Comment by lwkl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lwkl | Hacker News Reader

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> It's clear as day they know the minute they allowed alternatives, a giant fraction of the App Store would depart because they can get a better deal either elsewhere.

As an user of an iPhone I don't want this. I bought an iPhone because I deal with enough technology in my day to day job and I want a phone that's straightforward to use and doesn't need any attention. So no I don't want to install three app stores on my iPhone and have to deal with 20 different payment providers.

In the end it's important to make the distinction between consumer interests and the interest of businesses that want to sell their product on the iOS platform. I get that this sucks for developers because iOS is from what I've heard much more profitable than Android. In my opinion consumers interests should be weighed higher here and Apple's policies for the App store are mostly pro consumer, at least compared with the situation on different platforms.

Consumers that want a more open platform can always choose Android or Linux phones.

It's a totally false dichotomy that you have to choose between consumer friendly and business friendly outcome. The idea those things are linked is a convenient fiction Apple has come up with to maintain its position of control.

Apple can put however many constraints it wants on external app stores. It can make them present a uniform interface for payment, delivery etc etc. Just like it puts those constraints already on the apps. Pretending it's powerless and all these terrible outcomes will ensue when it literally already controls every detail of every single app on the existing store is one of Apple's "big lies" (but one clearly a lot of people have fallen for).

> Apple can put however many constraints it wants on external app stores.

I doubt you mean that. All apps must be served from server farms in the Oort Cloud and be in Esperanto would be acceptable constraints?

But it's actually not a false dichotomy. Things I want are vendors who make iOS apps forced to use other parts of the Apple ecosystem. Forced to use Safari. Forced to offer Apple Single Sign On (if they use anyone's). Forced to offer Apple's payment methods. Those are the very things they are trying to get out of by having alternate app stores.

> Forced to use Safari.

That's a huge issue actually. See the story the other day about Optional Chaining operator breaking iOS 12 Safari[1] and there's nothing users can do about it even if the hardware is perfectly capable of handling Optional Chaining operators.

If I could just install another browser then that issue disappears. But I can't do that, because Apple will never allow any other web renderers on the App Store.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29894300

The day Apple allows other browsers is the day you can put a countdown clock on the entire web only working with Chromium in a way that Microsoft could only dream of during their IE on the desktop period. Not because Chrome is better, but because Google has been very effective at using its dominant web position to force people to "upgrade" to Chrome.

Even Microsoft, which invested huge amounts of money in Edge, packed it in when Google kept telling people that Edge was going to kill their firstborn (or whatever other tactics they use, like allegedly making YouTube not work properly.)

So, yeah, I'm fine with allowing other browsers - a few years after we've seen Google successfully broken up.

Meanwhile, I'm fine with websites just not using Optional Chaining operators. It's syntactical sugar. And frankly, rapid iterations on JavaScript, adding optional features only supported on Chrome and then making people think the web is broken without them, is a huge source of Google's ability to bully people into using Chrome.

I agree it's a stupid problem to have when simple solutions exist (use cool features while developing, babel them into old boring code that runs on your smart fridge from 2002), but it's a problem nonetheless and a problem we wouldn't have if it was possible to install a new non-Safari/WebKit browser on iOS 12.

> Forced to use Safari. Forced to offer Apple Single Sign On ...

I don't understand why you think Apple couldn't make those requirements? They already do for the apps on their own store, why couldn't the require it for apps on other stores? Apple can still control the signature process to allow apps to install on devices, they can just not sign anything they don't like.

(Putting aside whether those are reasonable constraints or not, I don't necessarily agree with them, but it's a separate matter).

Avoiding those restrictions (including Apple signing apps) are usually the reason listed to start other stores. Why benefit would those other stores offer to anyone?

30% cheaper prices? Better user experience?

Why would prices be cheaper? How would the user interface be changed in anyway and how would it benefit users?

That's exactly my point. There are no real improvements I can see coming from any new store. Please explain how it will be better and why any actor would make it better.

> Why would prices be cheaper?

In the emails linked, even Apple acknowledges that the 30% will be passed to the customers.

One Apple employee acknowledged that in their discussions with Uber employees about their need to pay a commission on IAPs, Uber tried to convince Apple to remove their commission because that 30% would have to get passed on to customers.

However, I have no reason to believe that Uber would actually follow through. It seemed like a bluff. Certainly, any economic theory I'm aware of would have Uber and customers split that 30%, with Uber paying the vast majority out of profits.

should apple be allowed to make a (what seems like substantial) profit off that lock-in? by comparison payment processors like stripe can offer as a baseline 2.9% and 30 cents. if you predict that the average uber is 10 dollars (which is probably low these days) that's 6% if you were able to process with stripe and they're still turning a profit.

If you want to make the argument that because of the substantial number of free apps that apple needs to subsidize the costs of review etc. then I'm 100% sure that these companies would rather pay for the underlying resources than get raked over by this pricing scheme.

You do understand that Uber can use Stripe (or whoever else) to process the rides? It's just the in-app premium monthly membership fee we're discussing?

Apple's payments are extremely pro-user friendly. Do I wish they charged less? Yes. But if it's open to competition no one will use Apple payments even if they are the cheapest, because they are tilted more in the user's favor than other payment methods (subscription cancellation, etc.)

> It's just the in-app premium monthly membership fee we're discussing?

Sure, but even then Stripe charges half a percent extra to handle subscriptions. Given Uber One is 10$, my original assessment still stands that Apple wants ~4x what equivalent processors wants on their marketplace.

> But if it's open to competition no one will use Apple payments even if they are the cheapest

You're assuming that all subscription businesses would prefer to engage unethically with their customers. Many businesses are much more interested in the customer acquisition funnel and building up trust, and if Apple payments eliminates dropoff in subscribers because their payment credentials are already there or it just has strong user trust then many companies will prefer it even if they aren't the cheapest (but competitive).

And if Apple wants to enforce standard such that even the unethical companies have to play in their garden, then they need to be pegged at a fair and reasonable cost of services delivered which we can ascertain from everybody else who is doing this.

> You're assuming that all subscription businesses would prefer to engage unethically with their customers.

I'm assuming some do. Apple protects me from those companies. I also think most people aren't going to steal from me, but I still lock my door. Meanwhile, you have far more faith than I do that businesses will pay a fairly high additional cost (say 4x) to signal that cancelling is trustworthy - whether it makes sense or not.

Basically, Apple currently protects me over app developers, and I want that to continue.

Would you support them doing the same thing on MacOS? Or transactions through Safari?

I don’t see how iOS requires a 30% cut but Macs and transactions through Safari don’t.

The justification is the same, they make and maintain all the tech behind those the same as they do iOS. So really iOS shouldn’t have a cut or MacOS and Safari should. To be consistent.

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