If it was closer to 5%, or even a fixed fee (eg: $1 per app sold), I would accept the narrative that it's a fee.
30% of your business is not a fee, it's more like a partnership. Apple is, in practice, a business partner to each and every iOS developer. Except that they have total and absolute control of the business. If they shut you down on the App Store, you're done. Your iOS app is worthless on any other platform.
I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself.
> If they shut you down on the App Store, you're done. Your iOS app is worthless on any other platform.
> I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself.
My experience sending applications to the app store was certainly frustrating as a first-comer as the App Store has numerous rules about the screenshots, descriptions, naming etc. that you have to follow.
However, every time the app got rejected, the reviewer sent clear feedback on which rules the submissions were violating and how to fix those issues. After that, you could send your app for another review. Calling that "shutting you down" is slightly harsh in my ear. We fixed the problems they had with our submission and then we got approved.
Interestingly (sort of), 5%-or-$1 wouldn't work out well for Apple. This is because credit card processing fees are generally structured as a flat fee plus a percentage of the transaction.
Something like 5 cents + 1.3% would be a great deal on payment processing, generally. Apple is a behemoth, so let's assume they're getting a good deal.
For a $1 purchase that'd be ~$0.07 to the transaction processor... which is more than the flat percentage already. Then Apple has some amount of costs involved (bandwidth, maintenance of systems, general overhead, etc) even if they started running the App Store at cost as they originally claimed they'd do.
There's definitely room to lower the cut Apple takes... it's just that somewhere in the 10-20% range is still a reasonable fee to cover their costs.
It's also worth considering how gift cards affect what Apple can charge. Apple sells gift cards through retailers, who are getting a cut of those sales. That cut comes directly out of Apple's portion of the sale, so they have to account for some percentage of transactions having that effective cost, which is probably higher than the aforementioned payment-processing cost. (There are some markets where gift cards are incredibly common. Kids get given them a lot. They're super common in Japan and other countries for everyone.)
(The flat $1 fee wouldn't fall apart on processing costs until you reached really expensive in-app purchases... but it'd massively change the economics of the App Store, where $1 apps / in-app purchases are pretty common. I have no idea if that's a good idea or not.)
As long as there are still plenty of people making apps for iOS, I don't see how Apple has much incentive at all to change their behavior.
If this stuff is that big of a problem for the average iOS developer, then shouldn't this at least be an opportunity for Google (to attract more developers to its platform, possibly exclusively)? Or no because G has pretty much the same incentives that Apple does? Or is this already happening and I'm just not aware of it?
Apple considers the iPhone a single product. It has many features: some of them require extra payment. For example, you can purchase a feature that allows you to play a game about Pokemon. Apple outsources the development of some of iPhone features to 3rd parties. Some of those 3rd party iPhone feature developers mistakenly think of themselves as independent application developers. Apple mercifully allows such miscategorization because it does not really matter for them or their customers.
Usually this is because your app is low quality of looks bad.
I've published lots of apps and followed changes of Apple policy for years, and in 99% those increased the quality of apps published and user experience.
If someone doesn't deserve 30% it is Google.
With Apple at least I speak to a human (or if this in an AI - cudos to the developers, it is super real). While with Google all you get is a bot reply "Sorry, we can't tell you shit. Go figure out a problem and unless you do we will block your account and all RELATED accounts". Well that is some wild shit.
Considering the business partner angle, i wonder how expensive it was, 20 years ago, to market, securely deliver to consumers, and process payments from customers for small developers selling in CompUSA or BestBuy, while providing analytics on sales.
I wonder if it gave rise or "justification" to the 30% thing, but don't know.
> I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself.
That kind of editorial feedback seems like a good thing, no? Do you feel like that process improved how your app was presented to users?
Funny how most replies in that thread don’t actually address the initial question: why is there a policy of prohibiting disclosure of how the money the user pays gets distributed?
Most “answers” immediately diverge into monopoly discussions, or questions-as-answers of why 30% ‘seems so high’ (even though neither was initially brought up).
And besides this, most people seem content to compare it with the physical world with (IMO invalid) comparisons of malls, etc.
There's another thing: Apple already charges developers a fee every year. And they also sell ads on the App Store (which you basically have to buy otherwise you're a 'needle in a haystack'). AND they sell ads to your competitors, which use your (sometimes trademarked) keywords in their ads, which means you need to buy even more ads to counteract those.
It seems pretty obvious to me. Apple wants a user experience that makes the user happy with Apple products, not one where the app is complaining to the user about Apple policies. Apple is happy to prohibit zillions of random different things; they perceive the openness or fairness of their platform as much less important than user experience.
What would Target do if their canned beans vendor started putting labels on the cans like "we sold this item for $0.23. Anything else is profit that your store is charging you."? Those cans would never see the shelves.
If, in effect, Apple buys a product from its vendor for $3.50 and then resells it for $5.00, keeping the difference as profit, I can understand their statement that the wholesale price is irrelevant and shouldn't be shown.
> “We know that these freedoms require protection,” [Tim] Cook said of First Amendment rights. “Not just the forms of speech that entertain us, but the ones that challenge us. The ones that unnerve and even displease us. They’re the ones that need protection the most.”
>why is there a policy of prohibiting disclosure of how the money the user pays gets distributed
The same reason Visa doesn't let you let disclose to your customers that using your credit imposes a 3% fee to the merchant. People would use alternatives if they knew
Sure they do. They just prohibit you from putting that in your app's UI. If you were selling your software in a box at Walmart, they may well refuse to display it on the shelf if you included a message stating that Walmart had just gotten 30% of the software's and that the publisher had just gotten 20% of the software's price. Similarly, many publishers would likely refuse to publish such a message.
I don't think the question of why Apple doesn't allow such messaging is all that interesting.
I do think it's interesting that:
1. Apple is more likely to notice such a message buried within app UI, because they review apps. Walmart would probably only catch it if it appeared on the packaging.
2. We're more likely to hear about it , since we're more likely to know someone who has published an app on the Apple store than we are to know someone who has published an app through a traditional channel then marketed it on retail shelves.
I am gradually coming to the conclusion that active censorship of information should be illegal, on any platform, public or private.
These companies control most of the modern society's information intake, you can't keep justifying everything they do with 'it's private, they do what they want'. The potential for abuse is just too great.
If I make a discussion website about video games, and someone wants to my site and discuss Axolotls, shouldn’t I have the ability to moderate and control the content that goes on my website?
That’s a fairly innocuous example, but now someone comes to my site and starts spreading some pretty racist and otherwise vile bigoted content. Are you saying I should be forced, by laws, to host and publish that hate for others?
The internet, primarily sites that host user generated content, exist due to them being able to moderate the content that goes on them.
Welcome to hardcore porn on every website. Oh look, a Facebook competitor! Oh no! Facebook hired 100,000 people to post furry porn on their site to discredit them.
Certainly you don't believe that. What about child porn? Well you could say that's illegal so then it would be ok to censor it. But what about anti-vaxxers, QAnon or other blatant misinformation or lies? What if it's proven that the misinformation, is posted by foreign agents trying to stir controversy and hate in the country?
You clearly need to draw the line somewhere. But it's impossible to draw it to comply with the expectations of everyone. It's just an impossible task.
The fundamental question is of "rights". Do we apply 17th century morality and economic models for digital markets? Modern problems need modern solutions. We need to re-define where these "rights" of digital businesses come from.
Comcast invest millions and therefore has a "right" to control internet access, block websites, etc? Comcast "allows" a business to reach millions of customers.
Apple invested millions and therefore has a "right" to block third party payment processors? Apple "allows" a business to reach millions of customers.
Microsoft invested millions in their platform and there has a "right" to block Chrome/Firefox? Microsoft "allows" a business to reach millions of customers.
etc, etc.
Taking 30% of sales of a digital-only product is not morally acceptable to me.
Because Apple cripples their browser on iOS, so you cannot make a web app. Basic app features like push notification are not implemented on iOS Safari.
How is this different from any other store that offers access to a wide audience? Connecting devs to hundreds of millions of people, taking care of warehousing, logistics and sale/payments handling? Do those retailers tell you who gets what further down the supply chain? No. You see the price of the product and nothing even remotely reminds you of how much the retailer payed the manufacturer, and how much the manufacturer payed their designer.
Imagine you make a toaster. You want that toaster on the shelves at a retailer. How much do you think the retailer gets? And the transporting company? I think 30% is low in comparison. But but but this is digital. Yeah, so where do you you have access to Apple’s client base? How much do you pay for the running and maintaining of the App Store infrastructure?
How many apps do you think are hosted that don’t make any money? For neither dev nor Apple? All those are costs. For Apple. Admitted they make a lot of money, but they do so because they’re successful. If you want to be successful on their platform, you play by their rules. And those are clear: you pay 30%.
Well, it's easy: just develop your own mobile phone and operating system, make it popular, and then you don't have to pay the 30%.
Anti-free speech advocates use this argument when they say it's okay that Facebook, Twitter and Visa ban you - they are private companies and you can just create your own social media and payment systems. It's that easy!
Atleast apple’s surplus is not only taken by its employees, and a reasonable chunk passes to shareholders. So people paying the fee can just buy apple shares and get back some of the fee.
I’d guarantee that every company with a financial interest in the App Store would start putting up banners about the fee in an effort to stoke the Epic x Apple tensions in their favor.
Let the court decide the case without the mob influence of millions of uninformed users.
[+] [-] pier25|5 years ago|reply
30% of your business is not a fee, it's more like a partnership. Apple is, in practice, a business partner to each and every iOS developer. Except that they have total and absolute control of the business. If they shut you down on the App Store, you're done. Your iOS app is worthless on any other platform.
I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself.
[+] [-] antris|5 years ago|reply
> I shit you not, I've personally had apps rejected by the review board because they didn't like the screenshots. Those were screenshots of the app itself.
My experience sending applications to the app store was certainly frustrating as a first-comer as the App Store has numerous rules about the screenshots, descriptions, naming etc. that you have to follow.
However, every time the app got rejected, the reviewer sent clear feedback on which rules the submissions were violating and how to fix those issues. After that, you could send your app for another review. Calling that "shutting you down" is slightly harsh in my ear. We fixed the problems they had with our submission and then we got approved.
[+] [-] kemayo|5 years ago|reply
Something like 5 cents + 1.3% would be a great deal on payment processing, generally. Apple is a behemoth, so let's assume they're getting a good deal.
For a $1 purchase that'd be ~$0.07 to the transaction processor... which is more than the flat percentage already. Then Apple has some amount of costs involved (bandwidth, maintenance of systems, general overhead, etc) even if they started running the App Store at cost as they originally claimed they'd do.
There's definitely room to lower the cut Apple takes... it's just that somewhere in the 10-20% range is still a reasonable fee to cover their costs.
It's also worth considering how gift cards affect what Apple can charge. Apple sells gift cards through retailers, who are getting a cut of those sales. That cut comes directly out of Apple's portion of the sale, so they have to account for some percentage of transactions having that effective cost, which is probably higher than the aforementioned payment-processing cost. (There are some markets where gift cards are incredibly common. Kids get given them a lot. They're super common in Japan and other countries for everyone.)
(The flat $1 fee wouldn't fall apart on processing costs until you reached really expensive in-app purchases... but it'd massively change the economics of the App Store, where $1 apps / in-app purchases are pretty common. I have no idea if that's a good idea or not.)
[+] [-] usefulcat|5 years ago|reply
If this stuff is that big of a problem for the average iOS developer, then shouldn't this at least be an opportunity for Google (to attract more developers to its platform, possibly exclusively)? Or no because G has pretty much the same incentives that Apple does? Or is this already happening and I'm just not aware of it?
[+] [-] prepend|5 years ago|reply
If I sell something at Target for $50, I’m probably getting $25 tops. Don’t think I’m in partnership but definitely an important relationship.
[+] [-] kapp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] risyachka|5 years ago|reply
If someone doesn't deserve 30% it is Google. With Apple at least I speak to a human (or if this in an AI - cudos to the developers, it is super real). While with Google all you get is a bot reply "Sorry, we can't tell you shit. Go figure out a problem and unless you do we will block your account and all RELATED accounts". Well that is some wild shit.
[+] [-] jjtheblunt|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if it gave rise or "justification" to the 30% thing, but don't know.
[+] [-] quest88|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megablast|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CharlesW|5 years ago|reply
That kind of editorial feedback seems like a good thing, no? Do you feel like that process improved how your app was presented to users?
[+] [-] sebastien_b|5 years ago|reply
Most “answers” immediately diverge into monopoly discussions, or questions-as-answers of why 30% ‘seems so high’ (even though neither was initially brought up).
[+] [-] sebastien_b|5 years ago|reply
There's another thing: Apple already charges developers a fee every year. And they also sell ads on the App Store (which you basically have to buy otherwise you're a 'needle in a haystack'). AND they sell ads to your competitors, which use your (sometimes trademarked) keywords in their ads, which means you need to buy even more ads to counteract those.
Apple wins, and wins.
[+] [-] lacker|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstrauser|5 years ago|reply
What would Target do if their canned beans vendor started putting labels on the cans like "we sold this item for $0.23. Anything else is profit that your store is charging you."? Those cans would never see the shelves.
If, in effect, Apple buys a product from its vendor for $3.50 and then resells it for $5.00, keeping the difference as profit, I can understand their statement that the wholesale price is irrelevant and shouldn't be shown.
[+] [-] jasonhansel|5 years ago|reply
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/18/tim-cook-free-expression-awar...
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nemothekid|5 years ago|reply
The same reason Visa doesn't let you let disclose to your customers that using your credit imposes a 3% fee to the merchant. People would use alternatives if they knew
[+] [-] m463|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epanchin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hoistbypetard|5 years ago|reply
I don't think the question of why Apple doesn't allow such messaging is all that interesting.
I do think it's interesting that:
1. Apple is more likely to notice such a message buried within app UI, because they review apps. Walmart would probably only catch it if it appeared on the packaging.
2. We're more likely to hear about it , since we're more likely to know someone who has published an app on the Apple store than we are to know someone who has published an app through a traditional channel then marketed it on retail shelves.
[+] [-] ClumsyPilot|5 years ago|reply
These companies control most of the modern society's information intake, you can't keep justifying everything they do with 'it's private, they do what they want'. The potential for abuse is just too great.
[+] [-] madeofpalk|5 years ago|reply
That’s a fairly innocuous example, but now someone comes to my site and starts spreading some pretty racist and otherwise vile bigoted content. Are you saying I should be forced, by laws, to host and publish that hate for others?
The internet, primarily sites that host user generated content, exist due to them being able to moderate the content that goes on them.
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dudus|5 years ago|reply
You clearly need to draw the line somewhere. But it's impossible to draw it to comply with the expectations of everyone. It's just an impossible task.
[+] [-] ksk|5 years ago|reply
Comcast invest millions and therefore has a "right" to control internet access, block websites, etc? Comcast "allows" a business to reach millions of customers.
Apple invested millions and therefore has a "right" to block third party payment processors? Apple "allows" a business to reach millions of customers.
Microsoft invested millions in their platform and there has a "right" to block Chrome/Firefox? Microsoft "allows" a business to reach millions of customers.
etc, etc.
Taking 30% of sales of a digital-only product is not morally acceptable to me.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kgin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThatPlayer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pornel|5 years ago|reply
Facebook to Apple: if users were informed about your fee structure, they wouldn't like it.
Both companies have a cash cow that works better when users are unaware of it.
[+] [-] floflo79|5 years ago|reply
Imagine you make a toaster. You want that toaster on the shelves at a retailer. How much do you think the retailer gets? And the transporting company? I think 30% is low in comparison. But but but this is digital. Yeah, so where do you you have access to Apple’s client base? How much do you pay for the running and maintaining of the App Store infrastructure?
How many apps do you think are hosted that don’t make any money? For neither dev nor Apple? All those are costs. For Apple. Admitted they make a lot of money, but they do so because they’re successful. If you want to be successful on their platform, you play by their rules. And those are clear: you pay 30%.
[+] [-] hkai|5 years ago|reply
Anti-free speech advocates use this argument when they say it's okay that Facebook, Twitter and Visa ban you - they are private companies and you can just create your own social media and payment systems. It's that easy!
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] naveen99|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sithlord|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notmyname9173|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ecf|5 years ago|reply
I’d guarantee that every company with a financial interest in the App Store would start putting up banners about the fee in an effort to stoke the Epic x Apple tensions in their favor.
Let the court decide the case without the mob influence of millions of uninformed users.