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Do you expect a customer to purchase peanuts by the kg and another customer to purchase peanuts by the tons at the same price/kg? Larger companies bring larger
by systemvoltage 6y ago
Do you expect a customer to purchase peanuts by the kg and another customer to purchase peanuts by the tons at the same price/kg?
Larger companies bring larger revenue. They get juicy discounts. I acknowledge the situation with smaller devs, but the comparison is extreme - billion dollar company vs. a single developer. How do you reconcile these?
Every enterprise software has volume licensing even though the cost of distribution is negligible. Is an App store different? I argue its not, but open for discussion.
With Stripe, I can get 1.9% or even lower transaction fees if my volume is $2M+ annually. Usually for poor small companies, they have to pay 2.9%. So sorry for small companies :-( but that's how the world works. There is a lot of emotion behind arguments on HN when it comes to Apple. It is mob thinking and bandwagoning, I am not impressed.
Edit: Sorry, I was referring to another comment. My mistake.
- jlbnjmn 6y agoHasn't the pro-Apple argument centered around everyone pays the same amount and people knew what the rules are so stop complaining and pay? The anti-Apple argument has been that the policy hurts smaller developers and is being applied unfairly. This at least validates the latter argument while suggesting truth to the former. Regardless, it's an interesting development.
- dmurray 6y ago> Hasn't the pro-Apple argument centered around everyone pays the same amount and people knew what the rules are so stop complaining and pay? To me it's looked more like the argument is: it's Apple's store, so Apple gets to make the rules. And that they don't have anything close to a monopoly in mobile hardware or mobile OSes, which is one argument for not allowing them to make their own rules.
- systemvoltage 6y agoAt some point when the amount is in multi millions, it becomes a call to the a real person at Apple - negotiations are on the table. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. Unless we see this wrong across the board including the peanut business. Any other argument is hypocrisy unless the App Store is something different than normal business dealings?
- dodobirdlord 6y agoThe pro-Apple argument centers on “you got what you signed up for, what’s the problem?” Arguments about uniform treatment don’t play much part. The anti-Apple argument (at least the one that matters) is that Apple has hurt consumers in some way. Whether Apple has made life difficult for developers is pretty much irrelevant.
- gamblor956 6y agoGiven that developers have to pay Apple for access to the app store, they are also consumers, just in a different way.
- akiselev 6y agoI don't think that's how most business relationships work. When I buy a high end sintering 3d printer, for instance, it doesn't come with a mountain of consumer protections because it's assumed that if I'm buying one, I know what I'm doing and will make sure the purchase contract contains warranty clauses, support, and so on. The cheap FDM 3d printer I bought off of Amazon, however, is targeted at Joe Public and thus treated differently by the law with a mandated one year warranty. I'm not sure what the legal test is for differentiating the two, but the difference is definitely recognized by the courts. IANAL but it's unlikely that the courts would decide that app developers are consumers in the classical sense. That said, it doesn't matter (again, IANAL). Consumers are still being harmed, as Apple so graciously showed by removing Epic from the store - removing consumer choice in a free market is anti-competitive.
- gamblor956 6y agoBeing a business doesn't render one a non-consumer, otherwise, no business would ever have recourse against another business for non-negotiated transactions. A consumer is simply a purchaser that "consumes" a product or service rather than using it for production (of their own goods or services) or reselling it.
- akiselev 6y ago
- rootsudo 6y agoMob thinking and hopping on the bandwagon are just fallacies to dismiss how Apple operates as a business. If you poison the well, and it's just by one actor, do you not think that's enough action to warrant a response?
- systemvoltage 6y agoSorry to point out but you picked the weakest point of my argument which was my gut feeling about the what I see on HN, not sure how you can say that's disputable.