Because it can't just be that they actually want to be very clear to the user that Apple is not responsible for the experience?
They aren't just being "very clear", they are thumbing their nose at the regulator, and joyfully pissing in customer and developer chips as they do so.
They are trolling the process. That is very clear.
[citation needed]
It can be about more than one thing at the same time, but it certainly seems likely to be about the money. Apple wants people to use the App Store on their Mac more.
Those apps can be malicious too[0], but you don't see Apple warning you before you download or open them.
[0]: one of the first links on google, but this is not an isolated incident: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/07/more-malicious-ap...
No doubt on iOS it's about both, but my point is that it's reductive to think it's ONLY about losing app store revenue. Especially in the Dutch case, where they won't actually lose any revenue, since they're charging 27% anyway.
I believe Apple is being forward-looking here. They know such a ridiculous 27% policy is unlikely to be tolerated by the regulators, since it defeats the entire purpose, so they're planning for a future where they're forced to lower that. They want the option to be presented to consumers as being scarier than it actually is and to include as much friction as legally possible, so that developers will be more likely to continue to use IAPs even when they could use something else.
I've heard that Apple isn't allowing consumers any choice in the matter either -- developers can't simultaneously offer both their own payment method and IAPs[0] (at upwards of a ~50% higher price, to cover the ~30% that would have to go to Apple for the IAP option, if the percentage for out-of-band payments ever drops from 27%). Certainly, it would "make Apple look bad" to see the IAP at a much higher price just because of Apple's commission.
I actually think I'm 100% with Apple on this one. The Dutch regulators made the same mistake Epic and so many devs across the internet and hitched their "I don't want to pay 30% wagon" to "Apple is disallowing 3rd party providers" which have nothing at all to do with one another. The people pushing these regulations know that they would go nowhere if they tried to attack sales commissions directly and now the stupidity is bearing fruit.
I'm absolutely in favor of regulations that make it so platforms can't skim percentage revenue off the top but any regulation that does that will attract the ire of literally every business that sells things.
And hitching the wagon to "sideloading" or "alternative app stores" is equally as stupid because you're just trying to find a workaround to things that aren't the core issue. Even with sideloading and other app stores Apple can still demand a sales commission.
That’s a very strong statement to lack any citation. The intent of the regulators was clear. If a Apple is going to be petulant, the regulators can just come back and tell Apple to lower their commission across the board, which will inevitably hurt Apple more than if Apple had been reasonable about this.
I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion at all that the regulators are just going to give up and go home, crying about how Apple so cleverly outsmarted them.
> I'm absolutely in favor of regulations that make it so platforms can't skim percentage revenue off the top but any regulation that does that will attract the ire of literally every business that sells things.
When it comes to other businesses, consumers have choice. If one company charges too much of a premium, consumers can go elsewhere. If I go elsewhere from Apple, I lose access to all of my purchased items. If Apple would refund me every dollar I paid, then maybe that would be viable, but Apple wants to have their cake and eat it too.
Imagine if switching from Walmart to Safeway required you to give up every item you had ever purchased from Walmart. This is why Apple is not the same as most businesses charging a commission.
Unless you somehow craft a "fuck you Apple in particular" law which in basically all courts wouldn't fly, the regulation would be an immediate massive change to how all platforms do business. You would in one stroke wipe out the business models of basically all ecommerce platforms.
Re: your edit
> If one company charges too much of a premium, consumers can go elsewhere.
Except they can't though, that's the entire point. You're paying the commission to reach specifically the people on that particular platform. It's inherently non-fungible. You can sell art on lots of online stores, but if you want to reach Etsy customers you gotta pay up. If you want to sell software there's plenty of ways to do it from sharecropping on existing platforms of selling you own appliance but if you want to reach iOS users you gotta pay up.
If we want to talk about the developer perspective, then you’re making an even stronger argument that Apple has abused monopoly privilege and needs to be regulated as such. These iOS consumers aren’t reachable through other markets, only Apple’s. This is not the case for Etsy.
In both cases, the ability to choose is greatly reduced compared to other markets. The switching cost is high and requires a big sacrifice from the consumer, but then both Apple and Google have either directly or indirectly conspired to keep App Store prices at 30%, so switching between the platforms doesn’t even provide a real choice there at all.
Well Apple has always charged 30%, so it would be strange if you suddenly wanted to change platforms now because of that. It's reasonable to ask you to do your research before buying it.
Are you suggesting I should have illegally acquired information about Apple’s future business plans so that I could make informed choices as a consumer?
I certainly never agreed to their expansion of the commission, but what power does a consumer have over that now? That’s what monopoly power feels like, even if it may not meet the legal definition of “monopoly” that was set many decades ago before a smartphone was even imaginable.
Apple seems intent to expand their 30% commission to cover all aspects of daily life nowadays. I certainly didn’t know this years ago, and years ago when many consumers bought into iOS, the 30% commission was really just a commission on Angry Birds and similarly casual apps. It wasn’t impacting more serious parts of life, but now the smartphone is the place where the average person does some of the most important transactions in life. It’s a completely different situation from when the App Store first launched, and it should be treated as such. Do you recognize the validity of any of that?
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor...
As to covering all the important things in life, it’s only an issue for things that are 1. Not physical, or “content”, and 2. Not available through the browser.
Can’t think of anything important in life that you HAVE to pay the 30% on, but I’m sure there’s something.
No… they didn’t stay the same. Apple has changed their policies, numerous times. In this specific case, it is easy to point to the changelog that added person to person classes as something that owes Apple 30% commission.[0] Many large companies' lawyers clearly interpreted the guidelines to not include such events until Apple updated the guidelines, or else Apple would not have updated the guidelines and talked to the press about it. I don't think you have much ground to stand on here.
Also, whether an activity is physical or virtual should be entirely irrelevant. It was never communicated to me when I moved into the iOS ecosystem, nor was it in the App Store guidelines. Yet... you think it is unreasonable that customers should be given the same freedom from monopolies that they have when it comes to other physical and online retailers?
Apple continues to move the goal posts on what people owe them money for, both by expansion of what the App Store is intended to contain and expansion of their rules, and it is detrimental to both consumers and businesses, who are both locked into Apple's ecosystem and have little to no choice in the matter at this point. If you like monopolies, then cool, but... I believe Apple needs to make some serious changes, and it is clear that I'm not alone in these thoughts.
On a related note, if Apple will properly support PWAs (including push notifications, which have been rumored to finally be making an appearance 6 or 7 years after Android did it), then that will dramatically change the balance of the equation. Very few companies offer PWAs because they lack push notification support, which they consider to be essential. Many HNers like to act as if push notifications are just an annoyance and that they prefer not to have them... but that's an irrelevant opinion outside of HN. I don't think lowering the App Store commission or allowing unrestricted, revenue-free sideloading are the only options... I think properly supported PWAs are a perfectly valid third option for most use cases, and I would care a lot less about this issue when that happens. PWAs already do not need to report any of their revenue to Apple, and that should remain the case forever, unless Apple is planning to start charging for the privilege of using websites. (To head off one obvious digression, no, Apple absolutely doesn't deserve to charge for providing push notifications... it's an essential feature of literally any smartphone, and they were paid for that service when the consumer bought the phone. Apple also doesn't let anyone else run a competing notification service on the phone using a background process to hold open a network connection. If Apple doesn't like offering notifications for free, they should feel free to raise the prices of the phones they sell, but they should have been pricing that in from the beginning. Chrome and Firefox don't charge money to provide push notifications either, and they weren't even paid a single cent by either the user or the developer. But, if Apple were to charge less than a cent per notification the way that developers have to pay for SMS messages, it wouldn't be the end of the world. 30% of all transactions just to use notifications? No, that's not reasonable under any circumstance.)
[0]: "3.1.3(d): Person-to-Person Experiences" https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=xqk627qu
> Also, whether an activity is physical or virtual should be entirely irrelevant
You can hold any belief you want, but there's nothing illegal or immoral about a phone charging fees for one but not the other. It's up to them obviously, and to me personally it makes a ton of sense to make that distinction. A virtual class provided through an app vs something happening in the real world.
I don't know what PWA is so I'm not sure how crucial it is, but if Android has it, that seems like yet another reason for people like you not to have iphones. If you are talking about push notifications in web apps, that's something I have never ever missed.
What about virtual experiences that are sold through an app that a customer uses, but are held on a different virtual platform? We’re not talking just about virtual events held through the app or FaceTime, we’re also talking about virtual events held through Zoom calls, it’s just that the app maker (for example, Airbnb) used their existing customer relationship to market virtual experiences, and Apple somehow decided that was different from the exception to selling (physical) goods and experiences that are also used outside the app.
If they aren’t using the app itself or FaceTime, how is it any different from an in-person event?
What if that in-person event includes teleconferencing equipment that links two locations together, do you suddenly need to give Apple 30%?
Apple's rules have an exception for 1:1 virtual events. So, if you suddenly bring your significant other to a virtual event that was classified as 1:1, will the app maker need to implement facial recognition DRM to ensure that there is only one participant on each side of the virtual event, or else they are in violation of Apple's rules and deserve to be banned because two people showed up instead of one?
The rules are deeply tedious, and often have no obvious rhyme or reason.
Regardless, Apple changed the rules, and I don’t have an option to opt out without giving up everything I’ve already bought. I could not have known they would change the rules in the ways they have, so to your earlier point, I could not have made a more informed decision. Would you like to offer the refunds on Apple’s behalf? Doubtful. This is clearly different from other retail relationships in ways that would benefit from being regulated. That’s the core discussion here. Apple is not just another retailer, and the App Store is not just another store.
> Clarifying the rules is not the same as changing them, ask any hermeneutic.
They did not clarify the rules. They absolutely changed the rules, and this is not the first time either. Your whole argument is invalid if they changed the rules, so of course you're holding on dearly to that incorrect point. Apple argues that some apps were accidentally paying them revenue for that already, therefore it would be "unfair" for them not to take that revenue from everyone... but it wasn't in the rules before, period. Apple added the rule so that they could add more revenue.
You may think my opinion is irrelevant, and that’s fine, but my opinion is as logically self-consistent as I can make it. Apple’s rules are the ones that hold very little self-consistency right now, and are just overreaching in any way they think they can get away with, which is getting tiresome.
[0]: https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/03/remembering-apples-sweet-solu...
There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate.
Regarding your question, there are definitely still important areas such as Background Sync: https://caniuse.com/background-sync
If you try to send a message in WhatsApp, Signal, or whatever, but you were on the elevator and your phone was offline at that moment, it would be a pretty poor user experience if the app didn't send the message as soon as your phone was connected again, even if you had switched away. This is currently problematic for PWAs on iOS. Similarly, if you get a notification, apps will often get a small allocation of background time to fetch content related to the notification so that it is cached when the user clicks on the notification. Apple wouldn't offer this to native apps if they didn't think it was useful.
Here's an article talking about the benefits of the feature: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/12/background...
"Web apps" in this context should just be thought of as "apps". The fact that they're effectively bookmarks added to your home screen and operate without the user interface of Safari is just an implementation detail. I'm not talking about spam blogs trying to send you notifications. If you were required to "install" a PWA to your home screen before it could prompt for these other permissions, that would be perfectly fine, and a great way to avoid getting spammed for requests to send you spam notifications from random websites. Safari has fallen way behind other browsers on lots of standards, not just PWAs, so it's not terribly surprising that they aren't keeping up with PWA-related standards either, but it is disappointing. And, of course, Apple still doesn't allow third party browser engines to fill in the gaps.
Why? Native apps aren't webapps, and do have access to push notifications.
> There is a small but significant group of people that I've only found on HN who seem to claim to just not use notifications at all on their smartphones, but this is not how most people operate.
Why do you keep conflating webapps and apps? I certainly use notifications in native apps, but the thought never even crossed my mind to enable them in webapps. I click "No" faster than lightning when websites prompt me on the mac, so why would I want it on my phone.
As an example, if you go to twitter.com on your iPhone in Safari, you can click the share button, click Add to Home Screen, and you will get a very app-like Twitter experience when you launch what you just added to the Home Screen. Because it is an app.
Literally the only reason I’ve seen that most people would be dissatisfied with the Twitter PWA is because it lacks notifications. In my experience, it is often faster than the native app and does fewer dumb things, like clicking on a YouTube link actually opens in the YouTube app, instead of the way the native Twitter app tries to keep you in a modal web view.
Regardless of Apple marketing, PWAs run in a more secure environment than native apps, because Safari is used to dealing with untrusted code on every single page you load. Apple leaned too much on their insufficient app review process instead of native app isolation technologies for too long. They have fortunately corrected course over the last couple of years… but native apps still present higher risk.
(PWAs also run completely isolated from the regular Safari browsing session, so you will naturally need to sign into Twitter again even if you were already signed in within Safari, but then it stays signed in exactly like the native app.)
It is a reasonable interpretation that I tried to get into and failed to.
It's brave if they are, because attempts to move the Overton Window are surely usually deliberately designed to fail before they are enacted, to avoid the cost of action!
Indeed. Remember we live in a world where Tim Cook can say in court that he has "a feeling" the App Store is profitable, and that is apparently where it is left.
It suits them for the profitability of the App Store to be hard to observe as distinct from the sales of the devices themselves, and it supports the interpretation that they fudge around things that make them **loads of money by emphasising other things instead as important (customer experience, "security" etc.)
There are limits to everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
unfocussed_mike's point is that Apple has obfuscated App Store P&L for years to try to keep regulators from feeling obligated to step in. There's no other obvious explanation for why they would keep it secret from both investors and the courts, and "the purpose of a system is what it does."
The app store is only a monopoly on iOS, not on phones or computers in general. I think it will be very hard to make that case.
No... it's easy to calculate their revenue, but it's not easy to calculate how much profit they made versus how much it cost them to operate the App Store. Pure revenue is largely irrelevant, from what I understand. As you say, making money isn't illegal, it's just the sign of a successful business.
> The app store is only a monopoly on iOS, not on phones or computers in general. I think it will be very hard to make that case.
I completely agree, under the way the laws were written decades ago. A lot of powerful people have been moving to update the way monopolies are understood for the digital era, and to remove Apple's monopoly over iOS. In the US, I can point to various examples of this, but these two will do for the current discussion:
https://9to5mac.com/2020/10/06/app-store-gives-apple-monopol...
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/senate-committee-advances-op...
Whether these attempts succeed or not is difficult to say, given how strongly Apple lobbies on their own behalf.
Knowing exactly what the P&L look like for the App Store would make it easier for Apple's opponents to make the case that Apple is misusing their position to take advantage of large numbers of people and businesses within the US due to a lack of competition for iOS users, which might make their government representatives push harder on the issue.
That's the political reality as I see it in the US. I could be off base, but there has been lots of discussion about Apple and their App Store again lately.
This kind of double standard reveals the true nature of this warning dialog, which is just retaliation against the app makers who wanted outside payment methods and the regulators who agreed. Otherwise, Apple would have already required Uber to add such a dialog.
I think most customers are happy to assign blame to Apple regardless, since the app went through Apple's hand curated App Store. That may be illogical in the case of physical goods, but I've seen people assign blame for far less. It's also still illogical in the case of virtual events, even though those use Apple's IAP system and 30% cut now.
Becuase if I wasnt informed, and they took a subscription that I was then unable to cancel in 1 click from my iCloud subscription settings, I would be very annoyed. Shady.
Good job I was informed via this modal :)
So, you are definitely informed one way or another, but requiring the developer to be more explicit about that would probably be good, but achieving that benefit doesn't require Apple to do... whatever this is that they're trying to force developers to do. It's a farcically extreme version of what could otherwise be interpreted to be a consumer friendly requirement.
It should be about the thing you're going to. Something like 'WARNING: You are being directed to payment provider 'X', please trust them before continuing with your payment' would (I think) be seen as far less hostile. That doesn't insinuate that what you're doing is unsafe, does make clear that apple has washed their hands of it, and isn't about apple: It's about X.