I really doubt a single app will get submitted. The €0.50 cost per install over a million could end up pricing almost all companies out of business. Because it’s an annual payment as well, even if they make you pay a fee to download the app, how will they make sure they continue collecting €0.50 per person each year after this? No way any company will agree to this ever. Dead on arrival
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Apple Starts Letting Developers Add Alternative App Marketplaces to App Store Connect
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Actually Apple certification is a certification of authenticity and privacy. But there are entire categories of apps that the App Store might not allow. Example will be porn, political criticism, certain kind of games, etc. Apple might decide to not host X, or Truth Social in the App Store. But they are still safe for the user in terms of privacy and authenticity.
There is a risk of kids accessing content that might be dangerous to them from alternative stores. I hope parents will have the ability to disable alternative stores for kids altogether until a dependable alternative gets established. There are some dangers here, hope Apple and governments act sensibly while they remove guard rails.
The PWA situation is being misrepresented.
PWAs never used Safari, they used an OS-provided WebView, powered by WebKit.
Secondly, many PWAs weren't officially PWAs, only partial. This has been corrected with stricter checks.
The issue is (I believe) — if a user chooses an alternative browser, but PWAs still loaded with WebKit, it would be a violation of the "laws".
I believe full PWA support will return when Apple figures out how to get 3rd-party browser engines to load up like WebViews did. This will need to be implemented by the browser developers themselves, so support would be very scattered for quite some time.
The question is easy to answer — always-on, always connected, deep iCloud integration (if configured).
This isn't just about you. It's about the greater good.
We've seen the nightmare of desktop computers over the decades. Cheap, no support, crashing apps, slow performance. That's all been avoided with Apple's carefully-designed approach.
Yes, there's been massive profits in it for Apple, but that's been a RESULT of their efforts, not the motivation.
Apple went from abusing their leadership to directly stealing money.
Sadly, that’s the right move, the EU will punish them but they’ll be fined a fraction of what they’ve stolen.
The only way to prevent this kind of behaviors would be to instantly ban companies who just don’t give a f*** about consumers and competition.
Sadly, that’s the right move, the EU will punish them but they’ll be fined a fraction of what they’ve stolen.
The only way to prevent this kind of behaviors would be to instantly ban companies who just don’t give a f*** about consumers and competition.
Of course they should be allowed to sell.
First, I kind of like their products (though not their greedy monetisation).
Second, the money they‘ll need to be fined needs to come from somewhere.
My Mac is supported, apps crash rarely, it‘s fast - and definitely wasn‘t cheap.
And yet I can run any (compatible) code I want on it.
Edit: Actually… I bought Apple‘s very cheapest Mac (mini). So it was kind of cheap. 😄 But doesn’t feel that way - despite it’s mobile SoC that evolved out of an iPhone‘s.
They’re not on their own if they don’t want to be. If a company values the services that Apple provides, they can continue to use the App Store and pay the 30% commission.
Sure but.. in what way is it malicious? It is the current state today, plus a list of conditions which regulators put on them, to allow for alternative payment processors/alternative browsers/alternative marketplaces.
That means things become more complex for developers, because they have a lot more options.
That means Apple changes their monetization strategy.
Epic for sure. Not sure about Microsoft.
Apple's terms are that only legitimate marketplaces can participate, with guidelines for how developers submit their apps and so on. I don't know if Microsoft wants to get into that business. They don't need to in order to launch a streaming game app.
Microsoft also has something like 27 apps, and opting into the new terms means all of those cost them per user after the first million. Today, the six or so apps someone might have installed as part of an Office 365 enterprise seat don't cost them a euro cent in commisions. Today, offering up Microsoft Edge as a browser option to consumers doesn't cost them a euro cent either.
Apple's highest in-app purchase fee is 20%, if you use Apple for processing and are under the new European terms involving the core technology fee.
Epic may be 15% (plus the core technology fee).
Apple would likely say you get 5% more value being in the premier App Store, which also happens to be the one which comes preinstalled on the phone.
Or to look at it a different way, what actually pressures Apple to lower fees - apps deciding they don't want to be in the App Store at all? Which apps would do that in earnest, vs a "billionaires playing hardball" move.
Why not 12%, if that’s the commission they charge today?
That’s 40% less than 20%.
It‘s malicious in charging a „Core Technology Fee“ that has supposedly nothing to do with the choice of distribution/store - but then not charging it for apps on their own store. Thereby steering if not (economically) forcing many developers to staying with the old business terms.
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I believe 12% in the EGS is loss-making so they might want to set an ios App Store to be more profitable. Who knows!
It‘s not (though they may temporarily be investing in growing and marketing through exclusivity deals).
„Sweeney also said that Epic Games makes approximately 5% profit from that 12%, and this could grow to 6-7% as the store grows“
https://gamerant.com/epic-games-store-revenue-split-explained/
A fair share for an intermediary, compared to Apple‘s 50, 60 or 70% profits (as estimated in their trial).
Paddle and Fastspring also have sub-10% commissions (though with minimums of fixed per-transaction costs). And Microsoft has 12-15%. Even bloody Apple can do 15% for small developers - and people keep repeating „oh, so many developers pay less than 30% anyway today“.
👉🏻 Given all that, it certainly is more than just plausible to be profitable at 8-12%, especially when operating at some scale.
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Not really. The point is to circumvent the share that Apple gets from each sale.
That’s not really the point though is it? The average Joe can download stuff the exact same way they used to and skip the alt stores entirely. These users experience will be exactly the same.
I’m sure Apple will make it clear when trying to install these stores that it’s not a good idea if they don’t know what they’re doing
Buy your kid an Android device. Or a Raspberry Pi. Or an Arduino kit.
Seriously, kids that want to tinker have so many cool options that I didn't have as a kid in the 70ies.
Here’s one already.
The first alternative iOS App Store is confirmed as MacPaw's Setapp comes to iPhone as a mobile marketplace in the EU later this year
The first alternative iOS App Store is coming!
www.imore.com
They will for sure have something to say on Apple taking a cut of these app downloads. The whole point in opening the AppStore in the first place is to encourage competition and apple’s managed to monopolise that as well…
Just thinking out loud here...
If Netflix allow you to subscribe in their app in the Apple App Store, but they increase the price to cover the 30% fee, subscription numbers will be lower because it's 30% more than just doing it via the web.
If Netflix decide to add their app to a different app store in the EU, they're still going to have to pay a fee to the store owner to cover payment processing, maintenance, customer support etc. That fee might be 10-20%, but that means people are still not going to subscribe in-app until the prices are down to a level where it's acceptable.
Can Netflix have their app on multiple stores? If so, does each one have a different app identifier? (Probably does.) So can you sign up in the cheaper app, then sign in on the Apple App Store version? The subscription doesn't exist on the Apple App Store version, but does Netflix check for that or just that you have a valid account?
So, should Netflix open their own App Store? Well, you can't open an App Store just to sell your own apps, so that's unlikely. Plus, it would cost too much for Netflix to get into the App Store business - with all the extra admin & costs that come with it.
If Netflix allow you to subscribe in their app in the Apple App Store, but they increase the price to cover the 30% fee, subscription numbers will be lower because it's 30% more than just doing it via the web.
If Netflix decide to add their app to a different app store in the EU, they're still going to have to pay a fee to the store owner to cover payment processing, maintenance, customer support etc. That fee might be 10-20%, but that means people are still not going to subscribe in-app until the prices are down to a level where it's acceptable.
Can Netflix have their app on multiple stores? If so, does each one have a different app identifier? (Probably does.) So can you sign up in the cheaper app, then sign in on the Apple App Store version? The subscription doesn't exist on the Apple App Store version, but does Netflix check for that or just that you have a valid account?
So, should Netflix open their own App Store? Well, you can't open an App Store just to sell your own apps, so that's unlikely. Plus, it would cost too much for Netflix to get into the App Store business - with all the extra admin & costs that come with it.
If you look over and Android where side loading has been possible for years, you'll notice that almost all the big apps are in the Google Play store.
Why?
Because that's where the vast majority of users look for new apps. If your app isn't there, you are giving away a tremendous amount of market reach.
It's like choosing to sell your product at a store that has 5% of the traffic of the other one.
In other words, I doubt anything significant changes as a result of all this.
As usual, I predict that after all is said and done, way more will be said than done.