Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

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I think Apple would actually have more of a case if they charged different rates for different types of apps based on technical reasons (i.e. Basics - web/touch/image/audio, video media, gaming/ARKit):

1.) web view/touch/audio streaming app - 10%

2.) accelerated web view/SDvideo app - 15%

3.) HDvideo H.264 app - 20%

4.) 3D Graphics/ARKit SDK app - 30%

3D and ARKit which are pushing the boundaries of the silicon probably do have associated R&D costs as well as silicon COGS costs that perhaps do need to be recouped in a manner similar to gaming console SW licensing agreements (i.e. Xbox, PS, Nintendo royalty payments).

In the court of public opinion it would also minimize the effectiveness of "think of the solo iOS dev" type scenarios that the big guys such as Epic, etc. like to hide behind.

I wonder if that would run into net neutrality-type issues, but setting different rates is definitely a novel way of looking at things. Charging higher rates for publishers of larger app binaries would also make sense. Certainly tech giants such as Facebook and Uber who have bloated app sizes could pay the extra expense for the hosting and so forth.

> I wonder if that would run into net neutrality-type issues

It absolutely would. Who is Apple or anyone on HN to tell one developer that their app is more important/costly/uses higher priority SDKs than another?

Well, maybe app binary sizes are an objective metric. Apple could even raise the existing cap and give Uber a bit more room to breathe, while charging them for the inevitable expansion of their app.

I think the analogy would be more equivalent to AWS. There are different costs associated with using the various SDKs (i.e. Lightsail, EC2, S3, SageMaker).

I'd also say the more it can be defined in terms of technical reasons the better.

There are R&D costs to maintaining a cutting edge, industry leading 3D Graphics SDK for iOS that the primary users beneficiaries of said library (i.e. Epic, Xbox) should contribute to.

This would require a bit of mindshift and context.

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