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> But the "making money" part still remains partly unsolved. This is the only thing that concerns me about my current app plans. But here's my current thought

> But the "making money" part still remains partly unsolved. This is the only thing that concerns me about my current app plans. But here's my current thought process. A PWA would be much easier to use to test the market. Because it's faster to iterate and to deliver on both mobile OSs. Monetization of a social media app comes after you've attracted tens of thousands of users. So two years out if you still have a business, you can invest in native implementations. Money comes either from users or from advertisers or both. I think Apple will direct more developers towards building PWAs because it will reduce their review burden. Why else would they be adding features (notifications, installation) that make PWAs better? Doesn't it make sense therefore that Apple will also add support for monitization?

fassssst 4y ago
> Why else would they be adding features (notifications, installation) that make PWAs better? There's a team at Apple that owns PWA's and is iterating on them. Large organizations like Apple usually don't follow some grand strategy.
alin23 4y ago
Native support for buying PWAs (or at least in-app purchases) would probably be a game changer yes. It sounds possible in theory: Apple gets to keep their 30% cut while allowing devs to sell even more apps. But they would have no way of screening the PWAs, and if a PWA reaches enough feature parity to be usable by big sellers of subscriptions like Netflix, those sellers will surely invest effort in creating a PWA with their own payment SDK that bypasses Apple’s cut. This is where I think the incentives are not aligned. Small devs want an easy to use monetization framework and are happy to give a percentage of their income for that, but Apple might want more large sellers which bring far more money for less managing effort.
- intrasight 4y ago
  I don't see any intersection of Apple and Netflix. Big media services like Netflix have their own subscription services. >This is where I think the incentives are not aligned But could be aligned to everyone's benefit.
  - alin23 4y ago
    You might not be familiar with the App Store restriction on in-app links/buttons to external payment methods. An app on the App Store must only provide subscriptions through Apple's own means which gives them a 30% cut of every subscription payment. It took a long legal battle to allow Netflix to show a button to their own external subscription website: https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-says-japan-fair-trade-commission-closes-app-store-investigation-2021-09-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-says-japan-fair-tra... But even so, there are a lot of other big sellers which haven't yet got their external button approved.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > Small devs want an easy to use monetization framework and are happy to give a percentage of their income for that Small devs want competition. Apple goes out of their way to prevent that, you can't sing it's praises when it's literally the only option.

fassssst 4y ago

> Why else would they be adding features (notifications, installation) that make PWAs better? There's a team at Apple that owns PWA's and is iterating on them. Large organizations like Apple usually don't follow some grand strategy.

alin23 4y ago

Native support for buying PWAs (or at least in-app purchases) would probably be a game changer yes. It sounds possible in theory: Apple gets to keep their 30% cut while allowing devs to sell even more apps. But they would have no way of screening the PWAs, and if a PWA reaches enough feature parity to be usable by big sellers of subscriptions like Netflix, those sellers will surely invest effort in creating a PWA with their own payment SDK that bypasses Apple’s cut. This is where I think the incentives are not aligned. Small devs want an easy to use monetization framework and are happy to give a percentage of their income for that, but Apple might want more large sellers which bring far more money for less managing effort.

intrasight 4y ago
I don't see any intersection of Apple and Netflix. Big media services like Netflix have their own subscription services. >This is where I think the incentives are not aligned But could be aligned to everyone's benefit.
- alin23 4y ago
  You might not be familiar with the App Store restriction on in-app links/buttons to external payment methods. An app on the App Store must only provide subscriptions through Apple's own means which gives them a 30% cut of every subscription payment. It took a long legal battle to allow Netflix to show a button to their own external subscription website: https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-says-japan-fair-trade-commission-closes-app-store-investigation-2021-09-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-says-japan-fair-tra... But even so, there are a lot of other big sellers which haven't yet got their external button approved.
smoldesu 4y ago
> Small devs want an easy to use monetization framework and are happy to give a percentage of their income for that Small devs want competition. Apple goes out of their way to prevent that, you can't sing it's praises when it's literally the only option.