When Tim Cooke went on about services I didn’t realise he meant stealing 30% of other people’s. Seems insane to me this racketeering is legal, I actually think people should be jailed for behaviour like this...
It's like you had two paper mills that dominated the market, and they wanted to claim a percentage of every novel, newspaper, etc. printed on the paper they produced. Oh, and you can't use that paper you bought to write erotica or other things the company disapproves of.
Seems like a weird hill to die on for an email app to me. The market is saturated.
But we have an alternate universe where users can install outside of the official store yet hardly anyone takes advantage of it.
If you like updating manually, don't give the store you use permission to do it manually. Why are you running software you don't trust anyway!
> But we have an alternate universe where users can install outside of the official store yet hardly anyone takes advantage of it.
See the post you replied to.
How do you know which app makers to “trust”?
Epic?
https://www.cnet.com/news/just-as-critics-feared-fortnite-fo...
Zoom?
https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-...
Google?
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/15235262?hl=en
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/30/googles-also-peddling-a-da...
How would you write the rules to get what you want? It’s a complex question.
I used to always buy Mancini roasted red peppers for salads and sandwiches. My grocer did a strategic sourcing exercise and now carries a house brand and some other brand. Should they be compelled to carry Mancini?
WalMart requires that vendors be able to fill orders on tight timescales. If you can’t, your out. Is that ok?
Costco requires that I pay them to shop there. Is that ok?
My wife owned a mall kiosk, and part of rent was a cut of the gross. Is that ok?
You could compare it to Costco, where you have to pay just to get into the store, where Costco sells their own labels side-by-side with the competition. The big difference is Costco doesn't force you to pay with costco credit cards at the cash register.
Costco (Canada at least) also only allows MasterCard for credit card payment. Prior to that it was exclusively Amex.
Even then it's not the same because you don't own the Costco store like you own your phone.
Unfortunately since the MS antitrust trial, they've missed opportunity after opportunity to prevent monopolies or oligopoly of Big Tech companies so they might pass here as well.
I've seen that with Handango (they raised from 30% to 40% and then 50%) and they went bankrupt when the App Store launched.
Same story with the phone operators, their margins was in the 50% range.
Can't say I'm a huge fan of the 30% haircut, but I get to push my product directly to millions of people in a week and get paid monthly? What a time to be alive.
And I am perfectly aware that the situation was even worse before the App Store.
In fact, by all means, Apple created a viable ecosystem for a huge number of independant developers and that's great.
Still, 30% is not justified, and this is not Apple hate, Google and Valve are on the same boat.
If you are shocked that companies take a fee for distribution then wait until you see how things work in the real world.
That is not a good analogy. Supermarkets, retailers etc charge a fee from the vendor because that is their primary source of income ("bread and butter", if you may). In the OP's case, the "supermarket" is an iPhone device which the user has already paid a premium price for.
EDIT: bduerst covered this already https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571076
Grocery stores also have slotting fees.
> Grocery stores also have slotting fees.
Again, the whole point I'm trying to make here is that comparison to grocery stores just doesn't work (because of reasons mentioned in the first comment)
* English is not my first language so I'm having trouble finding the perfect word.
Having stock costs money, you have to decide what to stock and take a loss if you can't sell it, nothing is automated so you need more staff...
It's really apple to oranges.
You don't have a choice to distribute iPhone software.
Just broaden the market to software in general or even just software for mobile phones and tablets. Then you have a choice again. iOS's market share is below 50% even in the US, and much lower globally.
(I have both iOS and Android devices, and I specifically like that Android's Firefox allows add-ons like uBlock Origin. Apples doesn't allow those.)
Only in the Apple iOS land. If I don't like Google Play's revenue cut, I can list my app on any of a dozen or so alternative stores (Amazon, F-Droid etc) and all Android Users can install my app. Same story on Windows, Linux and even Mac devices.
They would be pretty happy if they could have a link on their site to download the iOS apps, for their customers.
If Apple still wants to review every app that can be installed, they could propose an option to be in the App Store but unlisted - then the fees goes down to 2 or 3%, just like a credit card fee. But they won't, because they can get away with shaking businesses 30% so they'll keep doing it until someone forces them to stop.
Apple not allowing side-loading seems like the main issue.
What happens in reality is developers either capitulate and / or sneakily separately contact their users and get them to pay through another payment processor.
App Store has been around for over a decade.
The percentage has actually decreased.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-changes-app-store-r...
Very few mobiles games can be sold using the subscription model.