davidw

paisleydisco said:

macxpress said:

People still use Spotify? 

Yes. All the Spotify BS aside, their algorithm is superior to Apple Music. It just is. The recommendations, the playlists are just way better than anything Apple is doing with Music. 

jdw said:

AAPL has taken a huge hit recently, so it's common sense Apple should do its buyback now, in a major way.

And before anyone gets excited about that "4% increase in the cash dividend," we're talking about a 1 penny increase here, and that increase is no different than previous increases, as per Apple's Dividend History here:

https://investor.apple.com/dividend-history/default.aspx

mikethemartian said:

greginprague said:

mikethemartian said:

You also have to account for the 3% to 3.5% inflation from Jan, Feb, Mar 2023 to Jan, Feb, Mar 2024 earnings, respectively.

Inflation of what?  As far as I know Apple hasn’t raised the prices for any of their core products.

$94.8B in early 2023 is the equivalent of 94.8B(1.03)=$97.6B in early 2024, so the inflation corrected percentage change in revenue is actually ((90.75-97.6)/97.6)*100=-7.0%. You have to at least beat inflation to have a true growth in wealth.

avon b7 said:

ssfe11 said:

A social media company competing with Apple on hardware/software is just silly.

In this case, isn't it the other way around? 

Meta is the established and dominant player and Apple is the one stepping in. 

avon b7 said:

Xed said:

avon b7 said:

Xed said:

avon b7 said:

dewme said:

jimh2 said:

VictorMortimer said:

Apple's 30% is highway robbery.

Once Apple is forced to allow normal software installation on iDevices, I won't care what they charge.  As far as I'm concerned, they can charge 99% on their app store, and I wish they would, it would encourage developers to pull their apps off of it and distribute from their own websites.

But since Apple still doesn't let us install software normally, I'm looking forward to the EU punishing them.

You really have no clue as to how the selling of anything works. With your logic Walmart would not be permitted to apply their overhead costs (taxes, insurance, rent/mortgages, compliance, employees, travel, maintenance, training, etc.) to their items. If Walmart can buy a bike for $50 they should have to sell it for $50, which would at a loss.

Apple will win as the software tools to create an App are not free and $99 is a token amount that assumes they will make money off of the App Store. 

It is safe to assume if Apple added a setting to block 3rd party app stores the vast majority of users would select it. The EU is catering to a bunch of grifters with Spotify being the largest. Were I Apple I would drop the price of Apple Music to $0 and choke Spotify out of business.

Apple’s $99 per year fee for developers is the deal of the century for anyone who has done professional software development on Windows. I recall spending north of $1500 USD for individual MSDN professional versions. The lowest subscription price for MSDN professional is around $45 USD per user per month. Enterprise subscriptions are $250 USD per user per month. 

I’ve always felt that Apple priced its developer plans and App Store fees to allow individual and small independent software d

Apple needs developers for success in its major revenue drivers. 

We know, from the billions it has paid out to those developers who charge for their apps, that it's a profitable business. 

It's definitely a good deal from a software development perspective but charging for the actual cost of development would definitely deter developers from writing apps for the platform. 

This is similar to major OS upgrades that used to be around $129 but then it made more sense for them to be offered for free and increase the amount of people moving up to the latest OS release which developers can then target more easily. 

It makes business sense to keep the fees low although I suppose they could even be offered free and still be 'profitable' as a revenue driver and through commissions of the final product. 

As usual, you start off saying obvious and then move onto word salad. Dewme's point is salient. Access to those tools are inexpensive. The problem with the game Spotify  (and Fortnight) s playing is that they'll eventually end up paying more than they are now if Apple changes how the IDE is accessed.

You may not realize this,, but it used to cost a lot more to be a just a Mac app developer. I think it was around $250 per year and your revenue options were much limited  due to much fewer OSes and users to build for.

I agree with Dewne. The tools are great value - as tools. 

Obviously that can only be achieved if those same tools are generating revenues elsewhere. 

Where those revenues are generated is through commissions and Apple has had monopoly control over those and only modified them under regulatory threat or obligations. 

That is not word salad. It's fact based context. 

They do not have a monopoly on "commissions" and it's been shown that Spotify uses Apple's tools and don't pay nearly their fair share. These actions will end up hurting all developers because Apple will simply find a different way to get compensated for building the tools that make their SW great.

In the EU they won't have a monopoly on commissions but up until now they have. Not only that, they did not offer better terms until they were pushed to do so. 

Spotify has nothing to do with Apple's developer tools pricing, and never will, because spotify is just one app developer out of thousands or hundreds of thousands. 

'Fair share' is a curious claim. 

Has Apple paid its fair share of taxes around the world? Tim Cook says Apple has values. Not only that. He says Apple pays every cent of taxes it owes. It's only when you wade through the complaints and paperwork that you realise that Apple was actually deciding for itself what to make available for taxation and in one famous case that amounted to 0.005% for one year (according to an EU investigation). Then you browse through the Paradise Papers and Apple’s name pops up more than it should with its external representitives seeking shadowy places to move money to where oversight is less stringent. 

I think Apple has had more than its fair share of just about everything when it comes to collecting money. 

Is it fair for those trying to make money from their apps to have to 'subsidise' those who don't have to pay more than their subscriptions? Or should prices go up for those who offer apps for free? Or is Apple doing all the subsidising itself? How can we know? Is that fair? Or does $99 cover the cost of everything involved. 

Hasn't Apple already had its 'fair share' for years by simply not allowing any other stores to even exist while taking a cut out of every paid app? It does not matter if it's 5% or 50%. The commission percentage is irrelevant to that debate if Apple is the only one getting the commission because Apple itself determined competition should not exist. 

Isn't it trying to keep its grip on those commissions, even now, by not allowing competition to exist in places like the US? Is that fair?

It definitely looks like enough authorities think it's unfair.

UK, EU, Japan, South Korea have pretty much made it clear that things need to change. Each one might go about that in a different way but I doubt any of them would use 'fair' to describe any of Apple's practices where competition isn't even allowed.

Has Apple abused its dominant position? A lot of authorities seem to think so. What does the DoJ think? 

And don't think this is an 'everybody against poor Apple' thing because it's not.