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Comment by dash2 | Hacker News Reader

What’s wrong with them making a profit? I don’t think that would be a powerful argument in this case on its own.

Apple has made the argument in court that a given app can be essential for work or education, so customers have no choice but to acquire that app any way they can.

On that basis and others, while I think it is appropriate for a company to make a profit, there has to be a thing as "too much".

Apple (according to evidence in this case) currently earns like 20 billion USD per year off the 30% cut. To me, this is absolutely more than necessary, and while it's not exactly the same as how the cost of insulin has gone from $0.05/unit in 1991 to ~$0.30/unit presently, apparently apps are essential, so it's worth asking just how much it's reasonable for Apple to skim off the top. In the end, the cost of that 30% fee will get passed on to the customer one way or another, and Apple allows that to happen as well.

Ok. But consumers aren’t forced to purchase an iPhone. They could pick Android. Presumably they are considering the whole package when they make that decision, including the tradeoff between app expense and app reliability. I certainly tried Android and went back, for reasons which included that the Play store seemed to have a lot of junk and not much good stuff.

If my mom buys an iPhone and then finds out two years later that it was a mistake, at that point she probably has a bunch of apps she'll have to re-buy on Android (Apple gives developers no way to offer cross-buy like this), and she may need to switch providers for things like e-mail or messaging if she was relying on Apple's email service or iMessage. This creates a lock-in effect because not everyone can afford to drop a bunch of money to leave the walled garden.

I think in general people like you or me are savvy enough to not get harmed by these Apple policies, but court cases like this are about protecting everyone.

This could be true, but is there any evidence for it? I have a ton of apps. Very few cost more than $5. Most were free, though sometimes with a paid-for service (e.g. Dropbox, Evernote) - which I would still get if I changed platform. If I claimed this lockin wasn't a serious problem, could you prove me wrong?

Its not that they are making a profit is that users have no choice, and no choice but to give them 15-30% for no value add (arguable). It's a racket.

How many users spend more than a tenner on paid apps? Not many... but Epic made 300 000 000 a year on iOS alone selling in game items. What value is epic selling there?

Epic is targeting kids with Fortnite and its their money that they're after. Impulse- and vanity purchases, much more than anything else.

Whereas, when buying a paid app, one usually gets real value. At least as I see it. But maybe this means i'm old :D

If you're going to argue "most users don't spend more than ten bucks", how do you explain Apple earning 20 billion USD per year off the app store? 20 billion USD divided by 10 dollars is 2 billion customers. But Apple only pockets 3 dollars of that 10, so it's actually 20 billion divided by 3 dollars - around 6.6 billion customers.

Do the math.

That's not true. There are repeat customers, so you probably mean app sales not customers. Even that isn't true, since there are in-app sales that go through Apple.

OK, so you're arguing customers spend <= 10 dollars per app on multiple apps. How many apps? These arguments are being used to make the case that Apple deserves to earn $20 billion USD per year, or even must. I think if you're going that far you should be able to at least support that with napkin math instead of hand-waving.

There are two facts you are not taking into consideration, instead you chose to attack something I didn't write. Those two facts are:

  1. A Customer is not the same as a Sale.  There can be muptiple Sales per Customer.
  2. App Sales * Avg App Cost is not the same as Total Sales.  There are also in-app sales.

> I think if you're going that far you should be able to at least support that with napkin math instead of hand-waving.

I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing.

If I find a game I enjoy, I will usually give them 5-10 and play until it gets ridiculous. I don’t want to play a game for a month, check up on it every day, etc.

Law of skewed distributions. A few apps, like Fortnite, generate huge amounts of revenue for the App Store (and for Epic in this case). Most apps are actually free or ad-funded and don't generate any revenue for Apple apart from the 100 bucks dev fee.

So it's fortnite and a bunch of other apps that make those 20 bn. Again, Fortnite alone made 300 M a year for epic, and 150M a year for Apple.

Actually I'd bet that the largest part of the revenue is generated by in-game purchases. Too easy to trigger addictive gaming with simple tricks like intermittent reward.

Game IAPs definitely have skewed distributions, but I think the exact numbers have significant impact on arguments made about how much of a cut Apple deserves or how much total profit is reasonable. If you're making arguments about that I think you need at least basic numbers to support them, and those numbers aren't here.

Apple and Epic both have those distribution numbers, and I wish those showed up in the trial. The distribution is going to vary wildly from app to app, and games like Fortnite allow you to earn currency in-game. While I know they are skewed from personal industry experience, any claim from me about the actual average would be complete speculation.

Yes, since Apple wouldn't release the numbers required we cannot do a proper analysis.

Personally I don't know anyone who spends huge sums on paid apps, but I know of cases where kids spend huge sums on in-game stuff on iOS.

So yes, it's based on anecdotal evidence, but I have yet to hear an account of someone who regularly spends more than a tenner per month (or even per year) on paid Apps.

Their choice is to buy an android device. The phone market is not a monopoly unless you limit the market to only Iphones, and that's ludicrous.

Don't you know, we're supposed to martyr ourselves for humanity. Profits bad.

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