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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

The next logical step is for Apple to demand a 30% cut of the revenue when you order physical goods on Amazon from your iPhone, or 30% of money you send to people with Venmo. If you don't think those behaviors would be okay, how can you think this is okay?

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Exactly, where does it stop? Will apple also take a cut when i buy public transport tickets or flight tickets? What about hotels or airbnb?

This shit has to be stop now!

Free up the app stores and see if the customers and app devs will be still willing to fork over these extortionate fees.

And this security argument is just complete BS, a typical “Totschlagargument” that gets thrown around as needed.

> Totschlagargument

For others just learning this gorgeous word (literally "killing-blow argument") Wikipedia says:

> A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance.

I prefer "thought-stopper" better. I would say Totschlagargument sounds like it could just be a really compelling argument that leaves the other side speechless and "kills" the discussion with a victory; but the point is not that the argument is compelling but rather it tries to block substantive thought and discussion.

I think it’s bizarre to say that’s “the next logical step” when in fact that things have all been explicitly addressed and exempted for the entire history of the App Store. It’s not as if Apple is slowly discovering new things they can take a cut from and they just haven’t discovered Amazon purchases yet.

It's bizarre to call any of it logical when 15 years ago this wasn't a problem. The App Store is at the center of this, and if Apple refuses to cede power it will be a long winter for them.

What do you mean? 15 years ago other phone app stores charged insane fees if you could even get on the store. At the time, 30% was seen as a huge win for developers.

Imagine if a desktop environment had the same restrictions. Would you accept them?

I'd buy from a different company if the restrictions bothered me.

Switching phones or OS or computer is not cheap or free for consumers. It's anticompetitive and should be flagged by the FTC. But they're toothless in the current era.

These policies aren't particularly new, so I'm not sure why there would be a sudden need to switch platforms. On the contrary, these policies are part of one of the biggest differentiators between Apple smartphones and their major competitors.

And even if someone did suddenly find Apple's policies unacceptable, there are several prominent alternatives to switch to, and switching is really not difficult for the vast majority of people. To be clear, there are some cases where Apple (and competitors) do make switching more difficult, and I do think it's reasonable for regulators to look into that stuff.

Of course they're new policies. In this case, Apple is asking for 30% match on Ethereum gas fees paid for transferring an NFT. It's an impossible request to follow for a number of reasons. The gas fee is variable with network demand, and the fee may change depending on when it gets executed, the gas fee is paid in ETH (which Apple doesn't support), etc. Nevermind that Apple has somehow arbitrarily determined that after 5 years of Ethereum wallet apps existing on its platform that it now wants a 30% cut of blockchain network fees. Apple does absolutely nothing to maintain the network security or facilitate the transaction. This might merely be for moving an NFT from one address to another. They are completely making this policy up. Like if I use my banking app to pay my electric bill or wire money to my family member, it would be totally unacceptable for Apple to demand 30% of either the bill or the transaction fees associated with such a transfer!

Apple is half of an entrenched duopoly in the mobile market. It is reasonable to restrict trillion dollar monopolies (or oligopolies!) from imposing a 30% tax on all web transactions. Not merely to restrict them from making it difficult to switch. It's unacceptable. It's exploitative. It's antitrust behavior. It's got to stop.

Those were feature phones, basically the handheld equivalent of a games console. In the age of smartphones, there is not a single reason that software distribution should be centralized.

What's different about game consoles and smartphones?

My bank and local government aren't making game consoles one of my primary methods of accessing their services. Smartphones are heavily integrated into the daily lives of most people now. They need to be regulated that way and the makers of these devices need to have less control over their users. We wouldn't allow a car maker to charge a fee to parking garages because the driver is "their customer". I need a car, I need a phone; being a hub of value shouldn't allow for such a high degree of rent seeking.

Do banks and local governments require using smartphones from Apple (or any one manufacturer) to the exclusion of other prominent smartphone options? That would be surprising to me, and definitely bad. But as far as I know, core services like that are going to be accessible on at least iPhones and Android smartphones, which is going to cover the vast majority of smartphone market share, so I'm not really sure why the ubiquity of smartphones is particularly relevant to what Apple's rules for third-party developers should be.

Apple wants a 30% on fees, not the good itself. This is consistent with the rest of their policies. Arguably that still isn't ok, but this is not an encroachment.

So 30% of the eBay fees and 30% off the Amazon marketplace fees should be fair game

That doesn't seem to hold up. If I buy something on eBay it's not any different from, e.g., buying stock on Robin Hood. There is an agreement between two parties, neither of whom are the people distributing the app, to make an exchange of money to [the eBay item] or stocks.

Apple does not claim a cut of the exchange of stocks, but they do claim a cut of the transaction fees for the exchange of stocks. If eBay or Amazon charged a transaction fee to facilitate their transactions, that would be an in-app purchase of which Apple would claim 30%.

“Apple does not claim a cut of the exchange of stocks, but they do claim a cut of the transaction fees for the exchange of stocks.”

Are you sure / how? I’m not going to sign up for robinhood to confirm but my brokerage transacts with my bank, not in-app purchasing, pretty sure robinhood is the same. I’m pretty sure the differentiation is that stocks aren’t considered digital goods. And neither is coinbase’s mainline business which is allowed to facilitate buying & selling crypto without paying fees, even on their transaction fees, which users pay.

But they do, all eBay transactions have a 5-15% fee and Amazon 3rd part is the same

I see. In that case, I'd agree these fees should be fair game by the same logic. That does make me curious what's different here, if anything.

Next is profit fees and transaction fees form your banking app. Hey not salary, after all Apple is providing the platform for banks. Peasants can always ask their salary in cash ir build their own platform.

should they get 30% of my Amazon Prime fee?

If not.. Could Coinbase Wallet offer Coinbase Wallet Prime for. $100 that provides free transactions on qualifying orders?

All these rules feel arbitrary to carve out as much money as they can from "lesser people" without upsetting the larger players that have a budget to afford a lawsuit.

If your Amazon Prime fee were paid via in-app purchase, why not?

The Coinbase thing is happening because it’s an all-digital purchase. There’s no physical benefit being transferred to the customer, as NFTs are wholly digital. Apple has been consistent about the fee being applied to all digital-only purchases, including for virtual yoga classes.

One can argue whether 30% is still an appropriate amount (compared to 15 years ago, it’s still a steal where pre-iPhone App Store models would take 50–75% of the revenue), but people should stop arguing in bad faith on this.

Robinhood gets paid for order flow should apple get 30% of that each time a trade is executed on the platform? Apple should also take a fee from all trading apps that charge a fee on options trades in this case.

The 30% cut is only for digital goods sold in app

That’s why Kindle doesn’t sell directly in the ios app

Coinbase could do the same thing - sell it on the website

Pretty sure there's a carve ot specifically for those.

Ref: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#in-...

There's also a carveout there specifically for NFTs

> Apps may use in-app purchase to sell and sell services related to non-fungible tokens (NFTs), such as minting, listing, and transferring. Apps may allow users to view their own NFTs, provided that NFT ownership does not unlock features or functionality within the app. Apps may allow users to browse NFT collections owned by others, provided that the apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.

(emphasis mine)

There is for now. I'm saying I can see their next step being to remove that.

You actually can't order Kindle books on any Amazon iOS App.

Because Amazon doesn’t want to give up the 30% IAP fee. Fair enough.

Isn't that circumventing apples payment system and against their rules?

It isn't a circumvention - you can't buy the products in the app. If you try to go to the product page of a digital product it redirects you to a browser - but importantly you can't actually even see the product in the app so it isn't redirecting a _purchase_.

No. They also cannot direct people to the Amazon website to buy the books, which would be against the rules. That’s likely to change with the recent changes and upcoming legislative requirements.

That is the next “logical” step for people to claim without regard for whether it’s true or not. People will believe anything that confirms their biases.

30% of your bank with an app on interests on loans xD

App Store rules have never required a cut of physical transactions, only digital.

That was tolerable a decade ago when it was only about iTunes songs and power-ups in kids' games.

But now more and more of the economy is moving online, and the Apple/Google duopoly gets to tax everything.

So, kindle books then?

Exactly kindle books. And audible books. And Netflix shows.

Which is why none of those companies offer the ability to purchase them directly through an app that is on the App Store.

Ah. It does sort of highlight why a simple policy like this gets silly, and isn't great for consumers.

Yes, which is why you can’t buy ebooks in either the Amazon app or the Kindle app.

It’s not great.

That’s Amazon’s choice because THEY also take a cut of the transaction on that book sale

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ and scroll to 3.1.3(a)

It's not their choice, Amazon isn't allowed to by Apple's rules. A very careful reading of the rules for reader apps reveals you're not allowed to sell content on your reader app at all.

That seems more like a carve out for reader apps to offer links to a website bypassing IAP for content

> 3.1.3 Other Purchase Methods: The following apps may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase. Apps in this section cannot, within the app, encourage users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, except as set forth in 3.1.3(a).

> 3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, … except as set forth in 3.1.3(a).

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