Notsofast

flydog said:

hammeroftruth said:

I wonder how many developers have gone out and priced what it would cost to maintain their own server to download their app, the cost of securing it so it doesn’t get hacked and the app replaced by a malicious clone, the cost to process payments for the app, and the cost to maintain correct accounting of app sales. 

30% might seem high to some, but they haven’t really come forward publicly to give an alternative or explain why a smaller percentage would be beneficial to both parties. 

Sorry, I don’t believe Spotify’s crocodile tears when it comes to a developer making a point about paying fees to Apple. IMHO, they are mad because they are getting squeezed by the RIAA and feel Apple is taking up whatever profits they would get for the price they are charging. 

Nothing you mentioned comes anywhere close to 30%, individually or collectively. 

Hosting Apps

Maintaining a server to host downloads costs next to nothing. Our app is under 15 MB, which Apple hosts on the App Store, but it requires downloading content between 100 and 500 MB depending on the user.  That content is hosted on our own servers, and it costs a fraction of a penny per user.  Most developers have to maintain servers for other purposes anyway, especially if their app is cross-platform, and hosting app downloads would be a microscopic fraction of overall costs.  Our back end infrastructure for app functionality that is unrelated to hosting content is 99.99% of our costs, and is something we would need anyway. 

Apple does provide alternatives to setting up your own back end infrastructure (database, storage, etc), but that locks you into Apple's ecosystem, and makes it difficult or impossible to sell your app or content on other platforms.  Also, Apple's services are down more often than our own services. There have been numerous iCloud outages this year, whereas our services have been continuously up for the past three years. 

Transaction Costs

We sell content on the App Store as IAPs and offer the same content on our own store at a discount to the App Store price.  Selling the same content via the App Store costs 30% versus 2% on our own store.  

Accounting

Accounting of app sales seems like something you just threw in there to make the argument more persuasive, but is a non-issue.  Not sure what you think Apple provides in this regard, but sales reports are often delayed and are very sparse in their content.  We do not know who our customers are, can't provide refunds, or answer questions about the purchase.  The information that Stripe or Square provide for credit card sales is just as good and often better than what Apple provides, and as I noted, costs under 2% for each sale. Stripe and Square also integrate with accounting software, the App Store reporting does not.  

Security

The security issue you raised is a red herring for a number of reasons. First, it is in Apple's best interest to provide a method to secure apps for the benefit of its customers. The only benefit to developers is it makes it difficult to pirate apps, but in our case it is a non-issue because most of our apps are free, and we secure the content that we sell for use in those apps. Again, the cost is nominal.


The benefit of selling apps on the App Store has little to do with the factors you mentioned.  The benefit is exposure to over a billion users, essentially free advertising. For a very small developer just starting out, the 30% is well worth it when compared to the costs of advertising an app outside the App Store. But as app revenues move past $1 million, there is very little benefit from the 30% paid to Apple. And for well-known companies like Netflix and Spotify there is zero benefit since people know who they are and just need a client app to consume the content. 

I see more and more developers moving to a model where the app is free and functionality/content is sold outside the App Store.  There really is nothing the App Store offers us developers aside from exposure to new customers.  Moreover, dealing with Apple is often frustrating.  Their developer support is not at all like the customer support you get when you buy an iPad or iPhone. You are not allowed to call Developer Support, and any message you send via the developer portal is met with canned responses that often have no relevance at all. If you are lucky enough you may receive a phone call from someone who is clearly trained in conflict resolution, but who will not actually fix anything. 
I no longer bother unless the issue is critical.

Deploying new apps and app versions is time consuming. Whenever we need to deploy a new app version to the App Store, I have to devote most of the day to that process.  
Screenshots have to be uploaded for every single device class.  iTunes Connect returns cryptic errors that the screenshot is the wrong size, when it is in fact exactly what Apple requires in its documentation. Creating app preview videos requires paying $299 for Final Cut Pro because video recordings from the actual device are incompatible. Then you need to spend half an hour archiving and uploading a bundle.  After you spend all that time uploading a bundle, it may reject the bundle, often with some cryptic error message that needs to be googled because Apple does not provide any context or information. After the bundle is uploaded, then App Store then needs to process it, which takes anywhere from 30 minutes to over a day.  It could be rejected again for some other reason, which requires you to start the process anew. In contrast, when we deploy a new web app, it takes a button push and 30 seconds of configuration.   

App reviews can be arbitrary, and appeals can take weeks, during which time your app is not being sold.  Even if you win, the next time you submit the app a different reviewer will reject it for the same reason.  And if your only source of income is the App Store there is always the danger that Apple will yank your developer privileges and put you out of business. 

To be fair, the issues I mentioned above don't occur every time, but often enough to make developers wonder why we pay so much money for Apple's service.

Wgkrueger said:

tylerd said:

Brian Roemmele has been preaching this for some time. Check out his Quora article for more insights:

https://www.quora.com/What-does-Brian-Roemmele-mean-when-he-says-Siri-should-be-its-own-operating-system

He’s advocating a Voice First system. That’s an extremely narrow minded proposition that assumes speaking and more importantly hearing are equivalent to a young persons capabilities, ignoring those with hearing problems which we all are succumbing to. And voice input doesn’t work well in a group environment, excepting those on the bridge of the Enterprise. 

davgreg said:

With universal Siri, all spoken requests would be in error.