All: These $BigCo vs. $BigCo threads are getting increasingly repetitive and nasty. Please don't post like that. The HN guidelines ask you not to, and every such post degrades this place for future discussion. We're trying to stave off the well-known internet phenomenon in which the site becomes nothing but repetition and anger, and the best users all leave. We want curious conversation here, so if you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully, and if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
* wanted a 30% cut on all Kindle book sales (sold via iOS)
* had negotiated with most major book publishers that any book distributer (aka Amazon, Apple, B&N, etc) must sell their books at exactly a 30% markup.
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Also, we had built a native store experience for the Kindle app before launching it.
Yet, after submitting to Apple (and not hearing anything back for weeks), Apple announced their intent to roll out in-app purchasing many months later
They also immediately blocked our submission and forced us to take out all references to the native store or even linking to the web store.
Would you be okay with if a web based company, say Google:
1) Delisted you if you didn't support their payment option.
2) Blocked any content that tried to criticize it.
3) Forced you to support their login as an option, and also didn't place it as the first option on the list.
Then why are we okay with someone trying to do this for the mobile internet?
Apple treats apps like they own the phone. My own mental model is it's my phone, and apps are an extension of the mobile internet.
It's not a surcharge on your bill. That's when you have to pay 30% more than the main price. This is you paying the main price, but the organization you (likely) want to support is only getting 30%.
You don’t have to use an iPhone and your product doesn’t have to run on one. In order to prove laws have been broken you have to prove that there is a higher issue than just lack of choice on the platform, if “that isn’t really the issue” then there isn’t any issue, legally.
If you want there to be something illegal about the lack of choice itself you have to think very long and hard about how you want to correct it with legislation, which would not be an easy thing to do right.
And even if there was most people wouldn’t sue anything other than the default or biggest store. Apple store policies for developers is making a lot of devs really hate Apple.
This situation is very good for the first start-up that will offer a website that works like an application store and provides crossplatform games/apps etc. along with a good SDK. Time for the web to neutralize the old monopolies
Is this the end of Apple? Will I actually switch mobile platforms from Android because third party stores are now available? Tune in next time on "2020: The Year Monopolies get questioned"
As mobile gamer Android has been the only option for the longest time already. There's just too much geolocking as the strongest mobile games come from Asia. If someone is interested in exploring this more check out Qoo app store.
All utilies (Electricity, water, phone, etc.) should ask their commercial customers a 30% cut because they build and provide an ecosystem that is mandatory for them to exist.
Going a little further and what if MasterCard and Visa requested a 30% cut to apple. They should also ban Apple from CC acquiring if they make this public.
The arguments are well-repeated by now, but your comment is analogous to saying if I buy a Ford, I can only fill it with Ford gas. It's OK to have laws that prevent and forbid that because it's not good for the people.
The most expensive payment gateway I have ever seen is Paypal, which charges 2.9% of the sale. Apple is acting as payment gateway, yet they are charging over ten times what a payment gateway would charge
So Apple wants a 30% cut on the money that could easily go to small business owners and artists. A $2T company that makes tens of billions in profit every year can't help being as extractive as it can in the middle of pandemic when everyone is struggling.
How can anyone be okay with this blatant abuse of power? How does it matter if the event is online or offline. If it's happening on a Zoom call or in a coffee shop. Apple isn't just harming big companies like Fortnite, it's harming individual creators. If this isn't case for anti-trust, I don't know what is.
Apple has improved the experience of phone and software for elderly folks and kids by giving them the Apple choice, where before if you wanted to use Microsoft Office, you either did it Microsoft's way or you don't use Microsoft Office (!).
Facebook can still communicate anything they want to customers through the channels <they> pay for. Facebook is also free to pursue any kind of financial arrangement they want with customers via channels which they can maintain and pay for.
But now through Apple's way, folks can have a one-stop shop to manage any runaway subscriptions, which is an unprecedented consumer benefit. Now folks don't need to maintain 10 different financial relationships... merely because they have 10 apps.
Before consumers only had one choice. Now they have two — Microsoft's way, or Apple's way. I'm still struggling to see how this hurts <consumers>, as opposed to the overarching story that Apple takes Very Good care of their customers. Without Apple in the middle, the Microsoft and Adobe's of the world each already have enough power to force customers to do things their way.
Yeah, but in this instance we’re talking about Facebook. I could care less about what Apple charges them. I do feel for indie developers and don’t support the 30% fee, but in the case of $FB (or zoom) allow me to introduce you to the world’s tiniest violin...
Also, I’m sure FB is only piling on because of the privacy changes to iOS which harm FB’s core advertising business. FB would charge 30% in a heart beat.
Again, I would do away with the 30% fee, but please find me someone other than Facebook to feel sorry for.
This money isn't going to facebook though? Facebook doesn't even take a cut of it. I imagine fb's intentions were to let the customer know that if 30% of the effective donation/payment had not gone to the recipient it wasn't fb taking a cut.
Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamewar style comments to HN. These threads are getting exceedingly repetitive. They're also getting nastier. We don't want those qualities here.
I’m being downvoted flagged and accused of “flamewar“ for simply saying that Apple has a set of rules developers must follow and they can’t make exceptions otherwise where would it end?
It's nothing but exploitive to keep online events in the same category as in-app purchases. There is a cost to conducting an event—offline or online. Secondly, Apple is well-aware that creators can't conduct offline events that easily because of the pandemic. Hiding behind "it's-rules" is just a trademark of an Evil Corp.
Now that everyone has smart phones and phone lifetimes seem to be growing not shrinking (good job Apple) the only way for them to grow their revenue is raising the price of phones (which they've slowed down on) or "services" which are essentially milking everyone using their platform.
It's been like this since the beginning. Only now has Epic Games (along with slight pressure from the antitrust hearings) created the perfect PR storm to get the spotlight on Apple's practices.
This is really why the law should come down like a ton of bricks on Apple. They aren't just bleeding everyone dry, they're also trying to prevent people from realizing Apple is doing it.
FB, etc get the use of Apple's infrastructure, they get the benefits of apple providing updates to hardware for 5 years without charging consumers.
That shit costs money, whether it costs 30% I don't know, but given that seems to be in the order of the charges of every other store (what % of sale price do companies get on retail sales?).
The problem here is a bunch of companies have decided that they want special rules for themselves that don't include paying for services that they benefit from.
Any iOS device apple sells has 5 years of ongoing costs - software support, service upkeep, etc.
Google's store doesn't have the update and software maintenance costs, and the actual hardware sellers have demonstrate no interest in taking them on, so it's clearly not free. In fact google charges 30% on everything as well, but also makes money from all of the surveillance they have on the platform (after all, spying is how google makes its money).
Put very simply. Apple makes a profit from a sale of hardware when the user buys a new device. That's it. They continue to support that hardware for 5 years.
Google makes profit from every android device as long as that device is being used. If you buy a second hand android device then that device continues to generate revenue for google.
Despite this google charges the same commission/rent as apple.
> FB, etc get the use of Apple's infrastructure, they get the benefits of apple providing updates to hardware for 5 years without charging consumers.
> That shit costs money
Exactly. That shit costs money. And by that I mean iPhone. People pay $1000 dollars for that. It’s not a freemium game where transactions on the platform support the product. It’s one of the most expensive phones on the market, and long term update support is part of why their prices are so high.
> In fact google charges 30% on everything as well
The difference here being, I can install any app, from anywhere onto my Android device, without modifying it any way past changing one setting. In fact there are several non-Google app stores you can install, which charge either significantly less or nothing at all to the developer.
There simply is no analogue for iPhone or iPad without jailbreaking, something that ultimately creates more headaches than it solves. For all intents and purposes, Apple holds a monopoly on marketing and distribution with regards to iOS apps, something no other device or software manufacturer is currently doing.
"Get"? Apple forces all iOS apps to use that infrastructure. Google has a much better case because the Play Store is optional, but Apple dug their own grave here.
the vast majority of that 3% is the CC company rate, and that's not going to stripe.
Which means that stripe is making 30c + maybe some tiny additional amount per transaction.
Their hardware PoS devices cost money and/or rent, so they make a profit there.
The distribution cost for their app is covered by amazon.
Which means that their remaining per transaction cost is the cost of the payment details which is presumably in the order of 1kb, which I'm fairly sure is in the fraction of cents realm.
Facebook was setting up a marketplace for paid digital events:
> On Friday, the social media giant claimed that Apple rejected the inclusion of a warning that the latter company would take 30% of sales in a paid-online events feature Facebook is rolling out in an update of its app.
Do you really think Apple provided 30% of the value of the event -- created and hosted by someone else, organized by Facebook?
There's a point at which Apple is not responsible for creating the entire economy, even if parts of it incidentally touch OSX. Like, this is functionally no different than the web browser OSX is providing -- but Apple has decided that because it touches the App store, they deserve a ton of flesh.
> they get the benefits of apple providing updates to hardware for 5 years without charging consumers.
Apple's updates included things like intentionally slowing down old phones without notifying users of what was going on, instead of encouraging a cheap battery replacement.
Interesting how every big dog is attacking Apple as they continue to be the lone-wolf in enabling privacy and a secure platform for their users. Apple users are mostly computer illiterate because its Apple’s mission statement to enable computing for everyone. Because of their ease of use, they are now targeted to open up their platform in ways that will jeopardize both their increasing user-privacy and user-security.
How big is each FB update? I recall they used to be hundreds of mbs, multiple times a week, times a hundred million or whatever users. I don't think that's free.
Edge caches aren't free to run, it's true. But at Apple's scale, they are not a significant expense either. It's important to understand that Apple does not pay the same retail bandwidth costs that your mvp web app does on AWS.
Do you mean to say Apple is not taking 30% and Apple is not admitting this is an unacceptably high fee by trying to prevent FB from informing its users about it?
