Techies have golf-clapped as Apple has borged more and more of the tech landscape. By time folks realize Apple is going to end up being 80% of what is "Silicon Valley", it will be too late.
The platform power of Apple's walled garden will destroy startup culture. Any great idea can vertically integrated directly into the platform, OR taxed 30% until the only real winner is Apple, OR nullified by kicking it off the app store without comment.
Not even Google is safe. Search is something Apple could do "good enough" at this point...and all they really have to do is threaten Google with being booted as the preferred search engine and Sundar Pichai will bid more and more and more until he is paying Apple $25 bln a year for the privilege.
Android will be relegated to Samsung making phones for poor people. Windows will die because other than gamers, no one under 30 uses it.
Who is safe? Amazon. Apple doesn't want to be in the warehouse business. Also Tesla. Apple will never catch them. Everyone else will lose and suffer the Apple monopoly.
New headline: “Billionaire doesn’t like to pay for infrastructure that helped make him a billionaire.”
To his credit that’s a substantially large club, he’s not alone.
(Edit)
To elaborate, he’s balking at a company having control over a platform that they built and charge for to help maintain the platform.
Every company wants to own and drive the platform, and that’s been the desire since at least the 80’s.
Tim would like to build a metaverse and own that platform, and doesn’t like that today he’d have to build it on top of other platforms and pay a price to do so.
Can’t push an app with a 3rd party store as an option. Can’t install outside the AppStore. I think the argument for some regulation is fair. The mobile space is restrictive at the end of the day and users lose because of it.
I think ultimately this argues for far more than regulating the mobile space.
Users can end up losing anytime there are dominant players, but I don’t think Tim is arguing for anything to help users, he’s arguing to help himself and that’s my point. This isn’t some kind of altruistic mission he’s on.
Epic’s Fortnite was massively profitable before mobile ports came around. Most companies are balking at a 30% surcharge on everything purchased for essentially app reviewing and listing in a store. Why doesn’t Apple charge all financial apps 30% on those transactions? Why aren’t the taking a slice from every streaming service?
It’s not clear, at least to me, how many apps end up paying 30% versus 15%.
To your point about financial apps, most can and do offer their services on websites as well. Those websites aren’t relying on infrastructure and SDKs paid for by Apple.
> most can and do offer their services on websites as well. Those websites aren’t relying on infrastructure and SDKs paid for by Apple.
Isn't that true for fortnite too? I bet 90% of the code and infra involved in an in-game Fortnite purchase belongs to Epic and is common to all the different platforms they support.
Apple is merely hosting downloads and not much else for Fortnite or any other online only game, they aren't running game servers. Yes they make the hardware and provide SDK's, so does Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nintendo, Sony, etc. and Epic owns Unreal engine and likely has games on all of those platforms. 30% or 15% on all in-game purchases is kinda ridiculous because Apple (or other platforms) aren't doing anything other than collecting revenue in those cases so the surcharge should reflect that, like 4-5% seems fair to cover credit card surcharges and payment infrastructure and volume discounts would make sense there for a behemoth like Epic.
> Epic’s Fortnite was massively profitable before mobile ports came around.
Massively profitable isn't enough when you could be ... supermassively profitable!
> Most companies are balking at a 30% surcharge on everything purchased for essentially app reviewing and listing in a store
That's probably why Fortnite is not available on Google Play or in the Nintendo eShop. Few companies are willing to pay Google's or Nintendo's platform fees.
I think we moralize this too much. Apple doesn’t get credit for the app or the infrastructure or whatever. Their role in the transaction is their ownership of valuable digital real-estate that companies salivate over and their business is keeping that real-estate valuable. And boy do they charge a premium for it.
Nobody has to hawk their goods on iOS and if there wasn’t money in it nobody would. If Epic didn’t stand to make assloads of money they wouldn’t saber-rattle every few months or fight these legal battles. If anything the fact that everyone complains about their pricing but still publishes on iOS means they have the pricing exactly right.
But this ignores their market position on mobile phones and the barriers to creating an open competing mobile phone.
It's like if there were two car companies and you could buy tires from them, but if you wanted to buy tires from a third party you had to pay Ford or Chevy 30% tax because you were putting them on their cars.
And you want to tell the tire companies too bad, you don't have to sell tires.
It’s really straightforward. Platform owners make investments in supporting development on their platform. Xcode? Metal? Would there even be any apps, developers, or users on iOS if they didn’t make this investment?
Tolls and taxes bother me but I don’t pretend to not understand them.
>>Would there even be any apps, developers, or users on iOS if they didn’t make this investment?
Pricing power comes from market power.
Apple has market power because they were first in the new generation of touchscreen phones.
Some app developers have hugely benefited.
Some app developers already have an audience and just want their software to be available on all platforms and Apple is using it's market position to extract a toll. I think it's abusive given it's market power.
Epic doesn't care about metal or xcode and if there was an open phone that had market position (like Windows PC) Epic would be fine to port it's software to that system.
Apple's toll comes from it's market position, not it's investment. The investment created the position -- but For how long does the consumer need to pay Apple's toll for being first 15 years ago? Forever? Apple recouped it's investment many many many times over.
Instead of trying to hobble their competitors with more regulations Epic should get control of a platform. Valve Software feared the Windows platform would funnel most revenue through the Microsoft Store so they hedged with SteamOS. Google was concerned Apple's vertical integration would be a threat to search revenue so they bought Android to guarantee a friendly platform exists. Ubisoft withheld their IP from Steam for a few years to prop up their own platform.
With the Windows and Mac market this is not really realistic.
And yet here Valve is with SteamOS and the Steam Deck.
It doesn’t actually have to capture the market, it just has to exist as a threat. It’s worked for ages threatening to move to Linux to get steep discounts from MS.
Honestly curious: what is the basis for Epic's claims about "monopoly" when iOS and Android are such a clear duopoly? Wouldn't there have to be some coordination between the two in order to trigger antitrust?
Apple is a monopoly inside the IOS platform, they set the rules, block anyone that they don't want in it and then release their own version of the product using closed APIs. They are not a monopoly looking at the OS mobile market but they are inside their bubble which has grown big enough to be considered decrimental to the users and developers
He is right. Look at the visceral response against SOPA/PIPA when all Google had to do was change their google doodle for a day. The senators said they had never encountered such a deluge of phone calls that day.
If Google/Apple doesn't want a law to pass, all they have to do is push a notification to every one of their users.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 79.8 ms ] threadThe platform power of Apple's walled garden will destroy startup culture. Any great idea can vertically integrated directly into the platform, OR taxed 30% until the only real winner is Apple, OR nullified by kicking it off the app store without comment.
Not even Google is safe. Search is something Apple could do "good enough" at this point...and all they really have to do is threaten Google with being booted as the preferred search engine and Sundar Pichai will bid more and more and more until he is paying Apple $25 bln a year for the privilege.
Android will be relegated to Samsung making phones for poor people. Windows will die because other than gamers, no one under 30 uses it.
Who is safe? Amazon. Apple doesn't want to be in the warehouse business. Also Tesla. Apple will never catch them. Everyone else will lose and suffer the Apple monopoly.
To his credit that’s a substantially large club, he’s not alone.
(Edit)
To elaborate, he’s balking at a company having control over a platform that they built and charge for to help maintain the platform.
Every company wants to own and drive the platform, and that’s been the desire since at least the 80’s.
Tim would like to build a metaverse and own that platform, and doesn’t like that today he’d have to build it on top of other platforms and pay a price to do so.
Users can end up losing anytime there are dominant players, but I don’t think Tim is arguing for anything to help users, he’s arguing to help himself and that’s my point. This isn’t some kind of altruistic mission he’s on.
If someone does something that helps a situation we should support it.
To your point about financial apps, most can and do offer their services on websites as well. Those websites aren’t relying on infrastructure and SDKs paid for by Apple.
If the current percentage isn’t fair, what is?
Honest question.
Isn't that true for fortnite too? I bet 90% of the code and infra involved in an in-game Fortnite purchase belongs to Epic and is common to all the different platforms they support.
Whatever Apple can negotiate with Epic after Apple is forced to allow Fortnite to bypass the app store and the 30% cut.
I don't know what number that is, but it's not 30% for Epic. I'm sure plenty would pay it, but plenty would not.
Massively profitable isn't enough when you could be ... supermassively profitable!
> Most companies are balking at a 30% surcharge on everything purchased for essentially app reviewing and listing in a store
That's probably why Fortnite is not available on Google Play or in the Nintendo eShop. Few companies are willing to pay Google's or Nintendo's platform fees.
This is simply not true. First because Fortnite was a desktop first game.
But philosophically, I really struggle with the idea that just because something sits on the app store then Apple deserves the credit for any success.
It's like saying that Fortnite owes MS windows and Intel for their success. Sure at some level, but not in any real or practical way.
Can you imagine if Windows took 30% of all desktop software sales since the dawn of Win 3.1, and what a worse place computing would be in?
Nobody has to hawk their goods on iOS and if there wasn’t money in it nobody would. If Epic didn’t stand to make assloads of money they wouldn’t saber-rattle every few months or fight these legal battles. If anything the fact that everyone complains about their pricing but still publishes on iOS means they have the pricing exactly right.
But this ignores their market position on mobile phones and the barriers to creating an open competing mobile phone.
It's like if there were two car companies and you could buy tires from them, but if you wanted to buy tires from a third party you had to pay Ford or Chevy 30% tax because you were putting them on their cars.
And you want to tell the tire companies too bad, you don't have to sell tires.
Tolls and taxes bother me but I don’t pretend to not understand them.
Pricing power comes from market power.
Apple has market power because they were first in the new generation of touchscreen phones.
Some app developers have hugely benefited.
Some app developers already have an audience and just want their software to be available on all platforms and Apple is using it's market position to extract a toll. I think it's abusive given it's market power.
Epic doesn't care about metal or xcode and if there was an open phone that had market position (like Windows PC) Epic would be fine to port it's software to that system.
Apple's toll comes from it's market position, not it's investment. The investment created the position -- but For how long does the consumer need to pay Apple's toll for being first 15 years ago? Forever? Apple recouped it's investment many many many times over.
Ubisoft could just create an app to avoid Steam.
It's not possible to do that in the mobile space.
And yet here Valve is with SteamOS and the Steam Deck.
It doesn’t actually have to capture the market, it just has to exist as a threat. It’s worked for ages threatening to move to Linux to get steep discounts from MS.
Steam failed to get any traction with SteamOS as a desktop systems before Steam Deck, so I think it reinforces my point.
If Google/Apple doesn't want a law to pass, all they have to do is push a notification to every one of their users.