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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

(www.apple.com)
830 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | 18 Nov 20 11:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.251s | source
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pja ◴[18 Nov 20 12:43 UTC] No.25136113[source]▶
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.

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dalbasal ◴[18 Nov 20 12:54 UTC] No.25136192[source]▶
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.

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1. viktorcode ◴[18 Nov 20 13:05 UTC] No.25136287[source]▶
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.