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That should be easy for Apple then. They bill developers for the developer program (tools, APIs, entitlements, etc.) and sell users the phone.
by SllX 3y ago
That should be easy for Apple then. They bill developers for the developer program (tools, APIs, entitlements, etc.) and sell users the phone.
- km3r 3y agoThey already do bill for the developer program with the $100/year developer fee. Tying it to installs also makes no sense if the fee is for the dev tools.
- Spivak 3y agoWhy? Unity seemingly legally though not popularly tied the licensing fee for use of the engine to number of installs.
- lozenge 3y agoBecause Unity isn't legally a gatekeeper under the DMA.
- SllX 3y agoWell, no, it’s $100/year for the developer fee plus the 15-30% you paid to Apple if you charged money anywhere, which in the US is now 12-27% if you subtract Apple’s payment processing portion and soon in the EU this new complex scheme which I don’t even want to summarize, but amounts to a price drop in some circumstances and a price increase in other circumstances. There can be 3rd party app stores now but nobody who develops for the platform is taking advantage of the features and APIs Apple invested their own money and developer time into building out without paying Apple something above a certain threshold. I mean whether it’s the EU or Epic, Apple isn’t interested in letting anybody just co-opt their baby.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>plus the 15-30% you paid to Apple if you charged money anywhere, well yes. That's part of the rub. You'll pay $100/year even if you never launch an app so that makes sense. That's the cost of using Apple's SDK. But you may now pay $.50 per install even for a free app if you don't/can't host outside of the App store, unless you declare your company/business a non-profit or educational instituion. This was previously $0. So the price hike can become absurd, to say the least. >Apple isn’t interested in letting anybody just co-opt their baby. Well tough luck. you made more money off your "baby" than many country's GDP. Microsoft got co-opted for much less decades ago. Governments' interest is in making sure companies do not in fact hoard all the money in the world, and when your product becomes a centerpiece of society something's got to give.
- SllX 3y ago> well yes. That's part of the rub. You'll pay $100/year even if you never launch an app so that makes sense. That's the cost of using Apple's SDK. You don’t need to pay Apple $100/year if all you want is Xcode and the documentation, but if you want to actually launch an app, that’s when you pay Apple. > But you may now pay $.50 per install even for a free app if you don't/can't host outside of the App store, unless you declare your company/business a non-profit or educational instituion. This was previously $0. So the price hike can become absurd, to say the least. Yeah, due to *checks notes* changes in the regulatory environment making their previous model untenable in the EU. It is now not worth the cost or business risks to Apple to let all free apps free-ride, just most of them. > Well tough luck. you made more money off your "baby" than many country's GDP. Two things: not my baby, and it is absurd to compare annual corporate revenue to GDP. GDP is a measure of economic activity within a nation, not a revenue figure, and revenue measures money earned before costs are accounted for. > Governments' interest is in making sure companies do not in fact hoard all the money in the world This statement is meaningless. A government that sees its role in society to cap profits is one that will assuredly wreck that society. > and when your product becomes a centerpiece of society something's got to give. Except that it’s not. Apple’s customers are customers who voluntarily spent money to purchase iPhones when other choices were available to them, and an iPhone is a luxury good, not a necessity. It is lucrative to invest in developing software for iPhones, but there are other businesses to go into.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoThis isn’t a high-school debate, you have to think about legal consequence of your arguments. If the user has not exchanged consideration for the software, what is it, a gift? Do they want it? You can’t force someone to accept a gift, now you have to sell me iPhone without iOS! If user just paid for the hardware, locking down the hardware and forcing the user to use iOS is interference with the user’s property, potentially a crime. Furthermore, you have to provide a user manual For The Hardware separately. How is that gonna work? What does it do without software? So consequences of taking this route could be even worse - having to allow android to run on Apple hardware or something.
- freedomben 3y agoI didn't downvote you, but I'm guessing the downvotes are because of your unnecessarily snarky opening sentence. That's unfortuante because it overshadowed what was otherwise some interesting thoughts. In the future I would definitely remove unnecessarily inflammatory/offensive stuff like that since it takes away from your argument rather than helping it.
- SllX 3y agoNot sure how you got from my separation of unit from developer program Point A to your BYOOS Point Z. The developer program ≠ the operating system. The phone at least in the case of iPhones is the hardware unit plus the software (the operating system, the secure boot environment, the baseband firmware, and the apps bundled with the phone).
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>If user just paid for the hardware, locking down the hardware and forcing the user to use iOS is interference with the user’s property, potentially a crime. sounds good to me. But I don't think anyone's really arguing that here. >You can’t force someone to accept a gift, now you have to sell me iPhone without iOS! I mean, for Windows OEMs the licensing cost of windows is bundled in the price. Apple can do the same here. they are buying hardware plus a software OS. they aren't buying the entire app store as those apps each have separate costs assossiated with them. This is more like you can sell me IOS without the App Store (which again no one is really asking for. Just a reasonable option to sideload other stores).