rorschachai

KTR said:

I personally thin apple should close down the Netherlands store, till all this is sorted out.

Let them use web apps. Then they can use any payment system they want and don't have to pay Apple a cent for any of it. Isn't that what they want?

Apparently simply asking for consent is “disruptive”. Well, I guess it is if your business model relies on practices that are so shady you don’t want to tell users what you’re doing.

jab3rd said:

The subhead is wrong, misleading, and damaging. It should not be “ Apple said it would still require developers to pay a 27% commission for using a third-party payment system.” It should be “[…]when using a third-party payment system.”  The fee isn’t for using third-party payment; it is for using all of the APIs and underlying IP that Apple created to support developers. 

Right, and if they can’t charge a flat commission then they should start charging by actual usage. Separate fees billed monthly for: developer program access, licensing fee for using Apple’s APIs, hosting in the App Store, bandwidth, credit card processing (if billed thru Apple), customer support, etc. 

I wonder how fast people would want to go back to the flat fee. I guarantee charging for actual use would end up costing way more than 27/30% for a lot of developers. Especially the big companies that are the loudest complainers.

rob53 said:

There must NOT be a lot of pre-App Store customers being interviewed about high costs. I still remember when the Adobe CS suite cost in excess of $5K per user--and we still paid that amount! The apps in the Apple App Store cost almost nothing compared to what they cost before and SOMEONE needs to remind the judge and lawyers about this. Software is free compared to what it was 10 years ago not to mention 20.

OS updates cost money too. $129 to get the latest MacOS. The developer program was $500/year if you wanted access to the betas. And that was when Apple only had to maintain one platform.

People think that if these lawsuits succeed, everything will just be free. Developing and maintaining 5 platforms, plus the infrastructure of the App Store, ain’t free.

Was anyone forced to pay for apps? Were the prices somehow hidden or false?

If you see an app (or IAP) and you think it’s too expensive, don’t buy it. Easy. Pick any category and there are tons of apps at all different price points. The prices are all listed up front in the App Store. You can even research all this online before you buy an iPhone/iPad, so none of this should be a surprise.

I wonder how much they’re paying their lawyers. I’ll bet it’s more in an hour or two than they’ll ever spend in two lifetimes on apps.