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Apple's 15% Deflection Tactic

599 points by lux 6y ago

somesortofsystm 6y ago
I've been an Apple developer for decades, but the last few years have been exhausting and I'm ready for a break. So I'm switching 100% to Linux development. For now that means contracting work for others, who are integrating Linux into their systems (embedded), but as soon as I start seeing a viable way to get paid to build Linux-only software for a mass market, I'll take it. Personally, I think the old models work fine on Linux: shareware/freeware, donation-ware, simple/cheap licensing terms, etc. I wonder what the SublimeText and Reaper guys get for their Linux builds? I'm sure it is not insignificant, but I'm not sure its significant...
jimbob45 6y ago
>Now that Microsoft and Apple have introduced app stores on Windows and macOS, they plan to slowly erode our freedom on PCs too so that they can reap the same financial benefits on our labour on all computing platforms I haven’t seen any indication that MS is trending in this direction, nor could I envision how they would go about doing such a thing. Fuck Apple though. Rent-seeking scum.
- lux 6y ago
  Right you are! My mistake on including them as an example there. I should fix that. Edit: While they're not taking the same fee (honestly, 5% is pretty great!), they are the original company recognized for their "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. I'm super impressed with Microsoft's turnaround on open source, but I'm still leery of them long-term, especially if leadership changes down the road.
  - patrec 6y ago
    He's not right. Windows comes with "telemetry" (read spyware) you cannot disable (unless you got a corporate version). Also UEFI has not exactly been without controversy.
    - partiallypro 6y ago
      What does collecting telemetry have to do with walled garden ecosystems that are used to squeeze every ounce of profit out of developers? Doesn't even makes sense.
      - patrec 6y ago
        So you think, sure Microsoft may lock users out of control of their own computers when it serves their monetization interests but they would never do anything so crass as control third party developer access in order to squeeze profit out of them?
        patrec 6y ago
        Ex-Microsofty Gabe must have been pretty paranoid when he decided to bootstrap a linux based gaming platform out of fear of being locked out by Microsoft.
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/11/17/meet-the-microsoft-pluton-processor-the-security-chip-designed-for-the-future-of-windows-pcs/ https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/11/17/meet-the-...
    - my123 6y ago
      That's an improved TPM/TPM successor. Those don't lock you out of anything Secure Boot wise, it's just not what they're designed for.
      - BoorishBears 6y ago
        By that logic T2 is also "just an improved TPM/TPM successor". It's not hard to infer the direction that MS is going with this concept.
- tomerico 6y ago
  Microsoft is definitely doing maneuvers in that direction - see this for example https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-to-permit-block-on-apps-installing-if-theyre-not-from-microsoft-store/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-to-permit-block-on-...
- modeless 6y ago
  Windows 10 S is how they would do it. It's optional, for now. But that's mostly because it hasn't been successful. If Microsoft was able to get more apps on the Windows Store, I have no doubt they would start introducing Windows 10 S devices that can't be unlocked to full Windows.
- jason0597 6y ago
  Have you forgotten about Windows 10 S?
post_break 6y ago
If I make $0 a year I should be able to put the app on my phone without having to pay as well. And not just for 7 days and have to resign it every 7 days.
threeseed 6y ago
We've been seeing these blog posts for over a decade and this doesn't offer anything particularly new. It would be nice to see one that actually offered constructive and workable legal solutions other than "make iPhones general computing devices" even though the concept has no meaning in law and would bleed into other industries.
- lux 6y ago
  My point was to collect the arguments in one place (to clarify my own thinking), and that we need to establish that legal definition already. We've run the "unregulated app stores" experiment for long enough, now it's time to do the work of defining these things and regulating them properly. I'm interested in the bleed into other industries though, and would love some examples. It's important that laws be general enough not to be too targeted against particular actors but also to avoid side effects that adversely affect others in the process.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    to clarify my own thinking If it was just to clarify your own thinking, then why did you submit it to HN?
    - lux 6y ago
      Essays by definition are to clarify one's own thinking. Why does anyone share them with others? Because we think they contribute something of value to others.
  - lovemenot 6y ago
    BeMye
- lukifer 6y ago
  > bleed into other industries And what would be so bad about this exactly? The comparison is oft made with closed stores for gaming consoles; but I don't see why regulating console manufacturers to require side-loading or third-party stores would be such a bad thing. There's no law of the universe which dictates that their business model be per-unit loss-leaders for game revenue splits.
matsemann 6y ago
but you pay for the distribution / tools / OS etc is a common sentiment I see here. No, the yearly fee should pay for that, and the user for the OS. And anyways, what if I don't want to, why cant I distribute it myself?
- jjtheblunt 6y ago
  Is the cold rational Apple answer that you signed a contract when enrolling as an Apple Dev?
  - damnyou 6y ago
    A contract can be declared unenforceable in court if it is against public policy: https://www.upcounsel.com/what-contracts-are-considered-to-be-contrary-to-public-policy https://www.upcounsel.com/what-contracts-are-considered-to-b... The goal should be to make Apple's app store model against public policy.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > The goal should be to make Apple's app store model against public policy. Policy should not be written to attack an individual company that for some reason you've got a beef with.
      - zeusk 6y ago
        It's not just Apple, I think the fight shouldn't be about just fee but allowing 3rd party stores and applications that don't have an approval stamp from Apple. Imagine, if your Tesla refused to move if you didn't use Tesla approved tires which cost 30% more because Tesla charges the tire manufacturer 30% for approving them?
        chrisseaton 6y ago
        > Imagine, if your Tesla refused to move if you didn't use Tesla approved tires which cost 30% more because Tesla charges the tire manufacturer 30% for approving them? Fine by me. Their business what they charge and how their product is designed, not mine. As long as there's a competitor. And there is.
nickff 6y ago
I understand that 30% is big, and does have an impact on some business models, but it also acts to align the incentives of the platform-developer with those of the app developer. The fact that Apple makes a bunch of money off apps makes it beneficial for them to continue supporting the ecosystem, by providing APIs, functionality, and other support. What surprises me most about Apple's model is why they don't offer better support to developers. It seems that iOS the 'rich users', whereas Android has the 'cheap users', so Apple doesn't even bother improving the developer experience.
- lux 6y ago
  Cost of framework development is a fair point, and they do continue to add things like ARKit, the Swift language, and a million new submenus in Xcode ;) But that's been true of all OSes for decades and doesn't make iOS specialized compared to macOS or any more deserving of 30% of every developer's gross profits.
  - nickff 6y ago
    I never said anything about compensating Apple for framework development costs; my point is about aligning incentives.
  - banachtarski 6y ago
    How is that a fair point. Developers don't WANT bespoke frameworks that lock you into a single ecosystem. We would obviously prefer open standards and specifications supported by multiple vendors. The popularity of frameworks such as Flutter and QT or APIs such as OpenGL and Vulkan prove that. The SDKs Apple chooses to provide are entirely elective on their part and we shouldn't pretend that as developers, they deserve to charge us for this.
- giobox 6y ago
  There have been measurable improvements over years to things like app review times etc, significantly so in some cases. Whether _any_ review process in a store the size of Apple's can justify taking 30% is not obvious to me. As size goes up, costs usually go down in a healthy market. The App Store is barely recognizable in scale vs launch day, but financial terms for developers have barely moved.
ajharrison 6y ago
Do people think Apple is running a fucking charity? It’s business. Grow up, deal with it.
andrewjl 6y ago
> General computing platforms should be protected from such predatory practices by manufacturers through strong government regulations. I find it much more plausible that any regulations will end up entrenching market incumbents and closing off potential avenues for disruption. In other words, this can only make the situation worse or keep it somewhat the same, it won't make it better. > Stifling innovation isn't good for anyone, and as more and more people become software developers, this really just hurts the small guys ... Indie developers need protection from monopolistic and anti-competitive practices from larger players in the market through strong government regulation, not a discount on their first $1m in sales. Indie developers aren't the only stakeholders here, platform users are as well and any regulation will need to take into account their needs and interests. In purely numerical terms, the latter group outnumbers the indies by 100x or more. Realistically speaking, whose needs will any regulation give more precedence? The top concern amongst tech users today is security, whether its security of personal data or a more diffuse sense of security concerning the integrity of public discourse conducted online. It's very hard to imagine any kind of regulation protecting indie devs without also introducing regulations on the distribution process itself, in order to protect end users in these two areas. The only thing harder to disrupt than a commercially dominant player is a commercially dominant player ensconced in a complex regulatory regime. This is not a reality that indie developers or myself (personally), particularly like, but it's the reality we have. Ignoring it won't make it go away.
- paxys 6y ago
  > I find it much more plausible that any regulations will end up entrenching market incumbents and closing off potential avenues for disruption Let's face it there are no disruptions incoming in the mobile OS space, similar to how no new desktop OS has been able to get significant marketshare since the 80s.
  - andrewjl 6y ago
    I don't share the pessimistic view mostly because there's a lot we do not know. The shape of all possible disruptions is hard to predict a priori. And desktop OS is nowhere near as dominant as it once was so significant market share there really doesn't matter as much as it once did.
pryelluw 6y ago
I just want to be able to run and distribute my own apps. It’s ridiculous and just plain criminal that this is not possible. Apple does not own my device and does not get to dictate what I do with it. Phones are so locked down that they are a real threat to personal computing and software engineering. The day where apple stops indies from publishing apps is near.
- benbristow 6y ago
  > Apple does not get to dictate what I do with it Sounds like they already do...
- echelon 6y ago
  This is where antitrust attention needs to be laser focused. Our freedoms are at stake, and this should be our rallying point. The iPhone is a general purpose computer (email, photos, dating, payments, reminders, docs, web, games, etc.) and computer manufacturers should not be allowed to control the only means to run software on computers they sell. This is less drastic than breaking the company up into constituent parts. But honestly we ought to also be asking ourselves why a computer manufacturer gets to be a film studio and distribution chain.
  - zepto 6y ago
    We are. Just don’t buy an iPhone. You never seem to explain why that freedom doesn’t suffice.
    - zeusk 6y ago
      Because it is essentially a duopoly, and switching platforms is not as easy as just not buying an iPhone. For example, I recently broke the screen on my iPhone 7 and for this exact reason (not being able to run some Apple unapproved applications on my device) wanted to switch to an Android, but when I tried one out for a couple days * My BMW would not show music cover art because only Apple had a deal with them in early 2010s * iMessage no longer worked and I had to maintain an iPad for communicating to friends who only use iMessage and Facetime * Macbook was suddenly a lot less interoperable with the phone - the easiest way to transfer photos was to push them to Google photos and download them on the mac * Homepod speaker would no longer be controllable from my phone * Apple obviously won't publish AppleTV(Remote) or HomeKit apps for android
causality0 6y ago
We need digital consumer rights laws. Badly.
diebeforei485 6y ago
They would have so much goodwill across the board if they dropped it to something like 10%. Apple has made these mistakes before (eg. the iBooks price collusion lawsuit).
- granzymes 6y ago
  If they had done the exact same thing they did today but settled on 10% instead of 15% I am extremely confident that the response from HN would have been the same.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    And that's despite 15% likely being near to or below cost for Apple. Remember, Apple sells a LOT of store credit through retail gift cards where Apple probably sees less than 80 cents in the dollar.
  - diebeforei485 6y ago
    Oh I meant 10% for everyone, not just for "small businesses".
- swiley 6y ago
  It could be 0%, they could pay developers to put apps on the app store and most people would still hate them because the money isn't the problem. Me not being able to recompile colloquy with a different push server and install it on my phone is the problem!
cup_of_joe 6y ago
If one considers the App Store as a marketplace and that it can be considered analogous to E-Commerce marketplaces, then a 15% fee is actually directly in-line with the standard set by Amazon and Walmart.com.
- ksec 6y ago
  Except consumers gets to choose between Buying from Amazon and Walmart.com, or many other smaller E-Commerce Marketplaces. Also Note 15% fee from WalMart and Amazon includes many cost and delivery. Some comments likes to use Freedom or General Computing devices as argument. I think those are beside the point. The question is for most consumers right now, and in the future, are Digital Market Place, Smartphone and Apps considered essential as part of our daily lives. If true, the questions becomes if one company holding 50%+ of market shares and 70% of Total Apps Revenue in a market that has near monopolistic market power requires some form of regulation.
tehlike 6y ago
Apple didn't lose much by reducing commission to 15%, when they are top heavy, anyways. Based on one of the articles (not sure about how trustable data was, though), while the new commission effects 98% of developers, the net revenue impact would be on the order of a percent or two.
bonestamp2 6y ago
If they would produce good documentation we might actually build native apps instead of web apps.
newbie578 6y ago
Change is coming, Apple can feel it (which is why they made this PR move), Epic can feel it, some devolepers can feel it (complaining about Apple and Google a year ago felt like talking to a wall), yet some people on HN can’t feel it, or just plain refuse to. It is about time Apple gets pulled down to Earth and faces scrutiny like all other major companies do.
Valkhyr 6y ago
I cannot disagree with a single word in that article. I would also go further and mandate that all general purpose computing devices should be forced to have an unlocked (or easily unlockable) boot loader so you can easily acquire full control over your device and even install competing OSes.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Agreed, anything less that that is not just dangerous but also really inefficient & unecological, as devices abandoned by manufacturers can't be often easily repurposed for other uses due to locked bootloaders.
jhunter1016 6y ago
Apple's reluctance to fully supporting progressive web apps makes me think they see PWAs as a real threat. As long as the APIs continue to mature, I could see PWAs being the the thing that breaks down the gatekeeper wall for apps and returns the web to being open again.
- nottorp 6y ago
  My battery thanks them, though...
ogre_codes 6y ago
I love how here on HN this is being painted as if it were some heinous underhanded move by Apple. Meanwhile in my Twitter thread, every single Indie developer I follow is over the moon about it. Whatever the end goal here, Apple is helping the smallest developers the most here. And yes, there are a lot of places Apple can do better, but the cynicism around this is overblown.
- swiley 6y ago
  Right, the app store is an issue for users not developers already invested in Apple's platform. That's probably a PR goal for Apple, to turn users and developers for other platforms into one group and iOS developers into another group.
- lux 6y ago
  This absolutely improves the situation for a lot of indie developers, but praising Apple for it is short-term thinking. It's a strategic move, and it's not cynical to recognize that.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > praising Apple for it is short-term thinking. Praising Apple for doing the right thing for small developers is not "Short Term thinking". It's a good first step, It should be recognized as such. There is a lot of room for improvement, but whining about something that puts millions of dollars in the pockets of indie developers is just not cool.
    - zamadatix 6y ago
      Something can be better than it was before and still not be good enough. There is no need to cast things in a single light.
    - mchusma 6y ago
      The issue is they are trying to make 15% seem reasonable. 1.5% is unreasonable. They provide developers negative value, it's just a tax on all transactions.
drawkbox 6y ago
The only concern I have is Apple has incentive to promote higher take apps over lower take, so they benefit more from pushing the 30% take apps over the 15% take. As long as we don't end up with a tiered App Store like XBOX Arcade or Steam Greenlight back in the day then all good. If the 15% apps become pushed less that is no fun. There is some benefit to a standard price market, most stores are 30% [1]. Tencent MyApp was even 55% until 2019 [1]. Epic Games is 12% but they said they are profitable around 7%-8% [1][2]. Steam, Sony, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all 30%[1]. If everyone went to 15-20% across the board it would be better. I am concerned about tiering of the market and down the line lower take apps being less pushed. [1] https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20200903/369516/Are_the_store_wars_really_upon_us.php https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20200903/369516... [2] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341249/Heres_why_the_Epic_Games_Store_takes_a_12_percent_revenue_cut_from_devs.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341249/Heres_why_the_Epi...
reilly3000 6y ago
I think most people forget that Apple is paying the merchant processing fees on all of these transactions. On a $0.99 sale typical rates are 3% + $0.30. I’m quite certain Apple doesn’t pay full rate, but it’s entirely probable that they lose money on smaller transactions. They have soft costs for app review and distribution but I can’t imagine they are significant whatsoever relative to merchant fees. This is a fantastic loss leader to build marketshare and nurture app growth. They will probably have a lot of fledgling devs plow that incremental money right back into ads in a ‘virtuous’ cycle.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Thing is none of this would be up to guess work if we had competition enabled. If you could offer "Pay with Stripe" alongside "Pay with Apple" and eliminate the forced price equality you would quickly see the user preference and value of Apple infrastructure/security/convenience.
- isthatsoup 6y ago
  Apple wouldn't be paying anything remotely like that rate - if they are, everybody involved in negotiating it needs to be fired. You're off by several orders of magnitude, therefore your conclusions based on the wrongly assumed cost structure are baseless.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Do you have any data to back that up? Off by "several orders of magnitude" means instead of Apple paying the standard $0.33 on a $1 app, they would be paying $0.00033 (that's three orders of magnitude smaller) or less, because that's how orders of magnitude work. Which is nonsensical considering it's easy to get a credit card that pays back $0.02 in rewards, which sets a reasonable floor. Sounds like your claim is the baseless one here, sorry. I would be curious to know what large online retailers do negotiate paying on single $1 purchases from someone who knows, though.
    - isthatsoup 6y ago
s1mon 6y ago
I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but the most basic thing I do not get about these complaints is if the people making them have ever seen the markup and overhead that goes into retail sales of physical products? It's not like I can manufacture a product, send it to Walmart or Bestbuy or whatever, and expect them to only add a few percent on top for credit card processing fees, so I can reap almost all the potential profit. I realize what some developers are looking for is a way to directly reach consumers. Have they ever tried to ship physical products to consumers? Logistics takes a lot of effort. Sure, we're talking about software so the "shipping" costs are so small that it's hard to even measure on a single download of an app. However there's a whole virtual storefront with curation, ratings, security, payment processing, and the APIs and hardware platform trust that comes along with it. If we go back to the physical store analogy, a lot of indie developers are getting value from being featured in the Apple or Google stores. It's a little like a large national retailer picking up some startup's product to feature in their stores. Or it's like being allowed to open a small store in a mall with major anchors. It means that the mass market will see your product and will trust it better than if you have some small shop off in some weird low rent location. Maybe 30% is too much for this, or maybe the app review process should be better, or maybe developer support should be better, but acting like the platform and the store don't cost anything to maintain, and aren't worth anything seems really naive.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Fine. Please allow alternatives.
  - sjwright 6y ago
    Huh? You can buy full featured smartphones right now that let you sideload apps and alternative app stores. If that matters to you, the alternative is available.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Margins of retail sales are notoriously low. It does not mean though that megastores only add a small markup on top of the producer's price: operating a store is not very cheap.
mattfrommars 6y ago
>Does it really cost Apple anywhere close to $15bn/year to maintain the app store's review process and hosting infrastructure? This.
- hallgrim 6y ago
  I can take comments like this seriously only if you are a full-on convinced communist. “A company making profits!?!? By providing a whole industry with extreme value?!?!? With products people love to spend money on????”
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mensetmanusman 6y ago
The only solution not listed is that unfortunately you have to get the government involved.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
Is it 15% or 50%?
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blunderkid 6y ago
I am an gadget fan. I wouldn’t be caught dead with an Android or a Windows thingy in my hand. Also a small dev. Here is the thing. Apple offers no revenue promise when I publish my app on iOS. If I don’t figure out how to market my app, it will just sit there and rot. But as soon as someone buys my app, I have to pay 15% to Apple. What for? It did NOT help me get my customer. If my app gets featured then may be I ll pay for the purchase bump. But what if I don’t want to be featured if it’s not worth the cut. I am paying plain and simple because Apple has the key to my customers phone. Where I come from, that shit is called extortion.
- Razengan 6y ago
  > Where I come from You’re always free to go back there, and pay for your own bandwidth, hosting your pretty pictures, handling taxes/refunds/reviews, and assuring your potential users that you’re a trustworthy source to download from.
- musicale 6y ago
  > But as soon as someone buys my app, I have to pay 15% to Apple. What for? Is this a trick question? It is the same walled garden model that game consoles have always had; have you noticed that most apps in the iOS store are games? You'll run into the same sort of thing if you want to list your app/game on PSN, Microsoft Store for Xbox, Nintendo eShop - even Google Play, Steam, and Epic game store charge commissions, and brick and mortar stores add markup - the manufacturer or distributor rarely receives the full retail price that the customer pays. The markup or commission exists so that the platform owner (or the retailer) can make money, some of which they use to invest in the platform, operate the store, pay their employees, pay dividends to investors, or just accumulate into a giant Scrooge McDuck-type pile of cash.
  - erik 6y ago
    On the PC, if I don’t want to pay Valve or Epic’s cut, I always have the option selling directly. That’s a significant distinction.
    - 6y ago
Razengan 6y ago
Jesus Bitflipping Christ, talk about being dammed if you do! Apple should just close up the App Store for good and let everyone build their own billion user marketplace from scratch. At this point I’m certain rival companies are paying people to pretend to whine about anything Apple does, to make them do exactly that.
rswail 6y ago
I'd really like to know how much all the people whinging think it would cost to offer the following to developers. Crunch your numbers and show your work: 1. A development platform that includes the toolchains and emulators for all the variations of the Apple hardware/OS environments (including the ability to distribute test versions to a restricted audience) 2. A secure platform for taking payments, including all chargeback risk, local consumer taxation requirements (VAT etc) worldwide. 3. A secure platform for in-app purchases, subscriptions, DRM on content (leave aside the arguments for/against) 4. Mechanisms for secure distribution to employee BYOD of employer specific applications, including capabilities to remove them from departing employees 5. A marketplace with search and discovery (however imperfect) that also provides for customer reviews, screenshots etc Currently all of that (barring the MDM of point 4) costs a developer: * $100/year * 30% of purchase/subscription/in-app revenue
- hcurtiss 6y ago
  Exactly. In many other markets, the retailer takes a full half of the sales prices. For instance, my parents are professional sculptors, and standard gallery commissions are 40-50%.
  - blago 6y ago
    A gallery offers prime-time, often times exclusive, exposure. It puts your work in front of a small, but exclusive, group of high-quality prospects and commands their undivided attention. Apple does no such thing. It offers no exposure in return for their fee. Once published, your app is but an anonymous drop in the sea.
    - hcurtiss 6y ago
      True, but the thing they offer doesn't require thousands of humans to administer either. Renting a building downtown and staffing it with a couple sales people is very different than the army of humans curating apps and developing the software requisite to produce the polished, trusted experience people get from Apple's ecosystem.
electriclove 6y ago
So Apple creates a closed ecosystem and everyone is cool with it for years and now we are demanding that they need to make it an open ecosystem?? Lolol
- electriclove 6y ago
  I don't like the Ebay and PayPal fees and it's not like there is another option, can we get those reduced too? I don't think the fees for selling my goods via Amazon are fair. There aren't many real competitors to Amazon. Can we get those fees reduced? I want to sell my game via Epic or Steam and they are charging too much. Can we get those fees lowered?
rswail 6y ago
I wish I had the problem right now of making sure that my revenue for 2020 doesn't exceed USD1.4m gross/USD1m nett. Oh to have the terrible concern that my monthly revenue next year doesn't exceed USD98K, or that if it does, it's no less than USD120K. My heart bleeds.
jrek 6y ago
I think that a private company making their own hardware product should be allowed to control what third parties get access to their hardware and should be allowed to charge whatever they like for it, and the market will decide whether or not there is any demand for it.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  I think someone who purchases a product should have the right to do with it as they please, and in the case of a computer or phone that means installing and running whatever software they feel like.
  - drstewart 6y ago
    I'd love to sail my Ford Escort to the Bahamas, that should mean Ford needs to support a nautical option on all its cars.
    - HideousKojima 6y ago
      Ford actively preventing you from converting your car into a boat has nothing to do with them supporting such an option.
  - jrek 6y ago
    The truth is we can both think what we like, but my view is the reality (cf. switch, ps5, xbox) and yours is wishful thinking.
eqtn 6y ago
Does apple use this to pay the tax too? In India, there is an 18% tax. Should an app has to pay 18% tax and 15% tax(totaling 33%) to apple?
dang 6y ago
The other (slightly earlier) big thread on this is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135410.
tommilukkarinen 6y ago
I'm a bit slow thinker, so it took me some time to put this into words. This article helped me to do it. Google and Apple app stores are mechanisms which are used prevent, snuffle and destroy competing digital services. They prevent competition by collecting 30% tax. They snuffle competition by setting their own rules and controlling app store visibility. They destroy competition by closing companies from stores. Why it is important, is that smartphones are the most used platform to consume digital services. Digital services can be apps, music or anything distributed digitally. Why it is financially so small business right now, 15Bn for Apple right now, is just that they have not used their full leverage yet. Why you need to make rules for all App stores, for example Facebook virtual reality, is that it is feasible, that these will later become platforms, mainstream customers expect to have services. How it works (if further explanation is needed): 1. If you are offering digital services to consumers or companies, your customers will expect them to be present in both platforms. 2. You have to pay tax, so both of these companies take a cut of your business, which prevents competition. 3. They can add offer the same service, and advertise it over your services, which snuffles competition. 4. Even been closed out by either of these, likely destroys your business. 4 happened to one of my products I'm building a new product, and I think it is likely, that Apple and/or Google will use 3 to compete against me in some timeframe. Even if they don't I will be paying 30% tax forever. Edit: Now that I think about his further, nothing prevents extending their reach to nondigital services as well, such as airbnb sales - they just need a new 'innovation' to the app store rules
pjmlp 6y ago
How have we forgotten how expensive software packages to develop such free to distribute applications were. Or worse, that such software packages actually came with a distribution license, where royalties the way beyond any 2020 "tax" had to be paid back per installation of software developed with such compilers.
todd3834 6y ago
I don’t get why people use the argument that they couldn’t possibly need the revenue from the App Store to keep it running. It isn’t a non profit business. What about all the money they spend on the hardware research and so many many other things. Some initiatives fund others and stock holders are very happy to see a profit. I keep seeing critics, who may also be developers, arguing with developers on why they should be unhappy. The truth is, there are enough happy developers and customers to show that there is a healthy ecosystem. If there wasn’t then it would leave a gaping hole for a competitor. I’m happy to pay for apps and happy to pay my cut for selling apps on the platform. There are benefits to having a closed ecosystem just as there are to an open one. There are trade offs. I’m not sure why anyone complains about the Play store charging similar fees when you can distribute apps on android in other ways. If that is so much better for developers and Apple doesn’t earn their cut then I would expect to see a mass exodus to Android development. I personally prefer developing for iOS and Mac. I don’t mind their fees. I find the customers to be very happy. I appreciate alternative perspectives but the tone of all of these articles complaining about Apple making money off of the ecosystem they created is so off putting to me.
- username90 6y ago
  > There are benefits to having a closed ecosystem Which is why it is good that we simulate competition using legal battles against Apple, since otherwise they have no reason to improve things. Apple wouldn't had reduced their rates like this if not for Epic pressuring them, so the lawsuit against Apple made the world a better place since now Apple is a bit less rent seeking than before.
hijklmno 6y ago
iPhone or any "mobile" phones are not actually phone's. They used to be, at a point in the distant past. With internet connection and a processor more powerful than the computing systems of the past era, these devices have to reclassified as mobile computing devices. Then these predatory tactics would be subject to antitrust, and the perpetrators can be brought to justice. Or, is the legal system and the elected representatives so inept to act on behalf of people?
- jrek 6y ago
  Where does this notion that classifying phones as a 'general computing device' magically strengthens the anti-trust case against apple come from?
skc 6y ago
I'd bet a pretty significant number of current mobile apps would do just fine as PWAs, rendering this whole kerfuffle moot. More developers should be pushing for improvements in web tech rather than just accepting whatever Apple decrees.
- radiKal07 6y ago
  Apple is very hostile towards PWA, lots of stuff unsupported by Safari
  - skc 6y ago
    Yep, and I have no idea why THIS isn't the subject of more scrutiny from developers. Their hostility is pretty blatant.
willtim 6y ago
Developers: please start supporting and advocating Linux, then we'll all have (hopefully) a better alternative future.
bni 6y ago
This article has the timeline wrong about Steam. Steam was established earlier than the App Store, and everything you buy there is very locked down to the Steam platform. Try uninstalling Steam and still play your bought games and they wont work. Also Steam has an even higher rate than 30%. Yet Steam get a free pass in most rants like this, why is that?
- Heliosmaster 6y ago
  Because you can sell your games to the same customers, same machines, outside of Steam. You can't do that with iOS.
- teraflop 6y ago
  This is flat-out false. It's true that many games on Steam use DRM of some kind (either through Steam itself or a third party) but there are many others that don't, and can be used with no restrictions once you download them with the Steam client. This page is just a quick Google away: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
- Ndymium 6y ago
  Do you have a source for Steam's rates? From what I can find by searching, it seems to be 30%, going down to 25 or 20% for more popular games.
- toast0 6y ago
  From other threads, Steam lets developers generate steam codes for free, and sell them elsewhere; it only gets its cut if the sale happens on Steam. They also don't have a history of making inconsistent review decisions that seem to be business oriented rather than customer oriented. I'm sure there's some examples, but most of the publicized removals have been for things like totally broken in unfun ways games, and games where a totally different game was published in the same slot. Often, customers get refunded for purchases when things like that happen. I think Steam has also earned a fair amount of goodwill by not being as terrible as most other game download services, but maybe that's just my perspective.
- dandellion 6y ago
mikl 6y ago
> For decades, developers were able to create and distribute their software, whether free or for a fee, to anyone with a PC or laptop. But if you wanted to get paid, whether by going through a distributor or building your own payment- and billing system, it would cost you way more than just 15% (especially if you factor in the lost time dealing with all that). Global distribution, sales support and payment, for just 15%, that’s possibly the best deal that’s ever been available to developers.
- chaostheory 6y ago
  Totally agree. I also wanted to add: > For decades, malware were able to run rampant on anyone's PC or laptop. There are several other important reasons why restrictive app gardens exist like better and more simplified UX for everyone else who wasn't technical.
bugsur 6y ago
>Developers should be free to choose the payment processing service that best serves their needs, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or Apple's built-in offering. Apple's payment processor should be chosen because it's better, not because you have no other choice. I'd like to note though, that users also should be free to choose the processing service that best serves their needs, not because they have no other choice. I'd much prefer paying with Apple Pay instead of Paypal. If Apple ever allows developers to provide different payment processors, I hope they make it mandatory for developers to also include Apple Pay as one of the options (just like they did with Sign in with Apple).
aienstein 6y ago
Teach a man to write on paper and he will tire his arm out, but teach a man how to blog and he will spew nonsense all day long and gain followers!
disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Sigh. > The 30% number was based on what video game consoles were charging developers. Actually, the 30% number was based on what Facebook were charging developers. Like I get that we're all nerds here, and thus hate FB, but can we at least remember that the reason the west has F2P games everywhere is because of Zynga, Facebook and Farmville?
macspoofing 6y ago
Deflection? I thought it was a big 'FU' to Epic.
NoblePublius 6y ago
I have purchased 25 Acer Swift 3 laptops this year for my staff. They cost about $650. They come preinstalled with unnecessary Norton antivirus software (which defaults the installation of a lighter version in its standard uninstall flow), Dropbox, Firefox, ads for Netflix and Amazon on the desktop, and a persistent “Would you like to use Skype?” popup program separate from Skype itself. Consumers have a clear choice to tolerate this bloat, or to pay more to Apple to avoid it and ensure only high quality software runs on their computers.
ho_schi 6y ago
The definition of general computing devices i.e. Personal Computer (PC) is correct and applies to smartphones. Making open usability a legal requirement makes sense and is what we need already for a long time. The difference between a cellphone and a smartphone is that the former is an appliance and the later a portable general purpose computer. @John Luxford. Thanks!
AlexandrB 6y ago
At least it's better than what Steam did, which is cut its rates on high-revenue games but keep the 30% cut on small, indie titles[1]. [1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/12/01/steam-taking-smaller-sales-cut-from-bigger-games/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/12/01/steam-taking-sma...
danielscrubs 6y ago
I’ve said it before. Because Apple has that tax the incentive to create an alternative OS is very very high and it needs to be because it’s a monumental task. So the question is: do you want to be stuck with iOS and Android forever (lower incentives by governmental demands) or do you want to see a new player in the market in a decade or two?
HeavyStorm 6y ago
I can be wrong, but I believe that Steam predates Apple Store.
truyou 6y ago
These days im hounded by apple marketing reps begging me to spend money advertising in the app store. So now we pay for access (yearly fee), discovery (apple ads) and if we happen to get anyone to pay (apple tax). Tim Crook!
emdax 6y ago
Important to remember: 30% is an issue, but unilateral control to ban, censor, and "pull" entire businesses offline on a whim is even more scary and dangerous.
hda2 6y ago
I really hope governments crack down hard on companies like Apple and Nintendo. You shouldn't not be allowed to force control of the device after you sell it if the customer.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
I think this can be relevant talks about Hinkley Point C and raising price and compares it with other options. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lg73SDYUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lg73SDYUw

599 points by lux 6y ago

I've been an Apple developer for decades, but the last few years have been exhausting and I'm ready for a break. So I'm switching 100% to Linux development. For now that means contracting work for others, who are integrating Linux into their systems (embedded), but as soon as I start seeing a viable way to get paid to build Linux-only software for a mass market, I'll take it. Personally, I think the old models work fine on Linux: shareware/freeware, donation-ware, simple/cheap licensing terms, etc. I wonder what the SublimeText and Reaper guys get for their Linux builds? I'm sure it is not insignificant, but I'm not sure its significant...

jimbob45 6y ago

>Now that Microsoft and Apple have introduced app stores on Windows and macOS, they plan to slowly erode our freedom on PCs too so that they can reap the same financial benefits on our labour on all computing platforms I haven’t seen any indication that MS is trending in this direction, nor could I envision how they would go about doing such a thing. Fuck Apple though. Rent-seeking scum.

lux 6y ago
Right you are! My mistake on including them as an example there. I should fix that. Edit: While they're not taking the same fee (honestly, 5% is pretty great!), they are the original company recognized for their "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. I'm super impressed with Microsoft's turnaround on open source, but I'm still leery of them long-term, especially if leadership changes down the road.
- patrec 6y ago
  He's not right. Windows comes with "telemetry" (read spyware) you cannot disable (unless you got a corporate version). Also UEFI has not exactly been without controversy.
  - partiallypro 6y ago
    What does collecting telemetry have to do with walled garden ecosystems that are used to squeeze every ounce of profit out of developers? Doesn't even makes sense.
    - patrec 6y ago
      So you think, sure Microsoft may lock users out of control of their own computers when it serves their monetization interests but they would never do anything so crass as control third party developer access in order to squeeze profit out of them?
      - patrec 6y ago
        Ex-Microsofty Gabe must have been pretty paranoid when he decided to bootstrap a linux based gaming platform out of fear of being locked out by Microsoft.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/11/17/meet-the-microsoft-pluton-processor-the-security-chip-designed-for-the-future-of-windows-pcs/ https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/11/17/meet-the-...
  - my123 6y ago
    That's an improved TPM/TPM successor. Those don't lock you out of anything Secure Boot wise, it's just not what they're designed for.
    - BoorishBears 6y ago
      By that logic T2 is also "just an improved TPM/TPM successor". It's not hard to infer the direction that MS is going with this concept.
tomerico 6y ago
Microsoft is definitely doing maneuvers in that direction - see this for example https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-to-permit-block-on-apps-installing-if-theyre-not-from-microsoft-store/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-to-permit-block-on-...
modeless 6y ago
Windows 10 S is how they would do it. It's optional, for now. But that's mostly because it hasn't been successful. If Microsoft was able to get more apps on the Windows Store, I have no doubt they would start introducing Windows 10 S devices that can't be unlocked to full Windows.
jason0597 6y ago
Have you forgotten about Windows 10 S?

post_break 6y ago

If I make $0 a year I should be able to put the app on my phone without having to pay as well. And not just for 7 days and have to resign it every 7 days.

threeseed 6y ago

We've been seeing these blog posts for over a decade and this doesn't offer anything particularly new. It would be nice to see one that actually offered constructive and workable legal solutions other than "make iPhones general computing devices" even though the concept has no meaning in law and would bleed into other industries.

lux 6y ago
My point was to collect the arguments in one place (to clarify my own thinking), and that we need to establish that legal definition already. We've run the "unregulated app stores" experiment for long enough, now it's time to do the work of defining these things and regulating them properly. I'm interested in the bleed into other industries though, and would love some examples. It's important that laws be general enough not to be too targeted against particular actors but also to avoid side effects that adversely affect others in the process.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  to clarify my own thinking If it was just to clarify your own thinking, then why did you submit it to HN?
  - lux 6y ago
    Essays by definition are to clarify one's own thinking. Why does anyone share them with others? Because we think they contribute something of value to others.
- lovemenot 6y ago
  BeMye
lukifer 6y ago
> bleed into other industries And what would be so bad about this exactly? The comparison is oft made with closed stores for gaming consoles; but I don't see why regulating console manufacturers to require side-loading or third-party stores would be such a bad thing. There's no law of the universe which dictates that their business model be per-unit loss-leaders for game revenue splits.

matsemann 6y ago

but you pay for the distribution / tools / OS etc is a common sentiment I see here. No, the yearly fee should pay for that, and the user for the OS. And anyways, what if I don't want to, why cant I distribute it myself?

jjtheblunt 6y ago
Is the cold rational Apple answer that you signed a contract when enrolling as an Apple Dev?
- damnyou 6y ago
  A contract can be declared unenforceable in court if it is against public policy: https://www.upcounsel.com/what-contracts-are-considered-to-be-contrary-to-public-policy https://www.upcounsel.com/what-contracts-are-considered-to-b... The goal should be to make Apple's app store model against public policy.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > The goal should be to make Apple's app store model against public policy. Policy should not be written to attack an individual company that for some reason you've got a beef with.
    - zeusk 6y ago
      It's not just Apple, I think the fight shouldn't be about just fee but allowing 3rd party stores and applications that don't have an approval stamp from Apple. Imagine, if your Tesla refused to move if you didn't use Tesla approved tires which cost 30% more because Tesla charges the tire manufacturer 30% for approving them?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > Imagine, if your Tesla refused to move if you didn't use Tesla approved tires which cost 30% more because Tesla charges the tire manufacturer 30% for approving them? Fine by me. Their business what they charge and how their product is designed, not mine. As long as there's a competitor. And there is.

nickff 6y ago

I understand that 30% is big, and does have an impact on some business models, but it also acts to align the incentives of the platform-developer with those of the app developer. The fact that Apple makes a bunch of money off apps makes it beneficial for them to continue supporting the ecosystem, by providing APIs, functionality, and other support. What surprises me most about Apple's model is why they don't offer better support to developers. It seems that iOS the 'rich users', whereas Android has the 'cheap users', so Apple doesn't even bother improving the developer experience.

lux 6y ago
Cost of framework development is a fair point, and they do continue to add things like ARKit, the Swift language, and a million new submenus in Xcode ;) But that's been true of all OSes for decades and doesn't make iOS specialized compared to macOS or any more deserving of 30% of every developer's gross profits.
- nickff 6y ago
  I never said anything about compensating Apple for framework development costs; my point is about aligning incentives.
- banachtarski 6y ago
  How is that a fair point. Developers don't WANT bespoke frameworks that lock you into a single ecosystem. We would obviously prefer open standards and specifications supported by multiple vendors. The popularity of frameworks such as Flutter and QT or APIs such as OpenGL and Vulkan prove that. The SDKs Apple chooses to provide are entirely elective on their part and we shouldn't pretend that as developers, they deserve to charge us for this.
giobox 6y ago
There have been measurable improvements over years to things like app review times etc, significantly so in some cases. Whether _any_ review process in a store the size of Apple's can justify taking 30% is not obvious to me. As size goes up, costs usually go down in a healthy market. The App Store is barely recognizable in scale vs launch day, but financial terms for developers have barely moved.

ajharrison 6y ago

Do people think Apple is running a fucking charity? It’s business. Grow up, deal with it.

andrewjl 6y ago

> General computing platforms should be protected from such predatory practices by manufacturers through strong government regulations. I find it much more plausible that any regulations will end up entrenching market incumbents and closing off potential avenues for disruption. In other words, this can only make the situation worse or keep it somewhat the same, it won't make it better. > Stifling innovation isn't good for anyone, and as more and more people become software developers, this really just hurts the small guys ... Indie developers need protection from monopolistic and anti-competitive practices from larger players in the market through strong government regulation, not a discount on their first $1m in sales. Indie developers aren't the only stakeholders here, platform users are as well and any regulation will need to take into account their needs and interests. In purely numerical terms, the latter group outnumbers the indies by 100x or more. Realistically speaking, whose needs will any regulation give more precedence? The top concern amongst tech users today is security, whether its security of personal data or a more diffuse sense of security concerning the integrity of public discourse conducted online. It's very hard to imagine any kind of regulation protecting indie devs without also introducing regulations on the distribution process itself, in order to protect end users in these two areas. The only thing harder to disrupt than a commercially dominant player is a commercially dominant player ensconced in a complex regulatory regime. This is not a reality that indie developers or myself (personally), particularly like, but it's the reality we have. Ignoring it won't make it go away.

paxys 6y ago
> I find it much more plausible that any regulations will end up entrenching market incumbents and closing off potential avenues for disruption Let's face it there are no disruptions incoming in the mobile OS space, similar to how no new desktop OS has been able to get significant marketshare since the 80s.
- andrewjl 6y ago
  I don't share the pessimistic view mostly because there's a lot we do not know. The shape of all possible disruptions is hard to predict a priori. And desktop OS is nowhere near as dominant as it once was so significant market share there really doesn't matter as much as it once did.

pryelluw 6y ago

I just want to be able to run and distribute my own apps. It’s ridiculous and just plain criminal that this is not possible. Apple does not own my device and does not get to dictate what I do with it. Phones are so locked down that they are a real threat to personal computing and software engineering. The day where apple stops indies from publishing apps is near.

benbristow 6y ago
> Apple does not get to dictate what I do with it Sounds like they already do...
echelon 6y ago
This is where antitrust attention needs to be laser focused. Our freedoms are at stake, and this should be our rallying point. The iPhone is a general purpose computer (email, photos, dating, payments, reminders, docs, web, games, etc.) and computer manufacturers should not be allowed to control the only means to run software on computers they sell. This is less drastic than breaking the company up into constituent parts. But honestly we ought to also be asking ourselves why a computer manufacturer gets to be a film studio and distribution chain.
- zepto 6y ago
  We are. Just don’t buy an iPhone. You never seem to explain why that freedom doesn’t suffice.
  - zeusk 6y ago
    Because it is essentially a duopoly, and switching platforms is not as easy as just not buying an iPhone. For example, I recently broke the screen on my iPhone 7 and for this exact reason (not being able to run some Apple unapproved applications on my device) wanted to switch to an Android, but when I tried one out for a couple days * My BMW would not show music cover art because only Apple had a deal with them in early 2010s * iMessage no longer worked and I had to maintain an iPad for communicating to friends who only use iMessage and Facetime * Macbook was suddenly a lot less interoperable with the phone - the easiest way to transfer photos was to push them to Google photos and download them on the mac * Homepod speaker would no longer be controllable from my phone * Apple obviously won't publish AppleTV(Remote) or HomeKit apps for android

causality0 6y ago

We need digital consumer rights laws. Badly.

diebeforei485 6y ago

They would have so much goodwill across the board if they dropped it to something like 10%. Apple has made these mistakes before (eg. the iBooks price collusion lawsuit).

granzymes 6y ago
If they had done the exact same thing they did today but settled on 10% instead of 15% I am extremely confident that the response from HN would have been the same.
- sjwright 6y ago
  And that's despite 15% likely being near to or below cost for Apple. Remember, Apple sells a LOT of store credit through retail gift cards where Apple probably sees less than 80 cents in the dollar.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  Oh I meant 10% for everyone, not just for "small businesses".
swiley 6y ago
It could be 0%, they could pay developers to put apps on the app store and most people would still hate them because the money isn't the problem. Me not being able to recompile colloquy with a different push server and install it on my phone is the problem!

cup_of_joe 6y ago

If one considers the App Store as a marketplace and that it can be considered analogous to E-Commerce marketplaces, then a 15% fee is actually directly in-line with the standard set by Amazon and Walmart.com.

ksec 6y ago
Except consumers gets to choose between Buying from Amazon and Walmart.com, or many other smaller E-Commerce Marketplaces. Also Note 15% fee from WalMart and Amazon includes many cost and delivery. Some comments likes to use Freedom or General Computing devices as argument. I think those are beside the point. The question is for most consumers right now, and in the future, are Digital Market Place, Smartphone and Apps considered essential as part of our daily lives. If true, the questions becomes if one company holding 50%+ of market shares and 70% of Total Apps Revenue in a market that has near monopolistic market power requires some form of regulation.

tehlike 6y ago

Apple didn't lose much by reducing commission to 15%, when they are top heavy, anyways. Based on one of the articles (not sure about how trustable data was, though), while the new commission effects 98% of developers, the net revenue impact would be on the order of a percent or two.

bonestamp2 6y ago

If they would produce good documentation we might actually build native apps instead of web apps.

newbie578 6y ago

Change is coming, Apple can feel it (which is why they made this PR move), Epic can feel it, some devolepers can feel it (complaining about Apple and Google a year ago felt like talking to a wall), yet some people on HN can’t feel it, or just plain refuse to. It is about time Apple gets pulled down to Earth and faces scrutiny like all other major companies do.

Valkhyr 6y ago

I cannot disagree with a single word in that article. I would also go further and mandate that all general purpose computing devices should be forced to have an unlocked (or easily unlockable) boot loader so you can easily acquire full control over your device and even install competing OSes.

m4rtink 6y ago
Agreed, anything less that that is not just dangerous but also really inefficient & unecological, as devices abandoned by manufacturers can't be often easily repurposed for other uses due to locked bootloaders.

jhunter1016 6y ago

Apple's reluctance to fully supporting progressive web apps makes me think they see PWAs as a real threat. As long as the APIs continue to mature, I could see PWAs being the the thing that breaks down the gatekeeper wall for apps and returns the web to being open again.

nottorp 6y ago
My battery thanks them, though...

ogre_codes 6y ago

I love how here on HN this is being painted as if it were some heinous underhanded move by Apple. Meanwhile in my Twitter thread, every single Indie developer I follow is over the moon about it. Whatever the end goal here, Apple is helping the smallest developers the most here. And yes, there are a lot of places Apple can do better, but the cynicism around this is overblown.

swiley 6y ago
Right, the app store is an issue for users not developers already invested in Apple's platform. That's probably a PR goal for Apple, to turn users and developers for other platforms into one group and iOS developers into another group.
lux 6y ago
This absolutely improves the situation for a lot of indie developers, but praising Apple for it is short-term thinking. It's a strategic move, and it's not cynical to recognize that.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > praising Apple for it is short-term thinking. Praising Apple for doing the right thing for small developers is not "Short Term thinking". It's a good first step, It should be recognized as such. There is a lot of room for improvement, but whining about something that puts millions of dollars in the pockets of indie developers is just not cool.
  - zamadatix 6y ago
    Something can be better than it was before and still not be good enough. There is no need to cast things in a single light.
  - mchusma 6y ago
    The issue is they are trying to make 15% seem reasonable. 1.5% is unreasonable. They provide developers negative value, it's just a tax on all transactions.

drawkbox 6y ago

The only concern I have is Apple has incentive to promote higher take apps over lower take, so they benefit more from pushing the 30% take apps over the 15% take. As long as we don't end up with a tiered App Store like XBOX Arcade or Steam Greenlight back in the day then all good. If the 15% apps become pushed less that is no fun. There is some benefit to a standard price market, most stores are 30% [1]. Tencent MyApp was even 55% until 2019 [1]. Epic Games is 12% but they said they are profitable around 7%-8% [1][2]. Steam, Sony, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all 30%[1]. If everyone went to 15-20% across the board it would be better. I am concerned about tiering of the market and down the line lower take apps being less pushed. [1] https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20200903/369516/Are_the_store_wars_really_upon_us.php https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SimonCarless/20200903/369516... [2] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341249/Heres_why_the_Epic_Games_Store_takes_a_12_percent_revenue_cut_from_devs.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/341249/Heres_why_the_Epi...

reilly3000 6y ago

I think most people forget that Apple is paying the merchant processing fees on all of these transactions. On a $0.99 sale typical rates are 3% + $0.30. I’m quite certain Apple doesn’t pay full rate, but it’s entirely probable that they lose money on smaller transactions. They have soft costs for app review and distribution but I can’t imagine they are significant whatsoever relative to merchant fees. This is a fantastic loss leader to build marketshare and nurture app growth. They will probably have a lot of fledgling devs plow that incremental money right back into ads in a ‘virtuous’ cycle.

reader_mode 6y ago
Thing is none of this would be up to guess work if we had competition enabled. If you could offer "Pay with Stripe" alongside "Pay with Apple" and eliminate the forced price equality you would quickly see the user preference and value of Apple infrastructure/security/convenience.
isthatsoup 6y ago
Apple wouldn't be paying anything remotely like that rate - if they are, everybody involved in negotiating it needs to be fired. You're off by several orders of magnitude, therefore your conclusions based on the wrongly assumed cost structure are baseless.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Do you have any data to back that up? Off by "several orders of magnitude" means instead of Apple paying the standard $0.33 on a $1 app, they would be paying $0.00033 (that's three orders of magnitude smaller) or less, because that's how orders of magnitude work. Which is nonsensical considering it's easy to get a credit card that pays back $0.02 in rewards, which sets a reasonable floor. Sounds like your claim is the baseless one here, sorry. I would be curious to know what large online retailers do negotiate paying on single $1 purchases from someone who knows, though.
  - isthatsoup 6y ago

s1mon 6y ago

I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but the most basic thing I do not get about these complaints is if the people making them have ever seen the markup and overhead that goes into retail sales of physical products? It's not like I can manufacture a product, send it to Walmart or Bestbuy or whatever, and expect them to only add a few percent on top for credit card processing fees, so I can reap almost all the potential profit. I realize what some developers are looking for is a way to directly reach consumers. Have they ever tried to ship physical products to consumers? Logistics takes a lot of effort. Sure, we're talking about software so the "shipping" costs are so small that it's hard to even measure on a single download of an app. However there's a whole virtual storefront with curation, ratings, security, payment processing, and the APIs and hardware platform trust that comes along with it. If we go back to the physical store analogy, a lot of indie developers are getting value from being featured in the Apple or Google stores. It's a little like a large national retailer picking up some startup's product to feature in their stores. Or it's like being allowed to open a small store in a mall with major anchors. It means that the mass market will see your product and will trust it better than if you have some small shop off in some weird low rent location. Maybe 30% is too much for this, or maybe the app review process should be better, or maybe developer support should be better, but acting like the platform and the store don't cost anything to maintain, and aren't worth anything seems really naive.

fomine3 6y ago
Fine. Please allow alternatives.
- sjwright 6y ago
  Huh? You can buy full featured smartphones right now that let you sideload apps and alternative app stores. If that matters to you, the alternative is available.
nine_k 6y ago
Margins of retail sales are notoriously low. It does not mean though that megastores only add a small markup on top of the producer's price: operating a store is not very cheap.

mattfrommars 6y ago

>Does it really cost Apple anywhere close to $15bn/year to maintain the app store's review process and hosting infrastructure? This.

hallgrim 6y ago
I can take comments like this seriously only if you are a full-on convinced communist. “A company making profits!?!? By providing a whole industry with extreme value?!?!? With products people love to spend money on????”

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mensetmanusman 6y ago

The only solution not listed is that unfortunately you have to get the government involved.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

Is it 15% or 50%?

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blunderkid 6y ago

I am an gadget fan. I wouldn’t be caught dead with an Android or a Windows thingy in my hand. Also a small dev. Here is the thing. Apple offers no revenue promise when I publish my app on iOS. If I don’t figure out how to market my app, it will just sit there and rot. But as soon as someone buys my app, I have to pay 15% to Apple. What for? It did NOT help me get my customer. If my app gets featured then may be I ll pay for the purchase bump. But what if I don’t want to be featured if it’s not worth the cut. I am paying plain and simple because Apple has the key to my customers phone. Where I come from, that shit is called extortion.

Razengan 6y ago
> Where I come from You’re always free to go back there, and pay for your own bandwidth, hosting your pretty pictures, handling taxes/refunds/reviews, and assuring your potential users that you’re a trustworthy source to download from.
musicale 6y ago
> But as soon as someone buys my app, I have to pay 15% to Apple. What for? Is this a trick question? It is the same walled garden model that game consoles have always had; have you noticed that most apps in the iOS store are games? You'll run into the same sort of thing if you want to list your app/game on PSN, Microsoft Store for Xbox, Nintendo eShop - even Google Play, Steam, and Epic game store charge commissions, and brick and mortar stores add markup - the manufacturer or distributor rarely receives the full retail price that the customer pays. The markup or commission exists so that the platform owner (or the retailer) can make money, some of which they use to invest in the platform, operate the store, pay their employees, pay dividends to investors, or just accumulate into a giant Scrooge McDuck-type pile of cash.
- erik 6y ago
  On the PC, if I don’t want to pay Valve or Epic’s cut, I always have the option selling directly. That’s a significant distinction.
  - 6y ago

Razengan 6y ago

Jesus Bitflipping Christ, talk about being dammed if you do! Apple should just close up the App Store for good and let everyone build their own billion user marketplace from scratch. At this point I’m certain rival companies are paying people to pretend to whine about anything Apple does, to make them do exactly that.

rswail 6y ago

I'd really like to know how much all the people whinging think it would cost to offer the following to developers. Crunch your numbers and show your work: 1. A development platform that includes the toolchains and emulators for all the variations of the Apple hardware/OS environments (including the ability to distribute test versions to a restricted audience) 2. A secure platform for taking payments, including all chargeback risk, local consumer taxation requirements (VAT etc) worldwide. 3. A secure platform for in-app purchases, subscriptions, DRM on content (leave aside the arguments for/against) 4. Mechanisms for secure distribution to employee BYOD of employer specific applications, including capabilities to remove them from departing employees 5. A marketplace with search and discovery (however imperfect) that also provides for customer reviews, screenshots etc Currently all of that (barring the MDM of point 4) costs a developer: * $100/year * 30% of purchase/subscription/in-app revenue

hcurtiss 6y ago
Exactly. In many other markets, the retailer takes a full half of the sales prices. For instance, my parents are professional sculptors, and standard gallery commissions are 40-50%.
- blago 6y ago
  A gallery offers prime-time, often times exclusive, exposure. It puts your work in front of a small, but exclusive, group of high-quality prospects and commands their undivided attention. Apple does no such thing. It offers no exposure in return for their fee. Once published, your app is but an anonymous drop in the sea.
  - hcurtiss 6y ago
    True, but the thing they offer doesn't require thousands of humans to administer either. Renting a building downtown and staffing it with a couple sales people is very different than the army of humans curating apps and developing the software requisite to produce the polished, trusted experience people get from Apple's ecosystem.

electriclove 6y ago

So Apple creates a closed ecosystem and everyone is cool with it for years and now we are demanding that they need to make it an open ecosystem?? Lolol

electriclove 6y ago
I don't like the Ebay and PayPal fees and it's not like there is another option, can we get those reduced too? I don't think the fees for selling my goods via Amazon are fair. There aren't many real competitors to Amazon. Can we get those fees reduced? I want to sell my game via Epic or Steam and they are charging too much. Can we get those fees lowered?

rswail 6y ago

I wish I had the problem right now of making sure that my revenue for 2020 doesn't exceed USD1.4m gross/USD1m nett. Oh to have the terrible concern that my monthly revenue next year doesn't exceed USD98K, or that if it does, it's no less than USD120K. My heart bleeds.

jrek 6y ago

I think that a private company making their own hardware product should be allowed to control what third parties get access to their hardware and should be allowed to charge whatever they like for it, and the market will decide whether or not there is any demand for it.

HideousKojima 6y ago
I think someone who purchases a product should have the right to do with it as they please, and in the case of a computer or phone that means installing and running whatever software they feel like.
- drstewart 6y ago
  I'd love to sail my Ford Escort to the Bahamas, that should mean Ford needs to support a nautical option on all its cars.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    Ford actively preventing you from converting your car into a boat has nothing to do with them supporting such an option.
- jrek 6y ago
  The truth is we can both think what we like, but my view is the reality (cf. switch, ps5, xbox) and yours is wishful thinking.

eqtn 6y ago

Does apple use this to pay the tax too? In India, there is an 18% tax. Should an app has to pay 18% tax and 15% tax(totaling 33%) to apple?

dang 6y ago

The other (slightly earlier) big thread on this is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25135410.

tommilukkarinen 6y ago

I'm a bit slow thinker, so it took me some time to put this into words. This article helped me to do it. Google and Apple app stores are mechanisms which are used prevent, snuffle and destroy competing digital services. They prevent competition by collecting 30% tax. They snuffle competition by setting their own rules and controlling app store visibility. They destroy competition by closing companies from stores. Why it is important, is that smartphones are the most used platform to consume digital services. Digital services can be apps, music or anything distributed digitally. Why it is financially so small business right now, 15Bn for Apple right now, is just that they have not used their full leverage yet. Why you need to make rules for all App stores, for example Facebook virtual reality, is that it is feasible, that these will later become platforms, mainstream customers expect to have services. How it works (if further explanation is needed): 1. If you are offering digital services to consumers or companies, your customers will expect them to be present in both platforms. 2. You have to pay tax, so both of these companies take a cut of your business, which prevents competition. 3. They can add offer the same service, and advertise it over your services, which snuffles competition. 4. Even been closed out by either of these, likely destroys your business. 4 happened to one of my products I'm building a new product, and I think it is likely, that Apple and/or Google will use 3 to compete against me in some timeframe. Even if they don't I will be paying 30% tax forever. Edit: Now that I think about his further, nothing prevents extending their reach to nondigital services as well, such as airbnb sales - they just need a new 'innovation' to the app store rules

pjmlp 6y ago

How have we forgotten how expensive software packages to develop such free to distribute applications were. Or worse, that such software packages actually came with a distribution license, where royalties the way beyond any 2020 "tax" had to be paid back per installation of software developed with such compilers.

todd3834 6y ago

I don’t get why people use the argument that they couldn’t possibly need the revenue from the App Store to keep it running. It isn’t a non profit business. What about all the money they spend on the hardware research and so many many other things. Some initiatives fund others and stock holders are very happy to see a profit. I keep seeing critics, who may also be developers, arguing with developers on why they should be unhappy. The truth is, there are enough happy developers and customers to show that there is a healthy ecosystem. If there wasn’t then it would leave a gaping hole for a competitor. I’m happy to pay for apps and happy to pay my cut for selling apps on the platform. There are benefits to having a closed ecosystem just as there are to an open one. There are trade offs. I’m not sure why anyone complains about the Play store charging similar fees when you can distribute apps on android in other ways. If that is so much better for developers and Apple doesn’t earn their cut then I would expect to see a mass exodus to Android development. I personally prefer developing for iOS and Mac. I don’t mind their fees. I find the customers to be very happy. I appreciate alternative perspectives but the tone of all of these articles complaining about Apple making money off of the ecosystem they created is so off putting to me.

username90 6y ago
> There are benefits to having a closed ecosystem Which is why it is good that we simulate competition using legal battles against Apple, since otherwise they have no reason to improve things. Apple wouldn't had reduced their rates like this if not for Epic pressuring them, so the lawsuit against Apple made the world a better place since now Apple is a bit less rent seeking than before.

hijklmno 6y ago

iPhone or any "mobile" phones are not actually phone's. They used to be, at a point in the distant past. With internet connection and a processor more powerful than the computing systems of the past era, these devices have to reclassified as mobile computing devices. Then these predatory tactics would be subject to antitrust, and the perpetrators can be brought to justice. Or, is the legal system and the elected representatives so inept to act on behalf of people?

jrek 6y ago
Where does this notion that classifying phones as a 'general computing device' magically strengthens the anti-trust case against apple come from?

skc 6y ago

I'd bet a pretty significant number of current mobile apps would do just fine as PWAs, rendering this whole kerfuffle moot. More developers should be pushing for improvements in web tech rather than just accepting whatever Apple decrees.

radiKal07 6y ago
Apple is very hostile towards PWA, lots of stuff unsupported by Safari
- skc 6y ago
  Yep, and I have no idea why THIS isn't the subject of more scrutiny from developers. Their hostility is pretty blatant.

willtim 6y ago

Developers: please start supporting and advocating Linux, then we'll all have (hopefully) a better alternative future.

bni 6y ago

This article has the timeline wrong about Steam. Steam was established earlier than the App Store, and everything you buy there is very locked down to the Steam platform. Try uninstalling Steam and still play your bought games and they wont work. Also Steam has an even higher rate than 30%. Yet Steam get a free pass in most rants like this, why is that?

Heliosmaster 6y ago
Because you can sell your games to the same customers, same machines, outside of Steam. You can't do that with iOS.
teraflop 6y ago
This is flat-out false. It's true that many games on Steam use DRM of some kind (either through Steam itself or a third party) but there are many others that don't, and can be used with no restrictions once you download them with the Steam client. This page is just a quick Google away: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
Ndymium 6y ago
Do you have a source for Steam's rates? From what I can find by searching, it seems to be 30%, going down to 25 or 20% for more popular games.
toast0 6y ago
From other threads, Steam lets developers generate steam codes for free, and sell them elsewhere; it only gets its cut if the sale happens on Steam. They also don't have a history of making inconsistent review decisions that seem to be business oriented rather than customer oriented. I'm sure there's some examples, but most of the publicized removals have been for things like totally broken in unfun ways games, and games where a totally different game was published in the same slot. Often, customers get refunded for purchases when things like that happen. I think Steam has also earned a fair amount of goodwill by not being as terrible as most other game download services, but maybe that's just my perspective.
dandellion 6y ago

mikl 6y ago

> For decades, developers were able to create and distribute their software, whether free or for a fee, to anyone with a PC or laptop. But if you wanted to get paid, whether by going through a distributor or building your own payment- and billing system, it would cost you way more than just 15% (especially if you factor in the lost time dealing with all that). Global distribution, sales support and payment, for just 15%, that’s possibly the best deal that’s ever been available to developers.

chaostheory 6y ago
Totally agree. I also wanted to add: > For decades, malware were able to run rampant on anyone's PC or laptop. There are several other important reasons why restrictive app gardens exist like better and more simplified UX for everyone else who wasn't technical.

bugsur 6y ago

>Developers should be free to choose the payment processing service that best serves their needs, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or Apple's built-in offering. Apple's payment processor should be chosen because it's better, not because you have no other choice. I'd like to note though, that users also should be free to choose the processing service that best serves their needs, not because they have no other choice. I'd much prefer paying with Apple Pay instead of Paypal. If Apple ever allows developers to provide different payment processors, I hope they make it mandatory for developers to also include Apple Pay as one of the options (just like they did with Sign in with Apple).

aienstein 6y ago

Teach a man to write on paper and he will tire his arm out, but teach a man how to blog and he will spew nonsense all day long and gain followers!

disgruntledphd2 6y ago

Sigh. > The 30% number was based on what video game consoles were charging developers. Actually, the 30% number was based on what Facebook were charging developers. Like I get that we're all nerds here, and thus hate FB, but can we at least remember that the reason the west has F2P games everywhere is because of Zynga, Facebook and Farmville?

macspoofing 6y ago

Deflection? I thought it was a big 'FU' to Epic.

NoblePublius 6y ago

I have purchased 25 Acer Swift 3 laptops this year for my staff. They cost about $650. They come preinstalled with unnecessary Norton antivirus software (which defaults the installation of a lighter version in its standard uninstall flow), Dropbox, Firefox, ads for Netflix and Amazon on the desktop, and a persistent “Would you like to use Skype?” popup program separate from Skype itself. Consumers have a clear choice to tolerate this bloat, or to pay more to Apple to avoid it and ensure only high quality software runs on their computers.

ho_schi 6y ago

The definition of general computing devices i.e. Personal Computer (PC) is correct and applies to smartphones. Making open usability a legal requirement makes sense and is what we need already for a long time. The difference between a cellphone and a smartphone is that the former is an appliance and the later a portable general purpose computer. @John Luxford. Thanks!

AlexandrB 6y ago

At least it's better than what Steam did, which is cut its rates on high-revenue games but keep the 30% cut on small, indie titles[1]. [1] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/12/01/steam-taking-smaller-sales-cut-from-bigger-games/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/12/01/steam-taking-sma...

danielscrubs 6y ago

I’ve said it before. Because Apple has that tax the incentive to create an alternative OS is very very high and it needs to be because it’s a monumental task. So the question is: do you want to be stuck with iOS and Android forever (lower incentives by governmental demands) or do you want to see a new player in the market in a decade or two?

HeavyStorm 6y ago

I can be wrong, but I believe that Steam predates Apple Store.

truyou 6y ago

These days im hounded by apple marketing reps begging me to spend money advertising in the app store. So now we pay for access (yearly fee), discovery (apple ads) and if we happen to get anyone to pay (apple tax). Tim Crook!

emdax 6y ago

Important to remember: 30% is an issue, but unilateral control to ban, censor, and "pull" entire businesses offline on a whim is even more scary and dangerous.

hda2 6y ago

I really hope governments crack down hard on companies like Apple and Nintendo. You shouldn't not be allowed to force control of the device after you sell it if the customer.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

I think this can be relevant talks about Hinkley Point C and raising price and compares it with other options. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lg73SDYUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lg73SDYUw