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Love how every comment here is a "Oh yeah, well, Elon did this...."

How original and unpredictable.
 
The popcorn tastes extra salty today. Yum Yum. I think Elon forgets that even though Apple is probably getting a lot of money from the government to put in all that spy equipment in their devices, its still a drop in the bucket compared to what elons front companies get for similar military industrial complex projects. So Apple has to make that up somehow, by finding ways to get more money from its customers. Why they are complaining in public is an odd choice.
 
Why is this news? The problem here isn't Musk-- yeah, he's impulsive and attention seeking and feels he's qualified to give an opinion on anything and present it as fact, but there's millions of people that do that and they're all ignored by the media. Why is this front page news?

If it's not anything he's qualified to talk about or actually in control of, then why feed his ego like this?
 
So Musk doesn’t have any issue with Google taking the same 30% cut?
And nothing about Facebook /Meta 47% fees for apps in the Metaverse ?!

Musk also conveniently forgets the fee is 15% for developers under a million in sales, which is the overwhelming majority of apps…

Also Musk fails to mention Epic charging 15% processing fee for in apps payments with NO added benefits, (on top of their subscription fees, and overpriced DLC which is often required for the full game experience and the $65+ you pay for their games ! ) and let’s not bring EA or Blizard in to this discussion!

Seriously, if Musk wants to whine about overcharging, he should look at his own companies first, not single out one of his competitors.
 
He is an assclown. While one might think 30% is high when one considers the infrastructure, staffing, and maintenance of the app store, it isn't really. People want to scream at Apple when a bad app gets deployed without thinking about what it takes to identify a bad app. There isn't any magic here. If you want a high-quality store, it takes resources. Resources cost money. Ergo, 30%. Oh yeah, btw, Apple is a business. Businesses work on a for-profit model.
I’m a free market capitalist so I’m fine with Apple and Google exploiting their market power and getting paid whatever the market can bear, but 30% cut is a ripoff. Anyone who is willing to do work under those conditions is not much of a business person. But then again if Apple and Google can get suckers to accept such a deal more power to them.
 
This past quarter Apple reported $97B in revenues and $25B in profit and yet some here act as though if Apple’s rent seeking 30% fee is cut the company will go out of business or something. This fee long since stopped being about what it costs to maintain the App Store. It’s all pure profit now. If you want to defend it, fine. But don’t make it sound like Apple will be on the rocks if that 30% is reduced or goes away.

Likewise, let's not pretend that Apple charging retail overheads has developers or customers living in penury...
 
He gets involved because he thinks he’s brilliant, thinks he’s entitled to stick his nose and fingers in everything, and has the money to “prove” it to himself (and his followers). It’s a common problem with the filthy rich; see Bill Gates…
Elon Musk is the smartest guy in the padded room called his brain.
 
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Someone higher up needs to tell Elon to mind his business, no one tells him how to run a company, and that Tesla cars are a overpriced! Time to adapt, we are no longer in research mode for hybrid and electric cars as the market will be all electric by 2030s
 
How is the Hyperloop coming Elon?

I'm both a Tesla owner and kind of a Musk fan, but it's also obvious this is just another feud going on between him and Apple - so I'm not going to just blindly accept everything he says as fact.

IMO, Apple is perfectly justified charging whatever percentage they like for apps on their store. Fact is, nobody has to publish anything there if they don't think it's worthwhile for them. If 30% was too big a cut, you'd see all the major developers taking a pass on iOS and only developing things for Android. That, in turn, would hurt iOS device sales. It looks to me like with millions of available apps, the 30% cut hasn't been much of a deterrent.

As for the Hyperloop, though? I'm constantly hearing people attack Musk over that and I think that's not quite fair. He never said he wanted to sell a Hyperloop. He simply read about the theory, thought it was intriguing, and suggested that others should consider doing R&D to make it a reality. His incentive is simply that he owns "The Boring Company" who could dig holes in the ground for one.
 
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If you literally do anything to a Tesla in terms of modification you are banned from the charging network. YouTubers who show or modify Teslas are leaned on extremely hard. That is a walled garden.
"Anything?" So the added trays I've installed in the console of my M3 means I'm banned from the charging network? The third party mud-flaps have excluded me from Superchargers? My custom installation of a Sirius radio for my wife have led to a black-ball?

Of course, my mods are relatively innocuous (the most work was installing the Sirius radio), but there are countless after-market mods (including one which adds Carplay capabilities) and I am highly skeptical that any of those mods would lead to a "ban" from the Supercharger network.

I'm not a Tesla fanboy (and I own a Tesla M3), but let's at least be accurate when making claims about Tesla mods, perhaps add a link back to a source for such a broad claim?

I think a legitimate comeback to Elon's (IMO, unfair) criticism of Apple's App Store (and, for that matter, of the "walled garden" experience) would be to make the very reasonable point that Apple at least has actually provided an Appstore experience, whilst we Tesla owners are still waiting for a similar feature in our Teslas. Criticizing a "walled garden", similarly, whilst not providing options for maps, or audiobook playback or music services, etc etc (I could go on) is another example where the pot is needlessly taking issue with the kettle.
 
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I’m a free market capitalist so I’m fine with Apple and Google exploiting their market power and getting paid whatever the market can bear, but 30% cut is a ripoff. Anyone who is willing to do work under those conditions is not much of a business person. But then again if Apple and Google can get suckers to accept such a deal more power to them.
Sorry but as a ‘free market capitalist’, you clearly do not understand how the system works.

It is accepted practice to double the cost of any particular widget in each step in the chain.
In simplified terms:
A factory build a widget, they determine a price based upon double the costs of the factory space and machinery, product development, labor, parts and packaging needed to make said widget.
A wholesale distributor buys the widget from a factory, the distributor doubles the price of said widget to cover costs such as shipping and warehousing, the distributor then sells to a retailer,
The retailer the doubles the price of that item to cover cost such as retail space, labor and marketing and they then sell the widget to the consumer.

There can be some variations in these percentages from 30-60% depending on the specific industry but this is the general formula used.

Rinse and repeat for any widget you buy.
 
I don't know about the 10x part, but 30% is too much. Apple should make some money for creating, maintaining, improving, moderating, and hosting the platform. But Apple also benefits from 3rd party apps on their ecosystem, so some compromise should be made.

At the same time, I am not sure consumers will stand to benefit from lower commission. I think most developers will simply pocket the differences as a bonus.

Before I'd be concerned about Apple's cut on developer profits on apps, I'd ask why Apple retail prices are so inflated on products that have a recent history of being substandard and not up to Apple's reputation for quality.

Why do so many Apple owners keep apologizing for trash like the video ribbon cables in recent Intel-based Macbook Pros breaking and causing lines in the video, just from regular use, opening and closing the lid? Why did it take YEARS for Apple to give up on a terrible keyboard design that kept resulting in stuck keys or keys double-typing letters? Why is the overheating on the $3400+ Core i9 2019 Intel Macbook Pro 16" something owners were just supposed to accept and live with? What about all the issues with external monitors attached via USB-C ports on new M1 based Macs that have problems with sleep/wake from sleep? (I still have to always remember to turn off my curved 34" Samsung display or else my Macbook Pro 16" M1X will cause it to keep powering on/off/on/off every few seconds, all night long.)

People on here talking about the poor paint and fit of trim panels on Teslas aren't wrong either. But the point is, we have the pot calling the kettle black here. Both companies can and should do better!
 
He's not wrong
Maybe depending on what you think about free markets, but he certainly is a hypocrite. Tesla doesn’t have Android Auto or Apple Car Play. He also charges people thousands of dollars for software that doesn’t ship and what has shipped is buggy. He also isn’t complaining about the government handouts that saved Tesla. The guy’s opinions are clearly intended to serve his own interests.
 
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