AFAIK Epic did their move by pushing "legal" iOS code, then doing an over-the-air update of adding non-Apple payment system.
Mozilla can't just push a rendering & JavaScript engine "over the air".
No, the code was hidden in the app itself, just disabled via server-side flag. After the app was approved they then flipped the flag to enable it.
Source: Epic admits this in their legal filings.
Just include both native renderer and webkit, and over the air switch which you use.
Plus I doubt Mozilla is in the mode to burn months of programmers time on a stunt right now.
As a long time Apple user, and open software advocate I'd literally cry tears of joy. I'd also have to throw Zuck a bone if FB joined.
I really just want Apple to separate their code signing (Developer) service with their advertising and distribution service (App Store).
As a user, it’s appalling to see developers taking the side of user-hostile companies in order to take down a company trying to protect users.
It makes me want to avoid any products from such companies and developers.
It would likely be unusably slow if they did. Apple doesn’t allow apps in the store with the required entitlements to make an optimized JavaScript engine of entirely Mozilla’s design.
Would Epic be willing to lead the fight against consoles as well (they charge 30%, too)? Oh, right...
epic is proposing a 12% rate to all the stores and asked Google for it as well, they have fought playstation policies against crossplay and won in the past.
"All stores" as in "actually all stores" or "Apple Store and Google Play Store only"? Their entire "fight" is very much targeted, and consoles (which are Epic's key partners) are not really targeted. Moreover, Epic goes out of its way to define consoles as something else.
--- start quotes ---
“The 30 per cent store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70 per cent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games,” he explains.
“There’s a rationale for this on console where there’s enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers. But on open platforms, 30 per cent is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.” [1]
"Consoles are unique in that the hardware is sold at or below the cost of manufacturing, and is subsidized by software sales, whereas iOS and Android are insanely profitable for Apple and Google from just hardware sales and ads." [2]
--- end quotes ---
Regardless of your opinion on 30% cuts in AppStore and Play Store, these are some really shoddy arguments.
[1] 2018, https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-31-30-percent...
[2] 2020, https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/127327654856984166...
Consoles will become more expensive but games will cost $60. Payment processing fees have to be passed onto the customer. Your $0.99 game with 30% cut is now a $1.30 game because of credit card fees. No more Steam cards at retailers.
All these statements require hard proof. Additionally, "you already earn more money than I'd like" is not exactly a valid case to make against a cut.
Apple is by far the most distinct case, so it perfectly reasonable to focus on Apple (Besides, I'm sure that Apple with its trillions can afford a legal defence). If Apple gets off, all other stores get off too since Apple is the most restrictive. If Epic wins, we can then discuss how to apply the legal doctrine to other cases.
The top 100 apps on iOS need to do a 'blackout' and pull their apps from iOS for a week. That will make front page international headlines globally and involve the entire planet. That's the kind of scale necessary.
Legislators from around the world will take notice whereas right now, probably very few know or care.
Don't discount how little the public knows or cares about these kinds of things, most people are busy with their lives they are not paying attention. Few even know or understand the terms of the iOS store let alone what it means.
So a focused PR campaign and 'major action' by a lot of players is what is needed. FB, Wikipedia, Netflix, CNN etc. etc..
I feel like it's a reasonable trade-off. Free apps don't cost you much (yes, $99 for dev tools is not much honestly. It keeps away spurious bots and spammy accounts). Paid apps cost 30% -- if the dev decides to charge outrageous prices then well, Apple will take an outrageous cut).
Most apps cost $1-$5 which is cheap. Of course, at a billion users it's hefty. But if you're grumpy about that then it just means you're grumpy about a shrewd for-profit company.
Combined with the ambiguity, lack of choice, threats to business - absolutely yes, iOS is basically universally reviled by developers.
Nobody on this planet accepts that the 30% is necessary for anything ergo, it's a massive chunk out of profits.
Most companies are not hugely profitable.
In many cases, Apple is making considerable more profit off of apps than developers themselves.
For a $1 spent, about 25 cents to Apple mostly profit, then 70 cents to the dev which will mostly be dev., ad. and op. costs.
It wouldn't surprise met that Apple makes more surplus from Fornite than Fortnite makes off the platform.
Their business model is munted. All because people are sheep. They advertised to moronic uni students who like shiny things, Their parents wanted to seem hip so they got on board.
I mean hell, you cant even use a cable they don't own.
Because I rather like the fact the iOS devices get OS updates for about twice as long as Android devices. Android security was also a pretty bad joke for a very long time—it has started to change, but there's only so much they can fix. Google would release an OS (or even a security) update, then you'd have to wait for both the OEM and the network provider to pass the update on to end users. Google are changing this with security patches, but there's still a lot of Android devices running old versions with no prospect of any new features coming any time soon.
In iOS land, there's no OEM or network intermediaries (something Apple insisted on in all deals with networks from the first iPhone), so generally takeup of a new iOS version happens really promptly - as of June 2020, 81% of iOS users are on iOS 13.* That's good for the health of the platform as app developers can build on top of new OS features knowing a reasonable number of actual users can use those new features.
Also, there are a whole variety of suppliers of Lightning cables. Go to Amazon and search "MFi certified lightning cable".
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/565270/apple-devices-ios...
30% is outrageous and basically no developers want to pay it.
Were it 10%, all those things you mention would remain the same.
Also, OP is stating that the only reason people buy iOS is because they're some kind of idiot fashionista sheeple etc. I was merely pointing out that there are compelling reasons to prefer iOS beyond, I dunno, the magic mind-control powers of the ghost of Steve Jobs.
Except that developers don't need to use the App Store a sales/distribution mechanism.
It's like saying "In one country, there is only one car, and it is $50 000". In another country, the same car exists, and yes, there are other $50 000 cars ... but there are also any number of other choices.
And FYI even Google is engaging in anticompetitive practices.
Both platforms should be required to allow the installation of any app vendor point they want as the default app store.
Boy will your world be shook when you discover the Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo stores.
I almost forgotten that here people want to get paid without paying for their own tools.
It sounds to me like the _only_ reason developers are clamoring against the App Store is because some fraction of developers are unhappy about a high commission. It's on the same lines are some people out there unhappy about Apple's high prices. In both cases, you should vote with your wallets -- do not buy Apple devices or develop for Apple devices.
>Combined with the ambiguity, lack of choice, threats to business Would you say that there was abundant choice for developers before the iPhone? What would you develop for -- Blackberry? Nokia? None of those manufacturers had anything remotely close to the iPhone. Right?
Would you say that a 3rd party developer who writes a "flashlight" app is really a legitimate business? Ok, I'll acknowledge the beef with Spotify and the threat an integrated platform can pose in that regard. So what would you propose Apple do? Pay software engineers on their payroll to help Spotify sell music on the iPod (oops; I mean iPhone)?
>Most companies are not hugely profitable. >In many cases, Apple is making considerable more profit off of apps than developers themselves. >For a $1 spent, about 25 cents to Apple mostly profit, then 70 cents to the dev which will mostly be dev., ad. and op. costs.
All this goes to show is that Apple is hugely expensive platform to develop for. Massively expensive! I am sincerely trying to understand _why_ would any developer _need_ to take this expense if they cannot afford it? Can't you develop a web app instead?
Well, Microsoft did that, they developed the Spotify app for Windows Phone back in the day.
> I am sincerely trying to understand _why_ would any developer _need_ to take this expense if they cannot afford it? Can't you develop a web app instead?
I guess because such a large portion of phone users use iPhone, not developing for iOS means you remove yourself from competing about not only those customers but others as well. Say you develop a chat app (fat chance of that now but anyways), a large portion of Android users will say "It's nice and all but because some of my friends have iPhones I want to be able to chat with them as well."
So quite simply, you need to be where the customers are and customers want native apps not web apps. They don't want to open Safari or Chrome or Firefox, type in a URL and some login credentials. It's too much of a nuisance. So if you don't write a native app some one else will and then they take all your customers...
> Well, Microsoft did that, they developed the Spotify app for Windows Phone back in the day. I was trying to be _too clever_ in my reference. What I was trying to say is that there's no moral highground for the developer community to stand on and demand that Apple reduce their commission or allow sideloading on the iPhone. A similar argument demanding that Apple open up iPods for 3rd party apps would've never sounded reasonable when Apple had the largest revenue share or market share or whatever share of the digital music player market. The exact same situation applies to the iPhone as well.
What Microsoft did was because they had no leverage. Apple beat them to market and successfully attracted enough developers to write apps. Sure Apple's platforms benefit from having 3P developers, but that doesn't mean they should set prices based on what 3P devs feel is "fair". If devs don't like the iPhone they should've developed for Windows Phone.
>I guess because such a large portion of phone users use iPhone, not developing for iOS means you remove yourself from competing about not only those customers but others as well. Say you develop a chat app (fat chance of that now but anyways), a large portion of Android users will say "It's nice and all but because some of my friends have iPhones I want to be able to chat with them as well."
> So quite simply, you need to be where the customers are and customers want native apps not web apps. They don't want to open Safari or Chrome or Firefox, type in a URL and some login credentials. It's too much of a nuisance. So if you don't write a native app some one else will and then they take all your customers...
Yes I completely agree with all these points. That is precisely what costs 30% of your app's revenue. The argument around "fairness" doesn't apply because the value provided by the platform is massive. It's the same reason why any argument comparing the iPhone to a Mac or PC wouldn't apply either. You can always build a web-app that's based on open standards and pay the price of losing to a competitor who will build a richer native app.
I'm a legal expert or something. As a developer myself, I find the arguments presented by the dev community against the App store & it's commission self-serving and hypocritical. That's just the cost of doing business on an iPhone. It's expensive! So the best thing to do is to go out there and build for every other phone maker.
No. No, it is not.
I am a developer, and I support iOS and Apple’s practices.
I know this comment will be buried; It’s ironic how the people supposedly championing freedom tries to bury any dissenting voices.
> In many cases, Apple is making considerable more profit off of apps than developers themselves.
Apple pays out more revenue to developers than the Play Store.
Interesting point about the looming iOS14 update. Makes you wonder whether Apple will ultimately fall at their privacy sword, similar to how Google fell at its own "Don't do evil" motto. E.g. it's meaningless bravado when not applied to universally to all countries, aka China.