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Apple reverses course: app must pay 30% App Store fee on tips sent to teachers
- pie420 3y ago"Squeeze, Rabban. Squeeze hard."
- ado__dev 3y agoIt's just Apple protecting their golden goose. If they start making exceptions, then that opens them up to more scrutiny and they have been very adamant about forcing all devs to pay the Apple tax.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoGoogle giving spotify a deal on their fee is a large part of why they lost the epic case after apple won.
- ZoomerCretin 3y ago(Google also gives Apple a deal on Apple Music)
- fragmede 3y agoI mean, they did lower the fee (well, it's a program you can apply to) to 15% if you make less than $1,000,000 a year.
- iAMkenough 3y agoMacRumors has more context: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/21/insight-timer-ceo-app-store-dispute/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/02/21/insight-timer-ceo-app-s... > Apple took issue with Insight Timer accepting tips for live events and meditations, deciding that this money was for digital content. Plowman did not agree with Apple's assessment, and spent months negotiating. Apple did agree to allow tip links on teacher profile pages that are not subject to a 30 percent fee, but donations from live events and meditations are not considered tips. Apple's reasoning is that a one-to-one donation is a monetary gift, but a workshop or class with at least two people is digital content that's subject to a commission.
- threeseed 3y agoThe app developer is being pretty tricky here. It is unquestionably digital content when it's a teacher giving a class and the amount of tipping is so high that it is their primary compensation model.
- halostatue 3y agoThis is a much better, more nuanced link than the original, which is just repeating the original questionable claims of Insight Timer.
- bhpm 3y agoThe “teachers” in this app are guided meditation helpers. From the title I thought it was like public school teachers.
- dheera 3y agoThey're still paid a lot less than Apple employees, and considering that they are getting fewer and fewer opportunities for exposure outside of Apple/Google/Facebook ecosystems, it doesn't seem fair that they should be subject to insane taxes by these mega-corps, far more than the government would tax them. Even consider a tech geek, gets $1M a year from a hot app, 30% goes to Apple, 37% of what's left goes to federal taxes, 13% goes to California taxes, there's hardly anything left, do we even own our money anymore? And then lose another 10% of what's left to sales tax when you try to actually spend any of it ... god damn.
- lupire 3y agoWow that tech geek should have created her own phone and OS to claw back that $300K per year. Also $320K/yr spending money is pretty good.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kanbara 3y agowhat? that’s just shy of 32k a month. enough to save for all your retirement, pay a mortgage, support a family, go on holiday, do whatever you want. and if this supposed dev did $999,999 he’d only pay 15%. hardly anything left? i made less than that at a FAANG and live an amazingly comfortable life. also, everyone pays sales tax: consume more, pay more. how is earning over $350k in cash a year net a bad place to be? this is insane
- dheera 3y ago> what? that’s just shy of 32k a month. enough to save for all your retirement, pay a mortgage, support a family, go on holiday, do whatever you want. Really? Houses here cost $3M, and since you can't afford that you'll be paying an arm and a leg to rent from a greedy landlord. You'll take 20 years to save up that 3M, by which time you're too old to enjoy life, and houses will cost 8M at that point in time. Good luck if you plan to have kids, that $32k/month won't be enough at all for daycare, schooling, afterschooling, insane medical expenses, fixing all the shit they break, and all that. And no, taking out a loan to buy a house doesn't mean you can afford a house, it means you're spending money that you don't have. This should NOT be the norm. People should be able to afford basic shit, like a roof. This tech geek actually COULD have afforded that roof if Apple and the government weren't stealing all of her money. > and if this supposed dev did $999,999 he’d only pay 15%. No that's not how taxes work
- emsy 3y agoThere's a clip where Steve Jobs talks about how Xerox became run by salesman. The current Apple is not quite there yet, but it's very slowly heading in that direction.
- threeseed 3y agoYou do know that Steve Jobs was CEO when the App Store was launched. And in the 15 years since then very little has changed with how it works.
- k12sosse 3y agoAnd wasn't Steve Jobs a Ringling Brothers level salesman?
- LarsDu88 3y agoSteve Jobs literally named the company after the summer he spent picking fruit with the Hare Krishna cult. The cult of Apple lives, even though Mr. Jobs died of acute pancreatitis wrought by his exclusively fruit based diet. Can't make this shit up.
- smallerfish 3y ago> Can't make this shit up Ironic, because you just did. Jobs thought he could cure his cancer through diet, and didn't. There's no indication that his diet caused his cancer.
- maxwell 3y agoProbably just a coincidence that Kutcher was hospitalized twice for pancreatitis after adopting Jobs' diet in preparation for the role. https://www.self.com/story/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-hospitalized-pancreatitis https://www.self.com/story/mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-hospita...
- colordrops 3y ago
- lilyball 3y agoThis really sounds like Insight Timer was relying on these tips as a primary form of monetary compensation for their teachers. Which is to say, the existence of the tips means their own subscription fee can be lower because they don't have to pay the teachers as much.
- api 3y agoTipping being pushed everywhere has become a way to simultaneously increase prices and wages but avoid officially doing the latter. Companies want to avoid officially increasing wages because wages are sticky while tips are not.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoIt's worse. They're shifting the economic risk of shitty service off to the worker - even if/when much of the service is beyond the control of the worker. For example: you deliver food for fictional service Yoter Eats. The customer pays a fixed price for the meal plus surcharges. Yoter Eats and the restaurant are guaranteed to get their cut no matter the quality of the meal, the completeness of the order (ie missing items 'accidentally' left out by the restaurant), how well it was dispatched, how quickly it was prepared, etc. You, the delivery person? You're the only expense of the transaction that the customer has control over. You have no recourse if your payment for services is reduced or withheld. It's even worse: some services don't show how much the "tip" is before you accept the order (because they don't want you to refuse low tip orders) or after the transaction completes, other services take a portion of your "tip" and don't tell you how much they took. Some services allow customers to "tip bait" - they can set one tip when they order, but then reduce it for no reason, up to hours after the order is delivered.
- LightHugger 3y agoMinor nitpick: If the tip is issued before the service it's a bid, not a tip.
- 3y ago
- etchalon 3y agoStrikes me as a "if we call it a tip, we can get away with it" situation.
- behnamoh 3y agoWhy are people desensitized to such Apple tactics? You'd think there would be much more backlash but somehow people just think this is okay and move on.
- healthdare 3y ago[dead]
- jaimex2 3y agoIt's pretty sad that developers and companies just take it as a 'just the cost of doing business' You should always self host where possible at a discount. I personally would never publish anything on Apple's ecosystem as there's no alternatives.
- calsy 3y agoHow do you self host an app? And if you can, how could you possibly reach the audience the size the app store offers? Never publish anything on Apple's ecosystem as there no alternative... so don't publish at all is what you mean? All these crazy ideas come from people who don't work in app development, clearly.
- jjav 3y ago> All these crazy ideas come from people who don't work in app development, clearly. Since the dawn of computers, it has always been possible to write and publish software directly from the developer to the consumer. This is the normal state. Apple has broken this on iOS with their model where they are the sole arbiter, gatekeeper and tax extractor, of every application.
- 10729287 3y ago... and they're working on breaking it on the personnal computer too. For security reasons, obviously.
- advael 3y agoI think the mobile duopolies would be a lot less bad if there weren't so many compliance moats for cellular infrastructure. For example, I was trying to use the pinephone for a while but ran into unreliability issues with SMS. It turned out that there was a known issue with the firmware for the cell modem in the phone, and maintainers claimed a working fix that they couldn't distribute because of a legal hurdle. A small problem that's likely been fixed by now, but aggregate a bunch of delays like this and it's no wonder there aren't yet strong FOSS alternatives to these big closed platforms yet
- standardUser 3y agoCan you imagine having $170 billion in cash reserves and not using it to both cut prices for your customers and engage in gargantuan philanthropic works. I can't.
- WXLCKNO 3y agoNot sure they can do that, they have a legal duty to maximize shareholder value.
- FireBeyond 3y agoShareholder benefit has been held many times by courts not to mean "the ruthless and exclusive sole pursuit of maximal profit"
- gruez 3y agoYeah but in this case, "maximize profit by charging 30% tax" is what the board (elected by the shareholders) decided to implement. You're free to disagree, but you'll have to start a proxy fight to change the board.
- standardUser 3y agoI think the greater point here is we need to change federal law if we want companies to not endlessly hoard cash and gouge their customers.
- ericd 3y agoThe people in charge of Apple don't own the company, or that cash. A large portion of that represents many peoples' retirement savings.
- standardUser 3y agoYou speak as if Apple, the company that controls those cash reserves, is incapable of using those cash reserves, which is a strange thing to claim. It may not be a slush fund but it is obviously not untouchable.
- squigglydonut 3y agoThis is why I refuse to develop my core product offering on the app store. Native app will always be companion features. Apple has built a shitty machine called the App Store. It's not developer friendly. It's not people friendly. It's a troll under a bridge collecting money.
- calsy 3y agoIts not developer or people friendly? What are you talking about??? They have the most mature dev stack for app development available. Its the most convenient option for anyone who owns an Apple device by far. Its not even an argument, the number of apps and the income generated from customers says it all. People want fully featured apps, not companion apps. Your personal feelings on the matter aren't relevant to what a customer wants.
- orwin 3y ago> People want fully featured apps, not companion apps Not my experience. I rock climb, sail and play pen and paper rpgs. I have a companion app for the second, four for the third (2 I coded myself). The rock climbing is the only one that would need a true app (with geo-localisation and maybe a gmap interface). Idem for my work, I don't care, on my phone, about a full feature github, or even email service. Just forgot, I also have a tuner, it's a full app but it doesn't need to be (I had one of Firefox OS too, you only had web apps on it).
- calsy 3y agoYou code? Then you should know your personal preferences are completely irrelevant. You think 99.999999%+ of apple users care about github or Firefox OS. Why even bring it up? 'I like using these specific apps, so millions upon millions of other users must be identical to me.'. The initial argument was completely different. This person makes companion apps simply because they don't like Apples business practices. Lovely for him I guess.. for most it makes absolutely no sense financially to ignore your customers needs based on a personal preference. Customer will just use a better, fully featured app thats not bound by the developers inflated ego.
- moolcool 3y agoHey do you guys remember when Microsoft spent years in court because they bundled a browser with an operating system?
- ProAm 3y ago$300 USB 2.0 developer cable for Vison Pro. USB 2.0!
- outcoldman 3y agoThere is so much attention right now at Apple, like we don’t have other real problems. Reminds me of masmedia in Russia, when they show how bad things are in other countries. (I am originally from Russia). With Apple - I am a user and developer. To be honest, I am pretty happy with App Store from both sides. I mean, there are a LOT of issues. But comparing to other platforms, I can deal with them. I have more problems: - with cars that don’t have documentations how to replace anything on them, or install CarPlay after purchase. And we pay for those way more than 1000. - medical insurance in USA and the whole medical system. Everyone knows all the issues we have here. Forget even about the prices, just the whole system. - very shitty quality of any home appliances, that become smart and might not do basic features as they used to. - smart TVs. This is certainly where things need to be fixed. My TV now takes 30 seconds to turn on. Vizio, LG, Samsung, all of them. - amount of spam, robocallers, text, emails. I want that to be fixed. - internet and cellular providers in USA. The max upload speeds are still 20mpbs - streaming services, we cut the cables, but now we pay $100 for hbo, disney, hulu and netflix. And prime just added 2.99 for ad free subscription. Those are just examples. We know about those issues, but we don’t talk about them, because they are beneficial for other large organizations. But we talk about Apple because some large organizations don’t want to pay other large organization money. And yes. The title is clickbait. Those aren’t tips, those aren’t teachers.
- aarreedd 3y agoPointing out one problem does not imply not caring about all other problems.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y agoAll your money are belong to us!
- andersa 3y agoApple has to be destroyed.