Maybe not. When you buy an app on the App Store you aren’t engaging in a transaction with epic. You have no contract with epic.
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Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account
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Your lack of software deployment paradigms is your mistake.
Check out, install and make a purchase via Starbucks app without the Apple Store:
- Visit https://app.starbucks.com/ through Safari on your iPhone
- Tap 'Square-O' ( middle bottom, square with arrow )
- Add to Home Screen
- Add
- Start an Order
- Apple does not get 30%
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Sounds like EPIC is eager for invasive intrusion into your personal data. Yuck.
Wow! Sounds like Apple better keep on their toes— there’s some real competition out there!
Epic could challenge those terms in court, which they did, or show they weren’t willing to follow said terms by submitting the offending feature in a visible form and wait for Apple’s formal reaction, which they didn’t. Instead, they triggered said feature remotely to skirt around the review process, and thus infringed on an unrelated but much more serious clause – as it can pertain to malware prevention –, not because they thought they could ever get away with it but precisely because they knew they wouldn’t, in order to make Apple look like more of a bully than it otherwise would…
Yeah, that’s what makes it “blatant”, a word which, incidentally, is a synonym for “flagrant”. They were caught red-handed doing some serious, premeditated stuff – and that stupid PR stunt further proves that that it all was, indeed, prepared well in advance – and that’s what got them banned. If this was really written in DED’s style, it’d be filled with adjectives like “immoral” and “unethical” (and it wouldn’t be any less accurate, mind you).
Noble and legally justifiable as one’s goals might be, I think we can all agree that getting at them through deceit is, indeed, wrong and immoral. And needlessly and forcefully dragging others into it isn’t just immoral, but also unethical.
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Apple's profit margin on the store is likely 10-20% (once you remove app reviews, bandwidth and hosting, credit card transactions, affiliate and gift card fees, lower rate on subscriptions, etc). Apple's reported average profit margin is 38%.
That isn’t a monopoly. I face palm every time I read this nonsense. There are plenty of alternative products. You just get a different device.
it is an Apple device. They have every right to decide what goes on their devices.
It’s like trying to say PlayStation has a monopoly because you can’t install Mario Kart on it from the Nintendo store. It’s nonsense.
Two can play this game.
To sum it up the reasons I prefer ios over android,
1. App ecosystem is miles behind iOS and prevents me from getting my work done the way I want
2. The system software lets you customize things, but is missing some core functionality
3. Integration with tablets/PCs/watches is anemic compared to what is possible with apple products.
To elaborate,
My iOS devices are assured of 5-6 years of software updates.
iOS is home to the best apps, such as overcast, Apollo, fantastical, Notability, Tweetbot and Bear, which in turn improves the manner in which in interact with my content. Android may have some good apps, but the best ones are on iOS first or exclusively.
Let me know when slay the spire comes to android.
You need an iphone to use an Apple Watch.
I can share app purchases between my iphone and my ipad, and anyone who has been following my posts will know how I use my ipad to teach in the classroom. Just recently, I used LumaFusion to edit videos on my ipad for a school event, and this goes back to me having the best apps on iOS to make doing what I do that much more enjoyable.
Having an Apple TV lets me mirror my ipad to the big screen, and it’s a great streaming box all round thanks to its integration with the Apple ecosystem (like being able to view my photos).
The Apple ecosystem lets me do things like take calls or send messages from my other apple devices, airdrop files around, sync my files via iCloud, and so on.
Between Apple and Google, Apple seems like the only company who actually gives a crap about my privacy, even if it’s a marketing ploy to win over more users. They have had granular permissions for the longest time, have instituted safeguards into the OS that revealed bad actors like YouTube accessing Bluetooth or Tik-Tok reading your clipboard without justification, and there will additional safeguards to limit the extent to which facebook can spy on its users.
The Apple ecosystem also provides meaningful choice for users seeking alternatives to Google services, such as Maps (which I use full-time now), iCloud mail, safari has ad-blocking support built in etc.
That’s what this all boils down to for the iOS user at the end of the day. Meaningful choice. I can always spend a little more cash getting an iphone or ipad with more storage to get around the limitation of not being able to use expandable storage. No amount of cash is going to make up for the lack of LumaFusion on an android tablet (or the lack of the A12X processor for speedy performance) or there not being an Apollo app to browse reddit with on an android smartphone.
Correct.
They could also sell a subscription for $3.99 / month for all the coffee you can drink ( if they wished ) and / or IAPs ( for hats or different color backgrounds ). It is completely up to them as they own the PWA.
The app was still available for download for existing users, still with the violating functionality remotely switched on. Removing the account removes the ability for existing users to download onto other devices for this and all other Epic games.
All the stores you listed ARE THE ALTERNARIVE ROUTES. You’ve just explained how this isn’t a monopoly. There is plenty of other choice.
Fact is you’re simply expecting a device to do something that its manufacturer has never intended it to do.
IOS is the product it is not the entire industry. The owner of iOS can run it how they see fit - competition comes from the many other companies you listed.
They do host and serve up the content. Fortnite is a large download that comes off of Apple's CDN account, as are all the dance moves/skins/whatever sold.
Apple does not run the game servers (in this case) though.
Nintendo historically sold their console slightly below cost on launch, but hasn't done so for quite a while. They are making a positive margin on the hardware from the first unit sold.
I do not believe Microsoft or Sony sell below cost either, but I do not have numbers on that. Once systems started to also be usable for things like streaming YouTube and playing DVDs, it became a bad idea to try and undersell dedicated hardware for those tasks, as people may very well never buy a single game.
Historically consoles were meant to be sold at a profit over an extended lifetime, but they might not have the parts or assembly costs down low enough on launch to have a positive margin - they obviously would constantly work on negotiating better deals on parts and more efficient/higher quality manufacturing to get their cost down to an appropriate level. This was typically done on a planned timeline - do an initial launch with a handful of attractive titles earlier in the year, possibly in a smaller market, with the plan being to stockpile units for sale alongside a second wave of attractive titles for the holiday season. The focus was a successful launch over profit - if consumers didn't have interest at launch, the company may get cold feet and the console dies before it ever really starts.
None of this is true anymore. Consoles do not go five years without being replaced by a new generation, but instead 2-3 before a new incremental update comes along. A periodic jump in hardware capabilities does not necessarily mean title compatibility is broken. Consoles like the Wii launch on Black Friday in the US.
If I had to speculate, I'd say the PS3 was a red flag both to Sony and the rest of the industry on how bad the competition to out-revolutionize the other consoles in the next generation could fail. The Wii then showed that people actually cared more about having fun than the best graphics/hardware.
Do the game consoles have the margins on hardware sales that Apple does? Well, likely not, nobody does - from massive scale, strategic investments, a focus on selling a higher quality experience at a premium, to a crazy amount of focus on operational efficiency in manufacturing that starts at the design phase, Apple is optimized to make money on selling hardware.
To be clear, when a small kid tries to bully a big kid and gets punched in the face - that doesn't make the big kid a bully; it makes the small kid an idiot.
Sometimes the curtain is pulled back and the soul of Apple is revealed...as with Epic / Fortnite situation ... and it isn't pretty. Quite disgusting actually.
The Amazon Prime Video "agreement" is not exclusive to Amazon. In fact, Amazon was not the first company to sign up (they were the first internationally known one - but that, at least at the time, would have pretty much been them and Netflix)
Amazon would love to be able to sell titles in the audible and kindle apps, but they have to play by the same rules as everyone else.
I do suspect that Bezos has a much easier job getting a face-to-face meeting with a SVP of Apple to talk about proposed rule changes than I would, however. I'm sure Matt Fischer and Eddy Cue know exactly how much Amazon would be willing to part with for in-app purchases.
Maybe you don’t just like no store has to carry specific products either. Same thing here.
1. Go to WalMart.
2. Pick sprocket from shelf.
3. Pay at checkout.
Sprocket not in stock? Wrong sprocket color? Sprocket not on sale?
Skip step (2) above. Go to Target instead. Then proceed to step 2. (*—Note: this step is not comparable to such a software deployment paradigm as the App Store.)
It might be expensive but it’s a lot more expensive to let Epic walk all over them and give every other developer ammunition to do the same. This is a smart (and only choice) move by Apple and reminds me of the Samsung lawsuit. Apple didn’t do that for money. They did it to send a message to iPhone copycats around the world. Now they still have plenty of Chinese copycats but they would’ve had many more including Samsung had they not repeatedly dragged them into court for years.