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You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win! Also, think

You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win! Also, thinking that all businesses will lock one in using friction and timewasting is not a rational argument. There are a lot of honest businesses there forced to pay the Apple Mafia's tax.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bitpush 1y ago
Exactly. This is the part that I dont get about Apple apologists. If one really likes paying 30% extra to Apple for privacy/security (debatable, but whatever) nobody is stopping you. But for every one of those, there are many who might want to transact with the business directly. FWIW, I trust Spotify equally as Apple - so if I get a Spotify subscription, I'm more than happy to get a 30% discount and deal with Spotify directly. Heck, I can do that on my MacOS (another fine product the Cupertino company makes) but when it comes to iOS - OMG, virus, malware, user privacy!!
- ubermonkey 1y ago
  I prefer everything go through Apple b/c I trust Apple more than I trust the average other vendor. This way, I know if I'm dealing with something on my phone, I have a trusted channel for commerce. I am sophisticated enough that I can probably ascertain what alternative payment schemes are reasonable and which are scams, but Apple's imposed payment monoculture means unsophisticated users are protected as well. A more permissive payment setup would necessarily mean more scammy apps, or maybe just vendors with gross, dark patterns designed to obfuscate cancellation without quite being fraud. No thanks.
- cowl 1y ago
  the next response would be "but then i would find myself taking the option that I don't like because the option that I like would put me in a disadvantage so since i can't control my options in order for me to have the best, the other bests should not exist and especially other people can not have better things than what i say is the best because then i would again find myself in choice conflict" Not just apple apologists btw, it's a full category of people who can't enjoy their "choices" without having everyone else have only that "choice"
Nursie 1y ago
> You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win! People say this stuff, but recently I re-examined my subscription to a multi-platform VPN service through the App store and found that they priced it cheaper than getting the same package through their website or through their windows client. No idea why.
- goku12 1y ago
  Is that the norm or just an outlier?
  - Nursie 1y ago
    I don't know, it's the only data point I have! I would presume an outlier as it seems to make poor business sense.
- thayne 1y ago
  I'm not sure if it is still the case after the EU cases, but it at least used to be that Apple prohibited you from charging more for paying through the app store. And that leads to increased prices for everyone, regardless of if you even own an iOS device.
  - dmoy 1y ago
    I thought you could charge more (at least now, maybe not in the before times), but you still can't say explicitly that you're charging more because of Apple's 30% fee.
- p2detar 1y ago
  You can’t just stamp a price tag on your app. Apple have price tiers and you must choose a pre-defined price tier. Edit: Not sure if up to date but for example: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/App-Store-Pricing-Update.pdf https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/App-Store-Pricing-Update...
  - 1y ago
piperswe 1y ago
If businesses don't have to offer the more consumer friendly option, they won't offer it.
- Nevermark 1y ago
  That’s an unsupportable claim. If customers want to pay more for Apple to facilitate, there isn’t an incentive to not keep apps in the App Store too. If a company has other reasons not to be in Apple’s store, why should they be required to?
  - BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
    > > If businesses don't have to offer the more consumer friendly option, they won't offer it. > That’s an unsupportable claim. It's supported well enough in my view by a long history of sleaze that apparently people have forgotten.
- immibis 1y ago
  Well then the rule could be: All apps must offer the possibility to use Apple Pay for payments. Or Apple could do one of those virtual credit card things. Or do they already? So you could use an Apple virtual credit card with any processor. But then the 30% extra fee would be visible to the user. Apple's whole schtick is making things way more expensive and hiding the competition pricing from the user. If "$10 with Stripe" was placed side by side with "$13 with Apple Pay", Apple would immediately lose all of their payment customers and about $2,000,000,000 in revenue, which is a lot. They can only prevent this by preventing "$10 with Stripe" from being there at all. (And if they did it with virtual credit cards, they'd have to tell users there's a 30% fee on each transaction)
- cowl 1y ago
  this is about allowing business to offer other choices, other store rules still would apply. for example if apple would be to require it's option as always present together with the rest in the app, then noone could say anything against it. it's the lack of choice that is the problem not requirements per se.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

bitpush 1y ago

Exactly. This is the part that I dont get about Apple apologists. If one really likes paying 30% extra to Apple for privacy/security (debatable, but whatever) nobody is stopping you. But for every one of those, there are many who might want to transact with the business directly. FWIW, I trust Spotify equally as Apple - so if I get a Spotify subscription, I'm more than happy to get a 30% discount and deal with Spotify directly. Heck, I can do that on my MacOS (another fine product the Cupertino company makes) but when it comes to iOS - OMG, virus, malware, user privacy!!

ubermonkey 1y ago
I prefer everything go through Apple b/c I trust Apple more than I trust the average other vendor. This way, I know if I'm dealing with something on my phone, I have a trusted channel for commerce. I am sophisticated enough that I can probably ascertain what alternative payment schemes are reasonable and which are scams, but Apple's imposed payment monoculture means unsophisticated users are protected as well. A more permissive payment setup would necessarily mean more scammy apps, or maybe just vendors with gross, dark patterns designed to obfuscate cancellation without quite being fraud. No thanks.
cowl 1y ago
the next response would be "but then i would find myself taking the option that I don't like because the option that I like would put me in a disadvantage so since i can't control my options in order for me to have the best, the other bests should not exist and especially other people can not have better things than what i say is the best because then i would again find myself in choice conflict" Not just apple apologists btw, it's a full category of people who can't enjoy their "choices" without having everyone else have only that "choice"

Nursie 1y ago

> You are free to pay ~30% extra for your preferred customer experience. The rest of us can leverage discounted pricing. Customer Choice for the win! People say this stuff, but recently I re-examined my subscription to a multi-platform VPN service through the App store and found that they priced it cheaper than getting the same package through their website or through their windows client. No idea why.

goku12 1y ago
Is that the norm or just an outlier?
- Nursie 1y ago
  I don't know, it's the only data point I have! I would presume an outlier as it seems to make poor business sense.
thayne 1y ago
I'm not sure if it is still the case after the EU cases, but it at least used to be that Apple prohibited you from charging more for paying through the app store. And that leads to increased prices for everyone, regardless of if you even own an iOS device.
- dmoy 1y ago
  I thought you could charge more (at least now, maybe not in the before times), but you still can't say explicitly that you're charging more because of Apple's 30% fee.
p2detar 1y ago
You can’t just stamp a price tag on your app. Apple have price tiers and you must choose a pre-defined price tier. Edit: Not sure if up to date but for example: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/App-Store-Pricing-Update.pdf https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/App-Store-Pricing-Update...
- 1y ago

piperswe 1y ago

If businesses don't have to offer the more consumer friendly option, they won't offer it.

Nevermark 1y ago
That’s an unsupportable claim. If customers want to pay more for Apple to facilitate, there isn’t an incentive to not keep apps in the App Store too. If a company has other reasons not to be in Apple’s store, why should they be required to?
- BugsJustFindMe 1y ago
  > > If businesses don't have to offer the more consumer friendly option, they won't offer it. > That’s an unsupportable claim. It's supported well enough in my view by a long history of sleaze that apparently people have forgotten.
immibis 1y ago
Well then the rule could be: All apps must offer the possibility to use Apple Pay for payments. Or Apple could do one of those virtual credit card things. Or do they already? So you could use an Apple virtual credit card with any processor. But then the 30% extra fee would be visible to the user. Apple's whole schtick is making things way more expensive and hiding the competition pricing from the user. If "$10 with Stripe" was placed side by side with "$13 with Apple Pay", Apple would immediately lose all of their payment customers and about $2,000,000,000 in revenue, which is a lot. They can only prevent this by preventing "$10 with Stripe" from being there at all. (And if they did it with virtual credit cards, they'd have to tell users there's a 30% fee on each transaction)
cowl 1y ago
this is about allowing business to offer other choices, other store rules still would apply. for example if apple would be to require it's option as always present together with the rest in the app, then noone could say anything against it. it's the lack of choice that is the problem not requirements per se.