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As a consumer, I am 100% in favor of the way run the app store. I don't want to give random apps my credit card. I don't want to have 18 accounts to keep track
by spullara 6y ago
As a consumer, I am 100% in favor of the way run the app store. I don't want to give random apps my credit card. I don't want to have 18 accounts to keep track of. I don't want to have to call telephone support to cancel my account. I don't want malware in my apps. I don't want apps to have my email if they don't need it. I don't need another middleman for content companies license and distribute. Everything Apple is doing is helping make a better app store for me.
Pro-consumer behavior almost always looks like anti-publisher behavior.
- anilshanbhag 6y agoWell they can do all that with a 10% fee too. The author is contending that by adding those restrictions and a high 30% fee, Apple is acting like a monopoly - it's their way or the highway.
- vogre 6y agoWhy do you think that fee is unfair?
- skuthus 6y agoBecause you cannot opt for a different store if you don't like the fee. If you want to sell independently, you cant. If you want to sell alternatively, you cant. This excludes many devs and shops from access.
- sanxiyn 6y agoBecause, I guarantee, if iOS app distribution market was competitive, fee would be lower than 30%. 30% fee is a monopolistic rent.
- eigen 6y agoGoogle Play store is also 30%. > For apps and in-app products offered through Google Play, the service fee is equivalent to 30% of the price. You receive 70% of the payment. The remaining 30% goes to the distribution partner and operating fees. [https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...]
- sanxiyn 6y agoOneStore fee is 20%.
- d1zzy 6y agoAnd Steam (unless you have a very popular game) and GOG. But it's easy to argue that many of these just derived their rates from what existing similar store fees were. Epic Game Store tried to disrupt this and they're still at it a few years later but for most developers publishing on Steam/GOG nothing changed.
- basch 6y agoSuppose you make the argument that developers, not consumers, pay for the dev kits, language, development, improvement, apis of the os. 30% might appropriately reflect the amount of work in an app that is apples work. 30% of subscriptions on the other hand might not.
- ac29 6y agoFortunately, Apple breaks it down for us: Services net sales in 2019 was $46.2B, and the cost of those sales was $16.8B (source 2019 10-K). They dont specifically break out App store vs other services, but as a whole the services section of their business is very, very profitable, according to their accounting. It remains so even if you throw in the entirety of R&D ($16.2B).
- pwinnski 6y agoWhat evidence do you have that a 10% fee is enough to operate the App Store at the scale Apple does? When the App Store was launched, Steve Jobs said they plan to run it at break-even, no profit, and for quite a few years that was exactly what they did. Now they are profiting from the App Store and clearly could continue to run it as they do on a lower percentage, but I don't think 10% is that number. If they could run it on 10%, they wouldn't have operated it without profit for the first quite-a-few years at 30%!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ac29 6y agoI cant find any evidence in their financial reports of Apple breaking down sales and cost of sales for the App store in early years. I would be very, very surprised though if it was not profitable almost immediately (unless you creatively move around numbers and claim 100% of the iPhone's R&D was a cost of sale for the app store).
- pwinnski 6y agoYou are correct, I am taking their early claims at face value, but they never produced supporting numbers. I would be shocked if their claims weren't true, however. Because of the lack of numbers, I'm not sure how long it was before running at break-even ceased to be a thing, though.
- bwb 6y agoThis is their platform... maybe the gov can make this a legal monopoly like the NFL. And, everyone gets the same % rate, same rules, and no apple competition in apps. Same for Google...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sanxiyn 6y agoSouth Korean local Android app market does all that, with 20% fee. Competition is in fact beneficial, both for consumers and publishers.
- spullara 6y agoYou can't have competition in a single ecosystem and have all those qualities because some consumers will be tricked into using some app store that looks legit and isn't. And as you point out, Android is a competitor and the Android stores compete with Apple's store. Just buy a different phone.
- wvenable 6y agoThe problem isn't how they run their store -- the problem is that they are the only store.
- coldtea 6y agoThe only store on their product. Not the only store, period. There is Android store which has 4 times as many users, and at some point Microsoft had a store but people didn't like it either...
- skuthus 6y agoHe means the only store on the iOS platform, not the only app store between all platforms
- coldtea 6y agoiOS is an option among several, not the only game in town. Nobody forces anybody to buy iOS, and if they don't they don't need to use the iOS App Store either, problem solved...
- wayneftw 6y agoNobody forces you to buy a Ford or a Chevy either but both of those manufacturers have to follow very strict rules about how they make and sell cars. If our country decides to make a rule about how smart phones should be created, sold or operated and Apple doesn’t like it, they can go and do business somewhere else.
- scarface74 6y agoDo console makers have to follow “very strict rules”.
- wayneftw 6y agoIf we make some laws that say they do then yeah they will have to.
- skuthus 6y agoYou can still have what you want and give people other options. It's called choice. We deserve to be able to choose
- simonh 6y agoYou can choose, go and choose one of the other 70% of the phones on the market.
- skuthus 6y agoI can and I do - but that doesnt mean I dont think that the option should exist on iOS
- searchableguy 6y agoThis. Go choose a better job if you are poor. There are many.
- simonh 6y agoThat’s very unfair. I believe in capitalism, yes, because I believe in individual freedom and personal property rights. That really all capitalism is. But I also believe in a caring society, as citizens were all in this together. Citizenship comes with obligations as well as rights and we should look after our own.
- bsaul 6y agoios has reached a critical mass that makes it impossible to avoid for a huge number of apps if they want to be profitable, especially in rich countries.
- kennydude 6y agoSure, when Apple will just sue any competitor for "infringing" on it's millions of stupid software patents
- scarface74 6y ago
- dkobia 6y agoAs a consumer I love Apple's commitment to high quality apps - a side effect of their review process. As a seller on their marketplace 30% is extremely high. 30% of every sale! For context Amazons referral fee averages about 15%.
- sukilot 6y ago> commitment to high quality apps ...that don't compete with Apple's own.
- scarface74 6y agoApple has plenty of competition on the App Store for every category.
- CppCoder 6y agoNot everyone made apps before Apple. In thoese times the developer got the 30% and the store keept the remaining 70%. Of course often after download, and credit card fees. I get it, everyone wants always more. And maybe there is more room. Many just view it from their own point of view.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoIt's not like someone will force you paying without your consent. If you don't want to give random apps your credit card, don't give it to them. Why do you oppose other people's right to do that, if they need it?
- xenadu02 6y agoMany apps, if not a large majority, would start doing this. That destroys the convenience and user experience. If every app does this there isn't any consumer choice about it.
- sanxiyn 6y agoNo, Android is an existence proof that this will not happen. Users in fact hate it, so apps mostly stick to in app purchases.
- winter_blue 6y agoOnly because of the 30% cut. Very few apps would start doing it if the App Store took a cut similar to what Stripe takes.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoPerhaps, but Apple would still have an edge on tight integration with the OS resulting in a quick and frictionless user experience. If that wouldn't cut it for some developers, so they would bother themselves building a separate processing, well, then Apple would probably have to lower their fees. Personally for me, as a developer of applications, I could care less about 30% fee. I find it reasonable. What I DO care about is restrictions on owning the device and users' inability to run any app they need - even if it is not vetted by Apple. In part it is because I happen to live in an authoritarian country which government loves to block apps in the AppStore.
- spullara 6y agoAnyone can get a developer license and run whatever stupid apps they want. That seems like sufficient opt-in that you are likely competent to assess the risk of the apps you're installing.
- ajconway 6y ago> Everything Apple is doing is helping make a better app store for me. I would prefer paying for Netflix right from the iPhone. It would be great to have torrent apps (they have legitimate use-cases). I would love to run qemu on my powerful iPad Pro. Apple does not allow any of that.
- spullara 6y agoThey allow Netflix to charge on the phone if they are willing to agree to the other conditions.
- scarface74 6y agoYou can pay for Netflix right on the phone. You can go to https://netflix.com https://netflix.com You can also buy an Android phone like 85% of the rest of the world.
- chipotle_coyote 6y agoEh, I think this is one of the two points where the case against Apple's App Store model is the strongest. Not allowing applications to use third party in-app purchase systems is weakly defensible, but they not only don't allow that, they not only don't allow you to load an online store in a web view, they not only don't allow you to link to an online store that will open in Safari, the App Store terms literally do not allow you to mention the existence of other online stores. There are arguments to be made -- and they're made in these comments -- that the App Store is a net benefit for consumers, but it is really, really hard to make the case that users somehow benefit from this.
- scarface74 6y agoCan I advertise in Walmart that they can buy the sane item cheaper from my own website?
- jedberg 6y agoIs Walmart the only store you're allowed to shop at?
- jeppesen-io 6y agoYeah, I completely agree. I do feel conflicted because just a few companies control everything. It's that tough balance to be sure and I don't know what the right solution is Android has the freedom of other app stores, but in practice very few even bother
- skuthus 6y agoThen it shouldnt be a problem to allow alternative stores
- sanxiyn 6y agoThere are successful alternative app markets for Android, for example in South Korea. They are rare, because running an app market is in fact difficult. App search and discovery is not simple, neither is pushing update notifications. But it is possible, and when done competently (South Korean mobile telecom companies are competent; unbelievable, I know), the result is good.
- CppCoder 6y agoI see it the same way, even as developer. Every store is another task which takes resources to handle. Stores change and hence it never stops. Further, Icwsnt customers to know tuey can trust the ecosystem to some degree. As a fahter, the Apple App Store too is the only place I give my children access too. They started with Android phones but after I noticed the apps which are present in the Google Play Store we went on to switch to iOS. Passing on our used devices to our kids. Google could have done amazing things, abd so could Microsoft. But both took a different parh. I am not a Apple fanboy, I fact I am very critical about them. Yet its simply the best ecosystem for normal consumers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- devwastaken 6y agoAll of that can be done while also not being a monopoly. Apple steals apps and recreates their own versions. They can remove your app for no reason on a whim because you might compete with them. That's what the anti-monopoly is about. Frequently, apples 'pro consumer behavior' is demonstrably false, both from their hardware to their software. It's about making you artificially pay more for less and creating a culture of privledged users that mistake revocation of freedom as 'design' because they have the money to ignore reality. Apple deserves any anti-monopoly actions it gets.
- acituan 6y agoDo you think you would lose any of those benefits if Google had an iOS app store too? What if you also had the option of Microsoft iOS app store? Would the competition likely to increase pro-consumer benefits or decrease them? Pro-consumer vs anti-publisher is a false equivalence. This is not a zero-sum game, not at all.
- zepto 6y agoOr if Facebook had one, and Amazon had one? And when developers are forced to support all 5 big ones? And when any benefit of a reduction in fees is completely lost because of the requirement to support all 5 stores? If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners. There is absolutely nothing whatsoever that is pro consumer about having Google, Amazon, and Facebook be able to run iOS app stores. It will just raise costs for developers and harm consumers that way. It will lead to exclusives just as we have in the online streaming world, so consumers are forced to deal with all of them.
- acituan 6y ago> And when developers are forced to support all 5 big ones? That is a big assumption. Who is the forcing agent here you are positing? The whole point of making app stores a multiagent game is to reduce the leverage of one to force things on developers and consumers. > If the remedy for Apple picking winners is more stores, then it just means all of the big players will get to pick winners. For this to happen as bad as today a) they all will need to see a benefit in picking winners b) they all will need to pick precisely the same winners. The whole point of competition is giving power back to the end users (both app consumers and developers) in the form of choice. Any downside you mention is a competitive advantage first and app stores will have to synchronize hard and tight to forgo that to build a cartel against the users and developers (mind you they would also need to build precisely the same products with nothing to differentiate). And at its worst they still wouldn’t be worse than today’s single monopoly.
- zepto 6y ago
- osrec 6y agoThis is not pro-consumer behaviour. This is pro-Apple behaviour. They enjoy the lock in + fees that the app store generates. They're even stifling web apps to maintain this monopoly. If they were so pro-consumer, why do they allow spyware such as Tiktok to exist on their platform at all?
- threeseed 6y agoBecause if you consider TikTok to be spyware then you would need to also block Google, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. Instead Apple had implemented the most stringent, pro-privacy features and polices on any platform bar none.
- inopinatus 6y agoI actually do avoid installing all of those, and it is due to profound mistrust, so there's no reductio ad absurdum on that basis.
- threeseed 6y agoThose were high-profile examples. But most apps implement some sort of telemetry even just basic product analytics e.g. MixPanel or Google Analytics. Both of which collect a wealth of user data. So if I were you I would not use any app or search engine. Just to be on the safe side.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- inopinatus 6y agoIf you were me, you might've deleted that remark in shame after realising it is maximising snark at the expense of worthwhile advice. What I actually do is: minimise the number of apps installed, run a pihole to misroute unwanted traffic, run a VPN tunnel between home and a VPS that I manage myself for location masking and additional egress filtering, install a nonmonetized content blocker for which the source code is available (and run in advanced mode, with assets manually unblocked only by need), and use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Neither MixPanel nor GA are in my good books, and if a website requires such spyware to load before it functions, I abandon it. What's more, I don't allow anything of the sort to be installed on my own services. The only third-party assets permitted are the card-capture fields from our payment gateway.
- wstrange 6y agoWhy not let consumers decide if Apple's 30% uplift is worth it? Clearly for yourself that is the case, but others may come to a different conclusion. Most markets offer a variety of tradeoffs in price vs. quality. Consumers rarely pick the cheapest product. If Apple's app store is superior, they will have no problem in justifying their 30%.
- scarface74 6y agoHow many consumers on Android are using the Amazon store?
- wstrange 6y agoDoesn't that prove the point that competitive app stores would not harm Apple's business? It seems paternalistic to suggest that consumers are too dumb to make an App Store decision on their own.
- scarface74 6y agoIt also proves the point that consumers don’t care.... We have decades of viruses, malware, ransomware, and toolbars on Windows PCs that prove that the average consumer isn’t that technologically savvy. I’m not saying Macs are immune in anyway to the same exploits. It’s just that not enough people care to create malware on the Mac to make it that big of a deal.
- Apocryphon 6y agoActually, all it proves is that the Amazon store is inferior to the Google Play store.
- scarface74 6y agoAs it proves that when people have a choice - ie can afford it - they would rather buy Apple walled garden and all over Android where you can sideload.
- raz32dust 6y ago"Everything Apple is doing is helping make a better app store for me." - it is the benevolent dictator fallacy[1]. You cannot say dictatorship is good because one dictator seems to have done good things. In the same way, just because Apple has been nice so far (in you opinion at least) doesn't mean that the practice itself is good. [1] Don't google it. I made it up.
- osrec 6y agoThere's a certain amount of brainwashing I've come to expect from Apple users. My sibling uses a MacBook, but remotes into a Windows machine in order to use Excel and Word, as the native versions on Mac don't seem to have all the advanced functionality. As far as I can tell, there is no specific other use case for the MacBook for my sibling. Yet, they're convinced that their purchase was a great one (I only hear the occasional complaint about how scrolling feels a bit weird, and the lack of certain keys on the keyboard)!
- albertop 6y agoIt is free market not dictatorship.
- raz32dust 6y agoQuoting from the article, "Apple attempts to justify these fees by arguing that the App Store is no different from a mall, where companies seeking to offer their products must pay rent to the owner of the mall (in this case, Apple). This argument conveniently ignores the fact that there is just a single mall when it comes to iOS and no possibility of a competing mall to rent space from. It is not illegal for Apple to own a mall and rent space, nor is it illegal for Apple to own the only mall. What is illegal, is exploiting the fact that it owns the only mall to charge excessively high pricing which harms competitors." This is a recurring theme here on HN. The fundamental dilemma is whether or not it is a monopoly. The article is arguing that it is.
- matsemann 6y agoThis is completely missing the point. It's not merely about how the store is run, but that there is no alternative. You could have exactly the same with a competing store.
- alfonsodev 6y agoThat's fine, but why it has to be only app store? why not let other App Stores compete on the same platform, and let the user choose, as we do with browsers ?
- diego_moita 6y agoSorry, but I don't understand the point. No one is talking about taking away your choice of keep using the Apple appstore. It is ok to keep using Apple, if you prefer so. We wan't choices, we don't want to remove your choice.
- zepto 6y agoWhat if I choose not to be forced to deal with a multitude of different stores? It seems like you want to remove that choice.
- tsherr 6y agoThat's a truly silly comment. Based on that there should only be one grocery store to shop at and one place to work.
- zepto 6y agoWe generally don’t think it’s a good thing when people are forced to work multiple jobs, and we call it a food desert when you have to hunt lots of different stores to get the basics. The idea that more choices is always better is just ideology. It is quite obviously possible to move from a situation in which there is no choice and where there are some problems, to a situation where there are multiple choices and none of them are as good as the be no-choice case. I do think there are problems with Apple’s store. I think law may be needed. I don’t think antitrust law forcing ‘competition’ has any likelihood of solving the problems. If we think there are rights vendors should have over stores - e.g. the right to describe their product however they like, we should establish that in law for all stores. If we want to use law to force our cooperations to limit the practices they can use in other countries as a way to put pressure on other political systems, those are called sanctions. I’m fine with those being applied if our government decides to apply them. Again, nothing to do with anti-trust.
- diego_moita 6y ago> It seems like you want to remove that choice. The choice of not choosing? The more you guys explain, the less I understand.
- inopinatus 6y ago> I am 100% in favor of the way run the app store You want Apple to prohibit the apps you use from being allowed to tell you about alternative payment options?
- zepto 6y agoYes, because I want to be continue to recommend Apple products to friends and family who would definitely be scammed by fake payment mechanisms if Apple wasn’t preventing it.
- orwin 6y agoHow do you feel about them removing an app because it allows people from HK to circumvent censorship? And why? Just asking to understand your point of view on the article.
- scarface74 6y agoYou mean where they could get the same functionality from a website?
- noisem4ker 6y agoUsing a website would mean browsing it through Safari (the only, artificially imposed browser on iOS), which notoriously doesn't support push notifications and other app-like features. One generally can not get the same functionality from websites and apps, and this is especially true for iOS.
- zepto 6y agoI think that part of the article is frankly intellectually dishonest. I agree that there is a problem with them not allowing different descriptions in different countries, and I agree that they should add this feature to the store. I wouldn’t have a problem with this being litigated on its own merits. I can see potential legal arguments. I don’t see what this has to do with antitrust or the rest of the claims, which just seem like a tortured way to introduce an ethical dimension to the argument. No proposed antitrust remedy has anything to do with challenging authoritarian regimens. If anything the remedies would make the situation worse. One obvious pathological outcome is that if Apple is forced to create infrastructure to allow multiple stores, every authoritarian state will trivially mandate the installation of a state run store app, with all manner of tracking, privacy abuses, etc., even the ones which had previously had no leverage over Apple.
- pier25 6y agoThat's not really the issue. If Apple allowed more stores in iOS you could decide to keep using Apple's store much like you do in the Mac world.
- Hermel 6y agoI hate the fact the both Apple's App Store as well as Google's Play Store do not offer basic search filters. In particular for my kids, I'd love to be able to search for games without ads or in-app purchases. But Apple and Google do not offer this feature because it would hurt their revenues. That's why I'd love to have a good alternative to the App Store or Play Store.
- oscargrouch 6y agoI think you are missing the social and political implications of your choices. Its not just about being a monopoly in the economical sense, which is bad per-se, but to let a private company to control what you have access or not based on particular moral, political views. To forbid you to access technology that can compete with what they offer on the basis of "security". If you do not get it, they control the only app store allowed where they also control what you can or cannot access to. You are implying they are good actors somehow that are doing all this thinking on you, while in reality they will do whatever they can to maximize their profits, and as long as people like you are fine with it, nothing will change. Your current government might yet be democratic enough as this can not YET represent a threat to your civil rights or the ones you love, but things changes constantly. (Who could have predicted that the 30's Weimar Republic Germany would fall like that?) Once your government do not respect civil rights anymore the way it should, a private company with this amount of control on your digital life can represent a big threat that unlike in the past, would be pretty hard to get rid of. What about the concept of digital property? Should you have choices? Can a private company bar your choices? Can a private company own the things that were bought by you and are in a phone that you have pay for? Imagine if after having bought a vehicle, Wolkswagen could tell you who can you transport: "We dont allow dogs in OUR cars". Now imagine someone saying: "I like what Wolkswagen do, its for my safety, dogs will damage my car".. "Just buy a Mercedes then!" Or what if Wolkswagen did also sell vehicle parts, and even if you know there are pieces for your cars that are better or cheap, you wouldnt be able to buy them because the stores would be closed for you. But then you would say: "But apple dont bar me from buying apps, i have choices.." and its a illusion of choice, because the apps were not even allowed to enter the store in the first place. So there's a real danger into letting any private company to choose things for you before you are able to choose them. We should have by now a good legislation about digital rights, digital property, etc, that could regulate this source of thing. Because as i've witnessed here in the comments, you cannot let people on their own, because they can be emotionally manipulated into want things that will harm them and their rights in the long run. It should not be just about being good for you at this particular moment, we should always take into account the collective and social implications of our choices.
- judge2020 6y ago
- sneak 6y agoThere is spyware (that is, malware) in almost every single app in the Apple App Store. Apple asserts that you consent to spyware in your apps when you agree to the App Store TOS. These apps track your location (both sensor and geoip based) over time, and aggregate and sell that data, along with other user data they glean.
- Bombthecat 6y agoIt probably will look like the windows game stores, everyone could create one and sell games. But so far we only got: EA, UBISOFT, GOG, STEAM, epic and windows store.
- karakot 6y ago+ origin, blizzard
- defnotashton2 6y agoYou are assuming nothing else can be in place to solve all of those problems. If you and many other consumers want that then services will appear to solve those problems barring regulation and market barriers like a monopolistic app store and platform policies. PayPal comes to mind.
- LeftHandPath 6y agoThe biggest reason I haven't jumped ship to Android over the years is that the App Store has always been inherently curated, and typically more secure than the Android store. The iPhone has been pretty good for security / privacy as well - I remember an article that made the front page here about how an accidental usage of the phone's GPS was still stopped when not allowed in the user's settings, and still triggered the location use icon in the status bar. Much like how Standard Oil actually lowered oil prices while it dominated the market -- sometimes, a monopoly is benign or even benevolent towards consumers. Meanwhile Amazon is an example of a more predatory organization, as evidenced by some of Bezos's responses in the recent congressional hearing. Monopolies like Amazon should be torn down for the consumer. Monopolies like Apple should only be torn down if they are using their market dominance to extinguish competition that would otherwise force them to improve.
- benhurmarcel 6y agoFor apps that let you subscribe either in the app or on the web, do you voluntarily choose to pay 20~30% more for that convenience? For example, Dropbox is $12 in-app vs $10 on the web. Youtube Premium is $16 in-app vs $12 on the web. Spotify is $13 in-app vs $10 on the web. Do you think most consumers would choose to pay 20~30% more for that convenience if they were informed of that choice? And isn't it anti-consumer to deny them this information?