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And if your unlisted app does in-app purchases, you still have to pay 30%, right? Apple used to justify that cut by saying "we deserve it for bringing all these

And if your unlisted app does in-app purchases, you still have to pay 30%, right? Apple used to justify that cut by saying "we deserve it for bringing all these users to your app via the app store catalog", but that's not a valid claim for unlisted apps. Apple must be forced to allow installing iOS apps from arbitrary sources, signed with arbitrary keys. This is the only way. Or are they afraid that if they do allow that, then the app store would have to truly compete with "just host a self-signed .ipa on your own server" on its own merits?

kccqzy 5y ago
Apple still runs the infrastructure for handling the unlisted app, like storage costs and bandwidth costs. I believe unlisted apps still have to go through review, so there's human cost in that as well.
- NateEag 5y ago
  Which has to be covered by the $99 / year developer program fee, in aggregate. Sure, a few apps will cost them massively more than that, but most will take five minutes of reviewer time every six months and a few gigs per month (or year) in download bandwidth.
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    Are you trying to decide what revenue goes to cover which cost for a company worth $3T?
    - grishka 5y ago
      And by the way, they have so much money sitting in banks doing nothing, they could as well just start giving everything away for free and it'll last them for 20 years.
      - can16358p 5y ago
        If they were a charity or non profit sure. But why on Earth a for-profit company, whose reason for existing, by definition, is to make money, would give away money?
        grishka 5y ago
        Because it has already made several orders of magnitude more money than an amount it would know what to do with? I don't understand this whole idea of keeping on increasing your profits when you already make enough money thousand times over.
        rlt 5y ago
        Employees and other shareholders benefit when the value of the company increases. Why is that hard to understand why they'd want to increase profits?
        grishka 5y ago
        Employees get their salaries either way. Shareholders? They do nothing useful for the society and won't be missed. The way I see it, companies literally ruin the world for mostly imperceptible, and mostly abstract, benefit of the very few.
        Ntrails 5y ago
        > The way I see it, companies literally ruin the world for mostly imperceptible, and mostly abstract, benefit of the very few. How do you build a car without a company? How do you get 100 people to work together? How do you get components, carry out testing, and still keep people "fed and watered"? The only other answer I have ever heard is "the state".
        grishka 5y ago
        I don't mean "don't earn money at all and go full communism". I mean "stop making active steps towards increasing profits when your income already covers your expenses ten times over". I also meant "for-profit", and probably publicly-traded, companies specifically. A company doesn't have to be of this type. There are privately-owned companies that build products people genuinely love. There also are nonprofits.
    - NateEag 5y ago
      No. I'm just saying that the cost of the average app developer team is likely offset by the income Apple makes from the average app developer team. Whether that's how they spend the money, I have no idea. I don't need to know how they spend it to guess that the costs and income probably roughly balance out.
- grishka 5y ago
  A free (ad-supported or fully free) app that's very popular and updated frequently (requiring more reviews) would cost them a lot more than an app that has in-app purchases but only gets updated once a year. Yet the latter app would earn them more. Something doesn't add up here. And yes, that $99/year developer account fee, it exists.
  - etchalon 5y ago
    I don't think the math is that hard. Apple uses paid apps to subsidize free apps.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- NavinF 5y ago
  Yeah won’t someone think of the $3.50 in storage and bandwidth.
  - grishka 5y ago
    And a $15/hour reviewer who has no idea what they're doing spending a minute looking at your app.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  I hate this argument. Ok, so they think they should be paid for that, fine. So, what if I want to do all that myself then? Oh, no? They won’t let me? It’s not compensation for services rendered, it’s a toll or tax on their platform, regardless of their services offered.
tomjen3 5y ago
If they do that, Facebook is pulling their stuff from the App store and remove every privacy feature Apple demands, then have you install it from their servers. It is a problem, but the real problem boils down to services being able to mandate what client you use. Solve that, force Facebook and every other service to work with 3th party clients, and we can free the app store.
- grishka 5y ago
  And the solution to this particular problem of Facebook tracking the crap outta everyone should be technical not organizational. Apps are already sandboxed from the system and each other. For example, each and every API apps could potentially use to share a tracking identifier with each other should be put behind a permission that an app can't get the current state of. > but the real problem boils down to services being able to mandate what client you use The underlying problem is that these threats to third-party client developers have teeth. The US government would happily enforce them it seems, paid for by people's taxes. In a saner world, a Facebook lawyer trying to sue someone who built a better Facebook app would be laughed out of the court building.
  - Jcowell 5y ago
    As developers , haven’t we settled that the endless permission dialog boxes are a security risk and not a solution?
    - grishka 5y ago
      I'm not suggesting adding more permission dialog boxes. The way I see it is more along the lines of what Google does with Android: anything that would return a unique identifier (IMEI, serial number, Android ID, MAC addresses) returns either random data or zeros. And, crucially, it needs to be such that the app can't know whether it's getting real or fake data.
- cglong 5y ago
  Android has already proven that this won't happen. Google has enough scary dialogs in place to make it impractical for anyone else to compete at scale (including Amazon and Epic).

kccqzy 5y ago

Apple still runs the infrastructure for handling the unlisted app, like storage costs and bandwidth costs. I believe unlisted apps still have to go through review, so there's human cost in that as well.

NateEag 5y ago
Which has to be covered by the $99 / year developer program fee, in aggregate. Sure, a few apps will cost them massively more than that, but most will take five minutes of reviewer time every six months and a few gigs per month (or year) in download bandwidth.
- enos_feedler 5y ago
  Are you trying to decide what revenue goes to cover which cost for a company worth $3T?
  - grishka 5y ago
    And by the way, they have so much money sitting in banks doing nothing, they could as well just start giving everything away for free and it'll last them for 20 years.
    - can16358p 5y ago
      If they were a charity or non profit sure. But why on Earth a for-profit company, whose reason for existing, by definition, is to make money, would give away money?
      - grishka 5y ago
        Because it has already made several orders of magnitude more money than an amount it would know what to do with? I don't understand this whole idea of keeping on increasing your profits when you already make enough money thousand times over.
        rlt 5y ago
        Employees and other shareholders benefit when the value of the company increases. Why is that hard to understand why they'd want to increase profits?
        grishka 5y ago
        Employees get their salaries either way. Shareholders? They do nothing useful for the society and won't be missed. The way I see it, companies literally ruin the world for mostly imperceptible, and mostly abstract, benefit of the very few.
        Ntrails 5y ago
        > The way I see it, companies literally ruin the world for mostly imperceptible, and mostly abstract, benefit of the very few. How do you build a car without a company? How do you get 100 people to work together? How do you get components, carry out testing, and still keep people "fed and watered"? The only other answer I have ever heard is "the state".
        grishka 5y ago
        I don't mean "don't earn money at all and go full communism". I mean "stop making active steps towards increasing profits when your income already covers your expenses ten times over". I also meant "for-profit", and probably publicly-traded, companies specifically. A company doesn't have to be of this type. There are privately-owned companies that build products people genuinely love. There also are nonprofits.
  - NateEag 5y ago
    No. I'm just saying that the cost of the average app developer team is likely offset by the income Apple makes from the average app developer team. Whether that's how they spend the money, I have no idea. I don't need to know how they spend it to guess that the costs and income probably roughly balance out.
grishka 5y ago
A free (ad-supported or fully free) app that's very popular and updated frequently (requiring more reviews) would cost them a lot more than an app that has in-app purchases but only gets updated once a year. Yet the latter app would earn them more. Something doesn't add up here. And yes, that $99/year developer account fee, it exists.
- etchalon 5y ago
  I don't think the math is that hard. Apple uses paid apps to subsidize free apps.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
NavinF 5y ago
Yeah won’t someone think of the $3.50 in storage and bandwidth.
- grishka 5y ago
  And a $15/hour reviewer who has no idea what they're doing spending a minute looking at your app.
ViViDboarder 5y ago
I hate this argument. Ok, so they think they should be paid for that, fine. So, what if I want to do all that myself then? Oh, no? They won’t let me? It’s not compensation for services rendered, it’s a toll or tax on their platform, regardless of their services offered.

tomjen3 5y ago

If they do that, Facebook is pulling their stuff from the App store and remove every privacy feature Apple demands, then have you install it from their servers. It is a problem, but the real problem boils down to services being able to mandate what client you use. Solve that, force Facebook and every other service to work with 3th party clients, and we can free the app store.

grishka 5y ago
And the solution to this particular problem of Facebook tracking the crap outta everyone should be technical not organizational. Apps are already sandboxed from the system and each other. For example, each and every API apps could potentially use to share a tracking identifier with each other should be put behind a permission that an app can't get the current state of. > but the real problem boils down to services being able to mandate what client you use The underlying problem is that these threats to third-party client developers have teeth. The US government would happily enforce them it seems, paid for by people's taxes. In a saner world, a Facebook lawyer trying to sue someone who built a better Facebook app would be laughed out of the court building.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  As developers , haven’t we settled that the endless permission dialog boxes are a security risk and not a solution?
  - grishka 5y ago
    I'm not suggesting adding more permission dialog boxes. The way I see it is more along the lines of what Google does with Android: anything that would return a unique identifier (IMEI, serial number, Android ID, MAC addresses) returns either random data or zeros. And, crucially, it needs to be such that the app can't know whether it's getting real or fake data.
cglong 5y ago
Android has already proven that this won't happen. Google has enough scary dialogs in place to make it impractical for anyone else to compete at scale (including Amazon and Epic).