I suspect there's a DMA v2 coming, and it's going to be much much harder on them with this behaviour.

EDIT: https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...

2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue

this seems obscene

> this seems obscene

This is why I never cared about the 30% take: it was combining all the costs you'd have anyway into one simple number. People just acted like those things were all free just because Apple wasn't explicitly listing them.

Could you optimise your expenses better by splitting them?

Probably.

And that may even be worth forcing the issue from a competitive PoV, because it means some customers will be effectively subsidising others: A weekly updated 2 gigabyte app that's free in the app store gets its bandwidth paid for in part by a 30 Mb app that charges a $10 monthly subscription and gets an update every 3 months.

But even then, companies are expected to make profits. What's the level where it's fine for Apple to say "we want this much extra just for us"? For a lot of people the answer seems to be "zero!" — while this probably would not disincentivise Apple from making iOS given they also profit on the hardware, it would almost certainly disincentivise Google from bothering with any updates to Android.

In a pure technical sense, you're right, a mobile phone's computer doesn't have to be locked down such that the manufacturer like Apple controls the subsequent financial transactions on it.

Instead of technical reasons, what happened was Apple taking advantage of historical control of cellphones by the carriers that was in place before Apple flipped the relationship around in 2007:

- (1) before 2007, the cell carriers like AT&T and Verizon controlled what kind of software could be on the Palm Treo, Blackberry, Motorola, etc.

- (2) Apple showed an iPhone prototype to Cingular/AT&T that impressed them so much that they were willing to give up software platform control to Apple. This was the first time a phone manufacturer had the leverage to do this. Cingular was lagging behind Verizon so that's why Cingular was willing to play ball and relinquish control.

- (3) after 2007, Apple now controls the phone's software ecosystem with their App Store restrictions and it's a power they want to keep. In their mind, they feel justified since they are the ones who spent money on developing the phone and they're allowing more "freedom" of 3rd-party software than the carriers did.

Apple's perspective is that its smartphones are not "open" computers like the IBM PC and Macbooks. Instead, it's the "closed" computers like the Sony PlayStation.

Another "closed" computer is the AMD Ryzen + Linux system in Tesla's infotainment system. There is no "Tesla app store" for it. Instead, a 3rd-party app like Spotify has to forge a formal contractual partnership with Tesla to get integrated into the car's software. Some stories about that: https://www.google.com/search?q=spotify+signs+partnership+wi...

Likewise, is there any technical reason why Tesla can't let you sideload any app on the car? No. But Tesla doesn't let you.

Cars are effectively bullets, they can kill people, so you can't just install anything in a car. I'm sure there's plenty of laws requiring Tesla and other car manufacturers to lock down car software.

(Just like there are laws requiring phone manufacturers to lock down phones - you can't just install an app that lets you override the GSM protocol and mess with the spectrum, not even on Android!)

All that to say that if things are properly compartmentalized there is no danger in letting the user install any software he desires.

I'd like to agree, but that's a big "if". The more I learn, the less I trust any of these things I use continuously.

Of course, Apple are also the ones who extended smartphones to a mass-market product, as before then devices like the Centro were very niche.

It's worth watching "Blackberry" (2023) to see an instance of this in the style of a documentary drama.

But if it was a smartphone then it allowed third party apps to be installed without restriction. However, the OS itself might have been heavily controlled and/or modified by the carrier. It was common that say, Microsoft, would release an OS update and then that OS update goes to the carrier for testing and modification and then sometime later you get it. Apple, of course, was not interested in participating in that system.

Part of the early success of Android was that being an open platform meant that carriers retained a huge amount of control and they would release heavily customized carrier-specific phones.

PlayStation is seen by most people as an appliance for playing video games. Phones, on the other hand, are explicitly general-purpose computers. The iPhone is literally the only case of a "closed" general-purpose computer in this entire universe.

But it's 2024.

I grew up on the App Store, maybe I'm just old and cranky at 35. But my guess is 95% of people cry in pain when they see a wall of text about how Verizon charged for J2ME apps in 2004, therefore iPhones iPads Apple Watches Vision Pros are special exemptions and Apple should be able to bill "$0.50 per install per year." whenever a binary is installed on a device you paid for. There's 0 reason for it.

Anyone is free to enter the hardware market with an open platform. There are some devices for sale which allow this. But they're enormously unpopular.

It's not really any different in my mind than phones with more battery life, a better camera, or any other product mix.

But the situation here is that there is now an actual law mandating that no, you're not to allowed host an app store on your phone OS without allowing alternative app stores.

For an exaggerated analogy, you can't make a car without seatbelts and tell consumers that if they value safety they should purchase a different brand of car.

Too late. It already is. Which makes all these restrictions on what you can and can't do with it stupid especially if its gonna sell for an amount of money nearly equal to reasonably spec'ed laptop.

Contrast with, say, Adobe, which makes computer software not distributed through any App store and is a $278 billion company.

Android is fully open. No one is making you use Google services. You can, in fact, buy a Pixel and simply uninstall the Play Store. As a developer, you can distribute your app without any Google involvement whatsoever.

It's true however that you can use microG to replace Google Services, but even then some banks will block your account upon doing that (happened to me).

Granted, this really is a completely different point to what you were discussing, and I do agree with you. But, if we want truly open ecosystems, we need standards that ensure the authenticity of the user. Unfortunately, that gets distopian fast.

I really don't know what to think of all of this.

This is on the Pinephone Pro btw.

That you then can't really do anything with either because of the super limited HW support (due to only using "free" drivers) or because they're so slow you just give up in frustration. Or lack of apps.

At least in the case of the Librem 5 its wildly overpriced for what you actually get (if you ever actually get it that is).

If you think the hardware is slow, have a look at SXMo.

> if you ever actually get it that is

They've been delivering the phones within 10 days since a long tome already. Sent from my Librem 5.

Let's suppose that I still use Windows, which was installed on that laptop. I'm using Debian instead, but let's forget about it. Anyway, HP probably paid Microsoft for the OS. That's all that should be. I don't see any reason for me to pay Microsoft.

Now, let's suppose that both HP and Microsoft switch to a subscription model where the laptop costs some xx Euro per month and for the OS. Then it's different, I would think if I want to enter into that relationship and if I do then I would be OK for them "to keep their finger in the pie".

I won't use Windows anyway and I probably won't buy a subscription based computer. On the other side that would make me upgrade more often. It's more or less what some people do when selling their Mac to buy a new one. Sometimes the new one is not that good though.

If so, why did Google feel the need to bribe developers to keep their apps on the Play store?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632818/google-project-h...

I guess 2010's Google didn't want any trace of a popular gaming store to take over, given that we now know F2P mobile games are 70% of the app store revenue (and I'm sure it's similar to Google). If EA made the supposed Steam of Android and most games chose to focus on the EA store, that's a huge cut into Google revenue, even if most other apps would still be on the play store. So better not to risk it at all.

We all had to pay the licensing fee for the software. For many of us, a fee is paid yearly to the OS developer on our behalf. Just because the fee is not explicitly placed against our own debit/credit card balances doesn't mean a fee isn't being paid.

But even the fee argument misses the point. Myself and others are not asking that Apple not charge a fee. My feeling was that 30% on App revenue for example was too much. Given that the charges are now being itemized out in the open a bit better, do I still believe the fee was too high? I cautiously respond 'yes'. But I can now see where I might have been mistaken about what the amalgamation of the costs incurred to run this thing look like.

I guess all I really wanted was transparency. Let's get it all on the table and see what's what. Maybe 30% is a good deal? Maybe it's not? I don't know if you don't tell me everything that went into that. Consumers should be informed, that's probably more what I believe now. I no longer believe we should change the model before we get a better idea of what the costs will be going forward. That could bankrupt a lot of small devs right now.

On the other hand, I'm old enough to remember when operating system upgrades were around 10% of the price of the original computer (for each upgrade, about once per year but not at all regular), and when I couldn't afford a compiler.

They think of them far more like consoles or appliances.

And the people that want pocketable computers have plenty of options.

The PC is “the one that got away” in fishing parlance.

Personally I see the broader trend towards highly-restricted corporate-controlled hardware (of all types) as something explicitly detrimental that we should push back on wherever possible.

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing

https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

or watch the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFY0a_VOGbE

Battery life. Simple as that.

Personal computers are the special case where you don’t have to pay the platform provider - there are far more phones+consoles+set top boxes than computers

Apple was very explicit from day one and anyone who buys an iOS device knows exactly what they are going to get.

If Apple features you, then I guess it’s pretty fair to say you’ve paid a marketing expense, but they feature a tiny percent of apps. Most of us get nothing but buried in the app store.

30% is a lot.

They could also just charge a large cost for access to the SDK a la console systems, or not actually track the downloads but have a license agreement where you pay based on your user base like other ecosystems (Unity?).

This is not one sided at all. Historically generally Apple benefited more from developers releasing apps on their platforms than the other way around. Arguably that's still the case.

> Apple has to pay for all that somehow

So by selling devices? How did they pay for developing OSX/macOS and their APIs and tools for decades?

> They could also just charge a large cost for access to the SDK a la console systems,

There are many exploitative and unfair things they could do because of their dominant positions in the market, yes that's correct.

Badly. They very nearly went bankrupt with that model.

Like between 2000 and 2007? They did just fine, just like macOS is perfectly fine now.

Also: is macOS "perfectly fine now"? How many people only use it because it's necessary for iOS development?

Exactly, he knew that the success of the platform relied on third party developers (NeXTSTEP was a huge improvement)

> Also: is macOS "perfectly fine now"? How many people only use it because it's necessary for iOS development?

I don't know? Do you? I would bet on around 5%. Although I'm not quite sure what's your point?

> Like between 1993 and 2000,

Which was a relatively short period, compared to their post 2000 succes.

Third party devs can and will develop their own tools and frameworks. Apple charges 30% simply because they can, and nobody has stopped them.

Nobody buys an iPhone because of the SDK.

Nobody… except perhaps developers.

Apple makes those things so that developers make more apps for their phones, which they want to support in order that people continue to buy new phones.

> Apple charges 30% simply because they can, and nobody has stopped them.

Yes.

And unless the government says "the thing we don't like is specifically the price", what you're going to get from demanding side-loading and other app stores is going to look like the same price charged in a more complex way that's distributed differently over all the developers.

This also means that it's likely some app providers will suddenly discover their costs go up.

As a consumer, I'm fine with however this shakes out: I spend almost nothing on apps anyway, and the selection is too large for me to care about the size and diversity within the marketplace.

As an iOS app developer, I have no idea how any of these options may or may not affect the demand for my skills on the job market, but I still don't care much because GenAI is a much bigger change than all of these options combined.

As an investor, I've been expecting Apple to hit the upper limit for corporation size before monopoly lawsuits 2 trillion dollars of market cap ago, which is one reason why I bought S&P 500 instead of APPL (the other being I'd like my income and my investments to avoid too many correlated failures).

Yes, they do. They explicitly stated so during the Epic trial. Otherwise there would be no fee at all.

But most companies have some plan to monetize their software even if they also make money on the hardware.

1. Apple and Microsoft have both developed these things for 40 years without the fees and restrictions. They do it for the health of their ecosystem to sell devices/OSes.

2. The only reason there are two mobile OSes with significant marketshare (instead of more than two) is the app library. WinMo never took off because even though it was a wonderful OS, they couldn't get developers to make apps. It's hard to imagine now that any party, even one with practically infinite money like Amazon or Apple or Samsung, could develop a successful mobile OS because they'd be launching with two million fewer apps.

Chromebooks have been selling briskly with a relatively new OS because people no longer cared about apps on desktops when everything started working in a browser. This is the obvious attack vector for phones. If you can do everything in a browser you can do in an app, the door is open for another OS. That's why Apple doesn't want third-party browsers.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/06/iphone-users-spend-apps/

The exact same thing Epic is doing with their games engines.

Building and supporting the SDKs that developers use to make money.

You're implying that this is a somehow onesides transaction and Apple is doing developers a favour while Apple always needed third party developers as much as developers need them (with iOS of course this balance changed a bit which allowed Apple to become a lot more exploitative than they were before/still are if we're talking about macOS)

Give it about a month, and I'd guess so.

> Apple is just making these charges up, because they think they can get away with it.

Yes, with my non-existent MBA I assumed that's how most businesses set prices?

Business are not your friend, they're looking out for themselves only. This is why I do actually like governments: they can force businesses to be more aligned with public interests, even when that costs shareholders some dividends.

If that's the case, hopefully legislation will catch up.

I suppose ultimately, the market is fragmenting and Apple is aiming to pull and set levels to encourage as many developers as possible to stick with the current system.

I suppose they're counting on the fact that inertia and laziness will encourage continued loyalty when it comes to non free apps.

Imagine a new developer publishes a free app without a plan for monetization, and then it goes viral. They would be on the hook for thousands of dollars.

Unless they have a reason to switch most new apps will likely stick to the old model

So EU businesses will simply have more options to choose from.

Not very many businesses, but there are quite a few biiig ones.

Here on HN I often read startup stories about services which, on one hand, “nobody” has heard about, and which, on the other hand, “quickly grew to a couple million users and started having scalability problems”, which then spawns some story about scalability tricks. Always leaves me astonished as to how the heck some another glorified todo list/cat picture thing can rake millions of users so fast, but here we are.

I suspect there are way more niches in which tens of millions of users live, which the rest of us can just be ignorant of. It’s only when you approach a billion users that you can be sure “everyone” at least has heard the name of the service/app.

It's more interesting about the upstart companies who might get big one day.

Edit: Of course, eBay will likely continue to be allowed.

This applies similarly to many other businesses. There is a sweet spot for prices to maximize profit.

Maybe iPhone costs would increase a few percent, probably not.

This is just egregious rent seeking.

I don’t think Epic would either. They will build their own store and be the new Steam.

I've been wondering for a long time why there are no delta-updates at Apple...

Had they charged 10%, nobody will be complaining.

The buyer always wants the transaction to be more affordable and the seller always wants the transaction to be more profitable. The exact numbers don’t change that.

I think the thing that angers people is that the cost feels hidden, even if it’s common knowledge. You look at menu prices and see a price but tips, taxes, and credit card processing fees aren’t included. It can take you by surprise if you’re not thinking about it, even if you’ve been through the same dance many times before.

If I were running Apple, I would instead find a way to charge for developer accounts, code signing, etc. Things that are set up ahead of time and can have a known value, charged for upfront. I believe this would feel more fair, no matter the cost.

How much is it after a year?

I think people forget what it cost to sell and market software before the App Store. There’s plenty written about this…

That's untrue, from my experience using Kagi (payment processor) to sell shareware in c. 2010.

Kagi had fixed fees in addition to a percentage, so anything sold for $5 had close to 30% just from Kagi, and my bandwidth also independently ended up close to 30% of my post-marketplace fees.

A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app.

However, there's extra mumbo jumbo about "it doesn't count for 12 months after a first install is counted. But the next one after starts a new first annual install."

So it's essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic.

Are you referring to something specific here? Does Orange County have some stereotyped association with MLM schemes or something? (I'm genuinely asking as that would be hilarious and I'd love to learn more)

I'm from Orange County, California, and it's hardly a center of the MLM universe.

Honestly, if it's the center of anything like that, it's drug and alcohol rehabs.

Also, updates do count.

"A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app."

> First annual install. The first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge.

This is on a per account basis - not a per device basis. The install for a phone and iPad are the same install.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/distribut...

There's also usually up to a 10% "breakage" between people who install from the App Store but never run your app.

If I delete Overcast from my iPhone or install it on a brand new iPad, all of my data is kept in sync. That data is stored in a database where the user id is that opaque blob.

Marco Arment (the author) does all he can to discourage users from storing a user name/password/email address as part of the login and only requires you to have one to associate your user to your account to access your podcasts on the web.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/distribut...

Yes the fee is insane.

But I agree, as expected, this will go to round two.

Probably not even a new DMA just a court case about malicious compliance. The DMA was written expecting apples reaction

Still that they will reduce the commission fee is quite important on its own.

If this reduces the flood of free ad financed apps and moves the market to a more sustainable model I'm all for it (although I realise this stance is probably controversial)

This I don't understand. What exactly would the court case be about? "You're following the law but we didn't mean it like that?"

If you want them to do things differently, don't you need to either 1. prove that they aren't following the DMA, or 2. change the DMA?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance

That gives preference to apples own app (the app store) which they can only do because they are still Gatekeeping.

> Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu/#...

Pretty clear malicious compliance. "Oh, you want to be able to distribute your popular free apps on other app stores? You gotta start paying us massively then."

- They sell hardware and licensed software to consumers. Within the law they may ask for money for feature updates.

- They also charge developers for access to their tools and access to their store front and payment handling.

That's all legit and if they want to hike prices or put parts of that information behind paywalls, the market will sort it out.

But if a consumer and a third party developer want to do business without all that, then it's my (and the DMAs) stance that apple has no right to a share of that. They EU is increasingly of the opinion that, in general, a device has to serve its owner and not the original manufacturer.

When they want to protect consumers by scanning for known malware that's fine but "Apple loses revenue" is not a threat at all.

It reads like one of those buzzwords that doesn’t actually mean anything useful in a the context of a court of law, at least as a prosecutable offense, but gets talked about like it does, because the statement itself reads like an oxymoron. You’re either compliant with the law or you’re not, and malicious is subjective. Am I off base by saying that? What am I missing?

It depends on the area of law, traditions, common sense etc how much that ia true, but in general, disregarding transparent workarounds is a thing.

So if it comes down to whether Apple is compliant, wouldn’t you just stack up their measures against the law as written? Which would then mean compliance is compliance, and the onus then falls on whatever prosecutorial authority is empowered here to show that it is not.

And there is only one possible outcome: Apple will bend to the EU's will, because in the end the European market is too profitable to ignore.

The commission knows they really don't have much to stand on, if they go any farther they know other EU countries are going to step in again (these rules are not very popular anymore after GDPR and now that the EU is falling even farther behind the USA economically).

The EU commission is a lot less powerful than a lot of terminally online Americans like to believe. EU courts constantly rule against them for overstepping their bounds and they have been caught submitting fake evidence before (see: Qualcomm case)

Right, Far-right and EU-sceptic parties are predicted to become much stronger.

So their stance might change on some topics

The european far right are hardly fans of large American tech companies

now, if they were domestic, that would be entirely different

Those parties are running predominantly on nationalism and populism. If anything they will be happy to screw US tech companies even more.

No law like the DMA passes without the approval of parliament and the council of member states. In fact, all the details are hashed out between these two bodies with little to no say from the commission.

BTW: The way the commission is selected is one step removed from the voters but this principle is not too uncommon in European parliamentary democracies. For example the German or Austrian Chancellors or the prime ministers of Italy ,Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Poland are elected in a similar fashion.

Do they have a much more favorable attitude towards American tech giants than whoever is in power now?

https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#d...

> First annual install. The first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge.

Multiple devices with one account or new devices over the course of the 12 months are still a single install.

https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...

Worse, a game that has 5M installs and only earns $1 per year will still have to pay Apple $2.17M per year.

> iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

So App Store or not, you need to pay the fee.

You don’t have to pay the fee if you stay on the existing business terms.

> Also today, Apple is sharing new business terms available for developers’ apps in the European Union. Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms.

Nothing here suggests the new terms replace the existing terms, just that it's now a choice for developers in the EU.

It's also beneficial if you keep you

1. Keep your install base under 1M. So only if you're sure you have a niche app that you barely need to maintain.

2. If you somehow have a premium popular app. A $2 app would mean Apple is taking a 25% cut, a $5 app is taking 10%. Of course, since this is per device you will probably be hit by users who use multiple devices. Worse yet, apparently the install fee is "first install per year" and includes updates. So you will take a huge revenue dive if you want to maintain, de-incentivizing devs from supporting existing users

3. Manage your own alternative storefront. I feel this is where the deal may start to hit anti-trust issues depending on how the store takes these costs. Apple doesn't have to pay it's own store fee while a new store has to pay Apple for existing. Sounds like a way to suppress competition before it starts.

I guess Epic v Apple part 2 will hit faster than expected.

EDIT: oh, I don't know the logistics, but #4 can be ad supported apps. The most user hostile style of app but potentially one that can keep making it's $0.50 back year after year if they have an engaged user base. But since I know so little about adtech I am happy to be corrected on if this is sustainable

The bandwidth that everyone is forced to use. The web has shown that decentralizing distribution is not only possible but works well. This is just another way for the worlds most profitable company to continue to rent seek.

That seems perfectly fine as long as you sell your apps like a man and don't make ad-ridden free-to-play shit.

> this seems obscene

The web browser is right there. You don't have to have an app.

Any apps distributed through third parties pay their own CTF if they meet the threshold.

Threshold doesn’t apply to third party app stores, they start paying per install of their store from the first install.

So third party stores can host free apps without worrying about the CTF for those apps.

But that cost to free apps means that useful free apps won't sign up to the program, and therefore won't be available in the third party stores. It's a distinction without a difference. While I'm sure Apple will argue the distinction when they get pulled up on this, it's pretty obvious that the EU is expecting viable 3rd party stores and Apple will be forced to deliver it. The more they screw around the more likely that EU will set stronger regulations with less discretion on implementation.

Now you bring up a new concern.

Namely that useful free apps would get so popular outside of the App Store that they’ll reach 1M installs on EU iPhones within a given year and that the cost per install they owe over installs in excess of that 1M would be prohibitively costly that they’d rather not.

I think that’s a pretty significant difference from the other scenario, one in which alternative stores are on the hook for all the apps they host. Normally I would chalk it up to a difference of opinion, but we’re talking about significant factual differences.

Meta-discussion aside, I struggle to come up with an example of such an app that currently exists and would be subject to that CTF.

Non-profits, educational institutions and governments are exempt, so you’d almost certainly end up with an app by a company that extracts value out of it whether as a companion app to a service or some startup that’s burning through runway money.

Ultimately Apple wants to be paid for their IP, for the use of their frameworks and toolchain. Earlier this week some people were saying that Apple then should split off the fee for that from the commission. This is exactly that, and at a progressive rate where the first million installs is free, seems fair enough to me.

I see no viability issues for third party stores here because one way or another there is no free lunch.

> The more they screw around the more likely that EU will set stronger regulations with less discretion on implementation.

As someone who used to practice law in the EU on an EU and international level this always makes me chuckle. The EU and its bodies are not some benevolent dictatorship that can do whatever they want. They too need to move within the bounds of the law and have been burned when crossing those boundaries.

The DMA in its current form hasn’t even been subjected to adjudication, which on its own is going to be quite interesting, much less some hypothetical v2 that is stricter.

The main hurdle for the EU (and the US for that matter) is IP and property rights. You can’t legislate your way around that without significant overhaul which would reverberate across all of commerce.

Or put plainly: you can’t just say “what’s yours is now public domain”.

Closest you’re ever going to get is “what’s yours should be sold at a reasonable price to others” and it’s going to be one hell of a burden to convince a court that this isn’t a reasonable price at any given day, much less when there ample examples in the market that charge more.

Another, more fundamental issue specific to the EU is that European courts really don’t like laws that look like they target a specific company or individual. The DMA’s issue is that it doesn’t just look like that, it outright broadcasts that it does that.

Apple had a decent chance at fighting the DMA as it currently exists, so to be quite honest, I expected them to make some basic concessions, await enforcement actions by the EC and then fight that tooth and nail.

Instead, to my utter surprise, they capitulated in nearly everything and then went above and beyond the DMA requirements. The purpose of that is clear, to establish a very strong legal posture for the inevitable court case.

What?

Developing, compiling, distributing, and having users run an iOS app is not a "use of Apple's IP". The use of Xcode, SDKs, header files, etc is. What happens when an open-source SDK that is completely free of any Apple-copyrighted code comes around? What would the use of Apple's IP be then?

I ask this not as a gotcha, it’s a serious question.

There is no way to write an app that doesn’t use a single piece of Apple code.

Create a new project in Xcode, simply write print(“Hello, world!) right click on the print method, click “Jump to Definition” and you get to read Apple’s code.

To say nothing of all the boilerplate stuff (and more importantly all the stuff underneath it that is automatically created when you create a new project and that is necessary to run the app.

The open source SDK you talk about might be completely free of Apple’s code, but it most definitely makes use of Apple’s code.

It "makes use of Apple's code" in the sense that it calls iOS APIs. But the resulting binary wouldn't have Apple's IP, which is what matters for the purposes of copyright and patent law. When saying something "uses" an IP, we generally mean the exclusive rights granted to the holder by law. Merely interacting with an already-existing API on an already-existing copy of iOS is not "use".

If the opposite were true, all third-party aftermarket accessories for physical (patented) products that merely plugged in to the mechanisms and didn't implement them themselves would be illegal.

Oh I see: it seems like you only pay the fee if you choose to distribute outside the App Store.

It’s a dance, everybody knows the steps. Tech companies know the longer they can keep making money with their version of “X” the better - even if they know damn well they will lose when it goes to trial - which can take over a decade in some cases.

Microsoft practically invented the game, Google and Meta perfected it, and Apple is catching up.

I find such arguments more than absurd,

1. They have no issue doing that on macOS

2. Apple needs third party developers as much as the other way around. They are not doing this for free, they would sell a lot less devices if third party Apps weren't supported.

The world does not own Apple any level of profit.

So there's not going to be any problem with putting limits on the amount of money Apple can leech. Nor will there be any downside to doing it. Apple will not put any less effort into their platform or tooling even if such limits were in place. Nor is there any chance that Apple will abandon the EU market.

(If Apple was charging a nominal fee instead of a punitive one, they'd have a much better argument. But for Apple, it's not about the money they make from the technology fee. It's about making sure that the regulation can't actually achieve its purpose of promoting competition, because Apple will have smothered the competition in the crib.)

Fuck around, find out.

Epic is in no way more "European" than Apple.

Arguably that's not a new requirement, but simply the EU enforcing the existing single market rules.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/intra-eu-c...

> Before Intra-EU communications were capped, the average standard price of a fixed or mobile intra-EU call tended to be three times higher than the standard price of a domestic call. While the standard price of an intra-EU SMS was more than twice as expensive as a domestic one. In some cases the standard price of an intra-EU call was up to ten times higher than the standard price for domestic calls.

Which is why new iPhones still have Lighting connectors. Oh wait.

Just give it time to work its way out. We don't live in a cyberpunk dystopia yet.

As a consumer, lightning is a more pleasant to use connector than micro and therefore, I’m glad Apple didn’t cave at that time.

I still find plugging in the Lightning cable to be easier (less precise alignment needed) than a USB-C and by the time the iPhone 8 arrived with magnetic charging, any charging advantage to USB-C went away.

Of course if there were a law like that, they will rather point their fingers at the EU, over their users blaming apple for the slight inconvenience of changing.

It's obviously malicious compliance that hopefully isn't justifiable.

(They'll argue that this fee is required to keep the platform save which is obviously bullshit)

This needs to be funded somehow.

I'm surprised there are commenters who have such a strong view - that they should just be able to access all the benefits of the iOS ecosystem that Apple has built over many years, and then have all that access for free too.

Apple sells hardware. They don't give away software for free, you (generally) need their hardware per their licensing agreements.

You have to pay Apple $99/year to develop software for their ecosystem.

I pay them for their hardware, I pay them to let me write software -- you want me to pay them when others use my software? What about when others view photos I take with my phone? Do they want a cut of that too?

How anyone can think Apple's stance here is reasonable is beyond me. I haven't paid Microsoft anything in over a decade, I wonder how they can afford to fund Windows development?

[0] https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-app-marketpl...

I don't trust Apple at all with their capricious and arbitrary blocking of apps/updates. It was bad enough when it appeared to be mostly due to incompetence, but after what they did politically (and in concert with Google, Twitter and Facebook) to Parlor that's when any creditability they had for me in curating the app store went out the window. I don't care where you are on the political spectrum, when a company starts to go down that path it's a danger for all of us.

Of course there are costs incurred per install. Previously there were covered by a higher 30% fee on app costs. Now, with opening up the platform to alternative stores, the EU has pushed Apple to a per-install model.

So to me, this seems completely reasonable as a standard iPhone user.

I understand the security and performance of the platform costs more - that is why I use an iPhone not an Android.

Exactly zero, for alternate App Stores.

I paid $1300+ for my iPhone, I already covered those costs.

How are they covering it on macOS?

> New Business Terms for Apps in the EU

Also today, Apple is sharing new business terms available for developers’ apps in the European Union. Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms. Developers must adopt the new business terms for EU apps to use the new capabilities for alternative distribution or alternative payment processing.

Are you proposing we should go back to charging users for software updates? Personally, I think it makes more sense to take a cut from other people doing business on top of the platform.

They also pull in billions of dollars every year from their 30% cut on gambling/gacha games, and do almost nothing to earn that (those games have to provide their own updater/CDN because the Apple/Google ones aren't good enough, and those games don't meaningfully rely on Apple/Google for things like quality assurance or marketing.) Apple will be fine even if their Europe-specific cut is halved.

Claiming they're going to suffer or be unable to pay employees is simply not supported by any evidence.

"Have to"? For how long?

It cannot be a valid argument against regulation that your monopoly product supports other nonprofitable parts of your business.

Such constructions are hurting competition and maintaining the status quo. It is very difficult to compete against a product which is priced unsustainably cheap.

Even if you sell an App for 2€ that would mean you will lose all the income from it to fees in 4 years if you release at least one update per year that users install? I must be missing something?

emphasis added on and/or; it seems like Apple is being forced to break down fees according roughly to their costs (?). Maybe installs from altapp stores cost them some resources because they want to verify the notarization each time?

Or you mean that software should not be free for other people, but it's okay when it's free for you?

This is only adding new alternative choices, not changing or removing any current systems and methods and prices.

Also, is retro-gaming emulation really that popular in the EU? I don't think I know anyone who does that.

Retro-gaming emulators are quite popular here among nerds. I know several people who bought an Anbernic handheld, built a RetroPie, or similar.

why can't you do that?

So before the cost was $99 for 100% of users, and now it is $99 for 99.9999% of users, and a higher amount for a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction.

So if you have a popular free app, there is a good chance you will hit the 1M install threshold. This change is basically forcing you to monetize your app. Plenty of people can afford losing $99/year for having a free app that isn't monetized. Not many can afford losing several thousand per month.

[1] https://www.androidrank.org/categorystats?category=&price=al...

a) distribute outside the Apple App Store, or

b) pay the lower 17%/10% commission.

If you're already distributing the app for free, then you're not going to care about (b), so this only applies to apps that meet all three of the following criteria:

1. Free

2. Popular enough to significantly breach that 1M install threshold

3. Distributed through an alternative App Store

Anyone who has a popular free app out there right now doesn't need to change anything; they'll continue to have exactly the same expenses they had yesterday.

> Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

Basically seems to kill off Facebook forcing people to a Meta App Store for the free FaceBook app (and thus not being subject to App Store review, which has stopped some of the more brutal privacy invasions they’ve tried)

Companies do these kind of trickeries all the time. That's how they avoid paying taxes: by technically being within their rights. It doesn't matter if everyone knows what they are doing.

Apple's EU HQ is in Ireland and its totally selling the product from there, German companies are definitely don't sell restricted parts to Russia, they are selling it to Kazakhstan and Kazakstan suddenly had success with selling stuff to Russia, all the SV startups are incorporated in Delaware, all the Ships are Panaman and all kind of products that are assembled just the right way to avoid ban or taxes but can be reconfigured to do the banned thing.

Even at this very topic, Apple is trying to comply in such a way to circumvent actually allowing to freely install apps to iPhones.

Sounds to me like developers have to pay the per user fee no matter where the app is distributed.

This actually affects small devs as well. It's not that hard to hit 1M installs for free or inexpensive apps.

Is there some clause in the contracts that says apps from same source will count as single app, no matter how many times they are uploaded as separate app?

It could easily fall under a fraud or abuse clause. If you decide to play games, Apple would be more than happy to pull their authorization and ban you out of spite. Now none of your apps work.

It's unlikely but they could also pull a google and ban any company who hires you in the future.

How do you provide updates after removing it from the store?

OsmAnd has more than 10 million installs, VLC more than 100 million. Can you imagine the fees? They obviously don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars on hand to pay every month to Apple.

VideoLAN (VLC developer) is a non-profit so they are exempt from the Core Technology Fee even if they distribute on an alternate app store.

"OsmAnd is developed by a Dutch private limited company, OsmAnd B.V. located in Amstelveen, the Netherlands"[1] so it looks like they would be subject to the CTF if they choose to distribute from an alternate app store or utilize a non-Apple payment processor; or they could stick to the existing business terms and continue as-is in the Apple App Store.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OsmAnd

Those are global numbers. So, when counting EU specific revenue, you can't use that number.

It’s exactly what many have said Apple should do to get payment for usage of their IP: split it from the commission.

So now you can pay separately for the IP, separately for payment processing and separately for App Store services or a combination of all of the above.

The same should go for 30% appstore fee: make it explicit and add it to the user's bill: "1$ for the developer and your card is also charged separately with 30c Apple tax". That would actual competition for the best platform real.

Given that you have to update apps every year to support new iOS versions, this is essentially an annual tax per user.

I think Apple is delusional in thinking that the EU will buy into this scheme, but who knows.

I think they're quite aware that they won't

but that will take half a decade, and in the meantime, Apple will have made another couple of hundred billion dollars

If they give in "without a fight" by following the spirit of the law (or even the letter) they will use a lot of income.

Companies are not our friends (not our enemies either) and only form a fleeting alliance if the goal of makeing money aligns with the interest of the user.

On this subject, for this company it doesn't.

Apple is free to argue their hopeless interpretation in court, but in the short term they will not get away with these delaying tactics.

yeah, but they won't

the euroskeptics would absolutely LOVE it if they did

Whether you like it or not, we're heading towards a future where Apple and Google choose who wins and who loses. A good app built on merit will never be able to compete.

0. https://github.com/yattee/yattee/wiki/FAQ

Infuse have said that VP9 is supported on AppleTV which requires the same entitlements as iOS.

What are the differences between using AVPlayer and MPV?

AVPlayer is a system player component delivered by Apple. It provides best efficiency, performance and system integrations, but number of playable videos formats is limited. This means for Invidious/Piped videos the maximum resolution you can play with it is 1080p. There's no way to play higher resolution files as they are not provided in the right formats. Obviously, modern Apple devices are more than capable to hardware decode and play these formats. And in fact, Apple seems to be giving special entitlement to Google that allows them to enable VP9/AV1 formats decoding. Just remember that next time you hear how Apple treats all developers equally.

Source: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-m1-vp9-av1-decodi...

It’s from 2020 so it might’ve changed but it proves Apple gives certain apps special privileges. Who knows which other apps are given privileges and to what extent?

I don't miss it.

Not a huge deal though. In the past, pre-iOS-10 Safari was immune to the "no background playback" rule the app had, and before that, the site had no preroll ads while the app did, so it was a clearer difference.

If it isn’t on iOS it isn’t ubiquitous. It’s left the highest-earning viewers on the table.

Sure. Most wouldn’t. YouTube and Netflix would lose tens of billions of present value overnight. Hell, Apple might capture a good fraction of that surplus.

Not being able to use YouTube properly is also one of the reasons (among others) of why Windows mobile failed.

Youtube is a monopoly and there's no way around it.

People will swap phones to watch short-form videos? (But not the young; they’re on TikTok. Nor anyone in other streaming demographics.)

> Youtube is a monopoly and there's no way around it

Wat. Where are you getting this? Spotify has better churn statistics than YouTube.

Youtube Shorts is there especially because it's a different market that they want to capture.

> Wat. Where are you getting this? Spotify has better churn statistics than YouTube.

Unless you live in the few countries where YouTube has a competitor, they have a 100% market share on this kind of format.

Youtubers don't even bother to republish the video somewhere else because they know themselves that its a monopoly.

YouTube videos being the format?

Google owns YouTube. Google pays Apple tens of billions to keep its search front and centre. If Google thought YouTube had the leverage you do, wouldn’t you think they’d try swinging that around?

Youtube is the TV of the 21th century, it's not only the format but what you find there which is unique.

> If Google thought YouTube had the leverage you do, wouldn’t you think they’d try swinging that around?

Because there's no competition between both companies? Why would they do that? Google is pretty happy about their current position.

In fact in countries like Japan and South Korea nobody was using it until the last year or two.

This idea that any mobile device will fail unless it has X app is baseless. Everyone has a different set of X that is important.

People can usually replace the app X with an app Y but there's a few apps which are categorically needed on a phone otherwise it hurts the phone itself. Banks & government apps are part of those and Youtube is one as well.

Those are the ones really preventing a third company to join in.

If YouTube pulled itself from iOS devices, a shell company of Apple's would create a competitor in three months.

It would be more likely that Google bundled Chrome and YouTube into one app.

Hell, maybe they'd do that with mail and calendar as well.

It's for everyone, app store or not.

So they've basically made distributing popular free apps on an alternative app store really unappealing.

"Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms. Developers must adopt the new business terms for EU apps to use the new capabilities for alternative distribution or alternative payment processing. "

“ iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.”

  * Reduced commission: 30% -> 17%
  * Payment processing fee: No fee to Apple

*One million free first annual installs.* Membership in the Apple Developer Program includes one million first annual installs per year for free for apps distributed from the App Store and/or alternative marketplaces.

*Fee for each first annual install over one million.* Developers will pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.

That’s my guess.

But I guess Tim Sweeney won in the EU. He gets his new AppStore so he can charge his own commission on gems and fake tokens.

And game streaming seems interesting I guess we will get Xbox streaming gaming on the Apple platform after all.

However the economics have changed now. It’s no longer practically free to support iOS. So some companies could make a reasonable argument that supporting iOS is too expensive when only a fraction of their customers do in app purchases from Apple hardware. So from Apple’s perspective, they now have more to lose in not making deals. While app developers have more to lose in supporting Apple.

This might just tip the scales into forcing Apple to negotiate on more than just app permissions.

For example, the official EC report on the cost impact of the EU AI Act finds that, for businesses who already have a Quality Management System (QMS), "An enterprise employing 50 persons would pay roughly EUR 159,000-EUR 202,000 for upgrading and maintaining the QMS, and bringing one AI product to market." (Notably, that estimate excludes costs of legal review.)

Around 200000 EUR for one product making use of AI would be seen as a heavy burden on startups and small enterprises in much of the world, but as far as I can tell, it's considered not particularly noteworthy by the EC.

Apple's cost structure announced today probably needs to be assessed in that context. Tech companies doing business in Europe are already used to various additional compliance-related costs of doing business.

Come on now, that is utter nonsense. Apple has simply found a way to make even more money out of what seemed like a bad deal for them. They are not recuperating anything, they are increasing revenue.

That's not at all what I said. These regulations are increasing the cost of business in the EU. I'd much rather have those costs paid by those who democratically (?) decided these regulations that those in other countries who decided otherwise.

edit: Why downvote me for stating a matter of fact?

Ultimately existing players always have the advantage.

As a side note: the startup world is thriving in Europe. So EU regulations can’t be that high of a barrier ;)

Also, which startups are thriving in Europe with global appeal? Genuinely, un-sarcastically, curious.

That almost never happens

> Internet providers in the US are a perfect example of this in action: why would these virtual monopolies want to provide a better product if it's so hard for competition to materialize?

Infrastructure costs is why you don’t see hundreds of competitors. New companies either need the capital to build new infrastructure, in which case they are usually more expensive due to economies of scale, or they have to resell someone else’s infrastructure. In which case they can only be as good as the monopolies.

The ironic thing is in the UK there aren’t any monopolies in ISP. There is lots of healthy competition. So your example regarding deregulation proves the opposite of your point.

I beg to differ.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/08/28/undercharged-ipho... https://www.reddit.com/r/Spectrum/comments/ln0id2/spectrum_l... https://www.thisoldhouse.com/home-finances/reviews/worst-hom... https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/02/01/bad...

Take the last link, for example, United Airlines scores low in customer satisfaction yet people still fly with them. Facebook might be hated yet people still use it.

Most people either too lazy or too cheap to boycott businesses they don’t like. And that’s assuming they even have a choice, because often there really isn’t much of an alternative to choose from.

People don’t have to use Facebook.

Hence why you’re wrong in claiming that people are principled enough to boycott businesses at a scale that makes any difference to that business.

You claim that badly behaved businesses would just lose the custom and yet all the evidence out there proves that just doesn’t happen. Or at least not to the extent that amounts to anything more than a rounding error on their books.

I had said that, “Consumers catch on to dishonest business practices and want [to] choose new market options if/when they become available”.

So you agree then?

And ya know what, I think that’s BS: you definitely have a choice and if you think you can’t follow through you’re weak. You definitely don’t need to use facebook for anything and you don’t need to fly either. It’s a choice, mate, and if you don’t think you have a choice you’re weak.

No, we are arguing the exact opposite.

> And ya know what, I think that’s BS: you definitely have a choice and if you think you can’t follow through you’re weak.

It’s not bullshit. Different people just have different priorities to yourself.

Do you think the average person gives a shit about ethical software? Or even has enough time and/or money to boycott businesses that they don’t like?

No they don’t. Businesses are just services and once they’ve finished using a product they move on with their lives.

You calling people names because they care about different concerns to you is the real issue here.

edit: > worthy of the European market.

Also, what an entitled, elitist thing to say. Maybe the US would be better off pulling out of Nato and letting Europe alone after all.

Don't forget to double-check to make sure you're responding to the right comment!

Fortunately, they aren’t in business anymore. (For unrelated reasons.)

If for example its just an information website with static content and its putting cookies on the users device, its a you problem, not a EU problem.

Cookie disclosure/consent can be an issue, and again, sometimes companies would rather just not serve EU clients altogether than build a simple disclosure and not set any cookies. Not saying that's good or bad, but that's just what it is.

The apps could be perfectly fine, its just that people will speculate.