Spotify Submits iOS App Update With Out-of-App Purchase Options

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

There seems to be two camps in the discussion:

1. Ones who want Apple to succeed; either they hold AAPL or think that good business leads to good products
2. Ones entitled to dictate how Apple prices their products

Apple should be fine without trying to gouge other businesses for dubious fees.

They need to get back to making great products rather than churning out the same iPhone for years on end and trotting out junk like the vision pro.

The problem is the leadership of course.

Tim Cook is not a product person. Hence the focus on maximum extraction from the user and developer base. He knew the iPhone sales were flattening out and promised wall street it was fine because Apple is a services company now.

The problem Apple's services aren't very good, Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple News, Apple Fitness, Apple Arcade barely make any profit between them so Apple have focussed on rent extraction from other peoples services.

 

[AppliedMicro]

This ONLY would be issue if Apple continues to block installing apps to iPhone from outside their store.
My suggestion is to open it up:

Apple are never going to allow that (unless they're legally made to have to).
The likelihood of that is even lower than them complying on anti-steering rules.

Why?
Because Apple would run an even higher risk of losing transactions and customers from their store.
And because the But-think-about-the-children/not-so-tech-savvy! "argument" (FUD) would all the more be brought up, when you can install software from third-party sources (much more than on merely allowing outside purchase transactions on third-party sites).

There seems to be two camps in the discussion:

1. Ones who want Apple to succeed; either they hold AAPL or think that good business leads to good products
2. Ones entitled to dictate how Apple prices their products

👉 3. Ones who value freedom, competition and consumer choice.

 

[surferfb]

Apple should be fine without trying to gouge other businesses for dubious fees.

They need to get back to making great products rather than churning out the same iPhone for years on end and trotting out junk like the vision pro.

The problem is the leadership of course.

Everything I have ever read about Steve Jobs leads me to believe he would be fighting this even harder than Tim Cook is.

 

[theluggage]

So you just cut out the rest of my post and comment based on part of it only?

The rest of your post doesn’t alter the point.

I agree that there may be a case for forcing Apple to allow alternative web stores or sideloading… (or just get an Android device if you want that - they’re actually pretty good) but the reality is that most developers going it alone won’t see anything like the business they would get, or the user trust, withiut going via an established App Store - and whoever runs that is going to want to take their tythe (maybe after the initial free offer expires and enrubbishification starts to set in). In this universe, iPhone users wanting an app search in the App Store and trust Apple (rightly or wrongly) to handle their payments and filter out malware… and I really wouldn’t recommend technically naive users to go downloading stuff off random websites anyway (esp. the sort with multiple dummy “download” buttons trying to trick you into installing - at best - adware).

 

[theluggage]

My suggestion is to open it up: Allow installing any apps from anywhere with no conditions whatsoever. When that is true, the gatekeeper argument goes away with 0 commissions.

I don’t entirely disagree - as an opt-in setting. Similar to current MacOS, and similar to Android (you have to jump through hoops to enable developer mode, then you can sideload). I wouldn’t trust most users to do the necessary diligence to avoid getting riddled with malware.

For most people, going through an established, reputable App Store is the preferred solution - and even third party stores are, ultimately, going to want paying.

Trouble is, phones are getting used more and more for security and ID (whether we like it or not - if I make an online banking payment on my Mac I now have to confirm it on my phone) so there is some sense in keeping your phone locked down… Personally, I have an Android phone, and if I ever switch to iPhone, the lockdown would be a point in its favour. I’d like to be able to sideload on my iPad or AppleTV, but I don’t use those for ID, payment or banking…

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Everything I have ever read about Steve Jobs leads me to believe he would be fighting this even harder than Tim Cook is.

Honestly I think under Jobs there would've been lesser focus on services revenue and thus they never end up under the amount of regulatory scrutiny.

Cook cares way too much about wall street perception, you only have to look at the Apple Intelligence fiasco, a few analysts started to question where Apple's AI strategy was and they panicked over promised and under delivered.

When the iPhone sales started to flatten out Cook promised wall street that it would be fine because of services, they increasingly started to compete with third party apps on the store and seemed to get much more aggressive in enforcing app store policies, this has played a big role in all of the legal issue and regulatory action they are facing now.

I don't think that would've played out the same way under Jobs.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Then again, Jobs was a control freak who was reluctant to open up iPhone OS for anything other than web apps.

Maybe less so for Wall Street, I could imagine him fighting this tooth and nail for the sake of the "integrity" of the product they created.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Honestly I think under Jobs there would've been lesser focus on services revenue and thus they never end up under the amount of regulatory scrutiny.

This ^

I think it's really hard to imagine the company is in this particular spot and business position product and strategy wise to begin with.

Whatever position they would have been in, Steve would have been fighting relentlessly for.

But I'd argue he wouldn't have things in a position where they are essentially rent seeking and alienating their own developers to this level.

A lot of what Apple has been doing under Cook is somewhat anathema to a true "Product" person. The "SKU-Fest" across all the product lines that is hyper engineered to extract extra revenue is just not how Steve was. He'd want the best products out across lineups and would not want old and inferior ones languishing for years simply to anchor price points.

 

[theluggage]

Then again, Jobs was a control freak who was reluctant to open up iPhone OS for anything other than web apps.

Web Apps that anybody could create and host on their own infrastructure. Jobs’s iPhone was also instrumental in breaking the monopoly of proprietary “rich web” tech like Flash, nonstandard IE garbage and Java (although the latter didn’t “feel” proprietary until Oracle really sunk their claws in) and encouraging the uptake of open HTML/ECMAscript tech. Today, Safari has become a bit quirky and problematic if you’re trying to do crossplatform RIAs - maybe by design - but nowhere near the perversity of the late, unlamented, Internet Explorer.

I feel that it wasn’t a case of Jobs being a “sealed appliance” control freak, more that he understood the difference between a product designed as a consumer appliance and a product designed as a general computing tool. Under Jobs, the “pro” tower macs were wonderfully modular and accessible, we got full-blown UNIX easily accessible under the hood of MacOS X, and access to a free, full-featured IDE. Someone had gone the extra mile to make them flexible. Not the products of a company led by a single-minded “lock it all down” control freak.

I sometimes think that today’s Apple (and many other companies) have reduced Jobs’ wisdom to a couple of PowerPoints (sorry, Keynotes! - although sometimes it feels like they are using Sway ).

 

[HighwaySnowman]

They did not really sell like crazy.
They weren't even available in most parts of the world and with most carriers.

Apple just received considerable media hype.

The 1st generation iPhone was in fact the only Apple product I can remember that Apple (had to) adjust pricing down within weeks after release, with Jobs publicly "apologising":

"I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale."

👉 When has Apple ever dropped a product's price two months after going on sale in the U.S.?
And why? Crazy sales?

Overseas sales were described as "sluggish" (see sources Wikipedia)
The 1st gen iPhone certainly was a moderate success (following an intense early adopter hype that rather soon waned off). But the iPhone's success story only really took off with the advent of the App Store.

Let's not give credit where it isn't due though.

It wasn't the app store that drove the iPhone's success. It was the apps.

If Apple had just enabled normal software installation and never come out with the idiotic app store, the iPhone would have been just as successful.

 

[surferfb]

Let's not give credit where it isn't due though.

It wasn't the app store that drove the iPhone's success. It was the apps.

If Apple had just enabled normal software installation and never come out with the idiotic app store, the iPhone would have been just as successful.

I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

Most users are not technically savvy. Most users are worried about accidentally breaking their devices. Most users are worried about installing malware.

The app store made normal users feel safe installing software after the late 1990s / early 2000s made most people think downloading led to nothing but viruses, and every developer should thank Apple for every day.

 

[theluggage]

If Apple had just enabled normal software installation and never come out with the idiotic app store, the iPhone would have been just as successful.

...yes, small developers would just have had to set up their own website, drive traffic to it, write installation instructions, get a credit card merchant account...

The App Store was so awful that Google copied it with the Play Store on Android. Sure, you can sideload on Android (but on virtually every phone you have to jump through hoops to get there) and the App Store is more permissive (so every time you install an App it asks for a laundry list of permissions and you have to use your magical intuition to decide if they are legit). I don't have any data on how many Android users ever step outside the Play store - I bet you an internet that it's a minority.

I couldn’t disagree more strongly.

I'm with you. However, another huge factor was that the iPhone UI design was night-and-day better than the smartphones that had come before. The decision to go with a touch-only interface was inspired: I had a Windows Mobile phone, and it was horrible to use - it had a QUERTY keyboard, a resistive touch screen, a jog wheel, a joy stick, umpteen dedicated buttons and the sort of toothpick stylus that Jobs was on record as mocking, which was only there because the icons were to fiddly to operate with fingers... and every system tool and application was optimised for... well... precisely none of those input devices. The first gen iPhone was a non-starter if only because it only worked on a single US network, but the demo made it obvious that the UI and built-in apps had been designed, where on other smarthone platforms they had just coagulated. That's coming from someone who never bought an iPhone (mainly in cost) and went Android once that had played catchup (although I did have an iPod Touch so I know thw UI).

 

[constantsnags!]

You are free to purchase music in a myriad of forms, both digitally and physically.

*in myriad forms

 

[I7guy]

Apple should be fine without trying to gouge other businesses for dubious fees.

Why would one do business with a “gouger?” And hint, it’s an opt-in relationship.

They need to get back to making great products rather than churning out the same iPhone for years on end and trotting out junk like the vision pro.

They have been making great products. Vision Pro was an example of a gen 1 great product.

The problem is the leadership of course.

The company’s success is due to the current leadership.

Tim Cook is not a product person.

He doesn’t have to be.

Hence the focus on maximum extraction from the user and developer base. He knew the iPhone sales were flattening out and promised wall street it was fine because Apple is a services company now.

And yet Apple is churning out record revenues.

The problem Apple's services aren't very good, Apple Music,

Apple Music imo is good.

Apple TV,

Apple to has wonderful shows. Severance, Ted lasso etc.

Apple News, Apple Fitness, Apple Arcade barely make any profit between them

Okay so I don’t use those services but you having an opinion on them doesn’t make them not good.

so Apple have focussed on rent extraction from other peoples services.

Rent extraction is social engineering without innovation. That’s not Apple.

 

[DougiePhresh]

My comment was general. I knew that Spotify does not pay 30%.
Concerning your question: of course not, but the developer deserves it more than Apple. That 30% more increases the chance for longer support and more features in long term.
And the main problem with the 30% is that I don't like P.I.M.P.s: the worst species you can find on our planet, be it a person or a company.

Why does the developer deserve it more than Apple? The developer makes one, or a handful of apps while Apple is making a hardware device that is sold to hundreds of millions of people, they have physical stores, they create the OS that those apps run on. If it were not for Apple, the app (and likely not even the developer) would not exist.

I agree 30% is high, but if developers don’t like it - leave. I applaud Epic for taking Fortnite off the App Store. They saw something unfair and instead of just complaining about it, they truly did something about it. If more developers had followed suit, Apple would have caved a long time ago

 

[DougiePhresh]

Why does everyone hate on Apple Music? I have been using it for years and have absolutely no issues with it. What makes Spotify any better? I want to hear a song, it plays that song. The end.

 

[jlc1978]

I agree 30% is high, but if developers don’t like it - leave. I applaud Epic for taking Fortnite off the App Store. They saw something unfair and instead of just complaining about it, they truly did something about it. If more developers had followed suit, Apple would have caved a long time ago

People focus on the 30%, but that's only the small fraction that make millions off ov the App Store. I don't necessarily agree Apple's cut is too big, considering the value it returns to the developer. Just because the cost is low to Apple to provide the value doesn't mean they have to price it low; and the big developers support the store so free apps can exist and small developers only have to pay 15%. That 15% is a likely less than it old cost them to go it alone, once all the costs and fees are included, and they would not have access to Apple's large user base; many of whom likely will never use an alternative store or search out a developer's product.

If the big companies really think Apple is evil to charge 30%, start your own store and let developers come on fo free, use external payment processors and allow competitors free access as well. In EPIC's case, how about opening up Fortnite so people can make, see, and trade in game items separately from you? Or use those items in competing games or opening up the game to let competing companies access your game for free?

 

[AppliedMicro]

Why does everyone hate on Apple Music? I have been using it for years and have absolutely no issues with it. What makes Spotify any better? I want to hear a song, it plays that song. The end.

For starters:
Apple pestering me about it (free trials) not only in the Music app but also in system preferences etc.