In this case Apple really managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
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Court Rejects Apple's Emergency Motion to Pause App Store Rule Changes
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Which is barely enough to pay for a few app submissions considering App Review team gets $20/hour.
Then there's hosting/many services/developer tooling/etc...
Epic games pushes weekly updates. That's 52 updates per year.
Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo charged 30% before App Store existed.
The company that has specific and dedicated rules to distributing dating apps in one country and? 🤣
They aren’t going to. They will only pile up more and more country- and case-specific crap, “external purchase link entitlements” and the like, to maintain their anticompetitive revenue.
They are ALL greedy. And Apple could have been the better actor when it came to its app store.
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What does it matter what others do? That excuses the greed?
Now Fortnite is using that framework. Previously they did not and required the user to keep fortnite open.
And that's literally one of the ways of how Epic was able to bypass human review and broke the app store rules.
Shows hypocrisy. No one cared until Apple did it despite others doing it for decades. It's clear the complaints are not based on principle but based on the fact that people don't like Apple's behavior. It's biased.
I think I said ‘where applicable’. If I didn’t, that’s what I meant.
I’d argue that Apple bought this confusion on themselves anyway by insisting on their global %age approach, leaving certain sectors in particular countries to lobby for carve outs.
Ditto with the NFC access.
…for games for gaming consoles that were sold close to or below cost.
The iPhone was never sold at at that (except when discounted through carriers subscriptions).
To a certain extent, but before the App Store we bought stuff via websites each with different payment providers - and some of still do! - and it was ok.
I will partially agree with you that in its first few years, the App Store was incredible for small devs to be able to publish & sell apps and for consumers to try new software out without feeling that they were going to get stung.
Maybe.
As I said: First, it was only about children’s games. Then it was about games for everyone. Now it’s about all kinds of media content on people’s most personal computers.
The more and more important and ubiquitous the types of products/services that Apple are offering have become in our lives and societies, the bigger the pushback. No surprises there.
The thought of two or three big platform operators controlling all of our software purchases and media consumption - and imposing a 30% tax on it - is truly dystopian.
You’re focusing on big game developers. What about the small shop independent developers who were developing small apps like package trackers, or notepads, or a small games like tic-tac-toe or a puzzle game etc.? You have tunnel vision on this issue. I’m not defending Epic Games. I’m criticizing Apple. And don’t tell me Apple isn’t one of the stingiest, greediest companies on the planet. They are.
I’m pretty sure it’s different, as each console is sold at a loss with the hardware profit loss made back from the estimated average number of games each console owner will be expected to purchase.
Whereas apple are making a rumoured 30-40% margin on each iPhone.
Happy to be proved wrong though.
Someone’s (touchy subject of the) gaming consoles is just someone else’s ride sharing or physical book purchase.
“The reason people are touchy about the Uber or Amazon Store apps (and try to avoid the comparison) is because they’d operate using the exact same business model”:
You download an app, see or pick a product or service you like in it, and check out by entering your credit card details completing the transaction in-app. Without paying commission to the vendor of the operating system the app runs on.
Forcing a 30% commission (and a specific payment method) on every purchase of ebooks, digital items or music subscription while allowing all other in-app purchases to remain free is discriminatory.
I’m happy to entertain ideas how to get rid of discrimination.
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What about them? I'm a small independent developer and I'm glad I don't have to pay $2900/mo for Google Maps usage because Apple provides 100% free MapKit usage for all third party iOS developers. This is paid for by the 30% revenue Apple gets from the App Store cut.
And I have up to a petabyte of free user storage, 10TB free database storage via CloudKit. Again, paid for by the App Store cut.
And I can submit thousands of app updates if I wanted to. Goes through human curation so my customers feel safe when they try out my app.
And so on.
Talk about tunnel vision...
I think between this and the EU stuff, Apple will be forced to allow side loading globally. That’s the best solution. If a company doesn’t want to pay Apple’s fees, then they can promote, deliver, and host it themselves.
Also, I hope Apple would give us the ability to lock side loading down so that we can prevent kids or tech-impaired family members from installing crapware.
Also, I hope Apple would give us the ability to lock side loading down so that we can prevent kids or tech-impaired family members from installing crapware.
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I never fully understood the issue with there being a commission or it being 30% per se. I do think it's perfectly reasonable for the provider of a store to be compensated and, as many have pointed out, 30% seems to be the industry standard.
What I think is more problematic for Apple is that ideally it wants a perpetual cut for providing a service to which it contributes very little. It is of course debatable whether it is fair that Valve gets 30% of a sale on Steam, but hey that's part of the deal and always has been. But if you're Netflix and you have to run a whole infrastructure for streaming massive amounts of data to your customers and Apple now wants 30% of your revenue because it hosts your app that seems disproportionate.
Still, I wouldn't have an issue with how Apple runs its store, even if there's plenty to be said about how their rules often don't make a lot of logical sense, if users and developers had options. If you make PC games you don't necessarily have to use Steam to reach your customers, you can sell your game on GOG, Epic, on your website or even through Amazon on physical media if that's what you want.
So you don't like to fees after all. If you can avoid to pay fee, you would. That's great to know. And I am sure if there is alternative way for you to distribute your app without 30% revenue, then I can bet you will do that.
Apps submitted to App Store not always have human reviewer, mostly reviewed by machines.
Apple should just start charging them per app download.
There are few issues with this:
1) If you were to say, game developer needs to pay one time fee for submitting apps, then I don't think anyone has issue with it.
2) Apple charges 30% of fee regardless if they actually contribute to anything. If Amazon were to sell a eBook on its Kindle App, why does Apple need to take 30% fee. What does Apple do in this case? If Netflix spend billions of dollar to create a show, why does Apple feel entitled to take 30% of cut on Netflix's streaming services?
3) Microsoft has already reduced their commission to 12%
4) Consoles are sold at loss, is iPhone being sold at loss? Apple is making billions of dollars, locking developers in its own App Store, taking billions away from developer. The greed is unbelievable
5) Steams already provides way for external payments method. Heck I can go other website, such as G2A Games to purchase code and I can use the code to redeem my games. I can buy used game, borrows games etc and play it on Play Station.
All of your example has provided some kind of compromise or allow external payments. Apple wants neither.
If this is the case, I am just going to use 3U tools to side load my apps.
And this will just not work.
If Apple is forced to allow external payment method, then why would developer pay anything? They are just going to list all their App as free app and payment is done on external.
Unless you are saying
1) iPhone users need to pay for per app download. Let's see how iPhone users react.
2) Apple will charge per app download even on a free app.
So why should anyone have their payments run through Apple then in this case? If Apple cannot collect anymore fee in their store, might as well shut it down completely, as it is only a cost center then.
Apple only needs to add the importants apps which 99.9% of the people use, like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Google Maps, Uber, Meta, X, ... which were free to begin with anyway.
Apple only needs to add the importants apps which 99.9% of the people use, like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Google Maps, Uber, Meta, X, ... which were free to begin with anyway.
Any time I begin to feel bad for Apple, I just remember that they charge £200 for an 8GB memory upgrade.
