That's the real story here.
All of the excuses and side stories are just a distraction from Apple not wanting to relieve even a hint of control over their ridiculous cut of the pie....both currently and in the future.
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Epic Wins Appeal to Continue Antitrust Case Against Apple in Australia
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That's the real story here.
All of the excuses and side stories are just a distraction from Apple not wanting to relieve even a hint of control over their ridiculous cut of the pie....both currently and in the future.
Show me where I called you stupid, or retract your accusation. Read the whole sentence. I called a particular behavior stupid. Perhaps "extraordinarily foolish" would have been more accurate, but stupid fits. I'll think the same thing any time someone spends a ton of money on a product and then find it doesn't do a thing they want, when it would be obvious ahead of time with a few minutes of research that it's not the right product for them - especially if they then get angry at the product instead of themselves (hell, I see this in Amazon reviews all the time - "this dog leash won't walk the dog itself! 1 star!").
But if you're looking for reasons to feel aggrieved, knock yourself out, I guess.
Well you basically generally called people arguing for sideloading stupid, so it’s not a stretch to relate that to posters in this thread, is it?
Also I have to reiterate the point that turbine made earlier - a lot of these people wanting sideloading have been customers for many years, and recent issues like xCloud and Fortnite sparked the idea of sideloading. It’s not like we bought it unaware that you couldn’t sideload apps. It’s something I can definitely live with but if some government/agency/whatever is fighting for sideloading, is it really that abhorrent of me to voice my support?
I get it. But if you look at the early forms of many of the markets that exist in the USA and elsewhere, they weren’t always regulated by the government, but after time whether because of market failure or because of the value to the economy, the government stepped in. For example, there used to be a time in the USA when there was no federal reserve, and the security of banks was left to the forces of the free market. But after runs on banks and massive losses, the government stepped in to more closely regulate banking.
I bring all this up to say: when the App Store and the Play Store were new and small, they weren’t really on the radar of the governments for regulation. But as App markets have ballooned in size to be many billions of dollars per year in revenue, many governments across the world will want to ensure that there aren’t barriers to entry, that terms and conditions are not anti-competitive, that certain players don’t have undue influence over the rest of the market and so on. As markets mature and grow in size, they tend to attract government attention.
That is why I believe it is just a matter of time before some government somewhere forces Apple to open up, unless it does so first on terms that it finds favorable.
"Not a stretch" is jumping to a conclusion. And I don't think you are stupid, and I apologize if it came across that way. I still hold that buying a thing, and then being outraged that it doesn't do what one wants - and outraged at the company who made it, not at oneself for failing to research it ahead of time - that is stupid / foolish behavior (yes, I've done plenty of stupid things over the years). And, in particular, to then seek out legal action to force the company to change how that thing works to something different than what was its clear, obvious, behavior when you bought it - that borders on morally wrong. Keep in mind here that we're not talking about defective products that are harming people, we're talking about a product that is still doing all the things that were listed on the tin when it was bought.
For the record, yes, I think there are quite a few cases where it is wrong to support someone who is doing a bad thing simply because you personally like or stand to benefit from that thing.
If the government wrongly steps in and forces a company to change a thing in a way that you like, this time... what will you have to say, then, next time, when the government wrongly steps in and forces a company to change a thing that makes you really upset? I'm all for the courts administering justice. I'm not in favor of companies weaponizing the courts to use as a blunt instrument against each other.
Personally, I would like to see Apple lower their 30% cut of fees on the App Store. And I think they made the wrong decision with xCloud - keeping it off the App Store doesn't seem beneficial to their customers. They should work something out with Microsoft. But this is something I want Apple to do (that is, it's a desire of mine), not something that I want the courts to force Apple to do.
Also, I think they need to work out something with the rule that apps/companies aren't allowed to even hint that users can go elsewhere to buy in-game currency or subscribe to a streaming service or whatever. I understand why Apple was so strict with these rules initially - because if there was an outside way to pay, bypassing the 30%, then tons of apps would have switched to "free app, go buy your gems on our website", and Apple would get no money.
Apple faced a problem, particularly early on, that they're dealing with hundreds of thousands of developers and apps, and if they offered any sort of "free workaround" to their 70/30 rule, then tons of developers would go to that, and the App Store would be a money-losing proposition.
I think a lot of developers feel the exchange should be, "we pay our $100/yr developer membership, we list our app for free on Apple's App Store, and we sell in-game currency / IAPs on our website or in-game with our own payment processing and we get all the money". Well, that doesn't do much for keeping the app store running (it's quite a bit more complicated than just maintenance for a couple of servers). Perhaps the approach would be to offer the developer, per-app, the choice of (a) going with the existing plan, 70/30 cut and all, or (b) you can tie into your own payment processing and say anything you want, but in return you need to pay a substantial up-front monthly fee to have your app in the App Store, to help pay the costs of running the store, maintaining the servers, running the app review process, etc. I don't know. That might work. I suspect some developers would love it, and a lot of others would complain bitterly that they should get it all for free.
I'm all for Apple making some changes (e.g. lowering the 70/30 split, letting in xCloud, letting devs make some sort of reference to outside subscriptions), but I'm not in favor of the government or the courts requiring them to make changes simply because some developers and some consumers would like them to. I can want my neighbor to paint their house purple, but it would be morally wrong for me to go to court and sue them and demand that the court make them paint their house purple, even if I really want it to be purple.
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Maybe Apple should switch to simply charging a developer license fee (could scale to work for small & large volumes) and then try to make money on purchases by competing with their own integrated Apple Pay solution?
You aren't very patriotic. Are you aware that Australia has its own laws? What's legal in US may be illegal in Australia and vice versa.
There are possibilities in that direction. They already have an extremely modest developer license (license? membership? the term escapes me at the moment) fee, but they could offer developers a choice, of go with the existing 70/30 rules, or pay a monthly fee for each app the developer puts in the store, to pay for costs of running the store and all that that entails (with a profit, of course). Your idea about Apple Pay sounds good. I can see it being reasonable for Apple to require developers to offer Apple Pay alongside whatever other payment service the developer chooses, if they offer IAP (eh, it's Apple's ecosystem, they can have some rules). Then users could decide which payment method gives them the best combination of value, safety, and convenience.
Would probably need to find some way to scale the app fee to make it fair (listing Fortnight ought to cost more than listing some $5 dollar app that sells 10 copies a month, because a Fortnight update will be more taxing on Apple's servers, the review process, etc.). Would probably have trouble finding an algorithm for how to scale the pricing that (at least some) developers wouldn't try to game heavily (think of the wack-a-mole problem that tax laws present, with people trying to pay less than their fair share).
Honestly all of it sounds doable.
Hopefully Apple is thinking about it because with their current behavior they’re probably going to be forced to do things they don’t want to do.
They should be ahead of the game and heading off these issues on their own terms… Instead of sliding all of their chips to the center with the risk of a massive loss for them
Epic can't do anything to make me hate them more.. they're already on the "Don't touch with a 10ft pole" list. They're right up there with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Ubisoft, EA and Blizzard on my list.
The app store is beyond rigged. I have no qualm with 30%, but why should Apple pick the winners and losers? Why should Apple be able to game the charts to push apps up or down? Why do they make paid apps (which offer better value than subscriptions) so hard to find? How about some transparency and a fair playing field?
The same cut Nintendo, Sony, MS and many others get.
Anti-Apple fans are the worst
Sure, why not just go ahead and invent a bunch of conspiracy theories and pretend they are real.
Is that you Tim? Which one of those facts would you like evidence of? Or perhaps you don't believe any of them?
Epic was nothing before Apple?!?! 😂😂😂😂😂 Nothing you say anymore can be taken seriously after this comment. Just wow...
Modern math. Take away the 10% of revenue from apple and you apparently are left with 0%.
it doesn't mean that Apple has to allow Epic Games back on Apple. I would think Apple will let them back on iOS when hell freezes over
We already do it on PCs and Macs. You think people won’t know how to do it on a phone? 🤣🤣🤣
Then vote with your feet — leave and don’t do business with them — and they’ll come back in short order once their bottom line is hurting. Not rocket science.
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It is, because it won’t remain an “option”. Apps which are available in the AppStore now won’t be, users will have no choice if they want to keep using them but to side load. Right now there is a choice between two models, open (Android) or closed (iOS). Both have pluses and minuses. But what you consider a plus I might consider a minus. Your priorities are not my priorities. Yet you want to force everyone to have to use devices built to your priorities with NO other option.🤣
When giving users the option to sideload is considered taking away people's choice... Oh, brother.🤦♂️
To compare, some people want to live in the city, some in the country. It doesn’t matter why, there are many reasons. Each offers things the other doesn’t. You want to force everyone to move to the city because it offers more “choice” and are telling people who would rather remain in the country that it won’t matter, they don’t have to use the parts of the city they dont like, but you’ve already changed their experience, you’ve taken away their choice by turning two environments in to one.
Today we have two choices, you want to make it one. That means you, not me, are against choice.
It’s not about being able to do it/knowing how to do it, it’s the side effects that result:
- Security risks
- Less convenience
- Loss of ability to trust the source
- Increased abuses of privacy
You may not realize it, but many of us VALUE the advantages the single AppStore model provides. We don’t care or don’t prioritize the supposed downsides. That’s especially true for people who are less tech savvy (aka not people who frequent this forum). My father hates computers because he worries he will break things, or get a virus, or not be able to install or configure it correctly, etc. He LOVES his iPhone because he doesn’t have to worry about ANY of that. He can trust that Apps from the App Store aren’t going to infect his phone. He can use each App and not worry he’ll do something to “mess up” the device. He can even pay for stuff using Apples in app purchases because he knows he’s not handing over his payment deal ails to someone shady. The iPhone let’s him compute without anxiety. And there are millions of people like him around the world. The aspects of the iOS model you see as negatives are benefits for him and those like him. Force iOS to become like Android and you take that away.
And frankly, with the myriad of ways you install apps on PCs/Macs today, no, a lot of people don’t know how to do it. You like anyone else on this forum are more tech savvy than most people, but you need to remember that your experience is not universal. Your level of knowledge is not average or like most people’s. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done, or that it will be better for everyone, even if it might be for you.
And they are entitled. They built this up from nothing and it (the ecosystem) works well.