Devs must ask permission to use 3rd-party payments, and Apple still wants a cut.
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Apple lets devs use alternate in-app payment options, still takes commissions
- Thread starter JournalBot
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Bastards. Another example of big tech leveraging their monopolies to hurt the consumer. It's my hardware and I want to use it however I want
EDIT: Downvote all you want but I stand by it. Epic is 100% in the right here. I dont care about Epic, though, but as a owner of an iPhone I don't want Apple telling me what apps I can install and I sure as hell don't want them to forcibly take a cut of other companies that I do business with so they can make a quick buck at the expense of driving up costs for the rest of us.
If my pocket computer gets spyware, that's my problem. Apple is greedy company that will milk a customer as much as they can get away with, which is a lot considering they exploit their walled garden to the detriment to their customers. The FTC should smack em hard... but they wont.
EDIT: Downvote all you want but I stand by it. Epic is 100% in the right here. I dont care about Epic, though, but as a owner of an iPhone I don't want Apple telling me what apps I can install and I sure as hell don't want them to forcibly take a cut of other companies that I do business with so they can make a quick buck at the expense of driving up costs for the rest of us.
If my pocket computer gets spyware, that's my problem. Apple is greedy company that will milk a customer as much as they can get away with, which is a lot considering they exploit their walled garden to the detriment to their customers. The FTC should smack em hard... but they wont.
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Monopoly power for the Apple win.
It would be nice if there was a follow-up ruling saying that no, you don't get to collect 27% for doing nothing.
No, automated app screening and offering cloud downloads does not justify this in any way. 5% maybe, to be generous.
It would be nice if there was a follow-up ruling saying that no, you don't get to collect 27% for doing nothing.
No, automated app screening and offering cloud downloads does not justify this in any way. 5% maybe, to be generous.
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It's not clear that this byzantine reaction actually does comply with the most recent ruling.
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I know not every app developer is a Netflix or a Spotify, but apps like those seem like they don't really get much benefit out of the app store besides access to iOS devices. They host their own content, servers, and people largely discover them outside the app store so the big benefits that Apple provides to small developers don't apply to them.
It makes sense that Netflix dropped IAP altogether given that. It sounds like Apple doesn't want to let smaller developers follow that same path. That unfairness is part of why I'm against Apple on this issue.
It makes sense that Netflix dropped IAP altogether given that. It sounds like Apple doesn't want to let smaller developers follow that same path. That unfairness is part of why I'm against Apple on this issue.
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Isn't this basically the same thing that happens with console games? Fees are paid to the console manufacturer on both digital and physical purchases. You don't get to skip the fee by selling only discs (using a third-party vendor, a la Gamestop, etc). In fact, physical gets a smaller cut, as the physical retailer takes another cut on top.
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And for MMO type games, the MMO servers for hosting / processing and game play bandwidth are not Apple servers. 99% of the work and expense is paid by the app developer, next to nothing by Apple.
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I think this action is gross from Apple… but if it complies with the ruling, how exactly can they be hit with a hammer over it? (Also, assuming this complies, the original hammer was obviously teeny tiny so not a big bar to clear)
I’m not performing a legal analysis, but I’m sure Apple has. They are interpreting it in the most limited way possible, just as any other company would do when hit with an adverse legal ruling.
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do you lick those boots for free, or are you at least getting paid? A literal trillion dollar company doesn't need you rushing to defend its rent-seeking behaviors.
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I'm going to start with that I don't think the 30% fee is at all fair. However - I am going to be forced to argue against that Apple does nothing.
Apple does put substantial resources into developer tools including Xcode, the backend compiler, the Swift programming language, all the debugging tools, etc etc. Even if you're using a third party IDE - that IDE has likely built it's toolchain on a ton of developer tooling that Apple has built.
Apple is unique in that they give away all developer tooling for free - including all the debuggers. Their 3D graphics and game debugger? Free. Instruments - an extremely good memory and performance analysis tool? Free.
Not only that - but Apple only charges $50 to open an incident to get a direct response from their engineering teams. Which they've got to be losing money on.
One counter argument is that maybe you don't like Xcode and so you don't want to use it anyway - and that's fine. But the competition still charges for their tooling. Even Microsoft charges for the commercial grade versions of Visual Studio. And like I said - even if you decide to go use some other tool - they're likely just using Apple's own command line tool infrastructure to do their thing.
Maybe you feel like that the benefit to Apple doing nice tooling is that people build apps for their platform and they can sell more hardware. Also fair! But before the App Store - Apple charged for higher tiers of software access and engineering incidents. I used to pay around $1000 a year for my tooling access - just like MSDN devs do.
I think a reasonable solution is that Apple just starts charging developers directly for tooling. That will adversely impact free applications. Whatever they do - I just have to point out that Apple does in fact do something.
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Yep, as clearly demonstrated by Windows, MacOS and Android, all of which are fully locked down and do not allow third party app installation outside of their app stores. /s
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The justifications for that in the past included:
- Consoles being sold at a loss (vs. 40%? hardware profit margin for iPhones and iPads)
- Much higher cost per-app to the console maker for the development kits, split between 100-500 games instead of hundreds of thousands of developers and millions of iOS apps (paying Apple $99/year per developer)
- Much more handholding and cooperation between the console maker and the handful of companies working on their smaller number of games
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Only for the first year of so and because the console makers get fees for every copy of every game released for their consoles and the 30% cut of $60+ games makes up the loss from early console sales quickly even when games where mostly sold physically it was 10% to the console makers.
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By that logic, Microsoft should get 30% of every transaction on Windows. Oddly, people seem to have a very different reaction when it comes up in that case.
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We'd revolt if Apple did that for Macs or Microsoft did that for any PC running Windows.
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Android Studio is a horrible example because Google right now is trying to enforce the exact same rules as Apple for the exact same reasons. Google has the same motivations as Apple for making Android Studio free - and they've made the exact same arguments that a free Android Studio means they should be able to charge their cut.
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Can you use the tools on iOS without paying the $99/year developer fee? (Serious question, I'm a Windows developer not mobile).
MS does charge my employer $1300 + tax a year for Visual Studio Enterprise, but they do offer the community edition and VS Code for free. Also, if Apple offered the choice of 27% or $10,000 a year I'm sure Epic would never have gone to court.
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There are no per-copy or revenue sharing fees paid to release apps on Windows.
There are tools fees (Visual Studio), and some logo validation fees like to get a hardware device driver approved for general use. These are flat fees not a cut of all sales.
You're probably thinking of Xbox and iOS, but the post you replied to said Windows and macOS (also no cut of sales).
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As I argued in one of the other threads, it isn't fair -- it's stunning generous, based on what you get for it. Apple handles basically everything other than the actual programming and testing for you, allowing you to sell in almost every country in the world. You get permanent hosting, delivery, update handling, currency manipulations, tax handling for something like 10K different jurisdictions, refund processing, subscription management, and even some marketing and support, on a network with basically 100% uptime. You'd never be able to do that anywhere near as broadly yourself/third parties for less than 30% of the average app cost.
And some of that, they're still doing, particularly the hosting/update stuff. Whether that's worth 27% or whatever is debatable, but it seems reasonable to assume that there's no number greater than 0 that would satisfy Epic, and can you imagine the threads here if Apple said "Fuck it - here's an itemized list of the services we provide and costs for each; pick what you want at standard third-party prices?"
Because the folks claiming that for things like Netflix, MMOs and the like, Apple does nothing are nuts. They do exactly the same things they do for other devs, those just have additional costs.
Bing's AI tells me that standard markup for brick and mortar stores selling physical goods with far, far less reach than the App store range from 25% to over 45%, depending on industry. But nobody gets their knickers in a knot over that; it's literally how businesses pay for themselves.
And you get two of them a year for free with your developer program membership. In my experience, they also tend to give you additional ones (or rather "refund" the original) if what you're asking about turns out to be a bug in their code or they otherwise feel "at fault" for the issue.
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As other commenters have pointed out, if you use Apple’s development tools and publish to their store, you should have required to pay something.
It doesn’t make sense for someone to be able to put something on someone else’s shelves without giving them a cut. Even if they do charge people admission to the store.
It doesn’t make sense for someone to be able to put something on someone else’s shelves without giving them a cut. Even if they do charge people admission to the store.
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Yes - they're free for web download, and available for free on the App Store. You can even get a personal code signing account for free.
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This is sleazy of Apple. All the more reason the EU forcing side-loading is a good thing
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Lots of hot takes in this thread that don’t seem to know what’s going on.
if I’m in Steam and I click on a link I get the same warning that I’m leaving Steam.
if I’m in Steam and I click on a link I get the same warning that I’m leaving Steam.
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You have options, they are all called Android. Since the vast majority of the market doesn’t have the same technical understanding of their phones that you and I do, why can’t Apple offer the most secure mobile experience possible on their own intellectual property to protect all their customers from scammers and hackers?
Myself in my personal usage I’m unlikely to use third party payment services because I value being able to cancel subscriptions and get refunds with one click whenever I like without being forced into a 2 hour phone call.
And as an app developer I’m also not interested in implementing my own payment system. I think I get a ton of value from selling in iOS, and time improving my products and marketing is far more useful than trying to scrape a little more off each purchase, especially when customers can’t be as confident in the purchase protections.
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Is it not to Apple's advantage to have a broad selection of apps available to users? This is why Windows Phone died. Devs didn't want to have to support 3 different platforms.
I agree that devs shouldn't necessarily be able to have their apps on Apple's store for free, but it's pretty common for dev tools to be free, at least for small developers.
What they should be able to to is to sell apps to iPhone users without going through Apple and the App Store at all if they so choose. By doing so they're vastly limiting their market, so I suspect most devs would find 70% of a lot to be better than 100% (which isn't really the case, because they still have to pay for their own hosting and payment processing) of much less. It should still be an option though.
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