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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Apple provides a service for that 30% though. They handle the payment processing, they build, moderate and curate the App Store apps and they provide a lucrative channel to market for app developers. So allowing Spotify et al to get all the benefits of the channel without paying for it is actually unfair to Apple.

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This argument will easily hold if there were any way to have a competing store on iOS devices. Apple banning any competition in that field makes ‘buy they provide value for the money’ look like forcing consumers hand.

Not sure if I want to have a second AppStore (APNS, etc, etc.)

No. The argument holds irrespective of whether there is 1 store or a million stores.

Spotify wants to use Apple's distribution channel without paying for it.

That's unfair and doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. If I sell my software through a retail store they still take a cut.

I suspect Spotify would prefer to have their app on iOS without using Apple's distribution channel if they could.

Only because they could then do direct sign-up and billing without having to pay anyone a cut.

One of the most powerful things the internet has done for us: cut out the middlemen. Even Amazon is not safe, I foresee a future where people will order directly from the factory.

Let’s use the Kindle app as an example then. The app cannot link to their site when I search for a book I don’t have. If it did, the app would be banned. So Apple is trying to extract a 30% premium from Amazon and the only way for them to avoid that is to give me a shitty experience that quantifiable harms me (I waste time to search for and then hop through the download behavior, adding friction to what should be a seamless flow). In return for their 30% they are adding very little value. Amazon does it’s own payment processing, curation is surely not worth almost a third of every book I buy, storage is paid for by Amazon, and the transmission costs are paid for by me.

I disagree with it being called an Apple premium.

Apple has a store. Amazon has a store. Who is to say that Amazon's portion of operational costs and profit isn't the premium?

Amazon could choose to have a Kindle experience which doesn't go through the App store, such as a HTML 5 app. They distribute in the store because of the discoverability (and likely because they prefer to have a native app that can enforce their store's content DRM.)

Amazon could choose to expose more functionality through their app, such as title search, being able to look at reviews, download sample chapters, and even be able to fetch new books through the kindle unlimited and other prime features. They prefer to drive everyone to their own store instead.

Wait, so are you arguing that an HTML5 app is a perfect replacement for a native app?

They are arguing that the janky, hamstrung progressive web app infrastructure for iOS is a replacement for a native app.

Sadly, due to Apple forcing everything to use Safari's browser engine, PWAs are redheaded stepchildren on iOS: https://mobile.twitter.com/jbogard/status/104788904642763161...

HTML apps are never even close to working as well as a native app, they're generally a shitty compromise. If $COMPANY makes an app that would be crippled by Apple's policies, they should be free to distribute it through another channel to iOS users.

Have you used the Kindle app?

You can do title search, look at details of books, see reviews, download sample chapters, and download Kindle Unlimited books directly to your library with one click.

I presume what you _can_ and _can't_ do is directly dictated by Apple's policies, not what the Kindle team has been able to implement. As others have pointed out, native apps are a far superior user experience to HTML "apps".

Spotify is not using Apple distribution channel

> Apple provides a service for that 30% though.

Money is universally reviled, and rightfully so: it is a dark, vile, evil thing. It brings out the very worst in the very best of us. It brings entire countries to their knees. Money corrupts. Money is awful.

But there is one thing that money does better than anything else, bar nothing. No contest. No competitor on the horizon. Many have tried, all have failed. Money quanitifies value.

It is not up to you to defend how much money Apple should get. It is not up to us to contradict it. It is up to the market. This is the one and only thing it does well, so let's at least give it that.

Because allowing Apple to get all the benefits of determining the value of their app store, without letting the market give it a go, is actually unfair to Money.

> It is up to the market.

Insofar as Apple is a US Company, the US Government also gets a say.

Profit is a privilege. The US has a mixed economy, not a 'free market'.

> Money quantifies value

Money quantifies value... in our money based economy. Which is basically a tautology. Money in many cases fails to quantify utility and the same quantity of money has wildly varying utility from market to market.

This was true a few years ago but in 2018, it's not a curated place to get software. It's the only marketplace to get software for your device. 30% is disproportionate to what's being offered today.

- Payment processing, yes (though no other payment processor charges anywhere near 30% -- Stripe is 2.9%, I think?).

- Build, not exactly -- only in the sense that they can handle minor upgrades via bitcode for new ARM variants, if you choose to enable that.

- Moderate/curate, sure.

- Provide a lucrative channel? Yes, but only because they've made it the only channel by fiat.

I'm not sure I see 30% worth of mandatory value here. Is Apple's moderation so good it's worth 27% the cost of my app? Do developers think they're paying for bitcode upgrades, and do they think that justifies the fee? Recompiling for new minor architectures isn't difficult.

For that matter, is there more value provided in moderation for a more expensive app? If they approve my app at $5, and then I up the price to $25, did their moderation process retroactively become more valuable to anyone?

Apple do offer iTunes Credit and often does discount of up to 15% from Retailers. ( I am betting those iTunes Credit are wholesale at anywhere between 13% to 10% discount, and Retailers takes in ~10 - 8% after deducting processing fees )

Still, not many buy iTunes Credit. Most just use Credit Card direct from Apple Pay. But even if we have included all these, the 30% is still excessive.

The problem Apple is having is similar to their phone, it is not about the price tag or the 30% charges, it is people paying for it fail to see or justify its value. Apple will need to offer more "values". From Developers to its Users.

Storage/hosting, support and distribution (bandwidth) are missing frim the list. Arguably, it may not cover 30%, but it does provide for more than 2.9%

Spotify/Kindle/etc subscriptions and purchases are not hosted or distributed by Apple.

No, but the apps are. Spotify comes in at 98MB, and Kindle at 113MB. That is a lot of bandwidth. Since Amazon don't offer IAP, they get that for free, Spotify do offer IAP, so contribute that way.

Then Apple or Google can make developers pay for the size.

And no, Amazon doesn't get it for free, they pay the developer fees like ALL the other developers

> Then Apple or Google can make developers pay for the size.

They do; it's part of the 30% margin for the price of an App/IAP.

IAP doesn't have any size for Apple

If Apple's involvement is worth a 30% cut, surely they can compete in the free market with other App stores and distribution methods.

So if Ann's a developer and doesn't want their payment processing, and Bruce is a consumer and doesn't want their curation, then the buyer and seller should be able to dispense with the surcharge if they dispense with the "service." But they can't (without jumping through hoops.) And what's more, if Trusty App Corp. were to come along and set up a 20% cut Trusty App store that could be conveniently installed via an exploit, they would be undoubtedly sued for IP violations, due to the state protecting Apple's exclusive right to Apple IP. This is pure rent-seeking on the part of Apple, and ultimately antitrust laws exist to discourage rent-seeking even more than discouraging monopolies per se.

So charge the developers for that underwriting service.

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