This is not true at all. Netflix customers are Netflix customers, not Apple; the same goes for Amazon Kindle, Spotify, etc. Netflix literally cannot include a link to netflix.com in their app, otherwise Apple would pull the app from the store.
The smaller the app, the more those users are Apple's customers. But obviously we don't want a world where we penalise small developers more than large ones, so that's not a solution either.
The debate is around people who are Apple customers but not Netflix customers, and who download the Netflix app through the App Store.
When I buy a PS5, I understand that Sony 100% controls what games are offered on it.
For a PS5, it’s quite a bit different. We all can agree that piracy got out of control back in the 90’s/00’s. This is the price we pay to have games. Our phones never had this problem.
Somebody noted well in another thread that the main difference is that game consoles are often sold at or below cost, so a "software monopoly" on a given console platform can be seen as a way of "paying back the advance" on the console to the manufacturer/platform.
I don't think anybody would seriously argue that iPhones are a loss leader.
> through the simple act of using a phone
And the simple act of using a phone is you making a conscious decision to agree to accept the terms and conditions that come with buying any product. You are in no way forced to and by supporting alternatives you help to change the market for everyone.
These phones are not inanimate objects; they are computers that run software that is distributed under terms and conditions, and depend on central services the access to which is governed by terms and conditions.
I understand the position that this is a Bad Thing. I'm typing this from a Linux machine for that reason. But the analogy here is problematic.
If you want to complain that a phone needs Apple infrastructure to function, you should check out the phones from the 80’s and 90’s. They were a lot bulkier but a phone doesn’t inherently need software and internet to function.
These are computers, with modems, that happen to fit in the palm of your hand. They aren’t specialized, by any stretch of an imagination. The iPad even has the exact same CPUs that are literally used in computers.
So, saying these things are somehow special is a little bit silly. The only thing special is the locked down code that came preinstalled that I sometimes regret agreeing to using. If I could go back in time, I’d disagree and then sue Apple for selling me a device I couldn’t use and make them allow me to install Linux.
Sadly, I need a phone more than I have money to waste.
An iPhone doesn’t depend on Apple the same way a PlayStation 5 doesn’t depend on Sony. Most people buy the iPhone not just for the electronic components but for the entire ecosystem of apps and experiences, which are built on a foundation of Apple core APIs.
Even when Sony did support running Linux on the PS3, doing so was mutually exclusive with accessing Sony’s platform and playing games.
> They aren’t specialized, by any stretch of an imagination.
Specialization and vertical integration is what Apple is famous for. If these were not specialized, we should see similar devices on the market to satisfy all manner of customers similar to what we see with general purpose hardware. The reason general purpose hardware hasn’t produced a myriad of clones reminiscent of the early PC era is exactly because of how specialized and difficult these devices are to make.
> If I could go back in time, I’d disagree and then sue Apple for selling me a device I couldn’t use and make them allow me to install Linux.
I’m not asking this to be snarky; I’m genuinely curious: why do you want an iPhone then? Why not an Android phone that is far more permissive, or a PinePhone that is philosophically aligned with what it sounds like you want?
I guess I just don’t understand the mindset. I run Linux on hardware that is meant to run whatever I want. I run games on my Xbox, and don’t lose sleep over it. I use an iPhone because I need my communication device to “just work”, and no other general purpose hardware I’ve ever owned has achieved this.
Do I wish the iPhone was more flexible? Yeah, I really do. But I also understand why it’s not, and what that lack of flexibility provides me.
Your presumption here is that Sony is in the right. Who says they are? The original PS3 allowed installing Linux and they only removed it due to the maintenance burden -- almost nobody was using it except the US government.
Even still, you can upload your own OS to a PS5. There's no magic hardware stopping you. You can even replace parts ... or even just rip it out and make a handheld device like one guy did on youtube.
You can't do that with a modern iPhone. It will brick itself if you replace the screen.
> If these were not specialized, we should see similar devices on the market to satisfy all manner of customers similar to what we see with general purpose hardware
So, you're saying that Samsung doesn't sell cellphones? The hardware is so specialized that Apple is the only one who can make a cellphone? I find that extremely hard to believe that Apple hardware doesn't use electronic circuits, CPU's, and other modern technology. Are you asserting that iPhone's run on magic?
> I’m genuinely curious: why do you want an iPhone then?
I moved out of my home country and my parents have an iPhone. We literally own one just to use FaceTime with them because they don't understand whatsapp and they want to talk to my son.
Beyond that, I make apps, and I need a physical device to test things on.
> But I also understand why it’s not, and what that lack of flexibility provides me.
I don't understand why there is a lack of flexibility. I have a few custom tools I've built, and having to reinstall them every week makes it utterly pointless to use an iPhone. How is that a reasonable lack of flexibility?
This mentality of corporate fiefdom is new to me. Reminds me of another vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services that fared poorly under US jurisdiction.
I think the trouble is that all of the above are true, but not universally true. The issue can be framed from multiple perspectives depending on which aspect of market dynamics are most impactful to a given app/service/situation.
Some developers build for the Apple ecosystem because the ecosystem is large and enticing and provides better opportunities than the alternatives.
Some developers are big enough that they don’t need the App Store to gain customers.
If a new app gains popularity primarily because of Apple, and eventually gets big enough that its origins are now immaterial to the ongoing success of the company, whose customers are they? There isn’t a clear answer to this question. Arguably both Apple’s and the app maker’s, and there’s an intrinsic codependency that can’t be easily separated.
I agree with your point about small devs. The question is: at what point does it become penalizing? Once the app reaches some threshold?
The hard thing about this conversation is that I can see the merits of Apple’s position while also agreeing that at times, the outcome feels “wrong”, i.e. an existing product with an existing customer base seems like it shouldn’t be so limited.
But is it possible to provide a platform that enables this kind of developer ecosystem and app diversity combined with a consistent user experience without the at-face-value “wrong” outcomes? I don’t know.
This gets even murkier when apps rely heavily on Apple services for data storage, syncing, security, etc. It seems very fair to charge for “we’ve solved a lot of hard problems for you”.
It’s an interesting situation that is often painted in terms that are far too simplistic.
There is a clear answer, as you yourself just said: they're customers of both Apple (by virtue of having bought their hardware) and the app developer (by virtue of having bought their software). Those are distinct, separate relationships the customer has with two different companies. Apple doesn't own those customers now and for all time just because they originally found the service through Apple's app store! That's ridiculous.
In the Netflix scenario, it’s clear that Apple wasn’t the primary source of customer acquisition. The scenario where an unknown app grows and gets big based on Apple’s network effect highlights the complexity of the situation.
> Apple doesn't own those customers now and for all time just because they originally found the service through Apple's app store!
I’m not saying that Apple owns those customers. The pertinent question is what is or is not reasonable for them to charge and/or what restrictions are reasonable. The benefits of publishing in the App Store extend beyond just customer reach, and also involve Apple making good on the promises they've made to their customers (With few exceptions, I personally won't spend money on apps that use their own subscription mechanism, because I have no interest in cancellation hell). In addition to this, the vig covers access to platform capabilities and services that are arguably just as important as access to customers.
> in a way that effectively does give them ownership of your customers
Netflix and its users may find it annoying that anything related to subscriptions has to be danced around (I certainly do), but I don't think it's quite right to classify Apple's rules around directing users to subscription management features on the Netflix side as "ownership" of those customers.
The restriction feels onerous, yes, but is something other than ownership. They are wielding the value of their marketplace as leverage, and it's this power that is (rightfully) under scrutiny.
The DMA tried to fix this, but failed because Apple just shifted to charging per install even for applications that don't use Apple's marketplace. And if you don't want to play by those rules, Apple won't sign your app and iPhones will refuse to allow your customers to install it. There's no alternative, other than to abandon your iPhone-using customers entirely.
They pay money for customers who originate from the Apple in-app sales funnel. Netflix could choose to continue requiring all subscriptions to be handled externally, but I understand why they don't.
> There's no alternative, other than to abandon your iPhone-using customers entirely.
As far as I can tell, there is absolutely an alternative (to paying 30% of subscription fees), and it's what these companies are already doing. It's just an alternative that many people dislike, which is why the DMA exists. At issue is also a question of whether the DMA actually makes sense, which was the central point of my pondering in the GP comment.
I think we might be arguing orthogonal points.
Correct. You seem entirely concerned with the specifics of what rules Apple chooses to enforce and whether those rules allow developers alternatives to paying 30% of their revenue to Apple.
But I'm not talking about an alternative to paying the fee, I'm talking about an alternative to having to follow Apple's arbitrary rules period. What if I decide I don't like the terms Apple is offering, and that I just want to sell a piece of software directly to an iOS user and cut Apple completely out of the process? Right now, I can't; Apple will simply refuse to sign the application and iOS devices will refuse to allow my customers to install it on their devices, and there's no alternative to that. I either comply with all of Apple's demands (however reasonable or unreasonable they might be), or I can't sell working software to my customers.
People clearly want to cut them out of the process, but this requires justification just as much as Apple's current stance. The question is: why should they be forced to do what you want, vs. you being forced to comply with what they want?
I'm sympathetic to issues related to their dominant market position and recognize that there are multiple ways to run a platform. I'm also not saying that I prefer Apple's policies. But ultimately the products that Apple produces are a result of the way they run their business, and at issue is whether or not they should be allowed to execute on their business model, and if not, the basis for why they shouldn't.
> I'm talking about an alternative to having to follow Apple's arbitrary rules
While I certainly understand why people don't like these rules, they are not arbitrary. There is every indication that the rules are carefully calculated to benefit Apple, and in many cases, their customers. After spending some time in the Android ecosystem, I personally prefer the high bar required for apps to get published. I prefer the unified subscription experience mediated by Apple that allows me to see and manage what I'm paying for in one place. As a developer, I also understand why other developers find these rules frustrating. The bubble we're in is uniquely positioned to feel both sides of the issue.
eBay and Amazon also impose rules on sales, and they take large cuts of seller profits in exchange for the privilege of selling in their marketplaces. The same goes for your local shopping mall, and even some towns/municipalities etc. Your local shopping mall has rules and regulations about the kinds of stores that can sell their goods and services, and charges money for the privilege of selling what they do allow. You might dislike a limitation that prevents you from opening <disallowed shop>, but that doesn't make the rule arbitrary.
> I either comply with all of Apple's demands (however reasonable or unreasonable they might be), or I can't sell working software to my customers.
This could be said of almost every market and community in existence. And the trouble is that this is both a bug and a feature, depending on your perspective. The distinction between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" currently seems to be based on personal preference, the nature of an app, or the stage of a company.
Bringing this full circle, my early point was that what seems completely reasonable for a developer launching a brand new app targeting Apple's highly lucrative customer base may not seem reasonable at all when bigger players with existing customers (like Netflix, Spotify, etc) get involved. And it's the simultaneous reasonableness/unreasonableness that makes this a far more complicated issue than many people are willing to acknowledge.
Why should I need to justify my right to sell software to my customers without interference from an unrelated third party? Just because Apple has the technical ability to hold my customers hostage, that doesn't mean they have a right to.
> why should they be forced to do what you want, vs. you being forced to comply with what they want
Neither of these need to happen. Apple should not be forced to do anything other than to stop blocking their competitors from the market. And Apple's competitors should not be forced to comply with what Apple wants either unless Apple can entice them by offering something valuable in exchange, beyond a mob-style protection racket. (Nice application you have there. It would be a shame if someone were to block your customers from running it.)
> I personally prefer the high bar required for apps to get published.
Then buy your apps exclusively from Apple's app store. Nobody's forcing you to leave Apple's walled garden, Apple's just not allowed to be the only game in town anymore.
> eBay and Amazon also impose rules on sales
I can sell my product without going through eBay and Amazon. I can't sell my iOS app if Apple installs code on my customer's devices that blocks it from running.
>> I either comply with all of Apple's demands (however reasonable or unreasonable they might be), or I can't sell working software to my customers.
> This could be said of almost every market and community in existence.
What? No. What other market exists where one single company is able to act as a governing body, dictating the rules which their competitors must follow in order to be allowed to exist?
> The distinction between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" currently seems to be based on personal preference, the nature of an app, or the stage of a company.
Right, which is why different companies should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they consider Apple's terms reasonable, rather than Apple being able to essentially hold them at gunpoint and make any demands they want.
In fact, they see 27% [1], and that's very new – it used to be impossible before.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...
To me, theres two issues:
1) this push is all driven by big businesses looking to just get free money for nothing, which is why I worry that the EU is so taken up with it.
2) taxes, is you want to line apples 30% up with those, are just part of business. No, you cant write off the 30%, but if you want to keep adding 250million new phones to your potential customer base every year.... wtf, pay up and be happy? To be fair, taxes arent the same - taxes take money out of an economic system usually based on economic activity to make currency actually worth something. But they kind of are the same in that they keep the infrastructure that lets you reach customers going.
I guess we can move to the windows model and place the burden on the customers, pay your $99/yr for updates or whatever, but then youd have ... like no one buy the phone.
Apples stance is - if you generate economic activity on the phone, you should have to pay to upkeep the roads that keep the phone working. I am sure Apple and MS would love to do this with desktop, but the ship sailed on that ages ago, and probably wouldnt have ever worked.
Heck they could introduce a tax on Amazon deliveries when Amazon is installed through the Apple App Store and nobody would be able to do anything about it. Except the EU that is.
Just don’t use an iPhone. And Amazon - just don’t put an app on the iOS store.
I mean it really is that simple. If customers actually cared about any of this stuff they would just switch. If there was enough demand another competitor would emerge (windows phone, black berry, foss)
We are all enslaved to keep buying iPhones and have no free choice?
Or is it that even if no one bought an iPhone, Apple as a company would be able to keep it's market position?
This is why Apple keeps winning in the court cases, because the argument as you just presented it lacks any kind of rigor.
You are just as disingenuous as Apple is and it is sad that you are defending the greed of a trillion dollar corp.
That being said, considering their behavior I'm pretty sure Apple has lost the good will of quite a few people, that are indirectly influential on the purchase of many tech devices of their social circle.
I am personally an Apple customer since the first iPod (was a teenager back then) and lots of Mac's plus many iPhones including the first but now I am pretty sure that my next smartphone will definitely not be an iPhone. Not that hard decision considering the insane pricing on Apple Silicon Macs (RAM/SSD) I had already started using my Mac less and my PC a lot more. And I make sure to avoid recommending anything Apple to anyone and actively discourage any purchase from them. I'm pretty sure I am not the only one doing that and I am pretty sure that Apple will feel this after a while...
Charging third party app developers never worked on the desktop, but Microsoft had a lot of success with building the key features of popular third party Windows applications into their own products, thus taking away the third party developers' markets. Which is worse for the third party developer than just having to pay a fee or a percentage.
If both Apple and other companies have engaged in taking away a 3P developer market by building their product features into their own, then what is the point of your whataboutism? You're trying to imply that paying a fee is better than having your product copied -- when in fact the comparison is 'pay a fee AND risk product copy/delisting' vs 'no fee, no delisting, risk product copying'. Stop trying to obfuscate.
Do you just assume that? Because in the article, two decidedly small businesses are mentioned as leading the charge: Tuta and Proton. Not exactly friends of big business either.
What would happen if this had been the standard applied to Windows?
> If the arguments were "these restrictions are so burdensome I can't be in the app store!", that's a different conversation. But they tend to be "I can access such an irresistible amount of customers via apple, I just wish I could take those benefits à la carte.
For some developers, they are. The ones that are complaining about it are the ones still trying to be in the app store despite the burden.
Microsoft had no problem taking features from popular third party Windows applications and building them into their own products, basically stealing the third party developers' markets. That looks worse to me than what Apple is doing.
No, you explained that Apple has done the same thing. That doesn't mean MS didn't do what I said or that it didn't have a huge impact on third party Windows devs.
Was the impact on Windows devs worse than Apple's impact over iOS devs?
Plus, Apple did the exact same things.
But I think it’s also fair to note that there are app developers to whom these arguments do not apply. For example I was a Spotify customer long before I installed the Spotify app on my phone, and I don’t mind them having my credit card details.
EDIT: For clarity.
More like Apple's hostages if Apple gets to dictate who does and does not have access to them.
The issue is trying to make a business out of it.
Conditionally, you are allowed to make a business out of selling iOS emulators.
> As to count one, we agree that Corellium is shielded by the fair use doctrine. First, Corellium’s virtualization software is trans-formative—it furthers scientific progress by allowing security re-search into important operating systems. Second, iOS is functional operating software that falls outside copyright’s core. Third, Co-rellium didn’t overhelp itself to Apple’s software. And fourth, Co-rellium’s product does not substantially harm the market for iOS or iOS derivatives—so Apple’s own incentive to innovate remains strong.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca11/2...
- I was working on an app for both healthcare professionals (paying customers) and their patients (the app was free for them). At the same time we could not have sign up for the doctors - Apple would like 30% of the subscription fee for the honor of hosting the client and its updates on their servers, but also Apple insisted vehemently that everybody should be able to sign up for the service, even if we insisted that we needed to check on their credentials (i.e. if they had a degree in medicine). We had to explain this multiple times to app review people as they kept on coming back to the same points. On the patient side, we were able to add payments to the doctors as luckily an exception had just been granted for use cases like that - up until then, Apple would have required 30% of the doctor's payment as well. We were still VERY on our toes, because the whole process felt like Apple at any time could change the rules and put us in the situation of paying a lot of money, drastically change our business model, or just shut down/lose tons of customer. While this might be technically legal, is not exactly a great business partnership.
- These rules have giant exceptions for big companies who pay a lot less or are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as smaller app makers. This feels incredibly unfair.
I really don't know what the right solution is overall, but I am sure that having large numbers of one-off negotiations is not the right way to solve it.
Google would then pay apple less in search default fees to boot.
Android has been losing market share to apple globally for nearly a decade, in particular amongst the richest, most valuable customers.
Developers are very valuable to apple but the field isn’t obviously unbalanced. The apple App Store is an incredibly profitable distribution system for developers.
You have discovered duopolies. It's not like Google isn't being sued for anti-competitive smartphone behavior right now.
Okay to be fair, that's a somewhat dismissive answer, it is slightly more complicated. Google uses Android more as an advertising platform than as a product on its own. Their goals are slightly orthogonal to Apple's and taking full market share or capturing high-paying users (especially users who are advertising-adverse and prefer to pay for apps) is not necessarily the most important thing in the world to Google.
As a point of reference, we're all fighting over the app store, but Google pays Apple more per-year to be the default search provider in Safari than Apple makes from the entire iOS app store in a year. All of the noise Apple has made... over less profit than they make with a single transaction from Google. This should tell you something about where Google's priorities lie and about whether or not the company really cares about seriously competing with iOS. Google is willing to expend enormous resources and to spend enormous amounts of money... about things they care about.
Google gets enough developers to compete with iOS in general, they don't really need to do more. And because of that they'll charge what they can. Sure, maybe Google could do something radical and transform the market, but why would they? It's not what Google is here for, they're here to get your data and then advertise to you and Android is just one mechanism out of many that Google has to do that.
But if you sell something for a 10% markup, having to give that + 20% to apple is bad. And now people ask "why do I have to pay more for your service on apple vs android". And now you're in a fun PR battle.
In cases of say fortnight, there are real server costs involved. Not to mention dev costs. In cases of say music, there's licensing you pay. If you order food, you are already working in the margins.
This makes competition vs big boys even harder. How can I compete vs netflix if any streaming service I make who doesn't have netflix's negotiation power has to pay 30% of every payment. I can't get close to netflix's price.
The list goes on.
The point is, it isn't just a grin and move on problem :(
> In cases of say fortnight, there are real server costs involved.
They are selling digital coins, there is zero cost to "minting" these. It's not up to Apple to make your margins work. F2P works because some people pay and others don't, the ones who pay cover server costs for those who don't. I can promise you Fortnight was bringing in a ton of _profit_ even with Apple's 30% cut. Also "think of the people running digital casinos for kids" (re: lootboxes and the like) isn't a winning argument. In fact I think hosting all that crap is a blacker stain on Apple than taking 30%.
> In cases of say music, there's licensing you pay.
Totally fair, see also: ebooks/audiobooks/tv/movies.
> If you order food, you are already working in the margins.
Apple doesn't take a 30% cut here.
> How can I compete vs netflix if any streaming service I make who doesn't have netflix's negotiation power has to pay 30% of every payment. I can't get close to netflix's price.
Valid when it comes to Google who seem to have struck a number of deals with places like Spotify (see EPIC vs Google suit, and why Google lost) and while there were some backroom deals with Apple I believe it was only for the 15% which Apple eventually rolled out for all subscriptions in the second year.
Why do you pay more for coffee on a square in Paris than in an alleyway a few hundred meters from there? Because it’s a place people want to be.
> This makes competition vs big boys even harder. How can I compete vs netflix if any streaming service I make who doesn't have netflix's negotiation power has to pay 30% of every payment. I can't get close to netflix's price.
It would be of little help because you need scale to compete with Netflix, but if anything, I would think the DMA helps with that. https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/legislation_en, article 6.12:
“12. The gatekeeper shall apply fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory general conditions of access for business users to its software application stores, online search engines and online social networking services listed in the designation decision pursuant to Article 3(9).”
I think that means they could still give quantity discounts, but at least, you’d know you would get the same discounts Netflix gets, _if_ you manage to grow to their size. That’s not a promise you had before.
In Fortnite, anyone can develop their own maps ("islands") and sell them, while Epic will pay them 40% of the revenue. Now could you please explain how the platform charging 60% platform fee are the good guys in their fight against the greedy platform charging 30% platform fee?
I wish the cut was more like 50%, to benefit my stocks, while I'm using exclusively FOSS and pay nothing.
These devices are so shiny and great status symbol. I recommend everyone should be in Apple ecosystem and develop applications for it.
I’d like to see Apple unbundle their take such that the maximum cut is 30% for devs who use all of the iCloud, dev, payment, and store for their apps. It’s debatable, but I think this is reasonable for this type of dev.
The problem is when I have an existing SaaS business with all that infrastructure already built—I don’t need all of Apple’s infra, so why should I have to pay for it? I’d have no problem paying Apple a % for listing and distributing through their App Store and processing payments.
Unfortunately Apple is being very short sighted about this and consequently are being forced to unbundle by the EU and it’s likely other countries will follow. That puts us in a situation where regulators are making these decisions instead of Apple, which is why I think we’re going to be in for some very janky user experiences that Apple will try to pin on regulators.
This is just such a radically different way thinking about platforms than the way that I think about them. It's like saying that I owe Facebook for the privilege of talking to my college friends because "they're not my friends, they're Facebook's users and I've been given access to them."
It's hard for me to debate something like this because it's just so fundamentally incompatible with my basic axioms about how interactions work online. The idea that platforms own their users is just not how I see the world.
> It sucks, but you're living in an ecosystem they made appear out of thin air, clearly benefiting enough to experience what you're complaining about, and wishing the deal were more beneficial to you _after the work has been done_.
If every single developer jumped ship off of iOS, iOS would stop existing. We only have to look at Windows Phone to understand what the difference is between a platform with developer support and a platform without developer support.
The reality is that Apple and developers have a mutually beneficial relationship and they are more like partners than customers. If Netflix, Disney+, Facebook, etc all stopped working on iOS, iOS users would jump to Android. Heck, look at the most recent Vision Pro launch, in which I saw users complaining that Apple even gave iPad developers the choice at all of whether or not their apps would be supported on the new device. The users want the apps.
So this is something that users care about, and users pay Apple handsomely for the privilege of accessing developers on iOS. That doesn't mean developers should pay literally nothing, but this is a relationship. The argument that developers are just customers always strikes me as vaguely Comcast-y -- saying that Net Neutrality is unfair and that websites are leeches if they don't pay for network access. No, your customers are there because of us. Customers are paying for access to a service that allows them to access the stuff that they actually care about -- apps, movies, books, the ability to talk to their friends, the ability to transact online, the ability to browse websites. And this gets back to the disagreement on axioms above, but to treat those customers primarily as if they're just resources to be locked down and resold for even more profit -- I just don't think it's a healthy place for a platform to be in.
> It sucks, but you're living in an ecosystem they made appear out of thin air
Funnily enough, iOS launched without an app store entirely on the promise of using web apps for all of its functionality. We weren't using the term PWA back then, but it's notable how different iOS's approach to application development is today than what it was when iOS launched. And notable for Apple's continued direction as the company appears to be actively reducing PWA functionality in Europe in response to increased browser access.
What we have on the web is effectively what Apple hates -- a completely Open, device-agnostic ecosystem of apps that is much more difficult for any one company to lock down or extract rent from. But Apple didn't always hate that principle, when iOS originally launched they were all for it; and in fact Apple looked at the web as a key strategy in differentiating their devices -- by offering developers a way to target their devices without development kits, exhaustive agreements, or commissions.
Over time that became less valuable to Apple, and it became increasingly important for Apple to distinguish between web capabilities and native capabilities.
Is that change fair, are they entitled to do it? I don't know, but it's not the direction I want the computing industry to go. How we deal with Apple's increasingly hostile approach to Open Standards, user freedoms, and market competition is an open question, but it seems clear to me that we should be trying to deal with it at the point where Apple is threatening to go backwards on web standards in response to regulation that opens them up to browser and ecosystem competition.
That it is mutually beneficial is sort of my point. If every developer jumped ship, iOS would be in trouble. But they won't. They absolutely will not. It's a humorous hypothetical. So I'm not the only one viewing the platform users as an asset. So is everyone clamoring to reach them.
It's not being an evil monopoly merely to have built the most desirable thing. Android exists today. It doesn't have anywhere near the access to the people who spend money. Apple spent decades cultivating that access, and they're in an extremely strong position because of it.
I hate the app store, it's a lazy mess. I hate Apple's deliberate crippling of the open web to stifle competition. That's probably far more fruitful ground for legislative action. But setting a price for what you can choose to either buy or not buy from them seems wildly within the bounds of what they're allowed to do.
Yes it is. Look at Visa and MasterCard. Even if there was no anti competitive practices (which I don't know), we wouldn't want them to take 6% of every retail transaction. So the EU set a limit, I think 0.5%.
Otherwise, the rentier corporations would extract a lot of wealth from the economy, instead of the productive class (like manufacturing, services, farming, etc).
----
> That's probably far more fruitful ground for legislative action. But setting a price for what you can choose to either buy or not buy from them seems wildly within the bounds of what they're allowed to do.
I am open to other strategies (not that I control what the EU does, but you know what I mean), and I understand the perspective of how legislating prices kind of misses the point because it does nothing about user autonomy. If the EU was stepping in and saying "we'll keep everything the same but we'll lock how much money you can charge" I would agree with you that the legislation is arguably unproductive. Apple could charge 90%, 1%, and my opinions would be the same -- the 30% just ranks very low on my list of concerns about iOS. So sure, somewhat agreed on that point.
What I want is the original iPhone back where I can write web apps. I don't want to trade a corporate dictator for a government dictator, I want to not have a dictator.
That being said, it does kind of seem like that's what the EU is targeting? Correct me if I'm wrong (I might be), but the extent to which the EU does any price control here it seems likely only to only be a restriction that Apple can't make the prices of sideloading so egregious that it's unrealistic for anyone to do it. Apple's position seems to be that their entire app store is only worth a 3% commission, and the hosting and payment processing and curation and customer acquisition and user metrics are all bundled in that 3%, but the platform API is 27% of app store costs. I don't think people are necessarily wrong to call out Apple over that?
But whatever, we'll ignore that, that's still talking about price. Arguably the more important EU legislation that Apple is flaunting is 3rd-party browser access -- Apple is now being stuck in a position where Safari will actually have competition, and (conversations about Google dominance aside), that has the potential to completely change mobile development. Or it would, if Apple's position didn't seem to be that they'll just add large compatibility requirements in front of every browser that basically disqualify any indie-web browser from launching, and that in response to other browsers having the ability to improve PWA support that they'll just disable PWAs entirely from the OS for everyone.
With good 3rd-party browser support for PWAs and required user options on both iOS and (importantly) Android for browser selection, the entire sideloading conversation might eventually become almost moot -- and I really mean that, I am convinced that one of the reasons why Android PWAs are kind of awful (aside from Google in general being terrible) is because without actual cross-platform support there's not much incentive for anyone to make them better or demand that they improve.
But this seems again like exactly what the EU is targeting, so I'm not sure it's fair to say that the EU is just deciding what prices Apple can charge.
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> But they won't. They absolutely will not. It's a humorous hypothetical.
Not to go out of order, but this is an important question when talking about sideloading: why won't developers do that? I agree, it's an absurd idea. But is it absurd because iOS is so attractive, or is it more stuff like "if 50% of people with a mobile phone can't watch my movies or talk to their friends or transfer money on my service, I am going to have 0% of the market?" I buy your explanation for apps like Fortnite, I totally agree that Epic sees iOS users as an asset. Fortnite doesn't need to be on iOS. But I buy that argument a lot less for any social media site or commerce platform or ridesharing app or anything that involves communication between users.
I've also seen some of those sites try to go the PWA option, and typically "why don't you have a mobile app" ends up being one of their more common support questions, even in cases where I personally feel like current web support seems like it should be good enough for users.
I don't think that the reason that (for example) Uber has an app for iOS is because Apple created an attractive market, I think it's because Uber needs their customers to be able to order taxis from a phone and very few people would use their service on iOS or on Android if they only supported one platform. If Microsoft forced Windows Phone to 20% market-share, even if nobody on the entire platform was ever willing to pay money for an app, I bet Uber would be on the Windows Phone app store.
In one sense, yes Apple created a platform and for some apps that's entirely where the story ends (games, buy-once utilities, etc). But in another sense for a lot of other apps Apple constructed a platform around people who already existed and who are already connected to the market and need to be serviced in order to stay market-viable regardless of what platform they're on. The actual harm here is not really that Apple takes 30% of the profits, it's that Apple (and Google) can both single-handedly decide that certain services won't exist on mobile platforms at all, because those businesses need to work for everyone regardless of what phone they've purchased.
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> It's not being an evil monopoly merely to have built the most desirable thing
Totally agreed, BUT Apple doesn't have to be evil to be a monopoly. Apple can legitimately and earnestly work itself into a position that is bad for the market. There's a very common idea that bad outcomes are the result of bad people or bad decisions or bad intentions, but that's not always the case. Sometimes companies like Apple or Cloudflare or Google offer great products that people love and then suddenly most of the Internet is behind a Captcha and Apple is deciding to ban entire genres of applications off of the iPhone and self-hosting email is impossible. Even benevolent dictators are still dictators.
So I'm not saying that Apple is evil, I'm saying they are a corporation that controls a substantial portion of the smartphone market, their only competitor is not particularly interested in competing with them, and they are increasingly coming up with new ways to lock users into that ecosystem and to restrict Open standards that they can't control. And again, I don't necessarily know the right way to deal with that; sometimes EU legislation goes way too far. Personally, I've been of the opinion that we wouldn't need to have as many conversations about government overreach or about the implications of some giant piece of legislation that set a standard for entire digital markets if we instead broke up Google, Microsoft, and Apple. We might not need to set rules about what Google can do to Chrome if Google doesn't own Chrome.
If you're making the argument that the EU should handle this differently, I think that's a completely reasonable argument to make. But I don't think that Apple deserves its position regardless of whether or not Apple is evil, because I don't think anybody deserves that position even if they're benevolent: not Apple, not the companies that launch apps on iOS, not Tim Sweeney, not the government.
I'm not looking at regulation like it's some kind of punishment, it's just about making the best market possible for innovation, and sometimes that means taking steps that aren't beneficial to the current dominant players. If I have multiple houseplants in a single pot, they grow better if I keep any one of them from taking over the others. That doesn't mean the housplants have done anything wrong, but I'm still going to cut them back if any one of them gets out of control.
Unless I am misreading somehow, this is an unusual position. Software developers don't sell their software to Apple. They sell to the end users. Unless an intermediary rebrands the software and takes ownership of customer acquisition and support, software users are the customers of the software developers.
The reader goes to ExamplePrint and buys the book.
ExamplePrint prints a softcover copy of the book on the spot and ships it out to the reader.
The user pays ExamplePrint, who pays the author some fraction of the user's money.
The reader is a customer of ExamplePrint and reading the author's book.
This is the analogy Apple would like to use for their app store. Apple's print time is almost instantaneous and the marginal costs are closer to zero.
Because if it is the customer of the book that wants to print it they are always welcome to go to PrintExample. But the situation is actually reverse: the customer entered ExamplePrint because they choose ExamplePrint first and then saw the book there. They might not read that book if they would not have been a customer of ExamplePrint => do they are in fact a customer of ExamplePrint that choose to read something they found there.
Yes, but the users are also customers of the owner of the software platform that the developers are developing for. And the owner of the platform gets to set the platform's rules. Microsoft's standard practice for many years was to watch for which third party Windows applications were becoming popular, and build those features into one of their own products, thus cutting the market out from under the third party developer. I'm actually surprised that Apple hasn't done more of that.
At least Microsoft can't ever ban you from selling Windows apps since you're not forced to use their store to sell to Windows users. Apple's grip of the iOS AppStore can be a poison pill for many devs who's livelyhood depends on Apple's automatic ML ban hammer and arbitrary rules which can change as they see fit with no warning.
https://www.verdict.co.uk/apple-watch-keyboard-app-store/?cf...
Ha. Oh no, virtually complete piracy protection, whatever will developers do.
True; but that also means third parties can lose even more when MS pulls the rug out from under them. The developer of the third party keyboard app you refer to said, according to the article you referenced, that they lost a year of revenue. Some third party Windows devs were forced into bankruptcy.
You're just a gift that keeps on giving. How do you come up with this reasoning?
I said no such thing. I said, by implication, that losing a year's revenue, but still having a functioning company, is better than being forced into bankruptcy.
Also, that in no way means that causing a third party app developer to lose a year's revenue is not a bad thing to do. Of course it is.
However, in both cases, the root cause is that the owner of the platform wants to run their platform in a way that third party devs don't like. And ultimately, unless the users of the platform care enough to force the platform owner to change, third party devs are simply going to be out of luck. It sucks, but that's the fact. Third party Windows apps today are for things that MS doesn't care enough about to implement themselves, because Windows users don't care that third party devs get a raw deal. Third party iOS apps are going to end up the same way, unless iOS users start to care about the sucky position third party devs are in. Which, as far as I can tell, they don't.
Apple's walled garden can more easily force you into bankruptcy though since you have no alternative way to distribute iOS apps to customers, therefore your revenue stream can be cut off without warning. Just because that one dev in that example didn't go bankrupt, doesn't prove your argument.
Meanwhile, Microsoft can't stop you from distributing apps on Windows, even though you're clawing to some made up strawman that they can make you bankrupt. You can still sell your apps just fine on your own website and people can easily pay you, download it and install it without Microsoft's permission since you can do whatever you want with that os, just like on MacOS.
I have no idea how you can argue the latter app distribution model is worse than the walled garden one, just through two anecdotal examples.
To be clear I have been an Apple customer since way before the iPhone, but I really feel bad about the new breed of Apple fanatics. To be honest, I have the feeling that some cognitive limitation is part of the reason for being such a loyal customer.
What? Of course they can. That someone will then just leave the market, or maybe change their product more. But there is absolutely no reason why they can't.
While I partially sympathize with the ostensible desire to be able to offer great customer service under the guise of refunds for unexpected downtime in SaaS apps, it's hard to see how this won't be abused by developers: Won't every app just offer App Store refunds to convert customers to 3rd party payment?
I suspect that's the actual reason these things are wanted. I completely understand that many people think 30% is too high (and maybe it is!), but it's hard to see how 0% isn't too low.
What would be his reaction if Apple enabled all these customer service options he supposedly wants, but at a cost to the developer? For example, a code for first-responders to download the app for free, but the developer still pays 20% of the store price. Or a customer refund, where Apple keeps 20% instead of 30%. After all, it's not about the money, but actually about offering great customer service. So he'd go for that, right?
With a product like Hey, you're signing up for their email service. You might use that service on your desktop, web browser, Android phone or iPhone. It's more than a little nuts on Apple's part to try to force a product like that through the iPhone system, especially because if I start using an email account I'm going to continue using it whether I have an iPhone or not.
Should Microsoft get a cut if I connect to my email account through a desktop app?
The mobile app is merely 1 of many interfaces to the service. In Jason's case, he's arguing that they are setup to run a business to offer service to their customers...all of their customers. Apple forcing him to fracture his users into iPhone vs everybody else is just bad business before you factor in any cut at all.
This looks like a very interesting argument. When you retain full control on access to a specifically defined set of customers (or relevant market), we call it monopoly. You should never have such a single powerful entity in a properly regulated, successful free market.
First: the most vocal developers really do not care about Apple's "ecosystem invented out of thin air". They just need to be where their customers are, wherever their customers are. The Spotify's, the Google's, the Netflix's, etc. The users who leverage the iPhone to access their Spotify subscription are Spotify customers, not only Apple customers. My relationship with Spotify pre-dates my relationship with Apple. I signed up for Paramount Plus due to a Superbowl Ad, not due to some contorted funnel which Apple, believing themselves to be the center of the universe, have inserted themselves into.
If I could download these applications directly from the suppliers: I would. And, in fact, I do so, on Windows, on Linux, and even on Apple's own MacOS.
The cognitive dissonance I can't reconcile among advocates for Apple's side is: simultaneously saying "Apple built this ecosystem, they deserve to tax it however they will" and "If you don't like it just go to Android". Ignoring the obvious problem that a duopoly is only marginally better than a monopoly: one of these has to be a weird argument, right? Either the ecosystems are not so-fungible as to be interchangeable for the purposes of marketplace competition; or, what Apple created isn't unique, it is fungible, and they shouldn't get as much credit as they have.
I trend toward the latter; I don't believe what Apple has created is all that special. I think their App Review does vanishingly little to improve the functional security of their end-users. Their software technology is almost universally crappy, especially when speaking on anything developers have to interface with. The next few years will prove even their hardware to be un-special, if it isn't already. They've built what they've built on the shoulders of giants. AT&T built a nationwide fiber network "out of thin air". Verizon built a nationwide 5G UWB network "out of thin air". TSMC builds state-of-the-art chips "out of thin air". The open source community built FreeBSD "out of thin air". Slack and Spotify built their application experiences "out of thin air". If even one of these entities didn't exist, or made the decision to stop dealing with Apple's unique ecosystem, Apple would face an existential risk. If Slack wasn't on the iPhone: I wouldn't buy an iPhone. If iPhones did not work with Verizon: I would not buy an iPhone. The list goes on.
Just think on that for a second: should AT&T have the right to say "our fiber backbone won't carry traffic generated by iPhone endpoint devices"? "Ultimately Apple is gaining unfairly access to our customers". "They represent a security threat to our customers". That would be insane! If its even possible, it would literally overnight destroy Apple as a company. So then it becomes, where do you draw the line? Why is it "obviously not ok" for AT&T to do that to Apple, but "eh its complicated" for Apple to do that to Epic Games?
Your argument is that this is an Ayn Randian situation where Apple put in the work to win over these customers, and now devs want a free lunch. I get that. My argument is: Apple would not exist today without the giants shoulders they stand on, Spotify (as an example) is a material reason why they're so successful, to whatever degree, and their insolence in admitting this isn't just morally wrong; its psychotically egotistical. This is, generally, the argument against all Ayn Randian philosophy; its not new ground, this is why Ayn Rand isn't really respected as an philosopher, and why her arguments also don't work in Apple's case.
She would have supported Apple charging whatever it wanted for its proprietary “steel”.
She would not have supported Apple limiting what others could do with it, such as stopping others from competing with its other products and services, or requiring cuts of downstream revenues only tangentially or unrelated to the use of its particular steel.
That would have been the “takers” in Apple, riding on the back and warping a previously moral business.
Windows users aren’t viewed as Microsoft’s customers from the point of view of third party software. Same with MacOS. Apple has pushed this paradigm in iOS because it’s ludicrously profitable.
Controlling the evolution of a ubiquitous computing platform gives a company a huge amount of power. Add to that the power to control any commercial transaction performed on that platform is simply too much concentration of power.
Whereas Apple sold the user a phone, so the users are clearly Apple's customers. There is an argument that they are also the 3P app developer's customers, but there should be no debate about the fact that they are Apple's customers, using a platform developed by Apple. If 3P app developers want to access Apple's customers on a platform developed by Apple, then they should expect to play by Apple's rules...
(And no, I never worked for Apple. In fact, I have worked both for Google and for multiple 3P app developers who were subject to the so-called Apple Tax.)
That whole argument is based on the implicit assumption that Apple's products would still be as attractive to consumers as they are right now, even if they didn't allow 3rd party developers access to their platform. Which is a completely insane take, like literally pathologically insane, you-should-get-professional-help take for me to swallow.
These devs aren't doing this, by and large, today, because its not in their business interest to do so. But: capitalism is an efficiency maximizer. Software has lower margins today than it ever has, and they're only getting lower. The market simply cannot support 30% taxes forever; it'll happen one-by-one, its already happening one-by-one. Apple's choice is: Get ahead of it, find a better more efficient path for developers to distribute on their platforms; or watch their platforms become boring places where no one can possibly leverage their extremely bad and proprietary technology to make money, and "apps" only make sense for gigacorporations to distribute as a value-add for their web apps.
2. Apple also sells Macs, where developers can access "Apple's customers" unencumbered, without needing to play by Apple's rules (developers may also opt-in to a lower-form of "playing by Apple's rules" by submitting their apps to Apple for notarization, or naturally, they may also opt-in to the Full Rules by distributing through the App Store. This is a fantastic, multi-tiered system that works, obviously, well enough for everyone.)
Really, Surface has THAT MUCH?! I honestly doubt it. I think I've only seen 4-6 surface devices in the wild in my life(in Europe). Maybe in the US they have 10% market share.
Successful enough that made Apple start shipping keyboards with the iPad to compete in that segment, as laptop wannabe.
According to Gartner, "Surface has never had more than 2.1% of the PC market."
At 2.1%, they're basically a non-player in the market.
Selling default placement & promotion is a very different beast from "Dell only allows Dell-approved software on Dell computers". We can all agree the latter would have been terrible in many ways.
> If 3P app developers want to access Apple's customers on a platform developed by Apple, then they should expect to play by Apple's rules...
Strongly disagree. Customers and developers should be free to transact using their own devices as they please, without Apple involved. Apple is very welcome to offer services for money - access to the app store, support services, and promotion etc all make perfect sense.
The end result of everybody on the path from the user to the developer adding rules & taking a cut is a world that blocks digital innovation entirely and completely hamstrings the software industry.
This would suggest the "Apple tax" on devs is less than the Steam tax on devs, despite Gog or whatever existing.
This is problematic argument, that imo we should not accept in _any_ commercial context.
* Are people browsing the web on an iPhone Apple's customers, and therefore 30% of web sales should be collected too?
* If you use Comcast to access the internet, are you Comcast's customer? They're giving the retailer access to your traffic, so they should take a cut of every online purchase?
* Should your headphones take a cut of all music streaming revenue, and refuse to play non-compliant music?
* Should your TV take a cut from every video stream provider they allow to show video to their customers?
There is significant value to society in general-purpose devices & services, where the user pays for something concrete, and can then use it with any 3rd party provider in any way they like.
That principle has been a key driver of digital innovation for decades, and allowing it to disappear would be a Very Bad Thing.
The RIIA Speakers, they only work with certified music software and automatically redirect a proportional a cut of your subscription payment to labels. /s
Insane take imo. I'm baffled how people can write this out with a straight face.
Just one counter example to the relationship you described: In Europe, if my app does not deliver as advertised, it is the customer that can sue me. Directly. They don't sue Apple because my app is in their app store, they obviously sue me, because I am the service provider.
> Also, I do wonder if EU flies a little close to the sun with this stuff. You can't legislate that someone lose more money than they gain with access to your market.
Watch us and learn.
Apart from that, I think this is blowing things out of proportion: Apple hasn't offered any calculation at how they arrive at the 0.50c installation fee, but I'm sure were going to get some insight once the first lawsuits at the CJEU roll in.
I would 100% buy an iPhone with no appstore, it would still be better as a smartphone than my Samsung with F-Droid and Google Play Store.
You contrarians are so fucking idiotic it's insane.
I have the exact opposite point of view, they are my customers and Apple is simply a middleware which is blocking access to them.
They only get their cut through very questionable and borderline illegal practices as seen in the EU.
Maybe if they had to actually justify their cut in a real market, they would improve the sad state of their dev tools, that could start to somehow justify the cuts.
Notice that they forbid any display of the Apple tax anywhere, that could be a marketing issue if Apple customers start to understand what's going on.
This makes no sense. If you were right there would be no android phones sold in europe because the conditions are so bad for the manufacturer. That, however, doesn't seem to match with reality at all.
Absolutely not.
Let me give you a hypothetical example - I pay for Jetbrain Ultimate. I use it in the MacBook for work. If OSX was as closed as iOS, I would magically turn into Apple's customer?
They are just the OS I am using (not even my own choice).
Apple would offer an app store in some form even if they were statutorily prevented from making any revenue from it because if they turned off the ability to install apps people would abandon iPhones in droves.
Yes, that's called "unbundling", and it's the bread and butter of antitrust regulation: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
It's not an exact match to Apple's situation, though; that's why there was a need for the DMA in the first place.
> [...] I do wonder if EU flies a little close to the sun with this stuff. You can't legislate that someone lose more money than they gain with access to your market. I'm not sure we're there on this one, but the patience can't be infinite.
What is Apple going to do? Stop selling iPhones in the EU, the third largest economy in the world? That would only make sense if iPhones and iPads indeed were loss leaders for the App Store.
Apple is a corporation, and corporations don't throw irrational tantrums. They do sometimes try to hold their customers hostage, but that type of behavior has a mixed track record at best.
That said, I really don't understand the issue with their cut, or insisting on handling payments. In the vast majority of cases, these are not your customers. These are apple's customers they have given you access to.
If the arguments were "these restrictions are so burdensome I can't be in the app store!", that's a different conversation. But they tend to be "I can access such an irresistible amount of customers via apple, I just wish I could take those benefits à la carte.
It sucks, but you're living in an ecosystem they made appear out of thin air, clearly benefiting enough to experience what you're complaining about, and wishing the deal were more beneficial to you _after the work has been done_.
Also, I do wonder if EU flies a little close to the sun with this stuff. You can't legislate that someone lose more money than they gain with access to your market. I'm not sure we're there on this one, but the patience can't be infinite.