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This makes absolutely no sense. It came out in the Eoic trial that 90% of App Store revenue comes from games and in app purchases. Those apps are no more goin

This makes absolutely no sense. It came out in the Eoic trial that 90% of App Store revenue comes from games and in app purchases. Those apps are no more going to leave the App Store and go to the web than they are going to leave the Google Pay Store. In app purchases monetize too well and people aren’t going to put their credit cards on every third party website. That’s not even to mention all of the ways that you can pay via in app purchases that you can’t pay via the web and all of the kids with phones without credit cards attached. If it’s only Apple, then why aren’t Android developers creating great PWAs to escape the same 30%?

afavour 3y ago
> Those apps are no more going to leave the App Store and go to the web than they are going to leave the Google Pay Store. ...Microsoft did exactly that, though: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/30/hands-on-xbox-cloud-gaming/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/30/hands-on-xbox-cloud-gam... I don't really understand the rest of your argument. "Of course developers aren't going to use the web instead of apps, it's a way worse experience!" is precisely the point in criticizing Apple letting the web platform languish. They have a vested interest in making sure the in-app experience remains superior to web experience because of their 30% cut.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  If it’s just Apple, then why aren’t developers leaving Google Play Services in droves to avoid the same 30% cut? And Microsoft did that not because they didn’t want to be in the store, but because at the time Apple wouldn’t allow them. Yes I disagree with this. If PWAs could be made one to one with apps - and today games like Candy Crush could be web apps - game developers who make up 90% of App Store revenue still wouldn’t give up the direct access to users wallets they get from in app purchases.
  - int_19h 3y ago
    If PWAs were on par with native feature-wise, why couldn't they have single-click in-app purchases? All you'd need is some large trusted platform to provide a single sign-on experience and process payments.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Why do small merchants sell physical goods on Amazon today when they could sell on their own website with much lower selling costs? Even back before the App Store and there was just iTunes, Apple had more credit cards on file than anyone in the world except for Amazon. Read up on “Aggregation theory” by Ben Thompson. Also people have access to in app purchases that don’t have access to credit cards - like kids. Who is going to be that large trusted platform?
      - afavour 3y ago
        I don’t understand the argument you’re making. “No one wants to use the web because it lacks the centralized payment processing” “If PWAs were fully featured a third party could offer that” “Why do you think people sell on Amazon?” The last statement has little to do with the two preceding it. We all understand the strength of a centralized payment system. Amazon themselves already offer Amazon Payments. That could absolutely be an alternative to in-app purchases. Except Apple wouldn’t get their cut, so they don’t want that. The correct answer here is to let the market decide. If I’m willing to trade 15%/30% of my revenue for an easier purchasing flow I can do that. But if I’m willing to tolerate more friction for a lower cut I should be allowed to do that too. But App Store rules expressly forbid that. The web could be an alternative but Apple has a vested interest in under developing it.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Where hard to understand? You don’t have to sell on Amazon and deal with their commissions but people do. A news website doesn’t have to allow Google to crawl them since they complain that Google takes their ad revenues - yet they do. And Apple would get no cut if Candy Crush were on the web and even the cut they would get from using Apple Pay (not in app payments) are standard credit card payments. But kids who probably don’t have access to credit cards still can use in app payments along with people who don’t have credit cards at all who can use Apple gift cards. I gave up a reliable reference from a well known analyst about Aggregation Theory. Outside of the App Store, parents aren’t going to give their kids unfettered access to their credit cards compared to parental controls that are available within the App Store. If so many developers are in such a hurry to leave the OS providers App Store, then why don’t the same developers leave the Google Play store where it is allowed? How did that work for Epic with Android? The fact is that game developers - who make up 90% of App Store revenue according to data that came out during the Epic trial - complain about the 30% cut. But they want access not only to Apple’s customers but also to in app purchases so they can use every psychological trick to take advantage of the whales. Neither Google nor Apple care about the Indy developer and the little revenue they make. Are you fighting for the independent developer or the slimy pay to win game developers?
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  If we ever reach a point where compiled code is equally as performant as web apps, I'll eat a shoe.
danShumway 3y ago
That's a good question: Apple has argued in court that PWAs are a serviceable alternative to the app store. So why aren't developers using them? Is Apple wrong? Are they not a serviceable alternative to the app store? Android has better support than iOS, and Android's userbase spends less money on apps and is more often monetized through ads. So it's not the payment platform that causes developers to avoid PWAs, otherwise they'd be used all over the place on Android. Android also has a semi-thriving community of Open Source applications through F-Droid that are privacy preserving and completely non-monetized. But installing apps through F-Droid is complicated. And F-Droid has zero user reviews. So it's clearly not the ease of delivery or advertisement that's causing those developers to ship native apps that need to be sideloaded through a complicated process that involves going into your phone settings and turning on sideloading instead of just shipping web apps. So what's left? Well, invasive apps like Facebook/Twitter could ship as PWAs (with the caveat that their notification support would be worse). But they'd be giving up tracking ability by doing so. Web browsers are better secured than phones are. Facebook on iOS has an easier time tracking your behavior than Facebook in Safari does. Facebook on iOS could even at one point (and might still be able to, I can't find a source that this is patched) push custom code into web views of other articles through its iOS native app. So yeah, they're obviously interested in shipping an iOS app because (frankly) the Safari team is better at security than Apple's iOS developers are. The only reason left that explains that behavior is the fact that PWAs on both Android and iOS are severely lacking in APIs that would enable anything other than shallow internet-connected services. They are not alternatives to the app store in their current state, no matter how much Apple pretends otherwise. Notification support on Android for PWAs is a joke, it's basically only usable for advertisements. And it's even worse on iOS. If you want to make an alarm app as a PWA, it is literally impossible to do that reliably. Want to make an RSS reader? I have no clue how that would be done as a PWA, I don't think it can be done without a web server handling the article fetching. ---- And I'm sure you would say at this point that there are tons of apps that don't need this stuff and that really it's not about capabilities it's about payments and about what the users want and where they look for apps... And I would just repeat your question back to you -- there are a ton of apps that are not monetizing through app store payments that aren't shipping PWAs. There are a ton of apps that are not looking for mass-market appeal that are not shipping PWAs. And Apple is arguing in court that they could. But they're not. They're not using PWAs on iOS or on Android. They're not shipping PWAs when they rely on advertising. They're not shipping PWAs when they would benefit tremendously from not needing to pay so many commissions to Apple. Even when they're Open Source and don't monetize at all, they're not shipping PWAs. Why not? What do those developers know that Apple either doesn't know or is pretending not to know? There's no NewPipe for iOS shipping through Safari. Why is that?

afavour 3y ago

> Those apps are no more going to leave the App Store and go to the web than they are going to leave the Google Pay Store. ...Microsoft did exactly that, though: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/30/hands-on-xbox-cloud-gaming/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/30/hands-on-xbox-cloud-gam... I don't really understand the rest of your argument. "Of course developers aren't going to use the web instead of apps, it's a way worse experience!" is precisely the point in criticizing Apple letting the web platform languish. They have a vested interest in making sure the in-app experience remains superior to web experience because of their 30% cut.

scarface_74 3y ago
If it’s just Apple, then why aren’t developers leaving Google Play Services in droves to avoid the same 30% cut? And Microsoft did that not because they didn’t want to be in the store, but because at the time Apple wouldn’t allow them. Yes I disagree with this. If PWAs could be made one to one with apps - and today games like Candy Crush could be web apps - game developers who make up 90% of App Store revenue still wouldn’t give up the direct access to users wallets they get from in app purchases.
- int_19h 3y ago
  If PWAs were on par with native feature-wise, why couldn't they have single-click in-app purchases? All you'd need is some large trusted platform to provide a single sign-on experience and process payments.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Why do small merchants sell physical goods on Amazon today when they could sell on their own website with much lower selling costs? Even back before the App Store and there was just iTunes, Apple had more credit cards on file than anyone in the world except for Amazon. Read up on “Aggregation theory” by Ben Thompson. Also people have access to in app purchases that don’t have access to credit cards - like kids. Who is going to be that large trusted platform?
    - afavour 3y ago
      I don’t understand the argument you’re making. “No one wants to use the web because it lacks the centralized payment processing” “If PWAs were fully featured a third party could offer that” “Why do you think people sell on Amazon?” The last statement has little to do with the two preceding it. We all understand the strength of a centralized payment system. Amazon themselves already offer Amazon Payments. That could absolutely be an alternative to in-app purchases. Except Apple wouldn’t get their cut, so they don’t want that. The correct answer here is to let the market decide. If I’m willing to trade 15%/30% of my revenue for an easier purchasing flow I can do that. But if I’m willing to tolerate more friction for a lower cut I should be allowed to do that too. But App Store rules expressly forbid that. The web could be an alternative but Apple has a vested interest in under developing it.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        Where hard to understand? You don’t have to sell on Amazon and deal with their commissions but people do. A news website doesn’t have to allow Google to crawl them since they complain that Google takes their ad revenues - yet they do. And Apple would get no cut if Candy Crush were on the web and even the cut they would get from using Apple Pay (not in app payments) are standard credit card payments. But kids who probably don’t have access to credit cards still can use in app payments along with people who don’t have credit cards at all who can use Apple gift cards. I gave up a reliable reference from a well known analyst about Aggregation Theory. Outside of the App Store, parents aren’t going to give their kids unfettered access to their credit cards compared to parental controls that are available within the App Store. If so many developers are in such a hurry to leave the OS providers App Store, then why don’t the same developers leave the Google Play store where it is allowed? How did that work for Epic with Android? The fact is that game developers - who make up 90% of App Store revenue according to data that came out during the Epic trial - complain about the 30% cut. But they want access not only to Apple’s customers but also to in app purchases so they can use every psychological trick to take advantage of the whales. Neither Google nor Apple care about the Indy developer and the little revenue they make. Are you fighting for the independent developer or the slimy pay to win game developers?
ToucanLoucan 3y ago
If we ever reach a point where compiled code is equally as performant as web apps, I'll eat a shoe.

danShumway 3y ago

That's a good question: Apple has argued in court that PWAs are a serviceable alternative to the app store. So why aren't developers using them? Is Apple wrong? Are they not a serviceable alternative to the app store? Android has better support than iOS, and Android's userbase spends less money on apps and is more often monetized through ads. So it's not the payment platform that causes developers to avoid PWAs, otherwise they'd be used all over the place on Android. Android also has a semi-thriving community of Open Source applications through F-Droid that are privacy preserving and completely non-monetized. But installing apps through F-Droid is complicated. And F-Droid has zero user reviews. So it's clearly not the ease of delivery or advertisement that's causing those developers to ship native apps that need to be sideloaded through a complicated process that involves going into your phone settings and turning on sideloading instead of just shipping web apps. So what's left? Well, invasive apps like Facebook/Twitter could ship as PWAs (with the caveat that their notification support would be worse). But they'd be giving up tracking ability by doing so. Web browsers are better secured than phones are. Facebook on iOS has an easier time tracking your behavior than Facebook in Safari does. Facebook on iOS could even at one point (and might still be able to, I can't find a source that this is patched) push custom code into web views of other articles through its iOS native app. So yeah, they're obviously interested in shipping an iOS app because (frankly) the Safari team is better at security than Apple's iOS developers are. The only reason left that explains that behavior is the fact that PWAs on both Android and iOS are severely lacking in APIs that would enable anything other than shallow internet-connected services. They are not alternatives to the app store in their current state, no matter how much Apple pretends otherwise. Notification support on Android for PWAs is a joke, it's basically only usable for advertisements. And it's even worse on iOS. If you want to make an alarm app as a PWA, it is literally impossible to do that reliably. Want to make an RSS reader? I have no clue how that would be done as a PWA, I don't think it can be done without a web server handling the article fetching. ---- And I'm sure you would say at this point that there are tons of apps that don't need this stuff and that really it's not about capabilities it's about payments and about what the users want and where they look for apps... And I would just repeat your question back to you -- there are a ton of apps that are not monetizing through app store payments that aren't shipping PWAs. There are a ton of apps that are not looking for mass-market appeal that are not shipping PWAs. And Apple is arguing in court that they could. But they're not. They're not using PWAs on iOS or on Android. They're not shipping PWAs when they rely on advertising. They're not shipping PWAs when they would benefit tremendously from not needing to pay so many commissions to Apple. Even when they're Open Source and don't monetize at all, they're not shipping PWAs. Why not? What do those developers know that Apple either doesn't know or is pretending not to know? There's no NewPipe for iOS shipping through Safari. Why is that?