South Korea Passes Bill Banning Apple From Requiring Developers to Use App Store In-App Purchase System

[Abazigal]

I like that.

And as Gruber said in his recent podcast... it's better for Apple to make that change themselves... rather than having governments forcing them to do it.

Hell... even Phil Schiller was questioning the 30% a decade ago. Basically he asked "Why are we still doing this?"

It’s pretty ironic though.

Apple’s decision to lower the cut to 15% for smaller developers was met with much ridicule and skepticism last year - because it was widely seen as Apple doing damage control to avoid antitrust lawsuits. Not to mention it doesn’t seem to have helped any; none of the measures Apple is being forced to adopt, like allowing third party payment options, have anything to do with this.

Conversely, Apple does the bare minimal needed to close one of their numerous lawsuits (allow companies like netflix to link users to a single website), and tech blogs fall over themselves to praise Apple for this move.

We still don’t know how Apple will respond to this as well. There is nothing stopping Apple from requiring larger developers to sign revised contracts requiring them to pay 15-30% of their revenue generated from third party payment sources to Apple, effectively nullifying the outcome of this lawsuit.

Given that many of these lawsuits are being brought forward by companies like Epic and Spotify who want to tear down the existing App Store model, I don’t think there is anything Apple can do that would get them off its back.

Their best option is to probably just drag these lawsuits through the courts for as long as they can, and when required to make changes, do just the bare minimum necessary to meet the letter of the law. No point trying to pre-empt the courts in this regard.

 

[CarlJ]

We still don’t know how Apple will respond to this as well. There is nothing stopping Apple from requiring larger developers to sign revised contracts requiring them to pay 15-30% of their revenue generated from third party payment sources to Apple, effectively nullifying the outcome of this lawsuit.

I seem to recall reading that this is what they have in mind, some reference from one of their bits of testimony alluded to this, having to collect their cut through a more complicated procedure than it is when they handle all the accounting themselves, the implication being that they don’t expect their commission to change.

Personally I’d like to see them drop it to the 10-15% range, but I still believe that is something that’s up to Apple and not to the government. Despite all the yelling to the contrary, here and elsewhere, Apple doesn’t have a monopoly (any more than McDonalds has a monopoly on what is sole in their restaurants).

If the government wants to control prices on something, I’d rather have them mandating a maximim allowable ratio between the total-salary-and-compensation for a company’s lowest and highest paid employees (including the CEO and board of directors).

 

[Abazigal]

I seem to recall reading that this is what they have in mind, some reference from one of their bits of testimony alluded to this, having to collect their cut through a more complicated procedure than it is when they handle all the accounting themselves, the implication being that they don’t expect their commission to change.

Personally I’d like to see them drop it to the 10-15% range, but I still believe that is something that’s up to Apple and not to the government. Despite all the yelling to the contrary, here and elsewhere, Apple doesn’t have a monopoly (any more than McDonalds has a monopoly on what is sole in their restaurants).

If the government wants to control prices on something, I’d rather have them mandating a maximim allowable ratio between the total-salary-and-compensation for a company’s lowest and highest paid employees (including the CEO and board of directors).

It won’t be easy for the courts to justify 15% or 10% or any other number themselves, not least because 30% is the standard everywhere. Google charges it, Nintendo charges it, so do Sony and Xbox. We can argue how game consoles are more “justified” in that their hardware tend to be loss leaders, but from the developer’s perspective, 30% is still 30%.

I will say that the bigger issue is that the App Store has created the current problem where software is more abundant than ever and nobody is willing to pay for apps anymore. It’s not an issue that can readily be solved, not be lowering the cut, not by introducing alternate App Stores or allowing alternative payments.

All this is nothing more than a crusade by a few larger developers who want to tear down the current App Store model so they can gain more power on the apple platform. It’s was never about benefiting end users or empowering other developers.

 

[ikjadoon]

Don’t have to find another app just have to side load the AppleHaxStore version. I will not give my banking info to any more companies than I already do business with. Congrats you get nothing.

I’ll fully support legislation like this when the rest of the system is fixed with it. Oh you compromised my billing information? No you don’t give me a couple years of credit monitoring and call it a day you pay me for any loss indefinitely due to your actions. I need to keep my credit frozen? You pay anytime I need to freeze/unfreeze indefinitely. Multiple companies compromised me? You divide the cost based on how recent the compromise is.

Still want to trust that cheaper card processor? Cool. You’re a business you take on the risk not I.

How many companies would want to play this game if they had to deal with the consequences and not have just keep a identity protection budget?

You all go on and on about this being the better option for consumers. How about real legislation that removes arbitration and other clauses that protect these companies when they ultimately screw you over.

If the big guys like TMobile can screw you over you really think the little guys are going to do a better job?

LOL, the difference between TMobile and Stripe is enormous.

Further, you've failed to realize some progress has to start somewhere. Asking for the moon on the first regulation seems rather pointless. Nobody cares that much, especially not voters and especially not consumers.

As an analogy, has Apple compensated all users for all the tracking Apple has done? CSAM, Do we get checks in the mail? Is it one check per iPhone / iDevice or is it once per account? Or, is that just stupid to ask for and maybe getting policy reversals is the first step?