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Apple has been fighting for their 30% since the beginning. Step by step any exceptions to the 30% rule have been removed. Is it more ethical to give Dropbox sp

by jopt 14y ago

Apple has been fighting for their 30% since the beginning. Step by step any exceptions to the 30% rule have been removed. Is it more ethical to give Dropbox special treatment? Should Dropbox-enabled apps be given that competitive advantage?

grey-area 14y ago
Apple has been fighting for their 30% since the beginning. Step by step any exceptions to the 30% rule have been removed. The most important question (for both customers, and developer partners) is: should Apple be trying to extract 30% from every transaction on their devices? Should they be trying to expunge any links to the internet in all apps (the logical conclusion of their current path), in order to ensure that no payments for anything digital go through anyone but them? If they get away with this, will they then come after companies like Amazon selling physical products later and try to enforce a 30% cut and equal pricing outside the app for products sold through any other system? Is that a sustainable model and one which we as consumers and developers want to support? If the answer to that question is no, Apple is pricing themselves out of business with their partners (who made all these wonderful apps which they are making money on), and their customers, who pay all the money for those apps and devices (because they have apps). They rely on those people to make their money, and annoying your customers and partners is never a good strategy in the long-term, as Microsoft found out to their cost when they lost customer loyalty in the late 90s. In this example the developer wasn't even explicitly selling something - they were just linking to the internet, which then meant that someone could possibly buy some digital service from dropbox without paying Apple a finder's fee. If they push this too far, we'll see more and more companies abandoning the Apple ecosystem and selling things direct over the internet instead - there have already been some high profile defections like the Financial Times who decided that it just wasn't worth dealing with Apple, and abandoned their high-profile iPad app for a web app.

by jopt 14y ago

grey-area 14y ago

Apple has been fighting for their 30% since the beginning. Step by step any exceptions to the 30% rule have been removed. The most important question (for both customers, and developer partners) is: should Apple be trying to extract 30% from every transaction on their devices? Should they be trying to expunge any links to the internet in all apps (the logical conclusion of their current path), in order to ensure that no payments for anything digital go through anyone but them? If they get away with this, will they then come after companies like Amazon selling physical products later and try to enforce a 30% cut and equal pricing outside the app for products sold through any other system? Is that a sustainable model and one which we as consumers and developers want to support? If the answer to that question is no, Apple is pricing themselves out of business with their partners (who made all these wonderful apps which they are making money on), and their customers, who pay all the money for those apps and devices (because they have apps). They rely on those people to make their money, and annoying your customers and partners is never a good strategy in the long-term, as Microsoft found out to their cost when they lost customer loyalty in the late 90s. In this example the developer wasn't even explicitly selling something - they were just linking to the internet, which then meant that someone could possibly buy some digital service from dropbox without paying Apple a finder's fee. If they push this too far, we'll see more and more companies abandoning the Apple ecosystem and selling things direct over the internet instead - there have already been some high profile defections like the Financial Times who decided that it just wasn't worth dealing with Apple, and abandoned their high-profile iPad app for a web app.