Spotify, Epic Games, and Others Argue Apple's App Store Changes Do Not Comply With DMA

[treacher]

Because it was developed and rolled out before it was feasible with application stores and no-one knew how lucrative it could be.

macOS has been getting more and more locked down and is getting more and more similar to iOS in several ways.

I agree! I can't help but be reminded of printers; HP is now realizing just how lucrative turning printing into a subscription plan is. I think most people are happy with this and I totally support their right to make as much money as possible; it's such a win and we all benefit from this locked-down approach. Smart!

 

[macwilko1]

"Core Technology" There it is. Put up or shut up. Either STOP USING Apple's developers' work, or PAY FOR IT. 🤷‍♂️

iOS dev here who literally could never make a penny without standing on the shoulders of thousands of Apple iOS devs, who’ve put in uncountable years of effort into areas I basically have zero experience or expertise in. 👋

Most people claiming Apple's cut is unearned don’t know what “import Foundation” does at the top of literally every iOS code file in literally every AppStore app. (Hint: It's not necessary to get an app into the App Store!)

Ditto for:

import UIKit
import SwiftUI
import CryptoKit
Button()
let task = URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: session)
etc, etc, etc…

Literally 💯 of iOS apps use code written by Apple to do a staggering amount of their work.

ZERO apps roll their own custom code instead of using the mountain of frameworks and APIs that Apple has built and perfected (complete with expected features like free dark mode, rotation, language, compat across device, accessibility size, backgrounding, persistence, etc, etc, etc features).

ZERO apps do this because it would cost 10-20x as much to develop, and nobody would pay for the lesser experience.

Even the simplest app would take literal years more development, and STILL not achieve anything close to feature parity by dropping in Apple’s code with zero effort.

Oh, and when iOS updates with new features, or a new style? INSTANTLY that app needs massive work to retain feature parity with other apps that did zero work to match style or make use of many new features. (Sometimes a TEENY bit of work to make a huge new feature work if you want.)

Show me an app developer who doesn’t lean HEAVILY on Apple’s developers’ work, and I’ll show you somebody who gets to talk about the “outrageous” price Apple charges for their work. 🙄

Developer here, this person does not speak for the vast majority of sane developers.

I have plenty of experience of Apples ecosystem (I’ve been coding AppKit macOS apps pre ARC objective-C).

Apple’s App Store tax to developers is only due to their strong position on the smartphone market, not because of the strength of UIKit and its associated frameworks.

In the past, Apple basically had to beg developers to be on its platform.

These days I code mostly cross platform, I’ve published apps on Android, Windows and Apple stores.

Apple is by far the worst in terms of its practices against developers.

And for the record, SwiftUI is absolutely hot garbage.

 

[6787872]

Completely separate issue from the payment cut.

In other words, you got completely proven wrong and now have moved the goalpost LOL

 

[wbeasley]

The margin on games/music services/video services is often 30% or less. They spent a fortune on lawyers because they break even or lose money but can't not offer their products on such a large platform.

You clearly don't understand the economics. Stores that sell physical media (games, gaming cards, subscription cards) net 10% or less in margin and have to physically stock shelves for it. The App store (Google Play included... though Google and MS greatly reduced commissions on these categories to 10%) is a mafia level exploitation. Google, even before reducing fees, allowed sideloaded apps and alternate apps stores and Android is open unlike IOS.

Show me the links to the figures you quote.
There is no way any retail outlet makes the amounts you claim.
They couldnt keep their doors open on 10%.

Reddit post:
"Page 14: Digital gross margin is about 70% (only owing fees to XBL, PSN, etc), while physical is 55% (owing fees to GameSpot, Best Buy, etc, plus additional royalties to Sony, MS, Nintendo for each copy sold)"

We imported and distributed products from US for years. Bought company off people who had done it for decades.
Y tweak prices over time but for everyone to stay happy, you need good margins. High volume can sometimes allow you to cut margins but you end up working harder for the same money.

A stereo supply shop years ago had a competitor move in and undercut them on price.
But while they sold items, they didnt last a year.
After sales support and customer relations are worth something.

Ironically, you provided the solution ... Android is open. Go there...

I have Android phones as well. Only ever install free apps. iPhone I have bought apps and media and subscriptions. Without drama. Devs love that Apple users actually trust and spend money in the App Store.

 

[headlessmike]

This isn’t any different to game consoles work though. To publish a console game you need to buy a license from Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft regardless of where the game is sold.

 

[Even Longer]

I really wish Apple shrinks and starts thinking different again by reassessing its original values of putting user first ahead of profit or technology... which by itself is not an oxymoron - as time has shown.

 

[wbeasley]

It might. Apps not available in the App Store will affect people only using the App Store if they want the app.

Even if you aren't going to use alt appstores or payments, iOS has now been modified to allow other to do this.

We are all about to upgrade a version of iOS that is weaker and more open and that means hackers and scammers are going to have a try to do things they havent before.

Just turned off System Settings to Auto Install upgrades.

Wait for the dust to settle on this one before I decide...

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Huaha, Apple changed their mind about web apps xD.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-reverses-decision-disable-some-apps-iphones-eu-2024-03-01/

 

[.wojtek]

Good call. Apple is getting more and more annoying...

If Apple executives knew how app distribution on Macs worked, they’d be furious.

They *DO* know and with each release make it harder and more annoying to run apps outside the appstore...

If the finally push comes then fortunately there are alternatives (Linux is getting quite awesome and hardware, especially arm is catching up)

 

[JordanNZ]

Good call. Apple is getting more and more annoying...



They *DO* know and with each release make it harder and more annoying to run apps outside the appstore...

If the finally push comes then fortunately there are alternatives (Linux is getting quite awesome and hardware, especially arm is catching up)

What do you mean “harder with each new release”? There haven’t been any changes there over the last few releases… What’s new that makes it ‘harder’?

 

[wbeasley]

Not surprising Apple would do this in a way that would make 3rd party marketplaces a bad deal. They don’t want 3rd party market places to exist. The only question is whether the EU believes these changes comply with the DMA or not.

There's no way Apple are rolling these changes outwithout knowing it meets DMA requirements.
It would be too hard to release it and then undo it later - you cant force people to install another iOS upgrade.
Just takes one person to hold onto it ...
Apple's lawyers will have checked every word and that the changes meet those words.

EU have had a while now to read what Apple is proposing and they havent come out and said no to it.

Spotify and Epic are knwon whingers leveraging their market share and profile to pretend to be interested in consumers. They arent.

 

[.wojtek]

What do you mean “harder with each new release”? There haven’t been any changes there over the last few releases… What’s new that makes it ‘harder’?

maybe I exaggerated with "every release" but indeed every one and then they add some other obstacle. First it was the vault (one setting change, puff, never to worry about), then there was a mix of notarization / quarantine so I had to go to preferences and allow app launch each install (turned out one can play with alt-shortcut and it should work). Then there are other apps that mac says "this package is damaged" and one to run shell command to take it out of quarantine... argh...

 

[wbeasley]

For starters it's not sideloading (which they must allow) if someone has to open an alt app store and then apple checks that app and the app store. Sideloading means I drag a file onto my phone and install it

Sideloading isnt just dragging a file to your phone.
It requires a significant change to the OS to allow this to happen.
I n past days people cracked iOS and jailbreaked then,
And Apple responded quickly to stop the method being exploited. Like Sony did with PSPs.

 

[Aoligei]

So develop for Android 🤷‍♂️

I can't wait until big developer stop developing for iOS! Make me as Android user happy.

 

[Urban Splash]

The answer by devs is simple. Remove your apps from iOS. Apple can’t live without these/any apps. I imagine is the top/most installed 20 apps were removed from iOS it would be catastrophic

 

[treacher]

I only use Apple solutions anyways.

 

[mrgrdn]

They all crying cause they don’t wanna pay the fee apple wants. Before Spotify crys over this, pay the artist the right amount of money they deserved and fix your damn policy. I hope apple continous the war, I mean, where in the world do you get something for free, either they want your money, or your data.

Would be interesting how many iphone users really want sideloading. In the end its less than the half or just one digit. congrats

 

[robertcoogan]

Ok, sideloading is stupid, people. There's a really good reason Apple has it that way and it's to protect their customer's data.

 

[robertcoogan]

Uh, the UK primarily left because of xenophobia and because the politicians lied to the public about how Brexit would provide billions a year extra to spend on things such as the NHS.

Xenophobia strongly linked to Brexit vote, study finds

British citizens who agreed that immigrants threaten their values and way of life were more likely to have voted to leave the EU, research led by Goldsmiths, University of London has found.

www.gold.ac.uk

That's exactly it.

 

[votdfak]

We know why VisionOS is iPadOS fork. App Store Tax.

 

[Octavius8]

Apple developed the tech so developers must pay?.
How about when you use visual basic and run in windows?.
No, that logic is incomolete. Apple developed its tech so more developers would come and more USERS would buy the phones. Apple could have a more decent cut, not zero, more more decent.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Sideloading isnt just dragging a file to your phone.
It requires a significant change to the OS to allow this to happen.
I n past days people cracked iOS and jailbreaked then,
And Apple responded quickly to stop the method being exploited. Like Sony did with PSPs.

As someone who have installed apps by just dragging and dropping them, or just downloading them today from the internet… yes that’s close to what’s needed.

There’s no significant changes needed. You people need to stop drinking apples made up excuses. Just how it was said it was going to be complex to allow web apps to be allowed but now it is being allowed after all.

 

[Konrad9]

"Core Technology" There it is. Put up or shut up. Either STOP USING Apple's developers' work, or PAY FOR IT. 🤷‍♂️

iOS dev here who literally could never make a penny without standing on the shoulders of thousands of Apple iOS devs, who’ve put in uncountable years of effort into areas I basically have zero experience or expertise in. 👋

Most people claiming Apple's cut is unearned don’t know what “import Foundation” does at the top of literally every iOS code file in literally every AppStore app. (Hint: It's not necessary to get an app into the App Store!)

Ditto for:

import UIKit
import SwiftUI
import CryptoKit
Button()
let task = URLSession.shared.dataTask(with: session)
etc, etc, etc…

Literally 💯 of iOS apps use code written by Apple to do a staggering amount of their work.

ZERO apps roll their own custom code instead of using the mountain of frameworks and APIs that Apple has built and perfected (complete with expected features like free dark mode, rotation, language, compat across device, accessibility size, backgrounding, persistence, etc, etc, etc features).

ZERO apps do this because it would cost 10-20x as much to develop, and nobody would pay for the lesser experience.

Even the simplest app would take literal years more development, and STILL not achieve anything close to feature parity by dropping in Apple’s code with zero effort.

Oh, and when iOS updates with new features, or a new style? INSTANTLY that app needs massive work to retain feature parity with other apps that did zero work to match style or make use of many new features. (Sometimes a TEENY bit of work to make a huge new feature work if you want.)

Show me an app developer who doesn’t lean HEAVILY on Apple’s developers’ work, and I’ll show you somebody who gets to talk about the “outrageous” price Apple charges for their work. 🙄

Here's a hilarious joke you should be able to appreciate:
"No overview available"

Here's another: compiling on anything other than an Apple-branded machine running macOS.

You like those? I've got more! Compiling on anything other than Xcode.

Testing software on a physical device without jumping through hoops.

Backporting APIs to previous versions of iOS

Debugging SwiftUI

Understanding Xcode's non-specific error codes

Your argument is extremely biased and picks and chooses a looooot. It's weird how it doesn't mention how many APIs still require ViewRepresentables to work in SwiftUI, or that we shouldn't have to pay a Core Technology Fee because we're already doing that by giving Apple $100 for the privilege, or that the only thing preventing people from writing their own web browsers was Apple's refusal to allow it.

And it is a flat out lie to say no one uses custom code instead of Apple's libraries. Alamofire, Realm, RxSwift, PromiseKit, SwiftyJSON, Lottie, SDWebImage, Realm, SnapKit. All of these are, or until recently were, extremely popular libraries that either filled holes Apple was ignoring or made it easier to do things offered by built-in APIs.

And before you come back with "but those libraries are still built on Apple's APIs!!!!", yeah, obviously they are. Apple doesn't allow it to happen any other way.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Ha... HJAHAHAHAHAH. AHAHAHAHAHAHGA.

Not seeing that in the PC space at all.
Developers are setting their prices, not App stores...

Plenty of evidence in other competitive markets.

No, they shouldn't. It's a locked down system and developers should have very little choice except not developing.

Absolutely anti-innovation stance.

We're not talking about users here, but developers. I don't mind if developers starve or eat too much cake.

Innovation shall be rewarded - but clearly you don’t care about innovation.

Apps not available in the App Store will affect people only using the App Store if they want the app.

Go, choose another app then.
You have the choice, just as I can/should choose to switch to Android.

Even if you aren't going to use alt appstores or payments, iOS has now been modified to allow other to do this.

Sideloading isnt just dragging a file to your phone.
It requires a significant change to the OS to allow this to happen.

👉 Plain wrong.

You can sideload today. Download an app from any website, trust the (enterprise) developer certificate and install.
Today. No App Store, no app review needed. Apple even explain how to do it. It’s just that Apple contractually doesn’t allow it for app distribution to consumers.

👉 Again, iOS can sideload today. Installation of third-party ”sideloaded” apps requires zero technical modifications.

 

[gnipgnop]

In the past, Apple basically had to beg developers to be on its platform.

These days I code mostly cross platform, I’ve published apps on Android, Windows and Apple stores.

In other words, app developers are free to choose the platforms that they develop on. That's the point that the EU never really addressed when it came to the App Store. Forcing side loading on iOS isn't going to do anything for "competition".