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Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

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1704 points ardit33 | 1 comments | 13 Aug 20 19:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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lordleft ◴[13 Aug 20 20:04 UTC] No.24147974[source]▶
Imagine if Microsoft did this on PCs. a) prohibiting the installation of non-windows store software (sideloading) and b) insisting that all purchases done via apps give them a 30% cut. I think this is a ridiculous practice on the behalf of Apple.
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pneill ◴[13 Aug 20 21:02 UTC] No.24149092[source]▶
Poor analogy. iOS does not have the market dominance that Windows/Microsoft has. In this case, iPhones represent about 15% of the global smartphone sales and I think that the OS (in the US) is a 60/40 iOS vs android split. There is a viable market. Developers, unwilling to pay the Apple fee, can switch to Android. If more apps are available on Android, that will shift the users away from iOS to Android.

When I see folks complain about this, I like ask "what do you think is a reasonable fee for Apple to charge?" Zero is not a realistic answer as Apple does incur costs to run the app store. Moreover, they're entitled to make a profit off the marketplace they created and support. So what's a reasonable percentage?

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1. Dylan16807 ◴[13 Aug 20 21:14 UTC] No.24149314[source]▶
It's bad for consumers to the extent that iOS and Android phones aren't interchangeable, and that's a very large extent.

> what do you think is a reasonable fee for Apple to charge?

That's an interesting situation, because if the game was free Apple would charge nothing. And the more they bang on the drum about consumer safety, the more I want them to charge a fee appropriate for payment processing.

If I was just arbitrarily setting the fees, I might go with something like 25% of the first 20 dollars per app per user, and then 5% afterwards.