to benefit the user, there shouldn't be any problem allowing multiple competing app stores people paid for the convenience of vetted and curated apps and letting the market forces decide the winner. And if all that would benefit users more, users would be demanding it, or switching from iPhone to something else. But they're not. Users seem overall to be quite satisfied with what they are getting from their iPhones. So your claim here appears to be empirically false. > strongarming the ecosystem and stifling market dynamics is the unethical move here All this depends on your factual claim above being true, which, as I have noted, it appears not to be, based on actual user behavior. But let's put that aside and assume that your factual claim is true. If that makes what Apple is doing unethical, then probably every single large corporation on the planet is unethical. Certainly every large corporation in the tech industry is. They all do these things; they just don't all do them with an app store.
- acituan 6y ago
  > Users seem overall to be quite satisfied with what they are getting from their iPhones. So your claim here appears to be empirically false. A lack of reduction in observable demand doesn't imply an absence of cost. Let's say the cost of having a singular app store for the user can be expressed as 99$, but the average utility they derive from using their iPhone is valued at 100$. It would be rational for that user to still prefer iPhone despite incurring great cost and we wouldn't see any drop in demand. > Certainly every large corporation in the tech industry is. They all do these things; they just don't all do them with an app store. That is appeal to tradition. Indeed, monopolistic nature of tech combined with vertical integration is a large unsolved problem of our era and it haven't completely played out yet.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > A lack of reduction in observable demand doesn't imply an absence of cost. Waving your hands and throwing random numbers around doesn't imply a presence of cost. > That is appeal to tradition. It is no such thing. I'm just trying to figure out what your actual position is. > monopolistic nature of tech combined with vertical integration is a large unsolved problem Which makes it clearer what your position is: you think the problem with tech is "monopolistic nature combined with vertical integration". I disagree. I think the problem with tech is that it is giving away valuable things for free, or selling them at or below cost, in order to capture users and sell their data and their eyeballs or corner markets. Apple is actually the least guilty of this of the major tech players; I'm far more worried about Google and Facebook and Amazon than I am about Apple. But at any rate, that problem is not a problem of monopoly and vertical integration. It's a problem of shortsightedness in general--putting short term gain and convenience over long term stability and trust.

reaperducer 6y ago

So you increase the price of your app by 30 to make up for Apple's cut%. It's called business. It happens all the time in every single industry. If a business' property taxes go up, that cost is passed on to its customers. Why do people think that because something is on a phone that it should be any different?

twicetwice 6y ago
That's also not allowed. I think Hey would be fine charging $142 a year for a subscription in their app, with a little note below saying "you can get this for $99 on our website, the difference is Apple's cut." In fact, if I understand it correctly, the price in-app has to be the same as the price anywhere else. They're literally not allowed to do what you're suggesting and pass the cost of Apple's fee on to consumers.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  You just Charge everyone the same and don't tell the customers that they're paying Apple's cut. Just like Hey doesn't tell its customers what percentage of its fee goes to the water company, or the electric company, or to company travel. This is how business works.
  - twicetwice 6y ago
    So Hey should boost their prices everywhere, even on their own site, to $142, so that they can make up Apple's cut? Which is what Apple demands. I don't think that's reasonable. I think that you and I are broadly in agreement. If Hey were allowed to charge $142 in their iPhone app, and $99 on their website, I'd think that was much less ridiculous than the situation as it stands today.
acituan 6y ago
> It's called business. It happens all the time in every single industry And we call those situations market failures. Besides, in this case the market failure is due to a monopolistic mechanism, which doesn't happen "all the time in every industry". If we are going to do markets, let's do it properly. Increasing price %30 causes a corresponding decrease in the demand, and in aggregate this can cause a decrease in the total profit. The fact that the developer is forced to set a new price point this way is a source of inefficiency for the entire app economy. Besides forced price increase is not the only harm done by the monopoly of the App Store. As this website exemplifies, it has monopoly over ontological decisions (whether a certain type of app can exist or not), over design decisions (signups, in app purchases etc) and whatnot. These are further points of inefficiency or outright failure. Apple might or might not be doing a good enough job making the best out of these decisions, but the bottom line is we don't have a choice of another player emerging with potentially better choice-making and therefore a better app store.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > we call those situations market failures. To the extent that this situation is a "market failure", it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences. > in this case the market failure is due to a monopolistic mechanism Apple only has a "monopoly" on their own app store because they built it. Users are not being forced to use iPhones; they choose to because they believe iPhones give them better value overall than the alternatives. That's called free market competition, not monopoly.
  - acituan 6y ago
    > it's not one that's fixable except by users changing their preferences. By definition market failures can't be fixed by market dynamics. That is why state does tons of interventions/regulations to make it work. > That's called free market competition, not monopoly. No. Vertical integration means there is no free market at the integration point to begin with, which integration of a software application store with a physical phone is. We are talking about a $50bil/year market that is not free.

pdonis 6y ago

> If app store was a standalone offering that aimed to benefit the user, there shouldn't be any problem allowing multiple competing app stores people paid for the convenience of vetted and curated apps and letting the market forces decide the winner. And if all that would benefit users more, users would be demanding it, or switching from iPhone to something else. But they're not. Users seem overall to be quite satisfied with what they are getting from their iPhones. So your claim here appears to be empirically false. > strongarming the ecosystem and stifling market dynamics is the unethical move here All this depends on your factual claim above being true, which, as I have noted, it appears not to be, based on actual user behavior. But let's put that aside and assume that your factual claim is true. If that makes what Apple is doing unethical, then probably every single large corporation on the planet is unethical. Certainly every large corporation in the tech industry is. They all do these things; they just don't all do them with an app store.

acituan 6y ago
> Users seem overall to be quite satisfied with what they are getting from their iPhones. So your claim here appears to be empirically false. A lack of reduction in observable demand doesn't imply an absence of cost. Let's say the cost of having a singular app store for the user can be expressed as 99$, but the average utility they derive from using their iPhone is valued at 100$. It would be rational for that user to still prefer iPhone despite incurring great cost and we wouldn't see any drop in demand. > Certainly every large corporation in the tech industry is. They all do these things; they just don't all do them with an app store. That is appeal to tradition. Indeed, monopolistic nature of tech combined with vertical integration is a large unsolved problem of our era and it haven't completely played out yet.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > A lack of reduction in observable demand doesn't imply an absence of cost. Waving your hands and throwing random numbers around doesn't imply a presence of cost. > That is appeal to tradition. It is no such thing. I'm just trying to figure out what your actual position is. > monopolistic nature of tech combined with vertical integration is a large unsolved problem Which makes it clearer what your position is: you think the problem with tech is "monopolistic nature combined with vertical integration". I disagree. I think the problem with tech is that it is giving away valuable things for free, or selling them at or below cost, in order to capture users and sell their data and their eyeballs or corner markets. Apple is actually the least guilty of this of the major tech players; I'm far more worried about Google and Facebook and Amazon than I am about Apple. But at any rate, that problem is not a problem of monopoly and vertical integration. It's a problem of shortsightedness in general--putting short term gain and convenience over long term stability and trust.