4 ms·

Apple's new extortion regime to keep big app makers

36 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

isaacfrond 3y ago
tl;dr Let’s start with the extortion regime that’ll befell any large developer who might be tempted to try hosting their app in one of these new alternative app stores that the EU forced Apple to allow. And let’s take Meta as a good example. Their Instagram app alone is used by over 300 million people in Europe. Let’s just say for easy math there’s 250 million of those in the EU. In order to distribute Instagram on, say, a new Microsoft iOS App Store, Meta would have to pay Apple $11,277,174 PER MONTH(!!!) as a “Core Technology Fee”. That’s $135 MILLION DOLLARS per year. Just for the privilege of putting Instagram into a competing store. No fee if they stay in Apple’s App Store exclusively.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Why would I care as a consumer? And why act like it's a disgrace? Somebody has to pay for the 'core technology' Apple develops. I think Facebook can handle a fee of 1/1000 of their yearly revenue. If it's about licensing why doesn't the EU go after Microsoft or Oracle? Especially the second one has a tendency to get very creative with licensing requirements.
  - pmx 3y ago
    I Paid for the core technology when I PAID THEM FOR THE FREAKING PHONE
    - wdb 3y ago
      Clearly not
      - mcmcmc 3y ago
        Thanks for the valuable contribution
    - hellisothers 3y ago
      What if you don’t though? I’m not saying it’s accurate but what if they were like “ok you can side-load but we didn’t price that into the $1000 phone, side-loading costs $4000”
      - pmx 3y ago
        Then Samsung's market share goes up?
  - jevoten 3y ago
    I would think it would be obvious why consumers should care about a handful of corporations acting like feudal lords and controlling what smaller developers can do, technically or economically. To spell it out: because you are affected. In the best case scenario, only the Apple tax is passed on to you. In the worst case, the app you get will be discreetly censored at Apple's whims [1,2,3]. But of course you can rely on altruistic developers willing to forego half of the mobile market to get uncensored apps. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-taiwan-flag-emoji-hong-kong-macau-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-ch... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-pulls-hong-kong-cop-tracking-map-app-after-china-uproar-11570681464 https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-pulls-hong-kong-cop-track...
    - bzzzt 3y ago
      Of course there's ample evidence Apple is not on the brink of bankruptcy, but we've settled for current IP laws which permit companies to own stuff and charge consumers for it. If the price is too high consumers won't buy but given the current state of the app store it doesn't look like there's a lack of people and companies building apps despite the "Apple tax". I'm not entirely against opening up the app store but it remains to be seen if that would change things for the better. Apple may censor a flag, but they also repel a lot of attempts by companies to get my personal data. I'm much more concerned about the latter and would gladly pay a bit more to have less tracking.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    They're not going after Oracle because that's a stagnant company with no real market power. Apple is running the most brutal and successful display of monopoly power in the history of technology. I don't know why you think that EU isn't going after Microsoft. Apple is not being singled out here, a bunch of companies including MS are also in the scope for the DMA. The distinction is just that the other companies seem to intend to actually comply with the regulations, unlike Apple whose public posture is one of whining, and actions are those of malicious compliance.
- bberenberg 3y ago
  Who should pay for API development and maintenance? The thing that Apple (and most other platform vendors) have failed at isn’t the charging a fair price. It’s the delivering fair value. Given the amount they take the APIs, docs, tooling, support, etc should be much higher quality. They’re selling a product (access to people and APIs) and they’re doing an excellent job of giving developers a larger and larger pie to eat from, but they need to make the utensils better.
  - mcmcmc 3y ago
    Uhhh how about the users who purchase the hardware and use the apps?
  - ensignavenger 3y ago
    There users buy a phone- giving Apple money... with an OS as part of the deal. An OS is by definition an way to run apps, or an API to the phone hardware. If iPhones couldn't run apps, they wouldn't sell a bazillion of them every year.
    - bberenberg 3y ago
      That's literally not the deal. The deal is you get a phone with an OS, and an App Store on which you can get free or paid apps. Plus dynamic content via web browser etc. Developers know they have to pay a fee if they want to transact with these customers. The only people here trying to break the "deal" are consenting developers that decided they want to have their cake and eat it too. I built an entire company on top of a similar platform in the past. The take rate isn't the issue, it's the developer experience and associated operational costs, but since there isn't' a great narrative to rally the general public around to force Apple to provide better docs, this is the approach Epic and co have taken. PS. An operating system may be by definition a way to run apps, but it is not by definition something you can do anything you want with. For example, I can't take the Linux kernel make it closed source.
      - ensignavenger 3y ago
        The EU parliament is hardly a group of developers. There are plenty of iPhone owners that want the freedom to run whatever apps they want to on their phones, too. Further, I never said anything about what the "deal" was. I simply said that there are plenty of ways for Apple to make plenty of money without charging a per installation fee on every app that gets installed/updated on every iOS device.
- rgbrenner 3y ago
  Is that a good example? Facebook pulls in over $50B/year from Instagram, about $34/user. Ignoring the EU is richer than the average user, and using the user count you mentioned, that's $8.5B from the EU. So $135M is 1.5% of revenue. Should I be outraged one of the largest tech companies in the world needs to pay 1.5% of revenue to distribute their app? Are they even outraged about this? Lots of expenses exceed 1.5%. I wonder how much Facebook really cares.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
HackerThemAll 3y ago
Unless a true alternative emerges (and I don't mean that hopeless current Android hardware), Apple's dominance will thrive undisturbed. Google is unable to properly launch a phone worldwide, which is really stupid, giving their claimed "top talent", resources they have and market presence in the entire world. They support Pixel 8 in Ireland (5 million population), Norway (5.4 million), Denmark (5.9) but they don't in Poland (38 million, part of European Union for 20 years) where they bought one of the largest offices for over $600 million USD to support 2,500 employees (it's not a "developing country"), and Poles consider Pixel's price a fair price, not an expensive one. Not to mention lack of Pixel presence in at least some Asian countries with at least several hundred millions of potential customers. They even did not enter all radio frequencies in their version of Android, so that 5G or some Wi-Fi bands don't work in some countries. When you roam from supported country to an unsupported one, you may loose part or all connectivity. They did the same in Chromecast. Multiple layoffs confirm it's all about money at Google, so why they don't reach for an easy money from smartphone market? It's a rhetoric question. Other phones compete with the same hopeless vision, Samsung being notoriously unstable, unfinished, downsized (in certain markets), overheating and just plainly idiotic. No company offers easy and complete tools to exit from iCloud, just toy projects and non-viable software, make people stay with Apple even if they don't want anymore, because it's just easier for them. Therefore for now no company with their Android hardware with dreadful UI and nonexisting/unfinished services is going to be able to compete with the biggest electronic religion, that is Apple. Many years ago idiots from Microsoft killed their smartphone division, which had probably the best realtime OS any phone had at that time, the best basis for app development. They had made some good decisions, such as introducing very easy to use and performant .NET and a nice UI framework, then they have over-engineered it. Had they had the crew with brains inside, had they listened to customers, they would now be the dominant player in the market. But even the simplest feature requests were ignored by them and/or downplayed by their then-zealots. I've read somewhere that Musk may be considering creating his smartphone. Looking forward to it, maybe it'll shake the market, bring some freshness and at least motivate some changes in the industry.

36 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

tl;dr Let’s start with the extortion regime that’ll befell any large developer who might be tempted to try hosting their app in one of these new alternative app stores that the EU forced Apple to allow. And let’s take Meta as a good example. Their Instagram app alone is used by over 300 million people in Europe. Let’s just say for easy math there’s 250 million of those in the EU. In order to distribute Instagram on, say, a new Microsoft iOS App Store, Meta would have to pay Apple $11,277,174 PER MONTH(!!!) as a “Core Technology Fee”. That’s $135 MILLION DOLLARS per year. Just for the privilege of putting Instagram into a competing store. No fee if they stay in Apple’s App Store exclusively.

bzzzt 3y ago
Why would I care as a consumer? And why act like it's a disgrace? Somebody has to pay for the 'core technology' Apple develops. I think Facebook can handle a fee of 1/1000 of their yearly revenue. If it's about licensing why doesn't the EU go after Microsoft or Oracle? Especially the second one has a tendency to get very creative with licensing requirements.
- pmx 3y ago
  I Paid for the core technology when I PAID THEM FOR THE FREAKING PHONE
  - wdb 3y ago
    Clearly not
    - mcmcmc 3y ago
      Thanks for the valuable contribution
  - hellisothers 3y ago
    What if you don’t though? I’m not saying it’s accurate but what if they were like “ok you can side-load but we didn’t price that into the $1000 phone, side-loading costs $4000”
    - pmx 3y ago
      Then Samsung's market share goes up?
- jevoten 3y ago
  I would think it would be obvious why consumers should care about a handful of corporations acting like feudal lords and controlling what smaller developers can do, technically or economically. To spell it out: because you are affected. In the best case scenario, only the Apple tax is passed on to you. In the worst case, the app you get will be discreetly censored at Apple's whims [1,2,3]. But of course you can rely on altruistic developers willing to forego half of the mobile market to get uncensored apps. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-taiwan-flag-emoji-hong-kong-macau-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/7/20903613/apple-hiding-tai... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-ch... [3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-pulls-hong-kong-cop-tracking-map-app-after-china-uproar-11570681464 https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-pulls-hong-kong-cop-track...
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    Of course there's ample evidence Apple is not on the brink of bankruptcy, but we've settled for current IP laws which permit companies to own stuff and charge consumers for it. If the price is too high consumers won't buy but given the current state of the app store it doesn't look like there's a lack of people and companies building apps despite the "Apple tax". I'm not entirely against opening up the app store but it remains to be seen if that would change things for the better. Apple may censor a flag, but they also repel a lot of attempts by companies to get my personal data. I'm much more concerned about the latter and would gladly pay a bit more to have less tracking.
- jsnell 3y ago
  They're not going after Oracle because that's a stagnant company with no real market power. Apple is running the most brutal and successful display of monopoly power in the history of technology. I don't know why you think that EU isn't going after Microsoft. Apple is not being singled out here, a bunch of companies including MS are also in the scope for the DMA. The distinction is just that the other companies seem to intend to actually comply with the regulations, unlike Apple whose public posture is one of whining, and actions are those of malicious compliance.
bberenberg 3y ago
Who should pay for API development and maintenance? The thing that Apple (and most other platform vendors) have failed at isn’t the charging a fair price. It’s the delivering fair value. Given the amount they take the APIs, docs, tooling, support, etc should be much higher quality. They’re selling a product (access to people and APIs) and they’re doing an excellent job of giving developers a larger and larger pie to eat from, but they need to make the utensils better.
- mcmcmc 3y ago
  Uhhh how about the users who purchase the hardware and use the apps?
- ensignavenger 3y ago
  There users buy a phone- giving Apple money... with an OS as part of the deal. An OS is by definition an way to run apps, or an API to the phone hardware. If iPhones couldn't run apps, they wouldn't sell a bazillion of them every year.
  - bberenberg 3y ago
    That's literally not the deal. The deal is you get a phone with an OS, and an App Store on which you can get free or paid apps. Plus dynamic content via web browser etc. Developers know they have to pay a fee if they want to transact with these customers. The only people here trying to break the "deal" are consenting developers that decided they want to have their cake and eat it too. I built an entire company on top of a similar platform in the past. The take rate isn't the issue, it's the developer experience and associated operational costs, but since there isn't' a great narrative to rally the general public around to force Apple to provide better docs, this is the approach Epic and co have taken. PS. An operating system may be by definition a way to run apps, but it is not by definition something you can do anything you want with. For example, I can't take the Linux kernel make it closed source.
    - ensignavenger 3y ago
      The EU parliament is hardly a group of developers. There are plenty of iPhone owners that want the freedom to run whatever apps they want to on their phones, too. Further, I never said anything about what the "deal" was. I simply said that there are plenty of ways for Apple to make plenty of money without charging a per installation fee on every app that gets installed/updated on every iOS device.
rgbrenner 3y ago
Is that a good example? Facebook pulls in over $50B/year from Instagram, about $34/user. Ignoring the EU is richer than the average user, and using the user count you mentioned, that's $8.5B from the EU. So $135M is 1.5% of revenue. Should I be outraged one of the largest tech companies in the world needs to pay 1.5% of revenue to distribute their app? Are they even outraged about this? Lots of expenses exceed 1.5%. I wonder how much Facebook really cares.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

HackerThemAll 3y ago

Unless a true alternative emerges (and I don't mean that hopeless current Android hardware), Apple's dominance will thrive undisturbed. Google is unable to properly launch a phone worldwide, which is really stupid, giving their claimed "top talent", resources they have and market presence in the entire world. They support Pixel 8 in Ireland (5 million population), Norway (5.4 million), Denmark (5.9) but they don't in Poland (38 million, part of European Union for 20 years) where they bought one of the largest offices for over $600 million USD to support 2,500 employees (it's not a "developing country"), and Poles consider Pixel's price a fair price, not an expensive one. Not to mention lack of Pixel presence in at least some Asian countries with at least several hundred millions of potential customers. They even did not enter all radio frequencies in their version of Android, so that 5G or some Wi-Fi bands don't work in some countries. When you roam from supported country to an unsupported one, you may loose part or all connectivity. They did the same in Chromecast. Multiple layoffs confirm it's all about money at Google, so why they don't reach for an easy money from smartphone market? It's a rhetoric question. Other phones compete with the same hopeless vision, Samsung being notoriously unstable, unfinished, downsized (in certain markets), overheating and just plainly idiotic. No company offers easy and complete tools to exit from iCloud, just toy projects and non-viable software, make people stay with Apple even if they don't want anymore, because it's just easier for them. Therefore for now no company with their Android hardware with dreadful UI and nonexisting/unfinished services is going to be able to compete with the biggest electronic religion, that is Apple. Many years ago idiots from Microsoft killed their smartphone division, which had probably the best realtime OS any phone had at that time, the best basis for app development. They had made some good decisions, such as introducing very easy to use and performant .NET and a nice UI framework, then they have over-engineered it. Had they had the crew with brains inside, had they listened to customers, they would now be the dominant player in the market. But even the simplest feature requests were ignored by them and/or downplayed by their then-zealots. I've read somewhere that Musk may be considering creating his smartphone. Looking forward to it, maybe it'll shake the market, bring some freshness and at least motivate some changes in the industry.