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Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

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1704 points ardit33 | 7 comments | 13 Aug 20 19:03 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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hijklmno ◴[14 Aug 20 07:03 UTC] No.24154700[source]▶
It's not Apple vs. Fortnite. It's actually Apple vs. Users. Apple has been taking us for a ride this whole time. We pay damn much and buy the phone. It is the user's property from then on. What the user install's and uninstall's from his phone should be his decision. Taking a cut of say, 3%, to keep the app store running is forgivable. But 30% digging into users pocket is unpardonable. Apple is no longer the underdog that it was 40 years ago, and some fanboys pretending it to be is despicable. It's a monopoly and the only thing it cares is it's profitability. Despite all the sugarcoated lies Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have been saying to the senate, they are a monopoly. Stop letting them deceive us. Let's take the power back. Stop enabling such deception. Death of a country is determined by it's governance. Death of a society is determined by it's culture and greedy monopolies. The way we can claim our power is by raising awareness to the point that the powers that are will take note and take action.
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pferde ◴[14 Aug 20 07:08 UTC] No.24154744[source]▶
What monopoly? Nobody is forcing you to buy Apple and enter into their rotten walled garden. If you "pay damn much and buy the phone", you are doing it of your own volition.

"Take the power back" by not continuing to give them your money.

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1. grenoire ◴[14 Aug 20 07:11 UTC] No.24154766[source]▶
The android ecosystem and OEM's lack of support for older phones (for one) is something that is 'forcing' me to enter their walled garden. I can't, also as a customer, ignore that Apple has done a lot of things very well, but that doesn't at all stop me from also complaining about their bad practices.
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2. gwd ◴[14 Aug 20 07:24 UTC] No.24154858[source]▶
Don't you think these things may have some relationship to each other? All the work Apple does has to be paid for somehow; and realistically, in a for-profit company like Apple, has to be paid for in a way that will generate not just barely enough to pay for itself, but has to be paid for in a way that will generate lots of profits.

Google makes money off of advertising. Apple makes money, in part, off of taxing apps. If Apple can't tax apps, then suddenly their business model isn't nearly as appealing, and they start needing to make changes to keep things profitable -- things like maybe selling more of your data, or "encouraging" you to upgrade by not supporting older phones as well.

This whole discussion always makes me angry because right now I have a choice: I can choose to buy a product supported by app taxes, or I can choose to buy a product supported by spying on me. If Apple is forced to allow other app stores, and thus forced to look for other business models to remain profitable, I may not have that choice any more.

If Fortnite doesn't like it, why don't they just charge 50% more for the app on iOS? If people complain, just show them the math, so they know that it's the Apple Tax making things more expensive. I'm happy to pay 30% more for apps.

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3. grenoire ◴[14 Aug 20 07:37 UTC] No.24154971[source]▶
I understand where your arguments come from, and I do agree to the fundamental economics of it.

It all holds well too, until you realise, however, that Apple is sitting on 200 billion dollars in cash.

Also: Epic did actually give an option to pay less for their microtransactions if you paid them directly, and were about to refund people for their transactions in the past month for the Apple tax itself. Their rebellion is the main reason Apple retaliated like this.

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4. ghostwriter ◴[14 Aug 20 10:05 UTC] No.24155967{3}[source]▶
> it all holds well too, until you realise, however, that Apple is sitting on 200 billion dollars in cash.

how does that negate the given points? These 200b is an indicator of a healthy business that can survive major downturns for a long period of time, which should be much more appealing that an open credit line and piles of debt in accounting tables, so much prevalent in the industry nowadays.

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5. saagarjha ◴[14 Aug 20 10:06 UTC] No.24155974[source]▶
> All the work Apple does has to be paid for somehow

How about the money they make selling iPhones?

6. grenoire ◴[14 Aug 20 11:06 UTC] No.24156393{4}[source]▶
It wasn't supposed to negate his points, I said I agree to them too.

The issue is that Apple would be still be comfortably profitable at a much lower and less predatory level of Apple-tax-rate. They are fundamentally not entitled to the profits of the companies who have to be on their market. The value they provide to the developers and customers collectively for simply hosting and reviewing these apps is not 30%. As other commenters have pointed out, they are willing to pay a portion of this extra 30% if and only if it goes to the people who build the applications. It's not a supply-demand mismatch issue, it's overreach and exploitation.

On the other hand, I don't quite get what your point is about Apple being a healthy business or them not accumulating debt (which is arguably wrong, Apple has ~91,807,000,000 USD in long-term debt (out of 142B USD in non-current liabilities)). I don't think that is relevant here, let alone discounts my point about the excessive profits they've accumulated.

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7. ghostwriter ◴[14 Aug 20 19:30 UTC] No.24162241{5}[source]▶
> They are fundamentally not entitled to the profits of the companies who have to be on their market.

that's not how markets work. Apple is absolutely entitled to charge whatever amount of money they wish, firstly because other companies engage into trade with Apple voluntarily and no one is forcing companies into App Store, they enter it because they know they are going to make money there, and secondly because if Apple is not entitled to this money by their right of ownership of the platform that millions of customers find outstanding, everyone else is even less entitled to own and dispose of these earnings.

It is also up to Apple shareholders to decide what is comfortably profitable.

As for the debt that you mention, accounting doesn't work that way either. Their total long-term and current operational debt as of 2020 can be paid in full, by the half of their immediately available disposable cash. This IS a prime example of a healthy business.