I have no problem paying a reasonable price for the tools I use. But 15% or 30% of my sales revenue forever, for tools whose market value can't be assessed because no competition to them is allowed, doesn't seem reasonable.
You're not just paying for tools, you are paying for a storefront to distribute your apps; just as if you sold in a physical store, except the store and distributer cut is less in an App Store.
Or you know app developers who have certain apps that Apple does not allow on the App Store like retro game emulators,
My guess is Apple doesn't want to get sucked into a pirating lawsuit for enabling pirating of games so they simply ban emulators.
What are you even talking about? I have installed dozens and dozens of apps on my Macs over the years, and never a single one from the Apple App Store. I don't understand what developer in their right mind would put it on there just to donate a nice fat percentage straight to Apple, as if Apple are some sort of charity of something.
As have I, but the phone app market developed differently from the computer one. I suspect, as I said, is a developer will find the total costs of maintaining a website, bank fees, tax compliance, etc. will be more or close to what the App Store charges, all while reaching a smaller audience.
Maybe Apple should just say, go ahead and start your own store or use someone elses. We'll just charge to sign apps based on your revenue. BTW, if you want to be on our store we want an exclusive distribution agreement and will do everything we currently do for the develop fee and our cut. Developers have a choice, tehir is competitio, the need to decide what is the most profitable route.
And don't give me this tripe about paying for developer tools. I'm a developer, and the last tool on earth I'd ever want to use is one made by Apple.
There is more than just developer tools built into the App Store costs. Apple handles everything a distributor and store did, for a much smaller cut. In the PC world, especially before widespread internet access, a developer was lucky to get 30% and upfronted all the costs of development, packing, media, advertising, etc. App stores changed all of that and put more money in developr pockets.
Sure, they build the OS, blah blah. But as a Mac user, who just paid a ridiculous fortune for my new 16" MBP, complete with the insane Apple Tax on my RAM/SSD upgrades, I think its the hardware buyers who are well and truly covering the costs of developer tools thank you very much.
If you don't like the value, vote with your wallet and buy something else.
And of course, this is exactly the original model of how computers were, and still are, sold. The computer company builds the hardware to sell to people. But they can't sell it if there's no software for the users to run on it. So the company also builds the OS and developer tools to make it easy for software companies to compile their software to run on the computer company's hardware.
The original model didn't allow for app stores so the market developed differently. As I pointed out, it was much harder for a developer to get into stores and if they did get a distributer they likely wound up with 30% of the sales price and all the costs of goods. Or, they advertised in Byte/Nibble/Creative Computing and hoped they sold enough to make a profit.
I doubt competing app stores will be some panacea for developers. Apple can change their pricing structure to create more upfront costs, and other stores are likely to lack the reach and services Apple does.
Look at the Android market. Easy sideloading results in much more piracy, to the point where apps need to offer a basic experience and charge for features to try to make money. It's like the old days of bit copiers that meant one sale is likely to be used by a dozen or more users.
I think developers, especially small ones, need to be careful what they wish for. The big companies, who often use a subscription model of stores anyway, can afford to run their own site and store; although they'll no doubt still want to free ride off of Apple to keep access to all of Apple's users. If you think they are on the consumer's side you are sadly mistaken. I'd love to be proved wrong and see them drop their price 30% if they run their own store and leave Apple's App Store, but I won't hold my breath.
This idea of taxing developers 15/30% of their revenue (yes, revenue, not profits, thus creating a situation where the developer can end up making a loss
There is no loss on the sale because Apple adds it to the developer's price, as and store does marking up products; so if the developer loses money overall it is because they priced it wrong or nobody bought it.
You talk about greed, but how many small developers dropped their prices when Apple reduced their fees to 15%? They just pocketed the windfall.
