Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

The headline seems to be:

> New program reduces App Store commission to 15 percent for small businesses earning up to $1 million per year

This is great and will really help smaller developers, 15% is much more of a palatable tax than the 30% they had previously.

Seems like tipping over $1m of revenue means your App Store tax now suddenly doubles?

This is good for smaller developers, but it doesn't really seem to solve the actual problem? All the people who are willing to go to war with Apple and have teeth are making way more than that…

> If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year.

> If a developer’s business falls below the $1 million threshold in a future calendar year, they can requalify for the 15 percent commission the year after.

So they take 15% commission from first million and 30% from later sales until developer falls below million in a calendar year.

I'd hope they've learned from tax law the world around and only apply the 30% rate from the second million...?

Edit: just read the sibling comment... that seems... unnecessarily complicated and non-reactive to short term changes...?

The way it is written, that seems to be the case. I imagine -since it makes really more sense, for people doing "a bit over 1M"- that it works more like tax brackets: 15% on your first million in revenue, 30% after that.

This is great news for many indie devs, but I think this is only a start.

Only on sales beyond the $1m, also its calculated after the apple compensation, so its on total sales of $1.15m then you pay 30%.

Same model as Unreal Engine. I wonder if this scaling model works out for most marketplaces or only specific ones.

No. The app store has always taken a 30% cut, so there's no "suddenly doubles" about this. It's a new rate. The new rate is 15% for <$1m commission. Once you hit $1m it reverts to the 30% rate.

I'd hope so too, but it doesn't seem to be worded that way.

Lowering taxes is industry-leading now?

Weird how this is the exact opposite of Valve's strategy:

> For all sales between $10 million and $50 million, the split goes to 25 percent. And for every sale after the initial $50 million, Steam will take just a 20 percent cut.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...

Antitrust process is probably the biggest known innovation accelerator in XXI century

Except Unreal Engine actually delivers some value for their cut.

Great move!

30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal.

Though it should be 15% for everybody, no artificial caps. Moreover, I believe once you become a platform there should be an independent nano-courthouse where you can appeal.

Today being rejected by Apple, Amazon, or Google platform is equivalent to the economical death penalty for many individuals.

It should be possible to pay $100 by individuals and appeal to an independent nano-courthouse if the original platform rejects or blocks you. If you win, the appeal fee is refunded and the platform has to cover the cost. If you lose, your $100 is gone.

Fee could be adjusted to your earnings, but basic mechanism should stay the same.

We'll have to see how other stores aligns, and what is the effect on consoles.

I think in the long-term the 30% comission should disappear, but it can be gradual.

Looks nice but it doesn't solve my fundamental problem:

1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app

2. Apple rejects it

-or-

2. Apple approves it

3. I ship a new update

4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively.

I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser.

No, revenue over $1 million now now come with the same the level of fees they had before this announcement.

I mean, would you say “The Epic tax on the Unreal engine suddenly goes up by a factor of infinity” when you reach the $1 million threshold?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/05/unreal-engine-is-now-...

All about PR. Pretty sure they make the big bucks off the $1million+ earners.

This really isn't a problem in practice, unless you are going out of your way to try to bend the rules set in place, especially about sales.

The year-on-year qualification system is nonsensical and punishes developers with declining revenues.

A developer with revenues over $1m in the current year but under $1m in the next year would not qualify for the reduced tax rate.

They should have implemented a progressive tax system for everyone, not just those who qualify on a yearly basis.

Wonder how this will be handled for apps that are shipped on the app store via a 3rd party publisher. The publisher probably does >$1M across all the apps they publish, but each app / developer is likely far under that.

If there are no exceptions, it would mean that 3rd-party publishers lose tons of their value proposition.

This feels like Apple is trying to rally the small-business developer corps against its much larger platform supporters, who are probably feeling a bit parasitic (i.e. legal sticks being swung at the high end) to Apple management, at the moment.

So .. by invigorating the cottage shops with this generous relaxation, while holding the >$1million brick and mortars on the same leash, Apple seems to be trying for more upheaval in their app zeitgeist.

Trouble is, I still see serious issues with discoverability and interaction through the App Store to be a major barrier for all players. This handout is nice, but there is still a huge issue with small devs having to depend on Apple to keep the $>million guys off from dominating eyeballs.

Perhaps they should add another category of App to the Store: "built by budget/small-business" ...

The operating system isn’t valuable from your perspective? The payment processing? The IDE? The language?

Why weird? 2 different strategies with completely different goals.

Valve's strategy looks like to maximise revenue and get big companies on board that do $10+ mil in sales giving them incentives and discounts to be on the platform. (I think of it as tax break to incentivise high-earners to stay in the state/country)

Apple's strategy looks like to put more money into small companies/developers, while still charging the usual rate it had for 10 years to everyone else to access market of 1+ billion users. (tax break for small business to get up and running)

The way this is worded makes no sense - surely it should be for the first $1,000,000?

$1,000,000 = $150,000

$1,000,001 = >$300,000?

It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to the ongoing complaints without much forethought other than an arbitrary change in the percentage below some round number.

Yes but many of the larger players who are willing to go to war use the 'its not fair on smaller developers' argument against them.

This really slaps down the ability to use that.

It can be a problem in practise since the rules aren't fairly or consistently enforced. Look to recent issues with iSH being approved and rejected.

Edit: as others have pointed out iSH isn't the best example of this.

No it doesn't. You can receive the reduced rate only if you qualify for the program.

The Apple software/hardware ecosystem delivers no value?

I guess they can just create a new account for each customer?

Apple can change it rules. eg: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/27/18519888/apple-screen-tim...

Agreed. Delivery drivers don't take a percentage from every sale you make. They charge for the service.

App stores should charge for their service. They aren't making the sales (at least in most cases). They are delivering assets. Charge for the delivery.

I know somebody will start claiming that Apple created the market in the first place. Apple benefits from the large app selection just as much as the developers do - yet the relationship only works one way. Let's delete the App Store and see how well the iPhone does against Android.

I would argue the only fees that should be based on revenue are payment processor fees, and maybe distribution/CDN costs (althouth these should be instead charged per byte carried). And even then, these are astronomically low compared to the current 15%/30% cut.

Everything else is paid for already by the end user of the device (who consciously pay a premium to use Apple's ecosystem), and has no reason to scale linearly with developer revenue.

TLDR; New program reduces App Store commission to 15 percent for small businesses earning up to $1 million per year

…which, like many of Apple's moves regarding the App Store, is basically "let's shut down the ability of people to complain" rather than "let's actually fix things so people won't complain".

Why should developers also pay for this, when end users already do? Apple is double dipping like a world-class monopolist (see: ISPs who charge both peers and customers).

While this is smart and somewhat good news for smaller developers, what happens when you surpass 1 million with subscriptions? Will the next month’s payout be less than before?

So on Jan 1st every year your commission would suddenly fall from 30% to 15%, until you hit $1M and it jumps back up to 30%? That seems rather arbitrary.

This is a direct effect of a closed platform (iOS) vs an open one (PC).

Try to run a business for free and come back in few years to tell us how it goes.

You don't need to distribute on Steam. While it can bring legitimacy to an indie, alternatives exist. Not so with the App Store.

Steam wants to disincentivize big companies making their own distribution, which is why they have the regressive split.

Wow. That's amazing. That's a 20% increase in revenue for those eligible. I'm guessing they decided the increased value of their products from more smaller developers creating apps for the platform is greater than the lost revenue.

If I understand correctly though, since it's a hard cutoff it creates this gap between 1m and ~1.2m where you're actually worse off by making more money pre-tax.

   999k --[-15%]--> 849k
  1000k --[-30%]--> 700k
  1213k --[-30%]--> 849k

15% is almost like state level tax. They shouldn't ask more than 5% or they should take payment per app review and take no sales commission. The app store is what makes their iPhones useful, so in my view they should be paying developers to make apps not the other way around.

While I agree the rules are often inconsistently enforced, and I'm a fan of iSH, I think the real surprise is it was ever approved in the first place, as it seems to clearly be violating the "spirit of the law" regarding Apple being pretty clear they don't want apps that allow arbitrary binary execution.

iSH tried to circumvent this with a technicality, and it seems to have initially "worked", but I think it's a poor example of an app unfairly/inconsistently targeted.

Apple provides value to both end-users and developers. It does not seem unreasonable to charge them both. And if Apple did not charge developers, that would suggest they’d have to raise prices on end-users to make up the difference, which does not seem fair to the users.

iSH is definitely in the “pushing the boundaries of the rules” area of apps (x86 emulation) and probably shouldn’t have been allowed if you took a strict interpretation of the rules.

OP is just saying 99% of apps being developed are clearly within the rules, rather than really pushing against the boundaries of what is allowed.

Unless you're competing with something Apple is planning to bring out (parental control apps before screen time stats, etc).

I don't think I'm competing with Apple at all today, but who knows what they're planning for their next features?

There is another problem - you cannot create your own app store or use alternative one if Apple for some reason does not accept your app. There is essentially no competition and at least the EU should step in and force Apple to open it to other app stores.

If Apple want to push big publishers off the app store because they have the resources to fight for changes in court this would be a subtle way to do it..

This is not aimed at solving your problem, this is aimed at helping us small developers build a more sustainable business on the App Store.

We will ultimately build more apps and invest more time in supporting and improving our current apps.

If that is the case, are we going to see device price hikes after this cut decrease?

Apple can afford to not make 15%/30% off of developers. They are just greedy for short-term profit, as any publicly traded company is. The only reason this cut happened is because they started getting threatened with lawsuits, so they had to slightly slow down their free money printer.

Exactly, nothing stops them to pull "Amazon", that is once they see your app is successful, they could request all data they need and either buy it off the company that developed it for you or commission their own app based on the documentation you had to provide and then block you. There is currently nothing you could do about it.

It's progressive. You pay 15% on first million you make. 30% on amount thereafter.

EDIT: It looks like I am wrong, ignore me.

They are charging for the manual work of checking apps, making sure your app exists in a fair market place and its not surronded by fake, malware infested nightmares.

Whether this is worth 30% is arguable, but they are not charging for the delivery, they are charging for keeping the garden trimmed.

15% is still not fair.

This is exciting for small devs, even if not life-changing.

I made 42k in the last 365 days after Apple's 30% cut (or 60k in sales). That means I will get to keep an extra 9k next year, assuming revenue stays flat (it mostly has).

And you calculated that how?

Classic antitrust maneuver; divide and conquer, this time from Apple. Antitrust activists shouldn't let this dull their pencil.

The main issue is not the exorbitant commission rate. Apple is hurting the consumers via its anti-competitive behavior with regards to what apps people are and are not allowed to install on a device that they've paid for. They are blocking value creation up and down the stack in a manner that "if we can't extract it, you're not allowed to create it."

Agree. As a small developer, apples 30% tax never bothered me - seemed excessive but worth it. The arbitrary and weird approval rules is what turned me off their platform.

Although I could see how they are trying to appease antitrust regulators with this move - although they should have gone with 0 - 2% range for that. 15% is a substantial markup to price consumers would pay for using apples monopolized mobile software distribution store.

You can always bash Apple but this seems like moving in a good direction. It would have put about $75,000 in my pocket had it been this way when my only successful app was in the App Store. That would have been nice!

App review is a one off task. They could charge the review fee and that's it. If they wanted more money they could charge data transfer fee similar to Amazon's S3. The 30% or 15% has no justification and it is just a cash grab because app developers can't go to an alternative app store with better terms. I am hoping that EU will stop this abuse.

There's no discontinuity in the first year you exceed $1m: that extra dollar is "taxed" at 30%, but the first $1m is at 15% ("the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year").

Looks like the next year (after exceeding $1m) the first dollar will be taxed at 30%, though.

They should just make this work like income tax: the first $1m is taxed at 15%, and everything above that is at 30%. (Same rules every year, no flip-flop.)

No. The majority of their income is from the less than $1million earners. That's how the long tail in economics works.

My income just increases 20% from next year for doing nothing. I'll take that.

It'd be interesting to see how Apple decided $1M as the threshold of this change. My expectation is that this change probably contributes to less than 1~2% of the total App store revenue, given that a large fraction of the app store revenue are driven by a bunch of $100M games with loot box IAP. But I don't really have data to support this estimation.

They should actually be paying small developers based on app usage. This will also be in their interest

~$340k for my apps. This is why I thought they would never make a change, because people would be upset without retroactivity (which they would never do).

Except it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Apple#App_Store

So if I read this right, they're changing the account fee structure once revenue surpasses $1m, not that they charge 30% on all new revenue over $1m. It doesn't reset back to 15% in year two.

So a developer making $1,000,001 in year 1 will pay ~$150,000 in fees because they would just pass the threshold, but then makes $1,000,001 in year 2 will pay ~$300,000.

As a developer and growing business, I think I'd prefer a higher rate over on revenue above the threshold and reset it every year. A bit like how the tax system work in the UK.

> this is aimed at helping us small developers

I doubt this was the aim. It suspect its aim was to fend off all this scrutiny on their App Store business.

Who knows whether it'll work in avoiding attention from law makers and regulators, but this will do nothing to address the developer's concerns and problem with the App Store.

This is obviously a cheap PR (albeit a good one) move to help in Apple's battle with Epic.

I hope this does not deter the courts in their decisions regarding the App Store monopoly. Apple should just be careful with moves like these, some see it as a sign of good will, some see it as a sign of weakness (and smell blood). Give an inch, they'll take a mile.

Even better: .85/.7 = 21.4%

OK fair enough perhaps it wasn't the most cut and dry example. But it was the most recent I could think of.

Yeah, economically a marginal rate would make more sense and avoid hard step changes.

But I guess it might be harder to implement, not only for Apple, but also for developers to keep track of etc.

Maybe that makes it look a bit too much like the tax it is for comfort.

Tone can be hard to judge, so you should append the /s tag to make it clear you're joking, otherwise people are going to assume you mean it.

Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry?

As counterexamples: Apple sell Logic, yet it has numerous competitors, also all fairly successful: ProTools, Live, Cubase, Reaper, Ardour, FruityLoops. Apple give their customers Notes, Reminders and Mail for free, on all their devices (i.e. you don't even need to get hold of apps for these functions), and yet we also have Evernote, Notion, Airmail, Spark etc etc.

Does the App Store monopoly significantly change the nature of app competition? I'm not convinced, but I'm open to learning about it.

It's a level that state would take to take care for roads, healthcare, civil service, army and so on. There is no justification for such high % to maintain an app. They could charge per app review and maybe the data transfer fee no more than Amazon S3. Anything else is Apple abusing their monopoly. Developer can't submit their app to an alternative app store because Apple doesn't allow that and it must change.

But developers provide value to Apple and users as well, and of course already "pay" by writing software for the platform.

What makes you think it is a joke? Happy to hear why you think 15% is reasonable.

> There is no justification for such high % to maintain an app

Again, you calculated that how?

A good first step, keep the pressure until app stores are demolished

It's interesting that they haven't made this discount automatic. Each developer has to apply for the discount. Seen from a PR point of view they support small developers, but they will profit from those who are not aware, or who don't sell enough to justify the time spent on applying for discounts.

Except then the next year you get kicked out of the program and back to 30% on every dollar?

Probably based on their own internal metrics around range that would minimize their losses.

Small business size definitions in US are managed by SBA and they have very specific revenue ranges that defines what that is for each NAISC code https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2019-08/SBA%20Table%...

Another way to look at it is that you severely overpaid before. It's not like Apple innovated by using cheaper materials, more automation, less hardware, or made a lot more profit recently to give back to the developers that are providing value to their platform.

For app store listing and promotion, application delivery all over the world to hundreds of millions of devices, access to back end services like notifications and iCloud storage, and sales transaction processing? Really?

Imagine if you had to develop or pay for all of those services individually. Your own download site, product promotion, services, a third party transaction processor, a content delivery network, bespoke cloud syncing, etc, etc.

No, you start by 15% default until you reach the $1m threshold. After that you pay 30% for the remainder of that year. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Yep. Apple should have handled this like tax brackets: The first million gets taxed 15% and anything beyond that gets taxed 30%.

I wonder why they're not doing that and creating all kinds of weird edge cases that will encourage hacky workarounds.

I guess they didn't want to lose out on the first million from those who are above the first bracket.

It's about encouraging the small innovative developers. Their apps make the ecosystem attractive.

Not weird, but it is an interesting dynamic when you have an open platform that has to compete in the marketplace, vs a closed ecosystem that has to compete in PR / Legal battle.

Apple is clearly attempting to reverse some of the bad PR, and divide the Dev Community so the calls for Anti-Trust action is lessened as the "small devs" will consider Apple "on their side" by giving them a competitive advantage over larger shops

Clever move, time will tell if anyone buys it for more than what it really is, a PR stunt designed to ensure no real change happens

From the annoncement: "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year."

I have to admit I don't understand this, all those numbers are completely arbitrary and seem to be based on what you think is right and not on any economic data.

It seems to me the real question is whether the Apple App Store should be regulated or not. If it reaches the legal threshold to be regulated, then either they should open up to competition and let the market do the price discovery or be regulated like a utility and have the price set for them. If they don't reach the threshold, then they should be free to set whatever price they want, and you're free to go elsewhere if you don't like it.

Of course, the big question is whether the app store reaches that threshold, but I'm not sure whether they charge 30% or 20 changes anything.

How do people come up with these arbitrary rates? How is 30% anticompetitive and 15% okay? 30% was standard long before the App Store, so why does Apple have to lower it now that they're the most profitable app platform?

A lot of small devs are going to be over this threshold.

> 30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal.

Not it isn't a case for anti-trust. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...

The judge in the case agreed.

> Judge says the 30% rate is the industry rate— references Steam, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have the same rate.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/09/28/judge-so-far-not-...

Apple are effectively an affialite for your app i.e. they drive traffic to your app through their store.

Most affiliate style relationships the affiliate will receive 30% of whatever is made. It not only these companies it in almost every industry. e.g. Gambling Affiliate deals typically have 30% of whatever the customer loses on the site.

I really do not like Apple. I don't like the app store policies. But 30% is not a case for anything.

I worked on the iSH appeal, and have of course watched this space for years, so I've gotten very familiar with the "spirit of the law" to the point that the conversation with Apple ended up really being a confirmation that our interpretation of the law was correct and that iSH was fine under the rules that Apple enforces. Your characterization isn't quite right. Apple doesn't want to not have apps that allow users to execute code, in fact they themselves write apps that let the user execute code they write and demo them at WWDC (Swift Playgrounds? Shortcuts?). Some of the best apps on the App Store let you write code and run it. Saying iSH is in violation of those rules would require pulling down those apps too.

What Apple is really trying to do is prevent apps from changing their behavior after they review them in a silent way to bypass the usual process. The real issue here is that their guidelines don't reflect this and this confuses the reviewers (and evidently commenters here on Hacker News). What needs to happen here is Apple clarifies their guidelines so that we don't have rules that can be inconsistently enforced.

(If you need more to convince you, I'll point you at the stuff I wrote when that was going on: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/11/08/fixing-section-2-5-2/).

They are valued, the consumer pays for the value by purchasing the hardware

This aurgument is the same as Comcast claiming Netflix is a "free loader" on their network because Netflix was not paying Comcast...

hello, Comcast's customers pay comcast for the use of the network

In the same way, Apples hardware and iOS software are paid for by the END USER of the phone, users pay a HUGE and Excessive cost for these phones, why on earth then should Devs pay a second time

Like with last mile broadband, this is double dipping, in other contexts that would be considered fraud

That 100% inline with the intended purpose of antitrust laws

But next year the commission rate will be 30% and if the earnings that year are below $1m the business will be only eligible for the reduced commission year after that.

What's with the fugly 90s clipart?

Surely the fundamental difference here is whether "the market" decides, giving you a fighting chance, or whether the Deity decides, with no recourse but supplication?

> You don't need to distribute on Steam. [...] alternatives exist.

Sure, if you want your business to go bankrupt.

Itch? I love the place but good luck supporting your business with the number of sales you’ll make if you’re only available there. Epic? GoG? Humble? Those are curated stores; you have to be invited in; you can’t just choose to sell there. And even if you could, they still don’t have anything even remotely remotely remotely like the number of shoppers on Steam.

As a practical matter, today, Steam is the only realistic option for mainstream non-hobbyist digital PC game publishing. You can do other stores plus Steam, but Steam has to be in the mix if you’re hoping to support yourself by your sales. (and yes, you can point to a small handful of digital games which were highly financially successful without primarily selling through Steam, but those are the hyper-viral one-in-a-million exceptions, not representative business cases that you should be betting your business on replicating)

(Exception: if one of the other stores is going to pay you to be exclusive to their store (preferably only for a certain duration so that you can get onto Steam right after that period), then that can absolutely make up for losing out on the early Steam sales. But again, that sort of deal isn’t available to everybody)

Well, that is the crux of the matter: the rules are not written correctly because they allow iSH to be inconsistently judged if you take "a strict interpretation"; there should not be a strict interpretation; it should just be "this app is reasonable" and "this app is not" and not "hey this looks like it's running code…does that make it a security risk?" which reviewers are not equipped to answer.

When we made the appeal for iSH we correctly surmised that the point of the rule that was cited was to prevent apps from bypassing App Store review, which iSH does not do in the slightest. Taken from the real perspective from which the app should have been judged, iSH is not at the boundary at all; instead it's the apps that do things like undisclosed A/B testing and feature flags to hide things from review. So what happens is developers like us who are actually clearly within the rules as they are meant to be applied get caught in limbo at the whim of reviewers who misunderstand the guidelines because they aren't written as they are supposed to be enforced.

That was obviously the point of their comment. It doesn't matter what percentage apple take when they're still heavy handed about their apps and won't tell you why an app was rejected

I recently was in contact with someone who has written a menu-bar app to monitor Tesla Powerwall status. It's in the Mac App Store already -- but NOT the latest version, because Apple suddenly decided that they wanted written proof that accessing the Powerwall APIs was allowed (from whom?! It's MY hardware!). Apple will not allow the dev to update his Mac App in the MAS; yet they approved & continue to leave the original older version [with known bugs] up, available for purchase.

So now the developer is stuck -- he can't update his app on the Mac App Store, and what recourse does he have as a 1-man-shop vs Apple?! =|

As a developer I find it absurd, as a consumer [who bought the app on MAS and wondered why I had the non-latest version], I find it absolutely baffling & anti-consumer.

Does anyone feel that this is to get small developers to switch side in the Epic/Apple conflict and other threats to their 30% commission?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24146987

I suspect it may be to do with the Epic legal issues, and they're trying to appear less money grabbing

You are almost correct - it goes by the prior years income, but based on the 30% cut. Meaning if you sold 1m in products you would still be in the 15% bracket next year. You would need ~1.43m in sales to be "Moved up" the next year (It gets more complicated with subscription revenue already having a 30/15 cut depending on the user's subscription length.) It works out to this (Using 1m in sales as the cutoff to simplify the numbers):

Year 1: 999k --[-15%]--> 849k (This year doesn't trip the "limit"

Year 2: 1000k --[-15%]-->850k (Limit is tripped, next year is 30%)

Year 3: 999k --[-30%]-->699k (Fell below the limit, next year is 15% again)

Basically if you are close to the limit at the end of the year, you should immediately stop all advertising/marketing spend to ensure you don't go over the peak :)

I'm not really sure why they did it this way as it really screws over people that are just at the 1m/yr mark, vs a progressive system that would "just work."

Right, but will they be eligible the year after? If not, then this still means that not surpassing the threshold could increase their revenue in the long run.

I think the fact that the guidelines are written as such to make people think it wasn't a cut and dry example is really what makes it better example than you might have even though it was at the beginning. The rule Apple would like to enforce is very clear, and we know what it was and the review team didn't, because the guidelines didn't reflect the rule that Apple wanted to enforce (and thus ended up enforcing it inconsistently). A situation where developers have to tell the review team how the guidelines work because they're not written down explicitly is a very untenable position and one that needs to change.

That is correct, but then the next year you start at 30%. So if you make slightly less next year you will end up earning less money that year since it is all at the 30% cut (And then the following year will fall back down to 15%)

That's only if you're in the program.

If you get kicked out, you're stuck paying 30% for at least a year.

Apple Developer accounts have to be linked to a legal entity (a limited company for example). Registering a different account for each customer would require changing company structures accordingly.

Because by suggesting Apple pay developers to make apps and not the other way around you either don't know history, how markets and distribution work, or you're making a joke.

You strategy played out very well in pre 2008 days with Windows Mobile. It also played out very well for Microsoft paying developers to create apps for Windows Phone, before Microsoft admitted defeat and left the phone market they were in since 1996.

About the 15%.

Have you tried running a business to make a living?

Have you tried building something yourself?

Have you tried selling it in 155 countries?

Have you tried getting access to a market of 1+ billion people?

Have you tried monitoring you don't breach regulations and tax thresholds in 155 countries?

Have you tried registering for VAT MOSS in one of the EU countries?

Have you tried implementing IP geo-location for your European customers, to charge a correct VAT amount out of 27 options?

The operating system is paid by every customer.

The payment processing? That's usualy 3% for credit card operators.

The IDE and language? That's the $100 per year per developer account.

The operating system is valuable to the people who buy it, as in, the people who buy iPhones. This is why they pay a hefty price for it. Asking developers to pay for the OS is just double-dipping.

>> 30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal.

> Not it isn't. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.

Huh? They didn't say "standard", they said "reasonable" and "ideal".

> Apple are effectively an affialite for your app i.e. they drive traffic to your app through their store.

The problem is that they charge that fee no matter where the customers come from, and you can't opt out either.

It's just consensus. 30% seems very large, 15% is tolerable.

I don't think anyone liked 30% before either but anyone that can get away with charging 30% is probably already in a monopoly position so nobody has ever been able to do anything about it. Apple are only change now because of the threat of a lawsuit.

I think a lot of companies would sell digital services in-app with such a percentage that are not considering it now. So it could be a net win for Apple in the end.

But I'm also thinking about the lackluster state of the Mac App Store, which is getting more important now with M1 Macs running iOS apps but also all platforms supporting Catalyst apps. Apple could use some momentum for it's larger screen devices (tablets and PC's) and a lower App Store cut together with a larger audience for your products could help new developers enter the ecosystem or to help developers that turned their backs on the App Store to return.

But all in all the main reason is probably the battle with Epic. It really helps to thin out the choir of complainers when all of the smaller developers stop supporting or at least stop being interested in Epic's cause.

Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here (which is a significant caveat), I'd like to think that they modelled out various scenarios and looked at growth rates to know that the year 3 scenario you envisage rarely occurs.

Or, they could've just picked $1 million because it's a nice round number and looks good in a press release.

It seems to hurt their argument. They don't need that big of a cut for expenses, they just want it and can do whatever they like.

It still doesn't solve the fundamental issue.

Let users have the option of using third-party stores, but losing Apple's safety net. They claim users want that net. If so, the third party stores will go bust. If not, they're simply being anti-consumer.

Interesting move to try to delay anti trust investigations.

The way it is phrased, there will be some income around $1M dollars where you would want to prevent anyone from purchasing an app and pushing you into the 30% fee zone, as it doesn’t seem to apply a 30% fee on earnings above $1M.

> Huh? They didn't say "standard", they said "reasonable" and "ideal".

I should have clarified. They was saying it (the 30%) was a case for antitrust.

> The problem is that they charge that fee no matter where the customers come from, and you can't opt out either.

Can they come from anywhere other than the actual store?

In any event that is a different issue.

This isn’t a problem exclusive to Apple anymore. Google has implemented some draconian nonsense this year to the point where I ended up distributing my Android app as a PWA. I had no problems with Apple.

Apple gets all the headlines, and certainly gets more chatter on HN, but they aren’t alone in this bullshit. As an example... Fortnite was also banned by Google.

Thats fair but kinda like saying a food product producer is already providing value to a store by producing goods but not paying the store any money to host their product.

It doesn't really make sense.

> there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser

This is true, but perhaps not as many as some may think! Progressive Web Applications can now do quite a lot on mobile and tablets, with a notable exception of push notifications on iOS.

They are an increasingly interesting option for those whose use case allows it.

https://simplabs.com/blog/2020/06/10/the-state-of-pwa-suppor...

Well, to be fair, according to apple it accounts for less than 5% of their $500bn revenue..

Greed. Pure, unadulterated, unjustified greed. Why should Apple get 15%? It’s just disgusting.

It's not 'maintain' - its offer all the services that come along with it (integrations, store, download, hosting, authentication).

If you produce a food product, you should expect the store to take a cut of the price before it gets to you.

I would be interested in hearing the strategic rationale here.

Back in the day, it was novel that google had an influential chief economist. It made sense. Adwords is an auction. Doubleclick's novelties in search ad auctions were proven levers, big levers.

The interesting part (to me) was that the auction didn't just optimize price. It regulated advertiser behaviour. Explicit feedback. Black box. Commentary on black box. It all played a role influencing advertiser behaviour in an economist/regulator way.

These days, that would be quaint. Google has the android ecosystem and play store marketplace. Adwords/adsense is a market too, one that has been dinged for >$1bn monopolism fines. Youtube is a marketplace. Youtube affect content with monetisation algorithms and policies, the recommendation engine, censorship/classification. Appstore. Amazon. Big "markets," with corporate policies looking increasingly like state-scale economic policies.

Even stuff like social media is market-ish. Lots of participants are interacting. Attention& influence stand in for prices, but there are still producers and consumers. Many of them. More than FB can understand in all but the most abstract ways.

The search/seo/antispam codependency was an early exhibit.

Anyway.... besides the superficial similarity, I suspect the logic to this new app store policy is more "tax cut" than "price decrease." My guess: Apple's trying "fix market failures" showing up in data.

Most importantly it's the marketing and distribution that you're paying for.

Well, the app store cannot exist without app and phone without apps is essentially worthless (unless it has at least the caller app). So who is promoting who? The so called application delivery is just a file server that anyone can setup for peanuts these days. Apple offers no alternative for notifications or storage - there is no competition so they can dictate extortionate prices. Yes many companies would love to run these services on their own, but they can't as Apple is blocking it.

he cannot withdraw the older version of the software from the app store? that is weird.

30% is honestly a terrible deal as Apple does not provide the value for the money they are charging. The difference is you are forced into that arrangement you don't have the option of doing it all yourself.

If you had to develop all of those services yourself, it would look a lot like the internet. None of the things you mention are particularly challenging for the modern web.

These things that you listed are not that expensive to run.

If you produce a food product you can also set up your own store, but you can't in case of Apple.

Apple is not affiliate, it's a gatekeeper. Affiliate increase discovery to something that was already reachable through other means. If you already know me and trust me, you still can't install my app without paying the gatekeeping fee. Apple does play the role of a payment gateway where the standard fee is around 3%, so they definitely are entitled to that much.

This may also be applicable to Steam, Sony and others.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the federal government released marketing like this exactly talking about progressive taxes aimed at Apple as it got larger and larger.

“If you are only a $1M company, we will tax 15%, when you pass the $1B threshold, your tax will increase to 30%, and when you pass the $1T threshold, your tax will increase to 60%”

Isn’t the goal of progressive taxes to introduce a kind of ‘you won at life, there is no need for it to be easy to go higher’ mantra?

Is that second picture someone touching their MacBook screen?

For Android there are at the very least alternatives for app distribution.

Oh wow, my bad, I honestly thought you were joking.

You may need to rethink your arguments as I found them indistinguishable from parody!!

At least review process is better than Google's because when we rejected on Play Store we can't get any feedback from Google. They send a template email which says the "problem maybe A or B, check what you have changed".

Apple provides screenshots and human written explanation on rejection. I have even talked on the phone with review team several times to discuss the problem.

Yes, it sucks that the update may be rejected by some reviewer and another one may approve the same update.

> Fortnite was also banned by Google.

I think the main reason this wasn't as newsworthy is that sideloading it was trivial for Android users. Untick a warning and install it yourself.

No, this is aimed at divide-et-impera the front of critics, by dragging you to their side with a little bit of carrot. And it’s working - you’ve been hoodwinked.

> Can they come from anywhere other than the actual store?

If I have a link on my site that takes a customer directly to the store page, and they buy it, then Apple did nothing at all to earn an "affiliate" level payout. They didn't drive any traffic. Or if the customer puts in the exact app name and buys it.

> In any event that is a different issue.

It's very relevant to whether 30% is reasonable. Apple acts as a legitimate affiliate some of the time, but they forcibly take that fee all of the time.

I agree, but if we’re being honest, iOS is probably the prioritized platform for developers of apps like Hey that are commercial and used for professional work. Also, Apple doesn’t allow sideloading in the way Android does and PWAs are not as powerful because Apple is years behind with modern web standards.

I have to agree you.

It's intolerable that Apple has been allowed to lockdown their device for 10 years, completely control the market for apps and when it looks like regulators will take action they reduce their price and claim to be acting in the interest of small business.

Third party app stores must be allowed. Apple should not be allowed to dictate what software I can and cannot have on my device.

Alternatives technically exist, but they suck. We tried some alternatives but PWA was by far the only one that got any traction.

When Apple added Screen Time, they banned other competing apps.

This is laughable. You can setup Shopify to sell your physical inventory worldwide plus get an invoicing solution that deals with MOSS etc. for fraction of what Apple charges for hosting a file in an app. Plus they don't allow competing app stores, so they can dictate these extortionate prices.

Trivial for you, a reader on HN. Not trivial, and potentially unsafe, for my grandmother.

This I can understand because I'd argue most of the creative uses of Apple's ecosystems rather come from smaller indie developers meanwhile meanwhile larger companies also need to look at cross compatibility and sharing codebases.

The latter explanation is the winner. They needed an arbitrary threshold and went for an easy-sounding one.

For a B2C app, if we are not on the default distribution platform of the system, our user acquisition costs would be skyrocketed.

It's only standard as Apple was first through the gate with this scheme for online marketplaces. They got to copy the split from brick-and-mortar (without the accompanying costs like restocking) and everyone else followed suit.

It seems to me that trying to either stay under $1M or above $1.4M is harder to manage than using a slightly more complicated formula to calculate apple's tax.

It was better indeed, now it is worse. Now Google sends you screenshots and explains what is wrong and Apple just quotes like a dumb bot their policy (which is not even acceptable in many cases)

Same story.

As long as they treat big companies like royalty and small devs like trash (like they do now) I couldn't care less about their fee.

Considering we're talking about Fortnite I would suggest that it's trivial for anyone who can figure out how to play Fortnite.

In fact, in 2008 many people liked 30%. Especially those who used to pay ~50% for getting into a mobile carrier store.

I’m seeing a lot of positive comments on HN about this: to me it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part.

They hope to significantly reduce the pressure on politicians to take a close look at their App store practices by significantly reducing the absolute number of developers suffering the full impact whilst taking the minimum possible hit to their revenue. This has nothing to do with “doing the right thing” or “accelerating innovation” and everything to do with limiting the number of outraged letters to senators from devs, the number of newspaper interviews with prominent indie developers & so on.

Indie devs have an outsize PR impact relative to their revenue contribution, so buy them off with a smaller revenue tax that delivers outsize returns if it prevents the 30% house rake on the majority of Apple’s App Store income coming under scrutiny.

Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive elephant in the room here, not a few crumbs thrown to small developers.

I support progressive taxation but not for that stated reason. I see it more as “we need a certain amount to pay for necessary government programs and everyone should ideally contribute to that. Because some can’t contribute any and some can’t contribute much, we are forced to make the contributions progressive.” (Marginal utility of money also plays a related factor, but that effect is smaller in magnitude in my mind [or is the exact factor I describe above if you squint a little bit].)

I make no moral judgment that we should tax someone more highly in order to make things progressively more difficult for them.

You’ll probably find the actual rules even more arbitrary. In year 2, your January sales will still pay a 30% commission if you hit $1M the prior year.

That's a great sign for indie devs!!

it's exactly like the freelancer tax brackets in Italy. Everybody jumping through hoops (and or not declaring stuff) to remain under the threshold of 60k/year (was 30k/year). Otherwise tax rate doubles.

Once you get the foam out of your mouth, you could go and check how the various console markets were bootstrapped. Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well. Windows Mobile was undone by a number of mistakes (like rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch), paying developers was not one of them.

> about the 15%

Yeah, about that. As it is, it’s monopoly rent (and before you bring up consoles - yes, there too). Nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I wouldn’t be happy with 5% or 1% either, because the point is not how you measure the tax, but the tax itself and the fact that it’s not set by the market. Once they allow third-party appstores they can charge 50% for all I care.

I see how that does affect the competition. Fair point.

Same in Argentina, sadly :-(

I would like if there is any solution to this other than to apply the same percentage to all income.

Apple/Google's 30% take is a tiny baby elephant in the room.

Apple and Google have a model where they make lots MORE money outside the system and if the price of software is ZERO they would be happy.

In Apple's case, even free software sells their phone.

In Google's case, even free software funnels users to their ad platform.

[1] "Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements."

1: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

(joel's a smart guy, he should write more often)

Sure, being pro-indie is good PR.

I don't see how this helps with antitrust though. Either way, it is an actual policy. Newsworthy, at least.

Also, a comment isn't necessarily positive or negative. This isn't a poll on Apple's HN approval rating. It's an announcement of a thing Apple is doing.

> I’m seeing a lot of positive comments on HN about this

To me it seems like those comments are in the minority while the popular opinion is the cynical take.

Apple was not first through the gate. This fee structure has been in place at least since Nintendo in the 80s.

> If I have a link on my site that takes a customer directly to the store page, and they buy it, then Apple did nothing at all to earn an "affiliate" level payout. They didn't drive any traffic.

The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase.

This would be no different than if a boxed piece of software was in a brick and mortar retailer and you told your customers you could by it at those stores.

In a brick and mortar retailer they display your product in your store and people come in, take the box and go to the checkout.

Conceptually the process is exactly the same. The only difference is that it is happening over the internet.

> Or if the customer puts in the exact app name and buys it.

The user is still using the store to buy the app. It would be no different than a boxed piece of software being on display in brick and mortar retailer. The customer may only go in there to pick up the game and nothing else. They are still buying through apple.

> It's very relevant to whether 30% is reasonable. Apple acts as a legitimate affiliate some of the time, but they forcibly take that fee all of the time.

No it isn't. You are conflating the issues of them having absolute control over the app store and whether 30% is reasonable. 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in most of these relationships.

If it wasn't reasonable people wouldn't publish with Steam, Gog, Nintendo (nintendo lowered the rate if you look at the IGN link to 30% to match other stores).

Also if it wasn't financially viable with the 30% fee (which has been there since 2011) then people wouldn't publish apps there.

Dammit! It's not about the money, it's about there only being one real way to get apps on the phone. I said apple would do exactly this when Epic sued them.

As some of these platforms/markets mature, and the policies managing them... running a platform gets similar to running a country. Progressive taxation. Loopholes or anti-loopholes in this case. MSFT basically has an IRS.

I don't know what an e-commerce platform has to do with a distribution platform.

Just because you can create a store with Shopify, or build a website with Wix, doesn't mean you get access to a marketplace with billion people in it.

There's a reason why sellers want to be on Amazon, even when they have their own Shopify shops.

And/or are you cynically interpreting this as a piece of PR to rake in the karma? Nearly every act by every person or institution can be interpreted as a cynical attempt to curry favor. Who gets the benefit of a doubt and who gets condemned?

Is this a joke?

This is fixed in most countries by creating brackets that stack. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax

You'd pay let's say 15% over the first 30k, and then 30% over the remainder.

>to it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part.

Oh please.

Has it ever occurred in the history of the world that the selfish motives of two different parties aligned? i.e. Apple gets good press for helping smaller developers and the smaller developers get increased revenues. It happens all the times, and it's called "good business".

You can keep waiting for Apple's App Store executives to cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes and repent of their terrible policies. Let me know how that works out.

The cynic in me agrees. Perhaps Apple sees the writing on the wall and they can either make the change with good press or bad.

Didn't those apps get around lack of OS integration by essentially installing an always-on VPN ... something that could be a huge privacy issue?

Commission size has nothing to do with anti-trust here. Apple didn't increase the rate from 2008, hence there's no basis for argument of anti-trust violation. It does undermines public (non-judicial) argument that App Store fee is bad for small developers, though.

No, majority of the App Store revenue come from big developers. Think YouTube, all the freemium games, etc.

> The change will affect roughly 98 percent of the companies that pay Apple a commission, according to estimates from Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm. But those developers accounted for less than 5 percent of App Store revenues last year, Sensor Tower said. Apple said the new rate would affect the “vast majority” of its developers, but declined to offer specific numbers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/technology/apple-app-stor...

You’re kidding, right?

I don’t know how it is in the Land of the Free, but in Europe most margins on food are in the single digits all the way down. It’s true that small producers are squeezed at both ends, but at least there are market dynamics in place - if one supermarket chain takes too much, you go and sell to the other one, and the consumer can get it anyway.

Double-digit and triple-digit margins are the reason the software world is now dominating the economy. Most other sectors can only dream of that.

>Surely this is true for all developers, at any size? And also just about any product, or service, in any industry?

No, this is very unique to Apple, and only on iOS. Its the reason why iPhone web browsers have to use Safari under the hood.

> This has nothing to do with “doing the right thing” or “accelerating innovation”

Correct. True Character is what you do when nobody is watching. :)

If it was trivial they would not bring Fortnite to Play Store at all, but they did.

Unlike a commercial company a state is not for-profit enterprise. Maybe you think that app stores shouldn't be for-profit marketplaces either?

If there is a niche for “appstore for grannies”, a free market will eventually get it.

Security is a non-issue. If Apple were really worried about that, they would allow appstores in a regulated form with certain security rules.

Cynical or not, putting pressure on companies works and negative attention is a valid tactic when the issue is subject to reasonable debate.

Considering their volume fifteen percent should still allow them to rake in ridiculous amounts of money. However one area I still support Apple is selling of additional product within the store should still be subject to a charge; as in the Epic store selling additional games should be subject to the same rules as selling any content on the store yet you should be able to purchase outside the store and redeem codes within apps to use them; similar to how Steam allows developers to sell keys outside of Steam

Really? It's not progressive [1]? This page suggests it is: https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/italy/individual/taxes-on-perso... (Yes, this is a foreign third party so may be wrong; I can't read Italian.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax (See the Computation section for how the higher rates only apply to the higher portions of a person's income, with their lower portions taxed less.)

I don't get "you are forced" part. If a deal is bad for you, don't take it.

Apple has no growth left in selling phones. They are now a “services” business. Their most lucrative service so far is the app store.

That 30% matters to them a lot.

Very cool..

Black hat on. Wouldn't it make sense to create a parent company which own various child companies each of which runs a single app ?

> The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase.

Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out.

> They are still buying through apple.

Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.

> 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in most of these relationships.

Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.

> If it wasn't reasonable people wouldn't publish with Steam, Gog, Nintendo (nintendo lowered the rate if you look at the IGN link to 30% to match other stores).

People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...

> Also if it wasn't financially viable with the 30% fee (which has been there since 2011) then people wouldn't publish apps there.

It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?

%0 is ideal.

It's along the same lines of what Microsoft did when they were being investigated as a monopoly: throw a bone to smaller developers (or in Microsoft's case, kids in school) which actually just grows their market share (in Microsoft's case, kids learn to use Microsoft products and take that to work, in Apple's case, more devs see profitability in the Mac garden).

> Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive elephant in the room here

No. They both built a distribution channel on which developers build, but they're not open markets. Those app stores are the property of their respective creators (this is a flaw of the app store paradigm in general, at least for those who want full control over their software).

Both Apple and Google are fully within their rights to charge whatever they want within their app store and enforce whatever capricious whims they like on apps that they distribute. It's the same as traditional book publishers writing their contracts with authors they publish. Which is why open platforms and device jailbreaking remain valuable for those of us who believe in personal ownership of our software.

Wish I could downvote this for fake info, but I'm too new.

Distributors make a pittance for a relatively risky bet on delivering fruit and veggies. Margins are usually below 10%, often close to 5%, and definitely nowhere near 30%. On top of that, there's the added risk of damage happening to the goods in transit and storage, voiding the entire profit. Google and Apple make money by sitting on their asses and taking a slice off a developer's cheque, which is more akin to a usurious mafia slumlord rather than a tech company. Small farmers are on the short end of a stick, but only because by nature small landholdings are not profitable, and farming is a scale operation for production of a commoditized good by nature. App development is not a scale operation - a developer can be easily profitable with a small group of high-paying customers.

Being trivial in difficulty doesn't ensure that people want to do it, especially for a free app.

If you want a better experiment, have a play version with normal fees, and a sideload version where v-bucks are cheaper.

Of course there might be other reasons to scrutinize big companies like Apple, Google etc. but isn’t the best policy the one you don’t even have to implement because the actors in the market acted beforehand already?

apple being masters at PR undoubtedly influenced this more than wanting to be more "fair" to all developers. cynical take ahead:

assuming the distribution of app store devs follows a usual power law, this will impact a large number of devs whose revenue makes up a small percent of apple's total take from the app store. 80/20, 90/10, whatever it may be. so id guess their actual revenue hit is probably 5-10% in this specific category. great sounding relative numbers but not much in absolute values.

they'll also play the other side and use the great sounding absolute numbers - ex: "We cut app store commissions in half for over a million small businesses, helping to stimulate the economy in these tough, unprecedented times".

disclaimer: no one expects apple to be a charity, they created and own the app store, their platform their rules, etc. all fine and good but as others have mentioned, without antitrust scrutiny the chances of this happening are far slimmer.

This is nice, but I still won't buy any iPhone until I'm allowed to run any app on it, bypassing the app store. Because I live in a country that might force Apple remove necessary apps from its store, and Apple has a history of complying with such requests.

> whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship.

Not seeking a cut of almost every transaction going through your OS just because you built the foundations and gatekeep the door was standard too.

UK typically ~ 3%, learnt that recently and was shocked.

An app store monitoring your revenues and the size of your business is a bad sign.

Minecraft didn’t distribute on Steam, they managed just fine.

Neither does Fortnite come to think of it.

At least condemn those that have a history of malice. Innocent as default does not work for businesses PR. Especially not for FAANG.

How about personal accounts (using John Doe instead Acme Inc)?

Also, I'm new to App Store, does it mean they hold your money for (up to) a year so they can decide which bracket you fall into?

Are you sure you're wrong?

The relevant sentence seems to be "If a participating developer surpasses the $1 million threshold, the standard commission rate will apply for the remainder of the year." (emphasis mine)

Apple takes the comission as you go, so it sounds like they take 15% of each sale until you hit $1M, and then 30% for every sale after that.

The next year they'd take 30% right from the start though, so a good year followed by a bad one would be unfortunate.

Writing is on the wall for the Mac App Store. It’s pretty obvious that now M1 macs run iOS apps that Apple is hoping to make the norm running iOS apps therefor making sure they get their rent payments.

Feels a bit like whataboutism. Especially since Apple is worse than Google now.

In Germany we have "cold progression", so stacking tax brackets. If you earn 35.000€ it's something like (random numbers):

0-9000€ [0%] -> 0€

9000-20.000€ [10%] -> 1100€

20.000-40.000€ [15%] -> 3000€

Total = 4400€

So if you're in the 15% bracket you pay 4400€ which is actually 12.5% in total, and not 5250€ (15%) as some people seem to believe.

If I recall correctly, the apps they banned were doing things like abusing the VPN function to capture all traffic from the phone, and using that as their mechanism for blocking certain websites (or maybe it was MDM they were abusing...?).

It wasn't a simple matter of "Apple releases product that does X, then bans all products that do X from the App Store;" the products they banned had to use some seriously sketchy tactics to monitor and restrict other apps on the iPhone without system-level access.

Let me know when I can make Apps without giving Apple $2000.

As a note I feel especially bad for the (global) poor who can't access 100% of humans because Apple charges luxury pricing.

"XX"

Fixed. ;)

It is when the policy enacted is reasonably close to the one you'd expect from intervention. There are multiple possible outcomes here ranging from this being insufficient progress to enough progress splintered across separate changes (which outsiders don't necessarily see a whole.)

This is sort of backwards from an economies-of-scale perspective. In the normal world, shipping your software internationally is something of a cost (like filing VAT in all the countries). And even though Stripe has made it way easier to do billing, a small company still would need some servers to do updates, customer service, etc. These things have a cost in time, people, and development.

For an Epic-sized business these things are somewhat small. These costs go down as a percentage of size, not up. So it's almost as if Apple is saying that "bigness" can only happen as a consequence of being on their platform, which I think most people would disagree with.

The attractive thing here is that it is now in Apple's interest to "grow" a bunch of indie developers into bigger companies.

Should that work in that way on desktop also? With Microsoft/Apple being free to restrict apps to their store only, and taking a cut of every transaction made outside the browser?

If not, what's the difference with phones/tablets?

This is clearly a direct result of Epic's lawsuit. I wouldn't consider it a cynical attempt to curry favour if they had done it a year ago.

"no growth left in selling phones" is kind of the wrong way to look at it. Even if their number of units sold per year never grows, it's a very healthy revenue stream because they manage to convince existing customers to buy new hardware. Considering the cost per phone the revenue per customer is pretty high just from selling phones if they can get them to buy every 2-3 years.

Naturally, the 30% take from the app store is bigger, but that's a matter of overall volume, not growth. The app store is a cash cow and will remain so even if its numbers start trending down.

More reason to make PWA and keep everything in HTML5 if possible.

Previous they did not have a Play Store version at all. If someone wants to play, they HAD to sideload. And people still don't do that.

When will Google drop its 30% rate?

Their M1 would begin antitrust headaches, as they top every market using a SoC (i.e. increasingly, everything), but are protected by their premium pricing: they'll make the most profit, but not the most sales.

He's talking about freelance people. This link is for employees.

So had Apple done this but told no one it wouldn’t be PR — and you’d be praising them right now? Would they be allowed to tell the affected developers?

The FAANG are random assortment of companies that share little in common aside from being large. Facebook and Google monetize eyeballs but in very different ways. Amazon is a logistics and retail and PaaS powerhouse. Netflix streams movies. Apple sells hardware and services and, in stark contrast to Facebook and Google, temperamentally despises performance advertising. Google and Apple (and Microsoft and Salesforce and Nintendo and…) have walled garden marketplaces.

Apropos a dubious assertion the grandparent made, Google and Apple are also the driving forces behind the two most feature-filled web browsers that enable ever more sophisticated web apps to run on smartphones outside of their walled gardens at no charge.

So, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions to make a company a FAANG, aside for assisting with the construction of a snappy acronym, and what are the conclusions that flow from those conditions that justify your assuming every one of their acts is best assumed to have been done in bad faith?

I really, really wish that Apple would support push notifications for PWAs that have been added to the home screen.

Without push notifications, PWAs are not really viable and Apple knows it. Apple wants developers to use the App Store and be subject to their fees and review process.

At least Google supports push notifications for PWAs, making them a legitimate alternative on Android.

If you're talking about the price of a Mac to develop the app, it's true but not nearly that high. You can go for a Mac Mini, or second-hand.

This makes so much sense. It's like progressive tax rates for individuals. I suggest more levels between 0-1MM revenue.

Appoogle are a duopoly. You can’t get significant sales on mobile phones without going through their respective App Stores, which both charge 30%. What a coincidence!

Your comparisons with book publishers are specious: if I write a book today I can go to any of a number of publishers, none of whom have any kind of control over access to readers. Or I can even self-publish and sell direct.

Jailbreaking is a complete irrelevance in market terms: It’s effectively impossible to sell on Apple devices without paying Apple’s tax & very difficult to sell on Android devices (which Google controls via carefully written contracts with mobile phone manufacturers) without paying Google 30%. We have anti-monopoly + market collusion laws for good reasons. It’s about time they were enforced.

I just feel that there's always this discussion about "X% isn't fair because $reason" (insert Apple's market cap, free cash flow, stock price, etc.) But what I'm yet to see is any kind of mindful analysis of what a "fair" fee is without the emotion attached to the discussion.

If Apple didn't fear either Epic's lawsuit or Congressional action, or both, they'd never reduce their app store cut, for anyone, ever.

This announcement means Apple knows that neither public opinion nor the law is on their side and they're about to lose really, really big. And they're hoping if they can flip this around a bit and get control of the narrative, they can convince regulators they will self-regulate... while continuing to get a third of the revenue from all the most lucrative developers.

Google's new Gmail privacy settings fall in the same boat: They'd rather lose data from a small portion of their users if it might deter the government from taking away all of it.

Or clearly a result of Covid. Or clearly a result of Republicans’s and Democrats’s newfound love of using tech companies as punching bags. So many single, all-encompassing theories that clearly fully account for every act.

It's very kind of you, but there's no foam coming out of my mouth. Thank you.

Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?

> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.

Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?

I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?

People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.

Google literally has multiple alternative app stores currently active.

It's not that crazy to think that Apple owes to the app developers, at least some of them.

In the end, a lot of Apple customers would never have bought an iPhone if it couldn't run their essential apps (like Whatsapp, Spotify, Youtube, etc).

That "notable exception" is fatal to PWAs for most businesses who might otherwise develop one. Apple needs to implement that.

As an iPhone owner, the inability for PWAs to have notifications is probably my single biggest gripe at the moment.

I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643185

and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24731713

Apple is not in any danger of losing their lawsuit with Epic. However, it did not make sense why Epic was paying the same amount of fees as an indie developer.

I said it before, but Epic went about this all wrong. They should have started this out as a grass roots campaign focused on their indie devs that licensed Unreal.

Epic should have advocated for Apple to reduce low revenue App Store royalty payments to these people. Then used that win as a springboard toward trying to get their own reduced as well.

The difference is just a historical choice. The desktop platform owners chose to be open in that way, but they didn't have to. Games console makers chose to go the locked down route at about the same time (in the grand scheme of things). The Mac launched long after many locked down games consoles existed. They just chose different strategies.

To Apple developers are disposable, if you don’t want to make software in their garden someone else will clone your app there. They seem themselves as the ones providing value to you.

It won’t be long till they make more changes to make sure they get that value out of you on the desktop too.

Absolutely agreeing as well. It’s a nice gesture from apple towards independant developers, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issues stated over and over. I hope they won’t get away with it, especially now that laptop and desktop are closer than ever to live the same fate.

> Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out.

What is and isn't affiliate behaviour isn't important. They are acting like an affiliate I said. It is close enough.

> Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.

Yes it is a 30% cut. We have already established it is on other stores.

> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.

You can choose not to do business with Apple.

> People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...

These aren't unreasonable rates though. If they were unreasonable people would not publish there. End of. I don't understand how people can say something is unreasonable when there are lots of people using it and making money just fine. So for a lot of people they obviously think it is reasonable.

> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.

You can. You can not deal with the app store.

> It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?

No we cannot agree. Firstly 90% is not viable to anyone, nobody would agree to that and people wouldn't publish on the app store. So to start your premise is completely absurd.

Pretend for a moment Apple did raise it tomorrow to 90% cut to them. The vast majority of would just pull their apps and Apple would have to lower the rate again. Every company chooses 30% because it is what everyone else does because it is more or less fair to both parties. Now if another player releases a new phone with a store and they have a better market rate and a decent market share then Apple will lower their rates (like Nintendo did).

Apple has revenues of about $275bln, and a net margin of about 21% company-wide, meaning $58bln.

The app store sold about $50bln worth of stuff in 2019, Apple's 30% cut would therefore mean $15bln in revenue. If they operated the app store at a least a 70% margin (and really, if they didn't, then I'd be rather surprised), that would mean a good $10bln in net profit from the app store, or 17% of their total net profit.

And that's still not accounting for the network effect the app store creates, or the business intelligence.

It might not be the biggest elephant ever, but it's not what I'd call a tiny baby elephant either.

That would be an incentive to drop the price is almost 0 until January if you see that you're trending towards $1M at the end of the year.

Sure, I refer you to a comment I made in a previous thread about mobile payment revenue shares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23583011

As a point of reference, HumbleBundle charges 5% for the Humble payment widget. They handle hosting your data, all the payment systems for taking payments from most of the world, handling chargebacks on your behalf etc etc.

If you want to sell your game on the Humble Store on the other hand, well then they take a 25% cut. That’s the value in being able to deliver a customer.

Apple’s fixed 30% cut is effectively saying: our brand is more important than yours in delivering customers to your App. The imprinteur of being in our App Store and bringing you a customer is worth 30% of your income. Your ability to deliver your own customers is irrelevant; we’re taking 30% either way. Unsurprisingly this sticks in the craw of some companies.

The fact that Apple’s systems make it almost impossible to effectively communicate with your own customer is an even bigger problem for a customer-focused company who’s income & branding depend on a close relationship with their customers: those companies are completely stuffed by the Apple App model & are the reason the App Store has not lead to the explosion of innovation some of us expected - it’s just not possible for a company to sustain themselves outside a very narrow set of income generation patterns.

It sounds like this is a cliff? If you go over the threshold all your revenue is taxed at 30%?

That will lead to some wonky behaviors.

> Especially since Apple is worse than Google now.

Care to elaborate on that statement?

No, but it seems to be the direction those two companies are moving anyway. Just look at Windows 10 "S mode". I'm just glad we have Linux as an option on the desktop to get away from that nonsense.

We've barely been able to get people to stop referring to all Android devices as "Droids". The average person doesn't even know about alternate app stores, yet alone have the will to seek them out, install them, search for an app, and then pay for it (likely having to enter payment info this time). You might as well tell developers to release their apps on the dark web.

I'm sure you can release niche apps on these stores, but the general market isn't moving away from the Play Store any time soon, and that's where the money is.

the whole point of antitrust regulations is that

> Both Apple and Google are fully within their rights to charge whatever they want within their app store and enforce whatever capricious whims they like on apps that they distribute.

actually isn't always true - especially when it hurts consumers. of course it isn't up to us here to decide if it does. remember that private doesn't mean unregulated.

And, instead of providing APIs to help make those apps less sketchy... Apple decided it would be easier to just ban them.

Apple clearly thought they were valuable enough to customers to keep around before the release of Screen Time, even with the sketchy method they had to use.

And how many of those are installed on the average US Android phone exactly?

What happens to a phone manufacturer who ships a phone with an alternate App store?

> they'd never reduce their app store cut, for anyone, ever.

Why not 50%? 75%? 100%? 150%?

It could also be that they are seeking the optimal rate of return, balancing developer incentives, bringing in new developers, etc.

I think many factors play into the decision, including lawsuits and public scrutiny.

I think it will be really interesting to watch and see if google mirrors the pricing.

I am not sure what you said makes any sense...

The food product producer is not selling to me directly, they sell to the store, who then sells to me.

Apple is not selling me the app, they are very clear about this, my relationship is with the App Developer, they are just a "payment processor"

So comparing the App Store to traditional retail store is no where near a proper analogy

I'm publishing the same (paid) app on Google Play and on Amazon's store, which is AFAICT the most widely used alternative (outside of markets where Google is not active).

My Amazon income is less than 2% of the Google income.

The way the rules are now seems like there's a very big incentive to avoid earning a little bit more than $1m. This could have … unintended consequences.

(e.g. if it looks like you're going to earn a little bit over $1m, increase prices by a lot (to discourage purchases), but tell people the app will be "cheap" again in January. Or even make the app free for a while.)

Well, there is Amazon Appstore for Android, where you can buy digital goods (apps and games as well) on an Android device. Idk if the Amazon Appstore is available for IOS with the same terms. Can you buy IOS apps via Amazon Appstore on an IOS device?

Fortnite was banned from the Play store, not Android.

Because those APIs can be used for extremely sketchy activity.

Same in the US I believe.

Are you kidding me? This is great news for indies and small companies, to which I count myself, and I will be making 15% more money. Dude, I'm really happy reading this announcement today, thanks Apple, what else is there to say? I think some of you might have trust issues, and are stuck in a spiral of negativity, it's getting a bit weird. Now Google please follow!

It's not even the 30% cut itself. It's the inevitable necessity to go through Apple if you want any presence on iOS. The only solution I see here is to allow proper sideloading.

Apple keeps trying to spin the app store as a way for users to discover apps, when in reality, the reason developers publish their apps there is that it's the only way onto the millions of iOS devices worldwide.

I think it’s more targeted specifically at Epic, although maybe they thought it might help more generally with antitrust too. Epic made a big deal in their lawsuit/PR about how apples policies negatively impact smaller developers, and that they were standing up for them. With this change apple can now push back on this point against Epic, as it’s unlikely they will drop the lawsuit.

It’s something I’ve been torn on for a while, on the one hand 30% seems way too high for most apps (maybe you could make an argument for a few that rely more heavily on apple infrastructure). But on the other app stores do provide a lot of benefits like auto-update, malware scanning, reviews, distribution, etc. that most apps couldn’t or wouldn’t do by themselves.

> they can convince regulators they will self-regulate... while continuing to get a third of the revenue from all the most lucrative developers.

So what?

Seriously, who cares if Epic earns 14 bzillionty dollars this month, or 20 bzillionty dollars?

At that scale, the 30% is such a terrible thorn in your side?

Come on. Cry me a damn river.

The 'narrative' here is Epic pretending they care about anyone except themselves and that this ridiculous song and dance is about it being 'good for everyone'.

Let's try something positive instead:

What should they have done then to make you happy?

Seriously; if this is such a cynical, terrible move, what should they have done?

> significantly reducing the absolute number of developers suffering the full impact whilst taking the minimum possible hit to their revenue

It also reduces their anti-competitive effect on new entrants. Now they have a beachhead. Sounds like a win-win.

There should be an additional tier between e.g. $1mm and $25mm. Though that still wouldn't satisfy an absolutist constituency. So maybe this is the most efficient compromise.

> This has nothing to do with “doing the right thing”

Who cares? I'll take effective solutions from self-interested actors over well-intentioned bumbling.

> everything to do with limiting the number of outraged letters to senators from devs

Sounds like a responsive political system.

If your concern is the App Store's 30% take from large developers, good news: they have the resources to find recourse in courts. Small developers don't. Given this has zero effect on Epic, it has zero effect on their case. (Just, perhaps, its lobbying effect in Congress.)

Of course, as we all know, the cost of distributing 1 million digital goods is the same, and scales the same way, as distributing 1 million physical goods.

There is a moral imperative that copying of software, which costs almost 0, is taxed per unit, just like physical goods, where there is a storage cost, a transport cost, etc.

I'm being ironic, obviously. Apple's App Store profits show that they're basically just sharecropping developers. Their operating costs are minimal and the fact that they're allowed to charge per unit, like they're Walmart and have to stock actual shelves, is quite ridiculous.

Google does have its problems, but at least you still have the option of publishing an apk on your website.

Nope, you should do your research before reaching for your guns. In Italy for example it’s a well known, scandalous situation that’s been going on for years.

Apologies for the Italian links but that’s all I could find for now:

https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/05/14/frutta-e-verdura...

https://youtu.be/29OYrFOYkTg

> desktop platform owners chose to be open in that way, but they didn't have to

They probably did. The industry was small. Attracting developers in significant numbers meant convincing people to become developers. That is a huge hurdle. Platforms with entry fees didn't build app ecosystems that attracted end users.

By the time the iPhone was announced, developers were plenty and the software business model proven. Apple had resources to subsidize onboarding with a well-documented, rich API and good native apps.

As a practical matter, what does this mean for most app store businesses? This sounds like an across-the-board cut to 15% with the old rate remaining for a tiny fraction of app store developers. How many are generating more than $1M/year?

> Seriously, who cares if Epic earns 14 bzillionty dollars this month, or 20 bzillionty dollars?

The narrative here is amazing, because you're not sympathizing with Epic because they're so big and have so much money... but they're still the little guy compared to Apple. The scale of Apple's monopoly profit makes Epic look like a corner pharmacy in Montana.

Unless I am misunderstanding, I believe you will be making 21.4% more money?

(70% share of revenue -> 85% share of revenue)

You’re actually making 21.4% more!

And for any dev with more than 0% marginal cost the increase in profit is even higher.

This doesn't change much.

PWAs are still second-class citizens on iOS.

Still no third party browser engines.

Apple can reject your app for whatever reason and everything you've invested into producing iOS code vanishes into thin air.

Apple pays monthly at 45 days after the end of the month.

So they won't be holding on to money.

It means you'll have a 15% cut taken out of your revenue until you exceed $1.176m (which becomes $1m of your post commission revenue) at which point all future revenue for that year will have a 30% cut (year 1).

You'll continue to pay 30% the following year (year 2).

If at the end of that year, your post commission revenue is less than $1m (ie you earned less than $1.42m pre-commission), then the year after that you'll be back on the 15% rate (year 3).

So there's a gap there that will mean that if you are close to that initial $1.176m near the end of the year, you should stop your sales, unless you expect the following year to have at least an additional ~$300K in sales to make up for the increased commission.

It would be better and more logical to apply the same rule for each calendar year. Start at 15% and ramp to 30% as the equivalent of a marginal tax.

On the other hand, the costs to Apple are essentially flat for all apps, so other than their own revenue, there's no justification for the increased commission.

People can argue about whether developers get value for money from the app store (ie, what commission is appropriate for someone providing billing, local taxation, debt collection, all receivables risk etc).

People can also argue about whether Apple has a monopoly. If they do, it's on their own hardware. So it's not a market monopoly. If you define the market as "app stores for Apple hardware".

People can also argue that Google and Apple have a price fixing arrangement.

They could argue back that they don't, they both independently came to the same commission rates (or that Google followed Apple, so that's not Apple's fault).

They could also argue that they don't control the market, depending on how the market is defined, eg "mobile phone applications" as a market has numerous other app stores.

> Apple has no growth left in selling phones

Increasing prices on top-of-the-line iPhones beg to differ.

Why not get another device? Third party app stores break the security model for regular users.

Smartphones have seen explosive growth because normal people can use them safely.

Love the spocks answering your comment. Jesus, we understood what you meant by 15%.

“In today’s news Apple announced the opening of its iOS platform to allow users to install any apps they want from any alternative App Store. Posters on ycombinator.com denounced the move as a cynical attempt to generate positive PR. Said one, just because Apple has listened to us and stopped doing the evil things we asked it to stop, does not mean we won’t find new things to criticize it as evil for.”

No, I’m not. In Italy it’s common to see markups of 600% on veggies at the supermarket.

There are few intermediaries and they get to dictate prices, mandatory discounts, and run double-discounted auctions (which the legislature is trying to make illegal.) If you get to outsmart them selling to another distributor (as if they’re not conniving already) good luck selling your next load of perishable goods before it rots.

Also brick & mortar shops make hideous markups to cover for their poor selection, inventory and commercial space rent (so sure, it doesn’t line only their pockets but for the final consumer it doesn’t make much difference.)

Provide an officially-sanctioned way to install alternative software sources.

macOS has that; Apple will even certify third party developers so that the system can still validate software outside of the Mac App Store. That kind of security model would be perfect for iOS and would moot pretty much all the substantive parts of Epic's complaint.

That would actually be a substantive change that would genuinely change the App market dynamics. This ... is not that.

Personally, I think the iOS App Store would still maintain it's market positioning even without iOS's technical lockout. Most people stay on the first app store they see and hate having to switch to new ones. First mover advantage is everything; look at the relative uptake rates of Steam vs. Origin or Epic Games Store.

>The fact that Apple’s systems make it almost impossible to effectively communicate with your own customer

Do you see effective communication with customers being interrupted by the App Store page itself? For example, the UX on the app description where the only link is to Developer Website at the bottom under Information? Or a mix of things?

Can you propose or point at a set of proposed changes that would improve the opportunity for direct communication between app developers and their customers?

Even better!

So now there's really very little reason not to have your app on the app-store (I'm thinking mac here), even if you're small-fry.

I wonder if there will even be a choice in future.

Like which ones? Even the Amazon Appstore, the largest alternative store is so negligible we might as well pretend it does not exist.

How many of them have > 1% market share?

"Little guy"?

Epic is fore casting earning something like 5 billion dollars this financial year.

You'll have to try a bit harder to get a bit of sympathy for them than 'they're smaller than apple'.

...

5 billion dollars.

...

And you want me to care that another company is shaking you down for a couple of million?

Boo hoo. Poor epic. I wonder how they pay the bills.

Oh, I know! They use some that 5 billion dollars they made to do it.

--

I think maybe there are some, you know, real people, who will get some tangible benefits from these rate cuts.

If Epic loses out.. or... you know, if they get them too? Really, it makes no difference to them at all. So.. I really. Do. Not. Care.

If epic can spend 50 million to receive and extra "5 bzilionty" dollars plus excellent PR, that's bloody good business.

Making it hard for the regular joe to pirate apps is a big part of apple's allure me as a developer.

Your app/game won't be 24h on the play store without the apk popping up on some random site, ready to be downloaded.

I don't see a way to do proper sideloading without opening this avenue. Maybe a mac os style notarization scheme, but apple gets a lot of flack for that too.

Amazon will pay a pittance for ebook sales unless you’re exclusive with them, and they’ll generally use their market leading position to limit your choices at every step.

Not for users who wish to use the macOS without engaging in Apple's services business.

It's already impossible on iOS, due to the fact that you cannot install any software except via the App Store, which requires an Apple ID.

At the moment it is possible to continue to use a mac and download and run software without an Apple ID, but if the trend of only releasing software via the App Store continues, that will become more and more difficult.

Even totally free apps in the App Store require that you identify yourself to Apple to download and use them.

This would leave Apple in the awkward position of taking double the amount of commission for a developer making just over $1 million. They could go from paying ~$150,000 to suddenly paying ~$300,000 in fees with very little difference in gross sales.

Even from a purely selfish perspective, Apple should have been doing this all along. As a platform, Apple has an incentive to prevent any one app in any one market grabbing monopoly, because the app maker will have too strong a negotiating position (eg WeChat). "Progressive taxation" of app makers will help subsidise smaller app makers giving them an edge vs entrenched large players.

They have an officially sanctioned way. Reinstall every 7 days without cost, or pay $100/year and you don’t need to reinstall.

It’s not as convenient as the main store, of course, but there are convenience tools (altstore.io) that make it close.

> Why not get another device?

This advice would work for clothes/home appliances/furniture and other competitive markets, but not to mobile OSes.

Mobile OSes are natural monopoly/duopolies. There isn't enough room in the world for 100 OSes for us to get a competitive market. There isn't even room for 3. There is barely room for 2 with great downside. Companies spend a lot of money developing an app for one OS and basically re-creating it for the other.

I'm looking at my phone's home screen. Most of these apps are available in the other OS too, with almost the exact same functionality, but completely different codebases. Each of these duplicate efforts represent anything from X×100K $ to X×10M $ of development cost. This is just part of the cost of having more OSes. And the consumer ultimately pays for these costs.

Anyone who thinks this is just a PR move doesn’t know what it is like inside the walls of Apple. They truly care about developers and they love indie developers. To me this sounds like they took the feedback they were getting from big players pretending to be standing up for the little guy and realized they had a point. Even though the feedback was delivered in the most hostile way they still saw that small businesses could use a break. This also gives small businesses a chance to afford 15% more in cost per acquisition so it is a little easier to compete with big businesses with larger budgets. Thanks Apple!

Disclaimer: I used to work for Apple years ago

Just because they can afford not to take it doesn't mean it's free

You can't have it both ways. Either it's as closed as iOS and apps can't be pirated, or it's as open as Android and it's possible to pirate apps. Restrictions on what can be installed and user's ultimate control of their own device are mutually exclusive.

That said, I'd choose to have control, even as an app developer. Piracy is a fact of life.

Just because it is something YOU want doesn't mean we ALL want it. I appreciate Apple's review of apps and their store policies. While no human endeavor is perfect it is at least an attempt to keep their platform more secure, safer for kids, higher quality, and more trustworthy.

Opening up the platform to other app stores means they have less control over the experience on their platform it opens more avenues for malware.

If you want a more open platform use Android.

You're talking about a once-in-a-generation indie hit (which arguably started before Steam was omnipresent), and a game which was made and published by a big company. This is not the norm.

I'm not even talking about alternative app stores. Just let me distribute my app to my users from my server, without Apple inserting itself where it doesn't belong.

Many APIs can be used for sketchy things. Supposedly, that’s one thing the App Store review process is meant to catch.

I'm not waiting for Apple to repent. I'm waiting for the company to be broken up.

Developers are not the only small businesses subject to Apple's 30% commission. Ebook publishers also have to pay the 30% commission to Apple for inclusion in Apple Books.

Then there are the indie musicians in Apple Music and indie video publishers in Apple TV. I don't know how much their rates are, but if it's anything like Spotify or Amazon Prime it's not much.

Will these other indie producers get a break too, or is it just developers?