Small developers would otherwise face struggling to sell software into physical stores at the time.
Article Link: Phil Schiller: App Store Levels Playing Field and Supports Developers
Too bad the internet didn’t exist in 2008
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Phil Schiller: App Store Levels Playing Field and Supports Developers
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Too bad the internet didn’t exist in 2008
There isn’t a monopoly to start with, though, going by the definition of “monopoly”.
No, it’s more like being told that if you buy a car you can ONLY drive it to certain businesses, buying the car anyway, then being surprised that you can ONLY GO TO CERTAIN BUSINESSES!
Schiller, are you insane? Apple did not invent a unique and indiscriminate app store system.
And furthermore, Apple did NOT even create the system you described. The App Store certainly has both special terms and requires special code. For example, adult content is banned (these are special terms, see "App Store Review Guidelines" section 1.1.4). For another example, all code must be packaged and submitted from the Xcode developer environment (this is special code, see "App Store Review Guidelines" section 2.4.5.ii).
I don't get why all the hate on the fact that Apple takes a 30% commission on sales. Leaving 70% of the profits for developers seems like a pretty good deal to me. Apple is in business to make money, not give stuff away for free.
no. that’s a stupid analogy. rather, it’s like buying a TV and being able to watch only certain shows. viewers and tv studios would simply avoid the product altogether if they hated it
nintendo has done this for decades. sony and microsoft’s xbox too.
IMO, what Schiller says isn't incorrect. Especially trusting Apple to take my cc info. After a recent bad experience with giving an online e-tailer, my cc info... trusting Apple isn't a bad thing. As for the rest of it, arguments run all ways, but in the end, I think the App store is better for Apples policies. Even though as they grew they had to deal with different situations, that have people on MR touting bias.
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sony or microsoft doesn’t allow that with their game consoles.
brick and mortar stores selling physical copies doesn’t really count as it’s simply an extra middle man that takes more of the cut but really the same review process and policies apply to those games
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and if you want to reach playstation customers, you have to go through sony (even if you plan to sell only at best buy).
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if you customers are using nintendo switch, then you are stuck with nintendo’s policies and paying nintendo’s prices.
Poor analogy because despite the fact that you own the hardware, you do not own the software. If you do not like the terms and conditions associated with iOS, you can try to load a different OS.
So it is like buying a car and being told that the city you live in has rules regarding licensing, registration and how that car is driven. If you do not want to abide by those rules, you can drive it however you want on your own private property; just not on city roads.
All these anti Apple posters are like the animals that the Little Red Hen asked for help to make some bread (remember the story). None of them would help so the Little Red Hen did all the work herself. But when the bread was ready to consume, all the animals that lazed about were more than eager to partake in the profits.
If you don't like the deal with one store, go somewhere else. And I don't want to have to worry about Apple programs coming from a cesspool of dubious providers.
If you don't like the deal with one store, go somewhere else. And I don't want to have to worry about Apple programs coming from a cesspool of dubious providers.
Apple and Google are a duopoly - only 2 players controlling the whole market. If you want to distribute a mobile app that will have a chance of getting popular - you have to put your app in at least one of their stores. If you're really serious - you'll put in both stores. That's why the "if you don't like it don't buy it" excuse doesn't apply here. Not "buying it" means your business will fail.
Also, side-loading apps on Android is a joke. Seriously - try it. They make sure most users will give up before they have a chance to download an app from a third party source. Don't believe me? Ask Fortnite's developer: https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/...gle-play-store-available-third-party-software
Also, side-loading apps on Android is a joke. Seriously - try it. They make sure most users will give up before they have a chance to download an app from a third party source. Don't believe me? Ask Fortnite's developer: https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/...gle-play-store-available-third-party-software
There's one thing people are missing with this argument, and that is that iOS apps are single-source. If you publish a book and want to sell it at B&N, and they won't accept it or you don't like their terms, you can turn around and pitch it to any number of other book sellers, but regardless of where you sell the book, the buyer gets the same product. The burden on the customer is quite small - the worst case is that a customer needs to travel to a store they do not frequent to get your book since their preferred retailer wouldn't carry it. Yes, this affects sales, but again, it's the customer burden that's at issue here. With a book, you can also just self-distribute it as well and not depend on anyone except a web hosting provider, and you can even find any number of outfits that will print hard copies for you to sell on your own. There is no way to "self-publish" an iOS app, no matter how willing you might be to front costs, time and skills to do the work to publish it.
If Apple won't allow an app on the app store (or unfairly applies their policies - Schiller directly admitted they make "exceptions"), you are now shut out from Apple customers. The burden on the customer to go to another source for your app is much higher. A customer would need to purchase an Android phone, learn to use it, deal with the fact that some apps are Apple-only (or deal with paying for two lines + two phones and juggling them around), deal with the fact that Apple makes it damn near impossible to export your data, and all of the other headaches that come with switching to Android for a less technically savvy user. Compare that to simply needing to go to a different physical shop or a different website to buy a book, and you'll see it's not a fair comparison. Even the "mall" argument falls apart, because you could just buy your own physical storefront and open the store yourself if the mall won't let you open your store there or charges unfair rates. You cannot open your own iOS app store regardless of how many resources you're willing to spend.
And the other thing we should remember is there are bigger issues at play here. Restricting iOS to the App Store is only one problem. There's the problem of forcing developers to use Apple payment systems - again, except when Apple feels it's OK to make an exception. No other payment processor charges 30% or even 15% strictly for processing payments. There's also all of the crazy advertising and implementation requirements (you must offer Sign In with Apple for example, even if you also target non-Apple customers). And the thing that both upsets and amuses me the most about this article is Schiller directly admitting they make "exceptions". I wonder how that'll play out for them with these investigations into anticompetitive practices - it's not only Apple being anticompetitive themselves, but it also is Apple helping other companies by propping them up unfairly (i.e. making exceptions to rules).
Edit: It's does exist, but is locked down and is not for a company such as Amazon to use as a distribution method.
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In that case, you should be able to just reflash the iPhone with an OS of your choice. But even Android devices don't let you do that for the most part. Show me a mainstream flagship phone that is as open as even the most basic of modern PCs when it comes to choice of software and operating systems and this argument might have some merit.
Additionally, since Swift is open source AFAIK, it should be allowed for an iOS app to be easily ported to some other platform. Unless we want to start arguing that Oracle is righteous in their Java lawsuits, reimplementing the iOS APIs based solely on descriptions (no code copying, clean room) would let iOS app developers target another platform directly with minimal to no recoding. Nobody has really bothered with this since there's no way to even put another OS on an iOS device.
The mental gymnastics they do are astounding sometimes.
It’s like buying a track day special and complaining that you can’t use it on the road. Or that you can’t use your road car in a homologated series. The manufacturer isn’t obligated to fill all voids.
I like this more than anything else, I refuse to buy apps from the MAS because of their restrictions. Also 70/30 split is trash, it's all about Apple touting how much they make a quarter. The same way they refuse to raise iCloud storage so they can have 20 million people pay $1 each month for what Google offers for free.
I frequently see this kind of argument presented and it always baffles me how anyone still thinks it's in any way valid. I'll even use your own example to show how dumb it is.
"If you don't like the price of a hotel, you choose another hotel".
Ok, what if there are only two hotels in existence? What if both charge the same price and both discriminate identically about who is allowed in their hotel? What if the cost of building a hotel to compete against this duopoly is so enormous that even the biggest possible potential competitor in the industry with tens of billions of dollars at its disposal gives up trying to because it's impossible to disrupt (Microsoft)?
"JusT cHooSe AnotHer hOTeL".
Brilliant. Same as "just build your own app store." "Just build your own internet infrastructure".
There's a point beyond which this is not a valid argument. Apple and Google's duopoly control of 99.9% of the mobile ecosystem IS this point.
I don't care how much money they invested in it, how much it costs them to maintain it, etc. Irrelevant. At a certain point, you're too powerful to be allowed continue the way you are. Apple make more than enough money to drop their commissions by at least half and still be enormously profitable. And if they want to act as gatekeepers and decide who gets to have an app in their store, they need to be forced to allow anyone to publish as long as the app isn't breaking the laws of the land (not the subjective laws of their own app store) or, enable people to install an app on their iPhone from outside the app store and still access all native OS features like push notifications, sensors, etc.
Hotels are not vital to the economy, or indeed society at large. Smartphones are, and at this point, the duopoly operating systems and their respective app stores are so vital to the functioning of a giant slice of the economy, that for them to close down would be absolutely devastating. Too big to fail doesn't even come close. We're way beyond that point. Comparing the App store and Play store to a hotel is so ludicrous that I can't believe anyone actually thinks they could fool people into thinking they are remotely equivalent.
When a company gets too powerful it should be broken up or regulated. Companies are supposed to serve people. The moment they become too big to fail, or too powerful to compete against, the government should intervene. At this point, iOS and Android are so important to modern life that I think the government should actually take an ownership stake in them. If that's too "un-American" for some hardcore capitalists then at least enact some other mechanism that puts some control or major oversight on them. Anti-trust legislation that forces them to open up would be a start, but it should really go much further. We don't have to go full China and do what they do with their tech behemoths, but we have to do something.
There's a world of difference between some Mom 'n' Pop business and these multinational tech giants. To think of them as merely "businesses" you can choose to deal with or not is beyond naive.
This is the usual corporatese excuse for high prices and markups: "the money all goes to provide a better customer experience..." blah blah blah. Short of detailed accounting, I'd like to see some indication that 30%, not 10% or 60%, is the magic number for maintaining the App Store services, rather than just generating profits. How much does it cost to evaluate an app? (mostly automatic, occasionally an hour of human labor, maybe?) How much does it cost to keep an app on the servers and have someone download it? (fractions of pennies). What financial justification do they have for a high flat tax (20x what a credit card company charges) on any transaction mediated by an app, which their servers have nothing to do with?
how about actually point to a specific example of what apple is doing in terms of having full access to hardware vs third party devs? there probably is one, but the fact that you aren't stating one makes your point irrelevant as i have no clue what tf you're talking about.
regardless, sony does limit you as they reserve cores for their operating system. they *unlocked* one of their cores on their PS4 through an update. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ps4-gets-cpu-boost-core-unlocked
so no, technically devs *don't* have access to all of the hardware functionality.
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Let people sideload apps like Android. Problem solved. If someone installs an app that isn't done through Apple, then they assume the risk for payment/data breaches.
Because at the level of industrial and technological magnitude companies like Apple operate things are different than hotel rooms and individual jobs. There was a bit of news a while back about a penalty of around $1 billion that Apple had to pay because it did not sell as many phones as it thought it would an it could not collect the volume of displays agreed in the contract with the supplier. Instead of just taking the displays and storing them someplace until needed, Apple decided to pay that much money. Would a mom and pop store do that with a certain product that does not sell as expected?
Samsung is one of the main (if not the main) rivals of Apple and yet Samsung sells parts to Apple. Does that make sense at the level that the average people work an live? If you would fix cars for a living would you borrow tools to your bitter rival?
In theory all developers could stop and Apple would suddenly be in a lot of trouble. Real life however has bills and monthly payments that need to be taken care of and people can't just quit. Apple has a lot of people by the balls. Including customers because migrating to Android (or the other way around) is not that easy if you depend on certain apps or features.
Saying that if you don't like it you should do your own thing is like saying that if you don't like working for/with Amazon you should open you own store.