3.1.3(d) Person-to-Person Experiences: If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training), you may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments. One-to-few and one-to-many realtime experiences must use in-app purchase.
This is huge news. Being able to use third-party payments methods to bypass Apple's 30% charge is essential for service driven marketplace apps. Classpass and AirBnB bumped into this issue [0], but, I wonder if this exception will apply for them?
> One-to-few and one-to-many realtime experiences must use in-app purchase.
WUT?! This is so arbitrary and petty. So we're supposed to feel thankful that the all mighty Apple is allowing 1 on 1 personal fitness trainers and tutors but not build something that is scalable?
Clearly, Apple has been and still is in a long process of seeing what they can get away with. It seems they thought this was something they couldn’t continue under new scrutiny.
This was local news for me. Basically, as a classified platform they were a pimp and got shut down by feds (granted they helped produce the ads, which is what a digital pimp would do). Laws have been amped up as focus on reducing sex/human trafficking. It’s now similar to the money laundering laws put in place in the big narco cocaine days. If you’re any type of legit business, or prison fearing at all, you don’t want to have any relations with that type of 1:1 transaction
Define "corporate America." The majority of American companies, even Disney, do whatever it takes to make money, including catering to sexual interests.
Apple is one of the few that has different standards. And some of its consumers appreciate that. There's room in the market for both views.
Almost nobody wants their advertisement running next to porn. Almost nobody permits their services to be used for sexual activity unless said service explicitly caters to it. Disney boxes all their "adult" stuff under the Dreamworks label IIRC.
Everybody wants to be "family friendly", which means no sexy stuff. Violence? Sure. Guns? Sure. Sex? Get that filth out of my product!
“You might care more about porn when you have kids. It’s not about freedom, it’s about Apple trying to do the right thing for its users.”
TBH as much good as he did, he sounds like a pretty boring square, one of those people who liked drugs in their 20s then got married and lived the entire remainder of his life alternating between home and his suburban office.
I don’t know the guy, I’m just going based on what was reported of his work.
In general I don’t think people who consider cities like Santa Clara or Cupertino to have very good taste, despite the popularity of square American suburban living.
Some day you will have to learn to understand that not everyone thinks the way you do. In America, it's OK for people to have different views on things. In many ways it's encouraged.
I don't think Jobs would have cared if you thought he had good taste or not, or whether you think he's a "square." As for boring, it's already been widely documented in newspapers, magazines, books, and online that his short life was 1000 times more interesting than your life ever will be.
You’re talking to someone who thinks it’s lame that Steve Jobs appointed himself a censor and thought that other people he’s never met should be prohibited via products he helped design from viewing porn.
Adult humans who decide for other adult humans what they should or should not be allowed to choose to read on their own devices are lame as fuck.
The baby sitter is a service delivered outside the platform, so just like Uber and the like, they already didn't have to use IAP. There are tons of similar apps on the App Store that already don't use IAP.
Not to my reading. This rule only applies to real-time experiences.
> If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training)...
How would it not? It’s no different than tutoring. I pay the website a monthly fee (which probably needs to be an IAP) but the payment to the babysitter could continue as-is via bank transfer/ideal.
Ah, I see. I was intersecting "real-time experience" with Apple's previous "digital goods" and thinking "real-time experience that happens digitally" (which tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training all can support), and I quickly wrote off babysitting as something that can't happen digitally. I'm much less confident now based on how you're reading it.
Of course it's arbitrary - the whole fee structure of the app store (stores, to be fair) is arbitrary. 5% could be more than enough for everyone, but no, it has to be 30%...
Just wait until you learn what % retail used to charge developers for promoting, distributing, and selling software.
People quickly forget what a tremendous liberation the App Store created for developers.
It's also not about the developers, the success of the App Store comes from Apple's users. They trust the App Store because they trust Apple's curation/privacy/security. That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers. Trust doesn't come cheap.
> People quickly forget what a tremendous liberation the App Store created for developers.
People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed.
>That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers.
No, that was caused by a billion people buying shiny new mobile computers. They would have bought a lot of software in any case, even without an App Store. New platform, new software.
So any transaction less than or equal to the $2.99 tier would be just as bad (as in, it costs you at least 30% of the list price), even if hosting was free.
> So any transaction less than or equal to the $2.99 tier would be just as bad (as in, it costs you at least 30% of the list price), even if hosting was free.
It's true that App Store has the best deal for payment processing for very low-priced apps.
But that's not truly a win for developers when the App Store itself caused the "race to the bottom". Who was selling 99 cent apps before the crap store?
I remember that if I wanted to play anything other than Snake on my Nokia, I had to pay like $5 a game. And those games were even worse than the majority of 99¢ games on the store.
You can argue lower prices lead to more crap, but it also encourages people to spend more. Most people would debate a $4.99 purchase, but think nothing of 5 99¢ purchases if done separately.
I think I agree with Lap Cat here. There's a place for cheap apps, but the problem comes for people developing productivity (or worse, vertical market) software that's going to sell "mere" thousands of copies, or tens of thousands at best, rather than hundreds of thousands or more. If you sell 10,000 copies at $50 a copy, you've grossed well over a quarter-million even subtracting Apple's 30% -- but if you're selling on a platform where it's hard to price anything over $5, you may have a problem, because one-tenth the price is probably not going to translate to ten times the sales.
Those kinds of apps today tend to be part of a SaaS service and listed as Free in the App Store. Provided it’s B2B and not B2C - and you do signups and payments on your own website - then you’re exempt from the self-service signup (and 30% tax) requirements.
The catch is that as you get bigger and seem more B2C than B2B then Apple might start to take notice (see: Hey e-mail).
Well, I was thinking of things like media editing (or specialized text editing) and other apps, not all of which work well in a true SaaS model. On the other hand, it's significant that more and more of those have moved toward a subscription model...
"People quickly forget that software was distributed on the web long before the App Store existed."
Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos (Steam, for instance, which takes a 30% cut as well). Begware was the most common tactic.
Even now with multiple options, while everyone piles on Apple, we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms. Apple did more to liberate payments from a user than any other platform. Through trust, through standardization and normalization, and even through things like the wide availability of App Store gift cards (which are often heavily discounted - $85 for $100 of App Store gift cards at Costco many times through the year).
Elsewhere people are arguing that Windows is a wonderful platform because look, it's so open. Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is. Unless your name is Microsoft or Adobe, you are in for a really, really rough time of it. You'll get 100% of nothing.
As always, of course this is downvoted. Anyone looking to HN for rational, reality-based discussion might find it a bit disappointing. Here apparently the Windows ISV market is a vibrant, lucrative market. Everyone here is profiting from it, right? (LOL -- close to none of you are). This is farce.
> Independent software development was an absolute wasteland.
I had a 10 year career in that "wasteland".
> we should note that iOS was the single most profitable platform for Epic, across all platforms
Citation? From what I've seen, that's not actually true.
> Okay, go and make money from Windows users and see how great it is.
For a time, the Windows version of our product was my company's biggest money-maker. It seems that in recent years though Microsoft as a company has pivoted away from Windows as their primary product. Away from desktop, toward "the cloud". I personally find that unfortunate, but I'm not a stockholder.
> The whole torch mob anti-Apple angle seems entirely detached from actual reality.
Thanks for having been a part of this golden age of computing.
There's not a day that goes by where I don't reminiscent about the time when companies like "rogue amoeba", "made by sofa", "monster", or "Strange Flavour" and people like Alexander Repty, Austin Sarner and Brian Ball made really great mac software.
There was so much community, and such an optimistic mood with things like the Appsterdam movement.
And then it all crashed and burned, because Apple decided to get greedy, and that 99cents was going to be the default App price, with 30cents going to Apple.
Those are scraps, and nobody who wants to make an artisanal niche app to scratch their own itch, and maybe sell it, can live from that money. It was either win the lottery, or starve.
Apple killed its own ecosystem, most app store apps suck nowadays. It's ironic that they were the ones with an ad saying "we mistake abundance with choice".
I wish all the old mac devs would get together and collaboratively write a good GUI-toolkit for linux and a new Userland. Right now there is not a single good operating system. Having all those apps on linux would be a dream come true. But a dream it is...
> Epic doesn't release these numbers, yet from third party analysis in the 30 days before being kicked from the respective stores, Fortnite made $43M on iOS, and a paltry $3.3M on Android, worldwide.
Fortnite total revenue was $2.4 billion in 2018, $1.8 billion in 2019. Not sure we have figures to date for 2020, but assuming it's approximately $1 billion, then iOS would be ~23% of total Fortnite revenue. Is that the largest platform? Maybe, maybe not.
> Independent software development was an absolute wasteland. It was extremely hard to get a user to give you money outside of a few extremely fortified ghettos
Utter nonsense. Shrink-wrapped and downloadable software in the Windows world was all over the place using activation/serial codes either thru email or on a CD.
> It is rare to find someone who has paid a penny for anything else.
Citation needed. Who are all those people attending the Microsoft developers conference every year? Who were all the people in the audience for Ballmer's infamous "Developers, developers, developers" chant?
You're claiming the nonexistence of something that clearly exists.
> You have become incredibly insincere in your arguments, or you are seriously misunderstanding this discussion.
Please refrain from personal attacks.
As you noted in another comment, I'm primarily a Mac developer, and in my experience, the extent of the third-party Mac software market has often been vastly underestimated. Maybe it's just because people aren't familiar with it.
There are of course large numbers of users who never buy third-party software, but with any large platform, such as Mac or Windows, all it takes is a significant % of users to buy software for the market to really add up. Doesn't even have to be a majority of users.
I haven't been a regular Windows users for many years, but back when I was, there was a thriving consumer software market on Windows. Again, it doesn't even have to include the majority of users, because those who do buy software are willing to pay good money for it.
"You have become incredibly insincere in your arguments"
> Tiny, micro-boutiques that are a little sliver of marginal prosperity in a desolate wasteland of failure.
I would rephrase this to say you're talking about small businesses, which are not sexy or well known, but are both widespread and crucial to the entire economic foundation of the United States.
Unfortunately, App Store revenue is very top-heavy. A few big players, such as Epic, do extremely well on the App Store, but small businesses tend to suffer in the App Store. The total software revenue may be higher now, but the distribution of revenue matters a lot. If the rich get richer, and the rest are stagnant or get poorer, that's only good for the rich, and I wouldn't call it a healthy market, regardless of the totals.
In the App Store era, it's "easier" than before to become a wild success, like Epic. But it's a lot harder for indie developers to make a living. You can't "make it up in volume", and you don't have a huge marketing budget to get to the top of the App Store charts, so you need to charge sustainable prices for software. The App Store "race to the bottom", as well as other business and technical limitations, have really hurt smaller developers. I'm not sure we can, or want to live in a world with only BigCos.
I would also say, since you mentioned developers making internal corporate apps, that the App Store doesn't really help them at all, and in fact makes their life more difficult, especially on a locked down software platform such as iOS, where you have to jump through all of Apple's hoops just to get your software from one computer to another.
Remember how Apple temporarily shut down a lot of Facebook by revoking their enterprise certificate? We can quibble about whether Facebook "deserved" it, but why is internal software even subject to those restrictions in the first place. I certainly wouldn't call that "liberation".
It seems like the unavoidable conclusion is that there are no longer any good places to make or find decent consumer software without having a corporate entity get their undeserving cut.
> Just wait until you learn what % retail used to charge developers for promoting, distributing, and selling software.
Zero %.
Retail used to buy boxed software and sell it at risk. Were Apple buying units of software/service up front and the taking a risk reselling it, it would be valid to compare the split of end-user cost with classic retail, but Apple's not doing that, so it isn't.
That is a historically inaccurate take. s/retail/distributor/ if it helps. The point is that a software developer would have been very lucky to earn a significant fraction of the retail price. 70%? Not even close. The App Store completely reversed this model.
That said, it's valid to acknowledge this history and still think 30% is too much for distribution overhead in 2020. I do not have an opinion on the latter.
They pointed out that retailers would buy the software up front (at wholesale price), and assume the rest of the risk for "promoting, distributing, and selling" themselves. Thus, the retailer did not "charge developers" for those things[0].
I realize this is a bit pedantic but it's not fair to say the parent has said something "historically inaccurate".
[0] There were special marketing or buyback arrangements in some cases, but what's described above is the default retail model.
> I thought they just returned unsold boxes back to the vendor?
Even in the cases where the vendor/distributor allowed that (and discount bins were a thing because they often did not, at least at no restocking fee), the retailer still accepted the risk that the vendor or distributor would be defunct. If they had a consignment model where they only paid contingent on a retail sale, that was different, but (at least AFAIK) that was never the norm for boxed software.
The discount bins you mention illustrate the previous poster's point: That developers used to get far less before the App Store existed.
If Electronics Boutique can dump a $50.00 game in a discount bin for $3.00, how much do you think it paid for that game in the first place? And how much of that amount went to the author?
The amount they spent in the first place is irrelevant, that's the sunk cost fallacy. They sell it for three dollars because that's their best expected return (weighing in factors like opportunity cost of keeping the box on the shelf).
They may have meant mobile marketplaces before AppStore. Those charged anywhere up to 90%.
And retail doesn't charge "0%" on boxed products, or they would go out of business. Logistics, distribution, and store markup all add up to the final price of the product on the shelf.
> And retail doesn't charge "0%" on boxed products
Yes, they do, unless it's consignment model, which wasn't usually the case for boxed software. The retail sale happens after retail has made the purchase. It’s obviously usually at a higher price than the retailer paid, but they don't take a cut of what the vendor is asking for the software. They pay whatever the vendor (or, often in real retail, a distributor that sits in between) is offering to sell the product for, in advance, and takes a risk that they will be able to sell the units they have purchased at a higher price.
It's structurally not at all the same as what an app store does, where it pays no one, anything (indeed, often charges an access fee up front to the seller) before a sale is made, and then pockets a share of the sale at no risk.
You seem to be getting stuck on the word "retail" referring to point-of-sale-to-end-user, where other people are using it to refer to the cost of the entire retail model, which is the comparable thing in this discussion.
This seems like splitting hairs. At the end of the day, if the consumer buys an app for $10, the developer gets some portion of that, and the retail store gets the other.
Whether that happens in one simultaneous transaction or two different ones doesn't really make a difference to how much the developer gets paid in the end, which is less with the retail store model compared to the current digital storefront model.
Let's also not forget that Steam launched with a 30% cut a full 5 years before the App Store ever existed, so it's not like Apple dictated this price, they were following industry norms at the time.
The idea that you can return unsold product to the supplier is a relatively new idea for most industries. When retail boxed software was at its peak (in the 90's), it wasn't very common at all.
I can't find anything current for boxed software (for obvious reasons), but boxed video and board games cannot be returned unless the retailer has a special deal with the publisher (rare).
It's not how the mass market book and (I assumw from your other link title) at least popular recording industries work, but it's how lots of the rest of the physical retail industries, including IP-based ones, work and have worked, and a big part of why (for instance), TSR (the original publishers of D&D), who sold IP-based products (including books) outside of the mass book trade was completely unprepared for the “success” of getting it's books into the mass book trade, where failing to adequately account for costs of remaindering almost drove them out of business before Wizards of the Coast bought them for the IP.
Apple does just the distribution. The promotion is still on the developer and you may not even promote your own services in your own app. It is also save to say that a lot of developers would like to do the selling themselves. Apple is not supposed to do the distribution for free, but 30% is really a lot, especially when they do unwanted stuff for you (the payment).
Also the App Store really is the only way to get apps on an iOS-device, so the user has no real choice anyway.
Apple does plenty of app promotion, from promotions inside its own store to multi-million dollar television campaigns showcasing all the cool apps that are available inside the App Store.
Wait till you learn how much Apple charges for app promotion -- which the 30% cut has nothing to do with. App promotion is a $500 million to $2 billion dollar industry for Apple.
More because the Inetrnet came and allowed every vendor to sell directly from their webpage instead of going through the distribution channel, making retail software stores obsolete
There are two platforms that drive 100% of the mobile phone industry. One (Android) allows other distributors in the platform (even if they have to go through loops like sideloading an app and then allowing that app to install other apps). The other will kick and try to destroy you if you try to do something like that. Is that legal or anti-competitive in the US & Europe? We'll find out...
>They trust the App Store because they trust Apple's curation/privacy/security. That's what has caused this flood of software purchases from consumers. Trust doesn't come cheap.
People buy way more on Amazon, and Amazon doesn't rob 30% of your sales.
> Just wait until you learn what % retail used to charge developers for promoting, distributing, and selling software.
Well, that was before the Internet era, wasn't it. Personally I'm buying macOS software outside of the AppStore and I'm very happy with it. I also feel good that I support the developers directly.
I’m in the process of building an app for massage services to the home. There are formulas like 1 on 1, 1 on 2 and 2 on 2. This change would mean that I could make all of this happen without any in app purchases as long as the purchases are independent and
Then linked together. Am I getting this right?
If this is absurd, then Google taking 30% and Sony taking 30% for Playstation and Microsoft taking 30% for Xbox is also absurd, right? So why aren't you complaining about that?
So because they aren’t a general computing device it’s okay? Also isn’t it bit disingenuous to suggest that side loading is an option to avoid the fee? I believe that’s why Epic also sued Google. Even when end users are given the option to download from an alternative store, most people won’t because it’s still not as convenient as downloading from the play store. Your app would have to be worthwhile enough to convince users to download from a 3rd party store.
Playstation/Xbox are general computing devices. So is my Sony TV, Tesla car and Samsung fridge.
All have an App Store and are fully capable of facilitating payments, running Microsoft Office, using SaaS apps, doing "work".
Users are prevented from doing so by artificial restrictions on their App Stores which could be lifted at any time by a simple business decision. Apple allows more freedom to developers than these platforms yet somehow should be treated differently. Seems arbitrary and capricious.
I assume you're making this argument to be absurd and reductionist, but just in case you aren't, no, those aren't general computing platforms.
Sure, they could be, with a lot of effort. But they are neither marketed nor capable of general compute today. They don't have the toolset or ecosystem to make general purpose apps. Nor do they actively encourage people to make general apps.
The only reason PlayStation and Xbox aren’t general computing platforms is by choice. They are still computers with CPUS, hard drives and RAM. Users can watch Netflix, browse the web and consume content just like you would on an iPhone. I think this idea that because iPhones are “general computing devices” they should be held to a different standard is absurd. You can’t pick and choose how one platform operates while ignoring how other platforms have the same arbitrary restrictions.
My PS4 and Sony Android TV are general computing platforms in every sense e.g. Salesforce is open right now on my TV.
It's simply that Sony won't approve non-gaming or non-entertainment apps. And if Apple were to follow the same path and block productivity apps then it would somehow stop being a general computing device ?
I can't load Intelij, Xcode, Xamarian, JVM, etc on my iPhone or my PlayStation "without a lot of effort".
What is your definition of "general" that makes one of them general, and the other one non-general?
To me the only reason an iPhone seems to be "general purpose" is because the "number of developers has reached some critical mass and wants it to be". Which seems like putting the cart before the horse.
Sanity Test: Should my microwave be a "general purpose" device because it is built with a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen?
Funny, some Apple fanboys claim that if side-loading is allowed the the Apple Store will get empty and you get 10 new App Stores and others like you claim the reverse (I agree with you, allowing side loading and other stores will not empty the main store)
And is not like curated App Stores did not had mallware, tracking stuff inside apps, minors spending all the parents credit card on gems etc. You basically want to force a "kid mode" without an opt-out for everyone.
Do you run Windows PCs and complain that it isn’t open source or do you use Linux? If not, why buy an iOS device instead of an Android if it meets your needs better?
I run Linux only for 3 years, I was dual booting before that.
This is not about what shit smells better, see people (not your tribe) complained and now Apple did something , is this article surprising you because you thought Apple policies are perfect and now because of this complains the good Apple had to give up some money to improve it's PR.
Remember the keyboard issues with broken keys, people like you were accusing uses that they are using it wrong and stop complaining, Apple is perfect and those genius engineers don't make mistake, Apple is always right and the complainers are trolls or guys that eat at their laptop? If you don't remember Apple was forced by lawsuits to aknowledge that their genius engineers are not perfect and were forced by those lawsuits to replace the broken parts (again Apple was not protecting the users but was trying to avoid losing money )... so if you can reflect 1 moment you could maybe(low chance though) that Apple sometime is not perfect and sometimes users that complain are in the right (it happened so it is not impossible)
I said no such thing. No one said that there weren’t keyboard issues. Apple was getting eviscerated for years by the Apple pundits for their horrible keyboards.
But you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t buy a Mac laptop with a keyboard after everyone knew the keyboards were bad and then complain about the keyboards.
It’s not about Apple being perfect - it’s about people buying a product that doesn’t meet their needs and then complaining when there are alternatives.
People complained and Apple had to fix the issue, the problem is people like you wanted those guys not to complain, then you would still have shitty keyboards, crippled batteries, today. There is only 1 alternative that is the exact same shit (30% tax on apps and subscriptions).
So my question that you avoided to answer, the change Apple just made, what is your opinion? Was Apple correct yesterday or today after the change? Is not Apple perfect and developers and users should stop complaining starting today because this was the exact last issue missing from Apple perfection?
Also if you can expand why people should not complain or express their negative opinions when they are on topic on this article thread? If you are tired of reading why X is not perfect and how it should be fixed then skip this topics and maybe watch a movie.
So first you said that “people like me” didn’t complain, but now you are saying that people did complain? All of the well known Apple pundits complained - John Gruber, Marco Arment, John Siracusa, etc.
The difference was that people who owned the devices complained. How many Apple pundits spent time complaining about Android devices instead of just not buying them?
Well Gruber always buys the top of the line Android device that Google sells and had a lot of good things to say about the assistant and the camera but that’s besides the point.
Was Apple correct yesterday or today after the change? Is not Apple perfect and developers and users should stop complaining starting today because this was the exact last issue missing from Apple perfection?
No one ever said that Apple was perfect. I’ve bought a few Apple duds. What I am saying is that people want the government involved instead of just not buying the device when their are alternatives.
OK, this is the first time you mention government, so then you acknowledge there is a problem but you are scared that the government can get involved? I don't see how free market can solve this since there is a duopoly that is happy how things are at the moment(they don't want to compete on the 30% tax)
The argument was that you wanted the ability to use your phone as you please and download what you want. You can do that now.
How much money have you really spent buying apps or doing in app purchases over the past year? What’s more likely to happen, you will save money or the developers will keep more of a cut?
On the other hand, most money on either store is not being spent buying apps from Indy developers - it’s being spent on loot boxes and pay to win games. Do you think that getting rid of the 30% is going to all of the sudden mean indy developers can make a come back like they did in 2008?
>What’s more likely to happen, you will save money or the developers will keep more of a cut?
Could be both, Why are developers evil and they should not get the money but the overlord that does (almost)nothing.
It is like if a farmer goes to a market and the mafia forces them to pay 39% for protection, then if mafia is destroyed you feel bad if the farmer gets more money now.
Not all developers are EA level of evil, some of them deserve every cent IMO.
Related to the money I spent I have some subscriptions and I bought some PC games and some PS4 games for my kid, I hope that consoles would be investigated too, there is not enough competition to have a fair market.
I never said developers are evil. What I did say is that the dream of the Indy developer making money on the App Store died a decade ago. Most money on the App Store is coming from in app purchases for loot boxes and virtual currency. I posit that every company making money that way is evil.
Besides, not only now are you arguing about a phone that you don’t own, you are also complaining about an in app system where just as I thought - you haven’t spent any money. Most people don’t spend money “buying apps”. The money is coming from in app purchases from games.
As far as the “farmer”. If the farmer is selling tobacco - an addictive substance just like loot boxes and coins for play to win games. I don’t feel sorry for either. This is not just my opinion. The government is investigating virtual loot boxes as gambling.
I think we are focusing at 2 different parts of the same beast called "Developers". You are concerned about lootboxes and I agree there should be better laws about lootbox === gambling.
I seen case of good developers that have free games (they are passionate and use Patreon to get some money) and I see this developers creating Win,Linux, Mac and Android versions but no iOS version. So then you have the iOS users looking at all this plartforms that are supported but he is excluded, what do you think? Could there be a way that would make everyone happy(but maybe less money from some rich gy yacht?).
If a judge deciders that is OK iOS is locked down this means OSX,Windows and Android can be legally completely locked-down , in the future, do we want this?
A bit offtopic, I am trying to keep away from Apple related topics, but sometimes there is one comment that I need to respond to correct something and then a threads starts, I will try not to get as involved next time, I feel we are 2 groups that are in a way "paranoid" that 2 different bad things will happen , some think that everything will get more and more locked and DRMed and others are afraid that competition will destroy apples garden.
> I seen case of good developers that have free games (they are passionate and use Patreon to get some money) and I see this developers creating Win,Linux, Mac and Android versions but no iOS version. So then you have the iOS users looking at all this plartforms that are supported but he is excluded, what do you think? Could there be a way that would make everyone happy(but maybe less money from some rich gy yacht?).
I think Apple is already trying to address that through Apple Arcade, it is giving indy developers that make games that don’t have in app purchases or advertising advances to publish games. Apple Arcade has to be a loss leader to convince more people to buy iOS devices.
I would go one step further, if they really want to support good, ethical games, prominently display ethical games (no in app purchases or advertising besides games from the same publisher) in the App Store, increase the minimum price that a game maker can charge - gets rid of the race to the bottom - and take a 15% cut. This would make iOS the platform for “premium games”.
They could also say that it “protects children”. Politicians eat up “think about the children”.
> If a judge deciders that is OK iOS is locked down this means OSX,Windows and Android can be legally completely locked-down , in the future, do we want this?
I wouldn’t buy a Mac. I use Macs because it is a consumer friendly Unix with commercial applications. I could completely live in a world running Linux and open source if it came down to it.
I run Linux but I am the only one that I know in my family and friends and if the hardware would be DRM and locked down you could not get an older windows machine and put Linux on it.
Don you think that the hardware and software you bought should serve you the owner? Like if it is my own OS it should execute what I tell it to do(maybe I would need to enable something to exit the "kid mode")
My hardware does serve me. I won’t install Zoom or Dropbox on my Mac for instance because they are essentially malware. Zoom was installing a web server in the background on Macs where even if you uninstalled it, it would reinstall itself. DropBox does all sorts of invasive stuff when installed on my Mac.
On the other hand, my iPad has a strict sandbox, I can restrict apps from using cellular on an app by app basis (I wish I could do the same for WiFi), I can restrict apps from running in the background using my battery life unnecessarily (see Slack), developers have proven they can’t be trusted to have unfettered access to your computer.
Even if you don’t give an app admin access on a computer, they still have all of the rights the signed in user does.
I mean people here in HN, probably most of us here have the same credibility , this person said
"The problem with this logic is that every company is going to set up their own App Store. Microsoft, Epic, etc. Then for every app that I use right now on my iPhone I would have to source from several App Stores. It will make my experience very cumbersome.
reply"
And this is proven false since the Google Store is still very popular and I don't see people having to source 5 apps from Google store, 5 from Microsoft, 2 from Apple, 3 from Adobe. With the Epic the situation is clear, this giants are asking too much just for hosting your application and the small guys had no chance to fight this , lucky for the developers Epic started this and as we can see from this article Apple is backing down one step here, other step a month ago ...
The difference is that Google’s sideloading experience is intentionally full of warnings and hurdles. Do you really think that if Apple had a court ruling against them they could get away with that? No, Epic (et al) will be very clear about third party stores being utterly seamless to install and use.
That’s why we’d see a proliferation of stores on iOS.
So now you want third party app stores and no warnings? Even though Epic - one of the first major apps to try side loading, actually had a security vulnerability.
Ew, god no. I think Apple should be allowed to offer us their idea of a good product and let the marketplace choose between that, Google Android, or other competitors who believe they could do better offering open source Android. The idea of having parts of your product designed by the competitors who envy your success is utter madness.
That's not a big difference, with Android, because nobody is making any money doing that. It doesn't work.
I didn't mention Windows. I was discussing platforms where everyone takes a 30% cut. You may say this is mere whataboutism, but anyone who reads Hacker News knows that 99% of the anger and attacks on this practice are directed at Apple. Nobody bitches at Google and Sony and Microsoft for doing the exact same thing.
Google gets hit on the privacy front pretty regularly. I guess it depends on the issue. But not to worry, I'm sure there will be plenty of time and opportunity to complain against injustices from all corporations in the future. A significant chunk of early adopters for Apple/MS/Google products were nerds who spread the good word. Its no surprise that issues like privacy, developer freedom and hacker-ethics will drive the conversation against these companies.
They allow third party stores though, and even installation without any store at all. Apple devices OTOH are severely limited regarding sideloading. This leads to Apple capturing a much larger percentage of transactions pertaining software for their devices.
That's an incredibly weak claim. The statement is certainly true for some value of 'many', but then so is its opposite. Unless many means, "the vast majority", which certainly is not clear and definitely would need some support, it is a meaningless claim.
It is also difficult to see how it is a feature. In a world where additional app stores or side-loading was enabled for those that want it, it wouldn't somehow remove the ability to use a single app store for those that don't.
The assertion was that there is a group that values the lack of side-loading, which your post doesn't really address, so I'm not sure why you've responded to me.
In any case:
> the people who really cared about side-loading
> 1. People who care a little bit about side-loading but not enough to choose a difference device.
This is not a useful model. If I choose feature X over feature Y, all you can really tell from that is that value(X) > value(Y). It doesn't tell you whether value(Y) <<< value(X). It's also important to note that this is vastly simplified, because there are many features and issues that people must combine and weigh against each other.
To illustrate, if a product offers side-loading but kills your mother on first use, if you choose a different product it doesn't mean you don't "really" care about side-loading. You might genuinely care a tremendous amount, but sacrificing your mother isn't an option for you.
I differentiate between products that I buy because they are a good option for me and products I buy because they are the least bad product for me. Phones are currently in the second group. It's not that I don't care about side-loading. It's that all issues combined, IOS is less bad for my purposes and preferences than Android.
I'm not sure that group values the lack of side-loading specifically. I think what they do value is the additional security and privacy benefits provided by a platform that strictly controls the distribution of its apps.
To the extent that the lack of side-loading helps prevent the spread of malware and shady apps stealing user data, I think they value it indirectly.
Android has serious malware problems. Even Epic's attempt to distribute Fortnite off the Play Store has directly led to fake APKs being distributed to unsuspecting users.
I don't see how you can open up iOS to side-loading without exposing it to the exact same malware problems Android has.
I would fully support Apple charging, say, $50 extra to lock down its devices to the current standard. That would be a much better world and the users who desire the "premium experience" still get to have it.
Hah, are you claiming people are that dumb and think "please protect me from my own stupidity"?
The enabling of sideloading on Android phones already comes with warnings written in plain language, and even if you want to install an app from e.g. the browser it asks you to give the browser permission to install apps, so it's pretty idiot-proof...
Using the Microsoft Store is totally optional. Selling software for Windows has rarely required any coordination with Microsoft other than maybe code signing with a cert from an approved CA. Exceptions include drivers, and Windows Phone/Windows Mobile 10
Using Steam is even MORE optional. They're PC games! Yet people still want to be on Steam even if you have to play by their rules, because being on there creates value.
I'm really bothered by the whole notion of games as less important and "[more] optional". Playing games is a fundamental part of being human, and it is certainly more important than capitalism.
I don't think that's the point that was being made - Steam is optional not because the content on it is games, but because the content is PC games - i.e. content where there's no obstacles to distributing it yourself, or through other stores.
Any game developer could at any point opt out of using Steam and accept payments on their own site, or go through another store. Most developers don't bother because Steam provides enough value to make it worthwhile.
It's impossible to determine if this is the case with the App Store since competitors don't (and can't) exist.
Uber (and any other "real-world" service) does not (and I believe are not even allowed to) use in-app purchases. This rule only applies to "virtually-provided" services.
The Uber app actually lets you use Apple Pay (as opposed to in app purchasing). Apple Pay charges standard credit card rates that you would pay anywhere.
I think you're confused. Of course you can build something that is scalable. But if you do that, you will be relying on all of the massive strengths of Apple's platform to make that much, much easier for you to do. And so you will have to pay for that. Of course.
Once again Netflix is crowned as the biggest of the Les Incorruptibles on the App Store by Apple since they can get away from not only the 30% charge as it is a reader app but is able to roll their own payments on the web and still scale to many users without in app purchases.
There are probably more apps / companies who belong to this group due to secret deals by Apple, but now Apple says: No 30% charge for apps who's customers are 1-1. That's it.
Charging at scale without the app store tax is disqualified. But not for the Les Incorruptibles.
The double standard is Netflix is able to provide an app that does nothing out of the box until you register elsewhere. Other apps would get booted because they don't work without navigating elsewhere.
I don't disagree that it's arbitrary, but the person I replied to implied Apple changed the rules specifically to block Hey's app, which is not correct.
> Apple on Wednesday confirmed the existence of a program for streaming video providers that allows those platforms to bypass its standard 30 percent App Store fee when selling individual purchases, like movie downloads and TV show rentals. The program first became public earlier today when Amazon updated its Prime Video iOS and Apple TV apps to allow in-app purchases for the first time. It is not clear how long the program has existed, but there are at least two other providers, Altice One and Canal+, currently participating, Apple confirmed.
These examples are actually a good example of Apple violating its own principles. Three out of a multitude of reader apps that don't get this preferential treatment.
> Everybody can't. The Hey.com email guys did the same thing. They allowed only signing into the up. No sign up.
Yes. And that's the gray area that needs to be challenged. Are email apps for private services reader apps? Yes, they probably are.
But the current guidelines specifically tell you what reader apps are [1]. So, no, there's no "secret agreement" between Netflix and Apple. They are a reader app by Apple's definition. Same as Spotify, Kindle, etc. etc.
On the face of the policy viewed in isolation, if they facilitate paid one-on-one encounters, yes, if they facilitate paid one-to-few or one-to-many encounters, no.
But I'm pretty sure pay-per-date apps of either type have bigger legal and App Store policy issues than whether the payment must be made via IAP with the Apple Tax.
I'm not a part of Apple's eco-system (I don't have a smartphone) but isn't this a matter of Apple knowing it's impossible to enforce what happens during a person to person experience -- so they might as well come off as being "nice"?
What would stop someone from meeting up with another person and then agree to pay in cash or Zelle or any other way to transfer funds? There's no way for Apple to track that.
Looks like I misread your comment when posting my other reply (I was talking about one-to-one). Sorry about that.
I'm not sure what the few/many distinction is about, but I can guess: if they only said "one-to-many" it could be unclear whether "many" means "more than one" or "some sufficiently large number", so they include "few" to remove ambiguity. Said another way: "one-to-few and one-to-many" is just a different way to say "one to more than one". As far as I can tell the new guidelines don't use the few/many distinction anywhere and only mention both in this one sentence.
> If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training), you may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments.
So you can avoid the Apple tax if you're a private tutor.
However it looks like I misread blueicecubes' comment. They were asking about one-to-few vs one-to-many, but I talked about one-to-one.
3.1.3(d) Person-to-Person Experiences: If your app enables the purchase of realtime person-to-person experiences between two individuals (for example tutoring students, medical consultations, real estate tours, or fitness training), you may use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments. One-to-few and one-to-many realtime experiences must use in-app purchase.
This is huge news. Being able to use third-party payments methods to bypass Apple's 30% charge is essential for service driven marketplace apps. Classpass and AirBnB bumped into this issue [0], but, I wonder if this exception will apply for them?
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/technology/apple-app-stor...
Edit: In excitement, I missed the last sentence; group services aren't covered by the exception :(