6 ms·

Developers can use their own payment systems, and MS take nothing. That's a bit of a kick in the teeth to Apple.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Except for, twist, if you are an Android developer. Amazon takes it's 20% cut no doubt, and to avoid the cut you need to make a native Windows app. Which actually isn't an awful incentive structure, but it's not 0% in the Store across the board. Also it doesn't count if you make Xbox games. Microsoft still takes a cut there. So it's 0% if it's a native Windows app and it isn't an Xbox Game. So let's just say Epic Games will still not be satisfied with this.
- beerandt 5y ago
  I'd be surprised if they somehow limited side-loading apks on a PC.
apozem 5y ago
Absolutely. Microsoft doesn't have a large existing Windows Store business to protect, so why not make Apple's life harder? I think it's also the solution that best meets the reality of apps in 2021. Big third-party devs like Netflix and Amazon will opt out of in-app purchase entirely before giving a cut to the platform owner. May as well let them use their own payment system so users get a better experience than signing up on the web.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  > Microsoft doesn't have a large existing Windows Store business to protect, This is how you GET a large existing Windows Store business.
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    It's not like Microsoft hasn't tried very hard in the last 10 years to emulate the iOS business model, but I guess Windows users don't like walled gardens.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - oezi 5y ago
      But they messed up so bad with the Windows store. It is beyond belief: - By including Candy Crush and other bloatware in the store, the store started with a bad reputation already. - By allowing manufacturers to define apps you cannot uninstall via the store, this infuriated any power user. - By no allowing to delete any items from your "purchase history" you could never try out any free apps without them contaminating your history. They did so to prevent people from losing their purchases, but this was just stupid with free apps. - Discovery in the store was a joke. Search results showed apps with less than 100 installs. Descriptions and screenshots of apps are often so bad that there is no way to figure out what an app does. - Not finding a way to offer legacy apps in the store was such a fail, it is incomprehensible. It is 2021 and end users still have to download applications from CNet and Sourceforge. A security nightmare. Don't get me started on UWP and the UIs from hell caused by it. Finally, there is absolutely no reason that the Windows store couldn't have been what Steam is now. Just MS incompetence in their vision of where to start. -- Edit: It seems legacy apps are coming to the store with Windows 11. Yeah! Let's see how they mess up this time.
      - ljm 5y ago
        I don't think it helps that MS have been trying to build new UI and app development frameworks for the past several years, each one with varying capabilities. I've lost track, I think UWP is the latest one but it's not UWP any more, or something? It just seems harder to build and sell software that has that same quality look-and-feel that many MacOS apps have. I just wonder what they'd be capable of if they had a separate OS that didn't have to concern itself with backwards compatibility. It'd be a monumental undertaking to do all that from scratch, not really worth it from a business standpoint, but it'd be interesting to see what they'd come up with if they started off with Linux.
    - alickz 5y ago
      I think this is similar on Mac. Anecdotally I don't know anyone who uses the Mac App Store to install apps. Everyone I know just downloads the .dmg from whatever website.
- actuator 5y ago
  It is such a welcome thing. Big platforms like Netflix, Spotify don't owe any revenue share to Apple, Microsoft or others. They made their own brand and have been responsible for their own success. These big OS/device companies in fact compete with them with unfair advantages like pre installed apps, prominent product placement on AppStore and closed/early integrations.
  - askonomm 5y ago
    Alright. So if Netflix wants their app to be hosted and indexed by the App Store, Apple should just provide the costs related to that because of charity? The bandwidth alone I imagine carries a pretty hefty price for an app like Netflix. By your logic, this should all be given free - which actually is negative profit for Apple .. why? Would you create an App Store, dedicate resources on moderation and app curation, as well as infrastructure, and then just give it away free? Would your stakeholders still back you if you did that? I never understand this line of logic, and the idea that for-profit entities somehow _should_ do lots of charity.
    - javchz 5y ago
      You could give Devs two options A) Give me X% of revenue, and I will give you free hosting of your app, and some form of promotion. B) No commission, but you host your own binaries. To be a valid installable app, you need to give me a hash of the binary valid to install, that I have approved before. Each audit of binaries cost X. No promotion for free in the app store.
      - themacguffinman 5y ago
        The main problem with Option B is the potential for bad/inconsistent app download experiences. Many companies may cheap out on binary hosting and have very slow or broken downloads (especially in certain countries), which results in a kind of random "never know if this will work well" patchy UX for iOS/Android users at large. This isn't an insurmountable problem of course. Perhaps Apple/Google could charge fixed bandwidth rates and host it themselves, or they could contractually set SLA requirements that could be verified regularly with an uptime service.
jmull 5y ago
Did something change? (Windows users/developers have always been able to use various distribution systems... likewise for macOS.
- MarcScott 5y ago
  I might be wrong (not a developer), but I thought within the official stores, in-app purchases were subject to 30%, as standard, going to the platform provider. At least that's what I understand with regard to Apple and Google stores.
  - pram 5y ago
    You can install software on Windows and MacOS outside of the app stores jfyi
    - zrobotics 5y ago
      I mean, you can also do that on Android; in fact Epic was doing that for quite a while with fortnite.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - pram 5y ago
        Yes, inarguably true, my omission wasn't implying otherwise.
    - wongarsu 5y ago
      But now you can have your Windows Store presence and still keep all your money. Of course that's easy to offer while nobody uses the Windows Store, but e.g. on MacOS that would be quite a big deal.
    - rufus_foreman 5y ago
      But more and more applications can only be installed through the app stores on those platforms. That's the issue.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swiley 5y ago
No. It normalizes OS vendor maintained AppStores which is a huge deal for Apple. The only way to avoid them now is to install Linux.
- wilsonnb3 5y ago
  Windows already had a vendor maintained App Store, though. It will just actually be useful now.
- dagmx 5y ago
  Linux distros also have equivalents to App Stores, and really an app store isn't different than apt-get from a lay persons perspective. Assuming you ignore payment/cuts, but it seems you're opposed to free App Stores too.
  - swiley 5y ago
    Linux distro repos are maintained by the community not a corporation. The only app store like that is f-droid.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      Hahahahahhahahaha. You might have a point with the likes of Debian, Arch, and Gentoo, but Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, SUSE, Oracle Linux, Amazon Linux, Rocky Linux are all maintained by corporations.
      - swiley 5y ago
        Regardless, both the attitude the repo maintainers have and the UX (for both users and developers) is totally different from smartphone app stores.
seaorg 5y ago
Not at all. Because the lack of curation will make the ecosystem dead on arrival for 99% of users.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  Lack of curation doesn't really matter for apps, where the user will find the software independently, and just use the MS Store for the final download. And for games, the curation will be where it matters - on Xbox games pass.
  - seaorg 5y ago
    I’m talking about filtering out malicious software ala Android App Store

Except for, twist, if you are an Android developer. Amazon takes it's 20% cut no doubt, and to avoid the cut you need to make a native Windows app. Which actually isn't an awful incentive structure, but it's not 0% in the Store across the board. Also it doesn't count if you make Xbox games. Microsoft still takes a cut there. So it's 0% if it's a native Windows app and it isn't an Xbox Game. So let's just say Epic Games will still not be satisfied with this.

beerandt 5y ago
I'd be surprised if they somehow limited side-loading apks on a PC.

apozem 5y ago

Absolutely. Microsoft doesn't have a large existing Windows Store business to protect, so why not make Apple's life harder? I think it's also the solution that best meets the reality of apps in 2021. Big third-party devs like Netflix and Amazon will opt out of in-app purchase entirely before giving a cut to the platform owner. May as well let them use their own payment system so users get a better experience than signing up on the web.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
> Microsoft doesn't have a large existing Windows Store business to protect, This is how you GET a large existing Windows Store business.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  It's not like Microsoft hasn't tried very hard in the last 10 years to emulate the iOS business model, but I guess Windows users don't like walled gardens.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - oezi 5y ago
    But they messed up so bad with the Windows store. It is beyond belief: - By including Candy Crush and other bloatware in the store, the store started with a bad reputation already. - By allowing manufacturers to define apps you cannot uninstall via the store, this infuriated any power user. - By no allowing to delete any items from your "purchase history" you could never try out any free apps without them contaminating your history. They did so to prevent people from losing their purchases, but this was just stupid with free apps. - Discovery in the store was a joke. Search results showed apps with less than 100 installs. Descriptions and screenshots of apps are often so bad that there is no way to figure out what an app does. - Not finding a way to offer legacy apps in the store was such a fail, it is incomprehensible. It is 2021 and end users still have to download applications from CNet and Sourceforge. A security nightmare. Don't get me started on UWP and the UIs from hell caused by it. Finally, there is absolutely no reason that the Windows store couldn't have been what Steam is now. Just MS incompetence in their vision of where to start. -- Edit: It seems legacy apps are coming to the store with Windows 11. Yeah! Let's see how they mess up this time.
    - ljm 5y ago
      I don't think it helps that MS have been trying to build new UI and app development frameworks for the past several years, each one with varying capabilities. I've lost track, I think UWP is the latest one but it's not UWP any more, or something? It just seems harder to build and sell software that has that same quality look-and-feel that many MacOS apps have. I just wonder what they'd be capable of if they had a separate OS that didn't have to concern itself with backwards compatibility. It'd be a monumental undertaking to do all that from scratch, not really worth it from a business standpoint, but it'd be interesting to see what they'd come up with if they started off with Linux.
  - alickz 5y ago
    I think this is similar on Mac. Anecdotally I don't know anyone who uses the Mac App Store to install apps. Everyone I know just downloads the .dmg from whatever website.
actuator 5y ago
It is such a welcome thing. Big platforms like Netflix, Spotify don't owe any revenue share to Apple, Microsoft or others. They made their own brand and have been responsible for their own success. These big OS/device companies in fact compete with them with unfair advantages like pre installed apps, prominent product placement on AppStore and closed/early integrations.
- askonomm 5y ago
  Alright. So if Netflix wants their app to be hosted and indexed by the App Store, Apple should just provide the costs related to that because of charity? The bandwidth alone I imagine carries a pretty hefty price for an app like Netflix. By your logic, this should all be given free - which actually is negative profit for Apple .. why? Would you create an App Store, dedicate resources on moderation and app curation, as well as infrastructure, and then just give it away free? Would your stakeholders still back you if you did that? I never understand this line of logic, and the idea that for-profit entities somehow _should_ do lots of charity.
  - javchz 5y ago
    You could give Devs two options A) Give me X% of revenue, and I will give you free hosting of your app, and some form of promotion. B) No commission, but you host your own binaries. To be a valid installable app, you need to give me a hash of the binary valid to install, that I have approved before. Each audit of binaries cost X. No promotion for free in the app store.
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      The main problem with Option B is the potential for bad/inconsistent app download experiences. Many companies may cheap out on binary hosting and have very slow or broken downloads (especially in certain countries), which results in a kind of random "never know if this will work well" patchy UX for iOS/Android users at large. This isn't an insurmountable problem of course. Perhaps Apple/Google could charge fixed bandwidth rates and host it themselves, or they could contractually set SLA requirements that could be verified regularly with an uptime service.

jmull 5y ago

Did something change? (Windows users/developers have always been able to use various distribution systems... likewise for macOS.

MarcScott 5y ago
I might be wrong (not a developer), but I thought within the official stores, in-app purchases were subject to 30%, as standard, going to the platform provider. At least that's what I understand with regard to Apple and Google stores.
- pram 5y ago
  You can install software on Windows and MacOS outside of the app stores jfyi
  - zrobotics 5y ago
    I mean, you can also do that on Android; in fact Epic was doing that for quite a while with fortnite.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - pram 5y ago
      Yes, inarguably true, my omission wasn't implying otherwise.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    But now you can have your Windows Store presence and still keep all your money. Of course that's easy to offer while nobody uses the Windows Store, but e.g. on MacOS that would be quite a big deal.
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    But more and more applications can only be installed through the app stores on those platforms. That's the issue.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

swiley 5y ago

No. It normalizes OS vendor maintained AppStores which is a huge deal for Apple. The only way to avoid them now is to install Linux.

wilsonnb3 5y ago
Windows already had a vendor maintained App Store, though. It will just actually be useful now.
dagmx 5y ago
Linux distros also have equivalents to App Stores, and really an app store isn't different than apt-get from a lay persons perspective. Assuming you ignore payment/cuts, but it seems you're opposed to free App Stores too.
- swiley 5y ago
  Linux distro repos are maintained by the community not a corporation. The only app store like that is f-droid.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    Hahahahahhahahaha. You might have a point with the likes of Debian, Arch, and Gentoo, but Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, SUSE, Oracle Linux, Amazon Linux, Rocky Linux are all maintained by corporations.
    - swiley 5y ago
      Regardless, both the attitude the repo maintainers have and the UX (for both users and developers) is totally different from smartphone app stores.

seaorg 5y ago

Not at all. Because the lack of curation will make the ecosystem dead on arrival for 99% of users.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago
Lack of curation doesn't really matter for apps, where the user will find the software independently, and just use the MS Store for the final download. And for games, the curation will be where it matters - on Xbox games pass.
- seaorg 5y ago
  I’m talking about filtering out malicious software ala Android App Store