Not the App Store is enabling things (the App Store is a marketplace)
You have not outlined perfectly a thing … maybe you are confused?
You came with the concept of a marketplace to counter argue this opinion of mine:
“I think we can agree that App Stores do not sell, dating arrangements, books, music, music lessons, email services, Uber rides, bitcoin, TV Sets, math lessons, … so on and so forth … This is done through Apps amongst other infrastructure components created and developed by third parties that enable those digital goods and activities … NOT the App Store or even iOS per si. The App Store sells apps, that is what the users see in their catalogue, nothing else … Just like when you are in Best Buy we see a package with an iPhone and buy it … it would cross no one’s mind for the Best Buy right to charge Apple for what happens in the device even inside the store.”
Yet a marketplace is a place where people and business gather to buy and sell goods. That is what a market place is. In this digital terms … a digital place … an app … a site … a chat. I think we can agree that the App Store and App are two different placed right?
Now with in-app-purchases … as the place of sale is not in the App Store / Marketplace but in the developer App.
A device that follows the App wherever it goes in the system / users device … a POS tracker, basically a mandatory tracker to track the sale of anything in the digital businesses app. That is where my butterfly effect analogy came from … Sahara desert (one place) … Amazon (another place). That is what allows the App Store to charge for any transaction for any kinds of assets or services, digital or not (governed by policy). So you see, my metaphors aren’t that unrelated, they may be sophisticated … but not unrelated.
There are plenty of examples of digital marketplaces. Amazon for retail, Airbnb for temporary renting … if you care have a look at how these work and come back with a less abstract outline. Look at the fees, price structure, where the POS placed … look at the billing statement …
Not the App Store is enabling things (the App Store is a marketplace). The App is! The App is a means to interact with services, like a TV to tune into programs.
Correct. But I believe you aren’t see things with enough detail to bringing clarity.
In case of in-app-purchase the App is enabling the sale of the (digital good license or subscription of the service), it is just handing it off to the App Store … someone elses business … that is why use another metaphor … “man in the middle attack” … to remove the control of the sale out of the hands of the business that enabled it.
Before you totally disagree, I agree with you that there is value in what the App Store does. There is a coin of two sides. One side enables users to search for apps in the their device (we can also use Google, in fact a lot of us users do), download and update apps … in sum user access to the App. On the other side of the coin it enables businesses deploying their apps to their customers and potential customers devices. There is value in that … I explicitly enumerated those in post above, which components are used to enable that.
But once the App is in the hands of the user … it enables nothing … not even the sale … so whats the reasoning behind charging there? Butterfly effect?
If eventually Netflix was able to provide their customer a way to pay the subscription in App would that be enabled by the App Store … your marketplace? What about recurring payments? If not, … why isn’t the option given to them to supply their own cash register in app? What about Spotify? What about say a teacher giving remote classes? A remote digital gym? Game steams? All business that do not specifically sell Apps? You see, there is aways a hosing model … so it not that in such cases would be impossible for Apple to be payed for what it enables.
I can tell you why there is a very good reason for Apple. First and foremost leveraging on the digital businesses places /apps, especially crafted to sell what the Apps themselves enable, makes it a lot easier and way cheaper for the Store to sell/close the deal. In effect makes its so easy that is than able to charge for things it does not sell or market as they see fit, from say a ticket to go to the cinema to a dating arrangement … virtually anything from physical goods to the digital goods, from physical services to digital services. They might not charge for somethings, heck even some things they could reasonably sell service for, say a facebook app, they give it for free. But its entirely at their discretion making use of devices they do not own (users bought the device).
As policies are set it is fundamentally a “cornucopia” of money … note here is another butterfly effect … as long as they keep on selling loads of iPhones and iPads. Which they have been extremely successful in that market, 50% smartphone market share in the US. Which means, if you build a digital business, likely 50% of your customers will be using iOS On their pocket. I think we can also agree that Apps enrich / enable also the device to do all sorts of things … that aren’t Apple doing (Butterfly effect).
Now I don’t think this move in-app-puchase device was intended with such purposes … initially. I think Apple brains saw the freemium model on the web and came up with this solution for bring that model to the App Store considering that digital businesses could not sell a thing their apps (policy). A reasonable aim … yet the policies around this, and its changes in time paint a different picture. This phenomena is not uncommon. It’s not that the freemium model is bad for business, but the combination of the freemium model with the in-app-purchase fully controlled by a third party that can ultimate disable your business with a touch of a button opens a can of worms.
As engineers we tend to see problems in logical steps, we split things in components and investigate their relationships, create new relationships … but some of this new relationships might negate the control of other entities properties …heck some may be even against law or Constitution. So some of them need to be observed politically. We, engineers don’t like that, its not as linear … but such dislike maybe come from the lack of understanding of a way larger machine than the one we built.
I don’t understand you as a user don’t see how bad this can be for you. As technology evolves, now this practice is happening smartphones. What about what comes next smart cars, smart houses, smart pacemakers … Then we will have the I7guy saying or maybe you … “hey this is no different than what App Store has done for 3 decades”. The ever so slightly differences that are added each year that accumulate into something …
By decomposing things into properties, I simplify all this to:
“No business should be lawfully able to forcibly mandate charges directly or indirectly for goods or services that do not provide in any shape of form.” Forcibly includes say market power.
Happy new year mate. We just see things differently in this context.
Cheers.
Brilliant tech innovation.
