"Charge your customer more for your work" is VERY meaningfully different from "Charge someone else's customer more for someone else's work, because you own the storefront for someone else's business".
Sure, building the storefront is hard and high leverage. But figuring out the moral answer to "who reaps the rewards" is an entirely different journey.
I think it's disputable. It would seem to be adding about the same amount of value that the Windows store does for Windows users. How much is that?
It is simple not at all comparable in quality to the app store on iOS.
Apple in that regard is holding them hostage.
Imagine Google pulling the same stunt for inclusion into their app store and it quickly becomes apparent how the pricing structure is laughable at face value.
As of September of 2021 in the US[1], both Apple and Google's mobile app payment policies have converged[2] as Google mandates that all app developers use their payment platform and only their payment platform, along with mandating a 15% to 30% cut of all app payments. I believe Google's policy matches Apple's when it comes to this example.
[1] https://fossbytes.com/google-mandates-android-apps-to-pay-30...
[2] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
> Android has always allowed people to get apps from multiple app stores. In fact, most Android devices ship with at least two app stores preinstalled, and consumers are able to install additional app stores. Each store is able to decide its own business model and consumer features. This openness means that even if a developer and Google do not agree on business terms the developer can still distribute on the Android platform. This is why Fortnite, for example, is available directly from Epic's store or from other app stores including Samsung's Galaxy App store.
The implication is that apps can choose to only publish in stores with more favorable IAP terms, not that each store is somehow eligible to a fixed percentage of the $120/yr fee for a costco membership that may or may not have originated within the app store's ecosystem. Otherwise, at a cut of 30% per store, an app would owe platforms 120% of subscription revenue to be on merely 4 stores, regardless of how the customer converted.
When you raise your prices on your own work, there’s usually an implied alternative like not hiring you. We know there’s no such thing when it comes to iOS.
Creating and providing access to a lucrative market is valuable. What's the moral imperative for allowing others to provide access to the market you created or reduce your fees, both of which would reduce your profits for the benefit of everyone else who is trying to increase their profits?
"Tech Immigration" is largely H1B immigration is prefectly valid to be opposed to H1B while being pro immigration.
H1B is a predatory program designed to lower wages and put immigrants in a terrible stop when in comes to the immigration status, i.e the employer holds not only their income, but their ability to remain in the nation in the palm of their hands. This created a toxic and coercive relationship with the employer.
At the same time a correction to this program, and a correction to the low skilled workers is simply allowing more open immigration, if you want to come here to work you should be able to.
The alternative is a sane program that is detached from your employer’s whims and provides you some stability and control. As of this writing, that program in the US is called a green card. But don’t get me started on how hard that is get.
I want to be clear no where did I say anything about "open borders", I said "more open immigration"
I do believe in some controls on immigration, security controls as an example. However I also believe it should be vastly easier than it is today, order of magnitude more open than it is today.
With that in mind, consider also that 'and according to a 2018 study by the National Foundation for American Policy, immigrants founded or cofounded 55% of the United States' billion-dollar companies.' [1] It's not a zero-sum game, and stapling would-be founders to companies they would rather not work at for decades (H-1B for Indian born folks) hoping to get the freedom to found the next unicorn is quite a waste of time, talent and their risk-on years.
As an aside, it's interesting that folks want high wages, high disposable income, low inequality, low prices and low inflation all at the same time. I strongly suspect that these are fundamentally incompatible goals. Feels like, at most, a pick-two kind of thing.
[1] https://hbr.org/2021/08/research-why-immigrants-are-more-lik...
Of course there is abuse. Even systemic abuse. This goes both ways though. For instance, Indian applicants can wait for over a decade for green card, we're talking completely americanized, fluent and self sufficient people, often with high positions at companies. People who did everything right, by any standard. Are these people abused? Perhaps, but if so, it's because the US government refuses to acknowledge them as permanent residents, which they clearly are for all practical purposes.
Alternatives and improvements to H1B is important, but suspiciously few in this community were interested in such a discussion at the time. Imo, parent comment is spot on that this is one of the hackernews dissonances.
I may have done the same! Parent and gp are scrubbing any nuance and leaving cartoon version of arguments, then fighting that strawman. Not all immigration is the same, IMO, sameness is a requisite for arguing the only "rational" positions can either be pro-immigration (all of it) or anti-immigration, which is absurd and reductive.
This is not about Apple charging more - it's about Apple charging for something they did not add any value to. This is closer to Oracle's billing tactics, that rightfully get pilloried on HN, the only difference is I'm yet to encounter anyone on HN defend Oracle's billing practices.
I am sure a large part of it has to do with the fact that until certain points in the process, you cannot change your employer without restarting the process, so a lot of people just stay without making a fuss about it.
Edit. Regardless, as it stands, the current H1B is indeed a broken system ripe for exploitation.
It appears your pro immigration stance is for people, who are less educated and more likely to provide cheaper non tech services. To summarize, your stance is not for pro or against immigration, but to serve your own interests like everyone.
Facts, Reality, 1000's of people that have exploited by the system and talk about their experiences publicly just like your fellow commenter that seems to have had a different experience than you.
>>Based on my personal experience,I don't think it is. H1B is boon for many people, who came here, got educated and started contributing to the local economy.
2 things can be true at the same time as well, it could very well be a boon for the person, but it could also artificially stunt their growth due to the restrictions placed on them by the program, I am not sure how anyone could honestly argue that is better for the immigrant to be locked into their employer, and for the employer to have the power to deportation over their employee.. Or honestly argue that would not be abused by less than ethical employers of which there many.
You may have found a good one, I can assure you not everyone does
>>It appears your pro immigration stance is for people, who are less educated and more likely to provide cheaper non tech services.
That seems to be a huge leap based on an assumption that does not track with reality. I am unclear as to what would prevent highly educated people from immigrating to the US with more open immigration, but how H1B does not?
>>To summarize, your stance is not for pro or against immigration, but to serve your own interests like everyone.
Does not serve my interests at all really. I am not impacted by immigration one way or the other.
I do agree with you that most people will see their lives improved when compared to the country they immigrated from. However, the abuse does exist.
The complaint isn't that H1B should go away. It that it needs reform.
I have the opposite view and don't believe they are diametrically opposed. I see many legitimate reasons to cap unskilled immigration while seeing virtually no good reasons to cap skilled.
Imagine a web developer gets hired to build a landing page for a product. Yes please, charge twice as much for your work, sure. But say they tried to charge an ongoing 30% of all future revenue for that product. Do you think HN would be behind that?
Actually many people do just fine without Apple.
However if many players decide to get out from Apple ecosystem, it'll be Apple that'll change stance here.
Since you’re talking about web, if you want to be on Shopify’s or Salesforce’s marketplace, you need to share revenue too.
Before iPhone, operating systems and the web were wide open for computation. You could install everything you wanted.
Apple views the iPhone as a sovereign territory, not just some generic compute resource. They can delete accounts, block access to the CPU, and charge whatever taxes they want. It's their land. In their minds, you're blessed to have the opportunity to be on their platform. Your users are strictly on loan from Apple, and you're going to pay for access to their customers. Your app better behave.
The market evolved into the shape that it did because Apple had a great product, a fun evolution of iPod, and a simple and compelling UI. Microsoft missed the shot, Android took time to get its act together.
None of this was a bad deal for developers at the time, but now there's no way to avoid it. We're now living in a sort of North Korea. Entrenched, with no way out. Over half of your potential customers don't have other devices and you can't reach them any other way than going through Apple.
It sucks for small companies in tech having to carve out ever smaller pieces of the pie. Year by year the market shrinks because the giants take it, tax it, and ration it out. If we'd have known then what we know now, we would have bought up every first generation iPhone and buried them all in a ditch.
iPhone is compute, but they'll be damned if you do anything that threatens their dear platform and profits.
We should push for our legislators to require open installs without an App Store. Customers already pay for the device. They shouldn't have to pay additional taxes for us trying to develop for them, trying to survive in this already hostile market.
That wasn’t always true of phones (pre-iPhone smartphones), PDAs, games consoles, workstations, or some mainframes. Platform owners requiring license fees for on developers on their platform, using their dev tools, was not invented by Apple.
That makes it unlike either a one-time or a flat maintenance fee.
Apple, much like the solo developer, is looking out for its best interests and what will help it continue to grow.
You'll need to ask patio11 for comment. He might have had some disciples regurgitating it, but he's ultimately responsible for this viewpoint. (Not saying I entirely disagree...)
And here's a comment with more; it has definitely been a theme:
It’s a different thing entirely when you’re the sole gatekeeper between hundreds of millions of customers and anyone wanting to sell them apps and digital services.
It might not qualify as monopoly in the legal sense, but you’re still being a bully, abusing a position of power in the market.
- If you are to build a product with similar quality to Xiaomi's, it has to be priced higher than Xiaom's, because unless your production/sales volume is on par with Xiaomi, your production cost is very likely higher than Xiaomi's. Customers will prefer Xiaomi's product because it is cheaper.
- If you cut down production cost by bringing down quality, you might be able to price the product in Xiaomi's price range. But customers will still prefer Xiaomi because it has better quality for the same price range.
1: https://www.gizmochina.com/2019/11/28/xiaomi-ceo-says-that-g...
This sort of cognitive dissonance is pretty par for the course for communities like this.
There is a difference between a pricey product and a high taxes.
But you are right, HN used to be about the little David entrepreneur. Since ~2012 it's all about "fuck making a startup and go work for The Man"
What’s really interesting to me is that moves like this are the embodiment of the “charge more” mantra that is (or at least was) extremely popular on Hacker News for years. For a long time it felt like every HN thread about pricing or salary negotiation was full of people insisting that you needed to “charge more” in every conceivable situation.
If you made a thing that was producing a lot of money for your clients, you needed to “charge more”! If your customers weren’t complaining and leaving, you needed to “charge more”!
Yet every time a company actually does a “charge more” type move, HN reaches for the pitchforks.
It’s interesting to see how clear-cut this dichotomy is depending on who the reader thinks is being charged more.