“Swiney” is an epic ass… I wouldn’t trust Epic games with my payments… especially if it is a subscription buried in layers of foo to end or pause it. One place to find my subscriptions… it’s called the App Store.
And this is based on what information and experience?
The fact that they a shady and willing to break agreements and start a false war to undermine a company that helped them grow. They can not be trusted. The reason they want an outside store is to avoid Apple rules which are in place to protect us from shady characters like them.
Seriously? Rouge Amoeba, who has been a Mac developer for decades, can't be trusted with private API access?
Apple are a bunch of cowards hiding behind policy - that they created! Why does everyone have to be treated the same? Answer: they don't. But it's far easier to treat everyone the same. No critical thought required - just numbly point to the policy, claim your hands are tied and then conveniently ignore the fact that you made the policy that is tying your hands in the first place.
I only picked this part of your tirade of a comment, because it seems like it is the core of it. That said, I am not sure where to start with this. So, I will begin with where my strengths are, and that is backend programming.
I develop APIs and backend processes for a living, and I can tell you with unequivocal certainty that having a set core of rules that all of your users of APIs have to abide by is CRITICAL to making sure that people who develop for your platform do so in the way that you intended. Those policies are the very foundation that make a secure platform that works not just for the developers but also for the users who use it. That is why they have those policies. Yes, some people want side-loading apps. That doesn't make it the correct solution. The moment a bad actor comes in and does something, who do you think the public (the same public demanding for side-loading apps) will blame? That's right, the people who made the APIs in the first place (that would be Apple).
So while it is fun to complain about how Apple doesn't trust "respected developers" or they are "limiting my choice" or whatever nonsense you want to spew out next; the fact of the matter is that they created an environment that is secure, user-centric, and accessible as long as you are willing to play by the rules. Yes, those rules are malleable and can change; but as they are written right now, those are the rules.
Sweeny is indeed an Epic ass (nice!). He is also mostly correct. I was listening to the guys on the Apple Insider podcast talk about this and it suddenly dawned on me - the core issue here is trust - or a lack of.
Apple treats every developer as if they are hostile.
Seriously? Rouge Amoeba, who has been a Mac developer for decades, can't be trusted with private API access?
Apple are a bunch of cowards hiding behind policy - that they created! Why does everyone have to be treated the same? Answer: they don't. But it's far easier to treat everyone the same. No critical thought required - just numbly point to the policy, claim your hands are tied and then conveniently ignore the fact that you made the policy that is tying your hands in the first place.
Apple has worked with a lot of companies and been caught by surprise at some of the things they have been doing. A lot of companies run on advertising and while they have a nice flashy and friendly brand, they are in the business of invading people's privacy for profit. A bunch of developers were embedding Flurry analytics APIs into their apps for profiling without asking users:
A company like Rogue Amoeba could be ok for years and then decide their business model isn't working and try something underhanded to survive. Just look at what Epic is doing now, trusted for years in a close partnership and Tim Sweeney himself apparently developed significant parts of Unreal Engine, which means he likely worked closely with Apple personally:
"In August 2005, Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, revealed that Unreal Engine 4 had been in development for two years. "People don't realise this but we're already two years into development of Unreal Engine 4. It certainly doesn't have a full team yet, it's just one guy and you can probably guess who that guy is," he told C&VG. Speaking in an interview in early 2008, Sweeney stated that he was basically the only person working on the engine, though he affirmed his research and development department would start to expand later that year, designing the engine in parallel with the efforts by the UE3 team."
Apple has been at this game a long time and they know how companies work. In business, you can't trust anyone completely. Some more than others sure but never anyone completely. There can even be people inside a larger trusted company that decides to do something bad. If they give some developers preferential treatment, they get called up for anti-competitive behavior.
Apple made a deliberate decision from the beginning to make a closed, protected, vetted ecosystem that operates on a trust no-one policy and they built from nothing the worlds biggest, most profitable, most user-friendly, most secure App Store in the world with over a billion users that has allowed small-time developers the opportunity to earn billions of dollars. And people just want to trash it for their own gain and so they can undermine all the privacy protections that Apple has spent years putting in place.
Tim Sweeney has the audacity to suggest that Apple should just fix issues with an open store policy. They already fixed the issues pre-emptively by making a closed store policy. They don't need to change it just for him and do a significant amount of extra work, all so that every single customer on the App Store can then avoid paying Apple a cent. It's the most absurd expectation - let us do what we want, trample all over your user protections, you lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue, put every single user's privacy, security and most intimate content at risk and if you have a problem, you just spend a lot of money and effort to fix it, all while they build profitable stores. This is all about companies trying to get direct control over customers and direct access to their data and if they get it, many of them will abuse it as they've done elsewhere.
“Swiney” is an epic ass… I wouldn’t trust Epic games with my payments… especially if it is a subscription buried in layers of foo to end or pause it. One place to find my subscriptions… it’s called the App Store.
And this is based on what information and experience?
The fact that they a shady and willing to break agreements and start a false war to undermine a company that helped them grow. They can not be trusted. The reason they want an outside store is to avoid Apple rules which are in place to protect us from shady characters like them.
Epic is hardly dependent on Apple. They make much, much more money outside the App Store. Apple is also very shady - not less than Epic. Whatever “side” we are on, these are two corporations that should be be measured equally. You are labeling one as “shady” without a basis, while exonerating another.
“Swiney” is an epic ass… I wouldn’t trust Epic games with my payments… especially if it is a subscription buried in layers of foo to end or pause it. One place to find my subscriptions… it’s called the App Store.
And this is based on what information and experience?
The fact that they a shady and willing to break agreements and start a false war to undermine a company that helped them grow. They can not be trusted. The reason they want an outside store is to avoid Apple rules which are in place to protect us from shady characters like them.
Epic is hardly dependent on Apple. They make much, much more money outside the App Store. Apple is also very shady - not less than Epic. Whatever “side” we are on, these are two corporations that should be be measured equally. You are labeling one as “shady” without a basis, while exonerating another.
Maybe not now, but about 10 years ago Epic was depending on Apple to showcase their technology during Steve’s keynotes. Maybe he was hoping to pull a Bungie and get handed a boatload of cash at that time by Microsoft.
One of the reasons why Epic might have a shady label is how for about 10 years they never withdrew their support of Apple and the app store while having this so called issue of Apple taking 30%. They have accused Apple of harming them when in reality, as the Judge explained, they harmed themselves, by violating their agreement with Apple and subsequently getting kicked off the App Store. When Judge Gonzalez Rogers advised Epic to revert Fortnite to its previous legal version and get restored back into the App Store while the case continues, Epic declined.
Seems like Epic would rather harm it’s fans who are Apple users than make money from them during the trial.
Love it! That one guy can take on a two trillion company and may very well win talks to all that is great about America. Embodies the whole Think Different ethic that Apple ironically pioneered. Even if he loses the court case, he has won already. Congess is going to force Apple (along with their peers like FaceBook and Google) to change in some ways.
No matter what our thoughts about Epic are, it’s clear that Apple’s policies on the App Store need some amount of tweaking.
30%, or even 15% is fairly high - and Apple surely can’t make the case that it needs the money to sustain or survive. They need to figure out a way in which they make money from free apps like Banks, etc - rather than putting higher burden on other apps. If they can’t charge money from Wells Fargo, that’s not Epic’s problem, is it?
But this isn’t just about the 30% cut. It is important that Apple gets its wings clipped in other ways as well. How fair is it that Apple Music gets unfair access to App Store which Spotify doesn’t get? Either Apple shouldn’t compete with Spotify, or it must be broken up into separate companies- is that so hard to understand?
In general, it is about time that Apple gets a few raps on its knuckles. They are actually hurting themselves with their “we know what’s best for you” approach. Exorbitant lightning cables that don’t last a few months, wimpy batteries that don’t last half a day of serious use, forcing people out of TouchID in to FaceID, and such other practices are customer unfriendly. It’s not like Apple sells the base iPhone as a loss leader - what’s the logic of the premium they charge for extra flash capacity? Again, sheer market bullying. We can rip you off, and we will.
Apple shareholders love these measures - obviously - because it increases profits. But no company can sustain customer unfriendly practices forever. It will come to bite them someday.
A few raps on Apple’s knuckles and a serious dip in AAPL shares caused by these raps, will do the company and its shareholders a good service in long term. It will make the company truly consumer friendly - rather than claim to be consumer friendly in a sham way, the way it is today.
No matter what our thoughts about Epic are, it’s clear that Apple’s policies on the App Store need some amount of tweaking.
30%, or even 15% is fairly high - and Apple surely can’t make the case that it needs the money to sustain or survive.
30% can be a high fee depending on how the app is made. If it's an app that's made by an individual at low cost, the margin can be close to 100%. If it's made by a company with thousands of employees, it has a significant cost. The game Genshin Impact for example has hundreds of millions in investment:
"president of MiHoYo, revealed that so far $100 million has been invested in the development of Genshin Impact. If that amount seems impressive to you (and it should be, as we're talking about a mobile game), what will you say when you learn the amount of money the studio intends to spend on the game's further development? We're talking about $200 million per year to ensure a steady stream of new content."
The studio has 700 people working on the game and 2400 employees overall.
But then the game reportedly made over $1b in revenue since launch and the company noted $800m revenue last year so they make significant margins even with significant investment:
A fee that would be fairer on average would be to assume a typical app costs are non-zero and around 30-40% margin after development and marketing. Then take 30% of that assumed profit, which would be 0.3 x (0.3-0.4) = 9-12%. A 12% margin is used quite commonly now. But like I say, some companies have much higher margins. A one-size-fits-all fee across millions of apps is always going to be fairer to some than others but they have to try to treat everyone the same or they get called anti-competitive.
A fee around 12% is also easier to absorb. If a developer wants to end up with $4.99, they'd set the price at 100/88 x 4.99 = $5.67 (or rounded to $5.99).
They need to figure out a way in which they make money from free apps like Banks, etc - rather than putting higher burden on other apps. If they can’t charge money from Wells Fargo, that’s not Epic’s problem, is it?
But this isn’t just about the 30% cut. It is important that Apple gets its wings clipped in other ways as well. How fair is it that Apple Music gets unfair access to App Store which Spotify doesn’t get? Either Apple shouldn’t compete with Spotify, or it must be broken up into separate companies- is that so hard to understand?
I'm not seeing how breaking Apple into separate companies would fix the issue with music, Apple would still get the 15% from that separate company and would be allowed to invest in it.
There could be a regulation that all of a platform owner's apps and services have to be charged the same percentage as others and that money has to be used to reduce the fees for other users of the store. So Apple Music would have to take 15% of their revenue and use it to reduce the fees for everyone else on the store. It wouldn't matter that it went to music companies, it would ensure that Apple Music couldn't offer better prices than competing music providers. But then that would be the same for Amazon and Walmart where it doesn't make much sense - it's their store and the fee would only be because they allowed others to profit from using their store, they could just as easily not stock other products.
They don't need to find ways to charge banks, these are example of companies that would be performing their services regardless. People would just use the web to do the transaction. There would be no reason to buy an in-app purchase for Fortnite without a platform to use it on so the purchase is inherently dependent on the platform. For video, music, games, the consumption is on the device. With Amazon purchases, banks, retail purchases, taxis, the device is just an intermediate. There will always be some grey areas but it's a pretty clear distinction overall - if a business directly profits from something that inherently depends on the platform, the platform owner should profit from it and the complainants like Epic feel the same way with their own products, they just don't like it being applied back to them.
This is a fight for control over the customer and make no mistake, this is something that companies like Tencent want more than anything. Their entire business is based on this and they run one of the most popular app stores in China with nearly 200m monthly users:
Tencent wants significant control over iOS users at least in China the same way they do with Android. This is why these companies are sometimes regarded as threats to national security as they have the ability to divert huge amounts of revenue and customer data into the control of companies based in China.
Comments
I develop APIs and backend processes for a living, and I can tell you with unequivocal certainty that having a set core of rules that all of your users of APIs have to abide by is CRITICAL to making sure that people who develop for your platform do so in the way that you intended. Those policies are the very foundation that make a secure platform that works not just for the developers but also for the users who use it. That is why they have those policies. Yes, some people want side-loading apps. That doesn't make it the correct solution. The moment a bad actor comes in and does something, who do you think the public (the same public demanding for side-loading apps) will blame? That's right, the people who made the APIs in the first place (that would be Apple).
So while it is fun to complain about how Apple doesn't trust "respected developers" or they are "limiting my choice" or whatever nonsense you want to spew out next; the fact of the matter is that they created an environment that is secure, user-centric, and accessible as long as you are willing to play by the rules. Yes, those rules are malleable and can change; but as they are written right now, those are the rules.
A company like Rogue Amoeba could be ok for years and then decide their business model isn't working and try something underhanded to survive. Just look at what Epic is doing now, trusted for years in a close partnership and Tim Sweeney himself apparently developed significant parts of Unreal Engine, which means he likely worked closely with Apple personally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine#Unreal_Engine_4
"In August 2005, Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, revealed that Unreal Engine 4 had been in development for two years. "People don't realise this but we're already two years into development of Unreal Engine 4. It certainly doesn't have a full team yet, it's just one guy and you can probably guess who that guy is," he told C&VG. Speaking in an interview in early 2008, Sweeney stated that he was basically the only person working on the engine, though he affirmed his research and development department would start to expand later that year, designing the engine in parallel with the efforts by the UE3 team."
Apple has been at this game a long time and they know how companies work. In business, you can't trust anyone completely. Some more than others sure but never anyone completely. There can even be people inside a larger trusted company that decides to do something bad. If they give some developers preferential treatment, they get called up for anti-competitive behavior.
Apple made a deliberate decision from the beginning to make a closed, protected, vetted ecosystem that operates on a trust no-one policy and they built from nothing the worlds biggest, most profitable, most user-friendly, most secure App Store in the world with over a billion users that has allowed small-time developers the opportunity to earn billions of dollars. And people just want to trash it for their own gain and so they can undermine all the privacy protections that Apple has spent years putting in place.
Tim Sweeney has the audacity to suggest that Apple should just fix issues with an open store policy. They already fixed the issues pre-emptively by making a closed store policy. They don't need to change it just for him and do a significant amount of extra work, all so that every single customer on the App Store can then avoid paying Apple a cent. It's the most absurd expectation - let us do what we want, trample all over your user protections, you lose tens of billions of dollars in revenue, put every single user's privacy, security and most intimate content at risk and if you have a problem, you just spend a lot of money and effort to fix it, all while they build profitable stores. This is all about companies trying to get direct control over customers and direct access to their data and if they get it, many of them will abuse it as they've done elsewhere.
30%, or even 15% is fairly high - and Apple surely can’t make the case that it needs the money to sustain or survive. They need to figure out a way in which they make money from free apps like Banks, etc - rather than putting higher burden on other apps. If they can’t charge money from Wells Fargo, that’s not Epic’s problem, is it?
But this isn’t just about the 30% cut. It is important that Apple gets its wings clipped in other ways as well. How fair is it that Apple Music gets unfair access to App Store which Spotify doesn’t get? Either Apple shouldn’t compete with Spotify, or it must be broken up into separate companies- is that so hard to understand?
In general, it is about time that Apple gets a few raps on its knuckles. They are actually hurting themselves with their “we know what’s best for you” approach. Exorbitant lightning cables that don’t last a few months, wimpy batteries that don’t last half a day of serious use, forcing people out of TouchID in to FaceID, and such other practices are customer unfriendly. It’s not like Apple sells the base iPhone as a loss leader - what’s the logic of the premium they charge for extra flash capacity? Again, sheer market bullying. We can rip you off, and we will.
Apple shareholders love these measures - obviously - because it increases profits. But no company can sustain customer unfriendly practices forever. It will come to bite them someday.
A few raps on Apple’s knuckles and a serious dip in AAPL shares caused by these raps, will do the company and its shareholders a good service in long term. It will make the company truly consumer friendly - rather than claim to be consumer friendly in a sham way, the way it is today.
https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/genshin-impact-staggering-costs-of-a-live-service-game/ze2dfb
"president of MiHoYo, revealed that so far $100 million has been invested in the development of Genshin Impact. If that amount seems impressive to you (and it should be, as we're talking about a mobile game), what will you say when you learn the amount of money the studio intends to spend on the game's further development? We're talking about $200 million per year to ensure a steady stream of new content."
The studio has 700 people working on the game and 2400 employees overall.
But then the game reportedly made over $1b in revenue since launch and the company noted $800m revenue last year so they make significant margins even with significant investment:
https://gameworldobserver.com/2021/03/01/mihoyo-earned-almost-800-million-last-year-thanks-genshin-impact-success
A fee that would be fairer on average would be to assume a typical app costs are non-zero and around 30-40% margin after development and marketing. Then take 30% of that assumed profit, which would be 0.3 x (0.3-0.4) = 9-12%. A 12% margin is used quite commonly now. But like I say, some companies have much higher margins. A one-size-fits-all fee across millions of apps is always going to be fairer to some than others but they have to try to treat everyone the same or they get called anti-competitive.
A fee around 12% is also easier to absorb. If a developer wants to end up with $4.99, they'd set the price at 100/88 x 4.99 = $5.67 (or rounded to $5.99).
I'm not seeing how breaking Apple into separate companies would fix the issue with music, Apple would still get the 15% from that separate company and would be allowed to invest in it.
There could be a regulation that all of a platform owner's apps and services have to be charged the same percentage as others and that money has to be used to reduce the fees for other users of the store. So Apple Music would have to take 15% of their revenue and use it to reduce the fees for everyone else on the store. It wouldn't matter that it went to music companies, it would ensure that Apple Music couldn't offer better prices than competing music providers. But then that would be the same for Amazon and Walmart where it doesn't make much sense - it's their store and the fee would only be because they allowed others to profit from using their store, they could just as easily not stock other products.
They don't need to find ways to charge banks, these are example of companies that would be performing their services regardless. People would just use the web to do the transaction. There would be no reason to buy an in-app purchase for Fortnite without a platform to use it on so the purchase is inherently dependent on the platform. For video, music, games, the consumption is on the device. With Amazon purchases, banks, retail purchases, taxis, the device is just an intermediate. There will always be some grey areas but it's a pretty clear distinction overall - if a business directly profits from something that inherently depends on the platform, the platform owner should profit from it and the complainants like Epic feel the same way with their own products, they just don't like it being applied back to them.
This is a fight for control over the customer and make no mistake, this is something that companies like Tencent want more than anything. Their entire business is based on this and they run one of the most popular app stores in China with nearly 200m monthly users:
https://android.myapp.com
Tencent wants significant control over iOS users at least in China the same way they do with Android. This is why these companies are sometimes regarded as threats to national security as they have the ability to divert huge amounts of revenue and customer data into the control of companies based in China.