It's interesting that they haven't made this discount automatic. Each developer has to apply for the discount. Seen from a PR point of view they support small developers, but they will profit from those who are not aware, or who don't sell enough to justify the time spent on applying for discounts.
If this creates an incentive for developers to keep their apps below $1M, then wouldn't that increase the divide between them and the "big fish" who can easily take the 15% loss?
> If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.
> If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can requalify for the 15 percent commission the year after.
So they take 15% commission from first million and 30% from later sales until developer falls below million in a calendar year.
The way it is written, that seems to be the case. I imagine -since it makes really more sense, for people doing "a bit over 1M"- that it works more like tax brackets: 15% on your first million in revenue, 30% after that.
No. The app store has always taken a 30% cut, so there's no "suddenly doubles" about this. It's a new rate. The new rate is 15% for <$1m commission. Once you hit $1m it reverts to the 30% rate.
This is good for smaller developers, but it doesn't really seem to solve the actual problem? All the people who are willing to go to war with Apple and have teeth are making way more than that…
…which, like many of Apple's moves regarding the App Store, is basically "let's shut down the ability of people to complain" rather than "let's actually fix things so people won't complain".
It's a level that state would take to take care for roads, healthcare, civil service, army and so on. There is no justification for such high % to maintain an app. They could charge per app review and maybe the data transfer fee no more than Amazon S3. Anything else is Apple abusing their monopoly. Developer can't submit their app to an alternative app store because Apple doesn't allow that and it must change.
For app store listing and promotion, application delivery all over the world to hundreds of millions of devices, access to back end services like notifications and iCloud storage, and sales transaction processing? Really?
Imagine if you had to develop or pay for all of those services individually. Your own download site, product promotion, services, a third party transaction processor, a content delivery network, bespoke cloud syncing, etc, etc.
Well, the app store cannot exist without app and phone without apps is essentially worthless (unless it has at least the caller app). So who is promoting who? The so called application delivery is just a file server that anyone can setup for peanuts these days. Apple offers no alternative for notifications or storage - there is no competition so they can dictate extortionate prices.
Yes many companies would love to run these services on their own, but they can't as Apple is blocking it.
30% is honestly a terrible deal as Apple does not provide the value for the money they are charging. The difference is you are forced into that arrangement you don't have the option of doing it all yourself.
If you had to develop all of those services yourself, it would look a lot like the internet. None of the things you mention are particularly challenging for the modern web.
Then you are a victim of Apple's tortious interference between yourself and your customers. Apple installs malware on every iDevice preventing users from installing apps they choose to purchase from 3rd parties.
No it doesn't. Apple and Google have stood on the neck of the mobile app distribution market for over a decade, and small developers have suffered for it. This change doesn't address the problem at all.
The only way to implement automatic upgrading, background installation or batch upgrading/installation of apps is via the Play Store. Third party app stores cannot compete with the Play Store on feature parity.
In a warped sort of way, I can think it would be useful to have it the other way around. A small developer doesn't have the resources to build and maintain their own billing system, promotion, etc, so 30% is probably reasonable. A larger developer, however, can, or already has those things, so to being forced to pay 30% is not reasonable. That's before we consider margins rather than takings.
I would argue the only fees that should be based on revenue are payment processor fees, and maybe distribution/CDN costs (althouth these should be instead charged per byte carried). And even then, these are astronomically low compared to the current 15%/30% cut.
Everything else is paid for already by the end user of the device (who consciously pay a premium to use Apple's ecosystem), and has no reason to scale linearly with developer revenue.
The operating system is valuable to the people who buy it, as in, the people who buy iPhones. This is why they pay a hefty price for it. Asking developers to pay for the OS is just double-dipping.
Why should developers also pay for this, when end users already do? Apple is double dipping like a world-class monopolist (see: ISPs who charge both peers and customers).
Apple provides value to both end-users and developers. It does not seem unreasonable to charge them both. And if Apple did not charge developers, that would suggest they’d have to raise prices on end-users to make up the difference, which does not seem fair to the users.
If that is the case, are we going to see device price hikes after this cut decrease?
Apple can afford to not make 15%/30% off of developers. They are just greedy for short-term profit, as any publicly traded company is. The only reason this cut happened is because they started getting threatened with lawsuits, so they had to slightly slow down their free money printer.
Thats fair but kinda like saying a food product producer is already providing value to a store by producing goods but not paying the store any money to host their product.
It is more like a market than a store. I buy from the stall / seller rather than the Market, but Market stalls still pay rent to the market to set up shop.
Of course, as we all know, the cost of distributing 1 million digital goods is the same, and scales the same way, as distributing 1 million physical goods.
There is a moral imperative that copying of software, which costs almost 0, is taxed per unit, just like physical goods, where there is a storage cost, a transport cost, etc.
I'm being ironic, obviously. Apple's App Store profits show that they're basically just sharecropping developers. Their operating costs are minimal and the fact that they're allowed to charge per unit, like they're Walmart and have to stock actual shelves, is quite ridiculous.
To Apple developers are disposable, if you don’t want to make software in their garden someone else will clone your app there. They seem themselves as the ones providing value to you.
It won’t be long till they make more changes to make sure they get that value out of you on the desktop too.
They are valued, the consumer pays for the value by purchasing the hardware
This aurgument is the same as Comcast claiming Netflix is a "free loader" on their network because Netflix was not paying Comcast...
hello, Comcast's customers pay comcast for the use of the network
In the same way, Apples hardware and iOS software are paid for by the END USER of the phone, users pay a HUGE and Excessive cost for these phones, why on earth then should Devs pay a second time
Like with last mile broadband, this is double dipping, in other contexts that would be considered fraud
Weird how this is the exact opposite of Valve's strategy:
> For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut.
Why weird? 2 different strategies with completely different goals.
Valve's strategy looks like to maximise revenue and get big companies on board that do $10+ mil in sales giving them incentives and discounts to be on the platform. (I think of it as tax break to incentivise high-earners to stay in the state/country)
Apple's strategy looks like to put more money into small companies/developers, while still charging the usual rate it had for 10 years to everyone else to access market of 1+ billion users. (tax break for small business to get up and running)
Not weird, but it is an interesting dynamic when you have an open platform that has to compete in the marketplace, vs a closed ecosystem that has to compete in PR / Legal battle.
Apple is clearly attempting to reverse some of the bad PR, and divide the Dev Community so the calls for Anti-Trust action is lessened as the "small devs" will consider Apple "on their side" by giving them a competitive advantage over larger shops
Clever move, time will tell if anyone buys it for more than what it really is, a PR stunt designed to ensure no real change happens
This I can understand because I'd argue most of the creative uses of Apple's ecosystems rather come from smaller indie developers meanwhile meanwhile larger companies also need to look at cross compatibility and sharing codebases.
> You don't need to distribute on Steam. [...] alternatives exist.
Sure, if you want your business to go bankrupt.
Itch? I love the place but good luck supporting your business with the number of sales you’ll make if you’re only available there. Epic? GoG? Humble? Those are curated stores; you have to be invited in; you can’t just choose to sell there. And even if you could, they still don’t have anything even remotely remotely remotely like the number of shoppers on Steam.
As a practical matter, today, Steam is the only realistic option for mainstream non-hobbyist digital PC game publishing. You can do other stores plus Steam, but Steam has to be in the mix if you’re hoping to support yourself by your sales. (and yes, you can point to a small handful of digital games which were highly financially successful without primarily selling through Steam, but those are the hyper-viral one-in-a-million exceptions, not representative business cases that you should be betting your business on replicating)
(Exception: if one of the other stores is going to pay you to be exclusive to their store (preferably only for a certain duration so that you can get onto Steam right after that period), then that can absolutely make up for losing out on the early Steam sales. But again, that sort of deal isn’t available to everybody)
You're talking about a once-in-a-generation indie hit (which arguably started before Steam was omnipresent), and a game which was made and published by a big company. This is not the norm.
> (which arguably started before Steam was omnipresent)
This just isn't true, Steam had almost no competition in 2008. Microsoft didn't even have an app store till 2012, Epic certainly didn't, EA Origin is 2011.
Steam lacking competition doesn't imply that it was omnipresent. I remember a long period where Steam existed but the overwhelmingly most common method of distribution was a box with CD(s) in it (or, since I was a poor student at the time, illicit download).
I had already addressed your comment in the post you replied to:
> and yes, you can point to a small handful of digital games which were highly financially successful without primarily selling through Steam, but those are the hyper-viral one-in-a-million exceptions, not representative business cases that you should be betting your business on replicating
I'm not arguing that either is good, but I think there is a fundamental difference. Apple is reacting to the threat of regulation, which is at least theoretically aimed at protecting small business owners. Valve is fundamentally competing for the business of large companies that actually can afford to forego the exposure Steam offers.
I'm not sure that the App Store's position is as stable as Steam's, either. I don't really have a clear sense of what impact it would have on their sales if Humble Bundle could sell iOS games.
Valve's strategy is actually the norm for the business world in general. The more business you do with a supplier/platform, the cheaper your unit costs get. If you're a small business buying 100 widgets, the price per widget is a lot higher than if you're a big business buying 100,000. Same with normal SaaS - try calling Stripe and asking them for a fee discount on your $100 revenue/month app vs. asking them for the same discount on your $1,000,000 revenue/month app.
The reason Apple doesn't use this normal model is that the mobile app market is completely screwed up - you get exactly two real choices for distribution if you want to make any money at all as a small developer.
Agreed. Delivery drivers don't take a percentage from every sale you make. They charge for the service.
App stores should charge for their service. They aren't making the sales (at least in most cases). They are delivering assets. Charge for the delivery.
I know somebody will start claiming that Apple created the market in the first place. Apple benefits from the large app selection just as much as the developers do - yet the relationship only works one way. Let's delete the App Store and see how well the iPhone does against Android.
They are charging for the manual work of checking apps, making sure your app exists in a fair market place and its not surronded by fake, malware infested nightmares.
Whether this is worth 30% is arguable, but they are not charging for the delivery, they are charging for keeping the garden trimmed.
App review is a one off task. They could charge the review fee and that's it. If they wanted more money they could charge data transfer fee similar to Amazon's S3. The 30% or 15% has no justification and it is just a cash grab because app developers can't go to an alternative app store with better terms. I am hoping that EU will stop this abuse.
30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal.
Though it should be 15% for everybody, no artificial caps.
Moreover, I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal.
Today being rejected by Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individuals.
It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 is gone.
Fee could be adjusted to your earnings, but basic mechanism should stay the same.
15% is almost like state level tax. They shouldn't ask more than 5% or they should take payment per app review and take no sales commission. The app store is what makes their iPhones useful, so in my view they should be paying developers to make apps not the other way around.
Because by suggesting Apple pay developers to make apps and not the other way around you either don't know history, how markets and distribution work, or you're making a joke.
You strategy played out very well in pre 2008 days with Windows Mobile. It also played out very well for Microsoft paying developers to create apps for Windows Phone, before Microsoft admitted defeat and left the phone market they were in since 1996.
About the 15%.
Have you tried running a business to make a living?
Have you tried building something yourself?
Have you tried selling it in 155 countries?
Have you tried getting access to a market of 1+ billion people?
Have you tried monitoring you don't breach regulations and tax thresholds in 155 countries?
Have you tried registering for VAT MOSS in one of the EU countries?
Have you tried implementing IP geo-location for your European customers, to charge a correct VAT amount out of 27 options?
This is laughable. You can setup Shopify to sell your physical inventory worldwide plus get an invoicing solution that deals with MOSS etc. for fraction of what Apple charges for hosting a file in an app.
Plus they don't allow competing app stores, so they can dictate these extortionate prices.
Once you get the foam out of your mouth, you could go and check how the various console markets were bootstrapped. Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well. Windows Mobile was undone by a number of mistakes (like rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch), paying developers was not one of them.
> about the 15%
Yeah, about that. As it is, it’s monopoly rent (and before you bring up consoles - yes, there too). Nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I wouldn’t be happy with 5% or 1% either, because the point is not how you measure the tax, but the tax itself and the fact that it’s not set by the market. Once they allow third-party appstores they can charge 50% for all I care.
It's very kind of you, but there's no foam coming out of my mouth. Thank you.
Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?
> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.
Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?
I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?
People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.
Should we also be happy that aristocracy has been abolished in most European countries, so the Napoleonic regime was excellent and we should have kept that? “It’s better than it was” is no argument for keeping still. Apple’s regime is more open than the previous one was, but it’s still nowhere near a really-open market.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to go through the catalogue of failures in the mobile world. Nokia afaik didn’t even pay developers, certainly not when they were spinning around trying to reboot their fossil OS - no app, paid or otherwise, could save that pile of crap. Blackberry I never followed, but I understand they also crumbled largely from within, I don’t think they ever paid developers either.
> why is it relevant here
It’s relevant in the sense that the lack of success of one particular effort does not mean the strategy is absolutely bad, as you were arguing.
I have to admit I don't understand this, all those numbers are completely arbitrary and seem to be based on what you think is right and not on any economic data.
It seems to me the real question is whether the Apple App Store should be regulated or not. If it reaches the legal threshold to be regulated, then either they should open up to competition and let the market do the price discovery or be regulated like a utility and have the price set for them. If they don't reach the threshold, then they should be free to set whatever price they want, and you're free to go elsewhere if you don't like it.
Of course, the big question is whether the app store reaches that threshold, but I'm not sure whether they charge 30% or 20 changes anything.
How do people come up with these arbitrary rates? How is 30% anticompetitive and 15% okay? 30% was standard long before the App Store, so why does Apple have to lower it now that they're the most profitable app platform?
It's just consensus. 30% seems very large, 15% is tolerable.
I don't think anyone liked 30% before either but anyone that can get away with charging 30% is probably already in a monopoly position so nobody has ever been able to do anything about it. Apple are only change now because of the threat of a lawsuit.
As someone who graduated from college in 2008 let me tell you that 30% sounded basically like highway robbery to me and soured me on Apple for a lot of years. I refused to buy anything Apple related because I viewed (and still do) that 30% as abusive.
Maybe folks in industry saw it differently but I definitely beg to differ.
> 30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal.
Not it isn't a case for anti-trust. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.
Apple are effectively an affialite for your app i.e. they drive traffic to your app through their store.
Most affiliate style relationships the affiliate will receive 30% of whatever is made. It not only these companies it in almost every industry. e.g. Gambling Affiliate deals typically have 30% of whatever the customer loses on the site.
I really do not like Apple. I don't like the app store policies. But 30% is not a case for anything.
> Can they come from anywhere other than the actual store?
If I have a link on my site that takes a customer directly to the store page, and they buy it, then Apple did nothing at all to earn an "affiliate" level payout. They didn't drive any traffic. Or if the customer puts in the exact app name and buys it.
> In any event that is a different issue.
It's very relevant to whether 30% is reasonable. Apple acts as a legitimate affiliate some of the time, but they forcibly take that fee all of the time.
> If I have a link on my site that takes a customer directly to the store page, and they buy it, then Apple did nothing at all to earn an "affiliate" level payout. They didn't drive any traffic.
The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase.
This would be no different than if a boxed piece of software was in a brick and mortar retailer and you told your customers you could by it at those stores.
In a brick and mortar retailer they display your product in your store and people come in, take the box and go to the checkout.
Conceptually the process is exactly the same. The only difference is that it is happening over the internet.
> Or if the customer puts in the exact app name and buys it.
The user is still using the store to buy the app. It would be no different than a boxed piece of software being on display in brick and mortar retailer. The customer may only go in there to pick up the game and nothing else. They are still buying through apple.
> It's very relevant to whether 30% is reasonable. Apple acts as a legitimate affiliate some of the time, but they forcibly take that fee all of the time.
No it isn't. You are conflating the issues of them having absolute control over the app store and whether 30% is reasonable. 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in most of these relationships.
If it wasn't reasonable people wouldn't publish with Steam, Gog, Nintendo (nintendo lowered the rate if you look at the IGN link to 30% to match other stores).
Also if it wasn't financially viable with the 30% fee (which has been there since 2011) then people wouldn't publish apps there.
> The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase.
Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out.
> They are still buying through apple.
Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.
> 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in most of these relationships.
Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.
> If it wasn't reasonable people wouldn't publish with Steam, Gog, Nintendo (nintendo lowered the rate if you look at the IGN link to 30% to match other stores).
People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...
> Also if it wasn't financially viable with the 30% fee (which has been there since 2011) then people wouldn't publish apps there.
It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?
> Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out.
What is and isn't affiliate behaviour isn't important. They are acting like an affiliate I said. It is close enough.
> Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.
Yes it is a 30% cut. We have already established it is on other stores.
> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.
You can choose not to do business with Apple.
> People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...
These aren't unreasonable rates though. If they were unreasonable people would not publish there. End of. I don't understand how people can say something is unreasonable when there are lots of people using it and making money just fine. So for a lot of people they obviously think it is reasonable.
> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.
You can. You can not deal with the app store.
> It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?
No we cannot agree. Firstly 90% is not viable to anyone, nobody would agree to that and people wouldn't publish on the app store. So to start your premise is completely absurd.
Pretend for a moment Apple did raise it tomorrow to 90% cut to them. The vast majority of would just pull their apps and Apple would have to lower the rate again. Every company chooses 30% because it is what everyone else does because it is more or less fair to both parties. Now if another player releases a new phone with a store and they have a better market rate and a decent market share then Apple will lower their rates (like Nintendo did).
It's really not. The difference is the part that actually motivates you to pay an affiliate.
> We have already established it is on other stores.
When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%.
> You can choose not to do business with Apple.
That doesn't disagree with what I said, which is that you can't choose the type of relationship with Apple.
> You can. You can not deal with the app store.
"Take it or leave it" is the opposite of choosing the type of relationship. I'm so confused by your response here.
> No we cannot agree. Firstly 90% is not viable to anyone, nobody would agree to that and people wouldn't publish on the app store. So to start your premise is completely absurd.
It's not absurd. People still made apps when the market was a lot smaller. People make apps for android. If revenue is greater than cost, then apps will get made. And a cut like that would remove a lot of competition, so the actual drop in pay wouldn't be as extreme.
But okay, what if I said 75% instead? If you get 3x the market share while getting paid 25% of gross revenue, you actually make more money than if you were paid 70% on 1x market share. So there would absolutely be viable apps for some developers. But at the same time, if Apple took a 75% cut that would be unreasonable.
> The vast majority of would just pull their apps and Apple would have to lower the rate again.
They wouldn't if Apple was really committed. The app already exists, removing it would mean less money.
> Now if another player releases a new phone with a store and they have a better market rate and a decent market share then Apple will lower their rates (like Nintendo did).
Even with a better rate, Android's app payment market is smaller. It wouldn't do enough to make the apps there significantly better, and the number of people willing to switch off iphone for the marginal difference wouldn't do anything.
> When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%.
Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC. EPIC can afford such a low rate because they are flush with cash from Fortnite and Unreal Engine dominates the professional game engine market. EPIC are trying to buy their way into the market, if it works then steam and other game stores will have to lower their rates.
> It's not absurd. People still made apps when the market was a lot smaller. People make apps for android. If revenue is greater than cost, then apps will get made. And a cut like that would remove a lot of competition, so the actual drop in pay wouldn't be as extreme.
We weren't talking about market. We were talking about the revenue split.
It was never 90% rate. Apple has had the 30% rate since 2011. Npbody had a problem with the 30% rate back then. Why is it suddenly such an issue?
> But okay, what if I said 75% instead? If you get 3x the market share while getting paid 25% of gross revenue, you actually make more money than if you were paid 70% on 1x market share. So there would absolutely be viable apps for some developers. But at the same time, if Apple took a 75% cut that would be unreasonable.
If people were happy with the arrangement then it is fine. So yes. However nobody would release anything to the app store back in 2011 if it was that high (70% to apple).
> They wouldn't if Apple was really committed. The app already exists, removing it would mean less money.
If everyone did it all at the same time as a protest. Apple would have to respond and everyone certainly would.
> Even with a better rate, Android's app payment market is smaller. It wouldn't do enough to make the apps there significantly better, and the number of people willing to switch off iphone for the marginal difference wouldn't do anything.
So you are saying paying the 30% on the App store is worth it as you get a larger paying market. Which is what makes the 30% reasonable because it is worth it.
> Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC.
Your list is companies being paid an affiliate rate. If I start linking companies that don't do affiliate stuff, they charge a lot less.
Which is to say that 30% could be a reasonable amount if you had any choice in the matter of what services you want to purchase from apple.
> It was never 90% rate. Apple has had the 30% rate since 2011.
All that matters is revenue vs. cost.
Apple's app store brings in about 80 billion a year right now.
In 2013 it was 10 billion.
People made apps in 2013, even though 70% of 10 billion is less than 10% of 80 billion.
They'd make apps for 10% of 80 billion and they'd definitely make apps for 25% of 80 billion.
> If everyone did it all at the same time as a protest. Apple would have to respond and everyone certainly would.
Everyone standing up and refusing those billions of dollars in solidarity is more outlandish than anything I've said.
> So you are saying paying the 30% on the App store is worth it as you get a larger paying market. Which is what makes the 30% reasonable because it is worth it.
It's much easier for a fee to be "worth it" than to be "reasonable".
If an airline started charging a fee of $5 for "Breathable air or whatever, screw you.", it would still be worth buying a ticket, but the fee would not be reasonable.
> Your list is companies being paid an affiliate rate. If I start linking companies that don't do affiliate stuff, they charge a lot less.
I listed like for like companies.
> In 2013 it was 10 billion.
> People made apps in 2013, even though 70% of 10 billion is less than 10% of 80 billion.
> They'd make apps for 10% of 80 billion and they'd definitely make apps for 25% of 80 billion.
I don't think you understand how percentages work. You are comparing the total amount of revenue available to the revenue share per purchase. That just isn't a valid way of comparing the two.
> Everyone standing up and refusing those billions of dollars in solidarity is more outlandish than anything I've said.
If they raised the rate soo high that it was unreasonable then yes the would be a mass exodus.
> It's much easier for a fee to be "worth it" than to be "reasonable".
Now you are just playing semantics. I think we will leave this here.
My personal comparison is between the HumbleBundle store and the HumbleBundle payments widget.
The rake on the former, where HumbleBundle brings the customer? 25%
The rake on the latter, where the game dev embeds the widget on their own website & HB handles the payments infrastructure for them? 5%
For App devs able to drive customer engagement directly themselves, Apple is effectively taking an extra ~20% of profit for themselves. Apple is treating every sale as if they were the ones delivering the customer. For $1 shovelware Apps this seems fair enough. For franchises where the Dev has an already established customer base through their own marketing efforts it seems completely egregious.
> The anti-competitive and illegal behavior that Apple is doing is preventing alternative app stores from being on the IPhone.
And that has nothing to do with the revenue share.
> This actions prevents other app stores from undercutting apple's prices.
Sure. But it doesn't mean the revenue share they currently have is unfair.
Other companies have a similar revenue share on their platforms on open platforms. So that suggests to me that it is fair.
> Epic's app store, for example, would take 12%, instead of 30%. This would help consumers if they were allowed to use it.
Would it? It will help developers but it wouldn't necessarily reduce the prices for the games because the market price for a AAA game is still what £50? The devs would make more money per unit sold I would suspect.
> doesn't mean the revenue share they currently have is unfair.
Sure it does. That is because competition is being prevented.
> Other companies have a similar revenue share
Except for epic! They charge 12%. So that is one specific example right there, that would reduce the fee below the current fee that Apple charges.
All I need is a singular example to prove my point. And we have that example. Epic's app store is being prevented, and they charge less money.
> It will help developers but it wouldn't necessarily reduce the prices
Even if you are willing to ignore basic economic theory completely by saying it would have no effect on price, giving more money to developers indirectly helps consumers even if prices stay exactly the same.
It helps them because more resources can be spent on the game to make it better.
And to go even further, even if such benefits don't exist, it is still better to give the money to the people who made the game, who I think deserve that money more than Apple.
> Sure it does. That is because competition is being prevented.
No it doesn't. The 30/70 split for revenue share is a standard thing across industries. This includes other industries that aren't related to IT at all.
> Except for epic! They charge 12%. So that is one specific example right there, that would reduce the fee below the current fee that Apple charges.
Epic are trying to buy their way into the market. They are flush with cash from fortnite and unreal engine. Once they wedge themselves in it will raise their take I would wager.
Every other player is at 30%. Nintendo have lowered it to 30% to be inline with others.
Every brainlet brings up EPIC as a gotcha, ignoring the fact that EPIC are buying their way into the market. Which is very important thing to consider.
> All I need is a singular example to prove my point. And we have that example. Epic's app store is being prevented, and they charge less money.
A singular example where a company is buying it way into the market is not representative of the whole. There were banks that had interest rates of 16% back in the 1970s. That doesn't mean that the other banks should have offered that or that it is fair (those banks with high interests rates would always collapse).
So no that isn't true.
> Even if you are willing to ignore basic economic theory completely by saying it would have no effect on price, giving more money to developers indirectly helps consumers even if prices stay exactly the same.
I am not ignoring basic economic theory. You are. If people buy a triple A game for £50 or £60 in the sufficient numbers then the prices won't be lowered.
As for developers getting more money helps consumer. Absolute nonsense. The company will pocket the cash. You are living in fantasy land if you think anything else.
> It helps them because more resources can be spent on the game to make it better.
That is good for developers by not necessarily for consumers. And no it won't be spent on making the game better.
> And to go even further, even if such benefits don't exist, it is still better to give the money to the people who made the game, who I think deserve that money more than Apple.
Apple deserve the money because the devs agreed to put their software on their store and the stipulation (until now) is that Apple got 30% of the purchase.
> Epic are trying to buy their way into the market.
So then you agree that what they offer is cheaper, and that this cheaper option is being prevent by Apple. Cool. Glad you agree!
> ignoring the fact that EPIC are buying their way into the market. Which is very important thing to consider.
Cheaper is cheaper. Thats all that I care about. I care about the end result of lower fees.
> it is not representative of the whole.
It is representative of Apple actions unfairly causing prices to be higher for this specific competitor is being kept out though!
All I need is a single example, to show that Apple's actions have prevented a lower priced option from competing.
> Once they wedge themselves in it will raise their take I would wager.
Even so, that still means that prices are lower for this previous period of time! Thats still lower pricing, for a period of time.
> The company will pocket the cash. You are living in fantasy land if you think anything else.
Even if we agree that this is the case, I would still prefer this to Apple receiving any of the money.
I would still rather the game companies receive all of the money, even if they pocketed it, because I want more money to go to game devs, and less to go to Apple.
> Apple deserve the money because the devs agreed to put their software on their store
Nope! Because their actions are illegally anti-competitive, and Apple has significant market power.
Regardless if game devs agreed to the contract, the contract can still be illegally anti-competitive. And the law can be used against Apple on that.
And even further more, I still want any and all actions to be taken, through whatever means possible, whether they be through the existing laws/court system, or that is through changing the law to retroactively target Apple and its employees, or if it through game devs working together to oppose apple, so as to make the game companies get more of the money, and for Apple to receive less of it, no matter how it happens.
> So then you agree that what they offer is cheaper, and that this cheaper option is being prevent by Apple. Cool. Glad you agree!
Nope. Not at all. It isn't cheaper to the consumer. You keep on conflating revenue share between who owns the store and the dev, with the amount the customer pays at the checkout.
> Cheaper is cheaper. Thats all that I care about. I care about the end result of lower fees.
That won't be the end result as I have already explained.
> It is representative of Apple actions unfairly causing prices to be higher for this specific competitor is being kept out though!
No it isn't. Prices aren't higher. You keep on conflating the price to the end user with the revenue share. They are not the same thing.
Even on revenue split everyone except for EPIC (which are buying their way in) are about the same in their respective stores.
> All I need is a single example, to show that Apple's actions have prevented a lower priced option from competing.
You are the not the arbiter of what is a valid example. I've already explained why in a previous comment why one example isn't representative of a whole, you chose to ignore it. That is on you and not I.
> Nope! Because their actions are illegally anti-competitive, and Apple has significant market power.
If* it is proven so in court than I may agree with you. IIRC the case is still ongoing. Your opinion isn't a fact. Google have significant market power, Steam has it, Microsoft has it (to a lesser extent). You keep on pretending that there is only one phone manufacturer on the market. All of this is nonsense.
> Regardless if game devs agreed to the contract, the contract can still be illegally anti-competitive. And the law can be used against Apple on that.
We will see if that is the case in court.
> And even further more, I still want any and all actions to be taken, through whatever means possible, whether they be through the existing laws/court system, or that is through changing the law to retroactively target Apple and its employees, or if it through game devs working together to oppose apple, so as to make the game companies get more of the money, and for Apple to receive less of it, no matter how it happens.
You want the market to be legislated because you don't like Apple. How foolish.
If people argued from the fact that there should be able to sideload applications. Then I maybe inclined to agree with you.
I suspect the conversation from here on out will be a waste of time because you keep on selectively ignoring caveats to your arguments.
> You keep on conflating the price to the end user with the revenue share.
So then the game devs get more revenue share for the specific example of the Epic Game store. Great. Glad you agree.
> everyone except for EPIC
So epic gives a larger revenue share to game devs. Great. And Apple's actions are preventing this revenue share increase to game developers, for that game store, at the very least.
> You are the not the arbiter of what is a valid example.
What? Even you agree that epic is giving game developers a large revenue share. That is an example right there, that exists.
> isn't representative of a whole
Its representative of at least one example though! So that means that Apple is preventing at least 1 competing app store that would have a better revenue share, for game developers. That single example, is an example of harm done to game developers.
> If* it is proven so in court than I may agree with you.
So then your previous statement about who "deserves" the money could be invalid.
> You keep on pretending that there is only one phone manufacturer
Anti-competitive practices do not require a literal singular monopoly, for them to be illegal. Instead, all that is required is them having significant market power. Which Apple clearly has.
> Your opinion isn't a fact.
Ok, then your opinion, of Apple "deserving" anything is also not a fact, because the court case could prove that the actions are anti-competitive.
You cannot at all say that Apple "deserves" this money, if the courts prove their actions to be anti-competitive.
> You want the market to be legislated because you don't like Apple.
No, it is because philosophically I want game devs to get more of the revenue split. Why? Because they developed the game.
> If people argued from the fact that there should be able to sideload applications.
What? Thats basically what this is about. Allowing other competing app stores on the platform.
> So then the game devs get more revenue share for the specific example of the Epic Game store. Great. Glad you agree.
No I don't. How disingenous. The claim was that it would reduce the cost. There is no guarantee this will happen.
> So epic gives a larger revenue share to game devs. Great. And Apple's actions are preventing this revenue share increase to game developers, for that game store, at the very least.
At the moment they do. But they won't in the future. You need to actually see EPIC's stance on this. If you read some of the interviews of the guy that runs it (I can't remember his name now) you would come to the same conclusion as I have.
All you are doing is thinking short term. I am thinking long term. So in the long-term there it won't benefit anyone except for EPIC.
> Its representative of at least one example though! So that means that Apple is preventing at least 1 competing app store that would have a better revenue share, for game developers.
You keep on reframing (dishonestly) the subject. When I originally replied to this thread I was specifically debunking the 30/70 split as being unreasonable as it simply isn't true as it something that exists outside of the IT industry. It just a split that people over the course of time have decided is reasonable. Maybe it is vestigial remnant of the past, but it is still seen as reasonable in similar types of relationships. To say otherwise (despite your protests) is a nonsense.
Also EPIC are buying their way in. They won't be able to keep it up forever (sooner or later people will stop buying skins on fortnite). Which means they will have to up their take at some point. If you don't think this will happen you are simply foolish.
> That single example, is an example of harm done to game developers.
The way the term harm is used these days is disgraceful.
> So then your previous statement about who "deserves" the money could be invalid.
No. The operative word in there is if.
> Anti-competitive practices do not require a literal singular monopoly, for them to be illegal. Instead, all that is required is them having significant market power. Which Apple clearly has.
That hasn't been decided by anyone. So you cannot claim that.
>Ok, then your opinion, of Apple "deserving" anything is also not a fact, because the court case could prove that the actions are anti-competitive.
Because something can be decided in the future doesn't mean it can be considered anti-competitive. This is a nonsense.
> You cannot at all say that Apple "deserves" this money, if the courts prove their actions to be anti-competitive.
Yes I can. If you want to be on the App Store, the agreement until recently was that it is a 30/70 split. That was the agreement between them and the app publisher. They are owed that money because that was what was in the agreement.
> No, it is because philosophically I want game devs to get more of the revenue split. Why? Because they developed the game.
I doubt that is the case. You wouldn't be supporting EPIC if that was the case. EPIC want a sea of launchers and return us to the days of game publishers which Steam btw broke that bullshit (for PC at least).
> What? Thats basically what this is about. Allowing other competing app stores on the platform.
No it isn't. It is about one large company EPIC trying to force another large company's hand (Apple) and trying to convince you that it is for your benefit. Both companies are doing PR and you are stupid enough to fall for the BS.
If EPIC wins. Do you know what will happen? There will be two dominate app stores. One owned by EPIC where 99% of the money taken through it will be for fortnite skins the Apple one. There will be others and nobody will use them because most normies will just use whatever is already on the phone. Independent devs will still get most of their revenue from Apple's store and nothing will change fo...
> No I don't. How disingenous. The claim was that it would reduce the cost.
But you agree that it would increase the developer split. Thats good enough for me. Glad you agree that it would increase the developer revenue split.
> At the moment they do.
Ok, and it is still a good thing, that in the moment, for a certain period of time, that developers would get a better revenue split. Thats still good.
> it won't benefit anyone except for EPIC.
I would still rather that a game developer get more of the money that their game makes. Thats still good.
> Also EPIC are buying their way in.
Ok. Even so. That means that in the mean time, developers could benefit from Epic buying their way in. Thats still good.
> That was the agreement between them and the app publisher.
But the agreement could be illegally anti-competitive. Therefore your argument would not be valid in that case.
> They are owed that money
You have no basis for claiming this to be the case, because the lawsuit could still find the arrangement to be illegal, and also the law could be changed later.
> . EPIC want a sea of launchers
If a game company wants to have their own launcher, that should be their right to do so. I would be happy that they get a larger cut, from having their own launcher.
> It is about one large company EPIC trying to force another large company's hand
The precendent that is set would allow other app stores to be on the IPhone as well. Even if you think Epic is doing it for its own benefits, the precent set would allow other game developers or app stores, to be on the IPhone. That helps those groups.
> There will be two dominate app stores.
I still prefer 2 app stores to 1 app store. Also, it would allow a 3rd and 4th or 4th app store to be in the Iphone, if anyone wanted to do that.
> it won't be the indie dev hacker
Well, it would help any indie dev hacker that is now allowed to be on the IPhone, without being forced to go through apple. Those people would benefit.
I really shouldn't reply but I really can't leave this unaddressed.
> But you agree that it would increase the developer split. Thats good enough for me. Glad you agree that it would increase the developer revenue split.
I never agreed. Please don't put words into my mouth. It is soo disingenous. I haven't done it to you so don't do it to me.
As for the rest of the points. You aren't accepting the reality of the situation. It will benefit nobody other than EPIC which have a money printer called fortnite. EPIC doesn't care about other developers it cares about itself,. Nobody will benefit from this in the long run other than EPIC and the other huge companies. But you keep on talking about the theorectical benefits, it is the same sort of mental masturbation that GPL zealots engage it. It is mostly pointless and doesn't address reality.
Also your concern trolling for the devs is cute. I imagine the vast number of developers are fine with the current revenue splits on storesm, unless you prove otherwise all you are doing is concern trolling to avoid the real issue.
As for future court rulings about "anti-competitive" practices. We will see. You and I don't know what will happen.
The 70/30 split which I was originally replying to is not anti-competitive or unfair. It is a normaly split and I will keep on re-iterating this because people on here because they are ignorant think it is unfair when it is perfectly normal.
As for app stores. More app stores won't benefit the consumer or the developers in the long run as I don't think the vast majority of Apple users will use anything other than the official App Store. You can claim theorectically it will be better but in practice that won't be the case. It will be a pyrrhic victory at best.
Even if you think it is only a short term benefit, that is still a good thing that the benefit would exist in the short term. Great. Glad you agree that there would be at the very least, a short term benefit.
> More app stores won't benefit the consumer or the developers in the long run
Even a short term benefit is still a benefit and is still a very good thing! Glad you agree that there is a short term benefit.
Apple is not affiliate, it's a gatekeeper. Affiliate increase discovery to something that was already reachable through other means. If you already know me and trust me, you still can't install my app without paying the gatekeeping fee. Apple does play the role of a payment gateway where the standard fee is around 3%, so they definitely are entitled to that much.
This may also be applicable to Steam, Sony and others.
It's only standard as Apple was first through the gate with this scheme for online marketplaces. They got to copy the split from brick-and-mortar (without the accompanying costs like restocking) and everyone else followed suit.
I said almost, not every and we both know they try their best to make it obtuse as possible to pay in a browser because your app isn't even allowed to allude to it.
Looks nice but it doesn't solve my fundamental problem:
1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app
2. Apple rejects it
-or-
2. Apple approves it
3. I ship a new update
4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively.
I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser.
While I agree the rules are often inconsistently enforced, and I'm a fan of iSH, I think the real surprise is it was ever approved in the first place, as it seems to clearly be violating the "spirit of the law" regarding Apple being pretty clear they don't want apps that allow arbitrary binary execution.
iSH tried to circumvent this with a technicality, and it seems to have initially "worked", but I think it's a poor example of an app unfairly/inconsistently targeted.
I think the fact that the guidelines are written as such to make people think it wasn't a cut and dry example is really what makes it better example than you might have even though it was at the beginning. The rule Apple would like to enforce is very clear, and we know what it was and the review team didn't, because the guidelines didn't reflect the rule that Apple wanted to enforce (and thus ended up enforcing it inconsistently). A situation where developers have to tell the review team how the guidelines work because they're not written down explicitly is a very untenable position and one that needs to change.
I worked on the iSH appeal, and have of course watched this space for years, so I've gotten very familiar with the "spirit of the law" to the point that the conversation with Apple ended up really being a confirmation that our interpretation of the law was correct and that iSH was fine under the rules that Apple enforces. Your characterization isn't quite right. Apple doesn't want to not have apps that allow users to execute code, in fact they themselves write apps that let the user execute code they write and demo them at WWDC (Swift Playgrounds? Shortcuts?). Some of the best apps on the App Store let you write code and run it. Saying iSH is in violation of those rules would require pulling down those apps too.
What Apple is really trying to do is prevent apps from changing their behavior after they review them in a silent way to bypass the usual process. The real issue here is that their guidelines don't reflect this and this confuses the reviewers (and evidently commenters here on Hacker News). What needs to happen here is Apple clarifies their guidelines so that we don't have rules that can be inconsistently enforced.
Hmm, that's fair. I don't use iOS much myself, so I'm not very familiar with what's available on the App Store. It does appear that at least Swift Playgrounds allows for projects (including code, which is interpreted) to be downloaded off the Internet, extending the runtime beyond what is available "at time of review".
That said, briefly looking over some scripting/IDE environments not from Apple, it looks like most of them ship "batteries included" and don't allow for content to be pulled from online.
It seems to me the equivalent of iSH shouldn't be, say, a Python interpreter/IDE, but a Python runtime including pip and the ability to pull modules from pypi.org.
OTOH, Python itself is so reflective, I imagine there's probably some way to self-inject modules within a script, if you have any sort of web access. And since you can tunnel TCP over DNS, even a hostname lookup is enough. So I'll conceded the point, since most scripting runtimes probably have some kind of EVAL routine to invoke the interpreter, or a porthole into the interpreter's bytecode.
That said, my own original point was about developers/businesses feeling uncertainty about Apple's rules, and worrying if an app would even be accepted. I feel like almost any developer would instinctively thing iSH's premise of being a program interpreter for the Linux ABI would be rejected by Apple.
Whether or not the underlying rule is fairly applied aside, it's clearly something Apple wants to prohibit. Albeit, I'm kind of baffled myself at why, especially in iSH's case where the emulated runtime is completely separate from the "real program text", with no escape hatches out IIRC. Seems utterly ridiculous to me, especially when you can accomplish something similar in WebKit/JSC I'm sure, just not offline. :-/
iSH is definitely in the “pushing the boundaries of the rules” area of apps (x86 emulation) and probably shouldn’t have been allowed if you took a strict interpretation of the rules.
OP is just saying 99% of apps being developed are clearly within the rules, rather than really pushing against the boundaries of what is allowed.
Well, that is the crux of the matter: the rules are not written correctly because they allow iSH to be inconsistently judged if you take "a strict interpretation"; there should not be a strict interpretation; it should just be "this app is reasonable" and "this app is not" and not "hey this looks like it's running code…does that make it a security risk?" which reviewers are not equipped to answer.
When we made the appeal for iSH we correctly surmised that the point of the rule that was cited was to prevent apps from bypassing App Store review, which iSH does not do in the slightest. Taken from the real perspective from which the app should have been judged, iSH is not at the boundary at all; instead it's the apps that do things like undisclosed A/B testing and feature flags to hide things from review. So what happens is developers like us who are actually clearly within the rules as they are meant to be applied get caught in limbo at the whim of reviewers who misunderstand the guidelines because they aren't written as they are supposed to be enforced.
Exactly, nothing stops them to pull "Amazon", that is once they see your app is successful, they could request all data they need and either buy it off the company that developed it for you or commission their own app based on the documentation you had to provide and then block you. There is currently nothing you could do about it.
Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry?
As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free, on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions), and yet we also have Evernote, Notion, Airmail, Spark etc etc.
Does the App Store monopoly significantly change the nature of app competition? I'm not convinced, but I'm open to learning about it.
Surely the fundamental difference here is whether "the market" decides, giving you a fighting chance, or whether the Deity decides, with no recourse but supplication?
If I recall correctly, the apps they banned were doing things like abusing the VPN function to capture all traffic from the phone, and using that as their mechanism for blocking certain websites (or maybe it was MDM they were abusing...?).
It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.
And, instead of providing APIs to help make those apps less sketchy... Apple decided it would be easier to just ban them.
Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.
I'm still not a fan of Apple sherlocking popular apps and then proceeding to ban those apps that carved out the market for them... that's a very anticompetitive move.
That particular case sees Apple setting the rules of the market, not acting anti-competitively.
All the browser-makers successfully compete on features, as proved by the continued existence of multiple browsers on the App Store. Hell, Firefox can even afford to cannibalise its own market with two versions of Firefox (FF, and FF Focus).
Furthermore all the big name browser makers sell their offering at "free". In my view, this makes browsers an outlier in any discussion of Apple's anti-competitive behaviour. It doesn't shut down the conversation, just takes browsers out of it.
Years ago, Apple banned Camera+ for allowing to take a photo with the volume switch (instead of using an onscreen button). It was "too confusing" and against their Human Interface Guidelines. Then they added that exact feature to the default iOS camera app.
I recently was in contact with someone who has written a menu-bar app to monitor Tesla Powerwall status. It's in the Mac App Store already -- but NOT the latest version, because Apple suddenly decided that they wanted written proof that accessing the Powerwall APIs was allowed (from whom?! It's MY hardware!). Apple will not allow the dev to update his Mac App in the MAS; yet they approved & continue to leave the original older version [with known bugs] up, available for purchase.
So now the developer is stuck -- he can't update his app on the Mac App Store, and what recourse does he have as a 1-man-shop vs Apple?! =|
As a developer I find it absurd, as a consumer [who bought the app on MAS and wondered why I had the non-latest version], I find it absolutely baffling & anti-consumer.
Absolutely untrue. Many well-meaning devs who paint entirely within the lines end up in review purgatory due to capricious interpretations of Apple's broad/vague rules.
There is another problem - you cannot create your own app store or use alternative one if Apple for some reason does not accept your app. There is essentially no competition and at least the EU should step in and force Apple to open it to other app stores.
I doubt this was the aim. It suspect its aim was to fend off all this scrutiny on their App Store business.
Who knows whether it'll work in avoiding attention from law makers and regulators, but this will do nothing to address the developer's concerns and problem with the App Store.
It seems to hurt their argument. They don't need that big of a cut for expenses, they just want it and can do whatever they like.
It still doesn't solve the fundamental issue.
Let users have the option of using third-party stores, but losing Apple's safety net. They claim users want that net. If so, the third party stores will go bust. If not, they're simply being anti-consumer.
It's a percentage cut and they cut it in half for a segment that brings in the smallest amount of revenue. I don't really think this affects their argument at all except that they now make enough from large players to pay for everyone else and the good PR is more valuable than the cash
That was obviously the point of their comment. It doesn't matter what percentage apple take when they're still heavy handed about their apps and won't tell you why an app was rejected
No, this is aimed at divide-et-impera the front of critics, by dragging you to their side with a little bit of carrot. And it’s working - you’ve been hoodwinked.
Agree. As a small developer, apples 30% tax never bothered me - seemed excessive but worth it. The arbitrary and weird approval rules is what turned me off their platform.
Although I could see how they are trying to appease antitrust regulators with this move - although they should have gone with 0 - 2% range for that. 15% is a substantial markup to price consumers would pay for using apples monopolized mobile software distribution store.
Imagine the outrage if people learned the markup that distributors make on vegetables and dairy as well as the monopsony power they wield against small farmers!
I don’t know how it is in the Land of the Free, but in Europe most margins on food are in the single digits all the way down. It’s true that small producers are squeezed at both ends, but at least there are market dynamics in place - if one supermarket chain takes too much, you go and sell to the other one, and the consumer can get it anyway.
Double-digit and triple-digit margins are the reason the software world is now dominating the economy. Most other sectors can only dream of that.
No, I’m not. In Italy it’s common to see markups of 600% on veggies at the supermarket.
There are few intermediaries and they get to dictate prices, mandatory discounts, and run double-discounted auctions (which the legislature is trying to make illegal.) If you get to outsmart them selling to another distributor (as if they’re not conniving already) good luck selling your next load of perishable goods before it rots.
Also brick & mortar shops make hideous markups to cover for their poor selection, inventory and commercial space rent (so sure, it doesn’t line only their pockets but for the final consumer it doesn’t make much difference.)
I think we’re not talking about the same definition of margin. If Widget A goes through 10 intermediaries and each skims 5%, that’s still 5% margin for every link of the chain. I seriously doubt any intermediary or food distributor in Italy enjoys a 600% margin - if you know of one let me know and I’ll go buy shares in it tomorrow, the dividends must be succulent. You can argue that the chain is too long or this or that link is squeezed, but that is another matter.
Wish I could downvote this for fake info, but I'm too new.
Distributors make a pittance for a relatively risky bet on delivering fruit and veggies. Margins are usually below 10%, often close to 5%, and definitely nowhere near 30%. On top of that, there's the added risk of damage happening to the goods in transit and storage, voiding the entire profit. Google and Apple make money by sitting on their asses and taking a slice off a developer's cheque, which is more akin to a usurious mafia slumlord rather than a tech company. Small farmers are on the short end of a stick, but only because by nature small landholdings are not profitable, and farming is a scale operation for production of a commoditized good by nature. App development is not a scale operation - a developer can be easily profitable with a small group of high-paying customers.
Nope, you should do your research before reaching for your guns. In Italy for example it’s a well known, scandalous situation that’s been going on for years.
Apologies for the Italian links but that’s all I could find for now:
I’ll quickly try: there are a handful of big supermarket chains - the article and the video reportage mention Coop, Conad, Gruppo Selex, Esselunga, Eurospin - that set prices and mandatory discounts. They essentially don’t compete, and fairness is only left to goodwill (e.g. Coop is historically tied to the Left and operates under a more worker-friendly CoC. In theory.)
Access to consumer markets is either via a looooong chain of small, inefficient and parasitic intermediaries or via the GDO, the logistics organizations of these few supermarket chains.
So the farmers are squeezed, they fall in debt and go bankrupt, or sell out to big landlords; and both tend to employ illegal immigrants under inhuman working conditions to meet the prices set by the aforementioned.
And I could play disingeniously and claim a much higher percentage in my home country, where distributors routinely make much much more. But again, that would be disingenuous, since our environment for comparison is the US market and not the Indian or Italian market, both of which are rife with corruption. I could counter with a German or a British example which would just as much counter your point.
This isn’t a problem exclusive to Apple anymore. Google has implemented some draconian nonsense this year to the point where I ended up distributing my Android app as a PWA. I had no problems with Apple.
Apple gets all the headlines, and certainly gets more chatter on HN, but they aren’t alone in this bullshit. As an example... Fortnite was also banned by Google.
I agree, but if we’re being honest, iOS is probably the prioritized platform for developers of apps like Hey that are commercial and used for professional work. Also, Apple doesn’t allow sideloading in the way Android does and PWAs are not as powerful because Apple is years behind with modern web standards.
I really, really wish that Apple would support push notifications for PWAs that have been added to the home screen.
Without push notifications, PWAs are not really viable and Apple knows it. Apple wants developers to use the App Store and be subject to their fees and review process.
At least Google supports push notifications for PWAs, making them a legitimate alternative on Android.
You’re welcome to use App Store apps... I don’t see the problem.
Safari PWAs protect your privacy better than native apps, because Safari trusts no one. The App Store review process is trying to find a malicious needle in a haystack because iOS by default trusts native apps more than it should, due to the existence of that nebulous review process. Apple is slowly locking down native apps with each successive iOS version... but PWAs have always been extremely private, and they're still the gold standard as far as I've seen.
PWAs are actually completely isolated from each other and from the rest of Safari, so there is no cross-contamination for tracking purposes.
If you don’t want more choice and more privacy... that’s up to you. I really don’t know what to tell you.
PWAs aren't the "wild west" that sideloading apps would be, yet you're trying to use the classic anti-sideloading argument against PWAs, and that argument simply doesn't work here. Apple has supported PWAs since before there was even an Apple App Store for native apps!
PWAs already exist, and PWAs are already extremely private. Apple just needs to give PWAs push notification support. Users would still have complete control over notifications, just like any native app.
Apple heavily pushes native apps because of the profit they get from it, not because of concerns about user privacy. They have already built Safari to protect your privacy on the open web.
I'm not welcome to buy your app on the App Store though. This seems to be the big disconnect about alternative app stores or distribution methods. It doesn't enable user choice unless every app is available on every store. It enables publisher choice and creates this loop where publishers who have a customer bases just move to the store with the fewest restrictions and fees. It's a race to the bottom where the user loses.
> I'm not welcome to buy your app on the App Store though.
If I never release it for iOS at all, you're also not welcome to buy it through the App Store! See how that works? The developer/publisher obviously does get a say in what happens to their app... this is not even slightly shocking. Apple can't force me to develop and release an app for the App Store, which is what you seem to be hoping?
However, there are many publishers competing for your attention. You have a choice, and many of those developers will always choose to use the App Store, since a lot of users browse the App Store. Users vote with their wallets, and developers who don't publish on the App Store would be keenly aware of the uphill battle they might have in convincing users to download their PWA.
> It enables publisher choice and creates this loop where publishers who have a customer bases just move to the store with the fewest restrictions and fees. It's a race to the bottom where the user loses.
Android has supported both sideloading and PWAs with push notifications for many years. Ever notice how the Google Play Store isn't a ghost town? Most Android users still only download apps through the Google Play Store. This is fine -- the users have made their choice, and that's the important thing.
Your doomsday, slippery slope hypothesis of developers vacating the Play Store en masse never occurred on Android. It seems equally unlikely to occur on iOS, unless Apple seriously mismanages their App Store. Still, users and developers should have the choice for meaningful apps to be distributed as PWAs, which essentially requires push notification support.
You make good points and I've learned something about PWA's, thanks. You also acknowledge that it's in Apple's interest to push native, which is absolutely true. The only thing I would disagree with is that you think "Apple just needs to give PWA developers [...]" when Apple does not "need" to do such a thing at all.
This isn't just for the cut Apple takes from App Store sales. It's also about differentiating their operating system and hardware from competitors products too. Operating system and hardware matter a lot less if the battlefield is the browser. So I think the argument that native apps are key and essential to Apple's existence is a sound one.
Google for example is pulling in a totally different direction, towards a world where only Chrome matters. In China, it appears that WeChat won that battle already.
I think it's great having so many different and opposing visions for what computing may look like. It would be a great tragedy if we ever ended up in a situation where there was only one remaining vision of what computing should be (unless maybe it was RMS's vision, which I think would be pretty good).
Because of that, I think it would be a mistake for Apple to act against its own interest by giving PWA's any kind of breathing room.
Also I may be wrong, but I suspect that users don't really care for or about PWA's, and that the only people who want push notifications for PWA's are PWA developers.
> You make good points and I've learned something about PWA's, thanks. You also acknowledge that it's in Apple's interest to push native, which is absolutely true. The only thing I would disagree with is that you think "Apple just needs to give PWA developers [...]" when Apple does not "need" to do such a thing at all.
Your whole comment is predicated on the interpretation of one word. Apple just needs to support push notifications for PWAs if they want to make PWAs useful and competitive, and it would be helpful for Apple in the antitrust battles that they seem to be facing. That's what I meant by "need". Previously, Apple also needed to add offline support, but they eventually did... so now that isn't a "need" for PWAs to be useful and competitive, even if Apple's offline support for PWAs is limited.
Apple doesn't "need" to implement it from whatever abstract interpretation of the word "need" that you're using... I'm not saying Apple will starve to death if they don't implement it -- it isn't a fundamental business "need" that they currently have.
They should do it, and I really want them to do it.
> there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser
This is true, but perhaps not as many as some may think! Progressive Web Applications can now do quite a lot on mobile and tablets, with a notable exception of push notifications on iOS.
They are an increasingly interesting option for those whose use case allows it.
My key issue is working offline, if I could make that work in a convincing way with good usability that'd be ideal. You can still only store 5mb in local storage, so you can't sync a load of data to the device and allow the user to use it in the field. Also, there is now a 7-day age limit for data in local storage - I understand why this was done (for user privacy) but it just makes things more hostile for developers attempting to use it in a legitimate way.
At least review process is better than Google's because when we rejected on Play Store we can't get any feedback from Google. They send a template email which says the "problem maybe A or B, check what you have changed".
Apple provides screenshots and human written explanation on rejection. I have even talked on the phone with review team several times to discuss the problem.
Yes, it sucks that the update may be rejected by some reviewer and another one may approve the same update.
It was better indeed, now it is worse.
Now Google sends you screenshots and explains what is wrong and Apple just quotes like a dumb bot their policy (which is not even acceptable in many cases)
Apple's human touch is underrated and I feel like those who complain about Apple's review process have no real world experience and talking from ideological standpoint.
I was more than glad to receive a f..g phone call from the reviewer telling me why he will reject my update, why is it this way and what I can do to make it pass and give me his phone number to call if I need further assistance.
I become die hard Apple AppStore review process fanboy by getting a rejection!
You know what happens when you get a rejection from some other place? You get a template e-mail with no specifics, good luck figure it out. Tough luck if your livelihood depends on it.
I've never heard feedback that good about Apple's app store approval process, thanks for sharing a new perspective! Can you give an idea of the size of the developer account you were submitting for/how established your apps were?
It was my first app ever(the account is registered to my limited company) and it is in the Health&Fitness category. It has some social networking functions and the issue was that the users could start talking with each other without approving the other party, a bit like the chatroulette, and the reviewer explained that the users should be given a chance to choose if they want to talk to this person before they receive the first message. He suggested me, at least to show a profile picture and a name and ask if the users would like to match.
I closed the phone and 5 min later I received the rejection together with the talking points that we went through on the phone.
I also suspect that Apple is trying to make sure that the same app is reviewed by the same employees. I think I dealt with the same 2 people in multiple review issues in later updates.
Sometimes it was frustrating when I have a rejection about something that was previously approved but it was resolved every time when I explain the problem and the solution in the notes to the reviewer section. I think I have a friendly reviewer that sends my updates straight to the store in 6 hours and there's another one who is being hard on me and needs to be convinced every time. Regardless, I am happy to be able to explain things to people.
For us, we had first phone conversation on phone with Apple when we had around 20K users. We did talk on our privacy policy and TrueDepth camera usage. We explained why we need to access TrueDepth camera, they understood and asked us to include the reasons in our privacy policy. We changed our privacy policy and the app update approved.
Something around 1 out of 10 updates to our app gets rejected for some random old core feature. So far it's always been resolved, but it's nerve wracking every single time.
No, majority of the App Store revenue come from big developers. Think YouTube, all the freemium games, etc.
> The change will affect roughly 98 percent of the companies that pay Apple a commission, according to estimates from Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. But those developers accounted for less than 5 percent of App Store revenues last year, Sensor Tower said. Apple said the new rate would affect the “vast majority” of its developers, but declined to offer specific numbers.
Another way to look at it is that you severely overpaid before. It's not like Apple innovated by using cheaper materials, more automation, less hardware, or made a lot more profit recently to give back to the developers that are providing value to their platform.
Wonder how this will be handled for apps that are shipped on the app store via a 3rd party publisher. The publisher probably does >$1M across all the apps they publish, but each app / developer is likely far under that.
If there are no exceptions, it would mean that 3rd-party publishers lose tons of their value proposition.
Apple Developer accounts have to be linked to a legal entity (a limited company for example). Registering a different account for each customer would require changing company structures accordingly.
If Apple want to push big publishers off the app store because they have the resources to fight for changes in court this would be a subtle way to do it..
They already discourage publishing apps for unrelated companies from the same account and want accounts to be associated with the content provider for each app.
This feels like Apple is trying to rally the small-business developer corps against its much larger platform supporters, who are probably feeling a bit parasitic (i.e. legal sticks being swung at the high end) to Apple management, at the moment.
So .. by invigorating the cottage shops with this generous relaxation, while holding the >$1million brick and mortars on the same leash, Apple seems to be trying for more upheaval in their app zeitgeist.
Trouble is, I still see serious issues with discoverability and interaction through the App Store to be a major barrier for all players. This handout is nice, but there is still a huge issue with small devs having to depend on Apple to keep the $>million guys off from dominating eyeballs.
Perhaps they should add another category of App to the Store: "built by budget/small-business" ...
The way this is worded makes no sense - surely it should be for the first $1,000,000?
$1,000,000 = $150,000
$1,000,001 = >$300,000?
It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to the ongoing complaints without much forethought other than an arbitrary change in the percentage below some round number.
So on Jan 1st every year your commission would suddenly fall from 30% to 15%, until you hit $1M and it jumps back up to 30%? That seems rather arbitrary.
You’ll probably find the actual rules even more arbitrary. In year 2, your January sales will still pay a 30% commission if you hit $1M the prior year.
There's no discontinuity in the first year you exceed $1m: that extra dollar is "taxed" at 30%, but the first $1m is at 15% ("the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year").
Looks like the next year (after exceeding $1m) the first dollar will be taxed at 30%, though.
They should just make this work like income tax: the first $1m is taxed at 15%, and everything above that is at 30%. (Same rules every year, no flip-flop.)
The way the rules are now seems like there's a very big incentive to avoid earning a little bit more than $1m. This could have … unintended consequences.
(e.g. if it looks like you're going to earn a little bit over $1m, increase prices by a lot (to discourage purchases), but tell people the app will be "cheap" again in January. Or even make the app free for a while.)
While this is smart and somewhat good news for smaller developers, what happens when you surpass 1 million with subscriptions? Will the next month’s payout be less than before?
Wow. That's amazing. That's a 20% increase in revenue for those eligible. I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue.
If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax.
That is correct, but then the next year you start at 30%. So if you make slightly less next year you will end up earning less money that year since it is all at the 30% cut (And then the following year will fall back down to 15%)
The relevant sentence seems to be "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year." (emphasis mine)
Apple takes the comission as you go, so it sounds like they take 15% of each sale until you hit $1M, and then 30% for every sale after that.
The next year they'd take 30% right from the start though, so a good year followed by a bad one would be unfortunate.
From the annoncement: "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year."
But next year the commission rate will be 30% and if the earnings that year are below $1m the business will be only eligible for the reduced commission year after that.
Right, but will they be eligible the year after? If not, then this still means that not surpassing the threshold could increase their revenue in the long run.
You are almost correct - it goes by the prior years income, but based on the 30% cut. Meaning if you sold 1m in products you would still be in the 15% bracket next year. You would need ~1.43m in sales to be "Moved up" the next year (It gets more complicated with subscription revenue already having a 30/15 cut depending on the user's subscription length.) It works out to this (Using 1m in sales as the cutoff to simplify the numbers):
Year 1:
999k --[-15%]--> 849k (This year doesn't trip the "limit"
Year 2:
1000k --[-15%]-->850k (Limit is tripped, next year is 30%)
Year 3:
999k --[-30%]-->699k (Fell below the limit, next year is 15% again)
Basically if you are close to the limit at the end of the year, you should immediately stop all advertising/marketing spend to ensure you don't go over the peak :)
I'm not really sure why they did it this way as it really screws over people that are just at the 1m/yr mark, vs a progressive system that would "just work."
Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here (which is a significant caveat), I'd like to think that they modelled out various scenarios and looked at growth rates to know that the year 3 scenario you envisage rarely occurs.
Or, they could've just picked $1 million because it's a nice round number and looks good in a press release.
Or maybe this is just PR with a clear but maybe oversimplified statement...
Yet they have 2 full year to see how it goes and work around all the edge case. I bet nobody except professional haters will complain if they soften the rules in 18 months.
it's exactly like the freelancer tax brackets in Italy. Everybody jumping through hoops (and or not declaring stuff) to remain under the threshold of 60k/year (was 30k/year). Otherwise tax rate doubles.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax (See the Computation section for how the higher rates only apply to the higher portions of a person's income, with their lower portions taxed less.)
As some of these platforms/markets mature, and the policies managing them... running a platform gets similar to running a country. Progressive taxation. Loopholes or anti-loopholes in this case. MSFT basically has an IRS.
> I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue.
My guess is that creating apps for the App store is actually far less profitable than Apple wants us to believe. That is, unless you are a large publisher.
I'd really like to see the distribution here, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a huge income gap.
Everyone I personally know who _made bank_ from iPhone and Android apps over the past 11 years did so by being paid to make the apps for other people who thought they had a great idea for an app...
"In a gold rush, you don't get rich by digging for gold - you get rich by selling shovels"
No.if I understand correctly, Apples own article says that you pay 15% if eligible, and when you cross 1million, you pay 30% for the remainder of the year, ie no back payments.
That would be dangerous, because imagine being under 1million all year, and in December you make 1 dollar too much - suddenly you would have to pay Apple a lot of money you may have already spent. You never pay Apple though, they just keep their cut.
While it is quite nice, maybe they did it to look better in the antitrust investigation. They are still forcing devs to use their in-app purchases within iOS apps, forbidding 3rd-party payment processors. And iPhone 12 is no longer repairable by swapping parts between devices [1], Safari is still the only web engine on iOS. Finally after many years they are slowly starting to support royalty-free VP9 codec across the OSs but on the other hand are starting to use proprietary M1 chips to further lock in their users.
This is exciting for small devs, even if not life-changing.
I made 42k in the last 365 days after Apple's 30% cut (or 60k in sales). That means I will get to keep an extra 9k next year, assuming revenue stays flat (it mostly has).
Classic antitrust maneuver; divide and conquer, this time from Apple. Antitrust activists shouldn't let this dull their pencil.
The main issue is not the exorbitant commission rate. Apple is hurting the consumers via its anti-competitive behavior with regards to what apps people are and are not allowed to install on a device that they've paid for. They are blocking value creation up and down the stack in a manner that "if we can't extract it, you're not allowed to create it."
It's intolerable that Apple has been allowed to lockdown their device for 10 years, completely control the market for apps and when it looks like regulators will take action they reduce their price and claim to be acting in the interest of small business.
Third party app stores must be allowed. Apple should not be allowed to dictate what software I can and cannot have on my device.
This advice would work for clothes/home appliances/furniture and other competitive markets, but not to mobile OSes.
Mobile OSes are natural monopoly/duopolies. There isn't enough room in the world for 100 OSes for us to get a competitive market. There isn't even room for 3. There is barely room for 2 with great downside. Companies spend a lot of money developing an app for one OS and basically re-creating it for the other.
I'm looking at my phone's home screen. Most of these apps are available in the other OS too, with almost the exact same functionality, but completely different codebases. Each of these duplicate efforts represent anything from X×100K $ to X×10M $ of development cost. This is just part of the cost of having more OSes. And the consumer ultimately pays for these costs.
Arguably not to OSes in general. Each platform type (desktop, server, mobile) effectively has only a couple of realistic choices when it comes to the OS. The network effects are very strong and winners take all.
I don't think it breaks the security model. There could be a strict but fair standard for qualifying as an app store. Then I could choose an app store that imposes an even stricter security/privacy model.
> Smartphones have seen explosive growth because normal people can use them safely.
Can you back this claim with a source? How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?
> How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?
1. Android is free for OEMs, iOS is unavailable. If you want to make a phone then its a great choice, and a free one.
2. Most flavors have a dominant store built in (android store, amazon store, Chinese-oem stores like Xiaomi) that are "safe" or offer that illusion. The important thing here is the built-in-trust of the default settings
3. Piggy-backing off point 1, cheap phone OS means people can make cheap phones -> Cheaper leads to more available for more people, and most of the world is poor compared to US iPhone users
"Normal people" doesn’t have to refer to the whole population and I would risk that apple iPhone was a imminent proponent to the whole "smartphone" craze.
I don’t particularly like it but the "trickle down theory" non marginally applies to fashionable or otherwise luxury items. iPhone creating a desire later satisfied by a cheaper option. Or something like that.
Regulators and authorities really like locked down devices. Not the FTC, but everyone else (FCC, NSA, SEC, FBI). It’s not going to change, unfortunately.
Practically speaking, the only big thing a web app can’t do on an iPhone that most app writers would like to do is notifications. Most other locked down things like call recording aren’t available to App Store approved apps either (and APIs are being removed from Android)
I have to respectfully disagree with you. I think Apple controlling the App Store is one of the best decision that's ever been made for 95% of consumers.
My 82-year-old mom's desktop computer is riddled with spyware, browser toolbars, and other garbage. Her iPhone is pristine and works as well as it did the day she got it. That's because Apple refuses to allow that garbage to make it to the App Store.
Yes, there's some collateral damage for us nerds. And perhaps there should be an easier way to - for those who really care - install more low-level tools and apps. But it shouldn't be easy, and it shouldn't put the majority of users at risk.
Apple is free to control their app store just like Google controls its app store. But they shouldn't be able to block you from running other app stores or sideloading applications.
Your 82-year-old mum's iphone wouldn't behave any differently but other people will be able to go into the developer settings and tick an option that will allow them to install non-app store apps. That's how it works on Android.
Absolutely agreeing as well. It’s a nice gesture from apple towards independant developers, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issues stated over and over. I hope they won’t get away with it, especially now that laptop and desktop are closer than ever to live the same fate.
One could argue that it's pro-consumer since curation of apps supposedly protects them from apps with malicious intentions (yes, the execution of this isn't perfect). It also guarantees a level of software quality associated with their devices.
But what's obviously anti-consumer to me is the in app payment system. They take their 30% cut and forbid you from even hinting at alternative means to pay for something to use in an app.
It means I have one place to manage subscriptions, one place with my credit card details, one place to manage family payments and all of it is from a company that can be trusted to do things in a secure and private way.
Do you really want the likes of PayPal or Epic to dominate mobile App Store payments ?
> It means I have one place to manage subscriptions, one place with my credit card details, one place to manage family payments
You are right. Choices and options just are messy. We should just have one company that does everything. Lets just merge everything together.
> all of it is from a company that can be trusted to do things in a secure and private way.
Are you for real? Apple is one of the greediest immoral and anti-competitive companies in the world. Not just in terms of tax avoidance via offshore shenanigans or slave labor in china, but their overall ethos of closed platform. But trust Saint Apple if you must.
> Do you really want the likes of PayPal or Epic to dominate mobile App Store payments?
What's wrong with nobody dominating anything and having competition?
You can always bash Apple but this seems like moving in a good direction. It would have put about $75,000 in my pocket had it been this way when my only successful app was in the App Store. That would have been nice!
~$340k for my apps. This is why I thought they would never make a change, because people would be upset without retroactivity (which they would never do).
At the time I have to say I thought it was a pretty sweet deal. I made this app in my bedroom and put it in the AppStore and a few months later it was top of the charts in Australia, then the USA. Places I’d never have been able to sell to myself. It makes sense to change it now they’re in such a strong position but at the time I thought I was completely reasonable.
It'd be interesting to see how Apple decided $1M as the threshold of this change. My expectation is that this change probably contributes to less than 1~2% of the total App store revenue, given that a large fraction of the app store revenue are driven by a bunch of $100M games with loot box IAP. But I don't really have data to support this estimation.
So if I read this right, they're changing the account fee structure once revenue surpasses $1m, not that they charge 30% on all new revenue over $1m. It doesn't reset back to 15% in year two.
So a developer making $1,000,001 in year 1 will pay ~$150,000 in fees because they would just pass the threshold, but then makes $1,000,001 in year 2 will pay ~$300,000.
As a developer and growing business, I think I'd prefer a higher rate over on revenue above the threshold and reset it every year. A bit like how the tax system work in the UK.
It seems to me that trying to either stay under $1M or above $1.4M is harder to manage than using a slightly more complicated formula to calculate apple's tax.
This is obviously a cheap PR (albeit a good one) move to help in Apple's battle with Epic.
I hope this does not deter the courts in their decisions regarding the App Store monopoly.
Apple should just be careful with moves like these, some see it as a sign of good will, some see it as a sign of weakness (and smell blood). Give an inch, they'll take a mile.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] thread> New program reduces App Store commission to 15 percent for small businesses earning up to $1 million per year
This is great and will really help smaller developers, 15% is much more of a palatable tax than the 30% they had previously.
Edit: just read the sibling comment... that seems... unnecessarily complicated and non-reactive to short term changes...?
> If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can requalify for the 15 percent commission the year after.
So they take 15% commission from first million and 30% from later sales until developer falls below million in a calendar year.
I mean, would you say “The Epic tax on the Unreal engine suddenly goes up by a factor of infinity” when you reach the $1 million threshold?
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/05/unreal-engine-is-now-...
A developer with revenues over $1m in the current year but under $1m in the next year would not qualify for the reduced tax rate.
They should have implemented a progressive tax system for everyone, not just those who qualify on a yearly basis.
This really slaps down the ability to use that.
Again, you calculated that how?
If you produce a food product, you should expect the store to take a cut of the price before it gets to you.
If you produce a food product you can also set up your own store, but you can't in case of Apple.
Imagine if you had to develop or pay for all of those services individually. Your own download site, product promotion, services, a third party transaction processor, a content delivery network, bespoke cloud syncing, etc, etc.
If you had to develop all of those services yourself, it would look a lot like the internet. None of the things you mention are particularly challenging for the modern web.
You can be quite a small business and still go over a million in revenue. This is more like "single small team" as a threshold.
I think in the long-term the 30% comission should disappear, but it can be gradual.
Everything else is paid for already by the end user of the device (who consciously pay a premium to use Apple's ecosystem), and has no reason to scale linearly with developer revenue.
The payment processing? That's usualy 3% for credit card operators.
The IDE and language? That's the $100 per year per developer account.
Apple can afford to not make 15%/30% off of developers. They are just greedy for short-term profit, as any publicly traded company is. The only reason this cut happened is because they started getting threatened with lawsuits, so they had to slightly slow down their free money printer.
It doesn't really make sense.
The food product producer is not selling to me directly, they sell to the store, who then sells to me.
Apple is not selling me the app, they are very clear about this, my relationship is with the App Developer, they are just a "payment processor"
So comparing the App Store to traditional retail store is no where near a proper analogy
There is a moral imperative that copying of software, which costs almost 0, is taxed per unit, just like physical goods, where there is a storage cost, a transport cost, etc.
I'm being ironic, obviously. Apple's App Store profits show that they're basically just sharecropping developers. Their operating costs are minimal and the fact that they're allowed to charge per unit, like they're Walmart and have to stock actual shelves, is quite ridiculous.
It won’t be long till they make more changes to make sure they get that value out of you on the desktop too.
This aurgument is the same as Comcast claiming Netflix is a "free loader" on their network because Netflix was not paying Comcast...
hello, Comcast's customers pay comcast for the use of the network
In the same way, Apples hardware and iOS software are paid for by the END USER of the phone, users pay a HUGE and Excessive cost for these phones, why on earth then should Devs pay a second time
Like with last mile broadband, this is double dipping, in other contexts that would be considered fraud
> For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...
Valve's strategy looks like to maximise revenue and get big companies on board that do $10+ mil in sales giving them incentives and discounts to be on the platform. (I think of it as tax break to incentivise high-earners to stay in the state/country)
Apple's strategy looks like to put more money into small companies/developers, while still charging the usual rate it had for 10 years to everyone else to access market of 1+ billion users. (tax break for small business to get up and running)
Apple is clearly attempting to reverse some of the bad PR, and divide the Dev Community so the calls for Anti-Trust action is lessened as the "small devs" will consider Apple "on their side" by giving them a competitive advantage over larger shops
Clever move, time will tell if anyone buys it for more than what it really is, a PR stunt designed to ensure no real change happens
Steam wants to disincentivize big companies making their own distribution, which is why they have the regressive split.
Sure, if you want your business to go bankrupt.
Itch? I love the place but good luck supporting your business with the number of sales you’ll make if you’re only available there. Epic? GoG? Humble? Those are curated stores; you have to be invited in; you can’t just choose to sell there. And even if you could, they still don’t have anything even remotely remotely remotely like the number of shoppers on Steam.
As a practical matter, today, Steam is the only realistic option for mainstream non-hobbyist digital PC game publishing. You can do other stores plus Steam, but Steam has to be in the mix if you’re hoping to support yourself by your sales. (and yes, you can point to a small handful of digital games which were highly financially successful without primarily selling through Steam, but those are the hyper-viral one-in-a-million exceptions, not representative business cases that you should be betting your business on replicating)
(Exception: if one of the other stores is going to pay you to be exclusive to their store (preferably only for a certain duration so that you can get onto Steam right after that period), then that can absolutely make up for losing out on the early Steam sales. But again, that sort of deal isn’t available to everybody)
Neither does Fortnite come to think of it.
This just isn't true, Steam had almost no competition in 2008. Microsoft didn't even have an app store till 2012, Epic certainly didn't, EA Origin is 2011.
> and yes, you can point to a small handful of digital games which were highly financially successful without primarily selling through Steam, but those are the hyper-viral one-in-a-million exceptions, not representative business cases that you should be betting your business on replicating
I'm not arguing that either is good, but I think there is a fundamental difference. Apple is reacting to the threat of regulation, which is at least theoretically aimed at protecting small business owners. Valve is fundamentally competing for the business of large companies that actually can afford to forego the exposure Steam offers.
I'm not sure that the App Store's position is as stable as Steam's, either. I don't really have a clear sense of what impact it would have on their sales if Humble Bundle could sell iOS games.
The reason Apple doesn't use this normal model is that the mobile app market is completely screwed up - you get exactly two real choices for distribution if you want to make any money at all as a small developer.
App stores should charge for their service. They aren't making the sales (at least in most cases). They are delivering assets. Charge for the delivery.
I know somebody will start claiming that Apple created the market in the first place. Apple benefits from the large app selection just as much as the developers do - yet the relationship only works one way. Let's delete the App Store and see how well the iPhone does against Android.
Whether this is worth 30% is arguable, but they are not charging for the delivery, they are charging for keeping the garden trimmed.
Fixed. ;)
30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal.
Though it should be 15% for everybody, no artificial caps. Moreover, I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal.
Today being rejected by Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individuals.
It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 is gone.
Fee could be adjusted to your earnings, but basic mechanism should stay the same.
You strategy played out very well in pre 2008 days with Windows Mobile. It also played out very well for Microsoft paying developers to create apps for Windows Phone, before Microsoft admitted defeat and left the phone market they were in since 1996.
About the 15%.
Have you tried running a business to make a living?
Have you tried building something yourself?
Have you tried selling it in 155 countries?
Have you tried getting access to a market of 1+ billion people?
Have you tried monitoring you don't breach regulations and tax thresholds in 155 countries?
Have you tried registering for VAT MOSS in one of the EU countries?
Have you tried implementing IP geo-location for your European customers, to charge a correct VAT amount out of 27 options?
Just because you can create a store with Shopify, or build a website with Wix, doesn't mean you get access to a marketplace with billion people in it.
There's a reason why sellers want to be on Amazon, even when they have their own Shopify shops.
> about the 15%
Yeah, about that. As it is, it’s monopoly rent (and before you bring up consoles - yes, there too). Nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I wouldn’t be happy with 5% or 1% either, because the point is not how you measure the tax, but the tax itself and the fact that it’s not set by the market. Once they allow third-party appstores they can charge 50% for all I care.
Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?
> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.
Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?
I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?
People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to go through the catalogue of failures in the mobile world. Nokia afaik didn’t even pay developers, certainly not when they were spinning around trying to reboot their fossil OS - no app, paid or otherwise, could save that pile of crap. Blackberry I never followed, but I understand they also crumbled largely from within, I don’t think they ever paid developers either.
> why is it relevant here
It’s relevant in the sense that the lack of success of one particular effort does not mean the strategy is absolutely bad, as you were arguing.
You may need to rethink your arguments as I found them indistinguishable from parody!!
In the end, a lot of Apple customers would never have bought an iPhone if it couldn't run their essential apps (like Whatsapp, Spotify, Youtube, etc).
It seems to me the real question is whether the Apple App Store should be regulated or not. If it reaches the legal threshold to be regulated, then either they should open up to competition and let the market do the price discovery or be regulated like a utility and have the price set for them. If they don't reach the threshold, then they should be free to set whatever price they want, and you're free to go elsewhere if you don't like it.
Of course, the big question is whether the app store reaches that threshold, but I'm not sure whether they charge 30% or 20 changes anything.
I don't think anyone liked 30% before either but anyone that can get away with charging 30% is probably already in a monopoly position so nobody has ever been able to do anything about it. Apple are only change now because of the threat of a lawsuit.
Maybe folks in industry saw it differently but I definitely beg to differ.
Not it isn't a case for anti-trust. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
The judge in the case agreed.
> Judge says the 30% rate is the industry rate— references Steam, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have the same rate.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/09/28/judge-so-far-not-...
Apple are effectively an affialite for your app i.e. they drive traffic to your app through their store.
Most affiliate style relationships the affiliate will receive 30% of whatever is made. It not only these companies it in almost every industry. e.g. Gambling Affiliate deals typically have 30% of whatever the customer loses on the site.
I really do not like Apple. I don't like the app store policies. But 30% is not a case for anything.
> Not it isn't. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.
Huh? They didn't say "standard", they said "reasonable" and "ideal".
> Apple are effectively an affialite for your app i.e. they drive traffic to your app through their store.
The problem is that they charge that fee no matter where the customers come from, and you can't opt out either.
I should have clarified. They was saying it (the 30%) was a case for antitrust.
> The problem is that they charge that fee no matter where the customers come from, and you can't opt out either.
Can they come from anywhere other than the actual store?
In any event that is a different issue.
If I have a link on my site that takes a customer directly to the store page, and they buy it, then Apple did nothing at all to earn an "affiliate" level payout. They didn't drive any traffic. Or if the customer puts in the exact app name and buys it.
> In any event that is a different issue.
It's very relevant to whether 30% is reasonable. Apple acts as a legitimate affiliate some of the time, but they forcibly take that fee all of the time.
The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase.
This would be no different than if a boxed piece of software was in a brick and mortar retailer and you told your customers you could by it at those stores.
In a brick and mortar retailer they display your product in your store and people come in, take the box and go to the checkout.
Conceptually the process is exactly the same. The only difference is that it is happening over the internet.
> Or if the customer puts in the exact app name and buys it.
The user is still using the store to buy the app. It would be no different than a boxed piece of software being on display in brick and mortar retailer. The customer may only go in there to pick up the game and nothing else. They are still buying through apple.
> It's very relevant to whether 30% is reasonable. Apple acts as a legitimate affiliate some of the time, but they forcibly take that fee all of the time.
No it isn't. You are conflating the issues of them having absolute control over the app store and whether 30% is reasonable. 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in most of these relationships.
If it wasn't reasonable people wouldn't publish with Steam, Gog, Nintendo (nintendo lowered the rate if you look at the IGN link to 30% to match other stores).
Also if it wasn't financially viable with the 30% fee (which has been there since 2011) then people wouldn't publish apps there.
Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out.
> They are still buying through apple.
Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.
> 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in most of these relationships.
Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.
> If it wasn't reasonable people wouldn't publish with Steam, Gog, Nintendo (nintendo lowered the rate if you look at the IGN link to 30% to match other stores).
People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...
> Also if it wasn't financially viable with the 30% fee (which has been there since 2011) then people wouldn't publish apps there.
It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?
What is and isn't affiliate behaviour isn't important. They are acting like an affiliate I said. It is close enough.
> Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.
Yes it is a 30% cut. We have already established it is on other stores.
> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.
You can choose not to do business with Apple.
> People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...
These aren't unreasonable rates though. If they were unreasonable people would not publish there. End of. I don't understand how people can say something is unreasonable when there are lots of people using it and making money just fine. So for a lot of people they obviously think it is reasonable.
> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.
You can. You can not deal with the app store.
> It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?
No we cannot agree. Firstly 90% is not viable to anyone, nobody would agree to that and people wouldn't publish on the app store. So to start your premise is completely absurd.
Pretend for a moment Apple did raise it tomorrow to 90% cut to them. The vast majority of would just pull their apps and Apple would have to lower the rate again. Every company chooses 30% because it is what everyone else does because it is more or less fair to both parties. Now if another player releases a new phone with a store and they have a better market rate and a decent market share then Apple will lower their rates (like Nintendo did).
It's really not. The difference is the part that actually motivates you to pay an affiliate.
> We have already established it is on other stores.
When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%.
> You can choose not to do business with Apple.
That doesn't disagree with what I said, which is that you can't choose the type of relationship with Apple.
> You can. You can not deal with the app store.
"Take it or leave it" is the opposite of choosing the type of relationship. I'm so confused by your response here.
> No we cannot agree. Firstly 90% is not viable to anyone, nobody would agree to that and people wouldn't publish on the app store. So to start your premise is completely absurd.
It's not absurd. People still made apps when the market was a lot smaller. People make apps for android. If revenue is greater than cost, then apps will get made. And a cut like that would remove a lot of competition, so the actual drop in pay wouldn't be as extreme.
But okay, what if I said 75% instead? If you get 3x the market share while getting paid 25% of gross revenue, you actually make more money than if you were paid 70% on 1x market share. So there would absolutely be viable apps for some developers. But at the same time, if Apple took a 75% cut that would be unreasonable.
> The vast majority of would just pull their apps and Apple would have to lower the rate again.
They wouldn't if Apple was really committed. The app already exists, removing it would mean less money.
> Now if another player releases a new phone with a store and they have a better market rate and a decent market share then Apple will lower their rates (like Nintendo did).
Even with a better rate, Android's app payment market is smaller. It wouldn't do enough to make the apps there significantly better, and the number of people willing to switch off iphone for the marginal difference wouldn't do anything.
Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC. EPIC can afford such a low rate because they are flush with cash from Fortnite and Unreal Engine dominates the professional game engine market. EPIC are trying to buy their way into the market, if it works then steam and other game stores will have to lower their rates.
> It's not absurd. People still made apps when the market was a lot smaller. People make apps for android. If revenue is greater than cost, then apps will get made. And a cut like that would remove a lot of competition, so the actual drop in pay wouldn't be as extreme.
We weren't talking about market. We were talking about the revenue split.
It was never 90% rate. Apple has had the 30% rate since 2011. Npbody had a problem with the 30% rate back then. Why is it suddenly such an issue?
> But okay, what if I said 75% instead? If you get 3x the market share while getting paid 25% of gross revenue, you actually make more money than if you were paid 70% on 1x market share. So there would absolutely be viable apps for some developers. But at the same time, if Apple took a 75% cut that would be unreasonable.
If people were happy with the arrangement then it is fine. So yes. However nobody would release anything to the app store back in 2011 if it was that high (70% to apple).
> They wouldn't if Apple was really committed. The app already exists, removing it would mean less money.
If everyone did it all at the same time as a protest. Apple would have to respond and everyone certainly would.
> Even with a better rate, Android's app payment market is smaller. It wouldn't do enough to make the apps there significantly better, and the number of people willing to switch off iphone for the marginal difference wouldn't do anything.
So you are saying paying the 30% on the App store is worth it as you get a larger paying market. Which is what makes the 30% reasonable because it is worth it.
Your list is companies being paid an affiliate rate. If I start linking companies that don't do affiliate stuff, they charge a lot less.
Which is to say that 30% could be a reasonable amount if you had any choice in the matter of what services you want to purchase from apple.
> It was never 90% rate. Apple has had the 30% rate since 2011.
All that matters is revenue vs. cost.
Apple's app store brings in about 80 billion a year right now.
In 2013 it was 10 billion.
People made apps in 2013, even though 70% of 10 billion is less than 10% of 80 billion.
They'd make apps for 10% of 80 billion and they'd definitely make apps for 25% of 80 billion.
> If everyone did it all at the same time as a protest. Apple would have to respond and everyone certainly would.
Everyone standing up and refusing those billions of dollars in solidarity is more outlandish than anything I've said.
> So you are saying paying the 30% on the App store is worth it as you get a larger paying market. Which is what makes the 30% reasonable because it is worth it.
It's much easier for a fee to be "worth it" than to be "reasonable".
If an airline started charging a fee of $5 for "Breathable air or whatever, screw you.", it would still be worth buying a ticket, but the fee would not be reasonable.
I listed like for like companies.
> In 2013 it was 10 billion.
> People made apps in 2013, even though 70% of 10 billion is less than 10% of 80 billion.
> They'd make apps for 10% of 80 billion and they'd definitely make apps for 25% of 80 billion.
I don't think you understand how percentages work. You are comparing the total amount of revenue available to the revenue share per purchase. That just isn't a valid way of comparing the two.
> Everyone standing up and refusing those billions of dollars in solidarity is more outlandish than anything I've said.
If they raised the rate soo high that it was unreasonable then yes the would be a mass exodus.
> It's much easier for a fee to be "worth it" than to be "reasonable".
Now you are just playing semantics. I think we will leave this here.
The rake on the former, where HumbleBundle brings the customer? 25%
The rake on the latter, where the game dev embeds the widget on their own website & HB handles the payments infrastructure for them? 5%
For App devs able to drive customer engagement directly themselves, Apple is effectively taking an extra ~20% of profit for themselves. Apple is treating every sale as if they were the ones delivering the customer. For $1 shovelware Apps this seems fair enough. For franchises where the Dev has an already established customer base through their own marketing efforts it seems completely egregious.
This actions prevents other app stores from undercutting apple's prices.
Epic's app store, for example, would take 12%, instead of 30%. This would help consumers if they were allowed to use it.
And that has nothing to do with the revenue share.
> This actions prevents other app stores from undercutting apple's prices.
Sure. But it doesn't mean the revenue share they currently have is unfair.
Other companies have a similar revenue share on their platforms on open platforms. So that suggests to me that it is fair.
> Epic's app store, for example, would take 12%, instead of 30%. This would help consumers if they were allowed to use it.
Would it? It will help developers but it wouldn't necessarily reduce the prices for the games because the market price for a AAA game is still what £50? The devs would make more money per unit sold I would suspect.
Sure it does. That is because competition is being prevented.
> Other companies have a similar revenue share
Except for epic! They charge 12%. So that is one specific example right there, that would reduce the fee below the current fee that Apple charges.
All I need is a singular example to prove my point. And we have that example. Epic's app store is being prevented, and they charge less money.
> It will help developers but it wouldn't necessarily reduce the prices
Even if you are willing to ignore basic economic theory completely by saying it would have no effect on price, giving more money to developers indirectly helps consumers even if prices stay exactly the same.
It helps them because more resources can be spent on the game to make it better.
And to go even further, even if such benefits don't exist, it is still better to give the money to the people who made the game, who I think deserve that money more than Apple.
No it doesn't. The 30/70 split for revenue share is a standard thing across industries. This includes other industries that aren't related to IT at all.
> Except for epic! They charge 12%. So that is one specific example right there, that would reduce the fee below the current fee that Apple charges.
Epic are trying to buy their way into the market. They are flush with cash from fortnite and unreal engine. Once they wedge themselves in it will raise their take I would wager.
Every other player is at 30%. Nintendo have lowered it to 30% to be inline with others.
Every brainlet brings up EPIC as a gotcha, ignoring the fact that EPIC are buying their way into the market. Which is very important thing to consider.
> All I need is a singular example to prove my point. And we have that example. Epic's app store is being prevented, and they charge less money.
A singular example where a company is buying it way into the market is not representative of the whole. There were banks that had interest rates of 16% back in the 1970s. That doesn't mean that the other banks should have offered that or that it is fair (those banks with high interests rates would always collapse).
So no that isn't true.
> Even if you are willing to ignore basic economic theory completely by saying it would have no effect on price, giving more money to developers indirectly helps consumers even if prices stay exactly the same.
I am not ignoring basic economic theory. You are. If people buy a triple A game for £50 or £60 in the sufficient numbers then the prices won't be lowered.
As for developers getting more money helps consumer. Absolute nonsense. The company will pocket the cash. You are living in fantasy land if you think anything else.
> It helps them because more resources can be spent on the game to make it better.
That is good for developers by not necessarily for consumers. And no it won't be spent on making the game better.
> And to go even further, even if such benefits don't exist, it is still better to give the money to the people who made the game, who I think deserve that money more than Apple.
Apple deserve the money because the devs agreed to put their software on their store and the stipulation (until now) is that Apple got 30% of the purchase.
So then you agree that what they offer is cheaper, and that this cheaper option is being prevent by Apple. Cool. Glad you agree!
> ignoring the fact that EPIC are buying their way into the market. Which is very important thing to consider.
Cheaper is cheaper. Thats all that I care about. I care about the end result of lower fees.
> it is not representative of the whole.
It is representative of Apple actions unfairly causing prices to be higher for this specific competitor is being kept out though!
All I need is a single example, to show that Apple's actions have prevented a lower priced option from competing.
> Once they wedge themselves in it will raise their take I would wager.
Even so, that still means that prices are lower for this previous period of time! Thats still lower pricing, for a period of time.
> The company will pocket the cash. You are living in fantasy land if you think anything else.
Even if we agree that this is the case, I would still prefer this to Apple receiving any of the money.
I would still rather the game companies receive all of the money, even if they pocketed it, because I want more money to go to game devs, and less to go to Apple.
> Apple deserve the money because the devs agreed to put their software on their store
Nope! Because their actions are illegally anti-competitive, and Apple has significant market power.
Regardless if game devs agreed to the contract, the contract can still be illegally anti-competitive. And the law can be used against Apple on that.
And even further more, I still want any and all actions to be taken, through whatever means possible, whether they be through the existing laws/court system, or that is through changing the law to retroactively target Apple and its employees, or if it through game devs working together to oppose apple, so as to make the game companies get more of the money, and for Apple to receive less of it, no matter how it happens.
Nope. Not at all. It isn't cheaper to the consumer. You keep on conflating revenue share between who owns the store and the dev, with the amount the customer pays at the checkout.
> Cheaper is cheaper. Thats all that I care about. I care about the end result of lower fees.
That won't be the end result as I have already explained.
> It is representative of Apple actions unfairly causing prices to be higher for this specific competitor is being kept out though!
No it isn't. Prices aren't higher. You keep on conflating the price to the end user with the revenue share. They are not the same thing.
Even on revenue split everyone except for EPIC (which are buying their way in) are about the same in their respective stores.
> All I need is a single example, to show that Apple's actions have prevented a lower priced option from competing.
You are the not the arbiter of what is a valid example. I've already explained why in a previous comment why one example isn't representative of a whole, you chose to ignore it. That is on you and not I.
> Nope! Because their actions are illegally anti-competitive, and Apple has significant market power.
If* it is proven so in court than I may agree with you. IIRC the case is still ongoing. Your opinion isn't a fact. Google have significant market power, Steam has it, Microsoft has it (to a lesser extent). You keep on pretending that there is only one phone manufacturer on the market. All of this is nonsense.
> Regardless if game devs agreed to the contract, the contract can still be illegally anti-competitive. And the law can be used against Apple on that.
We will see if that is the case in court.
> And even further more, I still want any and all actions to be taken, through whatever means possible, whether they be through the existing laws/court system, or that is through changing the law to retroactively target Apple and its employees, or if it through game devs working together to oppose apple, so as to make the game companies get more of the money, and for Apple to receive less of it, no matter how it happens.
You want the market to be legislated because you don't like Apple. How foolish.
If people argued from the fact that there should be able to sideload applications. Then I maybe inclined to agree with you.
I suspect the conversation from here on out will be a waste of time because you keep on selectively ignoring caveats to your arguments.
So then the game devs get more revenue share for the specific example of the Epic Game store. Great. Glad you agree.
> everyone except for EPIC
So epic gives a larger revenue share to game devs. Great. And Apple's actions are preventing this revenue share increase to game developers, for that game store, at the very least.
> You are the not the arbiter of what is a valid example.
What? Even you agree that epic is giving game developers a large revenue share. That is an example right there, that exists.
> isn't representative of a whole
Its representative of at least one example though! So that means that Apple is preventing at least 1 competing app store that would have a better revenue share, for game developers. That single example, is an example of harm done to game developers.
> If* it is proven so in court than I may agree with you.
So then your previous statement about who "deserves" the money could be invalid.
> You keep on pretending that there is only one phone manufacturer
Anti-competitive practices do not require a literal singular monopoly, for them to be illegal. Instead, all that is required is them having significant market power. Which Apple clearly has.
> Your opinion isn't a fact.
Ok, then your opinion, of Apple "deserving" anything is also not a fact, because the court case could prove that the actions are anti-competitive.
You cannot at all say that Apple "deserves" this money, if the courts prove their actions to be anti-competitive.
> You want the market to be legislated because you don't like Apple.
No, it is because philosophically I want game devs to get more of the revenue split. Why? Because they developed the game.
> If people argued from the fact that there should be able to sideload applications.
What? Thats basically what this is about. Allowing other competing app stores on the platform.
No I don't. How disingenous. The claim was that it would reduce the cost. There is no guarantee this will happen.
> So epic gives a larger revenue share to game devs. Great. And Apple's actions are preventing this revenue share increase to game developers, for that game store, at the very least.
At the moment they do. But they won't in the future. You need to actually see EPIC's stance on this. If you read some of the interviews of the guy that runs it (I can't remember his name now) you would come to the same conclusion as I have.
All you are doing is thinking short term. I am thinking long term. So in the long-term there it won't benefit anyone except for EPIC.
> Its representative of at least one example though! So that means that Apple is preventing at least 1 competing app store that would have a better revenue share, for game developers.
You keep on reframing (dishonestly) the subject. When I originally replied to this thread I was specifically debunking the 30/70 split as being unreasonable as it simply isn't true as it something that exists outside of the IT industry. It just a split that people over the course of time have decided is reasonable. Maybe it is vestigial remnant of the past, but it is still seen as reasonable in similar types of relationships. To say otherwise (despite your protests) is a nonsense.
Also EPIC are buying their way in. They won't be able to keep it up forever (sooner or later people will stop buying skins on fortnite). Which means they will have to up their take at some point. If you don't think this will happen you are simply foolish.
> That single example, is an example of harm done to game developers.
The way the term harm is used these days is disgraceful.
> So then your previous statement about who "deserves" the money could be invalid.
No. The operative word in there is if.
> Anti-competitive practices do not require a literal singular monopoly, for them to be illegal. Instead, all that is required is them having significant market power. Which Apple clearly has.
That hasn't been decided by anyone. So you cannot claim that.
>Ok, then your opinion, of Apple "deserving" anything is also not a fact, because the court case could prove that the actions are anti-competitive.
Because something can be decided in the future doesn't mean it can be considered anti-competitive. This is a nonsense.
> You cannot at all say that Apple "deserves" this money, if the courts prove their actions to be anti-competitive.
Yes I can. If you want to be on the App Store, the agreement until recently was that it is a 30/70 split. That was the agreement between them and the app publisher. They are owed that money because that was what was in the agreement.
> No, it is because philosophically I want game devs to get more of the revenue split. Why? Because they developed the game.
I doubt that is the case. You wouldn't be supporting EPIC if that was the case. EPIC want a sea of launchers and return us to the days of game publishers which Steam btw broke that bullshit (for PC at least).
> What? Thats basically what this is about. Allowing other competing app stores on the platform.
No it isn't. It is about one large company EPIC trying to force another large company's hand (Apple) and trying to convince you that it is for your benefit. Both companies are doing PR and you are stupid enough to fall for the BS.
If EPIC wins. Do you know what will happen? There will be two dominate app stores. One owned by EPIC where 99% of the money taken through it will be for fortnite skins the Apple one. There will be others and nobody will use them because most normies will just use whatever is already on the phone. Independent devs will still get most of their revenue from Apple's store and nothing will change fo...
But you agree that it would increase the developer split. Thats good enough for me. Glad you agree that it would increase the developer revenue split.
> At the moment they do.
Ok, and it is still a good thing, that in the moment, for a certain period of time, that developers would get a better revenue split. Thats still good.
> it won't benefit anyone except for EPIC.
I would still rather that a game developer get more of the money that their game makes. Thats still good.
> Also EPIC are buying their way in.
Ok. Even so. That means that in the mean time, developers could benefit from Epic buying their way in. Thats still good.
> That was the agreement between them and the app publisher.
But the agreement could be illegally anti-competitive. Therefore your argument would not be valid in that case.
> They are owed that money
You have no basis for claiming this to be the case, because the lawsuit could still find the arrangement to be illegal, and also the law could be changed later.
> . EPIC want a sea of launchers
If a game company wants to have their own launcher, that should be their right to do so. I would be happy that they get a larger cut, from having their own launcher.
> It is about one large company EPIC trying to force another large company's hand
The precendent that is set would allow other app stores to be on the IPhone as well. Even if you think Epic is doing it for its own benefits, the precent set would allow other game developers or app stores, to be on the IPhone. That helps those groups.
> There will be two dominate app stores.
I still prefer 2 app stores to 1 app store. Also, it would allow a 3rd and 4th or 4th app store to be in the Iphone, if anyone wanted to do that.
> it won't be the indie dev hacker
Well, it would help any indie dev hacker that is now allowed to be on the IPhone, without being forced to go through apple. Those people would benefit.
> But you agree that it would increase the developer split. Thats good enough for me. Glad you agree that it would increase the developer revenue split.
I never agreed. Please don't put words into my mouth. It is soo disingenous. I haven't done it to you so don't do it to me.
As for the rest of the points. You aren't accepting the reality of the situation. It will benefit nobody other than EPIC which have a money printer called fortnite. EPIC doesn't care about other developers it cares about itself,. Nobody will benefit from this in the long run other than EPIC and the other huge companies. But you keep on talking about the theorectical benefits, it is the same sort of mental masturbation that GPL zealots engage it. It is mostly pointless and doesn't address reality.
Also your concern trolling for the devs is cute. I imagine the vast number of developers are fine with the current revenue splits on storesm, unless you prove otherwise all you are doing is concern trolling to avoid the real issue.
As for future court rulings about "anti-competitive" practices. We will see. You and I don't know what will happen.
The 70/30 split which I was originally replying to is not anti-competitive or unfair. It is a normaly split and I will keep on re-iterating this because people on here because they are ignorant think it is unfair when it is perfectly normal.
As for app stores. More app stores won't benefit the consumer or the developers in the long run as I don't think the vast majority of Apple users will use anything other than the official App Store. You can claim theorectically it will be better but in practice that won't be the case. It will be a pyrrhic victory at best.
Even if you think it is only a short term benefit, that is still a good thing that the benefit would exist in the short term. Great. Glad you agree that there would be at the very least, a short term benefit.
> More app stores won't benefit the consumer or the developers in the long run
Even a short term benefit is still a benefit and is still a very good thing! Glad you agree that there is a short term benefit.
Never agreed. You are obviously trolling. Goodbye.
You agreed that "EPIC is buying their way in" to the market.
Buying their way into the market helps developers in the short term at the very least, which is a good thing.
So you agree that they were "buying their way in" to the market, in the short term. Great! Glad you think that.
This results in developers getting more money, in the short term, at the very least.
This may also be applicable to Steam, Sony and others.
Not seeking a cut of almost every transaction going through your OS just because you built the foundations and gatekeep the door was standard too.
1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app
2. Apple rejects it
-or-
2. Apple approves it
3. I ship a new update
4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively.
I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser.
Edit: as others have pointed out iSH isn't the best example of this.
iSH tried to circumvent this with a technicality, and it seems to have initially "worked", but I think it's a poor example of an app unfairly/inconsistently targeted.
What Apple is really trying to do is prevent apps from changing their behavior after they review them in a silent way to bypass the usual process. The real issue here is that their guidelines don't reflect this and this confuses the reviewers (and evidently commenters here on Hacker News). What needs to happen here is Apple clarifies their guidelines so that we don't have rules that can be inconsistently enforced.
(If you need more to convince you, I'll point you at the stuff I wrote when that was going on: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/).
That said, briefly looking over some scripting/IDE environments not from Apple, it looks like most of them ship "batteries included" and don't allow for content to be pulled from online.
It seems to me the equivalent of iSH shouldn't be, say, a Python interpreter/IDE, but a Python runtime including pip and the ability to pull modules from pypi.org.
OTOH, Python itself is so reflective, I imagine there's probably some way to self-inject modules within a script, if you have any sort of web access. And since you can tunnel TCP over DNS, even a hostname lookup is enough. So I'll conceded the point, since most scripting runtimes probably have some kind of EVAL routine to invoke the interpreter, or a porthole into the interpreter's bytecode.
That said, my own original point was about developers/businesses feeling uncertainty about Apple's rules, and worrying if an app would even be accepted. I feel like almost any developer would instinctively thing iSH's premise of being a program interpreter for the Linux ABI would be rejected by Apple.
Whether or not the underlying rule is fairly applied aside, it's clearly something Apple wants to prohibit. Albeit, I'm kind of baffled myself at why, especially in iSH's case where the emulated runtime is completely separate from the "real program text", with no escape hatches out IIRC. Seems utterly ridiculous to me, especially when you can accomplish something similar in WebKit/JSC I'm sure, just not offline. :-/
OP is just saying 99% of apps being developed are clearly within the rules, rather than really pushing against the boundaries of what is allowed.
When we made the appeal for iSH we correctly surmised that the point of the rule that was cited was to prevent apps from bypassing App Store review, which iSH does not do in the slightest. Taken from the real perspective from which the app should have been judged, iSH is not at the boundary at all; instead it's the apps that do things like undisclosed A/B testing and feature flags to hide things from review. So what happens is developers like us who are actually clearly within the rules as they are meant to be applied get caught in limbo at the whim of reviewers who misunderstand the guidelines because they aren't written as they are supposed to be enforced.
I don't think I'm competing with Apple at all today, but who knows what they're planning for their next features?
As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free, on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions), and yet we also have Evernote, Notion, Airmail, Spark etc etc.
Does the App Store monopoly significantly change the nature of app competition? I'm not convinced, but I'm open to learning about it.
It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.
Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.
iOS has always been designed as not to offer APIs that can be used for particularly harmful purposes.
I'm still not a fan of Apple sherlocking popular apps and then proceeding to ban those apps that carved out the market for them... that's a very anticompetitive move.
No, this is very unique to Apple, and only on iOS. Its the reason why iPhone web browsers have to use Safari under the hood.
All the browser-makers successfully compete on features, as proved by the continued existence of multiple browsers on the App Store. Hell, Firefox can even afford to cannibalise its own market with two versions of Firefox (FF, and FF Focus).
Furthermore all the big name browser makers sell their offering at "free". In my view, this makes browsers an outlier in any discussion of Apple's anti-competitive behaviour. It doesn't shut down the conversation, just takes browsers out of it.
So now the developer is stuck -- he can't update his app on the Mac App Store, and what recourse does he have as a 1-man-shop vs Apple?! =|
As a developer I find it absurd, as a consumer [who bought the app on MAS and wondered why I had the non-latest version], I find it absolutely baffling & anti-consumer.
What you want is for those stores to be on equal footing - which I would like as well, but is harder to argue for because alternatives do exist.
We will ultimately build more apps and invest more time in supporting and improving our current apps.
I doubt this was the aim. It suspect its aim was to fend off all this scrutiny on their App Store business.
Who knows whether it'll work in avoiding attention from law makers and regulators, but this will do nothing to address the developer's concerns and problem with the App Store.
It still doesn't solve the fundamental issue.
Let users have the option of using third-party stores, but losing Apple's safety net. They claim users want that net. If so, the third party stores will go bust. If not, they're simply being anti-consumer.
Although I could see how they are trying to appease antitrust regulators with this move - although they should have gone with 0 - 2% range for that. 15% is a substantial markup to price consumers would pay for using apples monopolized mobile software distribution store.
I don’t know how it is in the Land of the Free, but in Europe most margins on food are in the single digits all the way down. It’s true that small producers are squeezed at both ends, but at least there are market dynamics in place - if one supermarket chain takes too much, you go and sell to the other one, and the consumer can get it anyway.
Double-digit and triple-digit margins are the reason the software world is now dominating the economy. Most other sectors can only dream of that.
There are few intermediaries and they get to dictate prices, mandatory discounts, and run double-discounted auctions (which the legislature is trying to make illegal.) If you get to outsmart them selling to another distributor (as if they’re not conniving already) good luck selling your next load of perishable goods before it rots.
Also brick & mortar shops make hideous markups to cover for their poor selection, inventory and commercial space rent (so sure, it doesn’t line only their pockets but for the final consumer it doesn’t make much difference.)
Distributors make a pittance for a relatively risky bet on delivering fruit and veggies. Margins are usually below 10%, often close to 5%, and definitely nowhere near 30%. On top of that, there's the added risk of damage happening to the goods in transit and storage, voiding the entire profit. Google and Apple make money by sitting on their asses and taking a slice off a developer's cheque, which is more akin to a usurious mafia slumlord rather than a tech company. Small farmers are on the short end of a stick, but only because by nature small landholdings are not profitable, and farming is a scale operation for production of a commoditized good by nature. App development is not a scale operation - a developer can be easily profitable with a small group of high-paying customers.
Apologies for the Italian links but that’s all I could find for now:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/05/14/frutta-e-verdura...
https://youtu.be/29OYrFOYkTg
Access to consumer markets is either via a looooong chain of small, inefficient and parasitic intermediaries or via the GDO, the logistics organizations of these few supermarket chains.
So the farmers are squeezed, they fall in debt and go bankrupt, or sell out to big landlords; and both tend to employ illegal immigrants under inhuman working conditions to meet the prices set by the aforementioned.
Folks, Apple has many faults and they’re certainly leaning on their position but don’t undermine your arguments with outrage comments
Apple gets all the headlines, and certainly gets more chatter on HN, but they aren’t alone in this bullshit. As an example... Fortnite was also banned by Google.
I think the main reason this wasn't as newsworthy is that sideloading it was trivial for Android users. Untick a warning and install it yourself.
If you want a better experiment, have a play version with normal fees, and a sideload version where v-bucks are cheaper.
I think you're taking "trivial" to mean "completely frictionless with no downsides" which is not the sense in which I intended it to be taken.
To quote myself above:
> It's not a contradiction to say both "sideloading makes banning from the the Play Store less of an issue" and "it's better to be on the Play Store".
Security is a non-issue. If Apple were really worried about that, they would allow appstores in a regulated form with certain security rules.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/22/fortnite-...
Without push notifications, PWAs are not really viable and Apple knows it. Apple wants developers to use the App Store and be subject to their fees and review process.
At least Google supports push notifications for PWAs, making them a legitimate alternative on Android.
As do I, an end-user of Apple's platforms.
Safari PWAs protect your privacy better than native apps, because Safari trusts no one. The App Store review process is trying to find a malicious needle in a haystack because iOS by default trusts native apps more than it should, due to the existence of that nebulous review process. Apple is slowly locking down native apps with each successive iOS version... but PWAs have always been extremely private, and they're still the gold standard as far as I've seen.
PWAs are actually completely isolated from each other and from the rest of Safari, so there is no cross-contamination for tracking purposes.
If you don’t want more choice and more privacy... that’s up to you. I really don’t know what to tell you.
PWAs aren't the "wild west" that sideloading apps would be, yet you're trying to use the classic anti-sideloading argument against PWAs, and that argument simply doesn't work here. Apple has supported PWAs since before there was even an Apple App Store for native apps!
PWAs already exist, and PWAs are already extremely private. Apple just needs to give PWAs push notification support. Users would still have complete control over notifications, just like any native app.
Apple heavily pushes native apps because of the profit they get from it, not because of concerns about user privacy. They have already built Safari to protect your privacy on the open web.
If I never release it for iOS at all, you're also not welcome to buy it through the App Store! See how that works? The developer/publisher obviously does get a say in what happens to their app... this is not even slightly shocking. Apple can't force me to develop and release an app for the App Store, which is what you seem to be hoping?
However, there are many publishers competing for your attention. You have a choice, and many of those developers will always choose to use the App Store, since a lot of users browse the App Store. Users vote with their wallets, and developers who don't publish on the App Store would be keenly aware of the uphill battle they might have in convincing users to download their PWA.
> It enables publisher choice and creates this loop where publishers who have a customer bases just move to the store with the fewest restrictions and fees. It's a race to the bottom where the user loses.
Android has supported both sideloading and PWAs with push notifications for many years. Ever notice how the Google Play Store isn't a ghost town? Most Android users still only download apps through the Google Play Store. This is fine -- the users have made their choice, and that's the important thing.
Your doomsday, slippery slope hypothesis of developers vacating the Play Store en masse never occurred on Android. It seems equally unlikely to occur on iOS, unless Apple seriously mismanages their App Store. Still, users and developers should have the choice for meaningful apps to be distributed as PWAs, which essentially requires push notification support.
This isn't just for the cut Apple takes from App Store sales. It's also about differentiating their operating system and hardware from competitors products too. Operating system and hardware matter a lot less if the battlefield is the browser. So I think the argument that native apps are key and essential to Apple's existence is a sound one.
Google for example is pulling in a totally different direction, towards a world where only Chrome matters. In China, it appears that WeChat won that battle already.
I think it's great having so many different and opposing visions for what computing may look like. It would be a great tragedy if we ever ended up in a situation where there was only one remaining vision of what computing should be (unless maybe it was RMS's vision, which I think would be pretty good).
Because of that, I think it would be a mistake for Apple to act against its own interest by giving PWA's any kind of breathing room.
Also I may be wrong, but I suspect that users don't really care for or about PWA's, and that the only people who want push notifications for PWA's are PWA developers.
Your whole comment is predicated on the interpretation of one word. Apple just needs to support push notifications for PWAs if they want to make PWAs useful and competitive, and it would be helpful for Apple in the antitrust battles that they seem to be facing. That's what I meant by "need". Previously, Apple also needed to add offline support, but they eventually did... so now that isn't a "need" for PWAs to be useful and competitive, even if Apple's offline support for PWAs is limited.
Apple doesn't "need" to implement it from whatever abstract interpretation of the word "need" that you're using... I'm not saying Apple will starve to death if they don't implement it -- it isn't a fundamental business "need" that they currently have.
They should do it, and I really want them to do it.
This is true, but perhaps not as many as some may think! Progressive Web Applications can now do quite a lot on mobile and tablets, with a notable exception of push notifications on iOS.
They are an increasingly interesting option for those whose use case allows it.
https://simplabs.com/blog/2020/06/10/the-state-of-pwa-suppor...
As an iPhone owner, the inability for PWAs to have notifications is probably my single biggest gripe at the moment.
I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643185
and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24731713
Apple provides screenshots and human written explanation on rejection. I have even talked on the phone with review team several times to discuss the problem.
Yes, it sucks that the update may be rejected by some reviewer and another one may approve the same update.
Care to elaborate on that statement?
I was more than glad to receive a f..g phone call from the reviewer telling me why he will reject my update, why is it this way and what I can do to make it pass and give me his phone number to call if I need further assistance.
I become die hard Apple AppStore review process fanboy by getting a rejection!
You know what happens when you get a rejection from some other place? You get a template e-mail with no specifics, good luck figure it out. Tough luck if your livelihood depends on it.
I closed the phone and 5 min later I received the rejection together with the talking points that we went through on the phone.
I also suspect that Apple is trying to make sure that the same app is reviewed by the same employees. I think I dealt with the same 2 people in multiple review issues in later updates.
Sometimes it was frustrating when I have a rejection about something that was previously approved but it was resolved every time when I explain the problem and the solution in the notes to the reviewer section. I think I have a friendly reviewer that sends my updates straight to the store in 6 hours and there's another one who is being hard on me and needs to be convinced every time. Regardless, I am happy to be able to explain things to people.
As long as they treat big companies like royalty and small devs like trash (like they do now) I couldn't care less about their fee.
Something around 1 out of 10 updates to our app gets rejected for some random old core feature. So far it's always been resolved, but it's nerve wracking every single time.
> The change will affect roughly 98 percent of the companies that pay Apple a commission, according to estimates from Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. But those developers accounted for less than 5 percent of App Store revenues last year, Sensor Tower said. Apple said the new rate would affect the “vast majority” of its developers, but declined to offer specific numbers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/technology/apple-app-stor...
If there are no exceptions, it would mean that 3rd-party publishers lose tons of their value proposition.
So .. by invigorating the cottage shops with this generous relaxation, while holding the >$1million brick and mortars on the same leash, Apple seems to be trying for more upheaval in their app zeitgeist.
Trouble is, I still see serious issues with discoverability and interaction through the App Store to be a major barrier for all players. This handout is nice, but there is still a huge issue with small devs having to depend on Apple to keep the $>million guys off from dominating eyeballs.
Perhaps they should add another category of App to the Store: "built by budget/small-business" ...
$1,000,000 = $150,000
$1,000,001 = >$300,000?
It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to the ongoing complaints without much forethought other than an arbitrary change in the percentage below some round number.
Fire sale prices on apps around the holidays sounds like a consumer win to me.
Looks like the next year (after exceeding $1m) the first dollar will be taxed at 30%, though.
They should just make this work like income tax: the first $1m is taxed at 15%, and everything above that is at 30%. (Same rules every year, no flip-flop.)
(e.g. if it looks like you're going to earn a little bit over $1m, increase prices by a lot (to discourage purchases), but tell people the app will be "cheap" again in January. Or even make the app free for a while.)
If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax.
EDIT: It looks like I am wrong, ignore me.
If you get kicked out, you're stuck paying 30% for at least a year.
The relevant sentence seems to be "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year." (emphasis mine)
Apple takes the comission as you go, so it sounds like they take 15% of each sale until you hit $1M, and then 30% for every sale after that.
The next year they'd take 30% right from the start though, so a good year followed by a bad one would be unfortunate.
I wonder why they're not doing that and creating all kinds of weird edge cases that will encourage hacky workarounds.
I guess they didn't want to lose out on the first million from those who are above the first bracket.
Year 1: 999k --[-15%]--> 849k (This year doesn't trip the "limit"
Year 2: 1000k --[-15%]-->850k (Limit is tripped, next year is 30%)
Year 3: 999k --[-30%]-->699k (Fell below the limit, next year is 15% again)
Basically if you are close to the limit at the end of the year, you should immediately stop all advertising/marketing spend to ensure you don't go over the peak :)
I'm not really sure why they did it this way as it really screws over people that are just at the 1m/yr mark, vs a progressive system that would "just work."
Or, they could've just picked $1 million because it's a nice round number and looks good in a press release.
Why cant it just be simple where your First $1M will be 15% bracket regardless of total sales.
Yet they have 2 full year to see how it goes and work around all the edge case. I bet nobody except professional haters will complain if they soften the rules in 18 months.
I would like if there is any solution to this other than to apply the same percentage to all income.
You'd pay let's say 15% over the first 30k, and then 30% over the remainder.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax (See the Computation section for how the higher rates only apply to the higher portions of a person's income, with their lower portions taxed less.)
0-9000€ [0%] -> 0€
9000-20.000€ [10%] -> 1100€
20.000-40.000€ [15%] -> 3000€
Total = 4400€
So if you're in the 15% bracket you pay 4400€ which is actually 12.5% in total, and not 5250€ (15%) as some people seem to believe.
Cyberpunk always wins, in the long run.
My guess is that creating apps for the App store is actually far less profitable than Apple wants us to believe. That is, unless you are a large publisher.
I'd really like to see the distribution here, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a huge income gap.
"In a gold rush, you don't get rich by digging for gold - you get rich by selling shovels"
250k-500k - 5% 500k-1000k - 20% 1000k- ∞ - 30% (figures in INR)
the brackets varies every FY, but are same more or less.
It doesn't discriminate with border cases.
That would be dangerous, because imagine being under 1million all year, and in December you make 1 dollar too much - suddenly you would have to pay Apple a lot of money you may have already spent. You never pay Apple though, they just keep their cut.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY7DtKMBxBw
I made 42k in the last 365 days after Apple's 30% cut (or 60k in sales). That means I will get to keep an extra 9k next year, assuming revenue stays flat (it mostly has).
The main issue is not the exorbitant commission rate. Apple is hurting the consumers via its anti-competitive behavior with regards to what apps people are and are not allowed to install on a device that they've paid for. They are blocking value creation up and down the stack in a manner that "if we can't extract it, you're not allowed to create it."
It's intolerable that Apple has been allowed to lockdown their device for 10 years, completely control the market for apps and when it looks like regulators will take action they reduce their price and claim to be acting in the interest of small business.
Third party app stores must be allowed. Apple should not be allowed to dictate what software I can and cannot have on my device.
Smartphones have seen explosive growth because normal people can use them safely.
This advice would work for clothes/home appliances/furniture and other competitive markets, but not to mobile OSes.
Mobile OSes are natural monopoly/duopolies. There isn't enough room in the world for 100 OSes for us to get a competitive market. There isn't even room for 3. There is barely room for 2 with great downside. Companies spend a lot of money developing an app for one OS and basically re-creating it for the other.
I'm looking at my phone's home screen. Most of these apps are available in the other OS too, with almost the exact same functionality, but completely different codebases. Each of these duplicate efforts represent anything from X×100K $ to X×10M $ of development cost. This is just part of the cost of having more OSes. And the consumer ultimately pays for these costs.
Arguably not to OSes in general. Each platform type (desktop, server, mobile) effectively has only a couple of realistic choices when it comes to the OS. The network effects are very strong and winners take all.
Can you back this claim with a source? How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?
> How do you explain that Android smartphones has grown even more than iOS, despite the fact that they allow you to install whatever apps you choose?
1. Android is free for OEMs, iOS is unavailable. If you want to make a phone then its a great choice, and a free one. 2. Most flavors have a dominant store built in (android store, amazon store, Chinese-oem stores like Xiaomi) that are "safe" or offer that illusion. The important thing here is the built-in-trust of the default settings 3. Piggy-backing off point 1, cheap phone OS means people can make cheap phones -> Cheaper leads to more available for more people, and most of the world is poor compared to US iPhone users
I don’t particularly like it but the "trickle down theory" non marginally applies to fashionable or otherwise luxury items. iPhone creating a desire later satisfied by a cheaper option. Or something like that.
Practically speaking, the only big thing a web app can’t do on an iPhone that most app writers would like to do is notifications. Most other locked down things like call recording aren’t available to App Store approved apps either (and APIs are being removed from Android)
My 82-year-old mom's desktop computer is riddled with spyware, browser toolbars, and other garbage. Her iPhone is pristine and works as well as it did the day she got it. That's because Apple refuses to allow that garbage to make it to the App Store.
Yes, there's some collateral damage for us nerds. And perhaps there should be an easier way to - for those who really care - install more low-level tools and apps. But it shouldn't be easy, and it shouldn't put the majority of users at risk.
Your 82-year-old mum's iphone wouldn't behave any differently but other people will be able to go into the developer settings and tick an option that will allow them to install non-app store apps. That's how it works on Android.
But what's obviously anti-consumer to me is the in app payment system. They take their 30% cut and forbid you from even hinting at alternative means to pay for something to use in an app.
It means I have one place to manage subscriptions, one place with my credit card details, one place to manage family payments and all of it is from a company that can be trusted to do things in a secure and private way.
Do you really want the likes of PayPal or Epic to dominate mobile App Store payments ?
Only that it is user-hostile which services like Paypal absolutely are.
You are right. Choices and options just are messy. We should just have one company that does everything. Lets just merge everything together.
> all of it is from a company that can be trusted to do things in a secure and private way.
Are you for real? Apple is one of the greediest immoral and anti-competitive companies in the world. Not just in terms of tax avoidance via offshore shenanigans or slave labor in china, but their overall ethos of closed platform. But trust Saint Apple if you must.
> Do you really want the likes of PayPal or Epic to dominate mobile App Store payments?
What's wrong with nobody dominating anything and having competition?
Too bad Epic Games took so long to direct regulators' gaze on App Store practices (:
Small business size definitions in US are managed by SBA and they have very specific revenue ranges that defines what that is for each NAISC code https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2019-08/SBA%20Table%...
So a developer making $1,000,001 in year 1 will pay ~$150,000 in fees because they would just pass the threshold, but then makes $1,000,001 in year 2 will pay ~$300,000.
As a developer and growing business, I think I'd prefer a higher rate over on revenue above the threshold and reset it every year. A bit like how the tax system work in the UK.
But I guess it might be harder to implement, not only for Apple, but also for developers to keep track of etc.
I hope this does not deter the courts in their decisions regarding the App Store monopoly. Apple should just be careful with moves like these, some see it as a sign of good will, some see it as a sign of weakness (and smell blood). Give an inch, they'll take a mile.