I don’t understand this at all, is this really how it will work now?

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?

I don’t think your missing something. This is Apple’s way of discouraging use of an alternative app store for popular apps, or alternatively, of encouraging subscription models.

> 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

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?

Apps don’t have to pay for notarization on MacOS, and nobody forces Apple to perform notarization in the first place. It’s also implausible that there would be any notable cost per install.

That is the point. This is malicious compliance, presumably they expect to get away with it while the legislative/legal systems in the EU spend years grinding through the process of figuring out how to punish Apple for it.

Glad this happened to be honest. Software shouldn’t be free.

Gosh. I'd better stop work on my open source project immediately then.

Care to elaborate on this (honestly wild) take?

There’s too much abuse of free software by either individuals or big tech. Its not sustainable

Any example (preferably with GPL)?

I'm really not clear what you're arguing so it's hard to work out if I disagree or not. Have you considered maybe writing slightly longer sentences?

Do you mean you use no open source software?

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

Alternatively, greedy corporation shouldn't earn money off someone's free work.

Software should be free(dom) er properly paid and professional. But please no freeware or ad crazy software

Bet you also think it's sensible to fine people for feeding the homeless?

This is an unacceptable comment for Hacker News. Just because you strongly disagree with this person on software funding doesn't give you any reason assume they disagree with...feeding the homeless?

Not sure what you're on about. It's actually illegal to feed the homeless in certain American cities and you can get fined for doing so. This is called an analogy.

It just means that the bar has been raised, no? There has been a certain accepted cost of doing business in the Apple sphere for years. They're just changing the price.

From $99/year to $45,000/month. That's quite a large increase.

Maybe I am missing something, but can't you still just stay the same as the past?

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

If you want to publish a retro-gaming emulator as a hobby/open-source project, you can’t do that on Apple’s app store. And on a third-party app store you’ll have to pay Apple millions once it becomes popular (which would seem likely).

But it's a new thing you couldn't even do before. So the bar is not "raised". It's a new bar.

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

It’s certainly against the spirit of removing “gatekeepers”.

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

> If you want to publish a retro-gaming emulator as a hobby/open-source project, you can’t do that on Apple’s app store.

why can't you do that?

See item 2.5.2 in https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/.

You can always release Super-Duper-Emulator-2

Since apps are still subject to Apple’s review process even on third-party app stores, they are likely to reject this because it obviously circumvents the new business terms (if it doesn’t violate them outright).

Previously you only had to pay the yearly $99 for the developer account, and then could publish free apps to your heart’s content (subject to Apple’s app review process, of course).

Right.

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.

I think you are underestimating how many apps get over 1M downloads. According to [1], the Google Play Store has over 34000 apps with 1M+ installs, I assume the number is similar for the App Store.

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...

The Core Technology Fee still only applies if you want to either

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.

Maybe I'm misreading the original article, but it sounds like it would also apply to apps distributed only through the regular App Store:

> 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.

Only if they choose the “new” terms, they can stay on the existing terms if they want to distribute through the App Store, as it’s free so the commission change doesn’t matter.

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)

Developers can adopt the new terms, or not, up to them.

Small fraction of users but a huge fraction of the market share (and revenue generation share). Being that the DMA was specifically targeting these two things it seems quite at odds with "A free app like Chrome must pay us millions if it wants to distribute itself instead of using the legacy terms deemed illegal". If they didn't allow legacy terms it'd have a bit more of a leg to stand for opening the markets, same as if it didn't apply to apps distributed via third party, but the way it is now seems a contentious combination.

Imagine the new attack vector: You have a mildly successful free/very cheap app. Your competitor starts advertising your app, pushing it up over the 1m threshold and forcing you to start charging (or increase your price) to pay the core charge.

What stops you from having limited edition apps? Only 1 million copies and its gone, go download the next limited edition.

Apple’s business terms and/or app review rules, presumably. Do you seriously believe they would allow circumventing the fees that way?

Yeah, why not? Stop selling the app when you hit 1 million and have a new version from a new company and just license the brand or whatever to the new one.

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.