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The government does not (and legally cannot) give a darn on "dominance in market profits." If it isn't hurting consumers or illegally propping up market share,

The government does not (and legally cannot) give a darn on "dominance in market profits." If it isn't hurting consumers or illegally propping up market share, that's just called good business. As it should be, otherwise you end up with very bad incentives. For example, what's stopping Samsung then from using the world's most inefficient and old manufacturing techniques, and then complaining Apple's more efficient (but expensive to research) techniques are propping up their profits? Nothing. It would even be easier for Samsung to do that, and then use their competitor's own cost-cutting innovations to take them down.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Ok but apple is hurting consumers with their 30% fee. I would not have bought an iPhone if I knew about that. Now Im locked in.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  A. That's not exactly secret information, so your ignorance is not an excuse when you could have easily found that information if you cared. It's not a secret contract. B. Android also charges 30%. Developers making under $1M per year pay only 15% (initially announced by Apple, copied by Google). You can't argue you'd save a penny going to Android. C. You can always sell your iPhone, if it matters to you now, and buy an Android. D. It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    > D. It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted. I could not disagree more. > B. Android also charges 30%. It's actually better on iPhone, because developers making under $1M per year pay only 15%. On Android, everyone pays 30%. So you'd be paying more to Google on Android than on iPhone. Android is bad too but at least you can get an app store without the fee. > C. You can always sell your iPhone, if it matters to you now, and buy an Android. Will I get refunded for the apps I bought? What about the macbook I bought because I entered the apple ecosystem? > A. That's not exactly secret information, so your ignorance is not an excuse when you could have easily found that information if you cared. It's not a secret contract. How could I have known to look this up before it became a story?
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      > I could not disagree more. Well, we can agree to disagree, but call it a prediction - in three years, prices will be exactly the same as they are now. No business, especially in this economy, gets an opportunity like this to raise margins without affecting sales. > Android is bad too but at least you can get an app store without the fee. Yes, and literally nobody will install it. And the few app stores that are available - Aurora will get your Google account banned, while F-Droid re-signs all apps with itself, meaning you are opening your device to serious security risks. A middleman in F-Droid would mean every app you install from them could be compromised with fake developer signatures. Fun. > How could I have known to look this up before it became a story? How about paying attention since the 30% commission was announced at the iPhone App Store launch in 2008, literally by Steve Jobs on stage when iPhoneOS 2.0 was announced? There's no legal requirement to advertise every possible detail to cover every possible person's perspective - especially when it's old hat announced a decade and a half ago with fanfare. https://youtu.be/WUrzjLjP4UQ?t=217 https://youtu.be/WUrzjLjP4UQ?t=217 Edit for the comment below about iPhone being anti-competitive (because I'm "posting too fast"): Well, here's the problem with trying to investigate the iPhone. Remember how I showed that announcement in 2008? iPhone market share, at the time, was less than 5%. Almost the entire smartphone market was split between BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. Now look at where iPhone is now, despite the fee. That demonstrates, to a regulator, that it is a competitive product, and the market preferred it, despite the fee which was implemented at the beginning. Apple didn't build the iPhone to where it is now and then lock it down - developers signed up right when it was beginning and didn't care then, so they can't care now that it's a success. Apple has basically an ironclad argument for competitiveness. If it was anti-competitive, the iPhone would've died at birth. Nobody would have supported an anti-competitive product if they actually cared at a time when it could have easily been ignored. This came up in the argument with Epic - Apple argued, successfully, that the market chose them and their "anti-competitive practices" despite them having almost no clout, which can only be the result of market support for being a competitive product. Edit 2 (same issue, thanks @dang): > What makes you say that? A product being anti competitive has little to do with whether consumers will buy it. You dont see how you can have the best product on the market and also stifle competition? The iPhone took off because of third-party support, any market analyst will tell you that. If it didn't have third-party support from the App Store, it would have died. Why was that third-party support there? Previously, on almost all other cellphones, every carrier had their own App Store. With their own policies. And a 50/50 split at best. Some only gave the developer 30% with the carrier taking 70%. With the developer paying for your own credit card fees and hosting fees. Many carriers had severe upfront costs of tens of thousands of dollars to get a half-functioning SDK. The 70/30 deal with one App Store was revolutionarily competitive for the time. Developers flooded Apple's scene because it was, by far, the cheapest and most profitable App Store available at the time. They can't claim, high on the success that Apple gave them, that Apple's the problem now when Apple did not even change the deal that they initially signed for. At least, not legally easily.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    > It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted. I think it's a little more complicated than that. I agree that developers are unlikely to lower prices if the 30% fee is eliminated or reduced. But it seems reasonably likely that the next time they look into raising prices, they may raise them less, or decide not to raise them at all. I do agree with the underlying point: prices are not set based on cost, but are set in line with what the market will pay. If the market will pay $10 when the developer has to pay a 30% fee, the market will still pay $10 if that fee disappears. But still, consider that for many apps there's going to be a tension between what the market will pay, and the minimum the developer needs to keep the lights on. The developer might settle for a lower per-sale profit if they get a bunch more users that more than offsets the lower per-user revenue. Let's say a developer sells at a $10 price point, which nets the developer $7 (after Apple's 30% cut), and that they need $6 to keep paying their other costs; they'll get $1 in profit after all is said and done. But maybe they can only make 100,000 sales at that price point, or $100,000. Kill the 30% fee, and they make $4 per sale, or $400,000. Great! Instant 4x profit! But maybe they'll be able to make 150,000 sales if the price were $9, which would give them $450,000 in profit. That's a compelling reason to drop prices. Or at least not raise them even when their other costs go up from $6 to $7. Obviously these numbers are made up; maybe dropping the price to $9 only nets them an additional 5,000 sales, so it's not worth it. But we can't just flat-out say that no developer will do the math and decide that dropping prices can actually help them.
    - theshackleford 3y ago
      > But it seems reasonably likely that the next time they look into raising prices, they may raise them less, or decide not to raise them at all. What absolute unsubstantiated nonsense.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        No more or less unsubstantiated than what the person I replied to said. At any rate, maybe try for some productive discussion rather than shallow dismissals?
- Someone 3y ago
  Hurting consumers? Apps are dirt cheap. If anything, they’re hurting developers, but even that may be hard to argue. Developers still flock to the platform. Even if those developers can’t make a living doing that (and many likely can’t), that’s not an argument for Apple’s fee being too high. There’s no right to be able to make a living in the way you want.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Yes, they are hurting consumers by banning competing app stores. Just because they offer an acceptable product doesnt mean they can hamstring competitors. There is a right to be allowed to compete.
    - skydhash 3y ago
      > There is a right to be allowed to compete. You can always build your own phone and setup your own app store. Samsung does.
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        How is this different from telling people to move to a different town when their town bans walmart? I've invested considerably money into the apple ecosystem. I have a bunch of media on their cloud. Switching is a pain in the ass, why cant the gov just enforce anti competitive laws?
        skydhash 3y ago
        If you want Walmart products, you better follow Walmart.
        kelnos 3y ago
        > How is this different from telling people to move to a different town when their town bans walmart? I generally agree with your point, but this is a weird argument: towns can and do ban big-box stores, and yes, "move to a different town" is exactly the only remedy people have, if they want to live close to those kinds of stores. And frankly we generally see that as a good thing! Big-box stores tend to kill downtowns. > I've invested considerably money into the apple ecosystem. This confuses your Walmart analogy quite a bit, because there's no such thing as "investing money into the Walmart ecosystem". Walmart doesn't have an ecosystem. If your Walmart closes down and other stores pop up to replace it, you just start shopping at those other stores, and likely don't really notice much of a difference. And that's precisely the point of the issue with Apple. If I've been an iOS user for years and years, and suddenly Apple changes the terms to something I really don't like, it'll cost me a lot to switch to another platform.
- musictubes 3y ago
  Locked in? You can't buy another phone? Would you have been able to buy the apps you use without Google taking 30% as well?
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Sure, they can buy an Android phone, and then have to re-buy all those apps again, probably at considerable expense. And yeah, Google taking 30% as well also sucks. Just because Google does it, it doesn't mean it's fine Apple does too.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

Ok but apple is hurting consumers with their 30% fee. I would not have bought an iPhone if I knew about that. Now Im locked in.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
A. That's not exactly secret information, so your ignorance is not an excuse when you could have easily found that information if you cared. It's not a secret contract. B. Android also charges 30%. Developers making under $1M per year pay only 15% (initially announced by Apple, copied by Google). You can't argue you'd save a penny going to Android. C. You can always sell your iPhone, if it matters to you now, and buy an Android. D. It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  > D. It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted. I could not disagree more. > B. Android also charges 30%. It's actually better on iPhone, because developers making under $1M per year pay only 15%. On Android, everyone pays 30%. So you'd be paying more to Google on Android than on iPhone. Android is bad too but at least you can get an app store without the fee. > C. You can always sell your iPhone, if it matters to you now, and buy an Android. Will I get refunded for the apps I bought? What about the macbook I bought because I entered the apple ecosystem? > A. That's not exactly secret information, so your ignorance is not an excuse when you could have easily found that information if you cared. It's not a secret contract. How could I have known to look this up before it became a story?
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    > I could not disagree more. Well, we can agree to disagree, but call it a prediction - in three years, prices will be exactly the same as they are now. No business, especially in this economy, gets an opportunity like this to raise margins without affecting sales. > Android is bad too but at least you can get an app store without the fee. Yes, and literally nobody will install it. And the few app stores that are available - Aurora will get your Google account banned, while F-Droid re-signs all apps with itself, meaning you are opening your device to serious security risks. A middleman in F-Droid would mean every app you install from them could be compromised with fake developer signatures. Fun. > How could I have known to look this up before it became a story? How about paying attention since the 30% commission was announced at the iPhone App Store launch in 2008, literally by Steve Jobs on stage when iPhoneOS 2.0 was announced? There's no legal requirement to advertise every possible detail to cover every possible person's perspective - especially when it's old hat announced a decade and a half ago with fanfare. https://youtu.be/WUrzjLjP4UQ?t=217 https://youtu.be/WUrzjLjP4UQ?t=217 Edit for the comment below about iPhone being anti-competitive (because I'm "posting too fast"): Well, here's the problem with trying to investigate the iPhone. Remember how I showed that announcement in 2008? iPhone market share, at the time, was less than 5%. Almost the entire smartphone market was split between BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. Now look at where iPhone is now, despite the fee. That demonstrates, to a regulator, that it is a competitive product, and the market preferred it, despite the fee which was implemented at the beginning. Apple didn't build the iPhone to where it is now and then lock it down - developers signed up right when it was beginning and didn't care then, so they can't care now that it's a success. Apple has basically an ironclad argument for competitiveness. If it was anti-competitive, the iPhone would've died at birth. Nobody would have supported an anti-competitive product if they actually cared at a time when it could have easily been ignored. This came up in the argument with Epic - Apple argued, successfully, that the market chose them and their "anti-competitive practices" despite them having almost no clout, which can only be the result of market support for being a competitive product. Edit 2 (same issue, thanks @dang): > What makes you say that? A product being anti competitive has little to do with whether consumers will buy it. You dont see how you can have the best product on the market and also stifle competition? The iPhone took off because of third-party support, any market analyst will tell you that. If it didn't have third-party support from the App Store, it would have died. Why was that third-party support there? Previously, on almost all other cellphones, every carrier had their own App Store. With their own policies. And a 50/50 split at best. Some only gave the developer 30% with the carrier taking 70%. With the developer paying for your own credit card fees and hosting fees. Many carriers had severe upfront costs of tens of thousands of dollars to get a half-functioning SDK. The 70/30 deal with one App Store was revolutionarily competitive for the time. Developers flooded Apple's scene because it was, by far, the cheapest and most profitable App Store available at the time. They can't claim, high on the success that Apple gave them, that Apple's the problem now when Apple did not even change the deal that they initially signed for. At least, not legally easily.
- kelnos 3y ago
  > It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted. I think it's a little more complicated than that. I agree that developers are unlikely to lower prices if the 30% fee is eliminated or reduced. But it seems reasonably likely that the next time they look into raising prices, they may raise them less, or decide not to raise them at all. I do agree with the underlying point: prices are not set based on cost, but are set in line with what the market will pay. If the market will pay $10 when the developer has to pay a 30% fee, the market will still pay $10 if that fee disappears. But still, consider that for many apps there's going to be a tension between what the market will pay, and the minimum the developer needs to keep the lights on. The developer might settle for a lower per-sale profit if they get a bunch more users that more than offsets the lower per-user revenue. Let's say a developer sells at a $10 price point, which nets the developer $7 (after Apple's 30% cut), and that they need $6 to keep paying their other costs; they'll get $1 in profit after all is said and done. But maybe they can only make 100,000 sales at that price point, or $100,000. Kill the 30% fee, and they make $4 per sale, or $400,000. Great! Instant 4x profit! But maybe they'll be able to make 150,000 sales if the price were $9, which would give them $450,000 in profit. That's a compelling reason to drop prices. Or at least not raise them even when their other costs go up from $6 to $7. Obviously these numbers are made up; maybe dropping the price to $9 only nets them an additional 5,000 sales, so it's not worth it. But we can't just flat-out say that no developer will do the math and decide that dropping prices can actually help them.
  - theshackleford 3y ago
    > But it seems reasonably likely that the next time they look into raising prices, they may raise them less, or decide not to raise them at all. What absolute unsubstantiated nonsense.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      No more or less unsubstantiated than what the person I replied to said. At any rate, maybe try for some productive discussion rather than shallow dismissals?
Someone 3y ago
Hurting consumers? Apps are dirt cheap. If anything, they’re hurting developers, but even that may be hard to argue. Developers still flock to the platform. Even if those developers can’t make a living doing that (and many likely can’t), that’s not an argument for Apple’s fee being too high. There’s no right to be able to make a living in the way you want.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Yes, they are hurting consumers by banning competing app stores. Just because they offer an acceptable product doesnt mean they can hamstring competitors. There is a right to be allowed to compete.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    > There is a right to be allowed to compete. You can always build your own phone and setup your own app store. Samsung does.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      How is this different from telling people to move to a different town when their town bans walmart? I've invested considerably money into the apple ecosystem. I have a bunch of media on their cloud. Switching is a pain in the ass, why cant the gov just enforce anti competitive laws?
      - skydhash 3y ago
        If you want Walmart products, you better follow Walmart.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        > How is this different from telling people to move to a different town when their town bans walmart? I generally agree with your point, but this is a weird argument: towns can and do ban big-box stores, and yes, "move to a different town" is exactly the only remedy people have, if they want to live close to those kinds of stores. And frankly we generally see that as a good thing! Big-box stores tend to kill downtowns. > I've invested considerably money into the apple ecosystem. This confuses your Walmart analogy quite a bit, because there's no such thing as "investing money into the Walmart ecosystem". Walmart doesn't have an ecosystem. If your Walmart closes down and other stores pop up to replace it, you just start shopping at those other stores, and likely don't really notice much of a difference. And that's precisely the point of the issue with Apple. If I've been an iOS user for years and years, and suddenly Apple changes the terms to something I really don't like, it'll cost me a lot to switch to another platform.
musictubes 3y ago
Locked in? You can't buy another phone? Would you have been able to buy the apps you use without Google taking 30% as well?
- kelnos 3y ago
  Sure, they can buy an Android phone, and then have to re-buy all those apps again, probably at considerable expense. And yeah, Google taking 30% as well also sucks. Just because Google does it, it doesn't mean it's fine Apple does too.