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Apple doesn't let you disclose their 30% IAP fee to your customers
- ecf 6y agoWhich is smart of them. I’d guarantee that every company with a financial interest in the App Store would start putting up banners about the fee in an effort to stoke the Epic x Apple tensions in their favor. Let the court decide the case without the mob influence of millions of uninformed users.
- manderley 6y agoYou mean without the influence of millions of informed users.
- theonemind 6y agoAs a counter argument, this does not fall outside of the business or legitimate concern of the people in a representative democracy. The court should judge according to the law, but if the people do not like the outcome of the law, they might want a different law, and in the end, we will have the proceedings in the public record. If the people have no business in this, we should also make sure the same millions of uninformed users can't get access to record of the court proceedings as well, lest they think to form opinions even afterwards, as it did not concern them while it went on.
- himinlomax 6y ago> uninformed users Are you arguing for or against letting users know the fee is 30%?
- notmyname9173 6y agoFantastic! IDGAF whether Comcast and my local CBS affiliate can reach an agreement about rates, and I resent it every time either of them spams customers about their disputes. Same goes for app developers and marketplaces. Put it in your fucking newsletter and leave me out of it.
- bsaul 6y agomaybe not this way. But they're not even allowed to tell you you can buy the same thing they sell for cheaper by purchasing it somewhere else.
- rbecker 6y agoI too enjoy being an uninformed consumer, and can see no bad consequences of giant corporations coercing smaller ones into silence.
- ericd 6y agoI don’t know about you, but I would find a persistent 20-30% discount on their own website interesting knowledge, especially if it was placed next to an in app purchase button I was about to hit.
- Spivak 6y agoWell yeah, that’s the point. Of course apps want to use iOS to get customers to the point of sale and then not pay for it. How would you feel about an affiliate program that gave 30% to the referrer but right before purchase had a button that said "buy 30% cheaper without referral commission?"
- ericd 6y agoWell, I don’t think people should be forced into Apple’s affiliate program to write software for people’s phone. Apple is using their leverage to force everyone to pay them tolls on sales of all software and things done within that software which had nothing to do with on-store marketing, which I happen to think is wrong.
- vultour 6y agoYou're right, Apple should charge all developers per-download bandwidth, and per-month storage fee, and ditch the transaction markup.
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- pier25 6y agoIf it was closer to 5%, or even a fixed fee (eg: $1 per app sold), I would accept the narrative that it's a fee. 30% of your business is not a fee, it's more like a partnership. Apple is, in practice, a business partner to each and every iOS developer. Except that they have total and absolute control of the business. If they shut you down on the App Store, you're done. Your iOS app is worthless on any other platform. I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself.
- CharlesW 6y ago> I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself. That kind of editorial feedback seems like a good thing, no? Do you feel like that process improved how your app was presented to users?
- mhh__ 6y agoI don't know how much time the average app get looked at for but is it long enough to be feedback? I don't know what this app looks like, but if a screenshot of the app is a screenshot of the app what more can you do? Ideally, I would assume the creators of the app would know their customers well enough to choose.
- judge2020 6y agoEh I mean we don't know what it was, but if it was something like the settings page or a screenshot with a lot of white-space I can see why it would be rejected, although it probably should be allowed at the developer's expense.
- CharlesW 6y ago> Ideally, I would assume the creators of the app would know their customers well enough to choose. Having worked with many creators in many mediums, that's often not the case. In the case of apps, independent developers who don't have a marketing person can often benefit from even the surface-level presentational help Apple was providing.
- ksk 6y agoThe fundamental question is of "rights". Do we apply 17th century morality and economic models for digital markets? Modern problems need modern solutions. We need to re-define where these "rights" of digital businesses come from. Comcast invest millions and therefore has a "right" to control internet access, block websites, etc? Comcast "allows" a business to reach millions of customers. Apple invested millions and therefore has a "right" to block third party payment processors? Apple "allows" a business to reach millions of customers. Microsoft invested millions in their platform and there has a "right" to block Chrome/Firefox? Microsoft "allows" a business to reach millions of customers. etc, etc. Taking 30% of sales of a digital-only product is not morally acceptable to me.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sebastien_b 6y agoFunny how most replies in that thread don’t actually address the initial question: why is there a policy of prohibiting disclosure of how the money the user pays gets distributed? Most “answers” immediately diverge into monopoly discussions, or questions-as-answers of why 30% ‘seems so high’ (even though neither was initially brought up).
- lacker 6y agoIt seems pretty obvious to me. Apple wants a user experience that makes the user happy with Apple products, not one where the app is complaining to the user about Apple policies. Apple is happy to prohibit zillions of random different things; they perceive the openness or fairness of their platform as much less important than user experience.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoI am gradually coming to the conclusion that active censorship of information should be illegal, on any platform, public or private. These companies control most of the modern society's information intake, you can't keep justifying everything they do with 'it's private, they do what they want'. The potential for abuse is just too great.
- dudus 6y agoCertainly you don't believe that. What about child porn? Well you could say that's illegal so then it would be ok to censor it. But what about anti-vaxxers, QAnon or other blatant misinformation or lies? What if it's proven that the misinformation, is posted by foreign agents trying to stir controversy and hate in the country? You clearly need to draw the line somewhere. But it's impossible to draw it to comply with the expectations of everyone. It's just an impossible task.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoThe focus is on 'information', as in factual information. 'Apple takes 30% of your transaction' is clearly factual information that is different from general political speech. Clearly misinformation does not qualify. I am trying to outline it as distinct from general freedom of speech, but I am not sure how to draw the line. However, the edge-cases are quite clear.
- azangru 6y agoI strongly feel that it should be up to the consumer of information to decide whether to treat it as true or false. Otherwise, what's stopping you from banning all religious texts? Spiritual texts? Ads for homeopathic pills? And so on, and so forth. If people are manipulable enough to fall for "foreign agents" stirring up controversy and hate — well, they'll just need to learn and get smarter.
- Talanes 6y agoWhat's stopping anyone from banning all of that right now?
- hoistbypetard 6y agoSure they do. They just prohibit you from putting that in your app's UI. If you were selling your software in a box at Walmart, they may well refuse to display it on the shelf if you included a message stating that Walmart had just gotten 30% of the software's and that the publisher had just gotten 20% of the software's price. Similarly, many publishers would likely refuse to publish such a message. I don't think the question of why Apple doesn't allow such messaging is all that interesting. I do think it's interesting that: 1. Apple is more likely to notice such a message buried within app UI, because they review apps. Walmart would probably only catch it if it appeared on the packaging. 2. We're more likely to hear about it , since we're more likely to know someone who has published an app on the Apple store than we are to know someone who has published an app through a traditional channel then marketed it on retail shelves.
- sithlord 6y agoGuess Apple could let developers disclose the 30% iap fee, but only if they disclose the margins they make off of each user/transaction/etc.
- kgin 6y agoAnd yet people would rather battle Apple than make a web app and push open technologies further.
- ThatPlayer 6y agoBecause Apple cripples their browser on iOS, so you cannot make a web app. Basic app features like push notification are not implemented on iOS Safari.
- sdfhbdf 6y agoIts a trade off between new and exciting technologies like the Push Notification and privacy - the service worker needed to provide them.
- baddox 6y agoYou’re free to send emails or text messages from the backend of your web app. This is hardly a great example of “Apple crippling their web browser.” Personally I don’t want your advertisements pushed to me. Even the notifications permissions prompt on desktop Chrome is ridiculously spammy since it’s on basically every commercial website these days. Safari on iOS is a great web browser that provides a great web browsing experience in my opinion.
- naveen99 6y agoAtleast apple’s surplus is not only taken by its employees, and a reasonable chunk passes to shareholders. So people paying the fee can just buy apple shares and get back some of the fee.
- hkai 6y agoWell, it's easy: just develop your own mobile phone and operating system, make it popular, and then you don't have to pay the 30%. Anti-free speech advocates use this argument when they say it's okay that Facebook, Twitter and Visa ban you - they are private companies and you can just create your own social media and payment systems. It's that easy!
- floflo79 6y agoHow is this different from any other store that offers access to a wide audience? Connecting devs to hundreds of millions of people, taking care of warehousing, logistics and sale/payments handling? Do those retailers tell you who gets what further down the supply chain? No. You see the price of the product and nothing even remotely reminds you of how much the retailer payed the manufacturer, and how much the manufacturer payed their designer. Imagine you make a toaster. You want that toaster on the shelves at a retailer. How much do you think the retailer gets? And the transporting company? I think 30% is low in comparison. But but but this is digital. Yeah, so where do you you have access to Apple’s client base? How much do you pay for the running and maintaining of the App Store infrastructure? How many apps do you think are hosted that don’t make any money? For neither dev nor Apple? All those are costs. For Apple. Admitted they make a lot of money, but they do so because they’re successful. If you want to be successful on their platform, you play by their rules. And those are clear: you pay 30%.
- pornel 6y agoApple to Facebook: if users were informed about your tracking, they wouldn't like it. Facebook to Apple: if users were informed about your fee structure, they wouldn't like it. Both companies have a cash cow that works better when users are unaware of it.