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Okay, developers can choose on Android. Yet to a first approximation, all of them still use the Google Play Store, why is that? If it’s only mean old Apple sto

Okay, developers can choose on Android. Yet to a first approximation, all of them still use the Google Play Store, why is that? If it’s only mean old Apple stopping developers from using PWAs, then why do Android developers still use Google Play services instead of PWAs, alternate app stores or direct downloads? All of which are available? Candy Crush - still one of the most profitable games in the App Store is not graphic intensive and could be done on the web today and use Apple Pay (normal credit card charges), why don’t they?

afavour 3y ago
Because Candy Crush relies upon being an impulse purchase. If people had to go through five steps to buy it a ton of people would abandon it. That isn’t the same for every app. There are plenty of apps folks would be happy to go out of their way to purchase because they provide a ton of value. But the developers are not allowed to. Again: my argument here is choice. Let developers decide. Your counter is “but one of them is better”. You’re entitled to your opinion but that isn’t a counter argument to letting developers choose what type of payment system they want to use. Apple does not let developers do that and they should. There’s really not much more to the debate than that. If, as you argue, Apple’s ecosystem is better in all aspects then it will win out in a free market. What’s not to like?
- scarface_74 3y ago
  > Because Candy Crush relies upon being an impulse purchase. If people had to go through five steps to buy it a ton of people would abandon it. But this does apply to apps that make up 90% of the revenue on the App Store. These aren’t numbers I’m making up - it came out in the Epic trial. But even if that’s not the case for the other 10%, the same would apply for the App Store that applies for Amazon in the real world. Smaller merchants still choose Amazon for the conversion and that’s where the customers are when literally anyone can sell from a Squarespace website. > Again: my argument here is choice. Let developers decide. Your counter is “but one of them is better”. You’re entitled to your opinion but that isn’t a counter argument to letting developers choose what type of payment system And that’s the issue - everyone wants to use Apple’s App Store and have their own payment system not avoid the exposure they get from the App Store. Once again, on Android where you can in fact tell users to go outside of the Google ay Store - hardly anyone does. Every Indy developer thinks their little app will be special and they would be okay outside of the App Store. If they can’t even gain traction within the App Store what chances do they have of gaining traction outside of it? It’s not the 15% cut that’s keeping them from succeeding - small developers aren’t paying 30%
  - danShumway 3y ago
    As a reminder, both Android and Amazon are being investigated for antitrust, and part of that complaint for Amazon is that they utilized an algorithm called Project Nessie to raise prices across the web for consumer goods even on 3rd-party storefronts: https://fortune.com/2023/11/02/amazon-algorithm-raise-prices-ftc-antitrust-lawsuit/ https://fortune.com/2023/11/02/amazon-algorithm-raise-prices... These are maybe not the shining corporate examples you want to compare Apple to.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Google is being sued because they sold the idea of “freeduhm” and then changed the terms. There is plenty of precedence for this. This is why they loss thr Epic case and Apple won a similar lawsuit. But how is what Amazon doing any different than what the corner store does when it raises and lowers gas prices based on competition? And before you accuse me of being an Amazon apologist, I’ve mentioned plenty of times that I got Amazoned last year. I have no love loss for the company.
      - danShumway 3y ago
        > But how is what Amazon doing any different than what the corner store does when it raises and lowers gas prices based on competition? The FTC put out a blog post going into more detail about their complaints, which go beyond price adjustment to match competitors: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/.... Their full complaint is at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonecommercecomplaintrevisedredactions.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonec... In particular, the FTC is interested in Amazon's pricing requirements which prohibit sellers from offering products at lower prices through other storefronts, its bundling of services like Prime which require sellers to buy unwanted fulfillment services in order to obtain unrelated placements in the Amazon store (and force Prime users to essentially pay twice for shipping if they order products outside of Amazon), and its privileging of discoverability for Amazon's own products and for paid advertisements over products that the FTC alleges Amazon knew were higher quality and better rated than the results it surfaced to customers. The FTC's complaint describes this as a self-reinforcing feedback loop: > Because Amazon suppresses meaningful competition on price and product selection, shoppers lack viable alternatives, further forcing sellers to submit to Amazon’s exclusionary tactics to reach those customers, and further allowing Amazon to accelerate and expand its dominance. Together, Amazon’s conduct blocks off competition, shopper traffic, and seller business in the interrelated relevant markets. In other words, the more that sellers become dependent on Amazon, the more that shoppers become dependent on Amazon since goods and services are not available on other storefronts. This in turn makes sellers more reliant on Amazon since buyers become even harder to find off-site. Which in turn makes sellers more reliant on Amazon, and on and on. This has the effect of killing off 3rd-party storefronts since they are faced with a chicken-and-egg problem of trying to attract both sellers and buyers at the same time, and neither group can move off of Amazon individually without suffering financial penalties or losing product placement.
- danShumway 3y ago
  Not to mention that "the app store is a better ecosystem because it's easier for kids to impulse-buy in-app purchases from scammy games" is a heck of a take. If mobile games are sticking to the app store purely because the purchase model on the web discourages impulse buys, that is a strong argument for investing more time and resources into the web as a platform and pushing more apps in that direction. "It's easier to monetize children" is not an argument in the app store's favor, it's an indictment on Apple's payment UX and parental controls. Presumably in this theoretical world, the only thing keeping Candy Crush off of the web is that he web isn't exploitative enough. Which... again, just a weird argument for anyone to make if they're arguing that the app store is the best solution for everyone. Everyone except users apparently.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    I’m saying that it isn’t logically that Apple is keeping PWAs from becoming more popular because today most of the revenue wouldn’t leave the App Store because it comes from pay to win games. On the other hand I’m saying today Android developers could move from Google Play and not have to pay the “Google tax”. But they don’t. Why not? Also if it is only Apple holding PWAs back, then why aren’t PWAs a popular way to escape the “Google tax”? It must be that Android developers think 30% is worth it.
    - danShumway 3y ago
      > But they don’t. Why not? Because PWAs lack substantial capabilities that make them impossible to use for most app development. Which is what everyone has been saying. Note that developers do move out of the Android store, there are a host of applications available on F-Droid that are not available through the Android app store even though discoverability on F-Droid is nonexistent. But those developers don't build PWAs, because PWAs are not a viable platform for building modern apps. It has nothing to do with the 30% being worth it or not and everything to do with the fact that moving away from the app store on both Android and iOS is really only theoretically possible -- and PWAs in every practical sense can't actually be used to avoid the tax. You bring up Candy Crush above as an example of an app that could be a PWA. It couldn't. PWAs lack reliable storage mechanisms, unless Candy Crush starts requiring online accounts it's not going to ship as a PWA. Meanwhile, the last "big" app that tried to go down the PWA route was Wordle, which was both difficult for users to install and was immediately swamped with fraudulent clones in the app store claiming to be the official apps, which neither Google nor Apple did anything to stop. Once the NYT purchased Wordle, one of the first things they did was add an online account system -- in part to mitigate the common data losses that were present in the PWA. Wordle is the best possible candidate for a PWA, and the NYT is still struggling with it. I would not be surprised if at some point they don't turn it into a native app. It's not that the payments are worth 30%. It's that going outside the app store (even when you're not collecting any payments at all) isn't viable. Which is what everyone has been saying all this time. > Also if it is only Apple holding PWAs back It's not. Apple is one party holding PWAs back.

afavour 3y ago

Because Candy Crush relies upon being an impulse purchase. If people had to go through five steps to buy it a ton of people would abandon it. That isn’t the same for every app. There are plenty of apps folks would be happy to go out of their way to purchase because they provide a ton of value. But the developers are not allowed to. Again: my argument here is choice. Let developers decide. Your counter is “but one of them is better”. You’re entitled to your opinion but that isn’t a counter argument to letting developers choose what type of payment system they want to use. Apple does not let developers do that and they should. There’s really not much more to the debate than that. If, as you argue, Apple’s ecosystem is better in all aspects then it will win out in a free market. What’s not to like?

scarface_74 3y ago
> Because Candy Crush relies upon being an impulse purchase. If people had to go through five steps to buy it a ton of people would abandon it. But this does apply to apps that make up 90% of the revenue on the App Store. These aren’t numbers I’m making up - it came out in the Epic trial. But even if that’s not the case for the other 10%, the same would apply for the App Store that applies for Amazon in the real world. Smaller merchants still choose Amazon for the conversion and that’s where the customers are when literally anyone can sell from a Squarespace website. > Again: my argument here is choice. Let developers decide. Your counter is “but one of them is better”. You’re entitled to your opinion but that isn’t a counter argument to letting developers choose what type of payment system And that’s the issue - everyone wants to use Apple’s App Store and have their own payment system not avoid the exposure they get from the App Store. Once again, on Android where you can in fact tell users to go outside of the Google ay Store - hardly anyone does. Every Indy developer thinks their little app will be special and they would be okay outside of the App Store. If they can’t even gain traction within the App Store what chances do they have of gaining traction outside of it? It’s not the 15% cut that’s keeping them from succeeding - small developers aren’t paying 30%
- danShumway 3y ago
  As a reminder, both Android and Amazon are being investigated for antitrust, and part of that complaint for Amazon is that they utilized an algorithm called Project Nessie to raise prices across the web for consumer goods even on 3rd-party storefronts: https://fortune.com/2023/11/02/amazon-algorithm-raise-prices-ftc-antitrust-lawsuit/ https://fortune.com/2023/11/02/amazon-algorithm-raise-prices... These are maybe not the shining corporate examples you want to compare Apple to.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Google is being sued because they sold the idea of “freeduhm” and then changed the terms. There is plenty of precedence for this. This is why they loss thr Epic case and Apple won a similar lawsuit. But how is what Amazon doing any different than what the corner store does when it raises and lowers gas prices based on competition? And before you accuse me of being an Amazon apologist, I’ve mentioned plenty of times that I got Amazoned last year. I have no love loss for the company.
    - danShumway 3y ago
      > But how is what Amazon doing any different than what the corner store does when it raises and lowers gas prices based on competition? The FTC put out a blog post going into more detail about their complaints, which go beyond price adjustment to match competitors: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/.... Their full complaint is at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonecommercecomplaintrevisedredactions.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/1910134amazonec... In particular, the FTC is interested in Amazon's pricing requirements which prohibit sellers from offering products at lower prices through other storefronts, its bundling of services like Prime which require sellers to buy unwanted fulfillment services in order to obtain unrelated placements in the Amazon store (and force Prime users to essentially pay twice for shipping if they order products outside of Amazon), and its privileging of discoverability for Amazon's own products and for paid advertisements over products that the FTC alleges Amazon knew were higher quality and better rated than the results it surfaced to customers. The FTC's complaint describes this as a self-reinforcing feedback loop: > Because Amazon suppresses meaningful competition on price and product selection, shoppers lack viable alternatives, further forcing sellers to submit to Amazon’s exclusionary tactics to reach those customers, and further allowing Amazon to accelerate and expand its dominance. Together, Amazon’s conduct blocks off competition, shopper traffic, and seller business in the interrelated relevant markets. In other words, the more that sellers become dependent on Amazon, the more that shoppers become dependent on Amazon since goods and services are not available on other storefronts. This in turn makes sellers more reliant on Amazon since buyers become even harder to find off-site. Which in turn makes sellers more reliant on Amazon, and on and on. This has the effect of killing off 3rd-party storefronts since they are faced with a chicken-and-egg problem of trying to attract both sellers and buyers at the same time, and neither group can move off of Amazon individually without suffering financial penalties or losing product placement.
danShumway 3y ago
Not to mention that "the app store is a better ecosystem because it's easier for kids to impulse-buy in-app purchases from scammy games" is a heck of a take. If mobile games are sticking to the app store purely because the purchase model on the web discourages impulse buys, that is a strong argument for investing more time and resources into the web as a platform and pushing more apps in that direction. "It's easier to monetize children" is not an argument in the app store's favor, it's an indictment on Apple's payment UX and parental controls. Presumably in this theoretical world, the only thing keeping Candy Crush off of the web is that he web isn't exploitative enough. Which... again, just a weird argument for anyone to make if they're arguing that the app store is the best solution for everyone. Everyone except users apparently.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  I’m saying that it isn’t logically that Apple is keeping PWAs from becoming more popular because today most of the revenue wouldn’t leave the App Store because it comes from pay to win games. On the other hand I’m saying today Android developers could move from Google Play and not have to pay the “Google tax”. But they don’t. Why not? Also if it is only Apple holding PWAs back, then why aren’t PWAs a popular way to escape the “Google tax”? It must be that Android developers think 30% is worth it.
  - danShumway 3y ago
    > But they don’t. Why not? Because PWAs lack substantial capabilities that make them impossible to use for most app development. Which is what everyone has been saying. Note that developers do move out of the Android store, there are a host of applications available on F-Droid that are not available through the Android app store even though discoverability on F-Droid is nonexistent. But those developers don't build PWAs, because PWAs are not a viable platform for building modern apps. It has nothing to do with the 30% being worth it or not and everything to do with the fact that moving away from the app store on both Android and iOS is really only theoretically possible -- and PWAs in every practical sense can't actually be used to avoid the tax. You bring up Candy Crush above as an example of an app that could be a PWA. It couldn't. PWAs lack reliable storage mechanisms, unless Candy Crush starts requiring online accounts it's not going to ship as a PWA. Meanwhile, the last "big" app that tried to go down the PWA route was Wordle, which was both difficult for users to install and was immediately swamped with fraudulent clones in the app store claiming to be the official apps, which neither Google nor Apple did anything to stop. Once the NYT purchased Wordle, one of the first things they did was add an online account system -- in part to mitigate the common data losses that were present in the PWA. Wordle is the best possible candidate for a PWA, and the NYT is still struggling with it. I would not be surprised if at some point they don't turn it into a native app. It's not that the payments are worth 30%. It's that going outside the app store (even when you're not collecting any payments at all) isn't viable. Which is what everyone has been saying all this time. > Also if it is only Apple holding PWAs back It's not. Apple is one party holding PWAs back.