cropr

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cropr
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  • French iOS developers launch class action lawsuit over App Store fees

    croprcropr
    loopless said:
    There is not a developer in the world that truly thinks Apple does not deserve their 30%. The App Store infrastructure is incredibly impressive. Money just magically turns up in your bank account, with Apple taking care of EVERYTHING.  These are ambulance chasing lawyers riding the wave of "anti-tech" "anti-apple" sentiment.
    The fact that there developers launching a class action lawsuit proves that your claim is wrong. 

    I am an app developer and if I talk with colleagues we basically have the same understanding about the app store ecosystem:
    • Apple has created a very nice development environment for iOS apps: nice IDE (XCode),  great APIs, decent documentation. Only for the app management, there is room for improvement
    • The technical restrictions imposed by the App Store rules are great.  It guarantees a unified ans secure way of working for all iOS apps.    The business restriction are a PITA.  There is absolute no reason that if an end user buys multiple apps from me, I cannot give that user an extra discount.
    • The value of the App Store Infrastructure is overestimated.    The app developer needs anyhow a secured hosting solution for the back end of its app, for web based access and for marketing purposes.  Google, Amazon, Microsoft , Digital Ocean, .... have cost efficient off the shelve solutions for secure hosting.   But the Apple marketing machine makes you believe it costs much more.
    • Apple does not take care of marketing of your app.  In fact I did a survey among my app users and none of them found my apps using the App Store search function.    Google SEO  and direct marketing campaigns by my company are the key factors to attract new customers
    • Apple does take care of the secure payment of your app.   If you are developing an iOS only app, this is OK.  But if you have Android, PC, Mac and Linux versions as well, this is not so great. The management, accounting and end user support are much easier with a single payment system for all versions of your app.
    • Apple gets too much revenue from paid apps and not enough from free apps. 

    The majority of my colleagues find it would better for Apple to increase the  development license, but to lower the cut to a reasonable level (< 10%). 
    muthuk_vanalingam

  • EU to say Apple Pay breaks antitrust laws

    croprcropr
    I do understand the EU.  

    I am an app developer.   From an app developer perspective, I can choose my payment system provider I want if my app is running on Windows, on Mac, on Linux and even on Android (although Google does not like the latter), but I cannot choose my payment system provider on iOS.

    This has nothing to do with security as a lot of you claim, because my preferred  payment service provider is Ingenico (https://www.ingenico.com), a well established company with a proven security record.   

    The fact that for iOS I have to use Apple, has also a serious impact on my accounting system and my customer support.    For Ingenico, all transactions are booked between the end customer and me, while Ingenico just lowers the transaction amount with its commission (<3%).    For Apple, the transaction happens between the end user and Apple and Apple reimburses 70 or 85% of the amount to me.   

    In case of my customer contacts my customer support team for any question, the customer support team can immediately identify the all the payments the customer made, across all the apps on all devices the customer is using .  With the Apple payment system such thing is possible. 

    This last point is fro me the main reason why I will never choose Apple as payment service provider, if I have the choice.  If Apple would allow competition in the iOS payment service, the service towards the app developer could increase significantly.

    The consequence of the current situation is that I am only investing in apps where I can avoid any payment on iOS. 

     

    muthuk_vanalingamh2p

  • Fraudsters target Apple Pay in credit card scams

    croprcropr
    A few years ago I was working as a fraud consultant in a bank. When the bank started to accept Apple Pay,  we saw a serious increase in fraud attempts.  A lot of the victims we contacted, said they were less concerned about fraud because "Apple Pay was 100% secure".    

    When we explained that in terms of fraud there was no difference between a transaction originated from a  chip based bank card  and a Apple Pay transaction   (both use the same protocol ), they were surprised.

    Apparently the Apple marketing about security had the negative side-effect the victims being more negligent.
    muthuk_vanalingam

  • Apple faces escalating fines over Dutch dating app payments

    croprcropr
    mikethemartian said:
    omasou said:
    Seems a bit strange that the Netherlands is making such a big fuss about "dating apps".

    Is it b/c "dating apps" are used to book appointments int he red light district? And or the "proprietors" are withholding back political kickbacks till they get their way?
    Well it would be funny for Apple to allow apps that are knowingly largely used for prostitution when they didn’t allow Playboy magazine to have an app because of nudity.
    The biggest dating app provider concerned is https://www.parship.nl  ; The headline on their website (translated):"The number 1 in serious relations".   And Parship is active in numerous EU countries, so the impact can be bigger than just the Netherlands 

    spheric

  • Spotify users will get to choose whether to pay directly, or via Google Play

    croprcropr
    tenthousandthings said:
    Sameer Samat’s statement indicates Spotify is still paying Google its commission. 

    Who knows?  Maybe Google is anticipating the EU Digital Market Act, where  gatekeepers (read Apple and Google) must allow app developer to use external payment system.

    I can imagine that Google and Spotify made an agreement as a publicity stunt.  E.g the commission is 2% if the payment happens via Spotify and 5% is the payment happens via Google. 
    tenthousandthings said:

    So this is all about users choosing to give their personal data to Spotify as well as Google (who already has it). That’s what the Epic lawsuit was always about, though Epic’s demand is more complex because it involves irregular in-app purchases in the mobile gaming market.
    Here you have it completely wrong.  If you sign up with Spotify, Spotify collects your personal data (name, password, email, postal address, ...). Because Spotify runs on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, PC, Mac, Linux) with a single subscription per user or family, Spotify needs this information, so the user can reuse his subscription on different platforms.   In that respect, Spotify does not collect more information than Apple.

    On top of that Spotify, being a EU company, is bound to the GDPR laws, meaning it is not allowed to use your personal data for anything else then the music streaming service.

    The fact that on Android, Google takes care of the payment, does not change the picture.    The protocol between the Android Payment system (Google owned) and the app (Spotify owned) is very similar to the protocol used on iOS.  With the exception of a user identification, no personal data is transferred, so Google does not know what data Spotify has collected and the other way around.

    muthuk_vanalingamwilliamlondon