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The iPhone market is still huge and valuable. It’s too much money to leave on the table if you’re an app developer. You’re still going to build an IPhone app yo

The iPhone market is still huge and valuable. It’s too much money to leave on the table if you’re an app developer. You’re still going to build an IPhone app you’re just going to be more careful about it.

danShumway 6y ago
The endless HN swing between: - iOS is too important for developers to abandon, so it's not like people are actually going to stop developing games for it. and - Antitrust claims aren't valid against iOS because developers can just choose to move to Android instead. ---- All that aside, the important thing here is that Apple is now retaliating on the Mac, not just on iPhone. I was already never going to waste my time building mobile games, in part because of iOS. So anything Apple does there doesn't really change the status quo. But I'm increasingly looking at the current situation and saying, "does it make more sense for my future games to just be Windows/Linux?" And while they do arguably have a big enough hold on the mobile market to force mobile devs to support iOS, Apple definitely does not have a big enough hold on the desktop gaming market to force developers to target Mac. They could go from being pretty under-represented as a gaming platform back to being completely unrepresented if they're not careful. If AAA studios, special effects teams, and producers have to choose between abandoning Unreal Engine or abandoning Mac, I don't think it's safe to assume they're going to choose to abandon Unreal Engine. There are massive pipelines invested into this thing, for better or worse.
- codyb 6y ago
  Hmm, interesting. There's two sorts of monopolies here right? From the consumer side you can move from iOS to Android and vice versa relatively easily. But from the developer side, despite having access to similar numbers of US consumers the Apple market is far more profitable and can't be abandoned. Are monopolies measured from the perspective of third parties like that? The developers being the third parties here.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    Apple has a monopoly on the service of distributing iOS apps. This is something that iOS/phone app developers need in order to conduct business, and which they are illegally (antitrust violations) being prevented from purchasing that service from anyone but Apple. No one (worth listening to) is claiming that Apple has a monopoly on phones.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  > The endless HN swing between: Because HN isn't an individual, we are a group of people with sometimes conflicting opinions on the same subject.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  > But I'm increasingly looking at the current situation and saying, "does it make more sense for my future games to just be Windows/Linux?" This is where I'm at. I maintain a couple of open source apps for macOS, and have a few cross-platform apps that work on Windows, Linux and macOS. I'm reluctantly looking to discontinue the open source Mac apps because recent versions of macOS lead users to believe that un-Notarized apps are either broken or malicious. When it comes to the cross-platform apps, I'm considering just not targeting the OS at all, anymore. Most people use Windows on the desktop, anyway.
fxtentacle 6y ago
I don't think so. For many companies, it's better to sell to a smaller market with higher profit margins (e.g. SaaS web apps) than to sell to everyone and lose money (e.g. paying the iOS tax). And those 30% are surely large enough to completely eat up profit margins in some markets.

danShumway 6y ago

The endless HN swing between: - iOS is too important for developers to abandon, so it's not like people are actually going to stop developing games for it. and - Antitrust claims aren't valid against iOS because developers can just choose to move to Android instead. ---- All that aside, the important thing here is that Apple is now retaliating on the Mac, not just on iPhone. I was already never going to waste my time building mobile games, in part because of iOS. So anything Apple does there doesn't really change the status quo. But I'm increasingly looking at the current situation and saying, "does it make more sense for my future games to just be Windows/Linux?" And while they do arguably have a big enough hold on the mobile market to force mobile devs to support iOS, Apple definitely does not have a big enough hold on the desktop gaming market to force developers to target Mac. They could go from being pretty under-represented as a gaming platform back to being completely unrepresented if they're not careful. If AAA studios, special effects teams, and producers have to choose between abandoning Unreal Engine or abandoning Mac, I don't think it's safe to assume they're going to choose to abandon Unreal Engine. There are massive pipelines invested into this thing, for better or worse.

codyb 6y ago
Hmm, interesting. There's two sorts of monopolies here right? From the consumer side you can move from iOS to Android and vice versa relatively easily. But from the developer side, despite having access to similar numbers of US consumers the Apple market is far more profitable and can't be abandoned. Are monopolies measured from the perspective of third parties like that? The developers being the third parties here.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Apple has a monopoly on the service of distributing iOS apps. This is something that iOS/phone app developers need in order to conduct business, and which they are illegally (antitrust violations) being prevented from purchasing that service from anyone but Apple. No one (worth listening to) is claiming that Apple has a monopoly on phones.
mywittyname 6y ago
> The endless HN swing between: Because HN isn't an individual, we are a group of people with sometimes conflicting opinions on the same subject.
heavyset_go 6y ago
> But I'm increasingly looking at the current situation and saying, "does it make more sense for my future games to just be Windows/Linux?" This is where I'm at. I maintain a couple of open source apps for macOS, and have a few cross-platform apps that work on Windows, Linux and macOS. I'm reluctantly looking to discontinue the open source Mac apps because recent versions of macOS lead users to believe that un-Notarized apps are either broken or malicious. When it comes to the cross-platform apps, I'm considering just not targeting the OS at all, anymore. Most people use Windows on the desktop, anyway.

fxtentacle 6y ago

I don't think so. For many companies, it's better to sell to a smaller market with higher profit margins (e.g. SaaS web apps) than to sell to everyone and lose money (e.g. paying the iOS tax). And those 30% are surely large enough to completely eat up profit margins in some markets.