Yes, in eg. Germany and many other European countries it is. Education shall always be free, just another downside of the USA.
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Apple Threatens to Terminate Epic Games' Developer Accounts on August 28
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As I mentioned earlier, I find the CDN portion of the App Store alone with the 30%. I pay CacheFLY for my, even small, user base on some downloads and that gets EXPENSIVE very very fast.
Explain how you are locked in, and I'll give you an easy way out.
Talk about first world problems.
Apple is taking the bait on everything, aren’t they. Marketing and legal at Epic are probably celebrating Apple’s shortsightedness.
I guess Apple has decided it’s worth letting their public goodwill die on this cross.
I guess Apple has decided it’s worth letting their public goodwill die on this cross.
But you don't have only two choices. You choose to see only two. You can get Kai OS, Lune, Plasma, Tizen, and others. You can get an older device like Palm, Windows Mobile, or FireFox OS and still use their apps. You could also get one of those older non-smartphones and buy apps from your carrier. If more people used them they might see faster development.
Just because their are two names with the most marketing doesn't mean the others don't exist or you can't use them.
That's not really analogous because Walmart or CVS is a separate company. Apple owns both the App Store and the only payment method to purchase virtual goods on it.
And anyone can go to college? At any time in their life, for any field they are interested in? It isn't limited funding for only those with the highest grades and test scores?
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I have always, always had a love-hate relationship with Apple. This is nothing new. And yes, I like to rant about it here from time to time. Maybe I should get more of a life? Who knows.
Anyway, I love their hardware, and I love the way the platform is engineered. It's fast, looks good, and is reliable.
I DON'T like the excessive control that Apple has been exerting over the platform, though. I started out with an Apple II in 1983 and have been a Mac user since 2003. Back then Apple didn't care what you ran on their stuff. This crap started with iOS and has spread to the Mac; look what happened with that developer recently whose apps stopped working. It was a mistake and they fixed it, but the point is they just have TOO MUCH CONTROL.
I'm all for the app store existing. I just don't think it should be the only way. You are free to keep using the app store even if they allow sideloading. Heck; if they allowed sideloading I'd probably keep getting 95% of my apps from the app store; Apple would be forced to compete fairly to keep developers there, and healthy competition is a good thing.
Because of anti-competitive behavior. Having their own App Store, or 30% is not a bad thing. But if it appears you removed Family Screen Time apps for your own in-house version, that is anti-competitive behavior. And they only removed the ones that use MDM, there are still third party family screen time apps.
This is just like the Microsoft vs US case. Being so big and having 90%+ marketshare is not a bad thing. But if you do anti-competitive behavior like preventing competing products from being developed, or working with OEMs to not allow your competition to be sold/installed, then things boil over.
Microsoft had 95% of the desktop market and that's what got them in hot water with the DoJ. Apple has less than 15% of the smartphone market. That doesn't even remotely qualify as a monopoly.
You can't choose any digital payment option at Walmart. You can't use Apple Pay or Google Pay. Your only digital option is Walmart Pay.
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Apple has 95% of the paying customers
Can you go to your bank and deposit or transfer money into another bank without paying fees?
Can you choose what payment processor your bank uses for invoice payments, etc?
Can you pay invoices via your bank and avoid the payment fees by choosing a different payment processor or way of paying the invoice?
Yes it is true, Apple is the bank and the store. That is clear as day, they even offer their own credit card.
But I don't see a problem with that. And I think it should be compared to stores and banking on an international level, because the way operates is very similar to how banks and stores do operate all over the world. And yet Apple gets targeted like they are the only ones doing things this way. It seems like uneducated people are just jumping on the hate-train like always these days, without actually doing some research on their own, and apply some critical thinking.
Read one of my earlier posts. Government came down on Microsoft because they tried to prevent Netscape from creating Navigator and approaching OEMs from bundling it. Not because Microsoft had and still has 90% market share or bundles IE.
Nope! You need different grades to be able to register to different education fields, but it’s free.
And nobody is taking pitch-forks at Walmart for it? OMGADZz Walmart is EVUL just like Googl and Appl! Boycot, sue, regulate because of monopoly on payment methods!
So a student who barely passed High school can go back to college at age 60 to study the history of fashion for free?
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I should be able to pay Lipton for tea at Walmart without having to pay the Walmart tax!
Contracts usually have a section that says if one part of the contract is found to be invalid, the rest of the contract shall remain in force. So Epic’s only way out would be that if the sections they are getting booted out for violating are found to be invalid and I don’t see that happening.
That is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
But realistically, many markets naturally settle on one or a few giants. One of those things are network effects -- the more a particular platform is used, the more attractive it becomes.
This is the reason that companies like Amazon or Uber spend years running on a loss -- so that they can be the single or among the few dominant giants left entrenched in a market. Now, sometimes they can be disrupted by major technological change (which the iPhone itself was) but in the meantime, tough luck.
But even if that happens, what happens is that instead of giants A, B, C, now you have giants D, E, F. So the fact that there are only a few choices in this market is inevitable.
AND the market doesn't see Apple or other digital platforms not having recourse to retaliate against apps that Use Epic technologies.
What every other developers accept doesn't matter.
The success of iOS platform is not only contributed by Apple, but also 3rd party, and 30% for all scales of sales doesn't sound right for big companies.
I personally support Epic on this issue as it would be more beneficial for consumers than, say, stock investors.
The success of iOS platform is not only contributed by Apple, but also 3rd party, and 30% for all scales of sales doesn't sound right for big companies.
I personally support Epic on this issue as it would be more beneficial for consumers than, say, stock investors.
Granted, it's a bit of a gray area, but essentially Netflix and Spotify don't have each item (i.e. movie or song) as a purchasable/consumable instead it's part of their service, so Netflix and Spotify would only pay Apple a portion for each subscriber. I don't know if Netflix or Spotify still allow sign-up through their apps or if it's now only via their website (or apps on other platforms). Anyway, IAP are for app-specific features and digital products/content. So, for example, if Netflix made it so a Favorites tab in the app was only accessible as an add-on feature for say $0.99, Apple would take $0.30 of each purchase of that add-on. On the other hand, Amazon -- their general app -- is (mostly?) exempt because it sells (primarily) physical items and thus can integrate and advertise it's own payment processing system. I haven't purchased movies through the Prime Video app or books through the Kindle app (only via Amazon.com), therefore, I don't know if they comply with using Apple's IAP system.
EXACTLY! It's just to low for the bigger names. Small developers should pay 30%, but big names like Epic should be paying closer to 50 to 70%. They use more Apple resources to provide their product than the smaller ones do. Epic's items are all 100% markup anyway. V-Bucks don't cost Epic anything to make and since you can't resell them they don't have to compete with a secondary market.