I don't think this is the glowing review that you think it is.

I don’t think any of you remember that AT&T and friends wanted 70%. Seventy.

The old protection racket taking your entire arm if you didn't pay isn't an argument that the new one only taking a couple fingers is reasonable

So what’s the right number? 0%? Any number would elicit moaning from the peanut gallery. Look at retail store gross margins on the products they sell (I.e. their cut of the retail price), and the terms they set for their wholesalers.

The right number is decided by competition. Different payment processors vie for customers by offering better deals until profit margins stabilize at a reasonable level. That's impossible with a monopoly.

Thank you for this. People seem to get bogged down in what percentage is right or wrong (something that reasonable people can very reasonably disagree about), but ultimately the problem is that there's no competitive marketplace.

Absolutely this. I don’t understand why is it such a hard concept to grasp.

Apple Store isn't a Point of Sale system you outsource to IBM.

It's inventory, delivery, and to an extent stewardship. The same with Steam. I don't expect junk and I expect refunds when I find it. Once you split that to a vendor the perverse incentives kick in and you end up right back in the Bad Place.

I personally think somewhere in the neighborhood of 18% is probably closer to sustainable, given all that we expect. And I also think Apple fucked up. If they had voluntarily reduced their fees and created the intro level at the same time, and a year or so earlier, they could have picked a higher number than they are likely now to end up with when all is said and done.

None of that changes the fact that you need competition.

Did you just compare the markup of a retailer after negotiation with their supplier to the fee of a monopolist of the means of distribution on someone else's offered price? Because it seems to me those are very different things.

Yeah, I'm aware, but for the entities who have the revenue that justifies taking Apple or Google to court, it's 30%. Which is fairly egregious for a glorified package manager.

And in Apple's case an extremely restrictive package manger. Want to send encrypted notifications? Got to request the entitlements.

You can send encrypted notifications without any entitlement. I assume you are talking about sending notifications without displaying the notification to the user.

Sorry but I don't want random apps spaming me with junk. If they want to send me notifications, then yes they should request my (the user's) permission.

Oh I fully agree.

I meant the Hidden Notification Entitlement. By default iOS requires you to display a notification when you receive one.

But that conflicts with the idea of encrypting notifications. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38545984

Steam also takes 30%, and I’m not convinced they’re doing as much work for it as Apple.

That said, if I could not pay both Steam and Apple for Civ VI DLC, that would make me so happy

> Apple charges 30% on your second $million

Not exactly. That would be a purely progressive tax like US income taxes. With the Small Business Program, what you say is only true the first time you cross 1 mil. Assuming your revenue never goes down (you can appeal if it does), in all future years you pay the full price. So if your app makes a consistent $1.5 mil / year, you’re paying the full tax on all of that revenue, not just $.5 of it.

Oh damn. That’s even worse, thank you for the clarification.