cropr
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Dutch antitrust regulators launch probe into Apple Pay
sflocal said:This sounds like a similar situation that went on in Australia when certain banks filed a lawsuit demanding NFC access. They lost and eventually allowed ApplePay.This all comes down to who has control of the end-user's information. The banks want to use their own banking apps for NFC so they could harvest all our personal information and transaction history, sell it to the highest advertising bidder, and figure out ways to extract more from us.ApplePay on the other hand is secure, and I can trust Apple in making sure that the security between phone and receiver is hardened. Sure, Apple gets a cut of transaction fees from the bank, but what the banks aren't advertising the the amount of money saved due to not having issues with fraudulent transactions.2019 figures say that the banking industry lost $27.85B dollars worldwide due to credit card fraud. I would think ApplePay has saved quite for banks.I have zero faith in banks to keep my info private and secure. I as a consumer am happy that Apple keeps NFC locked out. It's their hardware/software package, their widget. Screw the banks. They either offer their services via ApplePay, or they don't get my business.Until last year I was working as a fraud consultant for a bank who supported Apple Pay. You may be surprised but 35% of all credit transfer fraud came from Apple Pay transfers. Users of Apple Pay are so convinced that Apple Pay is 100% secure, that they are becoming negligent to e.g. phishing attacks or CEO fraud. Just a reminder, the big chunk of fraud is human error related.Apple Pay is based on the chip card EMV standard. It shares the same security level as a chip card based transaction. In the Netherlands almost 100% of the credit card transactions are chip cards based, so Apple Pay does not offer an advantage in terms of security to a normal credit card payment. In your country the situation might be different. This could be the reason you have zero faith in banks.If I have to choose between Apple and my bank in terms of faith, I have a personal relationship with my bank manager and I can call him any time for a face to face meeting. I have no direct access to an Apple representative, so the choice is quickly made. This does not mean I can fully trust my bank (I am not that stupid).Banks want to offer additional secure services on top of a plain credit transfer. That is why the banks are requesting access to the NFC chip. As long as Apple is not granting access to the NFC chip, the iOS user cannot use these additional services in a optimal way. At the bank I worked for, the Android version of the banking app is much more advanced than the iOS version and the only reason is that Apple does not allow the bank to use the NFC chip
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Epic skirts Apple's 30% commission fee by implementing 'direct' payments
mjtomlin said:"Thousands of apps on the App Store approved by Apple accept direct payments, including commonly used apps like Amazon, Grubhub, Nike SNKRS, Best Buy, DoorDash, Fandango, McDonald's, Uber, Lyft, and StubHub. We think all developers should be free to support direct payments in all apps."
Is that what you think? Haha. These types of developers are nothing more than parasites.
Look, I get it and think Apple needs to do something about how the App Store is run, but these developers who want what amounts to a free ride are just being greedy and stupid. It is App Store revenue that allows Apple to give away free OS upgrades, which in turn allows Apple to push the platform (and developers) forward.
Maybe Apple should create tiered fees for their Developer Program?
$99/year to develop apps sold through the App Store - Apple gets their 30% cut. Basically the same as it is now.
$999,999/year to develop apps sold via outside payment system - Apple gets nothing extra.
Some of these larger developers could easily cover a million a year. And smaller developers can still start with a hundred dollar fee and if/when their app takes off, switch to the higher tier.I am an app developer, and you have absolutely no clue whatsoever about the business of apps. You are blinded completely by the few big ones like Supercell (Clash of Clans, ...). If Apple would $1M for to develop, there would no App store, Only major companies like Google, Facebook, ... would be willing to invest. Statistics show that 99% of the apps are loss making. The big profits are made by a few very profitable app companies.Just 3 examples of the real app business world:- Of the 11 apps that I put on the App Store, 7 are loss making, 2 are about break even and 1 is making a nice profit. This last app is profitable because it is multi-platform and because I can avoid the 30% Apple tax by charging the customer directly.
- If I would only make a iOS version of my apps, all my apps would be loss making. Developing an app simultaneously for iOS, Android and Web costs roughly 40% more than making it for iOS only, but the revenues are more than double. So the "fact" that Apple is offering me the market I was dreaming of, is a fake fact
- One of my colleague app business owners had spent 40.000 Euro in developing a new app, when Apple announced a change in its app developing guidelines. His app could no longer pass the approval and he went broke 3 months later. This is the business reality that you fail to understand.
Like in any other business, an app business owner want to cut costs wherever possible. This has nothing to do with greediness or stupidity but with normal business practice.I don't mind to pay a commission to any business partner as long as that partner provides the right value for the commission. Like all developers have discovered, the 30% cut Apple is imposing, does not provide the value it promises. A survey among my paying customers revealed that none of them discovered the apps via the App Store, they did it via the direct marketing campaign I launch and paid. Which basically means that Apple has just become a secure payment processor. The market price of a secure payment processor is 2.7% and not 30%. No wonder app developers try to avoid the Apple tax,.
- Of the 11 apps that I put on the App Store, 7 are loss making, 2 are about break even and 1 is making a nice profit. This last app is profitable because it is multi-platform and because I can avoid the 30% Apple tax by charging the customer directly.
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Apple explains why Microsoft xCloud won't be coming to the iPhone
Rayz2016 said:
The Hulu app isn’t streamed. The Hulu content is.Beats said:Microsoft thought they would get special treatment. They'll come along eventually. Android users hate paying for things and most knockoff devices have terrible quality screens and crap performance(Yes AI smart asses, I KNOW this is cloud computing, not the point).
Admittedly I missed this line before posting the above:
"App Store guidelines state that an app can't rely on streaming from the cloud."
What about video like Hulu?I’m with Apple here, but I’m not sure how this would work. We can’t have the game devs being charged once by Apple and then charged again by Microsoft. They’ll have to split the one charge between them.A video streaming app like Netflix is an app that get its content (the movie) form a cloud server. The app has buttons to control the content (change movie, rewind, forward, ...)A cloud gaming app like Microsoft xCloud is an app that get its content (the game content) from a cloud server. The app has buttons to control the content (move, shoot, ...)I am not a Microsoft fan, and the X-Box is also a closed gaming system, but Microsoft has a point. The difference of treatment in the App Store between Netflix and Microsoft xCloud is just pathetic.What is Netflix or another provider, comes with interactive movies, where 2 or more scenarios are streamed depending on user input. The difference between video streaming and gaming will become more blurry
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Fourth macOS Big Sur beta adds support for 4K YouTube playback in Safari
Your statement about VP9 is incorrect. VP9 is an open source, royalty free encoding/decoding library, so by definition it is not proprietary. Google has contributed a lot to the code , but VP9 is not owned by Google. H.265 is a commercial development, requiring royalty payments when used.lkrupp said:And people call Apple a bully. Google comes up with its own, proprietary codec and then refuses to support the industry standard H.265, finally bullying Apple into using it. Scratch your ass, Google.
Apple is a member of the consortium of H265 but is not involved in the VP9 development. This explains why Apple is promoting H265 and why it has been reluctant to support VP9.While H.264 is de facto the standard for encoding HDTV , it remains to be seen if H265 can make the same claim for 4K. The fact that Apple now include support for VP9, while Youtube is not including support for H.265, shows rather the opposite.
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Epic Games CEO criticizes Apple's App Store policies in interview
DAalseth said:
Oh yes I do.TheNubi said:DAalseth said:"If every developer could accept their own payments and avoid the 30% tax by Apple and Google we could pass the savings along to all our consumers and players would get a better deal on items."
A: This ignores the cost to the developers of setting up and running their own stores.
B: No they wouldn't "pass the savings along". they'd pocket it.
This is totally self serving and disingenuous statement by Sweeney.B. You don’t know that. No one has had an opportunity to see if it would happen or not. Even if they pocket the difference it won’t make much difference to the user.
First if each developer absorbed the overhead of setting up their own store it would cost at least as much if not more. Second if they went with another company to provide the storefront service, the cost would be roughly the same. Lastly if by some miracle Apple or someone else offered a digital storefront for free with no % cut for the cost, the developers would simply pocket the difference. Most developers work on thin margins and an extra 30% would be better plowed back into the business rather than dropping prices for likely no increase in sales.
The 30% would NEVER go back to the customers.As an app developer I must say that your claims are simply not true. I make apps for iOS and Android, hosted in the App Store and Play Store respectively and I make web apps where I manage the hosting and secure payments myself. For the web app, the cost of hosting is about 0.2% of the turn over of the web app and the cost of the secure payment is about 2.75%.If Apple would allow to use the same payment processor I use for the web app, I would have savings on 3 fronts: the cut of 30% would drop significantly, during development I would only need to integrate with a single payment processor and lastly my operations and customer service would be less complex.And if you assume that Apple and Google are bringing me customers, you are wrong as well. A survey among the customers of one of my apps revealed that 0 of them discovered the app in the App Store or the Play Store. I attracted my customers by own own marketing efforts and by ad campaigns.
