4 ms·

The problem here are not the special deals, saurik commented he cut special deals in the Cydia store occasionally the last time this topic came up. The problem

by emsy 5y ago

The problem here are not the special deals, saurik commented he cut special deals in the Cydia store occasionally the last time this topic came up. The problem is that there is no alternative to Apple when it comes to publishing software and content on the iPhone and that makes these kind of deals unfair.

netcan 5y ago
This is naive, IMO. Even if the app store was run differently, say allowing a competing way of installing apps, Apple still have plenty of fungible power to make such deals. You might have ticked a box to make it technically fair, for some definition of, but that would probably be just cosmetic. IE, app store would still represent most revenue and everyone is in the same position but a few geeks. The "platform game" establishes market power, where buyers and sellers need to go through you. They have no negotiating power, and you can price to make deals that take all the "surplus utility" off the table, in classic economic terms. So... reality isn't perfect and some players are big enough to negotiate. Netflix is that player here. They negotiate when they have to, but try to keep it quite. When the market is this structured, this is how it works.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  An alternative market would create pressure on Apple. If Netflix tells the App store to go screw themselves and lists on a different store, then the App Store gets that much less traffic and either has to compete or lose out.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    From a consumer point of view, this is terrible.
    - fbelzile 5y ago
      No, it increases choice and lowers costs for the consumer. If you see switching app stores a "cost" because it's less practical, you most likely would still be able to use your store of choice, but you might need to pay more. I don't see Netflix pulling out of the App Store if there alternatives. Right now, this is the only thing they can do to retaliate.
      - ribosometronome 5y ago
        >If you see switching app stores a "cost" because it's less practical, you most likely would still be able to use your store of choice This doesn't really match what's happened with the PC gaming marketplace. Facebook pays for exclusives to the Oculus Store, Epic (whose lawsuit brought this e-mail to light) pays for exclusives on their store. A fair few major developers only release through their own store. Cases that buck this trend (like Halo releasing on Steam) tends to be news rather than typical.
        danShumway 5y ago
        Compared to the console market, availability across stores on PC is still generally better, and importantly, the barrier for consumers to buy games from multiple stores on PC is much lower than the barrier to buy a PS5/Switch exclusive game on a console that you don't own. That lack of platform control has also lead to an ecosystem of PC games that is pretty objectively more innovative and more expansive than the collection of games on any other tightly-managed competing platform. The increasing trend of app stores on PC moving towards being silos is very worrying and harmful to consumers, but it's still a great deal better than what happens in competitive device-specific markets. Unless people like buying 3 separate gaming devices to get access to every console game that's released. That many apps are available for both Android and iOS really has more to do with a lack of competition and a set of consumer expectations about availability than it has to do with platform management. There was a period where most PC games only released on Steam, too. But I personally enjoy being able to opt out of that store/DRM in favor of stores like Itch/GoG without losing access to every single new game that gets released. And I think my consumer choices have generally increased with the addition of newer storefronts that offer me different features that Steam refuses to offer. It's easy to talk about the harms of fragmentation when you're happy with the status quo. But nobody who grew up protesting Steam's DRM is unhappy that more PC stores exist now, even if the market is more fragmented. And I similarly suspect that the people arguing that more choices on the iPhone would be bad for consumers are people who are happy with the app selection already, they're probably not the people who are frustrated that apps like NewPipe, Firefox, or emulators can only be accessed by moving to a completely separate ecosystem and buying a new device.
  - netcan 5y ago
    I don't think it does, beyond box ticking. You're not likely to get enough competition to get competitive market dynamics on iPhones. Sure, a highly motivated user might go to alternative app stores. Netflix does not need to go to a different store. They're influential enough to negotiate. Apple would cut them the discount, like now, and they wouldn't. The other store will not have enough users to make the reduced fees worth ditching the app store. If there was enough competition, most of the app store profits would dissipate. That's what competition does. Users wouldn't pay 20-30%'extra to have apple's stamp, prices would fall and the business model is gone. No little tickbox rule will make a competitive market in app stores. These markets are structured by nature. That's why platforms are so powerful.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kyle-rb 5y ago
      >Sure, a highly motivated user might go to alternative app stores. Highly motivated users like kids who want to install Fortnite on their phones? That would give an "iOS Epic Store" a foot in the door, and while I'm not a huge fan of Epic, I think that would at least introduce some competition for Apple.
  - ribosometronome 5y ago
    Does that seem to be the case for Google? My impression was that both companies take essentially the same percentages. They even both announced programs over the last year to reduce their fees for devs making under $1 million a year, only Apple beat Google to the punch there. My take away is that Google has felt more pressure from public perception/noise making than alternative app stores.
- amelius 5y ago
  > The "platform game" establishes market power, where buyers and sellers need to go through you. So we have to get a law against a "monopoly that arises after you've bought a product".
- emsy 5y ago
  You said it's naive but didn't actually present a reasonable alternative.
  - netcan 5y ago
    Sorry. Poor choice of words. Alternative to what? A law that says apple must allow alternative App Stores? I'm ok with that, and it might be useful to some people. I just don't think it will affect the market much. The App Store "market" is not going to become a competitive market with a quick fix like that. Any solution that does make it a competitive market also tanks the business model. 30% to deliver an app is many times what a competitive rate would be. The competitive rate might be 0. We didn't have app stores before app stores. Any kind of antitrust effort would need to start from the understanding that this is not a competitive market. Apple has all the power. A few app devs have the leverage to negotiate and everyone else is a price taker. You could "solve" it by regulating prices, enforcing a single price or otherwise limiting apple's choices directly. Or... you could leave it as is, which is (IMO) about the same as ruling that they must allow side loading or alternative app stores. Similarly, it will be very hard to limit fb from making their app addictive, shrill or other such problems. Their incentives are very strongly tied to these.
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
      > I just don't think it will affect the market much. In a weird way, I think Apple and Google proved it would have significant impact, at least enough for them to put sizable effort in stopping it from happening. Otherwise Apple wouldn't be fighting tooth and nails to keep it at bay. Google also went pretty great length, through bundled contracts, backroom deals and scaremongering to dissuade partners and users from choosing the alternative means that are available. From the "follow the money" perspective, it seems there's hope in that corner.
      - netcan 5y ago
        proves it both ways, does it not? I mean, I agree that if Apple abandoned trying to control app delivery it would be a big deal. I just don't think a simple rule gets us there.
mitemte 5y ago
Disclaimer: this is from memory You could submit paid products to default Cydia repositories, where you personally handled payments. There was no commission in such scenarios. If you opted for payments to be handled by SaurikIT, a 30% fee was in place. Cydia had special deals in place for Intelliborn products, I dont think this extended to other groups. Intelliborn previously operated Rock Your iPhone, which was acquired by Cydia and this was a negotiated term.
- saurik 5y ago
  I also had special deals in place for various other developers. The deal with Intelliborn was especially "at cost", but I also did deals with anyone who seemed to have leverage or whom I simply felt a need to motivate. In one interesting case I actually took a larger cut than 30% in exchange for extremely pervasive cross-promotional advertising, though you could argue that was simply a separate service "on top" of the payment processing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615663 <- some commentary I wrote about Apple's negotiating position with respect to the 15% discounts for anti-bulk sales (which is weirdly backwards) where I touch on special deals (and tie in how Intelliborn's special deal was in some sense due to store competition).
Handytinge 5y ago
Users know they're buying into a closed garden when they buy the product. It's a feature, not a bug. If people wanted alternative app stores, they'd buy Android or Linux devices.

by emsy 5y ago

netcan 5y ago

This is naive, IMO. Even if the app store was run differently, say allowing a competing way of installing apps, Apple still have plenty of fungible power to make such deals. You might have ticked a box to make it technically fair, for some definition of, but that would probably be just cosmetic. IE, app store would still represent most revenue and everyone is in the same position but a few geeks. The "platform game" establishes market power, where buyers and sellers need to go through you. They have no negotiating power, and you can price to make deals that take all the "surplus utility" off the table, in classic economic terms. So... reality isn't perfect and some players are big enough to negotiate. Netflix is that player here. They negotiate when they have to, but try to keep it quite. When the market is this structured, this is how it works.

vorpalhex 5y ago
An alternative market would create pressure on Apple. If Netflix tells the App store to go screw themselves and lists on a different store, then the App Store gets that much less traffic and either has to compete or lose out.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  From a consumer point of view, this is terrible.
  - fbelzile 5y ago
    No, it increases choice and lowers costs for the consumer. If you see switching app stores a "cost" because it's less practical, you most likely would still be able to use your store of choice, but you might need to pay more. I don't see Netflix pulling out of the App Store if there alternatives. Right now, this is the only thing they can do to retaliate.
    - ribosometronome 5y ago
      >If you see switching app stores a "cost" because it's less practical, you most likely would still be able to use your store of choice This doesn't really match what's happened with the PC gaming marketplace. Facebook pays for exclusives to the Oculus Store, Epic (whose lawsuit brought this e-mail to light) pays for exclusives on their store. A fair few major developers only release through their own store. Cases that buck this trend (like Halo releasing on Steam) tends to be news rather than typical.
      - danShumway 5y ago
        Compared to the console market, availability across stores on PC is still generally better, and importantly, the barrier for consumers to buy games from multiple stores on PC is much lower than the barrier to buy a PS5/Switch exclusive game on a console that you don't own. That lack of platform control has also lead to an ecosystem of PC games that is pretty objectively more innovative and more expansive than the collection of games on any other tightly-managed competing platform. The increasing trend of app stores on PC moving towards being silos is very worrying and harmful to consumers, but it's still a great deal better than what happens in competitive device-specific markets. Unless people like buying 3 separate gaming devices to get access to every console game that's released. That many apps are available for both Android and iOS really has more to do with a lack of competition and a set of consumer expectations about availability than it has to do with platform management. There was a period where most PC games only released on Steam, too. But I personally enjoy being able to opt out of that store/DRM in favor of stores like Itch/GoG without losing access to every single new game that gets released. And I think my consumer choices have generally increased with the addition of newer storefronts that offer me different features that Steam refuses to offer. It's easy to talk about the harms of fragmentation when you're happy with the status quo. But nobody who grew up protesting Steam's DRM is unhappy that more PC stores exist now, even if the market is more fragmented. And I similarly suspect that the people arguing that more choices on the iPhone would be bad for consumers are people who are happy with the app selection already, they're probably not the people who are frustrated that apps like NewPipe, Firefox, or emulators can only be accessed by moving to a completely separate ecosystem and buying a new device.
- netcan 5y ago
  I don't think it does, beyond box ticking. You're not likely to get enough competition to get competitive market dynamics on iPhones. Sure, a highly motivated user might go to alternative app stores. Netflix does not need to go to a different store. They're influential enough to negotiate. Apple would cut them the discount, like now, and they wouldn't. The other store will not have enough users to make the reduced fees worth ditching the app store. If there was enough competition, most of the app store profits would dissipate. That's what competition does. Users wouldn't pay 20-30%'extra to have apple's stamp, prices would fall and the business model is gone. No little tickbox rule will make a competitive market in app stores. These markets are structured by nature. That's why platforms are so powerful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kyle-rb 5y ago
    >Sure, a highly motivated user might go to alternative app stores. Highly motivated users like kids who want to install Fortnite on their phones? That would give an "iOS Epic Store" a foot in the door, and while I'm not a huge fan of Epic, I think that would at least introduce some competition for Apple.
- ribosometronome 5y ago
  Does that seem to be the case for Google? My impression was that both companies take essentially the same percentages. They even both announced programs over the last year to reduce their fees for devs making under $1 million a year, only Apple beat Google to the punch there. My take away is that Google has felt more pressure from public perception/noise making than alternative app stores.
amelius 5y ago
> The "platform game" establishes market power, where buyers and sellers need to go through you. So we have to get a law against a "monopoly that arises after you've bought a product".
emsy 5y ago
You said it's naive but didn't actually present a reasonable alternative.
- netcan 5y ago
  Sorry. Poor choice of words. Alternative to what? A law that says apple must allow alternative App Stores? I'm ok with that, and it might be useful to some people. I just don't think it will affect the market much. The App Store "market" is not going to become a competitive market with a quick fix like that. Any solution that does make it a competitive market also tanks the business model. 30% to deliver an app is many times what a competitive rate would be. The competitive rate might be 0. We didn't have app stores before app stores. Any kind of antitrust effort would need to start from the understanding that this is not a competitive market. Apple has all the power. A few app devs have the leverage to negotiate and everyone else is a price taker. You could "solve" it by regulating prices, enforcing a single price or otherwise limiting apple's choices directly. Or... you could leave it as is, which is (IMO) about the same as ruling that they must allow side loading or alternative app stores. Similarly, it will be very hard to limit fb from making their app addictive, shrill or other such problems. Their incentives are very strongly tied to these.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    > I just don't think it will affect the market much. In a weird way, I think Apple and Google proved it would have significant impact, at least enough for them to put sizable effort in stopping it from happening. Otherwise Apple wouldn't be fighting tooth and nails to keep it at bay. Google also went pretty great length, through bundled contracts, backroom deals and scaremongering to dissuade partners and users from choosing the alternative means that are available. From the "follow the money" perspective, it seems there's hope in that corner.
    - netcan 5y ago
      proves it both ways, does it not? I mean, I agree that if Apple abandoned trying to control app delivery it would be a big deal. I just don't think a simple rule gets us there.

mitemte 5y ago

Disclaimer: this is from memory You could submit paid products to default Cydia repositories, where you personally handled payments. There was no commission in such scenarios. If you opted for payments to be handled by SaurikIT, a 30% fee was in place. Cydia had special deals in place for Intelliborn products, I dont think this extended to other groups. Intelliborn previously operated Rock Your iPhone, which was acquired by Cydia and this was a negotiated term.

saurik 5y ago
I also had special deals in place for various other developers. The deal with Intelliborn was especially "at cost", but I also did deals with anyone who seemed to have leverage or whom I simply felt a need to motivate. In one interesting case I actually took a larger cut than 30% in exchange for extremely pervasive cross-promotional advertising, though you could argue that was simply a separate service "on top" of the payment processing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27615663 <- some commentary I wrote about Apple's negotiating position with respect to the 15% discounts for anti-bulk sales (which is weirdly backwards) where I touch on special deals (and tie in how Intelliborn's special deal was in some sense due to store competition).

Handytinge 5y ago

Users know they're buying into a closed garden when they buy the product. It's a feature, not a bug. If people wanted alternative app stores, they'd buy Android or Linux devices.