> 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.