I was under the impression that the slice going to the creator is exempt from Apple's cut. That being said, there's probably no way (with Apple's APIs) to specify what %age is going to the creator, and what % is going to fees.
Perhaps this exemption only applies when 100% of the proceeds go to the creator (as is the case with Twitter's Super Follow)
Everything seems to have a subscription model these days. In my personal opinion, I’d rather pay for a service I really want instead of this “free” model where it annoys me with ads.
I don’t fully understand the value proposition of Ticketed Spaces, although to be honest I understand the value proposition of social media - it seems to be voyeurism and exhibitionism with folks pretending to have a lifestyle that’s not sustainable or real in the first place.
I cancelled my Prime membership because as a paying Prime member, I don’t think my search results should be plastered with ads. I already paid you for a premium experience. Don’t insult me with cheap Chinese flea market garbage.
Don’t think that Twitter will suddenly stop showing you ads just because you paid them. They really are fundamentally an advertising company. The microblogging thing is just how they get eyeballs onto their ads.
We’ve been here before, with cable TV. And before that, with newspapers and magazines.
I'm not sure whether most people just care about the 44% cut, but ticketed spaces does sound like a pretty interesting experiment.
I have been a bit skeptical about the whole Clubhouse craze, but this does seem like a reasonable starting point to build a business model around live chat.
> ticketed spaces does sound like a pretty interesting experiment.
> this does seem like a reasonable starting point to build a business model around live chat.
Discord is doing something similar with their stage channels[0], including paid tickets etc. It makes a lot of sense since their whole business model is around text and audio/video chat already.
>The company is partnering with Stripe to handle payments, and it says users will receive 80 percent of revenue after Apple and Google’s in-app purchase fees are taken
if Stripe take payments, how do Apple/Google get involed at all?!
I really feel like some of the cuts these companies are taking should just be a flat fee. A ticket takes the same amount of compute and bandwidth to process whether it's $10 or $100. It's been a while since I've gone to a show but aren't the much reviled TicketMaster's fees still a flat amount?
They have many fees, some of which used to include paying for the convenience of printing your own ticket at home, but the majority is a percentage of ticket price.
I think there's a lot to be gained by really digging into this. There's no revenue tax for corporations in the US, the tax on profits is 21% - so Apple is taking more in revenue than those ARPANET guys are taking on profits. There are a lot more comparisons to be made than are warranted by a HN comment, but it's pretty bad.
And actually, while I'm here - why don't the ARPANET guys take more? Because it makes everyone better off if they don't.
If we continue to trend in this direction, Apple and Google will own 30% of all commerce in America. It's not okay, and it isn't legal. The DOJ hasn't been focused enough to shut them down.
The simple fix is to disallow app stores and "pay with Apple/Google". But if if it requires that the companies are broken into pieces, so be it.
If you're running a startup today, how on earth do you rationalize competing with these absurd giants? They're eating our lunch, and the only reason they can do so is monopoly power.
I realize that Apple and Google employees and stockholders may have different views, but this isn't an equitable or healthy market.
You rationalize it by asking: am I competing with Apple or building on top of them? Does my business exist to steal share from Apple, or does by business exist _because_ of Apple.
If its the former, you find ways of not “feeding the beast” to serve your growing share. Airbnb turned off Google ads. Snap built Spectacles. Facebook built Portal. Spotify built Car Thing.
If its the later, you bite the bullet and chalk it up to business expenses. You appreciate the wonderful world you do business and grow by innovating on top of the platform ie) more apps, more app features, etc. This is the path of Twitter. Or you can choose to be bitter, which is the path of Epic, Match group, etc. In the end these are the losers, IMO
Apple built their business on the capitalist platform of this country. If the other businesses and people in this country decide that Apple is doing wrong then we will basically flip that right on its lid.
It's up to the courts now. Apple is getting attacked from many different angles and they'll definitely lose some degree of control eventually.
I actually don’t believe any of these attacks will amount to much. Even in a scenario where some nudge of change is required, Apple probably has about 5 different “next moves” to mitigate any effects.
The point is that if Apple chooses to do business in our country, they'll follow our rules. Nobody is forever in debt to Apple for starting an app store. The fight can continue infinitely since we can change the rules as we see fit to.
What the hell kind of argument is this? This sounds like what the mafia would say if they were in control of the smartphone ecosystem. The free market isn't setting the fees that Apple and Google are charging because consumers aren't aware of them (and developers are prohibited from making them aware). It's a racket.
Funny because this is my argument and I have zero control of the smartphone ecosystem. I have zero interest or investment in backing any kind of mafia. It just makes sense to me. If Nintendo can build an ecosystem of hw, sw, 1st party games and charge a 30% revenue share, why can’t Apple?
> You appreciate the wonderful world you do business and grow by innovating on top of the platform
And what happens when "the platform" demands 95% of the revenue? Just go to one of the hundreds of competing platforms? You can debate the empirics of a particular market intervention, but your statement makes sense only in a world of perfectly competitive platforms.
Actually it has nothing to do with competitive platforms for developers. All that matters is that Android and iOS compete with each other, which they do tremendously.
From a developer standpoint, they simply decide to start a business or not, knowing the expenses of doing so. Whether you are a new company, or any existing one like Twitter, you can do the math. Look at the costs and ROI. It is worth noting the platform fees have never gone up, only down.
> You rationalize it by asking: am I competing with Apple or building on top of them?
You have no choice but to build on the illegal monopoly that is Apple. At least not until the DOJ breaks the company up for abusing our industry.
Chip foundries need to start locking hardware if they don't start getting subscription revenue. (Isn't that a dumb idea?)
Or maybe ISPs should do deep packet inspection and make you pay more for Apple traffic. This is what Apple and Google have done to freedom of computing!
How do you know chip foundries aren’t being paid subscription revenue from companies like Apple already? I am pretty sure they are tied up in very large scale commitments over time. Effectively the same thing.
Qualcomm charges pretty hefty licensing fees for Apple to use its modem technology. And they scale it based on the price of the phone, not a fixed amount, just like the App Store does.
We act like there is something so wrong here but its just business. Everyone needs to take a chill pill
It’s incredible how much of tech is just scalping.
I’m curious what loopholes exist for this - if you charge for coupons on your own site and a hosted space required a coupon but was otherwise not possible to use, would you still have to pay Apple?
Hah, imagine if someone makes a competitor. Is Twitter going to ban me tweeting to my 1000+ followers to come pay to see my talk at (some URL)? Or just derank that tweet so that very few people see it? (At which point the anti-competitive lawsuit should be interesting..)
I can understand Twitter taking a cut, but Apple and Google deserve no part of this.
Hopefully this is more fuel for the rage machine that will shut this racket down.
Device manufacturers should not be allowed to do the following:
1. run monopoly marketplaces on their devices
2. run any payments gateways on their devices
If Apple Pay and Google Pay continue to be a thing, the DOJ needs to force the companies to be broken up into distinct business units. Let these organizations compete with Visa, PayPal, and the like on equal footing.
Sure they do. They provide the devices that enable this TSMC should get the lion's share of the cut since they make all the chips to allow every part of the operation
In this entire chain, the only innovation and service being provided is by the app creator. All the dues to the other companies are already paid. The fucking OS vendor has nothing to do with anything other than enforcing their draconian bloodsucking rules.
And they do! Phone contracts, electric bills, shipping fees. Everyone gets their cut when they deliver a service to the user. After I get Twitter from the App Store, the service is delivered. The App Store isn't doing anything other than providing free OTA updates which they could charge for if they want (not my fault they don't). Why should Twitter continue paying the App Store once the service is delivered? Would anyone pay FedEx every time they use an appliance shipped by FedEx, just because FedEx brought it to their house years ago? This is the same ask the App Store has whenever a developer wants to collect payment from users.
And you can't even collect the payments yourself, even if you wanted to. And you can't tell users why payments are more expensive (not even through email or any web pages reachable through the app - Hey got kicked out for this). AND AND - this is truly outrageous mafia-like behavior - you can't sell your services for less outside of the App Store. That's right, if your monthly photo backup service is $9.99/mo on the App Store, you have to sell it for $9.99 on your web site, even if you want to sell it for $6.99/mo. And if you do sell it for $6.99 in your app, you have to accept the fact that 30% of your profits are just pissed away even before taxes.
An entire subset of online businesses aren't even financially possible because the 30% Apple cut and forced pricing model would eat up profit margins that would be healthy otherwise. I would happily sell a service for $9.99 in app and $6.99 on web, and give the user a choice, but of course I can't, because the App Store is a racket.
> AND AND - this is truly outrageous mafia-like behavior - you can't sell your services for less outside of the App Store. That's right, if your monthly photo backup service is $9.99/mo on the App Store, you have to sell it for $9.99 on your web site, even if you want to sell it for $6.99/mo. And if you do sell it for $6.99 in your app, you have to accept the fact that 30% of your profits are just pissed away even before taxes.
>An entire subset of online businesses aren't even financially possible because the 30% Apple cut and forced pricing model would eat up profit margins that would be healthy otherwise. I would happily sell a service for $9.99 in app and $6.99 on web, and give the user a choice, but of course I can't, because the App Store is a racket.
"Apple this week revised its rules for in-app subscriptions, and no longer requires that subscriptions purchased outside of an iOS application have the same price or less."
And I don't see anything in the current guidelines that would contradict that - did it come back sometime in the last ten years?
(Definitely not a fan of the other guidelines like not being allowed to even hint to your users that they can subscribe on your website or disclose the Apple cut)
Oh damn, you might be right and I might be getting this mixed up with some press coverage on Hey. I vaguely remember them mentioning this rule as a reason why their app got taken down; because their site made clear that the IAP option would be more expensive than paying online.
It's not strange that tech products are basically just digital middlemen today, taking their cut.
What is strange is the people working on such products, when speaking in public, always talk about innovation, creativity and freedom. Adjectives that are directly at odds with the strategic direction of their products.
> The company is partnering with Stripe to handle payments, and it says users will receive 80 percent of revenue after Apple and Google’s in-app purchase fees are taken.
Why go with Stripe when their CEO is also the CEO of Square? Avoiding self dealing or lost on the merits?
My understanding is that Square is solely a payment collector, you can't send funds out of Square to other accounts like you can with Stripe. If Twitter had went with Square then I think every Spaces creator would have to set up their own Square account in order to receive payments.
> A creator sells a Ticketed Space for $5. The creator, who people are willing to pay for, gets $2.80. Twitter, who facilitated the connection and created the product, gets $0.70. Apple/Google, who leverage OS API control into a tax on all activity, do nothing and get $1.50.
> Imagine people arguing in 1998 that Microsoft deserves 30% of all software sales with zero alternatives allowed lmao
No vetted and trusted secure authentication and payment systems?
No meticulously-created hardware in the first place?
Yep, that sounds about right. They're just "doing nothing" and don't deserve to be able to run their businesses while other people build on top of their platforms.
I agree that “do nothing” is inaccurate (I think Ben later walked it back).
But overall, I'm surprised how common the take is in the software industry that this is a fine state of things. How much of Apple's cut is because they run a good distribution network, vs. how much is because they are the only distribution channel?
Surely we don't think it's a bad thing that desktop software went in the direction of being an open platform (which, it's worth noting, may not have gone in that direction without DOJ intervention). Why aren't we rooting for the same on mobile devices, which have become just as essential?
If I want a walled garden should I be allowed to have it? I understand individuals want to exercise control over things they own. I’m not interested in forcing brands to make their products open platform. I don’t want an open platform. I want a locked down and predictable platform. If you would rather argue that the distributor fee is too high I’d be inclined to agree.
Sure, I have no problem with there being a walled garden as long as users who want to have a way to opt out. Curated app stores do have value and I don't think they should disappear. I even think it is fine for niche platforms to exclusively have walled gardens.
> I don’t want an open platform.
Do you think the state of the world would be better if desktops were not open platforms? I'm genuinely curious because this is something I just can't relate to.
You want walled gardens with check points? What is the point in building the wall if you can just leave or enter when you desire? I’m interested in a digital prison for my phone. I have no desire to entertain the concept of hypothetical arguments which ultimately boil down to - I also want some of this money, let us in.
Who is forcing you to leave the walled garden? All we are asking for is an option to install unapproved apps. You don't have to install them if you don't want to.
You don’t think that those third parties would move their apps to be exclusive to their stores?
The way it is now is very straightforward. If you want an app, you know where to get it. You know who’s vetted it. You know who’s handling your payment info. You (now) know what information about you is being gathered and disseminated.
Can you imagine how terrible a world where every App thinks it needs its own store would be?
This hasn’t really happened on Android or desktop open platforms. There are alternative app stores, but certainly not one for each app, and it would be a self-inflicted distribution wound for an app to go exclusive to a smaller app store.
Having a uniform way to handle payments is a great feature, but it would happen naturally if payment terms were competitive with industry norms instead of extractive prices that require a lock on distribution.
To expound on the other comments a bit more clearly: if it's the drive of a large portion of consumers that they only want to consume apps from the App Store because of the ecosystem that provides it should not require forcing everyone that has an iPhone to use the App Store, usage of the App Store and interest in apps working to get on it/pay dues should be a natural results of a large percentage of the customer base choosing to force apps to do such not a large portion of the customer base being forced into it because the hardware picks for them.
Did no one who bought an iPhone understand it has one store and a restrictive OS? I’m unsure of why you think the largest demographic isn’t already the ones who bought the phone with no side loading. I don’t give a shit that I can’t side load games on my console or my tv OS. The phone is the same and perhaps this is more of a generational difference.
I would wager a years salary if you went around to 100 random iPhone owners and asked them "did you buy the iPhone because it's a walled garden where you can't sideload" 90+ of the responses would be something along the lines of "what is sideloading".
For those that answer "yes, actually" the option for them to be able to use the walled garden would still be there - allowing others the option does not take that away from those that are actually choosing the walled garden vs being required to use it after getting the phone for other reasons.
Can those things be had cheaper, while being guaranteed interoperable and directly integrated into a trusted hardware security enclave without any further integration headaches?
Microsoft pushed personal computers to masses and the productivity gains fie society are insane. You really think they don't deserve 50% from every excutable for their innovation and vision?!
Microsoft didn’t invent the operating system, they just captured the market share with network effects before somebody else did. If it wasn’t them, it would have been apple. If it wasn’t apple, somebody else would have raced into the void with dump trucks of Vic money. All things said, we could have done worse than early days Microsoft, although modern Microsoft is all about advertising and tracking
> they just captured the market share with network effects before somebody else did
Ever heard of CP/M? That was an improvement over having every manufacturer ship it's own (unmaintained) OS. Microsoft's genius was seeing the value in Software, not just in shipping physical goods. And people believed they were crazy at the time.
Why not allow other competitors to take over these software responsibilities if they want to? Why can't Google Play be on iOS too? Do you think Google wouldn't be able to effectively curate, distribute, and secure its own app store?
Yes, Apple builds excellent hardware, and deserves to be rewarded for it. They are rewarded when I give them money for their products. They shouldn't have a say in what I do with the product after I receive it. Imagine buying a new Ford or Nissan and the dealership sets which highways you're allowed to drive on!
All great arguments for a fixed fee, not a massive % of sales (of sales...not profit). Apple has made BILLIONS of dollars running their App Store, I’d love to hear arguments why setting up an App Store with very minimal overheard deserves to reap billions of dollars of profit annually. None of the reasons you outline above would do it in my opinion.
The real crime is that they prohibit developers from itemizing this fee for the consumer. That's what Epic et al should be focusing on. Customers would be aghast at the extractive abuse of monopoly power after having already paid (in many cases) an exorbitant sum for their device. Let the free market deal with the problem.
A friend argued that the App Store cut is justified because it’s a free market and if consumers don’t think the value of the store is worth paying the cut, they can go get a different phone. Apple banning developers from informing consumers about the cut is a problem for this argument.
Consumers couldn’t care less, for sure. It’s only developers and corporations who cares.
It is a lot like all the furor over patent trolls. It only really hurts large companies, but techies decided it was somehow victimizing them and screamed about it constantly but consumers still didnt care.
In this hypothetical universe, Microsoft runs the only store, decides what you are allowed to sell, and blocks you from selling independently.
In reality you could sell your software by direct mail if you thought it was a better cost structure than a store, or if a store didn’t want to carry your product.
> In reality you could sell your software by direct mail
IIRC, that's exactly how some famous companies/developers (Apogee, for one) started out. They uploaded the demo to BBSes and then had interested users buy the full product by mail.
Is there a very clear explanation of who gets charged & who doesn't?
From what I understand places like Amazon don't get charged for in app purchases, but Audible (owned by Amazon) would & so they don't offer buying books.
I assume finance stock/crypto/etc apps don't get charged.
I've heard that food & drink, taxi services, & house rentals don't get charged.
>Apple/Google, who leverage OS API control into a tax on all activity, do nothing and get $1.50.
Except they offer you a channel for distribution, discoverability, promotion, rating and monetization of your app.
On Android you don't have to serve your app over Google Play you can distribute .apk file elsewhere and pay 0% fee but on iOS unfortunately you can not do that.
Read again what I wrote >On Android you don't have to serve your app over Google Play you can distribute .apk file elsewhere and pay 0% fee but on iOS unfortunately you can not do that.
Silly question, but is it not possible at all to build this as a PWA to get around the app store fees? I believe Twitter already have a basic PWA Twitter client that seemed ok the last time I tried it.
The modern web has pretty good audio support these days.
I assure you that Apple has no incentive to keep Safari up to date with the latest webspecs that enable solid PWA. Further, If developers started leveraging PWA enough that it made a dent in revenues Apple would find a way to discourage PWAs. Tax avoidance is illegal in the Apple ecosystem.
Why are you saying tax avoidance is illegal in Apple App Store? Nothing in their policy says App Store authors shall maximise the revenue share of Apple in their applications.
Whether developers acknowledge or not, when they build their apps for the App Store they're forfeiting 30% off their revenues.
Of course they can build PWA's to try to keep more of the money but Apple will eventually find a way to capture that money. Apple controls the only browser engine on IOS and I don't expect them to investing in features that threaten the Apple tax.
If PWAs become popular enough then Apple will add a browser feature redirects/proxies payments through Apple and they'll take their 30% cut.
the argument is so biased. if you want to argue that Apple and Google do nothing, you also have to argue that Twitter is doing nothing, and eventually you’ll have to wonder if the creator is even justified in taking a profit for their content.
Nothing is preventing creators from setting up their own infrastructure and building their own platform and then taking all the profit. They don’t, thus they must believe that what both Twitter and Apple and Google are delivering is valuable and with the cost.
The company is partnering with Stripe to handle payments, and it says users will receive 80 percent of revenue after Apple and Google’s in-app purchase fees are taken.
if stripe is handling the payments, how is a portion of this routed to Apple / Google?
This is my thought as well, Stripe is so creators can withdraw their earnings once Twitter has collected them through IAP. You can't use a Stripe checkout in app unless you sell physical products.
> You can't use a Stripe checkout in app unless you sell physical products.
I'm partly surprised that people have not done something like sell postcards of QR codes linking to their digital product or something in lieu of selling digital items directly, just to point out the absurdity of it all.
Yeah, that part makes no sense to me. If you use IAP for Google/Apple there is no need for Stripe (other than maybe payouts to creators?). Or maybe Stripe is for when you pay on the web?
Could be worse, Ticketmaster would probably add a $15 fee on top of the $5 ticket. Then, buy them all out themselves, and sell them back at highly inflated prices.
I was expecting to open the comments here and see talk about how the technical side of this would work - if Twitter is going to limit this to the app, enforce some kind of DRM in-browser, to keep these spaces private. Speculation on how they'd be preventing re-broadcasting, how this could disrupt Clubhouse, etc.
Sadly every single top-level comment is about the IAP fees, a tired and unproductive line of discussion.
Same here. I’m curious to know what happened in Twitter the past year or so or however long these products have been under development. Twitter languished for years and their only acquisitions (Vine, Periscope) both failed. Now all of a sudden it seems, they have Fleets, Spaces, Ticketed Spaces, Twitter Blue, Super Follow, etc. Did I miss a CEO change?
It's pretty fascinating to see the conversation here. No talk of the product at all (not surprising, twitter is about a decade behind in product innovation) but it really feel's like this is the perfect product to attack Google and Apple. It takes the most sympathetic group of people - individual content creators, it gives them a tool at a pretty tight margin - 16% and then slams the hammer down on you "30% goes to Apple" so that they can continue to sell thousand dollar phones.
But... why on earth is Twitter picking this fight. Have they done it accidentally? They're not at a scale for this to pay off for them, and other companies are already doing the heavy lifting. This is a fight Twitter doesn't need.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 201 ms ] thread100% - $10 // 30% - $3 to Apple // 20% of 7 - $1.7 to Twitter (+inclusive of stripe fees) // 80% of 7 - $5.6 to host //
Apple and Google makes more money than the product itself. haha
Perhaps this exemption only applies when 100% of the proceeds go to the creator (as is the case with Twitter's Super Follow)
Before taxes. I'd be very surprised if the host gets even $4 afterwards.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/07/uber-sells-self-driving-un...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25337553
I don’t fully understand the value proposition of Ticketed Spaces, although to be honest I understand the value proposition of social media - it seems to be voyeurism and exhibitionism with folks pretending to have a lifestyle that’s not sustainable or real in the first place.
I cancelled my Prime membership because as a paying Prime member, I don’t think my search results should be plastered with ads. I already paid you for a premium experience. Don’t insult me with cheap Chinese flea market garbage.
We’ve been here before, with cable TV. And before that, with newspapers and magazines.
Apple and Google are unreasonable monopolies, and they shouldn't have total platform control.
I have been a bit skeptical about the whole Clubhouse craze, but this does seem like a reasonable starting point to build a business model around live chat.
> this does seem like a reasonable starting point to build a business model around live chat.
Discord is doing something similar with their stage channels[0], including paid tickets etc. It makes a lot of sense since their whole business model is around text and audio/video chat already.
[0] https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005513722-...
>The company is partnering with Stripe to handle payments, and it says users will receive 80 percent of revenue after Apple and Google’s in-app purchase fees are taken
if Stripe take payments, how do Apple/Google get involed at all?!
And actually, while I'm here - why don't the ARPANET guys take more? Because it makes everyone better off if they don't.
If we continue to trend in this direction, Apple and Google will own 30% of all commerce in America. It's not okay, and it isn't legal. The DOJ hasn't been focused enough to shut them down.
The simple fix is to disallow app stores and "pay with Apple/Google". But if if it requires that the companies are broken into pieces, so be it.
If you're running a startup today, how on earth do you rationalize competing with these absurd giants? They're eating our lunch, and the only reason they can do so is monopoly power.
I realize that Apple and Google employees and stockholders may have different views, but this isn't an equitable or healthy market.
If its the former, you find ways of not “feeding the beast” to serve your growing share. Airbnb turned off Google ads. Snap built Spectacles. Facebook built Portal. Spotify built Car Thing.
If its the later, you bite the bullet and chalk it up to business expenses. You appreciate the wonderful world you do business and grow by innovating on top of the platform ie) more apps, more app features, etc. This is the path of Twitter. Or you can choose to be bitter, which is the path of Epic, Match group, etc. In the end these are the losers, IMO
Apple built their business on the capitalist platform of this country. If the other businesses and people in this country decide that Apple is doing wrong then we will basically flip that right on its lid.
It's up to the courts now. Apple is getting attacked from many different angles and they'll definitely lose some degree of control eventually.
The point is that if Apple chooses to do business in our country, they'll follow our rules. Nobody is forever in debt to Apple for starting an app store. The fight can continue infinitely since we can change the rules as we see fit to.
And what happens when "the platform" demands 95% of the revenue? Just go to one of the hundreds of competing platforms? You can debate the empirics of a particular market intervention, but your statement makes sense only in a world of perfectly competitive platforms.
From a developer standpoint, they simply decide to start a business or not, knowing the expenses of doing so. Whether you are a new company, or any existing one like Twitter, you can do the math. Look at the costs and ROI. It is worth noting the platform fees have never gone up, only down.
You have no choice but to build on the illegal monopoly that is Apple. At least not until the DOJ breaks the company up for abusing our industry.
Chip foundries need to start locking hardware if they don't start getting subscription revenue. (Isn't that a dumb idea?)
Or maybe ISPs should do deep packet inspection and make you pay more for Apple traffic. This is what Apple and Google have done to freedom of computing!
Qualcomm charges pretty hefty licensing fees for Apple to use its modem technology. And they scale it based on the price of the phone, not a fixed amount, just like the App Store does.
We act like there is something so wrong here but its just business. Everyone needs to take a chill pill
I’m curious what loopholes exist for this - if you charge for coupons on your own site and a hosted space required a coupon but was otherwise not possible to use, would you still have to pay Apple?
Hopefully this is more fuel for the rage machine that will shut this racket down.
Device manufacturers should not be allowed to do the following:
1. run monopoly marketplaces on their devices
2. run any payments gateways on their devices
If Apple Pay and Google Pay continue to be a thing, the DOJ needs to force the companies to be broken up into distinct business units. Let these organizations compete with Visa, PayPal, and the like on equal footing.
I'm not actually sure what exactly your point is, so I'm not arguing for or against it. I just thought the chain could be extended some.
The electric company should get a 50% cut.
UPS, FedEx, and DHL should get a 72% cut.
...
Oh my god, this is fucking stupid.
In this entire chain, the only innovation and service being provided is by the app creator. All the dues to the other companies are already paid. The fucking OS vendor has nothing to do with anything other than enforcing their draconian bloodsucking rules.
And you can't even collect the payments yourself, even if you wanted to. And you can't tell users why payments are more expensive (not even through email or any web pages reachable through the app - Hey got kicked out for this). AND AND - this is truly outrageous mafia-like behavior - you can't sell your services for less outside of the App Store. That's right, if your monthly photo backup service is $9.99/mo on the App Store, you have to sell it for $9.99 on your web site, even if you want to sell it for $6.99/mo. And if you do sell it for $6.99 in your app, you have to accept the fact that 30% of your profits are just pissed away even before taxes.
An entire subset of online businesses aren't even financially possible because the 30% Apple cut and forced pricing model would eat up profit margins that would be healthy otherwise. I would happily sell a service for $9.99 in app and $6.99 on web, and give the user a choice, but of course I can't, because the App Store is a racket.
>An entire subset of online businesses aren't even financially possible because the 30% Apple cut and forced pricing model would eat up profit margins that would be healthy otherwise. I would happily sell a service for $9.99 in app and $6.99 on web, and give the user a choice, but of course I can't, because the App Store is a racket.
Er, I do remember this being the case a long while ago but it seems to have been fixed in 2011? https://appleinsider.com/articles/11/06/09/apple_backs_down_...
"Apple this week revised its rules for in-app subscriptions, and no longer requires that subscriptions purchased outside of an iOS application have the same price or less."
And I don't see anything in the current guidelines that would contradict that - did it come back sometime in the last ten years?
(Definitely not a fan of the other guidelines like not being allowed to even hint to your users that they can subscribe on your website or disclose the Apple cut)
What is strange is the people working on such products, when speaking in public, always talk about innovation, creativity and freedom. Adjectives that are directly at odds with the strategic direction of their products.
Why go with Stripe when their CEO is also the CEO of Square? Avoiding self dealing or lost on the merits?
https://twitter.com/benthompson/status/1395766118304780292
> A creator sells a Ticketed Space for $5. The creator, who people are willing to pay for, gets $2.80. Twitter, who facilitated the connection and created the product, gets $0.70. Apple/Google, who leverage OS API control into a tax on all activity, do nothing and get $1.50.
> Imagine people arguing in 1998 that Microsoft deserves 30% of all software sales with zero alternatives allowed lmao
No curated/moderated/policed App Store?
No storage/distribution network for applications?
No vetted and trusted secure authentication and payment systems?
No meticulously-created hardware in the first place?
Yep, that sounds about right. They're just "doing nothing" and don't deserve to be able to run their businesses while other people build on top of their platforms.
But overall, I'm surprised how common the take is in the software industry that this is a fine state of things. How much of Apple's cut is because they run a good distribution network, vs. how much is because they are the only distribution channel?
Surely we don't think it's a bad thing that desktop software went in the direction of being an open platform (which, it's worth noting, may not have gone in that direction without DOJ intervention). Why aren't we rooting for the same on mobile devices, which have become just as essential?
> I don’t want an open platform.
Do you think the state of the world would be better if desktops were not open platforms? I'm genuinely curious because this is something I just can't relate to.
The way it is now is very straightforward. If you want an app, you know where to get it. You know who’s vetted it. You know who’s handling your payment info. You (now) know what information about you is being gathered and disseminated.
Can you imagine how terrible a world where every App thinks it needs its own store would be?
Having a uniform way to handle payments is a great feature, but it would happen naturally if payment terms were competitive with industry norms instead of extractive prices that require a lock on distribution.
For those that answer "yes, actually" the option for them to be able to use the walled garden would still be there - allowing others the option does not take that away from those that are actually choosing the walled garden vs being required to use it after getting the phone for other reasons.
Microsoft didn't build those computers.
Microsoft didn't sell those computers.
Microsoft didn't ship those computers.
They merely licensed their OS to the manufacturers and/or end users.
The X Box would be a better analogy, and MS does get a 30% cut there.
Didn't they? QDOS was bought, but 9x and NT were mostly MS with a little bit of IBM AFAIK.
Ever heard of CP/M? That was an improvement over having every manufacturer ship it's own (unmaintained) OS. Microsoft's genius was seeing the value in Software, not just in shipping physical goods. And people believed they were crazy at the time.
Yes, Apple builds excellent hardware, and deserves to be rewarded for it. They are rewarded when I give them money for their products. They shouldn't have a say in what I do with the product after I receive it. Imagine buying a new Ford or Nissan and the dealership sets which highways you're allowed to drive on!
BlackBerry, Nokia, they all failed to create an app ecosystem.
"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It is a lot like all the furor over patent trolls. It only really hurts large companies, but techies decided it was somehow victimizing them and screamed about it constantly but consumers still didnt care.
I would support this, as I believe that we pay high taxes because we're pacified into not thinking about the amount.
In reality you could sell your software by direct mail if you thought it was a better cost structure than a store, or if a store didn’t want to carry your product.
IIRC, that's exactly how some famous companies/developers (Apogee, for one) started out. They uploaded the demo to BBSes and then had interested users buy the full product by mail.
From what I understand places like Amazon don't get charged for in app purchases, but Audible (owned by Amazon) would & so they don't offer buying books.
I assume finance stock/crypto/etc apps don't get charged.
I've heard that food & drink, taxi services, & house rentals don't get charged.
-- I could be mistaken about many of these above.
Except they offer you a channel for distribution, discoverability, promotion, rating and monetization of your app.
On Android you don't have to serve your app over Google Play you can distribute .apk file elsewhere and pay 0% fee but on iOS unfortunately you can not do that.
Only because they don't allow you to do any of that yourself or allow for any alternatives.
The modern web has pretty good audio support these days.
Of course they can build PWA's to try to keep more of the money but Apple will eventually find a way to capture that money. Apple controls the only browser engine on IOS and I don't expect them to investing in features that threaten the Apple tax.
If PWAs become popular enough then Apple will add a browser feature redirects/proxies payments through Apple and they'll take their 30% cut.
https://www.xbox.com
Nothing is preventing creators from setting up their own infrastructure and building their own platform and then taking all the profit. They don’t, thus they must believe that what both Twitter and Apple and Google are delivering is valuable and with the cost.
I'm partly surprised that people have not done something like sell postcards of QR codes linking to their digital product or something in lieu of selling digital items directly, just to point out the absurdity of it all.
Sadly every single top-level comment is about the IAP fees, a tired and unproductive line of discussion.
But... why on earth is Twitter picking this fight. Have they done it accidentally? They're not at a scale for this to pay off for them, and other companies are already doing the heavy lifting. This is a fight Twitter doesn't need.