Hacker News Reader

Comment by psaux | Hacker News Reader

“ The App Store's standard commission rate of 30 percent remains in place for apps selling digital goods and services and making more than $1 million in proceeds, defined as a developer's post-commission earnings” [1]

What is convoluted and worse? I am not a mobile Dev at this time, just going by what I see online.

Edit: [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s...

View on HN

If you make $999k in revenue, you will receive almost $850k in profit. If you make $1000k in revenue, you will instead receive $700k in profit. You're strangely incentivized to completely shut down your app as you approach the 1000k mark, unless you're confident you'll make it past the 1200k mark, where it's worth it again. Silly system.

That does seem terrible. It should be bracketed how our taxes are, honestly.

Thank you, great information. Those incentives then have to change. I wrote a few apps back in the day, and 30% seemed high, but I never hit over $100k in rev. I was hoping the little guy who scaled would have won here.

Not strictly true.

Your earnings after the first 1M in a calendar year will become subject to 30%. Your earnings before that aren't affected.

However, you are then kicked out of the program for the whole following year and can only reapply for the year after that if the next year's earnings are under 1M.

Wealth distribution is exponential, meaning almost nobody will fall in the small revenue gap you mentioned.

Until you’re that somebody, and then you make a post about it and it blows up on HN.

It is not automatic, you need to enrol into the programme.

It only work for first year, subsequent year revert back to 30% if your previous year exceed $1M. ( the 1,000,000.01 problem )

Google also has a much more flexible definition of Services, Teaching to a group of Students via Video Call is not considered as Digital Services as on Apple App Store, and hence requires 30% of commission when signing up. ( And since been exempt after bad PRs )

Apple will hopefully realise how silly their system is. The way Google is doing it makes much more sense.

1) Can you can explain what "And since been exempt after bad PRs"?

Does Apple does not charge for Teaching to a group of students anymore?

2) and is "teaching to a group of students" just an example for teaching to groups, or does it really only apply to students and to groups, but not when teaching to one person interested in guitar for example?

Thanks! PS: any good ressources that distill such App Store & digital services? (even better would be also comparing them)

>Does Apple does not charge for Teaching to a group of students anymore?

This wasn't enforced or known until fairly recently [1] and finally got its public attention during pandemic. Those bad PR was what caused Apple to make concessions. Basically since 2018 Apple has been steadily Pushing these changes for their Services Strategy revenue target. If you look around on the Internet or places like MacRumours, you find a group of "Apple Apologist" who are perfectly in flavour of Apple charging 30% for these educational digital class.

>but not when teaching to one person interested in guitar for example?

Teaching one to one are exempt from sign up link. Which is basically a FaceTime Call. But that is only on the basis if the teaching is "live". If you are showing large quantity pre-recorded Video you might / will be counted towards "Digital Goods".

But again Apple Apologist thinks it is Apple's platform. They can do whatever they want.

Edit: I wanted to add some additional context. A lot of these were rules not previously enforced before 2016 / 2018. So App Store has been perfectly fine for many conducting online / digital business. And the App Store problem isn't just about the 30% commission.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/23/apple-extends-fee-waiver-for...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com