Apple Working on Solution for EU Core Technology Fee Possibly Bankrupting Apps That Go Unexpectedly Viral

[Zest28]

As I have said before, Tim Cook should have just pulled the iPhone from the EU and just start selling Android phones. Android does all what the EU wants and what MacRumors is complaining about.

Makes no sense to turn iOS into Android.

 

[Zest28]

Because there are only two players, which the EU has deemed to be not enough competition
There’s nowhere to actually “go” while running a viable cross platform business, which is a requirement for a large swath of App companies. Many can’t just “not be on iOS”

This is the issue the DMA was specifically created for

With respect, you’re missing sort of the key point of the DMA

I really encourage you to listen to John Siracusa on ATP talk about this.

There is going to be no competition when the iPhone turns into an Android phone. You and the EU is eliminating the competition against Android.

And Android is by far the dominant player in the EU with a market share of near 70%.

And there are not 2 players. Spotify and Tinder (which EU seems to love), is available on Linux, Mac, PC, Chrome OS, Android and iOS. So start spreading more misinformation.

 

[Sogeman]

The $99 is surely subsidized based on average income from app sales. Apple would probably start charging $999 or more otherwise.

if they think people will still develop apps for them they should charge what they want for the dev license.

 

[Windoes]

The death of EU…

 

[macabrumorsab]

Why does Nintendo, Sony (PlayStation), Microsoft (XBox)?

Because iPhones or iPads are general use computers for people. Apple has been claiming for years that iPads are computers. And indeed they are like any Android tablet, too.

 

[1284814]

in Europe apparently corporations are not allowed to use money ( funding campaign, or my favorite fund raisers) to get convince politicians to give them what they want.
I am loving every news braking out of this so far, Hoh epic is back and they are doing U TURNS.
go Europe!!!
allow people to sideload, and let the iPad become an actual pc - 2000$ on a tablet which is gimped by apple becuase they want to buy an iPad and a Mac. Let the better apps come to ipad osm And apple can shove that walled garden. I am so tired of apple just stop supporting an essential ( which I need for my work) and there is no way I can go on git hub for The alternative.

” The death of EU” XD====

 

[svish]

Will be very interesting to see what the solution will be.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Apple's developer fee has been $99 since long before the App Store existed.

Apple's compensation for its ecosystem is device sales and their highly lucrative profit margins; Apple always as been and remains a hardware vendor despite services making up an increasing share of its revenue. The iPhone/iPad would be nothing without its app ecosystem.

Incorrect. Apple pre-NeXT may have been, but not after we reverse merged with Apple.

Our Enterprise Fees for NeXT Tools included a User and Developer Seat of $795/4995 respectively for AppKit, etc.

For EOF we had tiers including our Distributed Object Link Embed (D'OLE).

EOF Enterprise topped out at $50k with the lowest tier at $2499, mid-tier of $24999.

D'OLE was something around $499 per Windows Server license.

WebObjects Enterprise topped out at $50k per server. Then the pricing dropped when it was mismanaged and then WOF lagged and eventually it embarrassingly became Java driven when it should have been ObjC driven. The fact no one has truly picked it up internally yet and modernized it for today's Web Enterprise services speaker to how badly that group fell apart.

Steve decided to reduce the fee for the OS from $795 to $120 to $0 over time. The goal of driving professional application purchases.

The Smartphone Industry would still be in the dark ages w/o iOS. Remember, Android was developed from an Apple developer who left and sold his Java version of similar features to Google which later opened up the Sun Microsystems debacle and then Oracle lawsuits.

Nokia and Blackberry were Kings before and they weren't smartphones. They are more like mini versions of palm pilots and other assistants, including Apple Newton.

Again, you can trace the history of NeXT from Apple and the vast majority of modern devices we take for granted back to engineers who worked at NeXT and Apple, and to a much lesser extent SGI and Sun Microsystems. Again, Java came from NeXT as an ex-NeXT Engineer left NeXT and the Foundation was a complete copy of NeXT Foundation Frameworks. A poorer version but he told me to his face it was. The NeXT family has always been very close, even to this day, but that's privileged and none of you have any history to it.

Most of you probably have no clue that my former fellow colleague Craig Federighi was just some guy working at NeXT on Enterprise Objects Frameworks which was originally a demo idea that Steve was fond of encouraging for future product development ideas.

 

[m4mario]

All this non-sense is because people are trying to change Apple's business model that pretty much created this entire modern app economy and startup ecosystem that everybody has benefitted from without bankrupting anyone. This problem is because some scheming companies/governments want to use Apple's technology by asking them to charge outside of the App Store. And when they charge outside of the App Store, they have a problem here. Why do people keep demanding Apple's technology for free?

Remember, releasing free apps on the App Store without paying Apple a dime is still a viability. All this happens only for downloads happening outside the App Store. This is what people wanted. They asked Apple to charge a technology fee but relinquish App Store control. And now they have a problem?

 

[SanderEvers]

if they think people will still develop apps for them they should charge what they want for the dev license.

For consoles it often costs 10.000 or more for an SDK. And those prices are per generation of those consoles, meaning 6-7 years. Apple's pricing is actually really cheap.

 

[AppliedMicro]

As I have said before, Tim Cook should have just pulled the iPhone from the EU and just start selling Android phones. Android does all what the EU wants and what MacRumors is complaining about.

As I have said before: Even if they did switch to selling Android phones, they‘d still be subject to the DMA and its rules,

 

[Zest28]

As I have said before: Even if they did switch to selling Android phones, they‘d still be subject to the DMA and its rules,

But they will be DMA compliant without a problem.

And it prevents other countries demanding the same thing if Apple only gives the choice between iOS or we put Android on it.

Tim Cook exposes himself to other countries demanding the exact same thing now.

 

[SanderEvers]

But they are forcing that discoverability onto developers. If a developer wants to release a free crappy little home-cooked app for some service only relevant to their small 100 person town, they won't need the App Store to distribute it because they can literally bike around to everyone with a USB stick and install it in an afternoon if they wanted to.

Discoverability via the App Store is great, and will keep all serious apps on the App Store, but it shouldn't be forced upon developers who don't need it.

That is a point I absolutely disagree with. Because as a consumer I want to know without a doubt that the thing I am installing isn't going to break my phone, install spyware or sell my data.

Similarly, how is it fair that said developer above is paying the same amount per year ($99/year developer fee) as a multi-national mega-corporation like Google or Microsoft? As mentioned earlier in this thread, that fee is super reasonable as a firewall against spam on the App Store, but it has no relevance to the process when I'm emailing an IPA to my buddy for them to install.

How is it fair I have to pay for Bread in the supermarket? I also have to pay the same price for that bread as someone who has 1000x my income. See here how stupid this is? For that 99/year Apple offers you a lot of services that cost them a lot of money.

The whole argument that Apple even has any IP to protect from abuse outside the App Store hinges on the expectation that there will be a mass exodus of apps out from the App Store if it were possible to not pay it, and that just won't happen, why? 1. because any relevant apps want to be installable on a global market and will stay on the App Store for that reason alone, 2. look at Android, it's been possible there since day one and nobody is installing apps from outside the Play Store except for geeks like me (and the apps I install that way generally aren't allowed on Play Store anyway because they are things like terminal emulators, network diagnostic tools, things that will load other pieces of code like terminal programs, which isn't allowed on the App Store for good reason), the same will be true of the App Store regardless of the outcome here, even if Apple removes all of their rent-seeking fees entirely, still no big developer will leave the App Store because it's just too convenient for users.

The exception MAY be Epic Games, and that's only possibly going to be successful now because of the huge drama Apple has caused surrounding all of this, which has given Epic free media coverage about this issue for years.

Spotify and similar sized developers may also release an app outside the App Store, but they will always keep a version on the App Store anyway, because not being easily discoverable loses them too many customers.

So it won't happen, but it will happen. And that is my issue with this whole argument. IT WILL HAPPEN. And other stores will have less privacy protection. Less protection against malware or spyware. For example the Epic Games Store on Windows used to install Chinese spyware from Tencent. (Who owns 40% of Epic)

 

[AppliedMicro]

Free! Free! Free!
Everything Apple provides should be FREE!
Now where’s the EU version of the a FREE developer platform reaching billions of devices?
That’s right, the EU has RULES not tech

They also have airplanes (tech) ✈️ that don’t fall apart.

Why? Because they have RULES.

RULES, you know, that weren’t made by billion dollar companies and enforced by themselves.

 

[seviu]

App developer here

With the 30% fee Apple is preventing innovation to happen for small developers. Google on their AppStore and directly charges 15% up to 1M revenue.

This is still excessive but as an indie young dev that 15% difference makes the difference between bootstrapping a business or not.

Didn’t mention the CTF because it’s a joke. Wake up. Your iPhone is not your device. It doesn’t belong you. Apple doesn’t protect you. There are many apps out there, full with scams and malware on the App Store. App Store review process is a farce and protects nobody, except their revenue, which pales against what they make by selling hardware.

They don’t care about you. And they think devs owe them everything while the reality is the iPhone wouldn’t be what it is today without people like me who started developing apps since 2008.

CTF is a joke, it’s unfair, and shouldn’t even exist. Nobody is gonna pay for it.

 

[Zest28]

They also have airplanes (tech) ✈️ that don’t fall apart.

Why? Because they have RULES.

RULES, you know, that weren’t made by billion dollar companies and enforced by themselves.

Didn't Air France (EU airline) receive state funding which is considered illegal? And Air France is rated quite poorly as an Airline.

Airlines from Asia and from the middle east are superior to EU airlines. So how are those EU rules working out for you?

 

[AppliedMicro]

You want to sell in my store? You pay rent. Go to another store if you don’t like it. Spoiler: they all charge rent

Spoiler: there’s a lack of other relevant stores.
Apple/iOS and Google Android control the market.

Margins will get wider, price will stay the same

Why should they?
It‘s a competitive market - unlike the choice if application store.

 

[5553130]

No, it's not. Apple is not required to give a free all access pass to their platform. It costs money to develop a platform and SDKs.

you know a dev must pay 99$ a year, right?

 

[Zest28]

you know a dev must pay 99$ a year, right?

You know Epic charges users who don't even make games up to $2000 per year right? And iOS is much more bigger and complex and Unreal Engine.

There are simple tinny apps in the App Store that charges more than $99/year even.

iOS is not a small little app from the App Store and it's bigger than Unreal Engine.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Didn't Air France (EU airline) receive state funding which is considered illegal? And Air France is rated quite poorly as an Airline.

Airlines from Asia and from the middle east are superior to EU airlines. So how are those EU rules working out for you?

Boeing.
Airbus.

European rules working out pretty well.

 

[Zest28]

Boeing.
Airbus.

European rules working out pretty well.

They don't. EU Airlines sucks. They are no match against good quality ones from the middle east and Asia.

I'm surprised people still fly with companies like Air France.

 

[AppliedMicro]

They don't. EU Airlines sucks. They are no match against good quality ones from the middle east and Asia.

Way to ignore the elephant in the room.

 

[Zest28]

Way to ignore the elephant in the room.

What ignoring? If rules are so good, why are EU airlines inferior to the ones from the Middle East and Asia?

It simply doesn't match with reality.

With airlines such as Air France, you pay alot of money for **** quality.

 

[AlmightyKang]

Not so. Copying a piece of software is not theft because nothing has been taken from the original creator; they still have the original.

What has been taken is the possibility of a sale and earnings. This is the theft part but only applicable if the item in question is on sale in the first place. It is currently impossible to buy GBA titles from Nintendo or anybody else so therefore using roms of those titles is fair use.

Might want to check that with a lawyer. Fair use doctrine only allows you to use ROM dumps of things you own, not things you don't. It doesn't cover if it's possible to buy the titles or not.

 

[AlmightyKang]

What? If rules causes companies to be so dominant, why are EU airlines inferior to the ones from the Middle East and Asia?

I've flown with a lot of both. I'd rather have better maintenance due to regulations (EU) than turd polish over a dangerous aircraft.

I was literally at Almaty airport last year and they didn't even have any security worth mentioning to the point I got everything but anal probed at IST on the way back. Everything runs like that out there, that far North to the South of the Philippines.