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Apple does not get a cut of any of the following:
  • Uber rides
  • Starbucks orders (ditto Dunkin' Donuts, etc.)
  • Amazon orders (aside from Kindle books)
The justification for this is the money a user spends does not deliver anything to be used within the app itself.
So what’s the justification for not getting a cut of Netflix or Spotify? If you don’t want Apple to take a cut you need to get into a business that competes directly with Apple?
 
An alternative analogy: there are, sadly, far too many people who will go to a brick and mortar store, examine all the items in some category (laser printers, or jackets, or something), test them, try some of them on, decide which they like best, and then go home and order the item from Amazon. They’ve used the store as a free showroom. The store still has to pay rent, and keep the lights on, and employ staff, and stock all those items, but they didn’t get the sale. The person walks away thinking themselves to be smart (and the attribute “unethical” rarely crosses their mind). Of course the online price is cheaper, because the online warehouse doesn’t have to pay for a storefront (at high mall rates) and salespeople and such. The people mentioned above use the retail store, in the cruelest sense of the word “use”. (No, I’m of saying every person who walks into a retail store is doing this, only that some are.)

There is a similar situation with the App Store: Apple naturally wants to make some money off the App Store - it costs them money to run, and they are a business. And, except for the few odd huge cases like the Amazon’s and Netflix’s, they can’t do anything that requires substantial manual interaction / negotiation with each developer, because they’re dealing with a million developers. So, they set an across-the-board rate, and require no outside payment systems, to make sure they get paid. Why? Because if they said that outside payment systems were fine, 95% of apps would switch to “free in the store with an IAP through us to ‘buy’ the app”. Each developer would make some more money, and Apple would make almost nothing, but their expenses for running the App Store would stay just as high. Kinda like the retail stores in the previous paragraph. So, that’s why Apple is such a stickler about all payments having to go through them - because if they open up any other method, the natural flow of the millions of developers and apps would be for all of them to switch to that other method that shifts more of the money to the developer.

Apple likes to make money, of course, and their angle on doing that is to make products and services that cater to the customer’s needs - easy to use, simple to understand, well supported (note that super-inexpensive wasn’t on that list). But sometimes Apple’s ironclad App Store policies are actively unhelpful to those customers - things like not just being unable to link to the company’s website to sign up, but not even being able to hint that “you can sign up on the web” - that is absolutely a bad customer experience.

A lot of their other policies can be argued to be expensive for the user but designed to provide a good experience - the signup one entirely fails the “good customer experience” test. But there’s still that problem of, if you simply tear up that rule, then millions of apps switch to “free to download, tap the in-app link to sign up on our website for a monthly subscription”, and the App Store income drops to zero, while everybody still expects the App Store to keep running. I don’t know what the solution is.

If you don’t change the fundamental mechanism, the question comes down to the percentages charged to the developer, same as in retail. Is 30% too high? Maybe. I’ve seen cogent arguments both ways (I’ve also seen a lot of enraged rants that basically any number you might name is too high - I tend to discount those). I think it could be a bit lower (20% maybe? I don’t know), but sales / marketing / economics is not my forte.
I’d rather every app cost something and Apple make money whenever a user purchases the app. to me that would be more analogous to B&M retail.
 
Phil's point of "not fun to watch" is exactly why I buy my eBooks from Amazon, or even Google Play. It's about being able to access the content I bought in whatever device I have, including the iPhone if I want to.
 
This has been one of the biggest annoyances for me on iOS. I hate that I can’t just buy a Kindle book on my phone. It’s a simple thing that Apple intentionally blocks. Apple’s greed ruins the user experience.

Same problem with the Vudu app. You can’t buy movies in the app. It’s super annoying.
And it doesn’t come down to anything other than Apple preventing it because they don’t get a cut. It’s not about security because you can pretty much buy any physical good/service in-app without using Apple’s IAP.
 
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does anyone have any market-share information regarding Kindle, iBooks, et all? number of users per platform, number of titles per user, etc?

I've got about 1,500 books on my Kindle; I've got about 20 books on iBooks. I'm wondering if Jobs et al were deluding themselves as to how great iBooks was going to be.

THIS.

When Apple changed their policies re e-book applications, it didn't just impact the Kindle app. It impacted multiple e-book apps which included a "buy" feature. I had several of those apps at the time and currently I use none, because Apple drove me away from e-pub and to the Amazon book format precisely because they chased out all other book purchase options, save their own. It was a catastrophically stupid business decision, in my opinion. It pissed off developers and consumers alike and very little benefit was derived for Apple.

Had Apple encouraged the e-pub format more effectively (and taken the same approach with books which they took with music, that is to say to have rejected copy protection), I would have been far more inclined to stick with a format where I could buy books on the iPad, with a choice of reading (and shopping - and curation) apps and with a wide option of e-readers. They literally deep-sixed a potential competitive advantage with their myopic business perspective, in this regard.

I'm generally a supporter and a defender of Apple - and most definitely an unapologetic user of Apple hardware and devices. But their approach to the book-selling business domain is a huge exception in my regard. I'm locked into Amazon (which is also somewhat of a closed eco-system, sadly) in large part because Apple chased me - and many of my preferred developers and apps - out of their eco-system.

This is something that Steve got wrong, sorry to say.
 
I think this just proves what we all know but nobody wants to admit -- that Steve Jobs was a dick.
You may be correct but that dick had a million times more charisma, passion, oratory skills and ability to project caring in what he was doing than Cook.
 
It's like they are focused on making it hard for people to leave the ecosystem on purpose.

Just make awesome products, and people will flock to your product.

Of course they are, and you are absolutely correct about how they should do it, instead of trying to literally lock you into their ecosystem. Although this might work on some scale, in my case it is the exact reason I don't buy applications and games from Mac from app store or content (books, music...) via In-App purchase/iTunes/iBooks store. I also don't use services if they're not available cross platform or are in some way compromised on the competing platform, especially critical stuff like e-mail, password managers etc.

Well, there is one exception to my rule, which is Logic Pro. Because it's the reason I switched to Apple in the first place, is a really great app and a bargain compared to the competing products, not to mention macOS superiority when it comes to audio work. But that's where I draw the line and if they screw something up on this front, it's not that hard to switch to something else (I can still use some old Mac for old projects).
 
Reminds me of the Visa vs America Express. American Express charged too much and thus many would not accept American Express cards. Let the market decide. Apple has their business decisions as does Amazon. I would prefer Apple get their pricing in better alignment with the market, their decision. So far I have been able to deal with the current situation.
 
come on... people who were at least once in a life in a decision making position would understand this type of approach and this type of conversation... you play with your house... you are in my store (physical or virtual), you pay me my fee as others do... as amazon sells products not produced by them, they put a margin (fee) to the final customer... end of story... P.S. the story is a bit more complicated from the business point of view, as there are many other things to be explained... store in store concept, margins of Amazon wiped because of the 30% fee, competition strategies related to using competitors' platform (their work, their property) for free in order to generate profit only for your interest... and so on, so on...
 
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Gotta love the “sent from my...” default signature ringers from these corporate honchos.
 
Could you imagine what these internal emails are saying about the iPhone 12?

"Lets remove the charge adapter, make the battery smaller, make them wait another year for 120ghz screen and to entice them to purchase it let's make the sides of the phone straight so it's more square-ish like our previous phones prior to the 6 (but it really still looks like the past phone so we can still claim it as a redesign) and then present it as (environmentally) smarter since the retail box will be much smaller. That will be our new feature, smaller boxes with a lidar camera that they won't really care about once they leave IKEA."
 
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Could you imagine what these internal emails are saying about the iPhone 12?

"Lets remove the charge adapter, make the battery smaller, make them wait another year for 120ghz screen and to entice them to purchase it let's make the sides of the phone straight so it's more square-ish like our previous phones prior to the 6 (but it really still looks like the past phone so we can still claim it as a redesign) and then present it as (environmentally) smarter since the retail box will be much smaller. That will be our new feature, smaller boxes with a lidar camera that they won't really care about once they leave IKEA."
I think there is more to this:
- Lets remove the charge adapter (as our studies show most customers have one. We'll provide one to first time buyers)
- make the battery smaller (because the internals are more efficient and we can use less lithium having a positive impact on the environment)
- make them wait another year for 120ghz screen (because 120mhz we have special plans for and it's not yet ready)
- smaller boxes with a lidar camera (we'll save money and it's more environmentally friendly with less packaging. The LIDAR camera will have the same bang for the buck as Apple Pay ultimately)
 
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Ahahahahahahahah! It's funny to read such amount of smart guys expressing their opinions about business… What is your business? Is it comparable to any of these companies stated in the article?
 
I am happy to let developers fight their own corner, as an end-user I don't care about the issue in honesty. Developers will either develop or they won't for the fees charged, for any that choose not to pay Apple there will be many ready to replace them that will.

If Apple turned around tomorrow and said they were reducing the fee to 5%, developers are not going to pass any of those savings on to you or I and that will be the debate if it was to happen, "why are developers not passing on some of the savings to the user?"

Absolutely guarantee that the conversation on MR will be all about greedy developers whilst today it's aww, poor things paying 15-30%.
 
And there it is. They are doing it because they want money. Not because of security, not because of the user experience, not because it's better for the consumer, not because "30% is fair for all that Apple provides", it's because of good old "I want MORE MONEY!". You already knew that, though.

It's cool though. Capitalism above all else, right? Let's all defend that over being a quality human being all the way to the grave.
And that’s exactly why people like you never run big companies. The bottom line is what matters, not feelings. You attacked their character and now I’m going to attack yours. Fair is fair.
 
What really gets me is how people latched on to the humanitarian aspect of Apple and expected more and more of that from a for-profit company. Apple primarily exists to make money. If they can do some good for the world while meeting business goals, they strive to, and I’m all for it. But please, stop trying to demand that Apple operates like a non-profit and social organization because that will never be the case.
 
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