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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

(www.apple.com)
830 points todsacerdoti | 3 comments | 18 Nov 20 11:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.611s | 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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1. heavyset_go ◴[18 Nov 20 18:11 UTC] No.25140155[source]▶
> Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive elephant in the room here, not a few crumbs thrown to small developers.

It's not just the rate that's anti-competitive, it's that these two companies have stifled competition in mobile app distribution for over a decade now.

There is no viable competition in this space because Google and Apple never allowed for real competitors to the App Store and Play Store to exist. You have to use the App Store to distribute mobile apps on iPhones and iPads, and if you want automatic updates, background updates or batch installations/upgrades on Android, you have to use the Play Store.

These days, if you want to install an app whose developers didn't pay the Apple tax, macOS will make the app appear radioactive, and as if it is either broken or malicious. Same goes for Android, where apps distributed outside of the Play Store invoke scary warnings, and are hindered when it comes to automatic updates, background updates, or batch installs.

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2. TedDoesntTalk ◴[18 Nov 20 18:46 UTC] No.25140671[source]▶
It's not just about distribution. What about allowing payments through stripe or paypal or any other payment processor?
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3. heavyset_go ◴[18 Nov 20 18:52 UTC] No.25140756[source]▶
Good point, and I agree. Developers and users should have the freedom to use the payment processors of their liking, without having their mobile operating system's vendor deciding for them.