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A comment on Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union. Parent comment

Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by andersa on Thursday January 25, 2024 @05:13PM (#39136119)
The fee is paid by the user when they buy the phone. No additional cost to Apple exists because the user downloaded an app that I wrote from my website/store. Thus, Apple should not be paid for it. That's really simple - we've been doing this model for general purpose computers for decades already.
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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by spacebanana7 on Thursday January 25, 2024 @05:28PM (#39136291)
Just as Unity has a legal ability to charge a fee for a game engine, Apple has a legal ability to charge for the Swift programming language along with the rest of the SDK.

It sucks because Apple is hiding behind intellectual property rights to protect its ability to tax the app economy.

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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by trumpeta on Thursday January 25, 2024 @05:40PM (#39136434)
You can choose a different game engine or write your own. You can not write an app for iOS without Apple SDK
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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by spacebanana7 on Friday January 26, 2024 @09:32AM (#39143004)
Market power doesn't nullify IP rights.

Disney could allows 3rd party cafes in Disneyland, mandate the use of Disney logos on all products, and charge a $2 royalty of every product sold with a Disney logo.

It's a dick move but shifts the legal argument from one of monopoly / gatekeeper status to one of intellectual property rights, the latter being much more business friendly and entrenched in international agreements.

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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by threeseed on Thursday January 25, 2024 @05:30PM (#39136316)
a) Nobody knows other than Apple about whether the cost of building the SDKs etc are included in the price of the iPhone. So making definitive statements about their being no additional cost makes no sense.

b) Microsoft and Apple both charge for developer programs and in the past it used to be significantly higher than today. So there is a precedent for this.

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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by andersa on Thursday January 25, 2024 @06:32PM (#39136938)
Apple financial statements are public. We know the income from hardware sales exceeds all costs and R&D by far. The app store fees are basically stealing from society on top of that to enrich themselves.
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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by wtallis on Thursday January 25, 2024 @06:11PM (#39136757)
That argument carried a lot more weight when OS updates were $129 instead of $0.
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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by andersa on Thursday January 25, 2024 @06:29PM (#39136915)
As if that cost wasn't included in the $1500 phone?
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Re:Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store... by smoldesu on Thursday January 25, 2024 @08:27PM (#39137858)
That argument carried a lot more weight when per-unit profit margins were lower than per-unit manufacturing costs.
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