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Amazon and other retailers are free to not sell products if they don’t want to. Entirely up to them. The relationship between booking sites and hotels is vastly

Amazon and other retailers are free to not sell products if they don’t want to. Entirely up to them. The relationship between booking sites and hotels is vastly different to Apple and app developers. I doubt Apple would have had a problem with developers noting the 15/30% store fee if it wasn’t being done for such obviously disingenuous purposes. It’s all well and good to argue the reasonableness of such allowances in theory, but here, context is everything.

DisjointedHunt 5y ago
If it's disingenuous, LET THE USERS DECIDE ! Like Steve Jobs said. . . Ask them! Every time! And make it clear! What's disingenuous to you is remarkably a standard business practice for a tax or a fee of any kind. Buying an airplane ticket? If there are fees and charges , guess what? They get called out so you have a choice. Buying an iPhone in most parts of the world? Guess what happens when you go to check out? You see the "Includes Tax of xx%" there so you have the information. This should not even be an argument in this day and age, but unfortunately, here we are. Market conditions and rules of engagement around competition should NOT be dictated by large companies. There is a line in the sand where Apples platform ends and the real world begins. It's ridiculous that they have been allowed to get away with saying "If you do ANYTHING on our platform, you agree to hamper your business voluntarily in EVERY OTHER PLATFORM you choose to participate in". Do it, or don't do business with us. That's anti competitive and has been finally called out by at least one judge so far in the Epic case.
- simondotau 5y ago
  The entirety of your post is a flagrant non sequitur. You seem to be oddly obsessed with this issue so I’ll leave you to it.
lmm 5y ago
> Amazon and other retailers are free to not sell products if they don’t want to. Entirely up to them. The relationship between booking sites and hotels is vastly different to Apple and app developers. Apple is a lot more hotel-booking-like than retailer-like IMO: approximately no-one is browsing through the apple "store" (though people might use it as a search mechanism), it's more or less just an aggregator of a bunch of third-party products. People don't go there because they want to get something from Apple, they go there because it's the only way to get an app onto their phone. > I doubt Apple would have had a problem with developers noting the 15/30% store fee if it wasn’t being done for such obviously disingenuous purposes. That's completely backwards - Apple is being far more disingenuous. They keep their cut secret because they know the users would - quite rightly - feel they were being ripped off.

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

If it's disingenuous, LET THE USERS DECIDE ! Like Steve Jobs said. . . Ask them! Every time! And make it clear! What's disingenuous to you is remarkably a standard business practice for a tax or a fee of any kind. Buying an airplane ticket? If there are fees and charges , guess what? They get called out so you have a choice. Buying an iPhone in most parts of the world? Guess what happens when you go to check out? You see the "Includes Tax of xx%" there so you have the information. This should not even be an argument in this day and age, but unfortunately, here we are. Market conditions and rules of engagement around competition should NOT be dictated by large companies. There is a line in the sand where Apples platform ends and the real world begins. It's ridiculous that they have been allowed to get away with saying "If you do ANYTHING on our platform, you agree to hamper your business voluntarily in EVERY OTHER PLATFORM you choose to participate in". Do it, or don't do business with us. That's anti competitive and has been finally called out by at least one judge so far in the Epic case.

simondotau 5y ago
The entirety of your post is a flagrant non sequitur. You seem to be oddly obsessed with this issue so I’ll leave you to it.

lmm 5y ago

> Amazon and other retailers are free to not sell products if they don’t want to. Entirely up to them. The relationship between booking sites and hotels is vastly different to Apple and app developers. Apple is a lot more hotel-booking-like than retailer-like IMO: approximately no-one is browsing through the apple "store" (though people might use it as a search mechanism), it's more or less just an aggregator of a bunch of third-party products. People don't go there because they want to get something from Apple, they go there because it's the only way to get an app onto their phone. > I doubt Apple would have had a problem with developers noting the 15/30% store fee if it wasn’t being done for such obviously disingenuous purposes. That's completely backwards - Apple is being far more disingenuous. They keep their cut secret because they know the users would - quite rightly - feel they were being ripped off.