DMA Compliance: Initial Acquisition and Store Services Fees

Apple literally gets in trouble, fixes things by adding fees back, gets in trouble again, and add the fees back. I can't even.

Maybe the idea for Europe should be to stop playing nicely and just fine Apple 1 billion Euros each month until they comply.

First the billions from Google Search dry up followed by the now inevitable billions in fines from the EU. Can’t wait to see how they spin this in the next earnings call

What is the difference to before the change?

The EU should probably fine Apple for each time it wastes their time. This is starting to feel like they are trying to perform a "terms and conditions" DDOS on the EU's legal department.

Do they even try to justify this?

The justification has always been the same. Apple makes and licenses software. It wants to make money off its work and IP and for referrals originated via its platform.

While this may not make sense to those who (pretend to) think that work should be given away for free, but that’s been the constant for all of Apple’s various pricing schemes.

Short of nationalizing Apple or its IP, they’re going to charge money. If they can’t make money, they’ll stop selling in the EU. Simple as that.

The weirdness in schemes is because of the regulations/regulators. The old scheme was pretty dead simple. Throw a few rocks into a smooth-sided stream and you get turbulence. It’s only natural.

"Short of nationalizing Apple or its IP, they’re going to charge money. If they can’t make money, they’ll stop selling in the EU. Simple as that."

They're not going to stop selling in the EU. They won't just throw away 20% of their revenue to spite the EU. They're going to drag this stupid game out as long as they can, and then they're going to be fined, and then they're going to properly comply.

"While this may not make sense to those who (pretend to) think that work should be given away for free"

You're either not making good-faith arguments, or you don't understand what this is about.

"The justification has always been the same. Apple makes and licenses software. It wants to make money off its work and IP"

There was a time when Apple was seen mostly as a hardware manufacturer but that time has passed I see.

I don't particularly like the term IP, especially when it comes to software. But I'm old enough to have paid for the Numbers iPad app, which I think is a fair way to make a profit from code you've written.

To extract an ongoing 20% tax based on mostly scammy in-app purchases made by minors in pay to win games is hardly how it has always been for Apple. And it's hardly putting a strain on their "IP"

Making money off of the APIs they create for their operating systems could be done in a much less scammy way. They are also one hundred percent dependent on others making apps for their closed plattforms. If you couldn't get your bank to work on an iPhone, or your commuter card, social media app etc, then people would abandon them, but this "making money of of their 'IP'" defence makes it seem like a very one directional relationship.

Also, blaming the EU for Apples fuckwittery is rich. Had they said "Our yearly developer fee is N" or "Run your own app store and see if we care!" we wouldn't have this back and forth. Instead they come up with a super complicated plan that resulted in the top 1% of apps paying more than before. Very much intentionally I assure you.

It's clear as day what the EU would want, Apple just think that they can have their own way as usual.

I look forward to the day one of the cellular network providers leak one of the secret contracts they have to sign before they are allowed to sell iPhones.

@Someone else: Yes, many believe that Apple should just give away all of their developer tools for free (oh wait - they do) and not charge anything for... anything, I guess. Never mind that those developer tools cost money to make, or that Apple only charges money for those tools if you try to make money using them.

Imagine this: One of the best food distributors decides to give away food for free. You can have all you want, and you can even give it away to others if you like. The only catch is, if you want to SELL any of it in any way, you have to pay an annual reseller license feed and give the food distributor a percentage of your sales income. Is that unreasonable?

If anyone thinks this is complicated, they have never signed a contract for use of IP based on a patent. Just gone through 10 iterations of a simple licensing agreement, on one patent, going back and forth on language related to royalties. Why? Because in any business, you have to define terms that you will be stuck with for the life of the patents.

@DJ It is no longer true that Apple only charges money if you try to make money.

Regarding your food analogy, I think it’s more like there’s a monoculture so that there are only two companies selling seeds, and even after you pay for the seeds and grow the crop on your own land, the seed company wants to tell you which dishes are allowed to be on the menu in your restaurant and wants a percentage of every check.

@Tony Yes, it is not complicated in an absolute sense, just compared with the status quo ante.

@Plume - Apple will absolutely walk away from the EU if it costs them more in fines + development costs to appease their ridiculous regulators and the ill defined “rules” of the DMA.

Well, it's your web site, so you can change the analogy if you want. :-)

But I think the original analogy is more apt. The developer tools are the food, and you can get them for free and do anything you want with them privately. You can even make things with them and give them to other people. But if you want to charge for what you make, you have to give part of your sales income back to the company. Which part of that is not true?

@DJ My understanding is that you cannot give iOS apps to people without a developer account, nor can you access all the APIs when developing/testing apps on your own device. On the Mac, you can do adhoc code signing, but without notarization many users will be unable to jump through the hoops to launch the app.

You're correct. There are some APIs that you can't use without a developer membership, and you would also need that membership to be able to share your apps with more than a few people. My developer account membership has been on auto-renew for many years, so I hadn't really thought about that.

So with the 'food' thing: the reseller membership fee would then be required if you want to share the food outside of your household, or sell to anyone.

I strongly wish commentators would stop with their disingenuous bullshit about intellectual property profiting. None of these disputes have anything to do with that.

> Imagine this: One of the best food distributors decides to give away food for free. You can have all you want, and you can even give it away to others if you like. The only catch is, if you want to SELL any of it in any way, you have to pay an annual reseller license feed and give the food distributor a percentage of your sales income. Is that unreasonable?

@DJ This analogy makes no sense. Apple never gave anyone “food.” In fact, the justification of the “Apple tax” (paying higher prices for the same hardware offered by PC manufacturers) was entirely justified by access to software (Apple’s software *and* access to third party software in the ecosystem).

Building great software for Apple helps drive their hardware sales. Plus Apple charges an annual membership fee and developers have to buy expensive Mac computers to be developers. We pay our way in; Apple hasn’t given anyone anything. It’s not like Apple gave me a cheese sandwich for free and I sold it to someone else for $5. It’s more like, I spent two years of my life writing thousands of lines of code to build an app for a general purpose computing platform.

BTW I actually have no problem with Apple taking a cut of sales when I sell an app in *their App Store* but if I’m selling the app directly from my website and Apple isn’t doing any marketing for me at all, the idea that they are entitled to a cut is bizarre. That’s like saying every website/webapp should pay Apple a fee for *all transactions* made in Safari because well…it’s their web browser (you got useless text documents without a web browser). If they could get away with this they probably would try it (but they know they can’t for “legacy reasons”).

A more accurate analogy would be:
1) Buy an expensive lawn mower.
2) Use the lawn mower to cut other people’s grass and charge money for it.
3) The company that makes the lawn mower demands a piece of the action for every cut!

The above analogy is not perfect but far closer to reality than suggesting that Apple was giving away food.

Truth is Apple’s cut on software sales is a cash cow for them and they are a public company. They are holding on to this revenue stream for as long as they can.

I also must mention that the EU regulators do suck major. They should have just demanded sideloading from the beginning and told Apple that when someone buys an app outside the App Store, they aren't entitled to shit.

No, Apple didn't give you food, they gave you their developer tools that you can use for free to develop applications for your own use. If you want to distribute those apps widely for free, you have to pay for a developer membership. And, as Michael Tsai pointed out above, there are a couple of APIs that you also need a membership to access. If you want to sell apps, then you have to pay the membership fee, and you also have to give Apple a percentage of your sales. Every developer knows this going in.

If the lawn mower company told you up front that you needed to give them a percentage of your lawn mowing sales, you would be expected to do so, even if you had spent 2 years developing your lawn mowing skills.

>No, Apple didn't give you food

Indeed this analogy made no sense.

>If the lawn mower company told you up front that you needed to give them a percentage of your lawn mowing sales, you would be expected to do so, even if you had spent 2 years developing your lawn mowing skills.

Well sure. But don't those terms sound absurd to you?

> If you want to sell apps, then you have to pay the membership fee, and you also have to give Apple a percentage of your sales. Every developer knows this going in.

Yes and that is how it is on iOS (the % of sales is not required for macOS). But developers can lobby for more. And if a government determines that Apple is operating a monopoly they will have to give more. We have two different points of view I guess. I believe that pushback from developers is entirely warranted and healthy (EU sucking aside) while you seem to believe that Apple can do no wrong and "it is what it is."

I think Apple is being too greedy and is going to take us all to a place where we don't really want to be (government overregulation). It would be better for **everyone** involved if they just did the right thing (gave in a little bit).

@DJ I’m also going to quibble with the “Every developer knows this going in” because Apple has changed the rules over time to claim percentages of more and more things—after telling people that they intended the App Store to be break-even.

@DJ, NeXT used gcc/g++ to make its operating system. Without it, there likely wouldn't be a MacOS X. We'd be running BeOS. Safari took WebKit, also developed by the Free Software community (KDE).

Secondly by making XCode zero-cost they killed the other dev tools, and any incentive to create new ones. That was anything but an improvement. XCode is a giant turd. I'd have been quite happy staying with gcc, gdb et al, but others would have been happy to use Metrowerks, etc.

As to using their APIs, in the past computer makers would literally beg you to bring your software to their platforms. Platforms would die based on whether killer apps were available for them. Hardware manufacturers would pay you to port your software to their platform if it was popular enough. If Apple doesn't want people to use their precious APIs, they have no value because they won't be used.

Apple's customers would be better off if Apple focused on making hardware and a bug-free minimal OS, and didn't foray into grabbing as much money as it can with its "services", just as GM's customers would be better off if GM made great cars instead of making its money off lending money. Sure, capitalism isn't about making customers happy, but making owners rich, but it is quite extraordinary how Apple has cultivated so many customers who proclaim their delight at being shafted. It's quite the trick. Kim Jong Un would be happy to learn it.

So this isn't giving out "free food". It is about killing all the alternatives, and becoming a monopoly. A Big Brother. The question is whether they shall prevail.

"Apple will absolutely walk away from the EU if it costs them more in fines + development costs to appease their ridiculous regulators and the ill defined “rules” of the DMA."

Apple makes roughly 100 billion US$ in annual revenue in the EU. What exactly do you think is going to be so expensive that it costs them a cool 100 billion?

Note that the fines aren't part of this equation, only the development costs, because if Apple actually follows the clearly defined rules, that we all know they are not following because the rules are very clear, they will not have to pay any fines.

But even if the fines were part of the equation, it's absurd to assume that the EU would fine Apple 100 billion.

And, again, every time Apple releases another one of these announcements, we can all read it and we can all immediately see that the EU is not going to be happy, because we all know exactly what the EU wants. Nothing here is confusing or unclear. We all know what Apple is doing, we can all see that they're acting in bad faith.

"not charge anything for... anything, I guess"

Nobody believes that.

"One of the best food distributors decides to give away food for free"

I hope you're trolling. This is honestly an untenable position, if you're actually serious.

The pro-Apple positions in this discussion are so flabbergastingly preposterous that it blows my mind that anyone can write these comments with a straight face.

"Apple will throw away 100 billion in revenue! Accessing an API is like stealing food! I don't understand what the EU even wants from Apple! Writing applications is IP theft!"

Do you guys hear yourselves?

We're not in the 90s anymore. You don't need to come up with these bonkers made-up stories to defend Apple's behavior. Mac Evangelists no longer exist. Apple will be just fine.

"If the lawn mower company told you up front that you needed to give them a percentage of your lawn mowing sales, you would be expected to do so, even if you had spent 2 years developing your lawn mowing skills."

Okay, lawnmower man. You've just made an analogy between Apple and a company that treats its customers like absolute shit. So far, I do agree with that analogy.

The difference is that in your hypothetical, the lawnmower company doesn't have a dominant market position, because if they had, I'd hope the EU would go after them, too. Free the lawnmowers. If I buy a fricken lawnmower, I own it, and I mow whatever lawn I want whenever I want without paying and additional fees.

"but others would have been happy to use Metrowerks"

Oh, the days of using dev tools that actually worked...

@Plume, @ObjC4Life: Well, the lawn mower analogy wasn't mine, I just extended it. :-) And I know that that extension is extreme. But if you agreed to such terms, you should be expected to abide by them.

I'm not saying that Apple is 100% right in this. I do believe that they have the right to set the terms of use for the tools that they provide, just as developers have the right to accept them or not, along with the right to lobby Apple to change them.

Governments should not be involved in these cases though. The companies are not monopolies. The EU is trying to go around that fact with the whole "gatekeepers" thing, and going after global revenue is a huge overreach.

Pour one out for Metrowerks though -- they were great.

For people attempting to justify why Apple is right to demand their cut from iOS software due to use of their APIs, can you answer the question of why Apple doesn't require this cut for software on macOS?

"I do believe that they have the right to set the terms of use for the tools that they provide"

I'm pretty sure you actually do not believe that. As an extreme counterexample, if the Spotify TOS said "Spotify gets to use your children as slave labor," you would (hopefully) argue that Spotify does not have the right to set those terms. Or maybe you're a libertarian, in which case you do believe that Spotify should be allowed to set those terms, and all hope is lost :-)

What I think you probably believe is that IN THIS CASE, Apple is not doing anything that the government should prevent them from doing. So what's the role of the government? It's to ensure that the free market works.

So does the free market work? We only have two companies that make up all of the mobile market. As a developer, if you want to create a product that people use on their mobile phones, you have no choice but to support those two products. In the context of mobile app stores, there is no real competition between them, because they both know that companies have no choice but to write apps for them. Neither of them has an incentive to improve the situation. And on iOS at least, there is no option other than to release your product through Apple's store.

It makes no sense to me to look at this situation and come to the conclusion that we should just let Apple set the terms that allow other companies to exist (or not). It's clearly harmful, both to the software market itself, and to customers in general. That's exactly the kind of situation where governments need to step in and ensure that the market actually works.

Like Michael says above, "We are so lucky that the Web was invented before the App Store."

@ ObjC4life, who popularized objective C? I believe it was NeXT/aka Apple. There’s probably a reason you love it so much and I’m guessing that reason rhymes with “Crapple”

@ Old Unix Guy, I think you’d agree that Apple used/basically took over WebKit and yes, they used bcc, but so what? Those IP were used (and contributed to) according to licenses. Apple follows the rules about consent and permissions. Some greedy developers (Epic, Spotify) don’t. Why? It’s not about fairness. It’s about $$$.

@ Stu, it’s possible to have multiple business models for different contexts.

Think of it this way: Mac dev tools were giveaways/loss-leaders because Apple needed Mac developers (and because it was probably un feasible without ubiquitous internet. Remember when OSX came on CDs for $129/release?)

Another example of giveaways: Costco or supermarkets have “loss-leaders” ($5 whole roast chicken, $1.50 hot dog and soda) to bring people in the door and they make their profit elsewhere (the 100 pack of Cheetos you didn’t plan on buying). But those chickens and hot dogs cost the retailer the same money as a chicken or hotdog elsewhere. They’re losing money to bring you in the door.

The iPhone doesn’t need developers as much as the Mac did. In contrast, the Mac was an underdog its entire existence. Still is.

The iPhone is the archetype of all modern smartphones and had plenty of customers and dev interest. In other words, it was way more popular than the Mac, and that’s worth a premium. Oh, and ubiquitous internet and new crypto schemes allowed licensing (thanks to Apple’s work developing, FairPlay to sell and DRM tracks on their music store)

Anyway…

Look, the way business agreements work is that someone puts something up for offer and may have contractual rules attached. You don’t have to accept it, but if you do, you gotta follow through on your agreement. If you don't like the strings, don’t sign the agreement.

The one caveat in the USA is monopolies (similar elsewhere) where societal needs take priority. And just a reminder: the DMA is not for consumers… it’s to buttress small European businesses. AND THAT’S FINE.

End users really don’t care about this inside baseball stuff.

Sometimes business and tech Is complicated and it’s our jobs to hide that from our users. And I’ll just remind folks, it used to be sooo easy. Like insanely easy.

So I see two arguments here:

1. Apple deserves something but not 30%
2. Apple deserves nothing (and the dev deserves everything)

Does that sum things up?

I’d love to know how folks justify #2 in the real world. Also, do you apply the same principles in the supermarket? At work? Getting a loan? In your families?

Hey devs. You made an incredibly popular app. You’ve made millions. Now give it to me for free.

And of course, most of us will never pay 30% - it’ll be 15% for us small developers.

Progressive taxation (boy, I hate that framing) is a good thing. The ones who benefit the most pay the most.

@Someone else It’s not really progressive taxation because the big companies who benefit the most mostly monetize through ads or non-IAP purchases (Uber, Amazon) or purchases that are outside of the app.

> @ ObjC4life, who popularized objective C? I believe it was NeXT/aka Apple. There’s probably a reason you love it so much and I’m guessing that reason rhymes with “Crapple”

I’m not sure my preference in a programming language is relevant to this particular discussion. Most of those objective-c guys guys are retired or dead and current Apple did a splendid job fucking that up with Swift when some dweebie manager let C++ compiler writers take over the entire software stack. Sure Objective-C 2.0 is probably the best programming language ever invented for *app development* but we’re getting off topic…

> So I see two arguments here:
>1. Apple deserves something but not 30%
>2. Apple deserves nothing (and the dev deserves everything)
>Does that sum things up?

I see a direct to customer sale (from my website) no different from transactions made in Safari or Google Chrome. If you think Apple or Google are entitled to % of sales made on the web because they created the browser than we’re just living on different planets.

And as Michael said the biggest companies pay Apple nothing like…Spotify Netflix Facebook Amazon etc. Well they do pay Apple something (they all buy Mac computers and join the developer program).

Do you think it would be reasonable for Netflix to give up 30% of their iOS revenue to adopt IAP on iOS? If yes you’re bananas. If no you just have an affinity for large corporations. And as far as these streaming apps are concerned they have to compete against Apple directly. It’s financially impossible for Amazon to give Apple a cut on ebook sales.

I see third party software more like an aftermarket accessory. App Store sales Apple ought to take a cut, otherwise no cut. 0, goose egg. This is the real world we’ve already been living in. The big companies are already doing it they just couldn’t provide a link in app to tell you how to sign up because of Apple’s dumb rules so everyone got a poor experience.

I don’t like government regulation and I don’t have a lot of good things to say about the EU but Apple can make it better for us all if they just acted different and stopped dicking around. They are *never* going to get 30% of Spotify streams and thinking they somehow will someday is only a pipe dream.

The EU and other governments aren’t just going to stop unless Trump takes Apple’s side in a second term but big tech doesn’t like Maga and vice versa.

@ Michael Tsai, sure it is.

Apples the one who chooses who to charge fees and who gets a free ride. “Loss leaders”, again. Apple’s chooses to subsidize (or, more realistically, not compete) for certain types of apps, and charge for others. It’s their licensing decision, just like how they charge small developers less.

This is similar to fed long term capital gains tax for stock sales being 0% if you earn less than ~60k/year, 15%, then 20% for above 500k/year (a Bush-era giveaway to the wealthy, but progressive taxation) https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/capital-gains-tax-rates#what-is-long-term-capital-gains-tax

Apple’s said that it doesn’t charge for certain classes of apps because it can’t track the delivery of services or physical goods, nor refund the payment if it wasn’t delivered, and I think that makes sense. That’s a potentially unlimited liability if someone orders a couch and then asks for a refund from Apple. If Apple could have charged for buying a movie ticket, tracked it through its use, I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs would have made them do it.

It can, however, track and refund things like subscriptions (and now, referrals with the outbound links entitlement) for use in-app. No surprise, but the EU asked and Apple delivered.

@ ObjC4Life, clearly like you’re in the 0% camp, and perhaps have a nice profitable niche. That’s great!. Does that match the current reality across the board, though?

You say that Apple deserves nothing other than hardware sales - not surprisingly an excellent deal for you, not so much for Apple. Agreements should only be entered when both parties are satisfied, yes?

Would you say Apple would satisfied with your arrangement or world view? and what’s your evidence that they would be? I see plenty that they wouldn’t be: the last 12 years since the App Store was created.

Also, Netflix doesn’t pay 30%
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prime-video-ios-app-store-cut-exempt-program-deal

Yeah, I think Netflix derives plenty of value from Apple software, ease of install, customer base. Did you know credit cards expect to pay about $80 to acquire a customer? Why? they make $120 in profit. People pay for those things. Netflix would. That’s why it’s worth something.

What they should pay is between Apple, Netflix/the streaming market, and now, regulators. (And American regulators don’t like price fixing)

Anyway, I’ll turn your spotlight back on you: you are, deliberately or not, carrying water for the big corporations to get free rides.

Also, speaking of the real world, you need to check your numbers.

Apple gets 0% of Spotify, because Spotify doesn’t use Apple subscriptions any more. https://subscriptioninsider.com/topics/payment-processing/spotify-stops-accepting-subscription-payments-via-apple

Before that, most subscriptions for Netflix, Spotify, etc were not via Apple. They were via the web.

A nice profitable niche. A great deal for them that they want to make even better, I’d say.

0% for non App Store sales yes. This is how it has been on Windows and Mac for decades (and still is). I’m in the US I can’t make iOS apps and distribute them outside the App Store btw.

> Yeah, I think Netflix derives plenty of value from Apple software, ease of install, customer base.

Sure they do. And Apple likewise gets value from Netflix. If there was no Netflix for iOS I think *a lot* of Apple customers would be very unhappy, to say the least. Same can be said for many other apps.

>Also, speaking of the real world, you need to check your numbers.

> Apple gets 0% of Spotify, because Spotify doesn’t use Apple subscriptions any more. https://subscriptioninsider.com/topics/payment-processing/spotify-stops-accepting-subscription-payments-via-apple

> Before that, most subscriptions for Netflix, Spotify, etc were not via Apple. They were via the web.

Right. And when you opened the app they couldn’t even tell you where to go to sign up because Apple wouldn’t let them. But they are never getting a cut of that revenue again and that was made clear a long time ago.
Instead of digging their heels in and creating regulatory messes all around the world maybe they should chill the fuck out a little bit.

Why do you think the maintainer of the web browser isn’t entitled to a cut of web sales processed in their browser? What makes the situation different in your estimation?

@Someone else Obviously, it’s Apple who’s deciding how they want to “monetize their IP.” I’m just saying that it’s not exactly progressive because it’s not a unified system. It’s the same with the U.S. tax code. Components of it are progressive, but lower income earners tend to have the types of income that are taxed at higher rates. Apple shareholder Warren Buffett famously pays almost entirely capital gains taxes. And even those can be avoided, e.g. via portfolio loans.

Steve Jobs initially said that Apple didn’t intend to make money with the App Store. Of course, now that they are they won’t be satisfied with less.

The credit card business is like the App Store business in that it’s duopoly that provides an essential service. You can look at it as vendors deriving lots of value from being able to accept credit cards or them not really having a choice. If Visa were charging the percent that Apple does, economists would say that the monopoly rent was a deadweight loss. If I’m using my Visa card at Walmart, reducing Visa’s fee from 20% to 2% is not “giving Walmart a free ride”; the fees are ultimately paid by Walmart’s customers and the prices would adjust.

If you can't defend Apple without making up ridiculous analogies, it's because plainly stating what Apple are doing makes them sound like assholes

@DJ The developer tools aren't really free though. It's pretty hard to sell an app with these free tools, at least on iOS, without a. buying Apple hardware to make the app and b. Paying Apple a yearly developer fee. The difference was pre iPhone (gee, notice how everything bad comes back to this shit mobile platform strategy), you could literally use any development environment that was compatible with the Mac to put out software. As for distribution, you could sell it yourself, you could sell in brick and mortar stores, you could sell it on the web, you could charge money up front, you could charge money after the fact as shareware, you could make it freeware, but it was always up to the developer. Apple provided the underlying platform, but didn't attempt to extract profits from any and every interaction with it.

If Apple wants to sell Xcode for $100 a year plus the registration fee, then go for it! If they want to offer a storefront with app hosting and payment processing, then go for it! What we are all saying, it shouldn't be required. Apple isn't competing, they are rent collecting. And a stupidly large percentage of Apple's vaunted services revenue was apparently tied up in Google paying Apple for Google search to be pre installed, which is all pure profit. Which I find personally amusing as an aside. So again, I cast a jaundiced eye at any platform steward who closes formerly open categories of systems and then changes the rules capriciously and arbitrarily to punish dissent and to extract more revenue at each and every turn.

Even the game consoles have better partner/developer programs than Apple does. Let's stew on that for a while. Dear goodness!

@Someone else
We all remember when people could develop for Apple platforms without paying them a penny right? Everything we said Microsoft was and we should fight against and before that IBM, yeah, Apple is that and a whole lot more. And even if you don't pay for the tools to develop software, don't you have to buy Apple hardware to develop software for the platforms and pay an annual developer fee? It's not like you can literally use an alternative if you want to opt out. For iOS, you literally have to use their tools because Apple shut the platform down.

Who cheers for this? Like, How does it make your life better for Apple to be a terrible partner and steward of the platform? What's the payoff here? Stock investment? Apple used to have an open platform, then they had a closed platform with zero third party developers (iOS). Because it was untenable to have a smart phone with no apps (which even feature phones and some "dumb" phones had support for already mind you), they created a closed developer loop and honestly, there hand was forced with people rooting their iOS devices and adding third party software that way.

The idea that Apple whole cloth generates all these referrals is a little rich. What happens is people have a computing device, often a cell phone, then they find out about a service to use, not generally through the app store mind you. And because of years of conditioning users to use apps vs just going to the website they download the app and sign up through it. Meaning, it wasn't Apple who brought the customer so much as the customer happened to use the app for signup. Do we really think all these people trying to sign up for services in app haven't heard of the service before?

Also, notice services that don't allow signups in-app are doing quite well without the Apple assistance of referring users.

As another poster mentioned, Apple used to charge $129 per OS update. So maybe you could develop on the Mac for free, but you still had those startup costs to do so, including buying the Mac hardware for several thousand dollars. Plus, the Mac is from a different time, pre-App Store and pre-web. I'm guessing if the web and the idea of app stores had been established back in the pre-desktop era, then things would be different for the Mac and Windows desktop software markets. (Yeah, yeah, not sure how that would have happened either, but it's just a thought exercise.)

So, yeah, if you are starting completely from scratch, without a Mac of your own, and you want to develop apps for iOS, then standing up that developer environment for yourself, even if you only want to develop for yourself, would not be free. You would need to buy a Mac to develop on, and an iPhone (et al) to develop for.

@ Kristoffer, haha. Capitalist as assholes, for sure!

The free market actually sucks at the edges and monopolies/duopolies can suck for some parties. But really, 15-30% is the going rate for most closed ecosystems as seen on video game consoles, steam, etc.

I’d say that folks - devs and consumers and society (not that it’s all good) - get far more for its 15-30% from Apple than from Google, Xbox, PlayStation, steam, etc.

@ Michael Tsai, yes, uneven progressive taxation. Poor people pay regressive sales taxes, property owners get subsidies on their properties, especially in California (warran buffet’s mansion is prop 13’d : locked in property taxes based on last-sale price so he pays a laughable amount in property taxes. Most rich people are considerable dead weight.)

So yeah, some people/companies are free-riding on the effort of others. In America, the world, and yes, in the dev space. Good for them, I guess? I don’t feel the need to cheer them on, though. Should Netflix and Spotify pay more than basically 0%? Probably! Paying less than 0% (free distribution, dev tools, access to customers, new tech)? Wow, that’s pushing it.

@Someone Else: "so what? it's all about the $$$"

So Apple would have gone bankrupt. Microsoft would have taken 100% of the pie. Indeed, it's only because Microsoft didn't want to appear to the government to be a monopolist that they helped Steve Jobs resurrect the Mac, what with Word, Internet Explorer, etc. Apple doesn't seem to have any such compunctions despite a Congressional investigation which concluded they were.

I spoke to a friend recently. Both of us are people who would usually have been very interested in developing for the "Vision Pro"... but neither of us is, so much so that neither of us has even bothered to try it out in an Apple store. Why? Because of Apple's behavior. So the Vision Pro is celebrating its 2500'th app, none of which actually does anything worth buying such a device for. I would not be surprised if it ends up being a flop.

So yes, it isn't "inside baseball". It affects normal customers. But hey, why don't you continue feeling good about yourself railing against "greedy devs" "stealing Apple's IP", when Apple has benefited from everyone else's contributions too, and has not always paid for them.

And with that, I am going to remind myself to stop feeding trolls.

Glad to see that it's not just devs who Apple wants to shaft for the "use of their IP".

Because Apple's IP is so very key to a travel vlogger making videos about life in remote Uzbekistan on a GoPro camera.

"But think of Apple's IP!", the new "But think of the children!"

I think it's perfectly fine for Apple to charge 30% or whatever they can get away with for sales on their own platform.

I don't think it's okay to disallow alternatives and trying to extract rent from those alternatives now that they are forced upon them.

Panic take 25% (iirc) for every game sold through their Playdate Catalouge. But you can also sell them on itch.io or open your own store, even open a market stand with games on USB that people side load through the user friendly web interface that Panic provides. And you can do that all in parallel.

And guess what, people still want to sell through the Catalouge.

There is no need to defend Apples assholery. There are alternatives and I've yet to hear a compelling argument against the alternatives. (Not even the dreamed up "Imagine you are a pet groomer.." ones)

Analogies are meant to help with understanding, but sometimes people are so entrenched in their positions that even the most apt analogy won't help.

@Kristoffer is right - Apple is free to charge what they want. "Whatever the market will bear", as the saying goes. They're also free to make the rules around their platform. The market, smartphone app developers in this case, is free to push back on all of that (pricing, fees, rules, etc.), including running to their governments for help. Government help is a slippery slope though.

Developers (just like consumers) are also free to switch platforms. I started out writing BASIC on a PDP-11 running RSTS/E, so I've had my share of platform switches.

@DJ
PDP-11 eh? That's very cool.

Yeah, the DEC PDP-11/34 had 256K of memory. 128K was for the RSTS/E operating system, leaving 128K for users. Each user login got 16K, so once you got past 8 users logged in, the system would start swapping user sessions in and out from disk. All that modern computing back then cost about $250,000, and that system was at the lower end of the product line.