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The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. A sibling comment notes that S

by rdw 6y ago

The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. A sibling comment notes that Steam charged 30% at the time (though some had better deals) but it's worth noting that Steam was not an open platform that anyone could publish on. Much like for consoles, to put a game on Steam you had to have a preexisting relationship with Valve, or try to develop one with no certainty of success. This was also considered a very generous cut because getting on Steam was almost a guarantee of financial success.

mikestew 6y ago
The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. No, it wasn't. I'm not going to dig up links, but one could pop a web site storefront and Fastspring for payment processing (as one example of a company I used) for less than 10% (Fastspring would take something like 6-7%, IIRC). Discovery has always sucked on Apple's store, so no value-add there. In fact, I'd argue that the only value-add one gets out of Apple's store is access to their closed garden. And "50-90%"? Is that in reference to putting software in physical boxes and on CompUSA shelves? Because no mobile publisher charged 90% before Apple's store came along.
- lallysingh 6y ago
  IIRC 50% (60%) was the rate for the app distributor I used for selling my PalmOS app. It was digital download, too. For the Apple case: access to the walled garden is the majority of the benefit. But still, setting up payments, customer service, chargebacks, fees, etc., is nice to have taken care of. 30% nice? Who knows. But more than just the raw payment processor overhead, surely. AFAIK physical boxes are way above 50%.
  - addicted 6y ago
    There were a couple of stores that were more expensive. But there's 2 reasons the comparisons aren't valid: 1) The revolution Apple brought to mobile phones was making them personal computers. So the relevant comparison really should be with personal computers and I doubt any of them had stores that took as much of a cut. 2) More relevant, the vast majority of such app stores which charged 40-50% were optional marketplaces. A customer didn't need to go through them to install an app on their phone (I believe Palm was like this. I'm pretty sure the likes of WinMo allowed many different ways to install apps). So if a marketplace was charging 40-70% it was entirely for the fact that they were bringing a customer to you. If you were able to acquire a customer by yourself, you didn't need to pay anyone any cut. The big problem with Apple's 30% cut has always been that they charge you that amount just for having a user, even if you did all the work to get that user to use and pay for your app. Outside of the maybe 3% credit card fees, Apple provides 0 value. One may argue (as many Apple folks do) that they charge for the frameworks, etc., but that argument is absolutely backwards. Apple creates the frameworks and APIs because they need the apps, not because the apps need them. If Apple was to get rid of its 3rd party APIs and frameworks, so there were no 3rd party apps, it's not the app developers who would suffer because all those users would migrate to Android. It's the iDevices and Apple that would basically disappear. In fact, App developers would be thrilled because now they only need to support 1 Operating system.
    - Retric 6y ago
      1) That’s extremely revisionist thinking, the original iPhone didn’t allow any third party apps. The iPhone was never sold as a computer it was very much just a better UI on a traditional cellphone. 2) Again no, most cellphones at the time where extremely locked down flip phones. Hell, selling ringtones used to be a thing because of how locked down phones where back in the day. Look up what kind of a cut musicians got of that fad.
    - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
      My phone can’t run an IDE or compile code, can’t run solid works, can’t be shared with multiple people, can’t render CGI, can’t mine BTC, and can’t run office, etc. If this is a personal computer, solely because it runs a browser, then the goalposts have shifted dramatically.
      - salamandersauce 6y ago
        It can run Microsoft Office. You can program in a Python IDE and run code (Pythonista). You can create CGI on an iPhone. Most of the limitations you mention like compiling are completely arbitrary and added by Apple. The devices are powerful enough and it's easy enough to do everything on a $300 Android phone.
        yazaddaruvala 6y ago
        I really don’t care much about Androids, I haven’t used/been educated about them in 6 years and don’t plan to. That said, a general purpose personal computer is defined by its advertising not its hardware. My iPhone was never advertised to be able to run any arbitrary binary. The fact it can JIT some version of Python, or run a watered down variant of a program I want does not change what I purchased. In fact my iPhone was advertised as a multi-purpose, specific device, “arbitrarily limited” to my satisfaction, with a walled garden for my personal protection. This is the device I very intentionally purchased and recommended to family and friends! Forcing it to be ruined for billions of customers because a few hundred thousand developers are less happy is not only ok with me, I paid for that privilege, thank you. If “developers” (which I am one of) wanted more open access computing devices, they should have self regulated and ensured viruses, scams, malware, bloat ware, etc were not so common as to drive away every user! Now it’s time to switch jobs, or be successful with a 30% (which hopefully in the future is 3% - I’m happy for you and anyone to push for a reduction in this value). Now is not the time to complain that Apple is anti-competitive and should be forced to ruin a billion customers experiences, given its users are actively inviting Apple to their defense.
- flemhans 6y ago
  I remember considering 1-2% to be fair, for the payment processing. Publishers were an old-fashioned thing and not even considered for the comparison.
svara 6y ago
I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past. The fact that there was this wide open field, where, sure, maybe you paid Microsoft for the OS, but then the rest was up to you. Trade shareware CDs, install stuff from the internet, type in code from a book or whatever, it felt like an infinite open field of possibilities. I guess it's normal that the exciting frontier shifts around, but I really can't believe that it's somehow a good thing in this case.
- alwillis 6y ago
  It’s a 15% cut for developers who makes less than $1 million and for most other developers after year 1 on the App Store.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    This only happened recently after they've had lawsuits and antitrust suits and Congressional interest.
- mason55 6y ago
  You can still do all those things on a computer. And now it’s so easy to put up a web app that I’d argue barriers are much, much lower than when you had to figure out how to get your physical software distributed. The goals of “keep grandpa from getting his life savings stolen by malicious software” and “allow a power user to do whatever they want” can literally never be solved by the same device. If there’s any way to disable protections then the scammers will get grandpa to do it. And the market for grandpas is much larger than the market for tinkerers.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    And the market for grandpas is much larger than the market for tinkerers. This kind of thing has become a meme. It's basically irrelevant. If the market of tinkerers was big enough 20 years ago, it's more than big enough now, and the GPU shortage kind of proves that. It's also an all-or-nothing fallacy -- nobody can protect all financial victims, and restricting the tech device market is probably one of the least effective ways to try. There are much better chokepoints for combatting both malware and fraud than the sanitized amusement park experience.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
It depends of course on how you published. When I was authoring software (over two decades ago) and a company acted as publisher they took 85% of gross. For author/publisher relationships at that time, this was pretty typical (book authors/publishers being the closest analog). Needless to say there was, in addition to the cost of creating and shipping floppies, advertising that the publisher had to cover. Apple's 30% cut seemed fair to me when the App Store arrived. I'm not sure if I would try to ship an iOS app these days though. Not because of Apple's cut but because of the race to the bottom that was unleashed shortly after the App Store gold rush: where now you don't appear to even be able to sell a $0.99 app.
- plater 6y ago
  You are probably right about the cut the publisher took, but the margins are still higher for Apple as they have very low costs of marketing, distribution etc. In fact I think Apple charges way more if you consider the margins. The other problem is of course that no one else can really enter this space. It's now only Apple and Google. It will be very hard for anyone else to enter. There were many more publishers and the competition and differentiation was higher.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
harry8 6y ago
This is such a nonsense justification. You want to sell software you wrote to run on an iphone. You have zero choice. Apple tax your revenue. You want to sell software you wrote to run on a pc. Steam is not your only choice. I am not defending steam or valve here, I've never sold anything using their stuff, nor am I suggesting anything other than that their market power over pc compared to apple's store over the iphone is not remotely comparable. It actually works against you to suggest apple's iphone software store and steam are comparable at all because it's so incredibly bogus. You want to make the case that steam suck too but with loads less market power. Go right ahead. We're listening. You don't need absolute and total market power to be abusive of it. Apple will immediately attempt redefine the market to include android or people spending money on coca cola instead of apple product to suggest that customers have real choice so there is no market power abuse here.
- memetomancer 6y ago
  Are you implying that you feel entitled to sell software on Apple's tightly controlled consumer devices?
  - harry8 6y ago
    I am stating, very clearly, that Apple have massive market power that they are abusing. This is known in economics circles as "market failure" and across the spectrum from Keynsians to Neo-classical economists is seen as a compelling case for regulation. Why are you implying I am saying something different to what I /said/.
    - memetomancer 6y ago
      I don't know much about "Neo-classical economist" circles, but you seemed to be saying something about comparisons to Valve's Steam product. Beyond that, it only seemed like you might be implying the entitlement to sell software on Apple's devices. You certainly didn't /said/ that "Apple have massive market power that they are abusing". I thought my question was pretty straight forward, and it seems like your answer is full of deflection and vitriol. Fair enough- we're on an internet message board after all. But I sure wish you'd draw the line somewhere. Do you feel entitled to sell software on Apple's platform or not? Do you feel equally entitled to sell software on my cable box? my car's dashboard? my thermostat?
harry8 6y ago
"The 30% cut was considered very good at the time." Let me fix this. There was a full range of views. Some considered the 30% cut to be good at the time, some didn't consider it much at all, some considered it to be a criminal abuse of market power. I remember commenting myself that microsoft would be crucified for attempting to tax everyone who wanted to write software for windows 30% of revenue. I don't recall anyone suggesting that was a controversial comment.
- insert_coin 6y ago
  Let me fix this. Microsoft did worse, they did charge more than 30% to everyone that published software for the xbox. People with skin in the game, game publishers, game developers, mobile app developers for nokia, blackberry, samsung, motorola, etc, considered Apple taking "only" 30% to be an excellent deal at the time. It was so good in fact, almost all other store splits collapsed shortly thereafter to the same 30% to compete with Apple. Others complained, sure. I too complain Ferrari charges way too much for customizing the color of the thread of the interior lining on their cars, I don't know why they don't seem bothered.
  - harry8 6y ago
    You don't think there was a range of views. And anyone who disagreed with your view had no skin in the game and so can be ignored. I disagree with that.
    - insert_coin 6y ago
      I know there was a range of views. I'm pointing out not all opinions have the same weight.
      - harry8 6y ago
        Feel free to support the claim that your opinion is supported by everyone that matters with some evidence for that. There were a range of valid opinions held by intelligent people who had "skin in the game" seems to me to be an utterly uncontroversial statement. Your unsupported list is also only one segment of one particular kind of stakeholder in that market. I think this has probably now gone past being useful to anyone if you agree I wish you the best. Otherwise enjoy the last word...
echelon 6y ago
> The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. Why didn't Steve Jobs go with web distribution of first class web apps or allow Flash on his platform? If they truly wanted to be remarkable, this would have been the future. The answer is control. Apple is a cutthroat business just like any other, and their "privacy first" veneer is just a wolf in sheep's clothing. They're playing it up as an attack against Google and Facebook, meanwhile they still phone home about the apps you're running and can shut them off remotely. Microsoft never taxed software on their platform. Jobs had to invent that business model. It flourished like wildflowers thanks to him.
- kyralis 6y ago
  'First class web apps' was precisely how you were supposed to create apps for the first iPhone; the SDK was thrown together over the next year only after the huge demand for writing native apps. The iPhone pushed a bunch of device access web APIs originally explicitly for this reason.
- sosborn 6y ago
  > Why didn't Steve Jobs go with web distribution of first class web apps That was exactly his intent when he announced the iPhone, and he got absolutely obliterated by the internet for it.
  - anoncake 6y ago
    *exactly what he claimed was his intent. There's no way Steve Jobs cared so little about quality he thought web apps were preferable.
- babypuncher 6y ago
  Not allowing Flash on the iPhone is probably the best thing Apple ever did
  - echelon 6y ago
    Destroying an open, low barrier to entry animation and application platform that was used by teenagers to develop and share interactive content? Destroying a way to deliver native-like, cross-platform applications without an app store was good? Jobs did it for control. He didn't want interop between Android and iPhone, and he didn't want any web browser with enough flexibility to do anything sophisticated.
sheeshkebab 6y ago
Bullshit - we were building and publishing mobile apps in the early 2000’s and the top rate was 15%.

by rdw 6y ago

mikestew 6y ago

The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. No, it wasn't. I'm not going to dig up links, but one could pop a web site storefront and Fastspring for payment processing (as one example of a company I used) for less than 10% (Fastspring would take something like 6-7%, IIRC). Discovery has always sucked on Apple's store, so no value-add there. In fact, I'd argue that the only value-add one gets out of Apple's store is access to their closed garden. And "50-90%"? Is that in reference to putting software in physical boxes and on CompUSA shelves? Because no mobile publisher charged 90% before Apple's store came along.

lallysingh 6y ago
IIRC 50% (60%) was the rate for the app distributor I used for selling my PalmOS app. It was digital download, too. For the Apple case: access to the walled garden is the majority of the benefit. But still, setting up payments, customer service, chargebacks, fees, etc., is nice to have taken care of. 30% nice? Who knows. But more than just the raw payment processor overhead, surely. AFAIK physical boxes are way above 50%.
- addicted 6y ago
  There were a couple of stores that were more expensive. But there's 2 reasons the comparisons aren't valid: 1) The revolution Apple brought to mobile phones was making them personal computers. So the relevant comparison really should be with personal computers and I doubt any of them had stores that took as much of a cut. 2) More relevant, the vast majority of such app stores which charged 40-50% were optional marketplaces. A customer didn't need to go through them to install an app on their phone (I believe Palm was like this. I'm pretty sure the likes of WinMo allowed many different ways to install apps). So if a marketplace was charging 40-70% it was entirely for the fact that they were bringing a customer to you. If you were able to acquire a customer by yourself, you didn't need to pay anyone any cut. The big problem with Apple's 30% cut has always been that they charge you that amount just for having a user, even if you did all the work to get that user to use and pay for your app. Outside of the maybe 3% credit card fees, Apple provides 0 value. One may argue (as many Apple folks do) that they charge for the frameworks, etc., but that argument is absolutely backwards. Apple creates the frameworks and APIs because they need the apps, not because the apps need them. If Apple was to get rid of its 3rd party APIs and frameworks, so there were no 3rd party apps, it's not the app developers who would suffer because all those users would migrate to Android. It's the iDevices and Apple that would basically disappear. In fact, App developers would be thrilled because now they only need to support 1 Operating system.
  - Retric 6y ago
    1) That’s extremely revisionist thinking, the original iPhone didn’t allow any third party apps. The iPhone was never sold as a computer it was very much just a better UI on a traditional cellphone. 2) Again no, most cellphones at the time where extremely locked down flip phones. Hell, selling ringtones used to be a thing because of how locked down phones where back in the day. Look up what kind of a cut musicians got of that fad.
  - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
    My phone can’t run an IDE or compile code, can’t run solid works, can’t be shared with multiple people, can’t render CGI, can’t mine BTC, and can’t run office, etc. If this is a personal computer, solely because it runs a browser, then the goalposts have shifted dramatically.
    - salamandersauce 6y ago
      It can run Microsoft Office. You can program in a Python IDE and run code (Pythonista). You can create CGI on an iPhone. Most of the limitations you mention like compiling are completely arbitrary and added by Apple. The devices are powerful enough and it's easy enough to do everything on a $300 Android phone.
      - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
        I really don’t care much about Androids, I haven’t used/been educated about them in 6 years and don’t plan to. That said, a general purpose personal computer is defined by its advertising not its hardware. My iPhone was never advertised to be able to run any arbitrary binary. The fact it can JIT some version of Python, or run a watered down variant of a program I want does not change what I purchased. In fact my iPhone was advertised as a multi-purpose, specific device, “arbitrarily limited” to my satisfaction, with a walled garden for my personal protection. This is the device I very intentionally purchased and recommended to family and friends! Forcing it to be ruined for billions of customers because a few hundred thousand developers are less happy is not only ok with me, I paid for that privilege, thank you. If “developers” (which I am one of) wanted more open access computing devices, they should have self regulated and ensured viruses, scams, malware, bloat ware, etc were not so common as to drive away every user! Now it’s time to switch jobs, or be successful with a 30% (which hopefully in the future is 3% - I’m happy for you and anyone to push for a reduction in this value). Now is not the time to complain that Apple is anti-competitive and should be forced to ruin a billion customers experiences, given its users are actively inviting Apple to their defense.
flemhans 6y ago
I remember considering 1-2% to be fair, for the payment processing. Publishers were an old-fashioned thing and not even considered for the comparison.

svara 6y ago

I can't help but feel like having it this way is breaking one of the huge reasons that made computers so absurdly exciting and enticing in the past. The fact that there was this wide open field, where, sure, maybe you paid Microsoft for the OS, but then the rest was up to you. Trade shareware CDs, install stuff from the internet, type in code from a book or whatever, it felt like an infinite open field of possibilities. I guess it's normal that the exciting frontier shifts around, but I really can't believe that it's somehow a good thing in this case.

alwillis 6y ago
It’s a 15% cut for developers who makes less than $1 million and for most other developers after year 1 on the App Store.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  This only happened recently after they've had lawsuits and antitrust suits and Congressional interest.
mason55 6y ago
You can still do all those things on a computer. And now it’s so easy to put up a web app that I’d argue barriers are much, much lower than when you had to figure out how to get your physical software distributed. The goals of “keep grandpa from getting his life savings stolen by malicious software” and “allow a power user to do whatever they want” can literally never be solved by the same device. If there’s any way to disable protections then the scammers will get grandpa to do it. And the market for grandpas is much larger than the market for tinkerers.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  And the market for grandpas is much larger than the market for tinkerers. This kind of thing has become a meme. It's basically irrelevant. If the market of tinkerers was big enough 20 years ago, it's more than big enough now, and the GPU shortage kind of proves that. It's also an all-or-nothing fallacy -- nobody can protect all financial victims, and restricting the tech device market is probably one of the least effective ways to try. There are much better chokepoints for combatting both malware and fraud than the sanitized amusement park experience.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

It depends of course on how you published. When I was authoring software (over two decades ago) and a company acted as publisher they took 85% of gross. For author/publisher relationships at that time, this was pretty typical (book authors/publishers being the closest analog). Needless to say there was, in addition to the cost of creating and shipping floppies, advertising that the publisher had to cover. Apple's 30% cut seemed fair to me when the App Store arrived. I'm not sure if I would try to ship an iOS app these days though. Not because of Apple's cut but because of the race to the bottom that was unleashed shortly after the App Store gold rush: where now you don't appear to even be able to sell a $0.99 app.

plater 6y ago
You are probably right about the cut the publisher took, but the margins are still higher for Apple as they have very low costs of marketing, distribution etc. In fact I think Apple charges way more if you consider the margins. The other problem is of course that no one else can really enter this space. It's now only Apple and Google. It will be very hard for anyone else to enter. There were many more publishers and the competition and differentiation was higher.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

harry8 6y ago

This is such a nonsense justification. You want to sell software you wrote to run on an iphone. You have zero choice. Apple tax your revenue. You want to sell software you wrote to run on a pc. Steam is not your only choice. I am not defending steam or valve here, I've never sold anything using their stuff, nor am I suggesting anything other than that their market power over pc compared to apple's store over the iphone is not remotely comparable. It actually works against you to suggest apple's iphone software store and steam are comparable at all because it's so incredibly bogus. You want to make the case that steam suck too but with loads less market power. Go right ahead. We're listening. You don't need absolute and total market power to be abusive of it. Apple will immediately attempt redefine the market to include android or people spending money on coca cola instead of apple product to suggest that customers have real choice so there is no market power abuse here.

memetomancer 6y ago
Are you implying that you feel entitled to sell software on Apple's tightly controlled consumer devices?
- harry8 6y ago
  I am stating, very clearly, that Apple have massive market power that they are abusing. This is known in economics circles as "market failure" and across the spectrum from Keynsians to Neo-classical economists is seen as a compelling case for regulation. Why are you implying I am saying something different to what I /said/.
  - memetomancer 6y ago
    I don't know much about "Neo-classical economist" circles, but you seemed to be saying something about comparisons to Valve's Steam product. Beyond that, it only seemed like you might be implying the entitlement to sell software on Apple's devices. You certainly didn't /said/ that "Apple have massive market power that they are abusing". I thought my question was pretty straight forward, and it seems like your answer is full of deflection and vitriol. Fair enough- we're on an internet message board after all. But I sure wish you'd draw the line somewhere. Do you feel entitled to sell software on Apple's platform or not? Do you feel equally entitled to sell software on my cable box? my car's dashboard? my thermostat?

harry8 6y ago

"The 30% cut was considered very good at the time." Let me fix this. There was a full range of views. Some considered the 30% cut to be good at the time, some didn't consider it much at all, some considered it to be a criminal abuse of market power. I remember commenting myself that microsoft would be crucified for attempting to tax everyone who wanted to write software for windows 30% of revenue. I don't recall anyone suggesting that was a controversial comment.

insert_coin 6y ago
Let me fix this. Microsoft did worse, they did charge more than 30% to everyone that published software for the xbox. People with skin in the game, game publishers, game developers, mobile app developers for nokia, blackberry, samsung, motorola, etc, considered Apple taking "only" 30% to be an excellent deal at the time. It was so good in fact, almost all other store splits collapsed shortly thereafter to the same 30% to compete with Apple. Others complained, sure. I too complain Ferrari charges way too much for customizing the color of the thread of the interior lining on their cars, I don't know why they don't seem bothered.
- harry8 6y ago
  You don't think there was a range of views. And anyone who disagreed with your view had no skin in the game and so can be ignored. I disagree with that.
  - insert_coin 6y ago
    I know there was a range of views. I'm pointing out not all opinions have the same weight.
    - harry8 6y ago
      Feel free to support the claim that your opinion is supported by everyone that matters with some evidence for that. There were a range of valid opinions held by intelligent people who had "skin in the game" seems to me to be an utterly uncontroversial statement. Your unsupported list is also only one segment of one particular kind of stakeholder in that market. I think this has probably now gone past being useful to anyone if you agree I wish you the best. Otherwise enjoy the last word...

echelon 6y ago

> The 30% cut was considered very good at the time. It was way better than the 50-90% cut that traditional publishers would take. Why didn't Steve Jobs go with web distribution of first class web apps or allow Flash on his platform? If they truly wanted to be remarkable, this would have been the future. The answer is control. Apple is a cutthroat business just like any other, and their "privacy first" veneer is just a wolf in sheep's clothing. They're playing it up as an attack against Google and Facebook, meanwhile they still phone home about the apps you're running and can shut them off remotely. Microsoft never taxed software on their platform. Jobs had to invent that business model. It flourished like wildflowers thanks to him.

kyralis 6y ago
'First class web apps' was precisely how you were supposed to create apps for the first iPhone; the SDK was thrown together over the next year only after the huge demand for writing native apps. The iPhone pushed a bunch of device access web APIs originally explicitly for this reason.
sosborn 6y ago
> Why didn't Steve Jobs go with web distribution of first class web apps That was exactly his intent when he announced the iPhone, and he got absolutely obliterated by the internet for it.
- anoncake 6y ago
  *exactly what he claimed was his intent. There's no way Steve Jobs cared so little about quality he thought web apps were preferable.
babypuncher 6y ago
Not allowing Flash on the iPhone is probably the best thing Apple ever did
- echelon 6y ago
  Destroying an open, low barrier to entry animation and application platform that was used by teenagers to develop and share interactive content? Destroying a way to deliver native-like, cross-platform applications without an app store was good? Jobs did it for control. He didn't want interop between Android and iPhone, and he didn't want any web browser with enough flexibility to do anything sophisticated.

sheeshkebab 6y ago

Bullshit - we were building and publishing mobile apps in the early 2000’s and the top rate was 15%.