Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning | Hacker News Reader

Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse unless they give 30% of creator earning

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Per https://fanhouse.app/, "Fanhouse is the place where creators can monetize their social media personalities by posting freely about their lives, like a finsta, close friends story, or private alt, while connecting and engaging with their top fans."

So they built a platform, where they take some cut for themselves, while allowing other people to sell some digital contents on their platform. Apple built a platform, where they take some cut for themselves, while allowing other people to sell digital contents on their platform.

Other than the argument that this could be an anti-trust situation (i.e. in that case, the argument would be that Apple is abusing their market position), what differentiates these two cases ?

But then why doesn't Apple take a 30% cut of every Uber driver fee? 30% of every DoorDash delivered, etc?

Why is a platform for monetizing artists any different than a platform for monetizing your car?

They draw a line between digital and physical purchases.

They don't force Netflix to pay them 30% either. The reality is they take 30% where they can overpower the other party. Where they are overpowered, they acquiesce.

They also drew a line between in app and non in app transactions.

They did not just draw a line; they gerrymandered a line so Netflix would not leave App Store and Apple would not lose its income from smaller players while pretending it is a fair line in the sand. Even Marco Arment has commented on the ridiculousness of the complexity of the line. I highly recommend reading the link below.

https://marco.org/2020/09/11/app-review-changes

Oh, I did not know all of that. I would agree those policies are ridiculous.

That post is from Sept. 2020, but Netflix (and Audible, Comixology + others) have been dodging the 30% cut for years simply by not allowing you to pay within the app. I'm not sure Apple had Netflix in mind with this change.

See my other comment here about Netflix:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27453395

I believe the majority of a Netflix subscriber's consumption is still on their TV, not on their iPhone/iPad.

But you also cannot pay for Netflix in the iPhone app. You have to do it on their website.

You can't pay Fanhouse on iOS, either.

I pay Netflix through my iPhone. I can manage the subscription along with my other iPhone app subscriptions.

> But you also cannot pay for Netflix in the iPhone app. You have to do it on their website

The App Store explicitly rejects smaller apps that attempt to do this. See Hey, the email client that tried the exact same thing and got the cold-shoulder.

This is because Netflix, knowing Apple would take 30%, does not allow you to sign up via an iPhone app. Apple takes 30% if you sign up via iPhone, not if you sign up via web and then use the iPhone app.

Netflix was able to do this because Apple carved out an exception for them by gerrymandering the rules so Netflix could do this. They did that because Netflix was powerful enough. Hey tried to do a similar thing, but Apple was having none of it. They were going to force them to pay them 30%, because they were not powerful enough. When the social media storm made them more powerful, Apple acquiesced.

wait, what was Netflix able to do?

Netflix does not allow you to sign up in their iOS app. You have to sing up and set up payment through their website, but you can use your username and password to use your subscription in iOS. They do not pay the Apple Tax.

Hey tried to use the exact same, but Apple said they MUST allow sign ups in the app, using in-app purchase API, and paying 30% to Apple. Apple was not going to allow Hey to do what Netflix/Spotify/etc have done for ages, until public sentiments and social media storm forced them to acquiesce.

audible - the audio book app also does not allow purchases in-app.

Fanhouse can just let purchases happen on web

You mean Audible by Amazon.com, Inc.?

Yep that's correct.

if you read the twitter thread or the verge article you'll see this isn't true. fanhouse did disable in app purchases and force transactions via the web and apple threatened to pull their app unless they reenabled in app purchases

Apple has always had clear exceptions for video, audio, magazine and newspaper apps.

"3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video). Reader apps may offer account creation for free tiers, and account management functionality for existing customers."

It isn't because Netflix or Amazon are "powerful" enough, but that they saw that these were traditional multiplatform services.

I disagree with the ridiculous Hey situation (and note that Apple backed down), however let's be accurate.

There are two ways to look at this:

1. Apple has strong convictions about what it is entitled to proceeds from and what it is not. It is a coincidence that the things it believes it is not entitled to proceeds from are things that the powerful companies produce; things people would leave the platform for rather than live without, like Netflix.

2. Apple is throwing its weight when it can and acquiesce when it can's. That's why exceptions are carved for the likes of Amazon and Netflix without specifically naming them.

Apple's rules, as I have mentioned elsewhere [1], are too convoluted for the first explanation to make sense, at least to me. I fully understand if that explanation makes sense to other people, but I am convinced it is a matter of power.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27452865

It's just a arbitrary rule comfortable for Apple.

Yes, of course it is. And it's self-serving. Apple saw that they needed to have these cross-platform services -- from big and small and medium sized creators and businesses -- and they carved out exemptions.

Welcome to getting downvoted for posting relevant facts that contradict the group narrative.

There are a core group of extremely passionate anti-Apple folks who seem to go through every Apple thread and downvote anything that doesn't have torch in hand. It's pretty silly, but whatever.

I just saw one of these guys sincerely claim that Safari was "notoriously outdated and incompatible with the modern web". It is beyond parody.

There was a thread the other day that seriously argued that Apple promised the App Store was "completely secure" (which apparently extends out to guaranteeing the honesty, security and operational practices of every business if they happen to have an app on the App Store). I took multiple -4 downvote sprees for pointing out actual fact and reality, and felt good that I at least wasted a bit of their time.

It's boring and below HN, but it's the reality we live with.

Hence, the phrase "gerrymandering" the boundaries.

This is another thread where anything contrary the mob is going to hit -4, but here I am because such things are a bit fun.

I replied to someone specifically claiming that Apple made an exception for the all powerful Netflix, but that Hey was too small to get the same exception -- it's just big v small. In actuality Apple has a "gerrymandered" broad set of categories that are exempt (whether you are a garage company or a multinational), otherwise you have to provide basic functionality in your app without such a subscription. Hey didn't fit in the categories, and they didn't provide the functionality.

I may disagree with Apple on this -- and there should be an App label denoting that external subscriptions are necessary -- however phrasing and truth actually matters.

The little tiny company I work for plays by the same rules. We don't support any subscription payments through either of the app stores, only through our website.

Every couple months Apple will reject us over it, but it always escalates and we always get approved.

Google at least allows us to link to our own website, but if you use our iOS app, you have to figure it out on your own if you want to subscribe.

This is true, but it's still an exception made for their specific situation. Email app Hey tried doing the same thing recently, and Apple rejected the update and refused to push further feature updates until they removed it. It's a double standard, no matter how you cut it.

That used to make sense in the early days of Smartphone era. Precisely because Digital have zero variable cost for each additional goods. And Apple wasn't very straight with those rules. They only enforce it on Software and Games, not services.

Now everything goes through your Smartphone. And the idea, to quote what Apple has been saying in court, they need to recoup those API cost. As they are using their API, they want a cut. Since the Apps for both Physical and Digital goods uses those API, and Digital Goods doesn't necessary use those API for creation. ( e.g I use Windows to create ), why are they only charging Digital Goods and not Physicals?

The only reason why Apple charges 30% of Digital Goods is because they know Digital Goods have zero replication cost. The cost of an additional Digital Goods is essentially zero, they want 30% of it. And Physical goods have basic unit cost. So they are charging base on the product margin. And this was clear in the Wordpess case, once they look at domain name registration where the whole industry is basically operating with 0% margin. Apple decide to put an exemption on it.

Then became a question, how did we arrive at 30% in the first place? If you look at Amazon Web Store, they have different percentage rate for different product? Why? Because they is how the market have worked over the years. They are basing the commission on current market rate / margin. Just like your Super Market has different margin for different product.

Ever since Apple decided on their Doubling Services Revenue by 2020, they have chased down every single 30% services. It is sad how much good faith they have burned.

Let me go even further. Why not get a 30% cut of every single credit card operation validated through that bank's iOS app? Why not get a 30% cut of every wire transfer done through that bank's iOS app? Why not get a 30% cut of every national tax declaration submitted through an iOS app? Neither of these is physical.

I actually wish they would do this. It just would go to show the power we are bestowing on these "gatekeepers" while governments keep pushing more and more vital services as "apps".

You've explained how those two are different, but not why Apple is entitled to money from digital goods but not physical ones.

Because that’s their business model which was stated by judge in Epic vs Apple case. Such types of business are legal for decades. You can’t change that for Apple by not damaging everyone else. Like Epic sells nearly same Fortnite skins for kids making millions and not allowing any independent designers to sell them in Fortnite skin market.

Because it's America and they can decide to charge whatever they want for their product?

Apple draws a pretty clear line, it's the difference between buying a book and an ebook. An ebook is delivered and consumed on your iPhone or iPad, a book is not.

What about e-currency? They don't take a cut from coinbase.

What about Patreon?

Patreon probably gets by because a lot of Patreon rewards are physical items, or other services performed by the creator where Patreon (and by extension Apple) cannot guarantee will be received.

Meanwhile an app whose subscription model is “you get access to digital content” falls square within Apple’s IAP rules. I’m rather shocked Fanhouse got approved in the first place.

The fact that Fanhouse got approved means Apple's rules are arbitrary.

Not so arbitrary. If you are big and in the market Apple is not interested in, you are safe. Once Apple wants to step into that market, you should be careful (ex: spotify).

Don't let Apple PR fool you into thinking commercial decisions like this are anything like principle based :-)

If Amazon, Uber and Lyft drop iPhone support, people will atop using iPhones and that's pretty much the only reason Apple doesn't charge them a commission.

You think people will stop using iPhones because a ride sharing app goes away?

Ever wonder what would happen to Uber and Lyft lost iPhone customers as a user base?

They would both suffer drastically. If it came to that, I’m sure other big companies would join in as well in an attempt to punish Apple ie Netflix,Spotify, and Epic Games

That could definitely put a hamper on new iPhone sales.

The difference is that Uber and Doordash have a lot bargaining power

Products and services in the real world have marginal costs.

Digital products and services have near-zero marginal cost, so they pay.

This. She is operating a platform for creators…that is literally what the AppStore is. She knew the rules when she started playing this game, and wants to appeal to emotions and hyperbole like this is an issue between “life and death”.

Why does she get to keep 10%? It’s arbitrary. What if I want to start an app that helps creators manage their Fanhouse content? Should I ask Fanhouse for a cut of their fees so that I can pass on 90% of gross earnings to creator?

> She knew the rules when she started playing this game

Knowing the situation is not the same as accepting it. Just because I know a couple of large actors control the market does not mean I have to accept the situation.

If you engage with those actors accepting the terms that is exactly what it means.

...no.

You can't meaningfully accept terms when they are a requirement to enter the market.

They are not required to accept them, OnlyFans is doing it just fine without Apple. They chose to be in Apple's platform. Voluntarily.

This is absurd. In any other situation you’d never argue this.

Ok, so I can just ignore all regulations because I don’t like them? I can sell unsafe food in my restaurant because I don’t want to agree to the terms the government says I must adhere to?

It's not absurd. Have you never heard the term "contract of adhesion"?

And contracts aren't the same as laws and regulations, so throw that strawman out. Laws and regulations are enacted through a process designed to serve the greater good.

If it's a requirement to enter the market, why wasn't it considered when developing the business model?

What market? The market of iOS users?

There are literally more users on Android - If I were in that position, I could just switch platforms.

If I'm a radio manufacturer, I can't cry foul that Lamborghini won't allow me to sell my radio in their cars by calling them a monopolist over the "market of Lamborghini drivers."

If I then decide to still make an exclusive Lamborghini radio, I own that responsibility for my failed business model.

It does mean you shouldn't bet your business on winning that fight

Per definition the existence of the business depends on entering the fight.

you can make the same argument for netflix, amazon, or anything that involves any type of transaction, even your uber...

If she is using the app store payments, then fine. But if she is not using it, then that is a problem.

Yes, which is precisely what she should do.

Apple is a mega-monopoly that has captured 50% of Americans that use computers, and then installed taxation in front of all of it.

Businesses can't business anymore. It is beyond unhealthy for startups.

It's all a scam. All a ruse. And we're all victims.

Computing was never like this before Steve Jobs decided to ban literally everything and force people to live within his death star.

I can't believe how many folks within our industry are fine with this! You owe your career to free and open computing. As does Apple. They've just managed to gaslight us for so long that we're apologizing for the horrible things they do.

Break up Apple or allow people to install directly from the web. Don't let Apple enforce their payment rails.

They have enough goddamned money.

Wonderfully put.

I am guilty of helping perpetuating this situation by acquiescing and buying my wife/mother Apple gear.

I won't do this anymore.

She gets 10% if creators choose to use her service as opposed to the dozens of other similar services, some of which charge more and some of which charge less. Hence, there is no antitrust issue.

OTOH, App developers don't get a choice for iOS. They must use Apple's payment system. They don't have a variety of payment processors to choose from. There is no market determining whether 30% is fair, and that is why antitrust regulations may apply.

What if I want to start an app that helps creators manage their Fanhouse content? Should I ask Fanhouse for a cut of their fees so that I can pass on 90% of gross earnings to creator?

That is how many B2B relationships actually work; you've described a referral arrangement in which one company refers a paying customer to another company and in exchange for their referral they get paid a percent of the revenue derived from it.

> OTOH, App developers don't get a choice for iOS.

The choice is to not use iOS. You’re argument is predicated on using iOS, which is a false equivalency.

> Other than the argument that this could be an anti-trust situation (i.e. in that case, the argument would be that Apple is abusing their market position), what differentiates these two cases ?

Well I think you already explained it. One is a company large enough to effectively dictate the terms of the market and thereby practically tax every other company.

The other is a small tool among many others.

People look for analogies to the App Store all the time. You can't compare App Store to anything else. You have a logical argument that frames two companies doing the same thing and pointing out the hypocrisy without taking into account their market shares, value provided for their fees or considered the fact that Apple developers target people that already paid for a device and the developer already pays fees to release apps via the App Store.

I think what developers want is a fair price for what they get out of the App Store and a choice to not use it if they want. Selling a $5 digital good or a $100 dollar digital good costs the exact same to Apple (minus the 2% credit card fee).

Fees aren’t about costs, they are about value.

This is all over the place.

Even with credit cards, it doesn’t cost 3% of something to process the fee. A $100 purchase yields $3 to the credit card and a $1000 purchase yields $30. It’s literally the same size data transfer. There’s some minimal additional cost for fraud/insurance but they don’t base their fees on direct costs.

Also, generally speaking, when there is some regulation forcing cost plus fees it makes things suck more (eg, water and power).

> Fees aren’t about costs, they are about value.

Correct.

The problem is the value is artifically high because it is basically extortion.

It is basically a protection racket: "you pay us and nothing bad happens to your app that you spent x years and y thousand dollars creating".

I'm all about pricing for value without regulation. But did the App Store lose half of it's value to developers when Apple decided to slash fees from 30% to 15% (for smaller companies)? I don't think so. Did a competitor to the App Store appear to try and compete for lower fees? No.

This is just the behaviour of a company that can change prices on a whim because they don't need to compete with other app stores after having established a large share in the market and controlling 100% of all third party app distribution.

You can easily use another platform instead of Fanhouse (users can easily go on another website or app).

You can't easily use another delivery method for apps to iPhone users (that would require iPhone users to also buy and carry an Android device, which is a massive hassle).

Or use the web.

Telling people that the web is a suitable replacement for native apps is an empty promise, especially when your only option for a browser on iOS is one that is notoriously outdated and incompatible with the modern web.

"notoriously outdated and incompatible with the modern web."

There are a lot of anti-Apple arguments a passionate critic might leverage, but claiming that Safari is "notoriously outdated and incompatible with the modern web" is just foolish. It is laughable nonsense.

Has Apple added support for web apps yet? They were around for years now, that would be a prerequisite for switching to web.

Apple added support for iPhone web apps in 2007, including native-style widgets and touch navigation support in mobile Safari. This was enough to support many early games and apps, and Apple even had a curated directory for them.

At the time, developers complained bitterly that Apple didn't provide a native SDK, nor did they support Flash or Java web apps.

In 2021, mobile Safari is good enough to run Amazon Luna game streaming, so you can actually stream fairly demanding games like Far Cry 6 to an iPhone. However, Safari (and, to a lesser extent, Firefox) is far behind in terms of feature parity with Chrome for implementing Google's vision of Progressive Web Apps. In particular, Apple has announced that they don't intend to support a number of web APIs (Bluetooth, NFC, etc.) for privacy and security (and presumably business) reasons.

I build PWAs, there are main features I wish I could see on Safari/iOS.

1: Some kind of guarantee they're not going to randomly purge my assets/data to get some disk space back. I want to provide a good offline experience and not require a network connection. 2: Notifications, which has been requested for Safari every year for a decade. This is willful neglect and not esoteric new-in-chrome functionality or a security risk.

Apple did finally move WebRTC over from regular Safari to WebApp last year (Not every feature in mobile Safari is available as a WebApp). Finally! This opens up new potential. If they did the two above I'd be reasonably satisfied with the platform's capability.

I remember how Jobs was „attacked“ in an interview for not supporting adobe flash. They said it was because of his history with adobe, but jobs repeated all the time that HTML5 is going to be the future and adobe flash is old technology that has no future.

I understand the critique about their app store policy. But if you don‘t like their policy, don‘t build a „business“ depending on it. Or find a way around it. But stop crying in public and play the victim. Be creative, just like the people who invented the things our businesses rely on.

There is a lot of precedence that Apple is very reluctant to implement web-app standards, that could compete with the app store.

For some opinion pieces you can search for "Safari is the new Internet Explore"

Yeah, I saw the "Safari is the new Internet Explorer" argument. I, like many others, found it uproariously stupid. It betrays an authorship and readership that have literally no clue what the IE era was like. Just some sort of "IE bad" cudgel bit of pandering rhetoric.

It is whispering to a very specific audience.

And through all of this, the most remarkable thing is that Safari is hugely over represented among web visitors, both from iOS and Macs. It's almost like providing an extremely fast, light, energy efficient, feature rich browser encourages its use.

If a company that helps monetize social media personalities goes out of business, meh.

Does fanhouse also sell access to their “platform” to the users at $600 a pop minimum?

It’s a meaningless comparison because they are completely different kinds of platforms.

The vast majority of the world will never hear of Fanhouse and it’s competitors’ platforms. The vast majority of the world can literally not live their lives without Apple or Google’s platforms.

There is no comparison between the 2.

There doesn't even need to be a difference. Platforms need to have a way to allow nested platforms, or we will lose a lot of economic output to the platform tax.

One of the replies from the founder: >We removed the ability to subscribe in app, but Apple still required us to do their 30% or would remove our app. However, if you do have the current app, it's not yet subject to Apple's 30% and all creators still will receive 90% of their earnings. Web will also remain functional

https://twitter.com/jasminericegirl/status/14027168228566876...

This is what I largely have a problem with (I personally don’t care about the 30% either way) why can Patreon, a similar service, do this but This app can’t?

Maybe it's been grandfathered in? But isn't it already the status quo for Apple to selectively give favorable treatment to bigger operators? Prime Video's app previously disabled in-app buying, but at some point in the past year they made a deal with Apple:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206400/apple-tax-amazon-...

> Apple and Amazon very, very quietly unveiled a monumental app deal this week, without fanfare or, sadly, much in the way of transparency. Out of nowhere, buttons to buy or rent movies appeared in the Amazon Prime Video app. It’s difficult to express how strange this is: for over a decade, Apple has stuck to the rule that all digital goods sold in iOS apps must use Apple’s payment methods, including Apple’s 30 percent cut.

Isn’t that program enrollable though? There’s a thing to beta roll out a feature to select apps and then have it as an API or program.

Why is everyone consenting with this favoritism?

The approach others have done is to charge 30% more for in-app purchases and offer the ability to purchase on web for a discount (but not advertise the latter).

Serious question, why does everything require an app? Why can't the same thing be accomplished via the mobile web? I get so tired of being prompted to install apps when you could just *show me the damned web page*. Anything that requires speed can be done via webassembly, and sure, anything like games can ship a native app.

Usually for proper push messaging and background processing

Those have been part of the web standards for ages (serviceworkers, web notifications).

Web notifications don’t work on iOS and I’m assuming Android as well? Serviceworkers aren’t woken up in response to a background push if your phone is lock and not on that webpage.

From a user standpoint, Web Notifications work quite well on Android. When using Chrome for Android (Chromium), each site is assigned a separate Notification Channel so users can change notification priority or block notifications. Firefox for Android (Gecko) works similarly but without Notification Channels.

Web notifications work fine on Android. Has Apple still not fixed notifications then? I was under the impression that they claimed to have massively improve Safari during last year's conference?

AFAIK web notifications do not exist on iOS.

Yeah, not supported on iOS.

Well, there was technically that iOS wallet/pass trick - dunno if it's been plugged tho.

Otherwise, yeah.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notificatio...

not on mobile safari

Right, and for those who aren't aware, that means not on any iOS browser since they all (are required to) use safari under the covers

OK, well iOS doesn't adhere to the standard, which means most of the US mobile device market does not support it.

Correct me if I'm wrong (I'd actually love to be wrong), but browsers don't let you do silent pushes, and background data fetches are pretty limited, which makes it hard to do something where the phone gets updated frequently with non-urgent data, so that when you open the app/page, you have current data regardless of connectivity when you open the app, assuming you've got at least intermittent connectivity.

Weather, headline news, sports scores, non-urgent messaging could really use silent push to get data synced whenever you want to use it, but clearly not with Safari on an iPhone, and I don't think you can do it on Android without an app either.

Why the heck do you need to be constantly pushed headlines, sport scores, and non-urgent messages? Just make them load fast, so when you only use resources on the device when the app is actually in use.

It's exactly this kind of wasteful resource usage and the accompanying notification spam that drives me to avoid native apps in the first place.

Because I want to use these things when I have no connectivity. And I don't always plan ahead for no connectivity.

Given where I live, my big one is ferries. When I get on the ferry, it's a nice time to see what's going on in the world, and what the weather will be like, and maybe check work email (before I retired), but I can't do any of those in an online only world because cell coverage is very spotty. For the small handful of apps that manage a data store on the device, I can use those and catch up on things and queue outgoing messages. I'd like to make some more things for me, but native Android development is beyond my patience, and PWA doesn't have the capabilities, and some horrible blend of the two is what's wrong with today's world :p

"Proper" app development treats the network as optional. Its surprising how spotty connectivity is in the real world, and so its a huge UX boost to load data predicatively when possible (not to mention that running offline-first is a magical experience for the user).

Push is supported by all competent browsers, which of course excludes Internet Explorer, Android WebView (the shitty built-in one) and Safari (iOS and desktop) [0]. Firefox (on every platform but iOS) even supports a limited amount of silent pushes. I personally wouldn't want silent background pushes to an installed web app anyway, I don't see what data is important enough to sync but not important enough to notify about. Such a mechanism would absolutely ruin the device's battery life.

Google, being Google, have developed a Background Sync API [1] that can achieve background sync without notifying the user. This also extends to Edge and Opera and such because they share an engine.

I can see the use in a system where you sync data to a device that has intermittent connectivity, but I've honestly never seen such a system work for native apps when I've had intermittent connectivity myself. Even Google's automatic weather notifications don't show the right weather until I tap then and a web search loads.

Your background sync requirement is a nice to have and it'd certainly be a reason to use the app instead of the web version of a service for users with limited connectivity, but they're not really strict requirements for most applications. The applications we use today mostly consist of scrolling and connected browsing, with some data management and sync in between. For example, I browse twitter through the web app and outside the "fleets", whatever they are, that Twitter simply decided not to port, I'm not missing anything. I get notifications, I can browse, I can compose, there's really nothing more I need.

In the end, Apple's (intentional, probably) nerfing of Safari is what primarily stands in the way of proper mobile app support on the web. Notifications are a feature that I'd say most apps would require these days and Apple simply refuses to allow them. There's plenty of other WebKit gripes that developers have to overcome to program for iOS, but the complete lack of certain features is absolutely the worst.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API [1]: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/12/background...

Nitpick: background processing doesn't generally kill battery life because the platform API's provide guardrails around how long/frequent you can run, and batches as many wakeups together as possible. You essentially have a runtime budget you deplete as you run.

That said, you're right that most apps dont truly take advantage of background processing. What you have to understand is that the lack of background processing is what keeps notifications unsupported on iOS. Not only can you not support push messaging natively, but you can't _replicate_ a push messaging system either because there's no way to run code when your webpage/PWA isn't in the foreground.

I think people are used to just scrolling to an icon on their home screen and tapping on it, and companies like Apple/Google don't really like the idea of PWAs because they lose control over the developers and walled garden ecosystems they have created

Developers will optimize for what feels natural to the user, i.e. installing an "app" which doesn't require typing an address in the browser or scrolling through bookmarks

Also some companies from the developer side will want that extra user control that you don't have in the browser, for example to track them more, play unskippable ads, or access to some native features on the phone which are not available in web apps

Google actually pushed for the PWA and did/does things to support them. It’s largely Apple that has made them more difficult/impossible.

Chrome supports installing web apps to your home screen, though clearly even among the HN crowd that is not common knowledge.

It's hard to do photo/video/media integration on a web page. There no good way to interact with the filesystem to share content, start a livestream, etc. UIKit also make it pretty easy to create layouts that work well on your phone with swiping gestures.

I am an app developer that would love to move to a mobile web app but those are the problems that I am running into at least. If web assembly can accomplish all of that then I just am not well educated enough to use it instead.

I don't know about iOS, but the file picker on Android is fine. Live streaming through Javascript is also no harder than live streaming through native libraries. Granted, there may be less "official" SDKs out there because the web is an open ecosystem, but still.

Jitsi and Kickstarter have quite competent streaming systems. I remember being amazed by the incredibly low latency the Kickstarter streaming system has (always sub 100ms between camera and my screen across the Atlantic with good quality!).

An app for uploading images and videos, writing text posts, receiving payment and streaming video doesn't need a native app. If there is a choice between giving an absurd percentage to Apple or building a web version, the web version makes a lot more sense.

However, even if they build out a web version right now, Apple will refuse any update pointing users towards the web version of any app because that goes against their TOS. That will make any switch quite difficult.

Even if technically all SDKs had an equivalent, a PWA never, ever feels like a real native app. All the difference is noticable. It's all the slight details, gesture and touch handling, and few more, but they all sum of and it feels laggy.

Your service not having access to my data is a feature. It's one of the primary reasons I prefer websites over apps.

What personal data (that you didn't explicitly provide or allow access to) does an app have access to that a website doesn't?

There's a whole range of things that an app can do/infer on a system that a web page in a browser can't.

Things like processes that are running, RAM, battery life, and more.

There's a million things they can do. Permissions aren't that fine-grained, and the apps always have ways to infer a lot of stuff. Heck, they can even make background tasks, while if it's a website I know that if I close the tab your tool is gone.

what if the service is a way to manage your data? In my case its a photo library alternative for fitness photos/videos. Take a picture of your handstand every month and store it locally in the app documents folder or on PhotoKit so that you can see improvements over time (nothing is stored in the cloud). I don't know of a way to do that on a mobile website.

I wish you well.

I wont be a customer because I don’t care enough about my looks or fitness to get into daily photos. But, really, what does your app offer over the photo gallery and folders already on my phone?

I personally like keeping it separate from my phone's photos/video folders. You can also add notes/rep counts and add links to useful workouts you find online.

We're building a mobile app because our users demand it.

Apple intentionally hobbled mobile web for a long time on iOS to incentivize people writing a native app over just making a webapp.

I’m wondering if native mobile apps are doomed to disappear as the web and mobile Browsers meet in the middle, the same way everything was a native app for quite some time in desktop land and now everything is a webapp.

If you watch Apple they're doing everything within their power to make sure this doesn't happen.

Current day because they've neglected Macs so much over the past few years your Mac is now mostly just a shell to run a jumble of electron apps (I used to love Mac Cocoa apps but can't even name one that has launched in the past 2 years) but if you follow what they're doing they'd prefer it if it was a selection of iPadOS apps instead.

Doubt it, mobile phones have only increased in features. More features, more likely need native app.

What incentive to does Apple have to make people use apps less and the web more?

What features? Not every app needs access to your camera.

Apple doesn't allow third party web browsers on iOS so native apps are the only viable solution until that changes.

My guess is that this will be the subject of a lawsuit at some point.

Wrong question

onlyfans is doing just fine in this space. They didn't want to worry about app store TOS or % cuts and decided to be web only.

While a good example of a web app that could've been a native app, there's a strong argument that they didn't decide to be web only as much as forced due to the nature of their content never being allowed in the app stores.

Yeah, the online gray area companies like porn and gambling are the ones largely holding up the web at this point.

Oh, I know this one! Because Apple made Safari the new Internet Explorer to force you into their walled garden where they extract their tithe.

I can't stand building for iOS Safari. It is the pain-point in so much of my development.

Many features aren't available on the web. e.g. web midi isn't planned on being worked on anytime soon by the webkit team. Also, iOS Safari browser updates constantly break/maim apps. e.g. iOS 14.4.x all had real time audio processing issues that weren't fixed until iOS 14.5.

Because apple deliberately hobbles mobile safari so that you need a native app to get real stuff to work. Google talks the talk for web apps but still falls far short. And why not? They are making so much money by not actually supporting web apps. It's in both companies DNA now.

Because Apple is intentionally limiting the mobile web to force your hand to create an app.

I've been working on hardware that we've been trying to ship using open technology for the protocols so it doesn't need apps. So focusing on things like WebBT and WebUSB which is almost magic, a user can unbox your device go to a website and then do anything you'd possibly want with. But yeah all falls apart the second it needs to work on an iPhone and you're back in the world of having to build an app.

Whole thing works flawlessly with just a webdev team on computers and android devices but because of Apple to ship this vision we need to build a solitary iOS app too.

I say this as an iPhone user too, unfortunately I feel too locked into their platform to leave now.

Is there anywhere I can try out this application?

Nothing I can show of it yet, but I encourage you to look into the WebUSB and WebBT APIs with an open mind.

I know a lot of HN users don't like them because they see it as a gateway to fingerprinting, not sure how much truth there is to that but for me I see there is a huge benefit to devices being able to communicate with our computers over open and understandable protocols.

Currently today, say you buy an IOT device you have to download a smartphone app. On a long enough timeline that smartphone app will stop being updated and then eventually it will stop working after an OS update, especially if its iOS and then at that point the device basically becomes landfill fodder.

If it were WebUSB or WebBT you just need to ship a web page, there is a greater chance that web page will still work down the line with newer browsers, if it doesn't rely on a server you could even archive that web page and at least it's easier to reverse engineer. Not to mention the web app will work on Linux too, no need to ship platform specific executables.

For me WebUSB and WebBT are great moves towards more sustainable and maintainable hardware.

Apple doesn't support a lot of modern web api or the api they provide is crippled. just few examples: there is no full screen mode Web api on iPhone - only on ipad - games pretty much require those.

There is no web push notification support on ios - only on desktop safari.

>Serious question, why does everything require an app?

An App button on your home screen is zillion times better for 95% of user than a web address.

If Apple allowed one click installation of Web App. ( Not clicking on Safari settings and add Site to Home Screen button ). Or Scanning a QRCode to download a Web App.

Along with adding all the missing Web App features to Safari that could be enabled only for Web App and not Web browser.

That would have been fine by me. This is borderline as good as side loading.

>An App button on your home screen is zillion times better for 95% of user than a web address.

I can create a button on my home screen that will take me right to a web page with one click (on android, I'm assuming you can also do this on ios)

With apps, publishers have more control, compared to webpages. For example, it's harder to block ads, or specific components of the page.

Nowadays even most games are casual games that can also be run on the web easily. I'm personally making my first game and it's going to be delivered through the web. Crossing my fingers that people actually appreciate the lack of a download and the cross-platform support out of the box.

How timely for Instagram’s CEO to say the quiet part out loud and announce that they’ll be helping content creators to get around Apple’s 30% cut today:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/instagram-ceo-facebook-will-...

I think Zuckerberg was right when he said Apple’s practices have ultimately benefited Facebook in eliminating any competition.

I think these content creators have it too good, they're only taxed about 30% by the government, and 30% by social media platforms, and only 30% by hardware platforms. That's a whole 10% they're left with! Those content creators should pledge 30% of their net earnings to worthwhile causes. It only makes sense.

Besides, look at how much they're earning gross to begin with. A whole $0.99 per app, and $0.04 per click on advertisements! These people are rolling in it.

They're actually left with 34% if you do the math correctly.

Don't forget to account for floating point rounding errors.

I just checked and I'm surprised Patreon has an iOS app. I wonder how they're dodging this type of shakedown.

People in the comments are right so far that this could be just a website, but I think we can turn that around and say that Apple is not providing any services that the developers of Fanhouse really need or want. They just want to be on the store, and all the services and APIs Apple provides aren't really features as long as developers are forced to use them.

That's a nice business you got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it.

Does anyone know to what extent Apple differentiates between in-app purchases and subscriptions? I've heard Netflix and Spotify do not give Apple 30% because, well, that'd be kind of ridiculous for these companies to give 30% of their revenue to Apple.

But what about mid-sized companies? I pay a yearly subscription fee to Headspace. If Apple is actually taking 30% of their revenue because people access it via an iPhone? That... just doesn't seem sustainable.

You can't subscribe to Netflix and Spotify on the App Store anymore. It was possible for a while, where both just handed the costs down to customers. E.g. when Spotify costs 10$ on their site, it used to cost 13$ when purchased through Apple.

I know Spotify stopped supporting in-app purchases when Apple Music came out, because even though both services are priced similarly, from within the Apple ecosystem it seemed that Spotify costs 30% more. And of course because of the anti-steering provisions for Apps, Spotify couldn't even tell iOS users that Spotify is cheaper when you visit their site.

if you pay that subscription fee via the app store then apple takes a 30% (or possibly 15%, in a few scenarios) cut

Something seems a bit sus here. There's a whole lot of "I'm poor and on food stamps, relying on my brand new company to pay me as a creator". Are they even "creating" on the platform? Seems like they're some kind of middleman for every other service kind of like hootsuite or something. Have they cleared that 1 million 15% threshold already in 8 months?

I must be following 50+ iOS developers on Twitter and none of them have liked this tweet. It's surreal. I feel like people are afraid of Apple's retaliation if they like this tweet.

I find the creators livelihoods lines to be attention grabbing and muddying the waters about what this argument should be about.

The Netflix exemption should be available to all apps - that point is what the Epic lawsuit should be about (they've confused the issue too by talking about having their own app store). Apple could then fight for developers to use Apple Pay on its merits in the marketplace.

In the case of Fanhouse, the rules were well known (and disliked) when they started. They should have created their product as a web app - their particular use case is one where the technical limitations of a web app wouldn't have been much of an issue.

If they felt so strongly that their product had to be in the Apple App store to succeed, they are justifying Apple's 30% cut.

Jasmine from Fanhouse is likely to get a speaking slot at the upcoming Congressional hearings on Apple.

It would be interesting to hear how she wants to make money on Apple platform by not following the rules and not paying fees for access to Apple user base. It seems zoomers live in alternative version of Universe where everyone is owing them something.

"Paying fees for access to Apple's user base" is called an "illegal tie-in sale" in antitrust law.[1]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

She, the fanhouse app owner, only takes 10% from the content creators

It doesn’t really matter. Apple takes 30% since rules are for all. You can do your business on Android in 3rd party store or without store and don’t pay any fees. But Android users are poor by statistics and no one is using sideloading or 3rd part stores in US. That’s why she hates Apple - they built successful and platform by investing billions and now someone wants to exploit it for free.

There is a culture, that has remained in place since the time when Apple was about to go bankrupt, to try to keep every penny possible. This corporate culture literally saved the company from its death (remember the Bill Gates Borg appearance on the giant screen in ‘97?) but it’s becoming a bit much now.

Apple should have been pulling every trick in the book to help this young female entrepreneur build a digital platform — she’s exactly the sort of person we need in a leadership role in that industry. Instead, they’re killing her business — what? This goes beyond “the rules” ... It’s time for their culture to evolve.

> We have creators who are unemployed from the pandemic. We have creators who need to pay rent, to pay tuition, to pay medical expenses, and they need their income to survive. Apple's 30% directly threatens their livelihoods.

Does anyone find this reasoning disingenuous? "Will you think of the [children or other unprivileged group]?" Is Apple morally obligated to give money to people with harder lives? It weakens her whole argument. Jasmine knows this. She used to be on OnlyFans which has no app, and is an Ivy League (UPenn) grad. She's trying to keep her cash while making an emotional appeal.

Yes, I find it disingenuous. It's bullshit and manipulative. I don't feel like Fanhouse is the second coming of Jesus.

It's a shame that these companies can't even vote with their feet because Apple users are too lucrative as a market.

Hell of a position to find yourself in as a business.

Hmm... This is interesting. Did the terms of the contract change? I'm not an app developer and I know that Apple takes a 30% cut.

Down in the thread, they compare their platform to Patreon, which has an app. Exclusive content is a substantial part of Patreon.

I'd like a straight-forward explanation of why Patreon is allowed to avoid in-app payments. It seems like a straight-forward violation of apple's rules. Apple having its rules is one thing, but applying them unevenly seems like a problem too, since it protects a whole host of 'grandfathered' businesses from competition.

If you are big enough the chance of getting hit by this diminishes and if you do get hit you can make a deal (like Amazon does) to pay less. Rules are for plebs and apps Apple think it might copy some day.

fanhouse is a SFW platform where creators can monetize their social media presence by posting about themselves and their lives

1. Why would creators using fanhouse get to bypass Apple’s tax?

2. Why is this being treated differently from Kindle, which allows creators to distribute content via an app offered in the App Store without paying 30% of ebook price?

2. Fanhouse not only has one off transactions but things like pay to view pictures of someone etc

How does Fanhouse work?

> We pay creators 90% of earnings. Now, Apple is threatening to remove Fanhouse from the app store unless we give them 30% of creator earnings.

Apple doesn't know anything about how much Fanhouse gives to creators. They just want their 30% (15% up to a million) for digital content transactions made within the app.

If someone pays $10 in the Fanhouse app then Apple is going to ask for $3 (or $1.50 if they haven't made $1 million so far this year or last year).

I understand that Fanhouse wants to give $9 of those dollars to the creator. They can, but they still owe their fee to Apple. Unfortunately that ends up being more money than the whole transaction so the economics just don't work.

What amount is fair for Apple to charge for payment processing and the infrastructure to actually make the purchases?

> What amount is fair for Apple to charge for payment processing and the infrastructure to actually make the purchases?

They can charge whatever they want as long as they give developers the alternative to use a different payment provider. See Discussions around exemptions for Netflix for instance.

What exemptions does Netflix have? They aren't using their own payment provider since you can't actually pay for anything from within the app.

> What exemptions does Netflix have?

Netflix is exempted from mandatory usage of Apple's payment platform. OP stated that Apple is threatening to pull the app if she does the same thing that Netflix gets away with: avoid using Apple's payment platform, and set up payments outside of the app. For a company that loves demanding its partners adopt Most-Favored Nation clauses, Apple sure does hate treating its app developers the same.

Netflix doesn't take payment in its iOS app as far as I can find.

They are allowed to take payment on their website for a subscription, but so is any other developer.

>so is any other developer

No, they are not. That was what the whole Hey debacle was about. Netflix and Spotify have special privileges there.

I do remember seeing articles about Apple "requiring" Hey to allow signing up in the app, but I'm not sure if Apple relented or if it was just a misunderstanding. Hey does not currently take payment in the app.

> but I'm not sure if Apple relented or if it was just a misunderstanding

the replies to your comments are literally telling you the true story, at least do your own homework

I can find nothing on the Internet about Apple bowing to Basecamp and allowing Hey to use their own payment processing.

I did however download the Hey app and try to sign up for a paid account, which you can't do.

the twitter thread/verge article are about how this is not true for fanhouse, at the very least.

It's not clear from the Twitter thread what Apple is asking for. They're definitely NOT asking for a share of creator proceeds but they may be asking for Fanhouse to have a way to subscribe in the app.

I downloaded Fanhouse and tried to view some profiles. It says "Follow to see more" but there's no way to follow anyone in the iOS app. I can see this running afoul of some App Store guidelines since you're advertising a feature with no way to use it.

This could be Apple being unreasonable, but it could also just be a misunderstanding of how the App Store review process works. I don't know how long they've been going back and forth with Apple on this.

> What amount is fair for Apple to charge for payment processing and the infrastructure to actually make the purchases?

Just that? Probably about 3%.

If they're not stacking more fees on top then even 5% wouldn't be an offensive number for payment processing and would give them tons of profit.

Seems pretty disingenuous given they had to have known this would happen (note that OnlyFans has no app)

Makes for a great soundbite though. "We had no idea going in that stepping in front of this bus would hurt us."

"Amazon and Patreon doesn't get hit with a 30% tax. Why do we?" would be less disingenuous.

Amazon (Kindle) and Patreon don't offer purchasing in their apps, exactly so they aren't charged 30%.

Then why do Venmo and CashApp get a pass? Is Fanhouse trying to leverage Apple’s Payment APIs without paying or something?

Those apps are not distributing content, I haven’t installed Fanhouse but from looking at their website it seems that you can consume the content you’re paying for through it.

So Netflix?

It’s a subscription service and you’re not paying for individual content a-la-cart? We can play wack a mole all day and find special carve outs by Apple but “what about-ism” isn’t the (or their) point, it’s did they expect this to happen or not. Surely they knew at some point the tax man would come with absolute certainty so crying (hyperbolic) foul now is… disingenuous.

I’m pretty sure Netflix and other streaming services give 30% to Apple if you buy the subscription through Apple. Don’t they?

No they don’t since they don’t give the option. It sucks that Apple isn’t giving them the option to just not allow In-app purchases at all when there’s Patreon.

They don't allow you to sign up in the app. You have to sign-up and subscribe via the web. App is login only.

Indeed, I stand corrected. I would swear that they previously allowed you to subscribe with an in-app purchase. Disney+ does still offer an Apple in-app subscription.

It hasn't been possible for about 2.5 years now.

They're both subscription services. One's just "too big to fail".

> Then why do Venmo and CashApp get a pass?

Don't give Apple any ideas. Next thing you know, they start charging you 30% of each transaction and are working on a way to send you an invoice for 30% of any transactions you do in real life.

OnlyFans wouldn't be allowed in the App Store since it is essentially pornography. I am curious if they would given the chance, but they can't

Reddit allows pornography in the app if you've chosen NSFW setting. How OnlyFans is different?

Number of users

Loudness of users

Because Reddit is old and big. Banning it would piss off lots of people.

It's the same reason why Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc can get away with it, despite clearly having accessible NSFW content.

This is the real reason. Notice that there’s no real 4chan app on the App Store, even though it has both SFW and NSFW boards, just like Reddit. Apple will bend their own rules depending on who they’re applying them to, they have zero integrity.

The risk of a porn story and counter-narratives of non-porn utility. Shipping and trucking has a risk of a trafficking story, but it has much weightier counter-narratives of salient utility.

Primary purpose. You can build a web browser that can load porn, but that’s not the raison d’etre of a web browser. Similarly Reddit is far more not porn than porn.

reddit would likely get rejected by the app in today's enforcement environment. discord was recently forced to disable nsfw channels in the ios client

This makes me curious is Onlyfans has a PWA. Really wish more websites did this going to go check right now.

Can confirm it does. Functions just like a normal app (user side) and since it doenst have any offline features there’s not any friction I can see a see as user.

I wonder if there’s a way for Safari to display a Add to Home Screen Option App Banner.

OnlyFans has no app because of the nature of the content.

They have no app because of the censorship in the app store, not the nature of their content.

As understandable as that is, what's a good working alternative? Google is no different and is becoming more Apple-like in its approach to software distribution. Admittedly, iPhones and Pixels provide a cruftless mobile experience. But I'd rather have an option that didn't require an ever-shortening leash or put on pretensions of concern for consumers or developers (privacy, censorship, et al.) while simultaneously shortchanging them.

This is exactly what I'm thinking.

I'm kind of exasperated with all of these apps / developers who know what they're getting into when they create developer accounts with Apple, go through all of the hard work and expense of developing apps for the App Store only to whine and tweet histrionics about how they don't like the rules after the fact.

If you want total freedom to do whatever the hell you want, there's a platform for that called Android or Windows.

Hey! Don't forget about Linux! :)

Yeah, it's not like they put together this entire business and then afterwards realized they'd have to pony up money to Apple. If they didn't know up front, that's not great business planning.

I think this might be a part of their strategy. Do a well timer PR push.

I don't understand. Has Apple changed their terms of services to disallow this? Is it not clearly disallowed by their terms of service? Or has it been disallowed for the whole 8 months of its existence, and this person is mad that they only got away with it for that long?

It's time to stop asking "Why does Apple think they deserve 30% of App Store revenue" and start asking "Why has Apple not demanded 30% of web app revenue yet?".

The justification of "We put all the hard work into building the hardware, the OS and the stack so deserve a cut" still stands if a website is opened using the Safari engine. If it doesn't stand then neither does the App Store cut.

> "Why has Apple not demanded 30% of web app revenue yet?"

They would if they knew how. Which is probably why they block features on the web so that they can't compete with native apps.

You're talking about webm right?

The standard modern web in general.

Mobile Safari is the Internet Explorer of the modern web.

There's some other examples too:

- Automatically erasing all script-writeable storage after 7 days, crippling local PWAs and preventing them from competing with native apps

- dragging their feet on Service Worker support for ages, another PWA issue

- blocking the standardization of numerous web hardware APIs:

  - Web Bluetooth
  - Web MIDI API
  - Magnetometer API
  - Web NFC API
  - Device Memory API
  - Network Information API
  - Battery Status API
  - Ambient Light Sensor
  - HDCP Policy Check extension for EME
  - Proximity Sensor
  - WebHID
  - Serial API
  - Web USB
  - Geolocation Sensor (background geolocation)
  - User Idle Detection

Restricting local storage features for "Privacy" looks like sly strategy by Apple.

Some new APIs proposed by Google is bad, so declining by Apple is fair. Mozilla also decline some APIs.

>Some new APIs proposed by Google is bad

What's the greater evil? Some APIs that have to be approved by the user that give greater access to hardware.

Or developers having to write platform specific native apps if they want to reach the gigantic iOS audience, oh and because it's then through the App Store, then pay Apple for the privilege and pay App Store tax on any income from the app.

I know some would argue both are bad, but I know which world I'd rather live in.

Safari is the new IE6

They're blatantly holding back web tech to maintain their entrenched interests

A seller accepts $x because they are betting they cannot sell at $x+1 at whatever scale they want to sell at.

A buyer gives $x because they are betting they cannot buy at $x-1 at whatever scale they want to buy at.

So the subscription apple tax work-around does not work anymore if you are making too much money?

More like not enough money. Netflix and Spotify leaving the App Store would be a big deal and piss off a lot of consumers. Months old startup a handful have heard of? Perfect to extort in Apple's eyes.

Netflix and Spotify don’t offer in-app purchases and come under the reader rule within the appstore guidelines. At least know about things before you talk about them dude.

I hate to be That Guy, but Apple doesn't care how much money you keep vs. how much money you pay others when you accept In-App Payments. If you paid 90% of your IaP revenues to the power company instead of to content creators, Apple has no way of knowing this. It just would mean that your business has no hope of being profitable.

Fanhouse can still pass IaP revenues onto their customers ("creators"), but they're going to end up giving them 63% of their IaP revenue (90% of 70%) instead of 90%.

This is a business problem disguised as a justice issue.

> This is a business problem disguised as a justice issue.

And we're discussing it because the monopoly known as Apple is continuing to gaslight and extort our industry.

Apple cannot be the single point of entry into a device that is responsible for 50% of American computing-related commerce. That might have worked if Apple was a small device used by 5% of consumers, but let's be real. Apple is the face of modern computing.

What the question really should be is, "why should Apple get to enjoy all commerce and freedoms linked to computing?" Through marketing and developing a good product, they've brought themselves into a market leader position. The choice to lock down their device may have made sense at 5%, but now it suffocates our entire industry under their gargantuan weight.

Apple isn't a device maker anymore. They're the fabric of computing itself. They have all the customers, they control all the software, and they make all the choices. You don't get ingress without going through them. They've been transformed into an analog of a common carrier, and the law now needs to treat them as such.

The only path forward is to force Apple to allow web-based downloads of apps, no longer allow them to force Apple payment rails, and to enable non-Safari based browsers to be installed.

Simple fix that will restore balance and health to the industry.

After this change happens, Apple will remain a 2 Trillion dollar company. This has negligible impact on their revenue - all it does is force them to work harder and gives the rest of us much-needed breathing room.

(Nevermind the right to repair and compute arguments.)

Some people like the status quo and would defend it to the death because they make money off it.

Why does this rise to an issue of regulation for you? All these problems with the Apple ecosystem are optional: Android exists, and is a viable alternative with none of the mentioned downsides.

The fact that 50% of Americans freely choose to entrench themselves in an ecosystem with draconian rules and high fees does not imply that creating or operating such as system should be illegal. Apple would argue that the fees are necessary to fund creation of the system in the first place.

Isn't the point here What they get 30% of?

Do they get 30% of what the end user pays or 30% of the revenue the app maker keeps (30% of Fanhouses 10% is 3%)?

Apple gets 30% of what the end user pays. IaP has always worked this way. It's a high tax to be sure, but it's not like Apple gets half, or more than half.

If you can't run a self-sustaining business with the remaining 70%, then you have two choices at the moment: (1) find a new business to be in, or (2) do what similarly situated businesses do, and use a different mechanism for collecting revenue than IaP.

Saying "That's just how it is" is basically admitting admitting it's wrong but refusing to support fixing it.

I get where you're coming from. I think Fanhouse is a bad example case. I won't die on this hill. But if that's the best reason for something, we are admitting there is no good reason for it.

The thing is, we can argue ad infinitum as to what an acceptable commission should be. There’s no “correct” value. No matter what it is, someone will always complain that it’s too high. (Case in point: brick-and-mortar merchants who complain about 3-5% merchant fees for accepting credit cards.)

But the fact that it’s been this way for over 10 years and the app ecosystem has been very healthy is a pretty good existence proof that it’s not as big a deal as some vociferous people (who, in the end, usually just want more money for themselves) make it out to be.

10 years is a pretty short time for "this has been always been this way".

Is the app ecosystem very healthy or could it be healthier? Why does the rate from 10 years ago make sense today?

In a free market, the rates would be set by market forces and we generally think those are right. But Apple set 30% and has never even reviewed it as far as we know.

I won't pretend there is a sure fire way of defining exactly the correct rate. There isn't. But that doesn't mean letting Apple set it is correct either. This is why we have utility boards: someone who isn't bias should set rates to make them fair and efficient and make sure the system is working as well as possible.

Your electricity price needs to be low enough you're not being fleeced, but high enough to allow investment in improved infrastructure. If you set the price it might be too low, if the local monopoly set the price it would be too high.

The app store is no different. Someone disinterested should be setting a price that maximises benefit for consumers.

That price might actually be higher? I don't know. I'm just saying that Apple shouldn't be permitted to set it alone and that "30%" was never carved I to stone by god as the right number. If anything, the fact it has stayed at 30% proves its wrong. What other price has remained exactly the same for over a decade?

Apple isn't alone is setting this price -- at the very least, Apple competes with Android for roughly half the smartphone market share. Making your app available in both ecosystems is not a requirement to run a successful business. As an example, consider the myriad apps that are available exclusively on iPhone, with no Android support.

The 30% in-app purchase tax can't be compared to a utility price because it isn't mandatory. As a business, if you don't want to pay it, you are free to target a different platform with a similar user base.

If high-quality apps stopped supporting iOS because of the high IaP fees, eventually Apple will be incentivized to reduce those fees. If apps elect to stay, the platform is clearly worth the cost.

The debate over whether app stores are a monopoly/oligopoly etc is pretty well gone over here isn't it? I won't waste your time repeating those points.

Interestingly, last time I checked 80% of iPhone users would not consider switching when surveyed (well done Apple).

I wonder if forcing an open market and even cross compatability would be a better semi-solution...

That certain people are angry about a situation such as this, despite the widespread evidence of customer satisfaction, speaks a lot about people’s priorities, I think.

Again, this is a deflection though isn't it? There will always be other issues in the world, so we should deal with everything else before we engage with apple?

And remember, users aren't the customers in this market, they're the product. The customer is the company being asked to fork over 30% just to access those users (who already paid for the phone and the data to connect it...).

The only reasonable way to structure the payment is on the gross value. If Apple tried to define it on some net or retained value then Apple would be auditing the developers of 337030 paid apps each pulling their own shenanigans to hide their revenue.

Maybe, but that defacto bans anyone acting as a middle man doesn't it?

I’m not sure the world wants or needs an App Store full of arbitrageurs. It wouldn’t be a very good experience for customers and it would lead even more questionable businesses to leverage it.

Careful, writing off "arbitrageurs" means you can't have Spotify or Amazon or eBay apps. Those seem like things people do want...

How is Apple different than Amazon? Humans are bad at things we can’t touch.

Imagine all physical goods shops had to be listed through a “Microsoft shop store” if you’re using the Edge browser. You can’t. Because that’d be dumb.

But hey Apple made the phone and we sign away our soul and first born when it comes to software. So it follows Apple can keep all, all, every, globally, software vendor or creator or hobbyist from putting an app on “their” phone unless it goes through Apple.

Last time I have checked Apple's appstore rules, if you don't take payments within an app and you DON'T tell users of an app to pay outside of it, you are clea from their tax.

So, for example, if you ask for their email and then email them to pay via their website, they won't bother you.

Has this policy changed? Or does Fanhouse ask for payments from within an app?

How is Fanhouse content different than other in-app purchases?

The antitrust case against Apple is so overdue it's embarrassing.

What I don't get is people who defend it. Imagine Microsoft taking 30% of every purchase you make online because you used their OS to get there. Then would the defenders admit it's an obvious abuse of a monopoly? What makes it different for Apple?

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on any market.

They control computing for 50% of Americans. Not games, not movies. All computing.

And all of the commerce around that computing.

You have to pay their tax to interact with Apple customers in any way.

Who are Apple customers? 50% of Americans.

It's a protection racket and it's anticompetitive af.

Furthermore, you can't use your own software stack / runtimes, have to dance to arbitrary rules, and can't deploy or update when you want or need to.

Apple got this by building an awesome product, but they also played an incredibly evil game that puts Microsoft to shame.

"We're protecting customers" really means "we're tying all of your hands and forcing you to walk the plank".

I totally get how you love your shiny pocket device and you own Apple shares (and may even work there), but this company is destroying our industry and making it unfathomably hard for startups to get off the ground and succeed.

Imagine if Apple hadn't made these draconian choices. We'd still have the technology we have today, but startups would be able to deploy when and how they want. And they wouldn't have to pay their margins away.

Yeah, computing is not a market.

I get you are trying to win an easy sentimental argument, but making your own market definitions will not make them a monopoly.

Apple sells products, not "computing". In no market where they sell products they have a monopoly.

How is computing not a market??

Computing covers many of the things people do in a modern society, including:

- Communication

- Banking

- Investing & trading

- Finding information

- Applying to jobs

In what world is that not a critical market?

They have a monopoly on devices running iOS apps, and a monopoly on channels to deliver mobile software to anyone who uses an iPhone (i.e. either their App Store or Safari).

So Does GM have a monopoly on Chevrolets? Does that mean they can be regulated as a monopoly? Chevrolets compete with Fords and Mercedes and Honda, etc; so having a monopoly on your own brand is not a monopoly. I have both an Android phone and an iPhone, so when I hear that Apple has a phone monopoly it just seems like dumb whining.

Using your analogy here...

Imagine there are only Chevrolet and Honda (Apple and Android).

Imagine you could only go to Chevrolet-approved locations. That Italian place you like is on the destination list, but only because they pay 30% of their revenue to Chevy.

The movie theater is protesting the 30% fee, so your car physically can't even visit. It's prohibited.

The new boutique really wants to get business. After all it bought land and paid for real estate in a prime location. But Chevy doesn't like the look of it and asks them to tear it down and rebuild.

All the artists at the market your Chevy brought you to are mad because they have to fork out to Chevy, and they're not even sure what Chevy has to do with any of this. They just want to sell their art.

The builders are complaining because everyone is driving these damn cars with their silly rules, and nobody used to work or think this way. But suddenly everyone thinks Chevy's demands are okay. They're not entitled.

Customers like Chevy.

And yeah, web apps, so you can go through the drive-through anywhere you want. That works fine for some places but it's not at all comparable to parking and properly visiting, for many reasons of capabilities and reliability.

>Apple got this by building an awesome product, but they also played an incredibly evil game that puts Microsoft to shame.

It really is funny how we went from a major anti trust case against Microsoft for simply bundling a web browser with their OS [1]. The original decision in that case was actually to break up Microsoft, though was lost on appeal. And here we have Apple doing many magnitudes worse. Even in this original antitrust case, you could always bypass Microsoft entirely to install whatever software you wished. Apple has quite literally never allowed that possibility, has no intention of doing so, and any software you develop for the platform entitles Apple to a 30% cut. There's many markets with a profit margin under 10%, and here we have Apple taking 30%.

And people defend them for it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Apple fans are doing evil. They just don't realize it. They're too awestruck by the brand to understand the harm it does.

Talk to your legislators. That is the way to fix this tribulation.

Wanting a sane and stable and reliable device is doing evil? Oh please. If the changes happened that people (who apparently don't use iOS) wanted, iOS would turn into the godawful shitshow that is Android. No thanks.

If you don't like Apple, boycott them. Easy.

> Wanting a sane and stable and reliable device is doing evil?

That can be true while at the same time being true that Apple is taking advantage of their position to extort money from developers and end users.

That people don't like the UX of Android, I totally understand (I did not like iOS' last time I tried, so it makes sense to me that someone that likes it doesn't like Android's).

But I don't understand why you would suggest Android is unstable and reliable. I have been using miscellaneous Android devices for some time now, and I don't remember having any stability or reliability issues with the OS.

As for the "boycott", I agree as a user, it's easy. But as a an app developer it's certainly much tougher given their large market share.

>If you don't like Apple, boycott them. Easy

If your customers demand an iOS app, boycotting them is not easy. It's expensive either way.

> and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others

More than "simply bundling a web browser".

Also they were trying to vendor lock third party hardware, acting in concert with OEM, it was far deeper and wider than Apple controlling access on their own hardware/software/user stack.

Apple damage control party has lost the plot if they're going haywire downvoting snippets of factual information

Apple certainly has a duopoly with Google in both the mobile operating systems market, and the mobile app distribution market.

iOS has 60% of the market in the US[1], and Android has 40%, and Google and the App Store is responsible for 100% more revenue than the Play Store[2].

Also, layman definitions of monopoly do not matter when it comes to antitrust laws[3]:

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.

[1] https://deviceatlas.com/blog/android-v-ios-market-share

[2] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

[3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Your stats show web traffic, not sales or market share.

For a monopoly you want to show market dominance by dollars, not activity.

By sales units, Android dominates [0] with 327k vs iOS’ 38k (most recent quarter was 2019-q3).

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Wide_Smartphone_S...

You're being pedantic. It's the second of only two alternatives; it counts as monopoly power here and everywhere.

It’s vastly smaller though so doesn’t have the market power that a monopoly would have.

When there’s a market with only two players where #1 has 75% of the market and #2 has 24%, describing #2 as being part of a monopoly is inaccurate.

That’s like saying that Apple had a monopoly with Microsoft in the 90s because between the two of them they had the whole market.

> When there’s a market with only two players where #1 has 75% of the market and #2 has 24%, describing #2 as being part of a monopoly is inaccurate.

It's very strange that you think worldwide market share has anything to do with market share in the US when it comes to antitrust laws in the US.

iOS has 60% of the market in the US[1], with Android taking the remainder. Apple and Google form an effective duopoly in the mobile OS, app distribution and app payment markets. They both form a mobile app distribution cartel that engages in price-fixing[2].

Again, your colloquial definition of monopoly doesn't matter when it comes to antitrust laws in the US. Please read this[3].

[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ios-more-popular-in-japan-and-us-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing

[3] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

iOS has 60% of the market in the US. This is cited (repeatedly) by the exact same Wikipedia article you looked at.

PS: web traffic is largely a function of market share at this granularity.

That is not units or sales, the wiki article I cited includes both web traffic and units.

This also shows that web traffic isn’t a function of market share because iOS users generate more traffic than Android users.

In a banking analogy, market share isn’t based on the number of checks written but by assets under management or number of customers or revenue.

there is no "world government" to handle world monopolys. There is only country governments the handle monopolys in their own market.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...

It's interesting to think that if Apple had been more popular in the 90s then the DOJ wouldn't have been able to stop Microsoft and between them they could have strangled the nascent open web.

In this way a monopoly is actually better for consumers then a duopoly because it allows the government to step in.

Define Monopoly?

Apple have ~65% Market Share in US and over 70% in Japan.

>A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity.

-Wikipedia

It gets defined to death every time we have this discussion. Apple has a de-facto monopoly on the app store no matter if their phones have 1% or 100% of the market share of phones. This isn't about market share but if they abuse their position/control on the app store.

Is Apple the "only supplier of a particular commodity" on the app store?

I dont disagree with you. I never said they dont have a monopoly, my reply was in reference to the OP comment around this post that Apple does not have monopoly or majority position in any market. The same thing utter out of Tim Cook month which is a spin or lying by omission.

That’s like saying my landlord has a monopoly on collecting rent from every apartment in the building they own. Well duh! They built the damn thing from scratch. To make it about how Apple is somehow being abusive by setting the rules of the road and collecting tolls on their own property is asinine.

That is assuming that the app store is a "market" for the purposes of monopoly law, which is indeed the argument that Epic is making, but hardly settled law.

GP is wrong about Apple being a monopoly, but he was also talking about "antitrust" and Apple is certainly preventing competition.

It's not uncharacteristic. Apple was the leader of the wage-fixing cartel with Google, Intel and Adobe.

> Imagine Microsoft taking 30% of every purchase you make online because you used their OS to get there. Then would the defenders admit it's an obvious abuse of a monopoly? What makes it different for Apple?

Yeah I'll defend against that setup. Your comparison makes no sense.

Apple isn't taking 30% of every purchase you make online because you use an iPhone to shop on Amazon or Walmart. Why would I need to imagine a scenario where Microsoft did such a thing?

The comparison would be: imagine if Microsoft had a dominant software store tightly bound to Windows, and for any software applications sold through that store - for use on your Windows machine - Microsoft took a 30% cut of that sale.

Not just dominant. If Microsoft had the only software store and mandated app distribution through the store. It is an important different.

>The comparison would be: imagine if Microsoft had a dominant software store tightly bound to Windows, and for any software applications sold through that store - for use on your Windows machine - Microsoft took a 30% cut of that sale.

Well for that comparison to work, we'd also have to assume Microsoft disabled installing unsigned software as well. Which is what Apple does today.

>Apple isn't taking 30% of every purchase you make online because you use an iPhone to shop on Amazon or Walmart

They try on digital goods, this is why Amazon has disabled buying ebooks in the iOS app, and asks you to open your web browser instead [1].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

>Well for that comparison to work, we'd also have to assume Microsoft disabled installing unsigned software as well.

Look no further than Xbox Store and how well you can run unsigned code on it.

Sure, you can buy a physical game copy, but there are two issues with that:

1. Diskless versions of consoles are becoming more commonplace, thus removing that option.

2. If you buy retail, it is still a cut to Microsoft, just a smaller one. Because you pay the same price for physical as you do for digital, except instead of the entire cut going to MSFT, a part of it goes to the retail establishment selling it.

And before someone says "well, this is a gaming console, not a phone/computing device", I will say that it has apps (youtube/streaming services/etc.), it has a web browser, and plenty other functionality not related to games.

So I am struggling to draw a hard line here as to why it is ok on Xbox, but not ok on smartphones (as long as there are commonplace alternatives available that would prevent it from being a monopoly, and Android is one such commonplace alternative).

EDIT: I stand corrected, apparently you can run unsigned code officially on new Xbox consoles, and I should have picked a better example. Thanks to people in the comments correcting me on this, as I genuinely had no idea you could run unsigned code on Xbox. Despite this, I believe my general argument still stands though, because the same situation with transaction cuts is happening with Sony's and Nintendo's consoles, except you cannot run unsigned code on those.

> And before someone says "well, this is a gaming console, not a phone/computing device", I will say that it has apps (youtube/streaming services/etc.), it has a web browser, and plenty other functionality not related to games.

How much is the cut for those functionalities for MS?

You are welcome to look at the leaked documents[0], and they have a nice table showing cuts for all kinds of transactions on Microsoft Store.

Looks like currently it is 30% for games, 15% for apps and app subscriptions, and they were exploring reducing the game-related cuts down to 12%. Microsoft spokesperson's reply to those leaked documents was "we have no plans to change the revenue share for console games at this time".

Though I am not sure how much the 15% (microsoft cut for app-related purchases) vs. 30% (apple's cut, or 15% if the devs haven't made over $1 million in revenue this year or the year before) difference matters here, because I am struggling to figure out how the 15% vs. 30% difference makes one a monopoly. If that's the argument, then what's the magic number threshold that makes you a monopoly after you cross it? And how does Apple's reduced cut of 15% for devs with under $1mil in revenue play into that?

0. https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/2/22415712/microsoft-xbox-st...

> If that's the argument, then what's the magic number threshold that makes you a monopoly after you cross it?

Let's assume a very generous 5% for payment costs (credit cards are capped at 0.3% in the EU, but US cards with their rewards can run up to 5% in merchant fees, and god knows about the cost of doing business in other markets), another very generous 5% for CDN/hosting (data traffic isn't cheap, modern games easily run into triple digit GB sizes, and gamers are notorious for bringing down even the largest CDNs on delivery dates), and another 5% for profit and other costs (development), and you end up at something like 15%.

Anything above that is ripping people off.

>US cards with their rewards can run up to 5% in merchant fees

Americans so much love freedom for companies to fleece them off.

The insidious thing that people never get taught or notice is that while, yes, you get 5% cashback as a customer, the store will eventually raise its prices by 5% to make up the higher CC fees.

Which still works out in favor of the debtor, because: (a) they reap the benefit in the meantime; and (b) rising prices benefit retail workers at the expense of those living off savings and investments

> they reap the benefit in the meantime

Yeah, but when the CC reward gets cancelled the store still will charge the old prices.

> rising prices benefit retail workers at the expense of those living off savings and investments

That assumes that retail will distribute extra profits to its employees... which many aren't known for, Walmart and McDonald's are infamous for paying such poor wages that its employees are entitled to food stamps ffs (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...).

Maybe, just maybe, the situation will change a bit now that corona has entirely uprooted labor markets, but even then it's a smoke debate - 15$/h is the lowest of the low, even adjusting for inflation would lead to a higher minimum wage!

> 15$/h is the lowest of the low, even adjusting for inflation would lead to a higher minimum wage

Adjusting the 1938 original minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 1794%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $4.73/hr.

Adjusting the 1945 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 1383.6%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $5.93/hr.

Adjusting the 1950 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 1008.1%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $8.31/hr.

Adjusting the 1965 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 747.8%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $10.60/hr.

Adjusting the 1975 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 396.4%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $10.42/hr.

Adjusting the 1980 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 224.1%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $10.05/hr.

Adjusting the 1990 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 104.3%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $7.76/hr.

Adjusting the 1997 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 66.4%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $8.57/hr.

Adjusting the 2008 minimum wage for inflation (cumulatively, 24.0%) would lead to a 2021 minimum wage of $8.12/hr.

It appears that inflation of the dollar has not happened at quite the same pace as inflation of socialist demands. *shrug*

Cool, so does that mean that Sony/MSFT/Nintendo should be sued for anti-monopoly here too, given that they take over 15% for game-related transactions?

Because my question was less about "how things should ideally be", and more about "how much legal scrutiny can this legal case withstand".

> more about "how much legal scrutiny can this legal case withstand".

That is entirely a question of jurisdiction. The US is famous for its deregulation, usury only covers loan interest rates - whereas in Germany the limit in §138 BGB is something that is "obviously not in a fair relationship between the payment and the value received for it", plus our whole anti-trust regulation.

The German Bundeskartellamt is already prosecuting the big tech companies, the EU anti-trust agencies also have woken up from their slumber... we will see.

Gaming console hardware is heavily subsidized by those cuts. Apple hardware, in contrast, is sold with profit.

> Gaming console hardware is heavily subsidized by those cuts.

I was about to reply with skepticism, but after looking online I found the following and have to reconsider my doubts. This Apple vs Epic trial truly is a wondrous thing

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22422691/microsoft-xbox-co...

The problem with that though is that legally, there is no difference between whether hardware is sold at profit or not as to whether you can have an App Distribution monopoly.

While this is true - with the caveat that the goal for console manufacturers _is_ to make a profit as they optimize and ramp up production - people generally leave out the part where they make a compelling argument based on this situation.

For instance, the primary complaint Epic has is not that Apple gives preferential treatment and deals to some companies - it is that they WOULDN'T give one to Epic. https://www.imore.com/epic-games-would-have-accepted-special...

You actually can run unsigned code on the Xbox. It's a bit of a hassle to get the developer account working, but completely possible. It's how Retroarch made a native Xbox app.

If developer accounts count, then you can run unsigned / self signed code on iOS as well. That's how Dash for iOS was distributed for some time when it was banned from the App store: https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-iOS

You can actually run unsigned code on a retail Xbox One console officially. There are ports of RetroArch to it and all.

I suspect this permissiveness was a major reason it was never hacked throughout its full 8 year lifespan - homebrewers didn't need to enable piracy to do what they wanted.

If installing with a developer account is official, then similarly you can run unsigned code on iOS officially. The process is quite similar to xbox.

Edit: can't reply further, but this can indeed be done for free (assuming you have access to a mac or a mac vm). The paid developer account is only for publishing to the app store, you can do almost everything with a free developer account.

For free?

My understanding was that you can run non-retail code on xbox the same way you can on an iphone - except:

- xbox always charges you for the privilege while apple has a free developer tier. The free tier is limited (no distribution of apps you wrote, app will time out and have to be reinstalled).

- xbox requires you to put the console in developer mode, which eliminates your ability to play commercial games. Apple does not have this feature (although some commercial apps do attempt to detect things like jailbreaks themselves).

So while the xbox developer mode might give homebrewers more capabilities than a developer account by apple, it doesn't affect revenue sharing for companies who want to make a profit off of their work.

I just like Apple’s App Store the way that it is. I’ve been through so many technology stacks and it I find their platform a joy to work with. The SDKs are coherent, very well-architected, extremely easy to use, and I have access to a user base that has very high adoption rates of the latest software versions so that I don’t have to worry so much about fragmentation. It’s the happiest I’ve been as a coder, so I feel that the 30% cut is a fair price to pay.

edit: So I answered the question and I’m getting downvoted to oblivion. Why do people even bother asking for other people’s perspectives.

When your app has revenues of $100M a month, let's see if you think Apple is providing you $30M worth of value.

Sure, if you have 2 sales a month, I guess Apple is providing you $0.60 of revenue. That's not what this thread is about.

You’re saying this thread is about the big players and not the small ones? And that’s why this open question to HN developers isn’t really asking for their experiences, not unless they’re in the hundred million territory?

> You’re saying this thread is about the big players and not the small ones?

It's not about relative revenue, but illustrating the extent of the exploitation.

You can have more than 2 sales. If you are making under $1mil in app revenue in a year, Apple takes a 15% cut instead of 30%.

You can thank Epic for that recent change.

Or someone else. There is not hard evidence that it was Epic.

Apple might have had that in the works even without epic.

> When your app has revenues of $100M a month, let's see if you think Apple is providing you $30M worth of value.

Lol they just told you they think it's reasonable!

Why bother asking for someone’s opinion if we're just going to berate them for it?

I think the Apple cut is justified because Apple provide the best platform. If someone can provide a better platform for a smaller cut people would move to it.

No, they wouldn't. That's the point. Apple and Google control the market for mobile phone apps.

You could invent the best possible app store and take nothing as a cut and get no users because Apple wouldn't permit your app store and so you'd lose.

Apple uses their hardware market dominance to control the software market and extracts rent from people who want to sell software on their hardware. That's what people are complaining about.

"Why don't they just invent their own hardware, phone OS, and app store?" Hmm, yes, why not?

It's notable that Google does allow their customers to side-load apps.

and Google doesn't ban use of other payment processors or have restrictions on "you can sell elsewhere for less"

> and Google doesn't ban use of other payment processors

They certainly do on the Play Store. Developers have until September of this year to comply with Google's rule to take 30% of sales and use its payment system[1] in their apps.

It's clearly more price fixing on the part of the Apple and Google mobile app distribution and payments cartel.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/28/google-to-enforce-30percent-...

I hadn't heard that. Thanks for the new info. They'd be another store I'd avoid like the plague if I was selling stuff.

if this isn't collusion and racketeering, then what is?

The market. Microsoft and Sony have been doing it for years.

So has Epic’s parent company

I think you misread the question. They didn't ask what this is, they asked what would qualify as collusion and racketeering if this doesn't.

Correct... let me know what is if this isn't because companies colluding to set prices? not sure what I'm missing if this isn't it...

How is the answer misplaced? It's saying that you don't need price collusion or racketeering or mens rea of any sort to informally converge on a position.

> It's saying that you don't need price collusion or racketeering or mens rea of any sort to informally converge on a position.

It is saying that, but that's not a reply to the question.

The question wasn't "What is it?", as in, "What is this, if it's not collusion?"

The question was "What is?", as in, "What would it take to count as collusion, if this doesn't?"

"This isn't collusion, it's just the market" addresses the former question. It doesn't address the later question, the one that was asked.

With the implication that a super narrow definition of collusion is not very useful.

This form of rhetorical questioning is a pretty common idiom.

"If this isn't stealing, than what is?"

That's not an open invitation for elucidation on property laws. It's an assertion in the form of a question.

I agree with everything you have said there.

In that situation, the question being asked is "what would they have to do for you to accuse them of stealing?", and there's an implication/assertion that your definition of "stealing" is too narrow.

Replying with "this isn't stealing, it's borrowing" doesn't answer the question, and it's ignoring the implication/assertion.

And that's basically what martimarkov did. They didn't say a single word that addresses the implication that such a narrow anti-collusion rule is too weak.

> No, they wouldn't.

I don't know why you think that. If someone developed a compelling new mobile platform that supported side-loading apps why wouldn't you move to it since that's what you value?

> Apple uses their hardware market dominance

It's dominant because it's good. Part of the reason it's good is because it's locked down. If it wasn't locked down it wouldn't be as good. The Android experience is miserable because they aren't as locked down.

> extracts rent from people who want to sell software on their hardware

I don't know what to say apart from this seems the most honest and reasonable thing in the world to me. They provide a service with legitimate value and ask people to pay for access to it.

The point is that in order to create a competitive app store the notional competitor would have to create an entire hardware ecosystem to rival Apple. Apple is tying the sale of products together (their phone hardware with the app store software) in order to profit from their app store and they prohibit the app stores of competitors. This is the definition of anti-competitive monopoly[1].

You also write that Apple is dominant because it is good and good because it is locked down. This is an argument that's first impossible to verify and second irrelevant. We can't know if "locking down" and preventing other app stores from existing makes Apple better or worse since we can't look at the counter-factual reality where Apple isn't locked down. My intuition would be that more choices would be better, but again, we can't know. The argument is irrelevant because it's still anti-competitive behavior and illegal regardless of if it makes the product better or not. I might sell more soda if I included a bit of cocaine in every bottle, but I couldn't argue that it was legal to do so because it made the product better. Bundling IE with Windows for free may have made Windows better, and yet...

1 - https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

> this is the definition of anti-competitive monopoly[1]

Keep reading your own link.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

> Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.

Apple has less than a 50% market share on smart phones.

Apple and Google dominate the mobile OS market with iOS being on 60% of devices in the US, and 40% with Android. Apple is responsible for 100% more sales in the mobile app distribution market compared to Google, but together they're responsible for over 99% of all mobile app sales in the US.

Read the definition you quoted from the FTC. Apple and Google are a group of two firms with monopoly positions in the mobile OS market and the mobile app distribution market. Google is even forcing developers to use their payment service on the Play Store and to give them a 30% cut[1] of all app sales to match Apple.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/28/google-to-enforce-30percent-...

Apple has more than 50% market share in the US[1]. The FTC is meant to protect American consumers, so the fact that Apple has a majority of market share in the US and is abusing their monopoly position in the US is relevant. The fact that Android leads iOS worldwide is less relevant.

1 - https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/north-amer...

> If someone can provide a better platform for a smaller cut people would move to it.

I agree. That's also why I think it's unfair/unethical/monopolistic that Apple won't allow anyone else to try.

They can try. They just shouldn't be allowed to force Apple to help them try, by forcing Apple to build them new APIs and open new vulnerability vectors to do it.

I think we disagree on this point and I don't really see it being resolved.

I'm of the opinion that they are not able to try because apple has blocked their ability to do so.

why would i give a fuck about the big players ? their paying 30M allows other to have high quality of service for close to nothing.

They can always go away from iOS it they think it is not a fair deal. No one is pointing a gun to their head.

I came from this in the opposite direction. I grew up programming on an iMac, but ended up switching to Linux when Macports/Homebrew started stagnating a few years ago. I was blown away by how simple and well-distributed everything was. Package management wasn't a nightmare, the shell respected administrator authority, I had fully updated coreutils, 32-bit apps/libs... the list goes on. I understand why people use MacOS, but defending it from a development standpoint has started to look asinine in recent years.

Linux is developer friendly but user experience is abysmal.

I’m a developer. I grew up with Linux.

I can’t wait for Apple to turn MacOS into iOS with extras.

Linus himself said that Chromebook (with a shell) looks appealing.

I just want iOS with a shell and file system running on fanless M1 without catching fire!

>Linux is developer friendly but user experience is abysmal.

I am a new Mac user and I will mostly disagree with that. Perhaps some of it is just being used to a different model, but there are lots of things I find confusing and unintuitive about the Mac. Like why can't I tile windows? And maybe it's just me, but I am having difficulty getting the close buttons to show up in full screen and the same for my dock. I am also unclear why sometimes my dock gets covered and other times it doesn't.

Also, I'm pretty disappointed with the performance. It takes 5-10s to open the context menu when right clicking a file in Finder and the thing sounds like a jet engine anytime it sees any sort of load.

> Linux is developer friendly but user experience is abysmal.

I'm of the opinion that if Chrome OS would suit a person's needs, then so would desktop Linux these days.

The choice that people want is the ability to have other App Stores, or direct installation. This changes nothing for people like you while giving more opportunities for others.

> The choice that people want is the ability to have other App Stores, or direct installation.

Who do you want to pay for building and supporting this functionality? Apple presumably?

Hmm, well Apple already has seemingly got their profit from the device when it was...purchased the first time?

Or should phones just become a subscription service overall so that you can never actually own your own hardware?

The answer to both questions is... it's up to Apple. When you design and build a product it'd be up to you how you design for your revenue.

If Apple allowed side-loading apps or custom app stores that'd cost them more to build and support that functionality, and it would damage their existing functionality through extra complexity and security surface, harming their existing happy customers. They don't want to do it. Why should they? Use Android if you have a problem with it.

Epic sues Apple though

> Who do you want to pay for building and supporting this functionality?

No, I can assure you that other companies are perfectly willing to build and support other app stores.

Instead, Apple is the one spending extra money and extra effort in order to prevent this stuff.

Other companies would be more than happy to build these other app stores, if Apple would just get out of the way.

Apple would have to develop new APIs and poke new holes in their security to enable this. Then they’d have to test and maintain these APIs. That’s work they don’t want to do and a cost they don’t want to pay for.

> That’s work they don’t want to do

Well when you are engaging in illegally anti-competitive behavior, you have to take some actions to correct that.

But also, I am sure that other companies would even be willing to put in the effort to jailbreak the phone, in some combined effort, if they knew that Apple wouldn't try to engage in illegal anti-competitive practices to stop it.

Apple can't just break the law like this. I am not sure why anything you are bringing up counters the fact that they are breaking the law, with seriously illegal and anti-competitive practices.

But the jailbreaking solution, where major companies work together, to provide an easy to install solution, that enables other app stores, without help from Apple, would work pretty well, if Apple was not allowed to stop this effort.

If a company like facebook got on board, I am sure that they might be able to convince at least half of all users, to install their solution.

Have they been found to be breaking the law?

Also if they are, are these good laws anyway?

Congratulations on having now made a falsifiable prediction!

I will absolutely make sure to save this comment, and come back to you in a couple months.

I think that at least some, of Apple's decisions are illegally anti-competitive, and that the judge in the epic vs apple case, will at least partially rule against Apple, on some fronts.

And your position, is that you think that nothing at all that Apple is doing is illegal, and that no judge will rule against them, on anything at all.

We'll see who was right, in a couple months, and I can show you this comment then!

But in my opinion, that is a very strong statement that you seem to be making, where you think that absolutely nothing about Apple's practices are illegally anti-competitive.

We'll see if you are right! I think that the judge will rule, at least partially against Apple, on at least some counts, (although probably not on every single count).

> if they are, are these good laws anyway?

Anti-trust law? Yes, it has been around for decades, and is pretty uncontroversial. I don't think that most people support the Standard Oil railroad monopoly, for example.

I think you've misread my comments.

I didn't predict anything. I asked if it had been found to be illegal. It hasn't. So I don't know how you're describing it as 'illegal'. Apple clearly believe it's legal, and no authority has given an opinion otherwise yet.

> And your position, is that you think ... that no judge will rule against them

Sorry I'm afraid you've misread again - I didn't say this anywhere. Where do you think I said what I think the outcome of any trial would be?

I'm giving my opinion (after being invited to) on the morality of Apple's actions. I'm not giving a legal opinion on the outcome of any trial. I even said 'if they are, are these good laws anyway?' which should have made that clear.

> I think you've misread my comments.

No, I really didn't.

If you agreed with me that Apple's actions are illegally anti-competitive, then you wouldn't ask why/how/when their actions are illegal.

So yes, by asking me why/how/when their actions are illegal, you are disagreeing with me. Thats what it means to ask that. We'll see if you were right or not, to question why/how/when their actions are illegal.

> So I don't know how you're describing it as 'illegal'.

When you say "I don't know how", that is a disagreement with me. You are saying that you do not see how their actions are illegal.

And my response, to you casting doubt on their actions being illegal (By saying that you "do not see how" they are illegal), is that I will show you why the actions are illegal, in a couple months.

And then you can re-evaluate your previous confusion as to "not seeing how" their actions are illegal, when that court decision is made.

I am pretty sure that I am right on this. And I'll be able to show this to you, when the court decision happens, and you can understand why you were incorrect to doubt that their actions are illegal.

> Where do you think I said what I think the outcome of any trial would be?

By the fact that you are saying things like "So I don't know how you're describing it as 'illegal'."

You are saying that you do not know how Apple's actions could be described as illegal, and I am saying that the court case will show you how.

Thats what it means to say stuff like "So I don't know how you're describing it as 'illegal'" It means that you don't think that their actions are illegal.

I also see that you are saying things like "Apple has less than a 50% market share on smart phones.", which is implying that you don't think that they are engaging in illegal/anti-trust behavior.

But like I said, this will all be settled in a couple months, and you will be able to see why it was incorrect to not be sure of how their actions are illegal.

You will be able to look back, and understand why it is incorrect to not be sure of how their actions are illegal.

Sorry I still think you're operating under a misunderstanding of the thread.

> We'll see if you were right or not, to question why/how/when their actions are illegal.

Why would the court's opinion change my moral opinion on whether something is or should be illegal or not? Unless there's new info.

The Salem Witches were found guilty in a court, for example. Maybe there's a parallel there? A bit of an hysterical and morally unjust witch hunt.

> Why would the court's opinion change my

What it would change is how you "don't know how you're describing it as 'illegal'. "

Once the court trial is over, you will know "how" it should be described as illegal, as before, you were incorrect on not being able to say why it was illegal.

And what it will do is help you understand why comments that you make such as "Apple has less than a 50% market share on smart phones.", that incorrectly attempt to imply that Apple is not engaging in anti-competitive practices, is an incorrect thing to imply.

> A bit of an hysterical and morally unjust witch hunt.

Ah, so instead of saying that you may not really understand how anti-trust law works, you are going to say that the whole court system was rigged, if the court rules against Apple in any way?

Anti-trust law is not particularly controversial, also.

> you are going to say that the whole court system was rigged

You're just inventing random things that I don't think and haven't said. I don't know know where you got 'rigged' from for example. That's not a quote from me or an intelligent interpretation of what I've said.

If you find yourself constantly replying 'so you're saying' or 'so you'll say' stop and think why you think you need to rephrase everything and speculate on what the other person may say rather than going off directly what was actually said in order to make a point.

I don't think you're arguing in good faith here or actually want to understand other opinions - you seem pretty intent on deliberately misinterpreting as strongly as possible - so I'll leave you to it.

> You're just inventing random things

You compared the apple court cases to the salem witch trials, and compared it to a "morally unjust witch hunt".

Oh sorry, you said "Maybe there's a parallel there?". Not like that matters though. It is obvious what you are attempting to say here.

Like, C'mon. By comparing a current anti-trust court case, to the salem witch trials, you are attempting to delegitimize the process.

When you say stuff like "Maybe there's a parallel there?", you are attempting to imply that the current trials are similar to the salem witch trials. Thats what you are saying when you asking if there is a parallel there.

You even said "Why would the court's opinion change my moral opinion on whether something is (illegal)"

You straight up asked why the courts opinion on something, would change your opinion on whether it "IS" illegal. (Yes, you also included the word "should", but you also said "is" as well)

If a court says that Apple's actions are illegal, then that is a pretty good reason for you to change your mind on whether those actions are illegal, and it is silly for you to then compare well respected judges, and uncontroversial laws, to the freaking salem witch trials!

You can't just back off from your comparison to the salem witch trials now. It is clear that you are attempting to delegitimize the trial.

That is an extreme comparison. You can't just make that comparison, and then get surprised when I point out how extreme that comparison is.

Yes. And? Microsoft does that for Windows, and you know Apple already does it for MacOS right?

Anyone who wants to list on the App Store can could still continue doing so and pay directly. The fees right now don't make sense anyway as many apps are free while others have to pay a cut for services that Apple has nothing to do with.

> and you know Apple already does it for MacOS right?

Possibly that experience led them to not do it when they had the clean slate of iOS.

Yet MacOS is doing fine, even after introducing its own App Store. And the iPhone originally started with no apps and added them as user interest grew. Apple knows people would like this, and they have the resources to easily make it happen.

The primary reason, as clearly shown by the way fees are currently levied, is purely for profit.

at least tell us how much it cost to build and support this functionality before asking that question

> The choice that people want is the ability to have other App Stores, or direct installation.

I am "people" and I absolutely do not want app developers creating their own silo'd app stores.

The last thing I want to do is download separate app stores for every major app vendor on my phone, to give them all my credit card info, to have per-store standards for warning me about privacy issues, to have different policies and UIs for managing subscriptions, etc. This is a technology nightmare.

Having the ability to install non-Apple-approved applications doesn't remove your ability to install Apple-approved applications.

I wonder though if non-Apple stores will lead to fragmentation. Apps on the App Store will flee and there will be a whole host of app stores. Sort of like Hulu/Netflix/Disney/HBO/etc. with television.

Suddenly the apps you had come to expect on the App Store are not there now.

That hasn't happened on Android. Using a third party store (a la F-Droid) or side loading in Android is very much a niche feature used only by the relatively tech savvy. Why would iOS be different?

because the arguments from people like the parent comment don't hold

So… don’t do it.

Android allows sideloading apps and this hasn't happened there - everyone still publishes on the main Android app store too. (except for Fortnite obviously, but that's been removed from the iOS store too so it's not exactly a counter example)

Why do you think it wouldn't work out the same way on Apple devices?

Also if you're concerned about hypothetical "missing out" on certain apps, consider all the developers that already don't release on iOS because of their restrictive practices.

I for one like the single store because it creates consistency. For developers, for privacy info, for subscriptions.

If sideloading is allowed when then malware is also close to get on the phone. Not my phone probably but the average joe, my family members, students, etc.

> I for one like the single store because it creates consistency. For developers, for privacy info, for subscriptions.

So... don't use other app stores? Nobody is forcing you to.

> If sideloading is allowed when then malware is also close to get on the phone. Not my phone probably but the average joe, my family members, students, etc.

Average Joe's aren't even going to know that sideloading apps is an option, let alone know how to do it. And if you're worried about grandma/kids doing something silly there's parental controls for this sort of thing. There just needs to be a way for power users to use other apps.

Well that’s not true. Let’s just look at game stores. It’s super fragmented because companies want to control everything.

They optimise for profit not end-user experience. On the other hand within the iOS ecosystem the store optimises for the end-user (more or less).

So enabling different stores will create a more fractured ecosystem. Something that hinders my experience. Why would I support this?

I’d only support it if: * All apps from other stores are always in the App Store * All apps still use the in-app payment functionality and not some 3rd party system that I’m not sure steals my data. I’m also okay if the apps are forced to use Apple Pay if they don’t want to use in-app purchase functionality.

With that said I don’t see how any of those can be enforced.

What is essentially going to happen is to lower the overall security of apps on the iOS platform.

> "It’s super fragmented"

So what? There's multiple options. That's called choice and competition, which is helping drive new features and better pricing.

> "With that said I don’t see how any of those can be enforced."

Draconic measures like that are being enforced, which why other app stores are wanted in the first place.

Your entire argument seems to be that other stores are bad because of "fracturing" the market, yet desktop/macos users manage just fine, even with an app store on that platform. You're imagining a challenge that doesn't exist.

I think 30% is absurd, but that would definitely change things for every user. I don't want to install Adobe's store because I need to use their PDF reader. I don't want to install Microsoft's store because I need to use Teams or Outlook for work.

Other App Stores mean that companies get to make that decision--not end users. How could it be otherwise?

Why do you feel justified forcing Adobe to make a deal with Apple? You could decline to install Acrobat until it's in a store you like.

Ah yes heard that one when ea came with their marketplace. It started fragmenting from there and got so bad today people with not stellar computer wait minutes for their computer to start and have to play whack a mole with half dozen storefront polluting their startup

So don’t install it then. You can use other software.

Why would you limit everyone else rather than make a choice for yourself?

This seems like the same question anyone who's happy with the way Apple runs things could ask those that want the government to step in and change it? Why not just go use Android, where things are exactly how you want them to be? Why limit everyone else rather than make a choice for yourself?

Because nobody is limited by having more choice. It's quite literally the opposite situation.

So how does Apple limit anyone by offering their choice? Anyone who wants a phone environment where you can install any app and app store you want merely needs to buy and Android phone instead of an iPhone. And anyone who wants a phone environment where developers are far more restricted and are required to behave in certain ways can buy an iPhone instead of an Android. Seems to me everyone wins.

Apple limits everyone by not offering the choice in how their purchased hardware installs and runs their chosen software.

We really must steer away from this dystopian view of "choice" amongst trillion-dollar megacorps that control half of the ecosystem. Yes, there should be different rules when they get that big, like serving the user first.

Everyone who served customers first (whoever they are), ended up in the dustbin of history. Apple became so big exactly because they made a right choice between serving customers and serving their self-interest, speaks profit and growth. The purchase and continue support of billions Apple’s customers underline the correctness of Apple’s choice and strategy. It’s also remarkable that not the Apple’s customers who have sued the company but the third players who want to use the Apple’s ecosystem to make their own profit (and probably serving their customers). Unfortunately, when they signed their developers contracts, they have already agreed to the T&C of the App Store and now they pretend they don’t know it, didn’t agree with it.

That's a meaningless statement. Putting the customer first is how companies provide value and grow. Obviously the need to capture that value and create profit but every trillion-dollar company today is only that successful by giving the people what they wanted.

What you're missing in this discussion is that these companies are so large and powerful, and their services so critical to 100s of millions of people, that the situation has changed.

Really? You want the best products for free and the companies should give you that?!

You literally have that choice right now. Today. You can buy ANY smart phone that isn't an Apple phone and you can choose how it installs and runs your chosen software. And for people who don't want the necessary tradeoffs that come with that freedom, they can choose to buy an Apple phone where such a thing isn't possible. Everyone gets what they want.

Everyone gets what they want if you completely ignore the issue of compatibility between different phones and stores.

Then don’t buy an iPhone.

Same question to you.

Do you block ads on the web? If you do, then why don't you just choose a different site instead? Aren't the publishers and advertisers entitled to their cut for producing and delivering your content?

Mobile phones are critical computing devices, even taking over as wallets and keys for many people. There should be some standard of freedom enforced when half of the market is effectively controlled by a single massive company. Why is the profit motive of this particular corporation so much more important than serving users (and developers) better?

Because I think they service me better this way. I don’t want to have an ecosystem that allows malware to be an option.

I explicitly bought my iOS device so that all software that is possible to be installed will always be vetted. I don’t have to worry about my parents being tricked by either maliciously crafted websites or false promises like cheaper price but they get all your data. Companies are not going to be upfront about their store’s policies.

So my argument is not the profit motive. Sure apple should probably charge 10%. 30% might be greedy BUT my issue with that is that any number is arbitrary.

Apple created the platform, the device. Fine the developers played a huge part in making iOS a success BUT nobody forced them to build for the platform. If Apple increased the % then yeah - sure I’d be behind lowering them and be angry with Apple but as of now: users want an apple device and developers have a choice to Cather to them or not. There are a lot of Android only apps that work fine so I think it’s fine if you don’t support ios

> "will always be vetted"

It isn't. Malware is already an option. And websites are available on the phone, along with text and calls and many other channels that are constantly being used for scams and attacks. iOS isn't magically invulnerable and security would be handled the same way as MacOS (which also has an app store). This really isn't that big of a deal as you make it seem.

As for the rest, the other comments already describe the issues with the size of the company and importance of mobile devices leading to the current challenges. Reality, and how people and companies operate, just isn't that black and white.

> Because I think they service me better this way. I don’t want to have an ecosystem that allows malware to be an option.

You already have one. iOS exploits and vulnerabilities are cheaper than Android exploits because they're so plentiful. The App Store was responsible for shipping hundreds of millions of copies of Xcodeghost, as well.

You said, "This changes nothing for people like you while giving more opportunities for others." I'm just pointing out that's completely untrue.

But a company is making the decisions - Apple.

Should you be able to directly install games to the PS5? Or have the ability to use a game store besides the PlayStation store? Honest question

Yes, and you can still buy physical disks.

I'd just like to check that you understand that when you buy a physical disk of a game sony/microsoft (for playstation/xbox respectively) still take a cut of the purchase.

Yes, game publishing is slightly different but it's still an alternative. For example, you can easily resell and transport physical disks. There is real ownership tied to the disk itself. It's still not as good as a desktop operating system in choice but as it's not a general purpose computer, that's far more understandable than iOS.

I think you should, yes.

Nobody believes it's not ok for developers to opt in at 30% the point is that they are forcing them to do so by retaining control of devices after they have sold them.

It’s more like having a shop in a mall.

Apple doesn’t take 30% of anything using their phones. They take 30% of anything installed and bought using their walled garden/app store/api/etc. Similar to Windows store, Xbox, ps, steam, etc etc.

I used to be annoyed at Nintendo and Sega requiring their cut, but got used to it.

What makes it different is that Apple isn’t a monopoly. You can use Android or PCs or whatever.

If we want this to change, we probably need some version of right to repair that forces “right to sideload.”

You are right but why not more people push for « right to sideload “ ?

It would be easy to force apple to let you install android on the hardware you paid for (the physical phone).

But forcing them to keep their OS backward compatible with some api used by some sideloaded app ... might be hard.

You’re missing the part where apple only allows users to install apps through that App Store

Probably the argument is that they (1) host the software in the cloud which costs them money, and (2) they review software for e.g. security issues which costs them money.

Anyway, the EU is coming for them:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...

> The Digital Markets Act (DMA) establishes a set of narrowly defined objective criteria for qualifying a large online platform as a so-called “gatekeeper”.

Regarding your two points, in 2020 Apple claimed there were about 23M developers [1] and they charge $99 every year.

Even if only 50% of those 23M devs are actually paying the $99 fee that is still over $1B a year.

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-wwdc-2020-kick...

The argument is that it's industry standard. Microsoft and Sony also take 30%

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/05/07/playst...

There are alternate ways to get software on those platforms. There isn’t on Apple mobile devices.

Citation needed? (For Playstation, XBox)

That too isn't ok

Physical disks.

Aren't physical disks also liable to give Sony and Microsoft a cut?

Do physical disks come with "you cant sell me at less" restrictions like Apple enforces? With "you can't use any payment store other than apple"?

The number of restrictions on top of Apples cut is what makes the difference. The mafia wishes they could enforce the same restrictions. Apple makes them look reasonable.

The only point I seem to see from you throughout this post is that you can use physical disks on playstation/xbox, but even that is dependent on having a playstation/xbox with a disk drive. Additionally, Sony/Microsoft still receive a cut from those sales.

The point is there is still an alternative. It's not quite the same as they act as publishers and distribution partners in gaming vs mobile devices. There should absolutely be more access to stores there too though, with Steam and Epic on Xbox or Playstation.

Why is this so controversial for you?

There is indeed alternative ways to get software on Apple mobile devices. Why is this such a common belief?

Edit: your point seems to be revolving around the access to physical disks for playstation/xbox, which is 1. Limited to devices that have a disk drive, 2. Limited to software that would similarly be sold on the sony/xbox stores, and 3. Still gives sony/microsoft a cut of the sale.

Edit 2: No, I'm not talking about webapps. You can sideload apps with a free developer account, similar to xbox.

Edit 3: Right, well I guess I'm being "purposely ignorant" and am actually talking about web apps. This was fun HN, lovely discussion.

Edit 4: It does indeed only require a free developer account, and you can strip and resign apps without needing to compile from source.

Jailbreaking doesn't count.

No jailbreaking necessary.

Edit: Can't reply further, but the way of doing this is much the same as installing unsigned apps on an xbox. Using a (free) developer account you can sideload things quite easy using something like https://github.com/ios-control/ios-deploy

Can you explain how, then?

Edit: So the only way to do it besides jailbreaking is for literally everyone who wants to do it to pay Apple an extra $100 on top of what they already paid for their iDevice. (Sharing will get your certificate revoked.)

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22421912/iphone-web-app-pw...

Anyone who pushes Web Apps as a viable option is being disingenuous about what it provides or purposely ignorant.

Can my tech illiterate grammy do it all by herself using just her iphone? if no, then OP's point stands.

Can your tech illiterate grammy do it (read: sideloading unsigned programs) all by herself on an xbox or playstation?

She can go to the store and buy a physical disk, yes.

And what happens when she has an Xbox without a disk drive?

Your original comment was about side loading apps on iPhone ON a thread about iPhone apps. I don't see what consoles have to do with this. You are being ignorant of the fact that the vast majority of iPhone users CANNOT and WILL NOT side load apps using a developer account.

It's a common belief because it's true. We're clearly talking about consumer-level access to install and run native software, not pedantic technical workarounds.

The "alternative way" is to install web apps... which is tied to webkit... which is a neutered browser technology that's purposely hamstrung as to not interfere with the app store.

Using the web apps as a defense only shows that you won't admit to the massive problems with it - from bluetooth restrictions to lack of hardware level driver support.

That isn't a realistic option... it's a deflection from the subpar user experience Apple supports to enforce their mafia level protection racket.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22421912/iphone-web-app-pw...

Anyone who pushes Web Apps as a viable option is being disingenuous about what it provides or purposely ignorant.

> Edit 2: No, I'm not talking about webapps. You can sideload apps with a free developer account, similar to xbox.

This is disingenuous. Not only do you need a paid developer account, you are limited by the number apps you can sideload, you need to compile them yourself and sign them with your key, and they must be resigned and installed every 7 days. You also need to do all of that from a Mac.

You don’t need a paid account but the limit in that scenario is 7 days.

This is so not the point lol

What happens in a niche market doesn't necessarily apply to a broader market.

Also, that's a "but they do it too" fallacy.

The standard argument that a 30% is ok for video games but not ok for the App Store is that games are special and different. I don’t find it convincing. I think a better argument is that a 30% cut is wrong full stop, but going after phone app stores is a higher enforcement priority because the stakes are higher. An increasing portion of commerce is digital, and increasing portion is happening on phones. Apple will try to expand the coverage of the 30% cut until someone makes them stop. The only way they can keep growing as a 2 trillion dollar company is to take an increasing cut of the world’s economic activity.

The argument with videogame consoles was that console makers were actually loosing money on each console sold, and would make up for it by taking a larger cut on each game sold.

This is of course very different from apple business model.

As well as the cost of running first-party QA processes, namely that “Nintendo Seal of Quality” that was instigated to prevent a repeat of the 1980s video game crash, precipitated by a slew of awful shovelware games for the Atari 2600 in particular).

Apple does have their app-review thing - but they said it’s paid-for by the $99 fee, so the 30% cut with all the other Kafkaesque restrictions is not a tenable position.

Anyway - my company stopped publishing to the iOS App Store over a year ago and switched to PWAs and no-regrets here at all.

It's not ok period if the owner of the device can't choose to install software themselves.

Microsoft and Sony take 30% of game revenue. A piece of software is sold and they take a cut. They also take a cut of in app purchases of game expansions and game items.

Apple, on the other hand, wants to take a cut of every non-physical item purchase on their platform regardless of what it is. They also don't want any non-physical item purchases to occur off their platform. Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Apple's platform is a gateway to all kinds of businesses selling all kinds of goods, both physical and digital, with a range of business models.

Apple could even take a cut of physical item purchases if they wanted; they just decided they don't want to (for obvious reasons).

I agree it's similar but it's also not exactly the same.

I don't think I see the difference in what you are describing Sony does vs Apple does. What's the non-physical items sold on PlayStation that Sony doesn't take a cut for?

That's not what I mean. Take this example: Fanhouse is an app that sells a digital products created by end users and pays those creators for the content that end users subscribe to.

In terms of business relationship and product something like this can't exist on gaming platforms. Game platforms are strictly for publishers to sell their own gaming content.

iOS is a gateway to businesses selling both physical and digital wares of all types. By their good graces, they don't force physical items through their payment processor but they do for digital goods regardless of what that good is (with a few notable exceptions).

While I understand what you’re saying The Xbox can download non-gaming apps. Consoles are not locked down to only games.

Microsoft and Sony also take a percentage of in game transactions on their platforms. I don’t see how this is any different.

Price-fixing as a defense is so odd.

"Industry standard", by itself, is meaningless. What if "industry standard" was 75%?

Tell this to the judge which stated this to Epic lawyers lmao. Don’t forget that Tencent who’s behind Epic takes 50% fee in its Android store in China and Tim Sweeney bans everyone in Twitter who reminds about this fact.

I'd love to hear his response to this in a court setting.

Many apps are free so that argument doesn’t hold up. Also 30% of subscription revenue from services they don’t run just because it was purchased through an app is further proof that the fee is just rent seeking.

It does cost them money, but I can't wrap my mind on why that's not subsidized by the rest of the Apple machine.

Didn't customers pay a premium for Apple hardware because of the unified ecosystem and superior security to begin with? And developers also pay a premium to be on the App Store ($99+30%) because it costs them money to create the infrastructure and ensure safety?

I'm pretty ignorant on the whole situation, but it does sound nice to be Apple. Raking in hundreds of billions while charging premiums on both sides, convincing them it's for their own good. Meanwhile, customers and developers descend into a feedback loop of even heavier dependence on Apple: the more customers there are, the more devs have a financial necessity to publish apps on the platform, the more value the platform has, the more customers they get.

People are quick to point out Apple is the one providing for developers, who should be honored to be able to get on the App Store for a 30% cut. But, really, how many users would Apple have without those apps? They do deserve their cut, but at some point it went from a symbiotic relationship to "oil the Apple machine." The economies of scale simply work in their favor here.

> Didn't customers pay a premium for Apple hardware because of the unified ecosystem and superior security to begin with

Not defending Apple, but offering forever-services for one-time fees is a great way to go out of business. I would not expect the App Store to be subsidized by hardware sales.

Also, assuming you accept the premise in the first place, it makes sense to charge the developer, who is the one generating work for reviewers.

All of those are recurring fees.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted. The developer program has a yearly fee. Phones, even in the rare case that they are used for their full lifespan, still need to be replaced as they slowly die/become obselete - in practice every 2-5 years.

Not completely, but maybe enough to lower the insane fees?

For instance, why not charge for the services used and a low payment processing fee? If developers bring associated costs, they should pay for it. It just seems 30% is overshooting quite a bit. They want to treat developers like regular customers with regular margins, when they are more like partners bringing them nearly free revenue.

I guess I'm too ignorant to understand how building, maintaining and securing the App Store is 10x more expensive than doing the same for something like Mastercard.

I was responding to comments about a particular pricing model, not defending Apple.

Perhaps I should find a better way to communicate that - making it literally the first words of my post didn't work.

Apple recently suggested to Australian authorities that Apple can't possibly have a monopoly on app distribution since they have no restrictions against PWAs which "have the look, feel and functionality of a native app". [1]

As someone currently building an app-like website – https://wormhole.app – let me tell you that Apple's neglect and underinvestment in the web platform definitely precludes websites or "PWAs" from having the "have the look, feel and functionality of a native app". Safari suffers from the twin effects of (1) limitations that Apple has intentionally put in place and (2) intentional under-staffing of the Safari team. Here's how it's affected us:

- Apple recently broke our website by adding support for a new API `blob.stream()` in Safari 14.1 (which we correctly feature-detected) but when you call the function you get a null pointer exception which crashes the renderer process [2]. Worse, the bugs was fixed on `master` several months before Safari was released but it wasn't included in the release.

- IndexedDB has been full of bugs for years and shows very slow signs of improvement. We have no other storage options on Safari, so we're stuck using their buggy implementation.

- Safari limits websites to using 1GB of temporary space after which the app must prompt the user for an additional allocation, each 200MB at a time. So if the app needs 5GB of space (for example, a video editing application, or in our case a P2P-enabled file sending app), then the user will need to click "okay" on twenty prompts for 200MB more space each to make the app work. Needless to say, this is totally ridiculous and definitely not an API that Apple would ever find acceptable to ship for native iOS apps.

- If we choose to use in-memory storage then Safari warns the user that our website is using lots of RAM. So that's not a real option.

- We can't offer streaming download + decryption from our servers because Safari's ServiceWorker implementation doesn't allow intercepting HTTP requests for file downloads.

- Missing many APIs that would actually let websites truly compete with native apps. Just a few that we use:

  * Web Share Target API (https://web.dev/web-share-target)

  * File System Access API (https://web.dev/file-system-access)

- I could go on...

It's hard to see Apple's decisions here as anything but outright hostile to the web and designed to push developers into making native apps.

[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Apple%20Pty%20Limited%2...

[2] https://twitter.com/feross/status/1386835131780931587

These complaints have a very similar vibe to the complaints about IE6 back in the day. Companies coyly pretending to support interoperability while actually breaking it as much as possible is getting really, really old.

Then people should start explaining how free they are from regional dealerships.

Apple 30% cut is for developer access to the Apple cultivated and exclusive selection of customers.

They built the platform, infrastructure, distribution channel and trust of the users, creating a market where there was none.

One can argue that a 30% margin may be too fat, but considering other industry margin and that Apple consolidates in that margin logistic, distributionship and dealership I haven't yet seen a convincing case comparing it fairly to other industries

But still, exclusive distribution rights are neither unheard of nor have scores of people up in arms about them restriction people from of choice, so why is Apple singled out and targeted?

Missing the point they the only way to install apps on an IPhone is the app store. If you had choice to freely download apps from the internet, this would not be a monopoly abuse issue. Then sure charge on the app store whatever you want, allow competing so stores that also offer reviewed software.

Correct if they did this virtually every really big player would opt out and offer a package on their website. See the MS and apple desktop store.

No they wouldn't. See the Google Play Store.

Do you know that Epic failed with their Android Epic Store because no one was sideloading it from their website and quickly went to the Goole Play Store and started paying 30% fee because users use unified solutions not geek ones.

I don't think so. I'd say the mobile market is quite different. Look at Android and the Google Play Store which also has similar pricing stipulations. There are players offering separate app sources/stores (Amazon or Epic appstores for example), but I certainly wouldn't consider virtually every big player or even a large portion opting out.

Google is less restrictive than apple leaving less reason to opt out.

If they did this, millions of iPhones would suddenly be filled with sandbox-breaking malware installed from websites, too.

I believe Apple is ready to die on this anti-malware hill.

It shouldn't be called "Sandbox"

Which is exactly why Apple users specifically do not want third-party app distribution at all.

This isn't just blind fanboyism, either: PC gamers absolutely loathe Epic Games Store and the Microsoft Store, because they want their entire collection of software to live on Steam. Yes, a decade and change ago everyone hated Steam, but now it's the established way of doing things. The more developer-friendly, competitive option is to have 15 different launchers, one for each publisher, with their own payment systems, terms of service, and so on.

You can see this in the reactions Apple users have to the Epic lawsuit, versus their reaction to stories of Apple demanding their cut from developers that don't have it to give. They're way more sympathetic to companies that aren't trying to split their app libraries in half.

(EDIT: I should probably clarify that I, myself, don't think alternative iOS app stores would actually take off without major cross-subsidies from powerful industry players. Google Play has a stranglehold in markets where it's available, even though Android has no technical lock-out like iOS. EGS on Android is a joke and I would never install it. On the other, OTHER hand, though... Android in China, where Google Play is banned, is basically PC digital downloads, pre-Steam.)

This is you really liking the mall experience where stores are paying twice as much rent to be in the mall and trying to make it illegal for shops to do business outside the mall to maximize your shopping experience. You and the mall are both in love with the idea.

If you want to shop in the mall vote with your wallet if there isn't enough demand to convince merchants to situate themselves there then deal with it.

Laws forcing merchants and customers into the mall ought to be themselves illegal.

See Android.

I think what you are saying is probably correct, but remember what happened to MS and IE. IE was never forced, and other options weren't blocked. The issue was bundling and inability to uninstall due to tight coupling. Both of those would apply to iOS though the details and current political landscape would probably give them a pass.

I anticipate that in the Epic lawsuit, the judge will definitely rule against the anti-steering policies of Apple though she'll probably not touch the app store, margins and payment processing pieces. There are many many Apps where buying content in iOS apps is pricier than buying on the web on the same publisher. This definitely raises consumer prices and causes consumer harm which is the key criteria of American anti-trust practice. This would be very very unlikely to be overturned on Appeal especially if the judge is careful to limit her ruling to just this and will result in numerous class action lawsuits.

The one I personally experience is sheet music where I'm very careful to never buy in-app which are always priced 20-25% higher.

It's basically a myth that apples reviewers are reviewing for security issues. I've worked in the iOS ecosystem since the beginning, undergone hundreds of reviews, and the reviewers are there primarily, almost exclusively, to endure apple gets it's 30% fee. There are automated security tools, to be sure, but apple the costs of hosting and automated tests are basically 0%.

If they charged $5-20 per release, that I would be fine with, and not only cover costs but would generate profit.

Cause Apple only has like 40% marketshare.

Is it really about market share or market power, and subsequent abuse of that power?

Anti-trust laws are about competition, not strictly about monopolies. They could be (and should be IMO) applied much more broadly.

Microsoft takes 30% of xbox purchases. That's the argument.

Apple doesn't take 30% of every purchase you make online. You're free to use a browser and purchase there where Apple doesn't take a cut.

I'm not saying I agree with this, and I think 30% is about triple what's reasonable, but if we're going to rail against Apple here, we should include Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft too.

and Valve/Steam too

> You're free to use a browser

You may be free to do that, but it’s worth noting that if an app developer tells you that you can use a browser, their app will be rejected and they may have their developer account banned.

This is a super important point. The "you're free to use a browser" argument would be very fair if I could tell my customers about that option, or charge 33% more for the iOS version, or simply not have a way to pay through the app.

This a pretty unfair comparison.

Apple doesn't take a cut of any online purchases made through Safari. They also don't take a cut of any in-app purchases for physical goods. They only take a cut of purchases for digital good purchases and used entirely within an iOS app.

The proper comparison to Microsoft would be buying software or games for Windows through the Microsoft store. Which, by the way, Microsoft also takes their 30% cut too.

The proper comparison would be Microsoft banning any browsers apart from internet explorer, intentionally gimping internet explorer to make it less of a competitor to native apps, going to great lengths to make it impossible for users to install any native apps not through the microsoft store... and then doing what they do with microsoft store.

It's all the things at the start that are anti competitive, not the cut.

brand and marketing power. Apple is the cool developer brand and devs with their sticker filled macbooks and consumers don't have a critical attitude when it comes to Apple.

It's really funny. Imagine if every independent game developer who has ever built videogames for Windows had to pay a third of their revenue to Microsoft, and had to go through a store review to get their games approved. Would we ever had some of the more controversial games? People tore Microsoft a new one for bundling a browser. Yet you cannot even install anything other than webkit reskins on ios. Completely absurd.

Why are you comparing open and closed platforms when they aren’t comparable? Try now with Microsoft Xbox and iOs and your logic fails.

Because the entire definition of "open" and "closed" platforms is an arbitrary one dictated by the platform creator. There is no reason that iOS (and every game console for that matter) can't run arbitrary programs provided by the person who bought and paid for the device other than obstinance in service of rent seeking.

Why should "closed" platforms (i.e. ones where the user doesn't get to decide) even be allowed to exist?

Because the user decided to buy into a closed platform. He could have chosen an open Android platform.

My parents chose iOS over Android for the security, ease of use, unification AND the App Store.

I’d say stop forcing your agenda on the users. They have the right to choose what they want. They voted with their money and do it each year.

None of that is lost with the ability to have alternative app stores. Creating more choice is the the opposite of forcing anything on users.

It increases the attack vectors for the platform

Maybe, but unlikely. The operating system still needs provide APIs and access. Alternate app stores doesn't mean apps can do anything they want on the device.

Nobody's forcing anything on anyone. What you campaign against with this screed is choice. If someone wants to stay within the walled garden, nobody is taking that from them.

I'm not comparing anything, I'm saying closed platforms shouldn't exist. the practical difference is however that the mobile phone is used as a general purpose computer and is at this point for many people the only device they actually use. That said I am not in principle opposed to apply the same standard to gaming consoles, but it is less of a pressing issue compared to the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people with smartphones who basically have no access to any remotely free and open computing environment.

Apple has always taken 30% of creator earnings. Even small indy developers have paid this cut.

Did she really expect otherwise?

I think not using Apple platform is the way to go if you cannot agree their ToS.

That’s just ridiculous. Person wants to make money on Apple install user base which they were growing for years by investing billions and doesn’t want to pay fee for possibility to make business on platform in which they didn’t invest a penny.

Am I understanding you correctly here: so a company that sells hardware, which they sell at a profit, has the right to exploit the works of others because it runs on their hardware?

That's a very strange point of view. So you would be OK with Google taking money from every website they list, because according to your logic it's Google who invested billions to make your website searchable and thus deserves a cut from whatever you earn with it? Because that's kind of what's going on here.

Developers pay to get their app into the store. This should cover the cost of maintaining the app store. If you charge for your app, there might be an argument to be had. But if you sell products and services using the app, there's no way Apple is involved with that other than that the app runs on their hardware, which doesn't cost them a single cent.

Title should be Fanhouse didn't understand app store policy and built an unsustainable business model.

The same App Store Policy that magically doesn't apply to a similar service, Patreon?

Going to jump in and reply. Patreon explicitly doesn’t do Pay to views, doesn’t have interaction gated behind paywalls, and is meant as just a straight transfer of $. Fanhouse does a lot of these things which counts as digital transactions. This differentiation makes sense to me. Also interestingly most people I have seen use fanhouse use it for NFSW stuff but Stripe seems to be fine with it? Specifically the pay to view feature which is people basically selling nudes.

Interesting. Doesn't Apple disallow porn?

Also Patreon does gate content behind payment, with different tiers even.

And I've seen Patreons sell one-time services/products for a fee, like this random Patreon: https://i.imgur.com/qKpOwpq.png

All these subtle differentiations to justify one service paying 30% while Patreon doesn't seem arbitrary to say the least. It makes no sense.

I agree with your point about the differentiation being vague and the fact that apple should be more clear.

Also apple does disallow porn. And fanhouse also says no porn but every fanhouse creator’s marketing is around suggestive pics. They get around it by calling it “lewd” instead of nude and the app literally has a pay to view picture functionality which some creators use for NSFW stuff. I wonder when Stripe will catch on to this. Basically marketing != what’s happening.

Fanhouse is explicitly supposed to be PG-13 and a family-friendly equivalent to other similar platforms. It wouldn't have even been listed on the App Store if it wasn't.

I can find you 15 fanhouse creator tweets that are suggestive in nature. They get around the PG-13 requirement by calling it “lewd”. Do you want 13 year olds to buy lewds? Lol def not PG-13 whatever they claim. And from personal experience a creator who has offered to let me buy her nudes on fanhouse’s pay to view. I too can claim something is SFW.

Here’s one such tweet fyi: https://twitter.com/rotkill/status/1367687681837301761?s=21 Just go on twitter and search for “fanhouse lewd” make sure twitter is not auto correcting fanhouse to funhouse. Lol they are clearly violating Stripe’s agreement and Apple’s no porn rule. All the SFW is marketing to differ from Onlyfans and has worked. :)

"Company is shocked to discover that the agreement they signed to do a thing is being enforced."

Should stores not have to pay rent? I mean what gives with that!

This will keep happening as long as people keep agreeing to Apple's terms and building on their platform. I wouldn't touch Apple's platform with a 10 foot pole. Nothing here is new. It's getting harder to sympathise with developers who keep doing it.

I'll give you the counterpoint. I'm very happy to spend money on apps and services that I like.

However, I'm only going to do it through Apple's platform, for a variety of reasons. If you don't want to build on Apple's platform, that's completely fine. I won't be a customer. And maybe that will change the system, I really don't know.

The issue is that this customer you're describing doesn't exist. It does provide a marginally higher amount of friction to use a non-native payment method, but there aren't any users out there cancelling their Netflix subscription because now Netflix gets 100% of the proceeds instead of 70%. At that point, you're inadvertently sabotaging the very company that you're trying to support, because your hardware manufacturer decided that they need to tax your software, too.

How can you honestly tell a person who just shared their opinion "you don't exist"? I also would never enter my credit card in an app, UNLESS it's a huge, well-trusted brand (which this influencer app isn't).

Many people wouldn't bother. The whole point of Apple handling this is that you trust Apple to have more clue than your average startup full of monkeys.

This is a big thing for me. I really do not want to give any vendor raw Payment information if I can help. Would much rather do so though a service like Apple Pay/Google Pay. And then only have to worry about that one vendor when they get a data breach then a dozen vendors and deal with a dozen data breaches.

There are plenty of services that offer payment fuzzing options, putting your faith in one of the largest digital targets does effectively nothing to save your digital privacy.

It offers the best crosscut between connivence (subscriptions) and privacy assurance (for the time being)

Yeah, I exist.

Let’s be clear, I don’t do any of this based on how much Apple gets. I have had a lot of bad experiences with developers abusing my information (too many emails, unsubscribe doesn’t work, selling email address) that it’s simply a game I’m not going to play anymore. This isn’t something I worry about with someone like Netflix. But the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent with small developers won’t happen otherwise.

On top of it, ever try to cancel a subscription? Wall Street Journal is one that I’ve had twice in the last 10 years. Once was through their website. When I cancelled, I had to call and got a sales pitch… through 3 reps.

The next was through Apple. Cancelling was one click.

I get why developers and people like these. As a customer I hate them. And I’m just not going to do it anymore.

I'm not saying Apple isn't adding end-user value. I can easily imagine a payment screen in an app that looks like,

* Pay with Apple Pay ($13.00)

* Pay with Stripe ($10.50)

If their value-add is as strong as you say then surely they'd still make plenty of money. If not, well maybe they need to start adding more value or dropping their prices, just like anyone in a competitive market.

Does Apple's TOS allow this?

IIRC, Credit card companies used to disallow different pricing for cash and CC.

no. you can't even mention other payment methods

Like you can’t mention on package of your product in Walmart that your product is cheaper on your website. No business allows this.

> No business allows this

IIRC, Progressive Insurance? had car insurance ads where they said that they'd show insurance rates for similar coverage from the competitors next to their quote.

I don't know about USA but over here it's very common for manufacturers to print their MSRP on their packaging. Retailers are free to charge whatever price they want, the MSRP is simply the recommended price. It's not unusual for retailers to charge more.

They also do not allow you to mention or even imply the existence of their fee. Nor do they allow you to so much as link to an external website that provides other payment options, nor mention the existence of such a website.

Again, I’m only one person, but I’m fine with that. I’d choose the Apple one.

This wouldn't be a problem if Apple wasn't the only company allowed to sign iPhone apps.

Apple is just milking people at this point. Their devices are subpar for the cost and customer treatment is sometimes even worse.

So don’t use it. Oh, most of Google engineers over the world and Silicon Valley are using iPhones. They even are given for free on par with Pixels when you are being hired. Are they that dumb and don’t understand that Apple is milking them?

Seriously curious, what percentage is “fair”? Or is the issue you can’t side load this app without going through the App Store?

If Apple wants to play gatekeeper, no percentage IMO unless they're using Apple's payment network which should be competitive with others like stripe at 3% or so.

In this case they actually are willing to pay Apple, just 30% of their revenue which is 10% of the transaction price but Apple wants 30% of the transaction price.

They planned their business after reading App Store rules and now want to bypass it. That’s not how the business work. They will fail in court very badly because they accepted the rules and know all consequences.

an 10% profit margin is considered average

I think none. Apple is clearly nickel and diming their own customers at this point. Now you're not only paying Apple for your iPhone, and Apple services, but you're also stuck paying them extra every time you buy a service from your iPhone.

It's stupid and greedy. Like where do we draw the line?

I think the current system is too much in Apple's favor, but I imagine they do have to spend a decent chunk of change curating the app store, validating submissions, hosting the apps for download, and maintaining the security infrastructure for developers to sign their apps and users to have confidence in them. This is all value added for developers.

The emails from the testimony indicate they wanted only a $1 billion run rate. They have a $4+ billion run rate. Do we really think it costs them $1-4 billion to run the apps store? I'd be shocked it cost even $100 million a year to run it.

The excuse that the 30% cut exists to pay for the costs of running the store seem absurd.

That is all in service of getting people to buy their phones. Those are no value added to the developer, they are restrictions on the developer so Apple can make statements about its ecosystem.

If a grocery store allows you to order groceries online, but they make it into an app instead of a website, will Apple take a 30% cut on the groceries too?

Nope. Retail goods are excempt already and can use their own payment processors too. Big obvious example is the Amazon app where you can buy anything so long as it isn't digital content using Amazon's payment system.

I've never thought "fairness" to be a material concept in anything with money. I mean how could it be? Is it fair to tax people different amounts, or should everyone be taxed the same percentage? Or the same dollar amount? How can "fairness" as a concept ever be nailed down to be useful?

Well, Google charges 30%. Microsoft (for the XBox, not sure about their store) 30%. Sony (PS4) 30%. Steam was 30%, but this is dropping. Nintendo's is well protected by NDAs, but reportedly 15-30%.

30% is pretty close to a standard when you're providing the storefront and control the hardware.

In Canada, Bell charges 80$ for a smartphone plan with 30GiB of data; and TELUS charges 80$ for a smartphone plan with 30GiB of data; and Rogers charges 80$ for a smartphone plan with 30GiB of data.

If you don't want to spend as much, you can go with their discount brands. Virgin Mobile Canada (Bell subsidiary) charges 45$ for 3GiB of data; and Koodo (TELUS subsidiary) charges 45$ for 3GiB of data; and Fido (Rogers subsidiary) charges 45$ for 3GiB of data.

One one to look at it is that the market rate for the smartphone plan with 30GiB of data is 80$ and the market rate for 3GiB of data is 45$. Another way is that it is an oligopoly situation. Having lived in Canada for a long time, I know it's the latter. Apple/Google/etc store markup situation seems similar enough that I am inclined to believe it is a case of oligopoly too.

The front runners here aren't Apple and Google, but Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. They set the standard that Steam, Apple, Google, and others have followed.

Bell existed long before Rogers and TELUS, but nowadays, they are equal partners and beneficiaries of an oligopoly. Bell does not have more power because it was there first, nor TELUS less in the wrong because it entered it last. Whatever differences their time of entry to the market made has long since dissipated. I don't see how the situation is different for app stores.

They really didn't. Physical video game software royalties were not 30% take. Closer to 10%, although it varied depending on manufacturer and publisher agreements.

By the time Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo got established selling digital video games Apple had already been doing a 30% take of iTunes songs for years.

Google allows other payment providers in apps without mandating their own provider. Same with Steam. I don't know about Microsoft or Sony.

They forbid this (bypass Google Pay Billing) for games that’s why Epics are suing Google with Apple at the same time since both companies kicked out Fortnite after malicious hotpatch.

The issue is that Apple continues to inroad services and tools through their own proprietary systems, which gives them a better excuse to mark up their products. Giving users the choice of marketplaces gives Apple incentive to stay competitive in an otherwise monopolistic software segment.

They built their closed platform from scratch on mature market with Nokia and Blackberry and made the lowest fee (in 2008) that’s why developers started making apps for iPhones. You think 30% is high while it was best choice in 2008. Now zoomers don’t want to pay fees and want everything for free.

This whole notion that Apple, by virtue of creating a platform, needs to cash in on every use of the platform really needs to go. Even IBM in the mainframe era knew not to charge transaction fees on what runs on the platform. The reason you create great APIs is to get developers to support your platform is so people will buy your platform. Without app developers, Apple is only what it can provide and probably not as popular. Those court released e-mails are going to keep showing people how wrong Apple's thinking is.

If Apple is the payment processor than so be it, but if they have nothing to do with the transaction, they deserve no money. Even saying that its an app in the App Store is lame because there is no other way to get apps on the platform. Even free apps help Apple to sell their wares.

Compiler royalties, anyone?

Ah, I remember the runtime fees for Smalltalks. I was hoping that whole thing was confined to niche markets these days.

The issue isn't really if 30% is "fair", its that the market has no way to find out if it is because apple have forced devs into their app ecosystem by deliberately keeping iOS browsers slightly worse than native apps (no push messaging or background processing). So there is no viable way for an alternate store, with an alternate fee structure, to run on iOS devices.

How Apple forced anyone when they launched App Store in mature mobile market in 2008 where everyone was telling iPhone is “failed product”.

The only thing I don't understand is why these people push apps on the AppStore and then whine about the rules they've agreed to. Apple's 30% is infamous. It's not something obscure about iTunes use in nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

Because they have a monopoly over 50% of the population, and many businesses quite literally have to participate or they would cease to exist.

Do you think it'd be legal for Microsoft to charge a 30% fee on every transaction you make on Windows?

They do not have a monopoly. 50% or more of the population chose to be in Apple's walled garden. They knew the rules, they knew what they were buying. Some people don't want to be in Apple's walled garden, so they buy Android. Businesses tend to prefer Apple's ecosystem because sales data has shown that Apple's customers tend to pay more for applications and services - so they're coveted customers.

You are delusional

Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments to HN, and please don't do name-calling or personal attacks. Those things are not what this site is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Wait so "because [Apple] have a monopoly" (which isn't correct, but let's put that aside) they can push an app and then act surprised about Apple enforcing the ToS they agreed to?

Yeah that's not good enough.

> about Apple enforcing the ToS

An illegally anti-competitive ToS is the point though.

Don't declare things "illegal" when they've not been.

Hey, we'll see who was right in a couple months then!

I'll save this comment for later. You think that nothing at all was illegal, and I think that at least some of Apple's actions will be declared illegal and anti-competitive. (Although probably not on every count. But still on some)

We'll see who was right. You who thinks that nothing at all will be declared illegal, and me who thinks that at least some will be. And I'll be glad to show it to you, later, when it happens.

> It's not something obscure about iTunes use in nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

This is not some weirdness of iTunes but is standard practice in all large software licenses. Take a look at Adobe or Microsoft licenses, they all have this clause.

Just curious, if Apple is so bad, why do people build apps for it? Browsers are very robust now a days. I have never built a iPhone or Android app, never needed to. Browsers now a days I imagine can get you atleast 90% of the way. Why go to Apple if you can build a webapp. And it is cross platform so you do not have to maintain a separate Android app.

What am I missing?

Some simply cannot avoid it because Apple does not implement all necessary functionality for all kinds of apps in Safari and does not allow other browser engines that do on iOS.

A native app has access to way more marketable data than a browser page. Why do you think all the big sites keep on pushing you to install their app?

The web never implemented easy micropayments, and iPhone/Android did.

Actually, Apple Pay works great on the web, but doesn't charge a 30% fee.

Which tells you everything. There's a stocking fee you pay to be on the Apple Store. I never hear the HN crowd complaining about the hoops you have to jump through to get your product on Walmart's shelves. It's almost like the entity owning the retail channel and the customers gets to set the T's and C's. You always have the option for not targeting Apple's customers and building your app for Android only - just like you can tell Walmart where to shove it and only sell your product at Costco. It's how retail works.

But if you make a purchase within the app, the developer should be able to charge their user however they want (Apple Pay, Paypal, CC directly). Wal-Mart doesn't get a share of every game I buy on my Xbox even if I bought the console off a shelf at Wal-Mart.

Customers want dedicated mobile apps that they can download from App Stores.

1. Apps get added to the home screen by default. Adding a website to the home screen is not easy and most users are not aware of this function. When app is on the home screen, there are much higher chances that user will return.

2. Push notifications increase return rate as well. Website can't send push notification to iOS client.

So basically it comes down to user retention. Apps allows for better user monetization, compared to websites.

I disagree about one partly. It’s two (well 3 really) clicks to add a PWA to the Home Screen. I would describe it more as having friction than not being easy.

3 clicks literally means you lost 90% of your potential users.

That’s how Epics failed with Epic Games Store and Fortnite and moved to Google Play and started paying 30% fee to the Google and then broke rules and were kicked out from the Play Store.

Notifications and icons are pretty big for me.

My app does end-to-end encryption, and this is much more straightforward in a "real" app. (1) I need non-volatile storage for the keys, and (2) I want users to know if/when they get a new version of the code.

You can do E2EE in a web app (like Element.io), but then every time you load the page, you're trusting the server not to send you a new version with a backdoor.

Possible misleading title. Apple wants 30% of earnings, not “creator” earnings.

Possibly misleading comment. Did you read the tweet thread? Apple is demanding 30% of all transactions sourced from an Apple device.

From the app. As someone else noticed, not having an app doesn't seem to have slowed down OnlyFans

I feel like Onlyfans being a porn platform is the reason behind its success. Porn and sex are very strong motivators if dare not I say innovators for Platforms and technologies. I’m still hanging on the belief that VR will be catapulted by Porn.

> Possible misleading title. Apple wants 30% of earnings, not “creator” earnings.

"In writing and over the phone, we explained to Apple that we could pay them 30% of our revenues (from our 10% take rate). It'll be harder to cover costs and build features as a startup, but at least it'd be coming from us. Apple insisted on taking 30% of creators' total earnings."

This is being pedantic to the point of being wrong.

Because of the nature of the app, the earnings in-app, which Apple wants, are creator earnings.

Your suggested title would be less specific to the point of being flat out wrong if Fanhouse makes earnings elsewhere... which they do.

Please read the thread before commenting.

Not really. Apple's cut would take 30% of the creator earnings. Of course, it would also take 30% of the app's earnings.

So instead of the creator getting $90 and the app getting $10 when someone pays $100 through Fanhouse, Apple gets $30, the app gets $7 and the creator gets $63.

Based on this, I downloaded the Fanhouse app, but before signing up I figured I'd read the privacy policy [0].

>Information We Get When You Use the Service • Cookies, Log Data and other tracking technologies: When you use our Service, we and our business partners may collect certain information about your computer or device through technology such as cookies, web beacons, log files, or other tracking/recording tools. The information we collect through the use of tracking technologies includes, but is not limited to, IP address, browser information, referring/exit pages and URLs, click stream data and information about how you interact with links on the website, mobile app, or Service, domain names, landing pages, page views, cookie data that allows us to uniquely identify your browser and track your behavior on our site, mobile device type, mobile device IDs or other persistent identifiers, and location data collected from your mobile device. Some or all of this data may be combined with other information described above. When you access our Service by or through a mobile device, we may receive or collect and store a unique identification numbers associated with your device or our mobile application (including, for example, a UDID, Unique ID for Advertisers (“IDFA”), Google Ad ID, or Windows Advertising ID or other identifier), mobile carrier, device type, model and manufacturer, mobile device operating system brand and model, phone number, and, depending on your mobile device settings, your geographical location data, including GPS coordinates (e.g. latitude and/or longitude), WiFi location or similar information regarding the location of your mobile device. You have the option to either accept or refuse these cookies, and know when a cookie is being sent to your computer. If you choose to refuse our cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service. • Analytics Data: We may also collect analytics data, or use third-party analytics tools, to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the Service. These tools collect information sent by your browser or mobile device, including the pages you visit, your use of third party applications, and other information that assists us in analyzing and improving the Service.

That'll be a hard no from me. App deleted. (Also absolutely illegal in the EU, and not in line with their own App Store listing's privacy disclosure.)

[0] https://fanhouse.app/docs/privacy

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