It sounds like Apple is trying to keep from becoming the new backpage.com.
It doesn't want to handle the money when you rent a hooker.
Unless, of course, you throw a gangbang, and Apple ends up eating 30% of the price of admission. Imagine the headline!
Imagine how much more fun life would be if vices were more accessible
Apple is one of the few that has different standards. And some of its consumers appreciate that. There's room in the market for both views.
Especially payment processors, which cause serious bottlenecks in the ability of people to pay for services online.
Apple seems to be in the majority from where I look.
Everybody wants to be "family friendly", which means no sexy stuff. Violence? Sure. Guns? Sure. Sex? Get that filth out of my product!
“Folks who want porn can buy an android.”
“You might care more about porn when you have kids. It’s not about freedom, it’s about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users.”
TBH as much good as he did, he sounds like a pretty boring square, one of those people who liked drugs in their 20s then got married and lived the entire remainder of his life alternating between home and his suburban office.
I don’t know the guy, I’m just going based on what was reported of his work.
In general I don’t think people who consider cities like Santa Clara or Cupertino to have very good taste, despite the popularity of square American suburban living.
I don't think Jobs would have cared if you thought he had good taste or not, or whether you think he's a "square." As for boring, it's already been widely documented in newspapers, magazines, books, and online that his short life was 1000 times more interesting than your life ever will be.
Adult humans who decide for other adult humans what they should or should not be allowed to choose to read on their own devices are lame as fuck.
That's probably the point - 1:1 experiences that are not scalable is a drop in the bucket even if they charge a 30% commission.
> If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training)...
People quickly forget what a tremendous liberation the App Store created for developers.
It's also not about the developers, the success of the App Store comes from Apple's users. They trust the App Store because they trust Apple's curation/privacy/security. That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers. Trust doesn't come cheap.
People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed.
>That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers.
No, that was caused by a billion people buying shiny new mobile computers. They would have bought a lot of software in any case, even without an App Store. New platform, new software.
I did that. Kagi.com was my payment… handler?
https://web.archive.org/web/20100303221537/http://www.kagi.c...
$0.75 + (5…8)%
So any transaction less than or equal to the $2.99 tier would be just as bad (as in, it costs you at least 30% of the list price), even if hosting was free.
I’m also old enough to remember Apple getting involved in the fight over the In App Purchases patent: https://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/08/lodsys-offers-update-on...
It's true that App Store has the best deal for payment processing for very low-priced apps.
But that's not truly a win for developers when the App Store itself caused the "race to the bottom". Who was selling 99 cent apps before the crap store?
You can argue lower prices lead to more crap, but it also encourages people to spend more. Most people would debate a $4.99 purchase, but think nothing of 5 99¢ purchases if done separately.
The catch is that as you get bigger and seem more B2C than B2B then Apple might start to take notice (see: Hey e-mail).
He's talking about when you used to have to pay $50 to $500 for software in a store, but the author was lucky to see $5-$10 of that.
Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos (Steam, for instance, which takes a 30% cut as well). Begware was the most common tactic.
Even now with multiple options, while everyone piles on Apple, we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms. Apple did more to liberate payments from a user than any other platform. Through trust, through standardization and normalization, and even through things like the wide availability of App Store gift cards (which are often heavily discounted - $85 for $100 of App Store gift cards at Costco many times through the year).
Elsewhere people are arguing that Windows is a wonderful platform because look, it's so open. Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is. Unless your name is Microsoft or Adobe, you are in for a really, really rough time of it. You'll get 100% of nothing.
As always, of course this is downvoted. Anyone looking to HN for rational, reality-based discussion might find it a bit disappointing. Here apparently the Windows ISV market is a vibrant, lucrative market. Everyone here is profiting from it, right? (LOL -- close to none of you are). This is farce.
I had a 10 year career in that "wasteland".
> we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms
Citation? From what I've seen, that's not actually true.
> Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is.
For a time, the Windows version of our product was my company's biggest money-maker. It seems that in recent years though Microsoft as a company has pivoted away from Windows as their primary product. Away from desktop, toward "the cloud". I personally find that unfortunate, but I'm not a stockholder.
> The whole torch mob anti-Apple angle seems entirely detached from actual reality.
I'm not anti-Apple, I'm pro-Macintosh.
There was so much community, and such an optimistic mood with things like the Appsterdam movement.
And then it all crashed and burned, because Apple decided to get greedy, and that 99cents was going to be the default App price, with 30cents going to Apple.
Those are scraps, and nobody who wants to make an artisanal niche app to scratch their own itch, and maybe sell it, can live from that money. It was either win the lottery, or starve.
Apple killed its own ecosystem, most app store apps suck nowadays. It's ironic that they were the ones with an ad saying "we mistake abundance with choice".
I wish all the old mac devs would get together and collaboratively write a good GUI-toolkit for linux and a new Userland. Right now there is not a single good operating system. Having all those apps on linux would be a dream come true. But a dream it is...
"Sensor Tower puts iOS spending in Fortnite at $1.2 billion since it was launched on the App Store in early 2018." That was from a month ago. https://www.usgamer.net/articles/fortnite-ios-removal-hurt-e...
Fortnite total revenue was $2.4 billion in 2018, $1.8 billion in 2019. Not sure we have figures to date for 2020, but assuming it's approximately $1 billion, then iOS would be ~23% of total Fortnite revenue. Is that the largest platform? Maybe, maybe not.
Utter nonsense. Shrink-wrapped and downloadable software in the Windows world was all over the place using activation/serial codes either thru email or on a CD.
Two examples:
VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/
SnagIt screen capture (which is now cloud based, I think. I still use an old version)
Citation needed. Who are all those people attending the Microsoft developers conference every year? Who were all the people in the audience for Ballmer's infamous "Developers, developers, developers" chant?
You're claiming the nonexistence of something that clearly exists.
Please refrain from personal attacks.
As you noted in another comment, I'm primarily a Mac developer, and in my experience, the extent of the third-party Mac software market has often been vastly underestimated. Maybe it's just because people aren't familiar with it.
There are of course large numbers of users who never buy third-party software, but with any large platform, such as Mac or Windows, all it takes is a significant % of users to buy software for the market to really add up. Doesn't even have to be a majority of users.
I haven't been a regular Windows users for many years, but back when I was, there was a thriving consumer software market on Windows. Again, it doesn't even have to include the majority of users, because those who do buy software are willing to pay good money for it.
There's even a quote from Bill Gates in which he dismisses someone (Facebook?) as a platform, because the amount of revenue they skim is usurious.
He specifically cites Windows as a platform model because they could have absorbed far more rent from their developers, but chose not to.
"You have become incredibly insincere in your arguments"
> Tiny, micro-boutiques that are a little sliver of marginal prosperity in a desolate wasteland of failure.
I would rephrase this to say you're talking about small businesses, which are not sexy or well known, but are both widespread and crucial to the entire economic foundation of the United States.
Unfortunately, App Store revenue is very top-heavy. A few big players, such as Epic, do extremely well on the App Store, but small businesses tend to suffer in the App Store. The total software revenue may be higher now, but the distribution of revenue matters a lot. If the rich get richer, and the rest are stagnant or get poorer, that's only good for the rich, and I wouldn't call it a healthy market, regardless of the totals.
In the App Store era, it's "easier" than before to become a wild success, like Epic. But it's a lot harder for indie developers to make a living. You can't "make it up in volume", and you don't have a huge marketing budget to get to the top of the App Store charts, so you need to charge sustainable prices for software. The App Store "race to the bottom", as well as other business and technical limitations, have really hurt smaller developers. I'm not sure we can, or want to live in a world with only BigCos.
Remember how Apple temporarily shut down a lot of Facebook by revoking their enterprise certificate? We can quibble about whether Facebook "deserved" it, but why is internal software even subject to those restrictions in the first place. I certainly wouldn't call that "liberation".
Almost 80% of Fortnite players are on console, so I very much doubt that's even remotely true.
https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoos-battle-royale-s...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24087933
It seems like the unavoidable conclusion is that there are no longer any good places to make or find decent consumer software without having a corporate entity get their undeserving cut.
Zero %.
Retail used to buy boxed software and sell it at risk. Were Apple buying units of software/service up front and the taking a risk reselling it, it would be valid to compare the split of end-user cost with classic retail, but Apple's not doing that, so it isn't.
That said, it's valid to acknowledge this history and still think 30% is too much for distribution overhead in 2020. I do not have an opinion on the latter.
They pointed out that retailers would buy the software up front (at wholesale price), and assume the rest of the risk for "promoting, distributing, and selling" themselves. Thus, the retailer did not "charge developers" for those things[0].
I realize this is a bit pedantic but it's not fair to say the parent has said something "historically inaccurate".
[0] There were special marketing or buyback arrangements in some cases, but what's described above is the default retail model.
I though they just returned unsold boxes back to the vendor?
Even in the cases where the vendor/distributor allowed that (and discount bins were a thing because they often did not, at least at no restocking fee), the retailer still accepted the risk that the vendor or distributor would be defunct. If they had a consignment model where they only paid contingent on a retail sale, that was different, but (at least AFAIK) that was never the norm for boxed software.
If Electronics Boutique can dump a $50.00 game in a discount bin for $3.00, how much do you think it paid for that game in the first place? And how much of that amount went to the author?
And retail doesn't charge "0%" on boxed products, or they would go out of business. Logistics, distribution, and store markup all add up to the final price of the product on the shelf.
Yes, they do, unless it's consignment model, which wasn't usually the case for boxed software. The retail sale happens after retail has made the purchase. It’s obviously usually at a higher price than the retailer paid, but they don't take a cut of what the vendor is asking for the software. They pay whatever the vendor (or, often in real retail, a distributor that sits in between) is offering to sell the product for, in advance, and takes a risk that they will be able to sell the units they have purchased at a higher price.
It's structurally not at all the same as what an app store does, where it pays no one, anything (indeed, often charges an access fee up front to the seller) before a sale is made, and then pockets a share of the sale at no risk.
Whether that happens in one simultaneous transaction or two different ones doesn't really make a difference to how much the developer gets paid in the end, which is less with the retail store model compared to the current digital storefront model.
Let's also not forget that Steam launched with a 30% cut a full 5 years before the App Store ever existed, so it's not like Apple dictated this price, they were following industry norms at the time.
Apple act as a middleman and and add on their fees, with absolutely no risk to themselves.
They're very different business models.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remaindered_book
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-out_(recording_industry)
I can't find anything current for boxed software (for obvious reasons), but boxed video and board games cannot be returned unless the retailer has a special deal with the publisher (rare).
https://www.polygon.com/2017/7/17/15974096/what-it-costs-to-...
https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/05/inside-the-secret-wo...
https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/6asinu/can_reta...
Also the App Store really is the only way to get apps on an iOS-device, so the user has no real choice anyway.
Apple does plenty of app promotion, from promotions inside its own store to multi-million dollar television campaigns showcasing all the cool apps that are available inside the App Store.
We do, but at the same time, physical stores selling software are now rare or non-existent. Apple is not competing with them.
There are two platforms that drive 100% of the mobile phone industry. One (Android) allows other distributors in the platform (even if they have to go through loops like sideloading an app and then allowing that app to install other apps). The other will kick and try to destroy you if you try to do something like that. Is that legal or anti-competitive in the US & Europe? We'll find out...
People buy way more on Amazon, and Amazon doesn't rob 30% of your sales.
Well, that was before the Internet era, wasn't it. Personally I'm buying macOS software outside of the AppStore and I'm very happy with it. I also feel good that I support the developers directly.
Imagine if Microsoft decided to take 30% of all online transactions that happen on Windows PCs...Pretty ridiculous thought, right?
That stuff Apple has gotten away with and continues to get away with is beyond absurd.
All have an App Store and are fully capable of facilitating payments, running Microsoft Office, using SaaS apps, doing "work".
Users are prevented from doing so by artificial restrictions on their App Stores which could be lifted at any time by a simple business decision. Apple allows more freedom to developers than these platforms yet somehow should be treated differently. Seems arbitrary and capricious.
Sure, they could be, with a lot of effort. But they are neither marketed nor capable of general compute today. They don't have the toolset or ecosystem to make general purpose apps. Nor do they actively encourage people to make general apps.
It's simply that Sony won't approve non-gaming or non-entertainment apps. And if Apple were to follow the same path and block productivity apps then it would somehow stop being a general computing device ?
Why should someone else get to dictate which of my devices is a 'general computing device' and what that means for me and my use-case?
What is your definition of "general" that makes one of them general, and the other one non-general?
To me the only reason an iPhone seems to be "general purpose" is because the "number of developers has reached some critical mass and wants it to be". Which seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Sanity Test: Should my microwave be a "general purpose" device because it is built with a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen?
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
Or reputable companies have ever been convicted of falsely getting money from minors.
https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-fortnite-sued-trick...
Remember the keyboard issues with broken keys, people like you were accusing uses that they are using it wrong and stop complaining, Apple is perfect and those genius engineers don't make mistake, Apple is always right and the complainers are trolls or guys that eat at their laptop? If you don't remember Apple was forced by lawsuits to aknowledge that their genius engineers are not perfect and were forced by those lawsuits to replace the broken parts (again Apple was not protecting the users but was trying to avoid losing money )... so if you can reflect 1 moment you could maybe(low chance though) that Apple sometime is not perfect and sometimes users that complain are in the right (it happened so it is not impossible)
But you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t buy a Mac laptop with a keyboard after everyone knew the keyboards were bad and then complain about the keyboards.
It’s not about Apple being perfect - it’s about people buying a product that doesn’t meet their needs and then complaining when there are alternatives.
So my question that you avoided to answer, the change Apple just made, what is your opinion? Was Apple correct yesterday or today after the change? Is not Apple perfect and developers and users should stop complaining starting today because this was the exact last issue missing from Apple perfection?
Also if you can expand why people should not complain or express their negative opinions when they are on topic on this article thread? If you are tired of reading why X is not perfect and how it should be fixed then skip this topics and maybe watch a movie.
The difference was that people who owned the devices complained. How many Apple pundits spent time complaining about Android devices instead of just not buying them?
Well Gruber always buys the top of the line Android device that Google sells and had a lot of good things to say about the assistant and the camera but that’s besides the point.
Was Apple correct yesterday or today after the change? Is not Apple perfect and developers and users should stop complaining starting today because this was the exact last issue missing from Apple perfection?
No one ever said that Apple was perfect. I’ve bought a few Apple duds. What I am saying is that people want the government involved instead of just not buying the device when their are alternatives.
How much money have you really spent buying apps or doing in app purchases over the past year? What’s more likely to happen, you will save money or the developers will keep more of a cut?
On the other hand, most money on either store is not being spent buying apps from Indy developers - it’s being spent on loot boxes and pay to win games. Do you think that getting rid of the 30% is going to all of the sudden mean indy developers can make a come back like they did in 2008?
Could be both, Why are developers evil and they should not get the money but the overlord that does (almost)nothing. It is like if a farmer goes to a market and the mafia forces them to pay 39% for protection, then if mafia is destroyed you feel bad if the farmer gets more money now.
Not all developers are EA level of evil, some of them deserve every cent IMO.
Related to the money I spent I have some subscriptions and I bought some PC games and some PS4 games for my kid, I hope that consoles would be investigated too, there is not enough competition to have a fair market.
Besides, not only now are you arguing about a phone that you don’t own, you are also complaining about an in app system where just as I thought - you haven’t spent any money. Most people don’t spend money “buying apps”. The money is coming from in app purchases from games.
As far as the “farmer”. If the farmer is selling tobacco - an addictive substance just like loot boxes and coins for play to win games. I don’t feel sorry for either. This is not just my opinion. The government is investigating virtual loot boxes as gambling.
I seen case of good developers that have free games (they are passionate and use Patreon to get some money) and I see this developers creating Win,Linux, Mac and Android versions but no iOS version. So then you have the iOS users looking at all this plartforms that are supported but he is excluded, what do you think? Could there be a way that would make everyone happy(but maybe less money from some rich gy yacht?).
If a judge deciders that is OK iOS is locked down this means OSX,Windows and Android can be legally completely locked-down , in the future, do we want this?
A bit offtopic, I am trying to keep away from Apple related topics, but sometimes there is one comment that I need to respond to correct something and then a threads starts, I will try not to get as involved next time, I feel we are 2 groups that are in a way "paranoid" that 2 different bad things will happen , some think that everything will get more and more locked and DRMed and others are afraid that competition will destroy apples garden.
I think Apple is already trying to address that through Apple Arcade, it is giving indy developers that make games that don’t have in app purchases or advertising advances to publish games. Apple Arcade has to be a loss leader to convince more people to buy iOS devices.
I would go one step further, if they really want to support good, ethical games, prominently display ethical games (no in app purchases or advertising besides games from the same publisher) in the App Store, increase the minimum price that a game maker can charge - gets rid of the race to the bottom - and take a 15% cut. This would make iOS the platform for “premium games”.
They could also say that it “protects children”. Politicians eat up “think about the children”.
> If a judge deciders that is OK iOS is locked down this means OSX,Windows and Android can be legally completely locked-down , in the future, do we want this?
I wouldn’t buy a Mac. I use Macs because it is a consumer friendly Unix with commercial applications. I could completely live in a world running Linux and open source if it came down to it.
I run Linux but I am the only one that I know in my family and friends and if the hardware would be DRM and locked down you could not get an older windows machine and put Linux on it.
Don you think that the hardware and software you bought should serve you the owner? Like if it is my own OS it should execute what I tell it to do(maybe I would need to enable something to exit the "kid mode")
On the other hand, my iPad has a strict sandbox, I can restrict apps from using cellular on an app by app basis (I wish I could do the same for WiFi), I can restrict apps from running in the background using my battery life unnecessarily (see Slack), developers have proven they can’t be trusted to have unfettered access to your computer.
Even if you don’t give an app admin access on a computer, they still have all of the rights the signed in user does.
People exited the “kids mode” on Mac and turned System Integrity Protection off and the Chrome installer hosed their system. (https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262?hl=en)
And of course the one popular app that tried to bypass Google Play - Fortnite - introduced a severe security vulnerability.
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
So I think the focus should not be in locking users but in locking the apps in strong sandboxes.
Thank you for all your replyes but I notice you are ignoring a category of developers, you are only consider the ones that do it for making lot of money and ignoring people that do it for passion, as I said I see plenty of free stuff that is made for passion and shared with the community (like a small game, or a mod, or a "save cleaner/editor" tool), this communities are small and probably not that vocal but they exist - a strong sandbox and a giant warning when you install such an approved tool should be enough for this people.
If I may add, Apple allowed Fortnite and games with lootboxes or skins purchase, Apple gets 30% cut so they will not block this as long as they make big money. I know they are making some arcade but that is to handle teh case of games that have ads. it is a good way of Apple making more money and it will not stop the lootboxes, let me know if I missed something and Apple is blocking lootboxes or skin.gem,coin purchases.
As far as the hobbyists, I had another proposal in another thread. Free “self signed certs” that are tied to your device. You can compile from source an app and keep it on your phone. You are free to share source code. This would also be keeping within GPL2, GPL3.
Apple making money on in app purchases is just as unethical. I think that’s the purpose of Apple Arcade.
"The problem with this logic is that every company is going to set up their own App Store. Microsoft, Epic, etc. Then for every app that I use right now on my iPhone I would have to source from several App Stores. It will make my experience very cumbersome. reply"
And this is proven false since the Google Store is still very popular and I don't see people having to source 5 apps from Google store, 5 from Microsoft, 2 from Apple, 3 from Adobe. With the Epic the situation is clear, this giants are asking too much just for hosting your application and the small guys had no chance to fight this , lucky for the developers Epic started this and as we can see from this article Apple is backing down one step here, other step a month ago ...
That’s why we’d see a proliferation of stores on iOS.
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
And a big difference with Google is that you can sideload or use other stores on Android. And same on Windows, you don't have to use the store.
I didn't mention Windows. I was discussing platforms where everyone takes a 30% cut. You may say this is mere whataboutism, but anyone who reads Hacker News knows that 99% of the anger and attacks on this practice are directed at Apple. Nobody bitches at Google and Sony and Microsoft for doing the exact same thing.
Yeah, because Apple isn't doing that at all.
What's more, it seems like the fee Microsoft charges for every sale in their Microsoft Store is also either 15% or 30%. (Source: the App Developer Agreement, https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE...)
Not on the Xbox, which Epic doesn't seem to mind in regards to Fortnite etc.
Yes, but for many users this is a premium feature, not a flaw.
It is also difficult to see how it is a feature. In a world where additional app stores or side-loading was enabled for those that want it, it wouldn't somehow remove the ability to use a single app store for those that don't.
So, of iPhone buyers, you're left with two remaining groups:
1. People who care a little bit about side-loading but not enough to choose a difference device.
2. People who don't care about side-loading at all.
In any case:
> the people who really cared about side-loading
> 1. People who care a little bit about side-loading but not enough to choose a difference device.
This is not a useful model. If I choose feature X over feature Y, all you can really tell from that is that value(X) > value(Y). It doesn't tell you whether value(Y) <<< value(X). It's also important to note that this is vastly simplified, because there are many features and issues that people must combine and weigh against each other.
To illustrate, if a product offers side-loading but kills your mother on first use, if you choose a different product it doesn't mean you don't "really" care about side-loading. You might genuinely care a tremendous amount, but sacrificing your mother isn't an option for you.
I differentiate between products that I buy because they are a good option for me and products I buy because they are the least bad product for me. Phones are currently in the second group. It's not that I don't care about side-loading. It's that all issues combined, IOS is less bad for my purposes and preferences than Android.
To the extent that the lack of side-loading helps prevent the spread of malware and shady apps stealing user data, I think they value it indirectly.
Android has serious malware problems. Even Epic's attempt to distribute Fortnite off the Play Store has directly led to fake APKs being distributed to unsuspecting users.
I don't see how you can open up iOS to side-loading without exposing it to the exact same malware problems Android has.
The enabling of sideloading on Android phones already comes with warnings written in plain language, and even if you want to install an app from e.g. the browser it asks you to give the browser permission to install apps, so it's pretty idiot-proof...
Any game developer could at any point opt out of using Steam and accept payments on their own site, or go through another store. Most developers don't bother because Steam provides enough value to make it worthwhile.
It's impossible to determine if this is the case with the App Store since competitors don't (and can't) exist.
WUT?! This is so arbitrary and petty. So we're supposed to feel thankful that the all mighty Apple is allowing 1 on 1 personal fitness trainers and tutors but not build something that is scalable?