Edit: Maybe I am greedy now, but it would be nice if large transactions like say buying a house only would cost me a 15% transaction fee to Apple.

Wouldn’t be surprised if macOS starts locking down CLI tools towards an App Store model too.

So everyone raced to the iOS app store, it was only 30%, what a great deal!

The problem is that two decades later it is no longer that great deal in mobile duopoly world.

In all seriousness, finance people see everything through the lens of margins and money primarily. Since any company's function is to deliver value to its shareholders, if allowed, bean counters will scorch the earth for it.

Ultimately, this is at odds on how Jobs approached things, i.e., money was not the end all be all.

Works offline?

30% is not that.

And the other half of the mobile app market is monopolized by Google who copies the pricing model while delivering even worse (if any) service to developers.

It's either getting out of mobile apps or paying up.

This is not going to change without drastic steps by regulators, which both Apple and Google fight tooth and nail.

I was an app advocate for a long time, now I made a PWA and it’s maybe 90% there. But you still get behaviors that you can not fix.

IMO the worst however is products that have a fully functional website, but refuse to let you use it (e.g.: Instagram)

The trouble is, market forces always try and push things the other way.

The Reddit App for example is totally unnecessary. It's just public web content and should be a website.

SaaS on the other hand shouldn't really be a thing at all. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea for their private data and app state to be on a cloud somewhere they don't control.

Note that this does not preclude the use of cloud services that users can control e.g. by specifiying trusted endpoints. I'm trying to build the idea of "data locality first" software. I.e. you know where your data are and where they aren't.

Because the web is still barely usable for anything more complex than showing a few lines of static text and an image?

Because for almost as long as (modern) mobile apps exist the web was even less usable?

Because even now you can whip up a fast complex mobile app with 60fps animations and native behaviours probably in minutes? While on the web you're lucky if you can figure out which state/animation/routing library du jour isn't broken beyond all hope?

I'm curious what percentage of creators chose which

Click here to avoid apple tax takes you to web page if allowed.

And it's still a net loss.

Popular apps have been exempt from these rules since the beginning of time - not that I agree with this.

Unfortunately, due to their behavior in the latest years, I'm not going to buy anything Apple anymore.

Fortunately for me, I prefer Linux to MacOS so I never have been totally tied in the Apple ecosystem and I know how to leave the boat without a lot of hassle.

I'm really saddened because they know how to make great products when they want to. It's just infuriating that everything that is shitty in their products is never due to randomness or bugs or whatever, but ALWAYS because they decided to fuck you.

Was all Apple since the iBook G4. Bought a Pixel last week. It's nice.

The Epic v Apple lawsuit verdict makes this allowed now.

I am so close to having raspberry pi phones but even rasp pi 's are getting expensive because of AI dammit

Of course the retailer margin is never actually 50%. That's theoretical if 100% of product is sold at MSRP. Actual retail margins are about 25% because of sales, write-offs, et cetera.

OTOH when there's a sale in Steam, they still get their full cut (of the reduced price).

It made perfect sense that this shiny new iOS platform would take 30% of a cheap app to ensure that it matches the high quality of iOS. These were little productivity apps and games at the time.

This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?

What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?

Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.

The Mac app store, being optional for developers, is a good example of how much people actually want something like this.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but it feels like over the past couple of decades we've gone from clever guys coming together with an idea and starting companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, to celebrating buyouts of startups by large behemoths—that's how low the definition of success has dropped. Is competition law even a thing anymore?

Apple also sits on a board that approves new web technologies for standards formalization, so they can squash adoption of anything that might make web browser APIs as capable as a native application, so that they can force people to make native apps where they can extract a percentage from it (they can't do that with a web application). Rather than work out reasonable ways to support things other browsers allow, they just say "no thanks" and then there is no standard allowed to move forward.

It's extremely abusive and anti-competitive. I hope the DOJ continues to pursue litigation against Apple for this and many other things.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

That's why people don't dig into the deep complex issues. Because it's uncomfortable, and forces one to confront the potential reality that their worldview, and everything they've known about how our society works is wrong, broken, and collapsing in front of them.

It can be a very distressing and depressing state of mind. There's a reason "ignorance is bliss" is a common trope, because there's some real truth to it. For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.

Not a bit deal really, a tiny minority of people will be a few dollars out of pocket, because the loophole most of us don't enjoy has been closed.

We can do a lot if we pressure the company or the regulations around it. Maybe not right now in this current regime, but tides will shift.

The issue is that people's attention spans on this are much too short. The fervor around this may not even last to the end of this month, let alone until a change in power allows a new administration to properly go after the company.

There is no way around it especially in an apple dense market like Switzerland.

They have a clear monopoly and together with Google a duopoly.

I can thankfully continue with my refusal to purchase from HP perfectly fine.

Moreover, the fee only applies to the subscriptions made using Apple's payment system. That being said, in most jurisdictions their payment system is the only one developers can use in an app. IMHO, this is the real problem.

Yet. Apple forces a specific browser engine on all apps, so they have the means to block patreon website too.

If they weren’t a public company, you’d think they were the mob. I’ll never trust the Apple ecosystem ever again

Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.

I subscribe to like 10 patrons each at $1-$3/month. Right now they can just charge me once, $20/mo, pay 3%+30c card fee on that, they pay a buck in fees, get $19, great.

Instead they want to charge me $1, 10 times a month, hit with a 30c fee every time, instead paying a total of $5 in fees, getting way less proportionally.

They must really make their bulk on big patrons paying like $20+/month to a single patreon

Alternatively, they could show up at the nightclub in person and bring their phone with proof of purchase and the bouncer could hand them a membership card and cross their name off a list.

I suspect developers are looking for these workaround because of the 30%. If Apple had asked for, say, 10%, would there be as many developers looking for loopholes?

I don't know. Apple perhaps should ask for compensation for "vouching for" the developer's app, hosting the app, distributing the app. But Steam shows us another model where the developer themselves pay a modest up-front cost to have their app hosted ($100) and then Steam steps out of the way.

I wonder if this would go a long way too to thinning the herd so to speak from the Apple App Store—perhaps improve the overall quality of the apps submitted.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-betrayed-trust-says-iph...

I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals. So it unfortunately comes down to who benefits more. If you have something Apple really wants then they will cut a deal. But if not then you pay the high tax. They've at least cut it down somewhat for smaller devs and teams, but the whole industry needs to change. IAP/Subscriptions shouldn't just inherit the pricing systems of old.

I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.

Your mindset results in Apple users thinking "the problem is those stupid Android idiots who accept being in an ad tech company's spyware garden" and Android users thinking "the problem is those stupid Apple idiots who accept that 30% of literally everything they do goes to Apple". In reality, we have a common enemy in the big tech duopoly and extremely lacklustre regulation which lets them keep doing this shit. You calling me an idiot for making a different shitty trade-off than you helps nobody.