If you haven't watched Tim Sweeney's appearance on Lex Fridman (which went live two days ago ironically), he discusses this battle against Apple, which he's maintained at a furious pace for years. He goes into detail on how the previous guidelines stifle innovation, how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.
His Crusade for open platforms/services in general is very very respectable.
Fortnite, in my opinion, has been a gold standard for F2P monetization. No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc. Compare that with Counter Strike 2, and I can't imagine how much money Epic has left on the table by choosing this path. So I give Tim a lot of credit for maintaining such a principled stance.
> So I give Tim a lot of credit for maintaining such a principled stance.
IMO, someone that drives and capitalizes on addictive spending by an underage audience should never be considered principled. While it may not be considered gambling, it’s not much better when it’s often out of control due to feeding on FOMO.
Ah yes, toy makers, the true problem of our world. 30 years ago I'm sure you'd be complaining about "addicted" spending on keeping up with the most popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys. It's not evil to make things kids want and make money off it. If you don't want your kids to buy things, that's on you and its a problem from time immemorial, not a new issue with video games.
These people are implementing Skinner boxes[1] for children.
There are literally "engagement" engineers actively doing A/B tests on children to see what makes them more addicted or gets them to spend more money or time on their platform.
There are humans literally doing experiments on children to figure out what stimulus results in more addicted behavior.
Who cares? My kids asked me for skins for years. As the one who owned a credit card and would be the one needed to pay for it I laughed them out of the room.
Maybe parents should learn to parent and tell their kids no.
My kid now older and with a job now tells me how he remembers when he used to ask for skins and I would say no damn way. He also says now that he makes his own money and buys things himself there is no way he would spend his own money on clothing for a video game while his own shoes are falling apart. It’s a waste of money and he said it not me.
So parents need to parent. Typically kids until older have no readily access to money so if a parent acts like one they can tell the kid to forget it.
Me and many of my friends were children when Fortnite came out. We still play, and we now have full time jobs. When fun new skins or dances come out, it’s not uncommon for us to get them.
They’re fun and entertaining. I hardly feel addicted or preyed on moreso than when I buy any other entertainment product.
It's fashion, to an extent. Do you only have a single outfit? Would you even if it was always the right weather for them, and was always clean? Kids often spend a lot of time in these environments, which makes them want variety of expression there.
It's not an issue from time immemorial. it's an issue from the late 19th century, if not post WWII. the child consumer class did not before that. Toys hardly existed before that. Even an adult consume class with disposable income had hardly existed. Kids spending hours every day zonked out at screens is a distinctly new phenomenon on top of that
Not sure I follow. The letter is about clothes (not toys)... He talks about people (himself, others) having low single digits outfits (one set, two sets), not sure how this makes him a post industrial capitalism consumer. In 1800 BC, life expectancy was probably 25 and people worked from ages like 6 onwards. This guy was definitely not a commoner, and he only had one set of clothes, and wanted two good sets. I'm not saying that's good and that out kids are spoiled and should be happy with two sets of clothes, I just have no idea what you're trying to say.
I think the persistence of advertising is an issue overall. I think we are worse off today now that you get bombarded with targeted ads and there's usually a seamless buy now button displayed within them.
Preying on whales is exploiting psychological issues. New technology certainly does exist today to aid in this exploitation that didn't exist 30 yrs ago.
Well said. Streaming services are finally getting the kinds of commercial content we did in the 80s and 90s. It's refreshing as I feel those years were the golden era of toys. Many toys of the era didn't even have commercials but we still wanted them. X-Men toys for example. If I was a kid, I'd of loved to have seen weekly commercials of the newest line up of X-Men toys.
With the caveat that shows still have a massive amount product placement within them and ad-free streaming services cost more than double the price of ad-supported, meaning that the poor are far more likely to be viewing ads anyway.
I love me some Gabby’s Dollhouse but the show is literally about a toy dollhouse that you can go buy.
I feel like you're being disingenuous with your choice of franchise. 30 years ago there were much worse toys. There were capsule machines that randomized what toy your quarter would give you. There were toys that you could buy random assortments at the toy store (M.U.S.C.L.E was one if I remember correctly). You could buy trading cards too. It's not that kids are marketed to (which is arguably its own problem), it's that the randomization is really not good for creatures that utilize associative memories (not sure if other intelligence avenues will be as susceptible to near misses, but likely it's a feature of intelligence in general to be stupid about randomness). And this has only been ratcheted up in the last 30 years.
What you may be missing, if you don't have kids, is just how insidious modern arcades are. They really opened my eyes in a lot of ways to the problem in general, since I just avoid a lot of the other modern invasive gambling mechanics. Most of the games are now just thinly veiled gambling machines. There are a few classics, like pacman still, and they eat quarters, but they are not programmed to randomly modify the game itself. Claw machines these days all have their claw strength randomized and is unknowable value that changes from play to play. And almost all the games I see at kids venues have some similar mechanic.
But it's not just the arcade. The rise of skinner boxes have become ever more weaponized (for lack of a better term?) in the last 30 years, as data collection has become cheaper and easier. I can't even imagine gacha mechanics in any of the games I played 30 years ago. Like, here, send Nintendo a dollar, and you can get a code for a better sword in Dragon Warrior? I would have mailed that dollar faster than you can imagine (I then would have shared the code, so of course this wouldn't work, but still, I would have sent the dollar). And for what? so they can make the games even harder?
This is a real problem beyond just teaching kids to ignore marketing. I don't have a solution other than trying to shield them until they're old enough that they're less likely to develop real addictions.
In Fortnite, skins are available to buy only sometimes. At a given time, you can buy like, 6-7 of them. If you want something that is not up, well, tough luck, it may never come back.
Isn't this true with collectable toys? My adult friends sure seem to be addicted to purchasing Pokemon cards. They talk about thousands of dollars spent when I am curious about numbers.
I've said this before and I'll say it a hundred times more - choice isn't binary. There isn't no choice and then free choice. There's infinite levels of choice. Some things are very choosy. Like me cutting off my arm right now - very choosy, I get a lot of control in that. Some things are not very choosy. Like a heroine addict deciding to shoot up or not today.
I won't make any claims on the addictiveness of fortnite in particular. However, we should all be aware it is certainly engineered in some ways to capture as much attention and time as possible, and this is intentional. Not unlike in nature to the engineering behind cigarettes, although again no claims on efficacy.
The point being, we really need to be doing analysis further than "well they chose to do it". It's not that simple, and it's really never been that simple. Companies are dedicating billions of dollars on solving this problem. We should, in response, at least try to analyze it deeper than that.
I agree. While I do think the skin issue is a parenting thing and a good time to teach a lesson about advertising and fomo*, there's more too it.
We protect people(arguably not enough) from gambling and alcohol which are basically banking on a portion of the population becoming addicted.(tho I also do not make any claims on the addictiveness of fortnite or say, gacha games)
At what point is the level of manipulation from these companies messing with psychology too much? It's an open secret they are researching how to farm attention. Don't people that are susceptible to this stuff deserve some warnings like booze and slots? I'm all for personal responsibility but we've created lines with other things where people lose control. Idk why this should be treated different.
No idea if anything needs regulated or what exactly needs to change, but as you said, at least more analysis.
To be clear, the definition of "exploit" I'm using in this case is like: "use (a situation or person) in an unfair or selfish way." The point is game companies are exploiting people who can't control themselves.
I don't know what autozone has to do with this particular discussion, but I'm not familiar with their business practices, so I'm not going to venture a guess.
I heard they make whole cartoons to feature a specific toy character and put them in kids happy meals and have limited collectors editions. Will the manipulative horrors of marketing to children ever cease or will we all be coerced into a life time sentence at Disney land by a clever cereal tie in.
That’s the same for the Tomica Blackhawk X3 Transformable Robot. Unless you find it somewhere on ebay second hand, after it leaves store shelves you will never see it again.
They give a lot of characters/vbucks away for free. I have a whole list of skins (including the 3 you mentioned) and have never spent any actual money on fortnite.
I can't deny they've made a crazy amount of money from convincing teenage boys that it's cool to buy outfits and play virtual dress-up. But compared to the must-have items of my youth at least you aren't excluded if you have no money.
Yes it is evil, considering how the advertisements are made in ways that makes it difficult for parents to escape them.
The only way to escape kids TV shows that have advertisements between shows and advertisements within the shows themselves as product placements is to only watch public television (which is generally funded way less and has way fewer programs than commercial television).
Hell, shows like Transfomers have the toys as the stars of the show.
So now all your kids have the peer pressure of all their friends consuming popular media and owning toys and now you have to be the bad guy saying no to literally everything to escape.
You go to any store and the toys and sugary cereals are right here at eye height of your kids with cartoon characters and promises of prizes, toys, and sweepstakes.
So you’re basically between a rock and a hard place, either you are the “weird kid with the weird parents” or you buy into at least some of that consumerism, trying to approach it with some level of moderation.
What about a company that controls exclusive access to this "addictive spending by an underage audience" on the computers they sell, _after purchase_, for a 24% cut of the spoils.
Apple is currently profiting quite handsomely off gambling games marketed to children. They deliberately limit the App Store to encourage games like Clash of Clans and shitty Farmville clones because letting you emulate Yoshi's Cookie wouldn't make them money.
They're both unprincipled. Sweeney just happens to be correct.
Fortnite started as a P2W coop game where legendary weapons were all inside loot boxes. It was very predatory. Then an internal team at Epic made an experimental battle royale mode and that's what became modern Fortnite. The old one is still available as Fortnite: Save the World.
Epic is largely owned by Tencent anyway, who makes a lot of their money from gambling games.
Good enough is how everything went to shit (enshitification). "It's an MVP? Good enough, ship it and bolt on features no one wants." Personally, I am very tired of "good enough." I wish we built great things.
"Enshitification" is probably the most self-sabotaging term we could think of; in terms of how it makes us look like whining teenagers. I will never use it in polite conversation; which would ironically be a tech company's greatest goal for if we had a word.
But optics aside, this also ignores the problem that many of these businesses were not sustainable and were never sustainable. They are heading downhill, partially because they never had any ground to stand on. If we want to see less of this behavior, we should stop allowing the blitzscale strategy of running a loss to gain marketshare.
This is also why the claim of "greed" or "enshitification" falls on deaf ears for them. They could easily say: "No, we lit billions on fire as an investment to keep it free and grow market share; we're now asking for some returns on that investment. We're not adding a Pro plan, we were paying for the Pro plan previously. Be thankful for how long it lasted, and how much money you saved."
You bring up some good points. I guess I was too absolute in my statement as I didn't intend to imply it was the only problem. Given that, Windows gaining ads (nevermind the number of settings panels/windows, etc), games being released broken or loot box driven, google search once being good and now being ad driven, and a myriad of other problems have caused the downfall as well. So the big players are part of the problem too.
No doubt; Windows gaining ads is the most egregious form; because it combines advertising with an upfront payment.
I think many of the worst offenders, and so much of the problem, would go away if we combined a payment with a mandatory ad-free experience, for any bundled software. Buy a TV, no ads allowed on the TV itself. Buy a computer, no ads allowed on Windows itself. Buy a Mac, no ads allowed in Apple News, should it be bundled. If it's truly free software that the customer did not directly or indirectly pay for, then ads are permitted; but the moment there's a payment, it's over. You can have Free with Ads, you can have Paid with No Ads, but never both.
That would not stop Discord from getting worse, or other services like them; but not allowing a paid + ad combo would solve most of the painful problems.
> No, we lit billions on fire as an investment to keep it free and grow market share
This is a form of price dumping and it should be illegal. Actually I'm confused as to why this isn't considered to be illegal already becuase I thought we had laws against this.
It's not just newer unsustainable companies. There are plenty of businesses that have been around for decades that are now engaging in these enshittifying practices (for dearth of a better term). Big box appliances like washers/dryers, fridges. Vehicle manufacturers (BMW and their subscription service bullshit), we're fast approaching a world where even doing an oil change will have to be done by the dealership/authorized 3rd party.
These Ivy League MBAs have been getting taught how much money companies have been leaving on the table and they are infecting every industry.
I often say you have to judge people based on their time and the environment around them and you need to encourage whatever good moves you see. In other words, I'll take a greedy bloodsucker over an evil greedy bloodsucker any day.
And those companies don't have the kind of time and money to take on one of the richest companies in the world. Sometimes you need a Goliath to take on another Goliath.
Before anyone tries to defend this, remember that consoles are not necessarily sold at a loss. Nintendo ensures their consoles are profitable on day one, even if others might be okay with year five.
In which case, yes, they are just iPhones in a big box with HDMI ports plugged into your TV. The only reason you can't do productivity tasks, is because of the restrictions, so the legally-nonexistent claim of "general purpose computing" doesn't do anything here.
Why would different business practices shield console makers in the first place, legally speaking? As in, even if all consoles were always sold at a loss, how would that help someone's legal case that they should be excluded here? Does the law state that, "if your business practices are incompatible with antitrust legislation, and you'd end up having to raise prices, shut down, or decrease your CEO's paycheck, if we enforced it on you, then we won't do it" or something along those lines?
Except there are indeed productivity tools for consoles as well, e.g. anything done with UWP on Windows Store can also be targeted to XBox UWP ERA environment.
I can appreciate this argument comes from folks who frequent this forum, who can discern scams from legitimate things.
But I'm sad for this decision for myself and for the lay man and woman out there. In recent years I've gone out of my way to sign up for subscriptions with App Store if I have the option, because of the true boon it offered in a world of dark patterns: managing a subscription in one place where I have scope of everything, with the expectation that I won't have to jump through barriers or puzzles to cancel, clear-as-day information of when a subscription renews, how much it costs, etc. This was what Apple was good at. I hate that my friends and family will now probably unwittingly get had as a result of this.
The only reason he is fighting Apple's monopoly on IAP is because he wants to ship the Epic store on mobile devices so he can make his 12% cut off exclusive titles.
Now is that better than the Apple store? Sure! But the real problem is that users can't install their own games without going through an arbiter like Epic or Apple.
Tim's a selfish businessman, whose interests just happen to align with the public interest in this instance.
He makes excuses about Linux market share when asked why Fortnite isn't on the Steam Deck, then ships a build for Windows ARM.
Fortnite Festival, their Rock Band recreation in the Fortnite ecosystem, recently started limiting when you can purchase songs in an effort to get people to impulse buy them when available. Players call it FOMO mode.
Epic is still pretty scummy and dishonest, even if in this insurance it appears to be on the good side.
He tweeted one time that Apple's Find My network is "super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn't exist" because years prior someone stole his Mac and then he was able to see the location of the home where the thief lived.
> He makes excuses about Linux market share when asked why Fortnite isn't on the Steam Deck, then ships a build for Windows ARM.
What's the implication here, that he has some personal vendetta against Linux? A sibling comment seems to imply this as well.
It seems like Hanlon's Razor would suggest there was just some engineering complication that they never dealt with. I can imagine a bunch of explanations for why Windows ARM might have happened first. Maybe there were fewer complications, maybe some competent engineer personally cared about Windows ARM, maybe they have Windows based testing infrastructure, etc.
>His Crusade for open platforms/services in general is very very respectable
You can't say that with a straight face when he's so vehemently anti-Linux. To this day, you still can't download Fortnite or the Epic Games Store on Linux. At the end of the day, all Tim actually cares about is his corporation having to pay rent to another corporation.
"App distribution costs" is laughable as an incentive. Any business that makes an app where you can and will spend dollars would gladly let you download it directly from their website in exchange for not giving up 30% of the in-app payments. App distribution costs nothing.
As far as I am aware what gets downloaded from the app store is little more than the launcher, which then downloads the actual game files from epics server.
Why shouldn't Apple compete on pricing against others then? Drop the arbitrary %, charge for actual usage. If they're so good and cheap then everyone will stay with Apple distribution.
And it is also rarely if ever measured in petabytes. Commercially percentile based (in terms of speed) billing is the norm, but that only applies to businesses that act as downstream customers of ISPs
Apple has global IX presences and generally maintains open peering policies, which means it only costs a few bucks monthly to maintain any given PNI (e.g. 10Gbit), and they are also available on those open routing server ports. IX presence is dirt cheap.
I have never bought anything in rocket league and I have played for 600 hours. I am no where near to being bored with it because it has a near infinite skill ceiling.
>He goes into detail on how [...] how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.
This sounds absurd. What was his argument for this?
This is what bad management at Apple looks like. They were now forced to cut off the spice flow that is millions of dollars of IAPs from games in their coveted services pie chart because they got cocky. Roblox alone is going to show up on their balance chart. Epic throwing water on an oil fire with their comments make me grin, they are the reason Apple lowered AppStore pricing, and now they are the reason Apple can no longer collect rent from Patreon (which collects rent themselves). Epic won due to Apple's on hubris.
Congrats. Two of the most user-hostile companies, one of which profits by exploiting children, are going to be better off. And let's also be clear, neither of these companies wants this revenue stream to go away; they just want a judge to give that revenue stream to them.
Get rid of Roblox's and Epic's anti-consumer behavior, and then I will "grin" at this.
So Apple getting a cut of Roblox's revenue is protecting children from exploitation?
I think the real situation is that Apple allowing Roblox on their store despite its safety problems shows that Apple wants to profit from that exploitation themselves instead of prevent it. They have the power to kick them off, but they don't. (Although now they might)
It's really important to realize Epic could've gotten off with special treatment years ago. Fortnite is large enough to dictate terms, and both Apple and Google have made offers before. Tim Sweeney may someday become the villain, but anyone who doesn't realize he gambled a huge amount of his company's future on demanding change for everyone.
Every single individual app developer should be singing his praises today, because he could've just gotten the deal for his company, and many other companies have gone that route. Epic decided to demand better.
Yep, and the EU wants the same thing so all Apple is really doing is holding on for a little longer to the old rules until the EU will make them do the exact same thing. Apple could have been less maliciously compliant and wouldn't have as much resistance from courts, but it was clearly a retaliatory tactic from minute 1.
It seems pretty standard for tech companies. They did the same thing with EU only side-loading (not even sure if that's the right term for how restricted it is). They'll only make changes where they need to, whether it's the EU or the US, or even the UK (let's see how that encryption stuff turns out).
As a business, I understand why they would - more revenue. At least there's some progress and I wouldn't be surprised if the EU follows suit.
It makes comparison easier though. If they did it everywhere, they could make claims about how cheaper or better it'd be for everyone if they didn't have to do it, but having both systems in place at once means people can just look across the lake and see.
Apple as the company we used to know is long dead. I still buy MacBooks and iPhones but only because some remnant of the past still exists in them. The new company came up with Vision Pro, screwing Spotify over app commissions, screwing game developers users love (Epic), non-upgradeable devices, extremely difficult repairability, etc.
Steve Jobs was quite famously against upgradability since the start. That is not something new for Apple.
Honestly I love the current macs, but of course I would like to be able to upgrade them as well. But yeah I also have the feeling that Apple is getting less innovative, more sloppy and more greedy, but I'm not sure I think its become a whole other company.
To me it's felt like coasting. Just release very minimal updates each year to all their main products let others die on the vine like HomePods. iOS 18 marquee features were Apple Intelligence and customizing the home screen. One that didn't ship and one that has been a staple of Android since day 1.
Only real advancement I've seen is in Apple Silicon. Which is fantastic but very much on a tik-tok cycle like Intel. Really wish these companies would cut back on constant model upgrades and instead spend more time polishing the products.
Heck, even iPhone battery was upgradeable while he was still in charge.
Eh, wot? iPhone battery has never been easily replaced. Yeah, you could do it, but it still involved tiny screws and fiddly bits; you’re not popping a new one in while waiting at a stoplight.
But I do miss the days of throwing some cheap RAM at a MacBook.
Spotify is the one who screws everyone. They deserve it
> Epic
Epic is another example of a shady company who doesn't want to give a cut from its micro transactions from users (users who are brought to them by Apple's innovation)
> difficult repairability
iPhone repairability score is 2-3 points higher than Pixel's according to iFixit. Only HMD beats iPhone.
Music royalties are also set by a panel of judges (Copyright Royalty Board). Spotify is not legally able to "screw" anyone. Their pro rata model pays as much or more than the legal requirement. The economics of radio and internet streaming, especially in a world with a democratic explosion of access to recording technology, simply aren't conducive to recording being lucrative.
Record labels are in the business of screwing musicians, though.
1) Using legally required minimum as floor is malicious, this is US we're talking about 2) CRB's ruling is very new and you want us to forget how Spotify was screwing everybody over all preceding years 3) the rates from CRB are based on total revenue of the streaming service which leaves a LOT up for manipulation if the company wants to pay less. Read what real bands and musicians say about how much they get paid from Spotify and others
If you are seriously asking, why not I just link you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify. Just so you know, we are talking about a company that literally has a Wikipedia article JUST about the issues people have with it.
This is too easy of an answer. Would you take more money if I offered it to you?
My problem with Apple here is that I believe it's short sighted. Lack of compliance or whatever you want to call it, could threaten the whole business by forcing legislation and legal action.
Beyond the morality of taking money in this situation, Apple soured it's relationship with everyone who makes income off Patreon or other apps with their unstoppable greed.
The idea Apple deserved a cut of Patreon podcaster's monthly subscription fees was beyond the pale.
I agree completely. My point above is that they are really focused short term. The hubris that nothing would change I believe shows how disconnected they are. They could have made some self adjustments and likely made more money long term, but now the entire payments business is threatened.
It's really unfathomable just how stupid and arrogant their leadership is.
I mean, these leaders are supposed to be the best of the best and we're all sitting here wondering how they can be so idiotic and short-sighted.
They had a perfect thing going. Make free money, do next to nothing. All they had to do was make some concessions, not get too overconfident, and maybe reel it back a tad when things get hot. But no. They got so cocky, so arrogant, that now they risk losing it all.
Time and time again I am just shocked at the sheer stupidity behind the biggest companies in America. Any bozo off the street understands the danger of arrogance better than Apple leadership. How are these people in power and how do they repeatedly make such poor decisions?
Presumably they are planning to appeal so want to minimize impacted apps when they hope to make everyone undo all the changes later. If it sticks it is hard not to imagine it becoming global, since the app store tax issue has become a topic of concern in like a dozen countries now.
Yeah, I was hoping Apple would read the room and simply change the rules globally, but I guess they will be trying to squeeze us customers for as long as they can.
The entire thing they got contempt of court for was trying to find a way to continue to squeeze customers as long as they can.
This is the Big Tech playbook. Apple and Google know what they're doing isn't legal. But they make so much doing it, that it's worth the lawyer fees to delay and delay and appeal and appeal as long as possible to keep the money train flowing. Historically the fine has never been as big as the profit, so even if they eventually get in trouble for it, it makes sense for them to profit in the short term.
They can just get a presidential pardon for now and all future acts. Companies are people. Unkillable people. Unjailable people. They don't sleep. They have a thousand arms, a thousand eyes, a thousand legs, thousand brains. They get better financing, they can walk away from their financing. I can send unlimited money to politicians. They can exist in a thousand places, countries, legal systems at once.
Apple was doing malicious compliance all along. It’s not surprising. But this is extremely good news, because it dampens FUD and narratives such as ”the EU is only going after American companies with frivolous rules”. If you get punished this hard for anti-trust, in the US, you are so out of line it’s not even funny. So it adds legitimacy to the free market spirit seen in markets like EU, which has been criticized for making up arbitrary rules for self-interest.
In either case, this thing will die with a whimper, not a bang. Apple will have to concede to EU and it would not surprise me if other large markets will demand the same.
So the stage is changing. Apple could have flown under the radar and made concessions with terms they could dictate, letting them simplify their offerings across the world without attracting regulators and mega-lawsuits (and hear me out - maybe focus on products and innovation instead). Now, they fight against multiple jurisdictions at once, which all have different requirements (obviously, since they are different bodies). Even if they fold now, by reducing the tax and making more lenient rules, they’re too late. They already have regulators and judges dictating for them what to do, so their agency is permanently limited.
People forget that in the EU, the ”gatekeeper status” wasn’t just ”go after Apple and Google”. It was the App Store specifically. For instance, Gmail was evaluated but not included.
TLDR Apple has to sleep in a bed that they shat in themselves. They were universally popular and could get away with lots of questionable behavior, but instead angered everyone and are rightfully getting curfewed.
> So it adds legitimacy to the free market spirit seen in markets like EU, which has been criticized for making up arbitrary rules for self-interest.
I'm confused a) who is taking the concept of free markets seriously, especially in this context where markets (and competition) are arbitrarily defined and owned by corporations and and b) who would view self-interested laws as either surprising or bad? Of course laws are in self interest. Why on else else would you pass a law?
This is HN, the Church of the Free Market is well represented. If you haven't yet seen someone give the "free markets create competition" speech on Monday and the "my company aims to capture this space and then entrench a monopoly with economies of scale / network effects / platform effects / two sided markets / last mile dynamics" pitch on Tuesday, just hang around HN a bit more. You won't have to wait long.
A monopoly isn't a free market though, because, well, the market is not free. This ruling is precisely about making the market of payment processing on iOS more free, creating such a market.
Sure, we can say that it isn't true communism -- err, sorry, market freedom -- so long as we acknowledge that the incentives which create, establish, and perpetuate the monopolies emerge due to market freedom and attempts to curtail monopolies are regularly attacked under the banner of market freedom and that actual market freedom requires (metaphorical) mace-wielding regulators to regularly go on (metaphorical) skull-cracking expeditions which will be fought tooth and nail by investors seeking the windfall profits that come from monopoly.
Do we agree? Or will we find ourselves on opposite sides of this fight the millisecond the specifics of this case fade from the public eye?
I had thought the clear need for anti-trust had tickled down to the plebs on here. Unfortunate to see that people still casually refer to free markets as if it's a meaningful concept.
If you really truly think that regulation is dragging down some market, it's easy to talk about in specific terms. It is only possible to employ "free markets" in bad faith.
Yes, but temporarily embarrassed millionaires abound. They eagerly employ the concept of "free markets" in bad faith, propelled by the hope that the corruption can be made to work for them rather than against them. Some of them are right, most are wrong, but they are propelled to spread the faith just the same.
Beneath them, people tend to get good at programming before they get good at spotting exploitation, so there is always a stratum of True Believers to feed the operation. Individually they wise up and graduate, but the stratum remains as it is fed from the bottom by the proverbial sucker born every minute.
Then we have the top of the pyramid which actually does benefit from it all. They are small in number but they have enough money to fund the whole space (more importantly: enough money to have a reason to fund the whole space) so they have outsize influence. They could decide to ban me for saying this, for example.
Endstate of the game theory of free markets is cartel or Monopoly.
All it takes is a single competitor to gradually gain more and more strength and competitive advantage via dumping, regulatory capture, or other means (see: organized crime and syndicates) to win the death struggle.
What has saved us hasn't been some magical free market, it has been the markets themselves, once they achieve trust status, fundamentally undermined by science and technology creating a new market that upends the old one.
I highly recommend reading Schumpeter, both "Business Cycles" and "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy".
He discusses how motivations fundamentally change after profit margins peak and argues that profit after this point necessarily produces less economically efficient processes (in terms of the flow of demanded goods and services, not the shareholder, who does receive further productivity gains). In this context, undesired market advantage (legal or illegal) is just a symptom of profit, but it can be analyzed like any other sort of inefficiency. The core prescription is to nationalize the process or otherwise remove the profit motive around peak profit (which is, to be clear, not always easy or possible to identify... but in the worst case, this would open further opportunity for private capital to invest in the next generation of improvements).
He also discusses how failed investment cycles can resonate into market crashes faster than capital can rationally reallocate. Both of these above observations seem very very relevant to our current situation in the US today, and should cause everyone to look askance at people who aren't concerned about how healthy our political economy actually is.
> fundamentally undermined by science and technology creating a new market that upends the old one.
The kicker here is that there's no reason to expect either to continue yielding the same rewards. Some industries have projectable, plannable, investable growth patterns; others do not. Almost all the industries with predictable growth rely on consumption driven by yields from the lucrative exploitation of frontiers, mostly technological recently as you point out. I suspect that the market is going to get incredibly volatile as capital sees this frontiers dry up and adjusts expectations. ideally by cannibalizing itself and not eating us, but it might need a little help in that regard....
I think a more interesting question is: who is “self”? US is historically more prone to favor business, while EU seems more concerned in protecting consumers. And of course there is the noise generated by incompetence/corruption/lobbying that makes the question of “in the interest of whom are laws made?” very nuanced.
Very good points. I've been trying to figure out whose interest is in our "national interests" my entire life. It sure ain't protecting my interests or those of anyone I love that justifies a trillion dollar a year military.
The trillion dollar military is Americas welfare system. You may be chronically confused why no politician dem/republican/liberal/conservative ever wants to cut funding for it, and toss it up as obvious collusion between mega-contractors and politicians.
Well it is. And it's willful. That trillion dollars is spent almost entirely on US made things by US workers. Only a small slice (still large in absolute terms) goes to those mega-contractors. The rest is the only thing that has kept any semblance of American manufacturing alive. The military buys everything (this isn't an exaggeration, you would be hard pressed to find something in your life that they don't buy in quantity) , and there are countless businesses that pay decent wages with benefits for low skilled workers in every state that are only still in existence because of military spending.
It also functions as an incubator, having special provisions for small businesses, especially those owned by marginalized people or located in especially impoverished areas. Basically "We need need coffee filters, so if you buy the equipment and higher the workers, we'll sign a contract to buy 2,000,000 packages a year from you. (And it's a kick-your-door-down felony if you try to backdoor foreign made filters)."
That's why it is never cut. It's a welfare plan that republicans agree too because it requires holding down a job to access. It comes with the side effects of keeping factories running and getting an overpowered military.
And it was an explicit pact between US and European countries: you can have socialism and not much military (because who wants a huge German army??), while we will do our socialism via our military, which in turn will protect you.
But now our politicians are so dumb they don't realize that's what was agreed long ago, and think they can have one part of that deal and not the other.
I am pretty sure if the US decided to get rid of its military entirely, then it wouldnt be long before it was invaded by Russia or China and then the interests of the people you love would be severly impacted.
The world stage is no more a safe place than it has been for any other part of history.
> then it wouldnt be long before it was invaded by Russia or China
I would be lying if I claimed I hadn't dreamed of being liberated by a foreign power with more cultural competence at governance (which excludes Russia, obviously, but they probably at least aren't worse), but realistically anything but a slow scale-down in military power would probably entail the bloodiest world (and civil) war in history. Maybe nukes, too.
But, there's a fork in the road. We can choose to scale down our military presence (and control of trade) today, and figure out how we actually want to exist in a global community outside of letting our corporations swing their dicks freely... Or we can blow trillions of dollars continuing to make fools of ourselves rampaging through other countries rather than building high speed rail before we lose our grip on hegemony anyway as a matter of pure economics.
Or, I suppose, we can just murder anyone who disagrees with us until we're just miserably exploiting each other inside of high walls armed with automated guns. Something tells me that's the option we're going to pick.
> US is historically more prone to favor business, while EU seems more concerned in protecting consumers.
Well that's not that obvious... Sure EU is more than willing to protect consumers from foreign(American) megacorporation because the cost of doing that is very low.
Entrenched major local companies? Well stifling competition through excessive regulation and propping up to bit too fall semi-zombie corporations is not necessarily that great for consumers long-term.
> who is taking the concept of free markets seriously
The EU. Let me explain, because this was confusing:
In US political debate, free markets have become synonymous with ”let companies do what they want”. Today, most of US ”markets” are neither free, nor (arguably) even markets at all, such as Amazon or health insurance. It is a mix between feudal system and protection racket.
Just like ”freedom isn’t free” in terms of civil liberties, same goes (imo) for markets. If you want to optimize for ”freedom” of markets, that means a non-zero amount of regulating them. This is obvious both in theory and by opening your eyes and looking outside.
As far as how to regulate them, I believe the EU is doing a good job, especially in the face of novel technology and business topologies. Basically, allow everything that isn’t deliberately anti-competitive. Because, drumroll, competition is fundamental for markets to work, at all.
Sorry for the confusion. It’s hard to make points when words mean completely different things in different parts of the world.
My main takeaway from this is that Luca Maestri was a blight on Apple. He steered this company into the most malicious of compliance schemes that only has increased their regulatory attack surface. On top of that, he's the one who discouraged apple from making huge investments in compute for LLMs that threatens to derail Apple and the iPhone's primacy as the gateway to information.
Yes, don't forget Tim Cook, who from what I've seen, is the biggest proponent of milking every dollar out of absolutely everything, regardless of if it's good for the consumer or not*. So Maestri and Cook were a perfect combination, Maestri got to be tough, and Cook got someone to blame.
*Take USB-C, Apple made tonnes of money from MFA, which was the main reason they didn't ever want to pivot to a different connector. Even if it was the better choice.
Crazy. I thought hackernews didn’t care because this happened yesterday and I never saw anything!
We’re updating our app in a couple days this will save a LOT of money.
We will kick users out to web and pass a JWT in the url with a short lifespan to log the user in on web and then prompt for Apple Pay or credit card. Then a link back to our app’s deep link
It'll be a nightmare to get an in-app change like this through their approval process. OP's solution to offload the entire thing to the web is a great stop-gap measure since when it is definitely rejected they can appeal through their App Store rep pointing to this external payment URL decision and have some small chance of getting it approved in the nearest term.
If you pay for something in the app apple gets 30% of that money. If you send users to your website to pay you get to keep it all now that the 27% fee was found illegal.
I don't know about iOS, but on Android you can just pay through a Google Pay pop-up, you don't need to input any kind of payment information to the app itself. Does iOS not have such a mechanism?
iOS does and of course you can call an in-app Safari popup to any payment processor or website (with limitations on JavaScript speed) if you don't want to pop them into a browser and then back into the app.
Only in the US feels like shooting themselves in the foot again. The EU is already cracking down on them for their malicious compliance with the DMA, and it’s only a matter of time before similar pressure builds
We need some courage to give larger fines. It is too common to calculate fines just as financial risk rather than something which you should not do because it is not a good thing. It is obvious that they are making more money than the possible fines are when they still continue doing this. Or just put persons responsible for company's ill decisions and suddenly all problems disappear.
Also don’t forget, only very large companies can make this kind of calculated risk; when the parking ticket isn’t calculated based on your income, the parking ticket for some is just a fee to park while to others it means not making rent that month, the fines stifle competition while the big players can take advantage
> In the European Union, developers can also distribute notarized iOS and iPadOS apps from alternative app marketplaces and directly from their website.
Well, this was only possible because the EU had pushed hard toward this openness otherwise, we wouldn't expect Apple to do this.
> For everything else there is always the open Internet. If the App Store model and guidelines or alternative app marketplaces and Notarization for iOS and iPadOS apps are not best for your app or business idea that’s okay, we provide Safari for a great web experience too.
IMO, Safari on iOS do not have a great experience for web devs who are willing to distribute their apps as PWAs, especially when there is no alternative browser that provides additional capabilities, they are all skinned Safaris. Take for instance the Vibration API [1], it has been supported since a long time in Chrome mobile but not in Safari. I believe it does an excellent job in giving a PWA some native-feeling when being used. Still though, I still miss that haptic feedback is not yet supported by Chrome. Bluetooth [2] is yet another missing API in Safari.
Of course, for these (and other) web APIs to be abused by developers, I encourage browser vendors to disable them by default when requested from a website and enable them ONLY on user consent. On the other hand, when a user installs the PWA, these privileges should be granted automatically with the ability to disable them by the user.
To finalize, another excellent API that facilitate the installation of PWAs by triggering an install prompt [3] is not supported in iOS Safari, which does really makes me wonder: "How Safari provides a great web experience?"
> … except for apps on the United States storefront, the apps may not…
US based app developers hosting apps on app stores in other countries should also be covered by the injunction. What am I missing? Is the injunction only covering US based app market? And does not cover app developers?
Right. We get that's what's Apple is doing, but the question is whether it satisfies the injunction.
FWIW, I will claim it does not: it should cover--at least for any developer in the United States--any app published by any Apple-affiliated entity, anywhere, and certainly covers Apple's centrally managed global store.
I’m no expert, but it may be the case that if you place an app on, say, the EU app store, you’re technically doing business in the EU, not the US, and are therefore subject to EU law, not US law. Wasn’t that the case with the DSA requirements? https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/apple-purges-apps-without-...
Even if I accept Apple's definition that such a developer is directly doing business in the EU, the injunction applies to "Apple, Inc. and its officers, agents, servants, employees, and any person in active concert or participation with them", which certainly includes the direction they provide to the people they hire to operate their storefronts in other countries (particularly so as this is, as I stated, a centrally-managed system run out of the United States).
Eh, I don’t think it works that way. Apple’s EU subsidiaries are separate legal entities, and everything that happens on the EU app store is not an activity that occurs within the US and would be subject to US federal law. Even Tim Sweeney implicitly acknowledged this: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/04/30/epic-games-apple-peace-...
The EU app store--even as a separate legal entity--doesn't operate independently: it takes its marching orders from Apple, Inc., and Apple, Inc. has been required to not do this thing to developers, not merely directly but indirectly even by persons (which includes corporations) they are merely "in active concert or participation with". The EU app store doesn't even have a separate submission portal or a separate approval process, much less any autonomy in its operation: it is certainly covered by this injunction.
Tax law do not work according to International Law. It works according to State Law. US Law treats revenue as either local or foreign. Local revenue gets local tax. Foreign revenue gets foreign tax. When the profit from foreign revenue makes its way to the US parent company, it is seen as local revenue.
3.1.1 In-App Purchase:
If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency wallets, etc.
Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshit
I bought GoodNotes 5 and love it. One time purchase, and a great little app. Now GoodNotes 6 is out. Their “most popular plan” is an annual subscription. I just tried to look up how expensive it is - but their pricing page[1] lists a bunch of different plans available. It doesn’t list the actual prices. (Why on earth does a notes app have multiple usage plans? Horrible.)
They have a “one time payment” option. But I thought that’s what I already bought from the App Store when I bought it a couple years ago. I guess not. My totally fine, currently working version (v5) will probably randomly stop working at some point in the future and I’ll lose all my notes, because I suppose breaking totally working software is good business.
That pricing page is absolutely abysmal and indefensible, but has nothing to do with what the parent comment said (small one time purchase vs larger recurring subscription). There's a one time payment option (with no price, which is shitty) on that page for v6. That seems like it has exactly the functionality you wanted?
> They have a “one time payment” option. But I thought that’s what I already bought from the App Store when I bought it a couple years ago.
You said yourself you bought GoodNotes 5, and this is for GoodNotes 6.
There's thousands of games targeted at children that are exactly this.
There are publishers that drop reskin after reskin of the same game all with individual subscriptions, and they constantly try to kids from one into the other.
Then others clone that game and do the same thing. Fluvsies is an App Store virus.
And nobody is going to drop their prices because of the ruling.
This may be great for some publishers, but doesn’t benefit the consumer in any way. In fact as i consumer id much rather deal with Apple’s payment system than a separate payment mechanism for each app, especially when it comes to cancelling, changes etc
Yeah, it's mobile, so it's not all games with loot boxes and escalating pay to play. Some of it is infinite slop addictionware, brain rot, gambling, payday loan apps, shovelware, and spyware.
Apple sucks for their monopoly tactics, but it's very hard for me to have any sympathy for the rest of the mobile ecosystem. It's probably the most exploitative toxic software ecosystem.
If you’re an Indy developer making less than 1 million a year, you are paying 15%. Is it really not worth 15% (where if your product has value you should be able to charge enough to make up the difference) for credit card processing (3%-4%) and distribution?
I think the issue is not about what it's worth, but what they should be allowed to charge for. To me, the argument about "what it's worth" is fundamentally wrong.
As an extreme example, if some company found a way to charge me $100 every day or my head would explode, that obviously is worth $100 to most of us. However, I'm currently not having to pay any company to prevent my head from exploding, so maybe that's just not something I should have to pay for.
As I said, my point is just that it's not something I should be obligated to pay for.
But, if you're looking for counterexamples to show it can be done for less than a 15% cut, they're around. Almost every eBay category charges less than 15%, for example. And, as another user pointed out, Epic takes less than 15%. AliExpress charges 5-8% on average. Etsy is I think something like 6.5%.
Etsy charges 6.5% transaction fee + 3% payment processing fee + a flat $0.25 fee per transaction. That would end up being more than 15% for most Apple purchases of $1-$3.
eBay charges a final value fee of 12.9% and $.30 - $0.40 flat fee per order. And you pay a fee for international orders.
I get where Apple is coming from, though, and it's not just the revenue stream. They want to make sure that if you spent money on something in the Apple ecosystem, you can enjoy that for as long as you got a working device with that app installed. Allowing third-party services like license keys introduce a dependency on the vendor to keep their servers up and running.
Apple wants to make sure they get a 30% cut if you spend money on anything within their ecosystem — that's all they really care about.
There are several reports of people having their entire accounts banned, effectively losing access to everything they paid for. And it's basically impossible to get your account back.
.. well, apart from Apple's own ability to vaporize apps from the store at no notice, and their own upgrade treadmill which tends to cause low-revenue apps to be dropped. No, it's just because someone other than Apple is earning money, and this will probably also end up being overturned.
> Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshit
You're confusing developers with publishers. Developers love this shit, one simple API that's built in to the OS and you can support payments worldwide instead of having to integrate with dozens of payment providers all with their own quirky APIs.
Now for publishers, who want to maximise their profit margins and who don't have to actually write the code to do all those integrations, that's a different story. But I don't think there is a single developer in the world who enjoys integrating with 3rd party payment services.
If you're an indie developer who self-publishes, do you want to spend your time working on your app or on payment platform integrations?
Especially the smaller self-publishing developers won't benefit from this at all. It's just the large publishers like Epic who can afford the developer resources to build their own payment systems who have something to gain here.
Apple’s rules leveled the playing field. All this ruling does is give a competitive advantage to the big fish.
Somebody needs to alert the developers, because they're currently unaware of how much they love it. I've only ever seen devs complain about this stuff.
Of course, this is a self-selected group because people who are happy with the status quo don't usually talk about it loudly online. Still, many developers, including iOS-only indies, are unhappy with the App Store's payment constraints. Check out mjtsai's blog for regular roundups of their complaints.
Apple's API is atrocious to work with, especially integrating it with a server to handle payment success/failure. It's annoyingly naive and kind of the API equivalent of "you're holding it wrong".
Why not? I'd personally never go somewhere else to pay for your subscription or content. Maybe if you were a big time player that didn't have an appealing alternative, like Netflix. But for the average app, like Planta or Breethe, I'm just switching to an app that has an in app purchase if yours doesn't.
Semi-related, but I also always pick an app that has family sharing of subscription over one that doesn't too (Headspace --> Breethe)
> I'd personally never go somewhere else to pay for your subscription or content.
When "going elsewhere" means "getting stuff cheaper", people are likely going to go elsewhere to pay for any subscription even if setup is notably less convenient.
If my Shonen Jump subscription goes from $2 to $1.70, I'd rather pay the 30 cents than have to click and type for 2 minutes, and then have to solve a mystery to cancel it later.
If my ChatGPT Pro (hypothetical, I don't pay for that) went from $200 to $170, maybe worth it.
Your first comment where you said "Why not?" to a comment questioning the clause that apps are required to use in-app purchases would be read as supporting Apple's restrictions, i.e. no user choice.
The wording here seems, to me, to have some silly limitations. For example, there are apps I have thought would make a nice gift for a friend before, and the easiest way to do this is to buy an unlock key and send it to them.
But, with these rules, I guess the goal is that I have to send them a gift card instead? I'll just not bother and get them something else.
Though you could make the argument that it would be more complex than it's worth. There's regional issues, like can I redeem your gift code from cdkeys.ru in the US. Can I return the app afterward if I don't want it for a 160 rubles credit? They might already need to handle that stuff for gift cards though.
That makes no sense, using Paypal or Stripe is very normal on the web. There is no reason why it should be any different in apps except for Apple trying to gaslight us.
My personal opinion makes no sense? I don't really care if an app only has subscriptions or purchases through their website, I'm just saying that I wouldn't use it when there's an easier and more convenient alternative available.
Adopting the language of the abused to describe being inconvenienced by the company that makes your phone is uhh, something.
>The App Review Guidelines have been updated for compliance with a United States court decision regarding buttons, external links, and other calls to action in apps. These changes affect apps distributed on the United States storefront of the App Store, and are as follows:
...
> 3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.
> 3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.
The difference between the quality of software in the Apple App Store versus the Google Play Store is dramatic, in my opinion. Apple has succeeded in increasing the bar to entry and standards to the point where a lot of the blatant trash/advertising malware present in the Google Play Store is caught by the net of the App Store submission process (and the $99 developer fee).
I do believe the court when they say that Apple has engaged in seriously anticompetitive behavior, and I don't look to Apple as some sort of altruistic honest company, but I also am curious to see if this reduces the average 'value' of a given app in the App Store. On the other hand, it could encourage the development of high-quality software since devs aren't paying the 30%+ tax on App Store sales.
I don't get it. Why is Apple changing this in the US now? Is it because the allegation of them lying under oath and being subjected to a criminal review? If so, how does this change absolves them or minimises their fate during the upcoming criminal trial against them?
You're confusing two different things. 1 the court determined that apple subverted the original injunction, and ordered that it comply immediately (specifically calling out all the ways apple was getting around the injunction previously). 2 the court said that to issue a fine so that apple loses whatever money it gained by non-compliance would be considered a criminal matter (unless it becomes clear that there's no other way to force apple to comply with 1 above) even though it may be appropriate, and as such it is beyond the scope of what the court could order in its own, and the court refers the matter for criminal prosecution.
"Upcoming criminal trial" implies that there is an upcoming criminal trial, which at this point there is not. The judge referred a criminal complaint for contempt against that witness. The office that received it (presumably some sort of investigative division of the court or law enforcement entity) has to investigate, decide if they want to refer it to a prosecutor, and the prosecutor then has to decide if they want to actually file charges. Then there's a probable cause hearing where a judge determines if there is enough evidence for a trial. Then they set a trial date.
Until a trial date is set there is no upcoming criminal trial.
Ran out of edit time but this is feature, not a bug, and it's not really something ideological like a lot of this kind of stuff can be.
You don't want courts to be able to decide on Monday that you're going to trial on Tuesday. You don't want courts (or any other entity of the judiciary or law enforcement) to decide that you're going to trial independently and the next step is your trial. Regardless of your political persuasion most people agree that fast and efficient prosecution by the state is a Bad Thing. Slow is good. Lots of hands and eyes involved in the process is good. Justice moves slowly by design.
True, but at the same time, "Justice delayed is justice denied"[1]. An excessively slow justice system means that you need substantially more resources (money, and time living under the uncertainty of the outcome) to deal with it, which is part of why the threat of court action against you from a large corporation (or another entity with deep pockets) is so concerning. I know someone who was in court defending against a civil suit for ten years, and the fact that someone is litigious and able to sue is a much larger threat than it should be.
Sure, there's checks and balances, and those are good, but it's ridiculous when we allow cases to drag on and then normalize it.
Yes but the maxim presupposes the existence of an injured party, and that's a little different in the context of civil claims (e.g. your example of the large corporation bringing a civil suit against someone) compared to the state bringing criminal charges against a person. There are intentional roadblocks to the state bringing charges, e.g. the separation of powers I mentioned above, that don't really exist on the civil side.
It's good that there are checks, but the core point remains that nimbleness is required for effectiveness. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm observing that the courts are slow, and that the same logic (slow is good) can indicate that is a good thing, which is why I take issue with general application of the concept without limiting context.
I'm pretty sure EU apps can link elsewhere for payment, but they have to show a warning message first saying that the payment is outside of Apple's jurisdiction and you can't get a refund from apple, etc.
" 3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video). ... Reader app developers may apply for the External Link Account Entitlement to provide an informational link in their app to a web site ...
Am I crazy or was this not already possible in the US? When I tried to sign up for Disney Plus to watch the new season of Andor, Disney told me I had to complete the signup outside of the app. Then I got a big warning from Apple saying I was no longer transacting with Apple and wouldn't be able to cancel the subscription or get refunds via the App Store if I continued. Am I misunderstanding what this trial was about?
because thats what the judge said. She ruled that rules banning in app purchases that dont use apple pay is allowed but the anti steering stuff is not.
Ironically the App Store only exists because of the ridicule Apple received when they announced their new smartphone which then only supported 3rd party applications as web apps. Back then, native apps were considered a “must have” feature for smartphones.
What!? Yikes that’s an overstatement. I prefer to use web apps over downloading an app to do a single action and then deleting.
There are lots of good web apps. The problem is that companies more often than not prioritize native (let’s be real, react native) apps over web. And not mobile web, desktop web. So you have a second thought of a second thought when designing and building a mobile friendly web app.
I build most of my clients’ apps as web apps. I target their main platform of choice first and branch out from there. But if I start with desktop, I pre-plan for mobile as well.
You can have high performing web apps if you continually optimize for state and rendering performance.
> Bloated and overcomplicated are design issues, not technology issues.
No, it's very much a technology issue. The overhead just for shipping an entire webbrowser with your app is insane. Building a decent UI in HTML/CSS which were never designed for that purpose, is an absolute disaster. HTML and CSS are for formatting text documents, not for designing user interfaces. There is a reason that there is a framework-of-the-week for webapps.
So now you have this massive webbrowser footprint, with the framework-of-the-week on top and then you have to write your app on top of this abomination in one of the most terrible languages ever invented.
The whole 'webapp' thing exists solely on the false promise of cost savings. Every kid who made a webpage for their aunt's Etsy business calls themselves a 'web designer', which has resulted in a race to the bottom. Web designer are a dime a dozen (sure, a good one may cost a pretty penny, but that's not what management sees). Now you can hire that cheap 'web designer' and they can build apps too, since that's just web tech, right? And since it all works cross-platform, you only need to build it once. What a cost savings!
They will even get an initial version out the door quickly. Look, everything worked out as expected. The problem is that it's quicksand. Your app grows and it gets harder and harder to fix issues and add features, as it's all build on shaky foundations. The more you move, the more difficult it becomes. Soon, you find yourself writing platform-specific code as the cross-platform promise doesn't hold for anything but the simplest functionality. Before you know it, you have this bloated, unmaintainable mess.
At the end of the day, it's easier and cheaper to just develop 2 native apps for iOS/Android than it is to build a 'webapp'. You can use nice, modern programming languages with very few footguns (Swift/Kotlin), good tooling, a UI toolkit designed to actually build UIs with, a set of well designed platform APIs. The whole cross-platform web-app thing sounds nice in theory, but it never delivers on its promises.
You're mixing things up. A web app does not ship a web browser, the user brings their own. You're thinking of electron apps.
When using web apps, the browser you bring is no different than, say, having to install Qt. It's a static entity shared by all apps, with each app "just" being anywhere between kilobytes and tens of megabytes.
Electron brings a browser, but even then what makes the app bloated is still design Theres a baseline amount of bulk included, but it's mostly inconsequential to the actual app behavior - similar to how a standard system has god knows how many libraries and functions available but mostly unusued.
You could easily have an app written with PyQt that's way more sluggish, bloated and complicated despite using a fraction of the disk space. Shitty apps, that's the issue.
> The whole 'webapp' thing exists solely on the false promise of cost savings
Tell me you know nothing about security without tell me you know nothing about security. Desktop software is a nightmare... and they can still be as bloated as the most bloated webapp.
The App store and native apps are not one and the same.
OP didnt say that native apps need to die, only the app store.
Android ecosystem deals just fine with native apps being distributed in .apk format which can just easily be installed by the user clicking on the file. Why cant this happen on Apple devices too?
I didn’t say they are. I implied a connection though. And the reason for that should be obvious: if native apps hadn’t existed then we’d have never travelled down this road with an App Store
If you think the android ecosystem is just fine as it is, why don’t you just use it instead of trying to change one that many other people are happy with?
I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning. It basically goes like this:
1. Read the argument
2. Disregard argument and instead try to read the person's mind or guess "what they really meant" to uncover some hidden agenda that you think must exist since it's simply not possible that somebody has a good argument against your pre-supposed belief.
3. Attack what you think they must actually believe rather than what they actually said.
You can also gas it up with some emotion too, especially if it's something deeply enmeshed in your identity like religion, politics, or Apple.
There are many ways to interpret that question - a hypothetical pondering, or a "why doesn't it work this way?" in the most direct sense. I interpreted it as the latter.
> I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning.
Isn't this exactly what you've done to my comment?
> There are many ways to interpret that question - a hypothetical pondering, or a "why doesn't it work this way?" in the most direct sense. I interpreted it as the latter.
Yes, this is actually my point. That question isn't clearly saying, "you should do this on Apple devices too" it's asking, "why not?" The answer to that question could be anything like, "Because Apple and they're users believe it's better this way" or something more technical like, "software architecture limitations in <component>" or anything like that. You broadened your interpretation to assume that OP was advocating for Apple to make the change, but I don't see anything in their statement that would suggest that they are. You could maybe say, "well they should have clarified in the original" but then every comment would have to turn into a long list of what the person isn't saying, which could go on indefinitely. If you're really not sure what they meant, you could also practice the time-honored tradition of asking them and then dealing with their actual position, instead of assuming and addressing a strawman.
> > I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning.
> Isn't this exactly what you've done to my comment?
Hmm, possibly, I don't believe that I have based on what I wrote above in this comment above, but I will definitely consider deeper whether I've committed the same fallacy.
Btw, FWIW I don't mean anything personal by it. Nearly everyone does this to some extent (including me I'm sure), especially when it's a subject that we've been around repeatedly with lots of different people. There definitely are people taht post with hidden agendas and ask questions that aren't in good faith, so I'm not even saying we're always wrong when we do this. However, I do think it's important for discussion/conversation to strive not to make assumptions about somebody that we don't know. Honest questions can frequently sound the same as the bad faith questions, but assuming bad faith is an instant conversation killer.
The itunes store predates the iphone. The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs.
And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone. I remember regularly using the iphone optimized version of Google Reader on Symbian, which of course had its own webkit based browser. Worked pretty well in 2008. I was working in Nokia Research then. Lots of people experimenting with browser based UIs there at there. Also the S60 webkit port came out of one of the teams there around 2005 or so. Nokia had a full blown browser running on smart phones years before the iphone launched. Incredible how they dropped the ball. I'm pretty sure that influenced the thinking in Apple when they were designing the iphone. Because Webkit of course was their project.
As does thousands of other online stores but that doesn’t mean they are App Stores too.
> The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs.
You’re basically just reiterating what I said here but in more favourable language.
At the end of the day, public demand was for native apps and the App Store was born from that. So all I’m doing is making a throw away comment about how times have changed.
> And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone.
Oh it really was. At the time it was heads and shoulders above anything else’s available for portable devices.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. More and more services have adopted a web-first interface. So the benefits of native applications have dwindled when you’re basically just using web technologies regardless.
And then there is the massive abuse of spyware in mobile apps. For that reason alone, I rarely bother with native apps if I can help it.
But alternative payment flows will put some pressure on Apple to improve IAP features that many developers want to provide better experiences for their customers. Like IAP kind of sucks, unless your revenue model is tricking kids into charging things to mom's CC or finding whales and getting them addicted to your gambling app.
If Apple was worried about this, they shouldn't have flaunted the court order in a way that made the judge say in the subsequent order that "this is an injunction, not a negotiation."
I understand what you are saying, but not what I am getting at. If you were a developer and had a choice between a "one-time fee" with Apple taking 30% vs "free to download" but redirect to an outside payment system, which one would you chose?
I am worried that now game companies are incentivized to abandon "initial purchase" games/apps and go the "loot-box, subscription" route.
Is this the final nail in the pay one time for games coffin?
At the risk of not piling on to the Apple dislike here, if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company. I presume even more scam apps will take your money and ignore your complaints; imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it. When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country. Of course this happens on the web too, but apps on your phone very different from web apps.
> When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country.
Have any App Store consumers sued Apple? And were they successful?
Apple does refuse App Store refunds all the time. Apple also closes consumer Apple accounts all the time, for some reason or no reason, often refusing to tell the consumer the reason, alleging some kind of fraud, in which case the consumer loses everything they've ever purchased. One of the reasons, though, is consumers doing a chargeback on their credit card, which Apple hates and punishes severely.
fwiw apple has been extremely generous to be on refunds and, while I don't abuse the system, I do get a refund when I think it's deemed necessary, either due to a lack of satisfaction or accidental purchase.
Chargebacks are a huge pain in the butt to deal with and, as someone who's saw this first hand, chargebackery is correlated bad customership (two words that I just made up) to so I can understand that they'd hate consumers doing that instead of going through what's otherwise a pretty fair system.
Dealing with apple support in payments land has been, on the consumer side, one of the less infuriating things that have come out of what is now their support process. That said, the ux for getting refunds and checking on their status is antiquated, perhaps purposefully.
Do they do such a-holish immoral moves also in EU? There could be a billion or 5 fine for them in the waiting, we don't like to get fucked over by greedy corporations, no sir.
We need all the money we can get for killing some russians once they invade our borders in near future, so any contribution is highly appreciated.
Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally? Lots of these arguments could equally be applied to a shopping mall but we don't require all stores within a mall to use the same merchant services provider.
This is probably the best analogy, however I think what might be different is there is somewhat high of a bar for the merchant/vendor to be operating a legal and legitimate business. On the internet and in the App Store, it’s kind of a Wild West.
Edit:
Maybe not globalizing App Store apps would resolve this? Or at least if you want to operate an app in a country, you need to incorporate in that country too? I think that might make it harder for overseas companies to get away with fraud.
They don’t always grant refunds for App Store purchases, I’ve heard from many customers whose refund requests were denied after we referred them to Apple. As a developer I would love to be able to refund them myself, but we can’t refund IAPs at all, it’s entirely up to Apple.
If the customer requests too many refunds (say 3-4 within a few months) their Apple ID is likely to be banned from making further purchases.
I feel that this is orthogonal to my point - it's not about how generous or not a given mechanism is, more to question why the App Store is any different from other transactions we need to protect. You either have to argue that App Store transactions need more consumer friendly refunds than other credit card transactions for some reason, or otherwise that credit cards should have no-questions asked refunds.
As another commenter said, in some cases Apple's power in the relationship is detrimental to the consumer - if a user issues a chargeback then Apple can disable their entire Apple account.
I don’t need no-questions refunds. I need fair transactions.
Apple is too powerful in this relationship to provide it. If I have a problem with a merchant I can go to my credit card company about it. If I have a problem with my credit card company I might lose out on that one transaction but I can get a different credit card.
If I have a problem with Apple (or Steam or Nintendo or…) I either have to take the abuse or lose past “purchases”.
And the merchant themselves can do no questions asked refunds anyway.
There's plenty of ways to ensure that. Don't let Apple's bad UI fool you into accepting Apple's bad business practices.
Apple could have created an API for other payment providers to integrate with, so that you could sign up for IAP with whoever you want (imagine your IAP and subscriptions run by PayPal if you enter a PayPal account instead of a credit card).
Banks and payment processors already have tons of policies requiring payments to be presented in a clear way, refunds and cancellations processed properly, etc. There are also plenty of trademark and consumer protection laws that forbid misrepresentation. It's a solved problem that Apple pretends to be unsolvable and spreads FUD about to keep their cash cow.
What do you mean? The app can use Apple's system and its own. If the developers don't want your money on terms fair to you, you don't buy.
Some things are relatively easy to refund via Apple, but not all of them. It's nearly impossible to get a refund for in-app purchases, gift cards, balance top-ups, auto-renewing subscriptions, redeemed digital goods, and so on. Coming from the EU, if I paid for these things directly with a credit card, I'd be able to get a refund in line with our consumer protection laws (if the item was sold deceptively, if it has a fault, if I am not satisfied for any reason within 14 days) that cover more or less all digital purchases - no problem.
To borrow your words, Apple's system is taking away trust. I like the refunds my European bank offers me because it operates under consumer-friendly laws. I don't trust Apple's refunds.
Anyway, opening any system to more choices for the consumer cannot decrease trust. If the consumer trusts the original payment option, they can use that. If that is not provided, but the customers don't trust other payment methods, the app won't make money. The market will soon negotiate so that the payment methods that customers and sellers find acceptable prevail. Apple fears it won't be their extortion (I mean payment system), and rightfully so. Aside from the Stockholm syndrome, there's very little reason to use it.
This is a good point. If an app does me wrong with a non Apple payment processor I can do a chargeback as a last resort. That's not really an option for Apple payment processing because I think it can get your whole Apple account banned.
That is also true. There is a very significant disincentive to charge back against sellers protected by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, PayPal, Stripe, and other similar payment gateways. The consumer protections are, therefore, eroded.
You're missing the part where app developers take away the Apple payment option because that way they can make it much harder to do refunds, cancel subscriptions, etc.
That decreases trust. Period.
You're claiming this is about adding choices, but it's not. App developers will be removing the choice for consumers to pay via Apple.
Saying it's my choice to then not use the app is disingenuous. When a good option is replaced with multiple worse options, there's no benefit to "more choices".
I don't need to, that's what I was already responding to. Please re-read my comment.
I really didn't think it necessary to reply to your sentence that "If that is not provided, but the customers don't trust other payment methods, the app won't make money" -- because it's so clearly relying on a false premise.
But since you need it further explained: trust in payment methods isn't binary. I prefer Apple payments but still use my credit card for everything else where it isn't available. If people can't use a better payment option, they'll fall back to a worse one. They usually won't just forego using the app entirely. Just look at the success of Adobe Creative Cloud despite its horrendous billing practices.
Again, that's what's wrong with your argument around choice. More choice leads to worse outcomes when you allow the best choice to be removed.
> You're not free to continue using Apple's payment system as a consumer.
Previously, apps could still require you to not use the apple payment option.
For example, Spotify only let you subscribe on the web because apple's 30% cut is larger than their margin, so they'd lose money if you subscribed in-app.
The "Buy" page in the app was just text saying "You cannot buy a subscription in the app". It couldn't link to the webpage since apple's rule banned that. It couldn't say "You can buy a subscription on our webpage" because apple's rules banned that.
Before, an app could simply not have any payment option in the app, and tell you "You cannot pay here". Now, an app can still choose to have no in-app payment and instead tell you "You can pay on the web", or embed that web payment option in-app.
You are still welcome to refuse to use any apps that don't support apple pay, as you could before.
I’m pretty sure this ruling just lets developers add an external payment option (and charge less for it). Apple’s IAP is still a requirement, so you’ll still have that option if it’s worth the 30% premium to you (it definitely is not for me).
Developers are free to include no payment mechanism in the app that would involve an iAP, and tell people to click to go to the website (which can open an in app browser window).
Well in that case, there must be a single endpoint, a common interface, to initiate a payment, track chargeback and view payment histories. Customers should have the option if they want to trust Apple with their payment details or 3rd-party.
This is sorta what customers expect. When they want a refund or have a problem, they ask the developer. They don't understand the payments are all going through apple AND that apple is responsible for all billing support. There is no way to even look up a customer or get a list of your customers with IAP, aside from using something like RevenueCat that tries to link your user accounts with the device receipts to figure out who is subscribed. Customers find it ridiculous that you can't help them with any billing questions at all.
In fact, with apple providing this service, it's objectively worse — if apple declines to refund you and you charge back via card, apple (and Google etc) will just ban your account.
Removing apple and google from the payment chain mitigates this risk.
Canceling a purchase via Apple is generally much easier than dealing with your credit card. I don't know what experience you've had that has been the opposite?
> if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company
Just use a virtual payment processor (PayPal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, etc) or any credit card directlyh. I mean, you often can't on an iPhone, and that's the whole problem.
If you have a genuine issue with what you bought via Apple's payment gateway and your bank files a credit card chargeback for you, Apple would even indiscriminately ban you. They are hardly the good guy.
They've installed themselves as an arbiter of what can be refunded and what cannot. But by law, the arbiter is the government, not Apple. So there are many, many problems with Apple's approach. The consumer rights are one, but acting above the law itself is a problem.
> you now need to go to the specific company and payment system,
My credit card company. In fact, this is better because as a consumer, if I get scammed, I only need to deal with my CC company, and when I get my money back, I don't have to worry about Apple closing my account in retaliation.
> When Apple controlled the payment system,
I was beholden to Apple's whims and limitations. If I didn't like Apple's outcome, going to my credit card company was still an option. However, initiating a charge back could result in something happening to my account.
> imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it
One phone call with my CC company (I don't even know if you still need to do the phone call anymore).
Oh, but... to be fair, I can't go to Apple's subscription page and cancel it there. So, there is that one thing.
If I charge back some random store because I didn't get what I ordered no problem. If I charge back Apple they can effectively shut my phone down and not allow me to install another App.
That's literally the biggest selling point of credit cards too, you don't need to argue with every business you paid, just charge back your credit card.
Apple didn't remotely invent "single point of dispute."
People are still able to use Apple payments. They just have other choices now. At least that is my understanding. Wanting choices does not seem like "Apple dislike". To me, at least.
That's a fair benefit to apple payment, and if the app vendor could offer apple pay (with the extra fee for this benefit) and their own payment system at a different price I think that would be ideal for consumers, yes?
Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP.
When I use mobile apps I like being able to do all my spending in one place. I want to be able to go to subscriptions and cancel everything I don't need at once.
Just yesterday I had to manually stop a PayPal payment renewal since the merchants cancellation process doesn't work ( 2 emails to customer service and I get the vibe this is intentional).
That's not something I want to have to keep doing.
I can imagine Epic being able to convince people to use a 3rd party payment provider, but that won't happen for smaller studios.
> Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP.
and this is apple’s reasoning for why their strict control over the app store is warranted. they want it to be seen as trusted and infallible and that can’t happen if 3rd parties have free reign.
for me, the correct way forward isn’t external referrals. it’s allowing multiple app stores on devices. if you don't want the “untrusted” 3rd party store with more lax dev rules than Apple’s, just don’t use them.
>for me, the correct way forward isn’t external referrals. it’s allowing multiple app stores on devices. if you don't want the “untrusted” 3rd party store with more lax dev rules than Apple’s, just don’t use them.
Exactly. Or better yet just let me install whatever binaries I want. Make it clear I'm responsible for what I install though.
From the perspective of the average consumer, it's much easier for Apple to handle the whole flow. If I want to cancel my subscription via the app store it take 30 seconds, not a bunch of unanswered emails to customer support.
If you haven't watched Tim Sweeney's appearance on Lex Fridman (which went live two days ago ironically), he discusses this battle against Apple, which he's maintained at a furious pace for years. He goes into detail on how the previous guidelines stifle innovation, how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.
His Crusade for open platforms/services in general is very very respectable.
Fortnite, in my opinion, has been a gold standard for F2P monetization. No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc. Compare that with Counter Strike 2, and I can't imagine how much money Epic has left on the table by choosing this path. So I give Tim a lot of credit for maintaining such a principled stance.
> No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc.
> So I give Tim a lot of credit for maintaining such a principled stance.
IMO, someone that drives and capitalizes on addictive spending by an underage audience should never be considered principled. While it may not be considered gambling, it’s not much better when it’s often out of control due to feeding on FOMO.
Ah yes, toy makers, the true problem of our world. 30 years ago I'm sure you'd be complaining about "addicted" spending on keeping up with the most popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys. It's not evil to make things kids want and make money off it. If you don't want your kids to buy things, that's on you and its a problem from time immemorial, not a new issue with video games.
These people are implementing Skinner boxes[1] for children.
There are literally "engagement" engineers actively doing A/B tests on children to see what makes them more addicted or gets them to spend more money or time on their platform.
There are humans literally doing experiments on children to figure out what stimulus results in more addicted behavior.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
Who cares? My kids asked me for skins for years. As the one who owned a credit card and would be the one needed to pay for it I laughed them out of the room. Maybe parents should learn to parent and tell their kids no. My kid now older and with a job now tells me how he remembers when he used to ask for skins and I would say no damn way. He also says now that he makes his own money and buys things himself there is no way he would spend his own money on clothing for a video game while his own shoes are falling apart. It’s a waste of money and he said it not me. So parents need to parent. Typically kids until older have no readily access to money so if a parent acts like one they can tell the kid to forget it.
This is the root cause. I don't get the part about kids spending ceaselessly on skins, who is giving them the money?
I get spending $20 on one skin to support the development of a game you enjoy.
Just don't see the point in having multiple.
Me and many of my friends were children when Fortnite came out. We still play, and we now have full time jobs. When fun new skins or dances come out, it’s not uncommon for us to get them.
They’re fun and entertaining. I hardly feel addicted or preyed on moreso than when I buy any other entertainment product.
It's fashion, to an extent. Do you only have a single outfit? Would you even if it was always the right weather for them, and was always clean? Kids often spend a lot of time in these environments, which makes them want variety of expression there.
It's not an issue from time immemorial. it's an issue from the late 19th century, if not post WWII. the child consumer class did not before that. Toys hardly existed before that. Even an adult consume class with disposable income had hardly existed. Kids spending hours every day zonked out at screens is a distinctly new phenomenon on top of that
Oh ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_from_Iddin-Sin_to_Zinu
Not sure I follow. The letter is about clothes (not toys)... He talks about people (himself, others) having low single digits outfits (one set, two sets), not sure how this makes him a post industrial capitalism consumer. In 1800 BC, life expectancy was probably 25 and people worked from ages like 6 onwards. This guy was definitely not a commoner, and he only had one set of clothes, and wanted two good sets. I'm not saying that's good and that out kids are spoiled and should be happy with two sets of clothes, I just have no idea what you're trying to say.
I think the persistence of advertising is an issue overall. I think we are worse off today now that you get bombarded with targeted ads and there's usually a seamless buy now button displayed within them.
Preying on whales is exploiting psychological issues. New technology certainly does exist today to aid in this exploitation that didn't exist 30 yrs ago.
Well said. Streaming services are finally getting the kinds of commercial content we did in the 80s and 90s. It's refreshing as I feel those years were the golden era of toys. Many toys of the era didn't even have commercials but we still wanted them. X-Men toys for example. If I was a kid, I'd of loved to have seen weekly commercials of the newest line up of X-Men toys.
With the caveat that shows still have a massive amount product placement within them and ad-free streaming services cost more than double the price of ad-supported, meaning that the poor are far more likely to be viewing ads anyway.
I love me some Gabby’s Dollhouse but the show is literally about a toy dollhouse that you can go buy.
I feel like you're being disingenuous with your choice of franchise. 30 years ago there were much worse toys. There were capsule machines that randomized what toy your quarter would give you. There were toys that you could buy random assortments at the toy store (M.U.S.C.L.E was one if I remember correctly). You could buy trading cards too. It's not that kids are marketed to (which is arguably its own problem), it's that the randomization is really not good for creatures that utilize associative memories (not sure if other intelligence avenues will be as susceptible to near misses, but likely it's a feature of intelligence in general to be stupid about randomness). And this has only been ratcheted up in the last 30 years.
What you may be missing, if you don't have kids, is just how insidious modern arcades are. They really opened my eyes in a lot of ways to the problem in general, since I just avoid a lot of the other modern invasive gambling mechanics. Most of the games are now just thinly veiled gambling machines. There are a few classics, like pacman still, and they eat quarters, but they are not programmed to randomly modify the game itself. Claw machines these days all have their claw strength randomized and is unknowable value that changes from play to play. And almost all the games I see at kids venues have some similar mechanic.
But it's not just the arcade. The rise of skinner boxes have become ever more weaponized (for lack of a better term?) in the last 30 years, as data collection has become cheaper and easier. I can't even imagine gacha mechanics in any of the games I played 30 years ago. Like, here, send Nintendo a dollar, and you can get a code for a better sword in Dragon Warrior? I would have mailed that dollar faster than you can imagine (I then would have shared the code, so of course this wouldn't work, but still, I would have sent the dollar). And for what? so they can make the games even harder?
This is a real problem beyond just teaching kids to ignore marketing. I don't have a solution other than trying to shield them until they're old enough that they're less likely to develop real addictions.
In Fortnite, skins are available to buy only sometimes. At a given time, you can buy like, 6-7 of them. If you want something that is not up, well, tough luck, it may never come back.
Isn't this true with collectable toys? My adult friends sure seem to be addicted to purchasing Pokemon cards. They talk about thousands of dollars spent when I am curious about numbers.
Yes, and?
ETA: Exploiting adult whales is bad too, if that's the angle you were going.
Is it exploiting if they participate under their own volition?
Is Auto Zone exploiting people who like working on their cars?
I've said this before and I'll say it a hundred times more - choice isn't binary. There isn't no choice and then free choice. There's infinite levels of choice. Some things are very choosy. Like me cutting off my arm right now - very choosy, I get a lot of control in that. Some things are not very choosy. Like a heroine addict deciding to shoot up or not today.
I won't make any claims on the addictiveness of fortnite in particular. However, we should all be aware it is certainly engineered in some ways to capture as much attention and time as possible, and this is intentional. Not unlike in nature to the engineering behind cigarettes, although again no claims on efficacy.
The point being, we really need to be doing analysis further than "well they chose to do it". It's not that simple, and it's really never been that simple. Companies are dedicating billions of dollars on solving this problem. We should, in response, at least try to analyze it deeper than that.
I agree. While I do think the skin issue is a parenting thing and a good time to teach a lesson about advertising and fomo*, there's more too it.
We protect people(arguably not enough) from gambling and alcohol which are basically banking on a portion of the population becoming addicted.(tho I also do not make any claims on the addictiveness of fortnite or say, gacha games)
At what point is the level of manipulation from these companies messing with psychology too much? It's an open secret they are researching how to farm attention. Don't people that are susceptible to this stuff deserve some warnings like booze and slots? I'm all for personal responsibility but we've created lines with other things where people lose control. Idk why this should be treated different.
No idea if anything needs regulated or what exactly needs to change, but as you said, at least more analysis.
To be clear, the definition of "exploit" I'm using in this case is like: "use (a situation or person) in an unfair or selfish way." The point is game companies are exploiting people who can't control themselves.
You might be interested to read about whales as it relates to loot boxes (in particular sections 1.E-F): https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
I don't know what autozone has to do with this particular discussion, but I'm not familiar with their business practices, so I'm not going to venture a guess.
I heard they make whole cartoons to feature a specific toy character and put them in kids happy meals and have limited collectors editions. Will the manipulative horrors of marketing to children ever cease or will we all be coerced into a life time sentence at Disney land by a clever cereal tie in.
They do, and that is bad. Growing up surrounded by toy adverts that make kids despondent if they don't have the toys is not good.
I feel like people with tour stance aren’t considering that skins and emotes are fun to have without fomo or addiction.
Similarly, toys are fun to have for their own sake.
I was under the impression that we all knew this was bad and are actively disgusted by it.
That is also true of action figures, trading cards, comic books etc.
That’s the same for the Tomica Blackhawk X3 Transformable Robot. Unless you find it somewhere on ebay second hand, after it leaves store shelves you will never see it again.
They also charge like $20 just to play as whatever licensed character in their game.
If you wanna be able to play as Batman or Mr Meseeks or the dog from Adventure Time, that's $60 already.
They give a lot of characters/vbucks away for free. I have a whole list of skins (including the 3 you mentioned) and have never spent any actual money on fortnite.
I can't deny they've made a crazy amount of money from convincing teenage boys that it's cool to buy outfits and play virtual dress-up. But compared to the must-have items of my youth at least you aren't excluded if you have no money.
Yes it is evil, considering how the advertisements are made in ways that makes it difficult for parents to escape them.
The only way to escape kids TV shows that have advertisements between shows and advertisements within the shows themselves as product placements is to only watch public television (which is generally funded way less and has way fewer programs than commercial television).
Hell, shows like Transfomers have the toys as the stars of the show.
So now all your kids have the peer pressure of all their friends consuming popular media and owning toys and now you have to be the bad guy saying no to literally everything to escape.
You go to any store and the toys and sugary cereals are right here at eye height of your kids with cartoon characters and promises of prizes, toys, and sweepstakes.
So you’re basically between a rock and a hard place, either you are the “weird kid with the weird parents” or you buy into at least some of that consumerism, trying to approach it with some level of moderation.
What about a company that controls exclusive access to this "addictive spending by an underage audience" on the computers they sell, _after purchase_, for a 24% cut of the spoils.
Roblox entered the chat.
Apple is currently profiting quite handsomely off gambling games marketed to children. They deliberately limit the App Store to encourage games like Clash of Clans and shitty Farmville clones because letting you emulate Yoshi's Cookie wouldn't make them money.
They're both unprincipled. Sweeney just happens to be correct.
Fortnite started as a P2W coop game where legendary weapons were all inside loot boxes. It was very predatory. Then an internal team at Epic made an experimental battle royale mode and that's what became modern Fortnite. The old one is still available as Fortnite: Save the World.
Epic is largely owned by Tencent anyway, who makes a lot of their money from gambling games.
Not really it started as a game for sale, in active dev trying various stuff alongside paragon and unreal 4
They ultimately refunded everyone who bought the original or the two other games
> Fortnite, in my opinion, has been a gold standard for F2P monetization. No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc.
Hard disagree. The tour-de-force on Fortnite's insane process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0
I haven't seen any crusade of him against console vendors though.
Don't let "better" be the enemy of "good".
The way my favorite boss told me, it was "don't let `great` be the enemy of `good enough.`"
Good enough is how everything went to shit (enshitification). "It's an MVP? Good enough, ship it and bolt on features no one wants." Personally, I am very tired of "good enough." I wish we built great things.
> "It's an MVP? Good enough, ship it
Nothing wrong with this. Don't over invest in an idea before it's proven.
> bolt on features no <customer> wants."
This is the enshittification.
"Enshitification" is probably the most self-sabotaging term we could think of; in terms of how it makes us look like whining teenagers. I will never use it in polite conversation; which would ironically be a tech company's greatest goal for if we had a word.
But optics aside, this also ignores the problem that many of these businesses were not sustainable and were never sustainable. They are heading downhill, partially because they never had any ground to stand on. If we want to see less of this behavior, we should stop allowing the blitzscale strategy of running a loss to gain marketshare.
This is also why the claim of "greed" or "enshitification" falls on deaf ears for them. They could easily say: "No, we lit billions on fire as an investment to keep it free and grow market share; we're now asking for some returns on that investment. We're not adding a Pro plan, we were paying for the Pro plan previously. Be thankful for how long it lasted, and how much money you saved."
You bring up some good points. I guess I was too absolute in my statement as I didn't intend to imply it was the only problem. Given that, Windows gaining ads (nevermind the number of settings panels/windows, etc), games being released broken or loot box driven, google search once being good and now being ad driven, and a myriad of other problems have caused the downfall as well. So the big players are part of the problem too.
No doubt; Windows gaining ads is the most egregious form; because it combines advertising with an upfront payment.
I think many of the worst offenders, and so much of the problem, would go away if we combined a payment with a mandatory ad-free experience, for any bundled software. Buy a TV, no ads allowed on the TV itself. Buy a computer, no ads allowed on Windows itself. Buy a Mac, no ads allowed in Apple News, should it be bundled. If it's truly free software that the customer did not directly or indirectly pay for, then ads are permitted; but the moment there's a payment, it's over. You can have Free with Ads, you can have Paid with No Ads, but never both.
That would not stop Discord from getting worse, or other services like them; but not allowing a paid + ad combo would solve most of the painful problems.
> No, we lit billions on fire as an investment to keep it free and grow market share
This is a form of price dumping and it should be illegal. Actually I'm confused as to why this isn't considered to be illegal already becuase I thought we had laws against this.
It's not just newer unsustainable companies. There are plenty of businesses that have been around for decades that are now engaging in these enshittifying practices (for dearth of a better term). Big box appliances like washers/dryers, fridges. Vehicle manufacturers (BMW and their subscription service bullshit), we're fast approaching a world where even doing an oil change will have to be done by the dealership/authorized 3rd party.
These Ivy League MBAs have been getting taught how much money companies have been leaving on the table and they are infecting every industry.
I often say you have to judge people based on their time and the environment around them and you need to encourage whatever good moves you see. In other words, I'll take a greedy bloodsucker over an evil greedy bloodsucker any day.
But this is not a dichotomy. There are games out there that aren't designed to suck you dry.
And those companies don't have the kind of time and money to take on one of the richest companies in the world. Sometimes you need a Goliath to take on another Goliath.
*Perfect
Before anyone tries to defend this, remember that consoles are not necessarily sold at a loss. Nintendo ensures their consoles are profitable on day one, even if others might be okay with year five.
In which case, yes, they are just iPhones in a big box with HDMI ports plugged into your TV. The only reason you can't do productivity tasks, is because of the restrictions, so the legally-nonexistent claim of "general purpose computing" doesn't do anything here.
Why would different business practices shield console makers in the first place, legally speaking? As in, even if all consoles were always sold at a loss, how would that help someone's legal case that they should be excluded here? Does the law state that, "if your business practices are incompatible with antitrust legislation, and you'd end up having to raise prices, shut down, or decrease your CEO's paycheck, if we enforced it on you, then we won't do it" or something along those lines?
Except there are indeed productivity tools for consoles as well, e.g. anything done with UWP on Windows Store can also be targeted to XBox UWP ERA environment.
I can appreciate this argument comes from folks who frequent this forum, who can discern scams from legitimate things.
But I'm sad for this decision for myself and for the lay man and woman out there. In recent years I've gone out of my way to sign up for subscriptions with App Store if I have the option, because of the true boon it offered in a world of dark patterns: managing a subscription in one place where I have scope of everything, with the expectation that I won't have to jump through barriers or puzzles to cancel, clear-as-day information of when a subscription renews, how much it costs, etc. This was what Apple was good at. I hate that my friends and family will now probably unwittingly get had as a result of this.
The only reason he is fighting Apple's monopoly on IAP is because he wants to ship the Epic store on mobile devices so he can make his 12% cut off exclusive titles.
Now is that better than the Apple store? Sure! But the real problem is that users can't install their own games without going through an arbiter like Epic or Apple.
You mean because he wants to compete in a market?
If the epic store is allowed to exist apple would be forced to allow any App Store onto their platform.
Or windows, or Samsung, or tsmc, or silicon miners… it’s wrappers all the way down!
>No gambling, no randomized loot boxes, etc.
instead you get peak FOMO, where you never know where item will return. It might be in a week, it might be in few years. you never know.
The business model is still getting kids hooked on digital crack and getting them to beg their parents for money. He’s no saint either.
Tim's a selfish businessman, whose interests just happen to align with the public interest in this instance.
He makes excuses about Linux market share when asked why Fortnite isn't on the Steam Deck, then ships a build for Windows ARM.
Fortnite Festival, their Rock Band recreation in the Fortnite ecosystem, recently started limiting when you can purchase songs in an effort to get people to impulse buy them when available. Players call it FOMO mode.
Epic is still pretty scummy and dishonest, even if in this insurance it appears to be on the good side.
He tweeted one time that Apple's Find My network is "super creepy surveillance tech and shouldn't exist" because years prior someone stole his Mac and then he was able to see the location of the home where the thief lived.
He seems like an idiot to me.
Ask him if he can see the geolocation of every Fornite user; or easily guess it by their chat logs, IP Address, and other behaviors.
I can guess your geolocation from a 14kb HTTP request. That's not what makes Find My creepy - if you can't understand the issue, that's okay too.
> He makes excuses about Linux market share when asked why Fortnite isn't on the Steam Deck, then ships a build for Windows ARM.
What's the implication here, that he has some personal vendetta against Linux? A sibling comment seems to imply this as well.
It seems like Hanlon's Razor would suggest there was just some engineering complication that they never dealt with. I can imagine a bunch of explanations for why Windows ARM might have happened first. Maybe there were fewer complications, maybe some competent engineer personally cared about Windows ARM, maybe they have Windows based testing infrastructure, etc.
As far as being an American company they're pretty low on scummy behaviour.
>His Crusade for open platforms/services in general is very very respectable
You can't say that with a straight face when he's so vehemently anti-Linux. To this day, you still can't download Fortnite or the Epic Games Store on Linux. At the end of the day, all Tim actually cares about is his corporation having to pay rent to another corporation.
Tim Sweeney has his own app store that does the same thing as Apple.
Fortnite - sit in lobby for 80% of the time and buy shit?
Tim just wants all of his cut.
And wants Apple to pay his app distribution costs...
There's no good guys anywhere in this.
Apple extra premium downloads, nobody else can do it.
"App distribution costs" is laughable as an incentive. Any business that makes an app where you can and will spend dollars would gladly let you download it directly from their website in exchange for not giving up 30% of the in-app payments. App distribution costs nothing.
390 million users. Say 10% on iOS. 39 million users. 18Gb on iOS last time
Yeah app distribution costs something. Finger in the air 10's of petabytes...
As far as I am aware what gets downloaded from the app store is little more than the launcher, which then downloads the actual game files from epics server.
Why shouldn't Apple compete on pricing against others then? Drop the arbitrary %, charge for actual usage. If they're so good and cheap then everyone will stay with Apple distribution.
Bandwidth costs next to nothing these days.
And it is also rarely if ever measured in petabytes. Commercially percentile based (in terms of speed) billing is the norm, but that only applies to businesses that act as downstream customers of ISPs
Apple has global IX presences and generally maintains open peering policies, which means it only costs a few bucks monthly to maintain any given PNI (e.g. 10Gbit), and they are also available on those open routing server ports. IX presence is dirt cheap.
It's sad that the entities that forced Apple to be more open are free to play peddlers...
> has been a gold standard for F2P monetization
Every F2P game is the same. They waste your time until you buy IAPs out of boredom. What gold standard?
Not true, you can enjoy rocket league fully without buying anything.
"buy IAPs out of boredom". Because they keep you "engaged" doing the same thing forever.
I have never bought anything in rocket league and I have played for 600 hours. I am no where near to being bored with it because it has a near infinite skill ceiling.
>He goes into detail on how [...] how app developers are basically forced to implement anti-consumer practices to maintain the ridiculous costs of achieving success on the app store, etc.
This sounds absurd. What was his argument for this?
This is what bad management at Apple looks like. They were now forced to cut off the spice flow that is millions of dollars of IAPs from games in their coveted services pie chart because they got cocky. Roblox alone is going to show up on their balance chart. Epic throwing water on an oil fire with their comments make me grin, they are the reason Apple lowered AppStore pricing, and now they are the reason Apple can no longer collect rent from Patreon (which collects rent themselves). Epic won due to Apple's on hubris.
Maybe? Apple collected a lot of money in the last year doing this.
I wonder if someone will try to force them to refund it all.
There have already been class action lawsuits against both Apple and Google that have paid out to developers so who knows.
A class action lawsuit from other developers is inevitable, at least for the time period where Apple took the money after the judgement.
Congrats. Two of the most user-hostile companies, one of which profits by exploiting children, are going to be better off. And let's also be clear, neither of these companies wants this revenue stream to go away; they just want a judge to give that revenue stream to them.
Get rid of Roblox's and Epic's anti-consumer behavior, and then I will "grin" at this.
So Apple getting a cut of Roblox's revenue is protecting children from exploitation?
I think the real situation is that Apple allowing Roblox on their store despite its safety problems shows that Apple wants to profit from that exploitation themselves instead of prevent it. They have the power to kick them off, but they don't. (Although now they might)
No one here (Apple, Roblox, Epic) is protecting children and Roblox/Epic business practices doesn't make Apple's "tax" more acceptable.
It's really important to realize Epic could've gotten off with special treatment years ago. Fortnite is large enough to dictate terms, and both Apple and Google have made offers before. Tim Sweeney may someday become the villain, but anyone who doesn't realize he gambled a huge amount of his company's future on demanding change for everyone.
Every single individual app developer should be singing his praises today, because he could've just gotten the deal for his company, and many other companies have gone that route. Epic decided to demand better.
You should grin any time you see someone make a "god" bleed.
It's still a step forward at least for everyone who doesn't use a product from Epic or Roblox.
There is simply no 100.00% perfect solution here that'll make 100.00% people happy.
Sigh, not that I expected anything else from Apple at this point but of course they only change the rules for the US.
Yep, and the EU wants the same thing so all Apple is really doing is holding on for a little longer to the old rules until the EU will make them do the exact same thing. Apple could have been less maliciously compliant and wouldn't have as much resistance from courts, but it was clearly a retaliatory tactic from minute 1.
It seems pretty standard for tech companies. They did the same thing with EU only side-loading (not even sure if that's the right term for how restricted it is). They'll only make changes where they need to, whether it's the EU or the US, or even the UK (let's see how that encryption stuff turns out).
As a business, I understand why they would - more revenue. At least there's some progress and I wouldn't be surprised if the EU follows suit.
It makes comparison easier though. If they did it everywhere, they could make claims about how cheaper or better it'd be for everyone if they didn't have to do it, but having both systems in place at once means people can just look across the lake and see.
> EU only side-loading
There is no side loading on iOS, even for the EU.
Not by my definition of side loading.
One word: greed.
Apple as the company we used to know is long dead. I still buy MacBooks and iPhones but only because some remnant of the past still exists in them. The new company came up with Vision Pro, screwing Spotify over app commissions, screwing game developers users love (Epic), non-upgradeable devices, extremely difficult repairability, etc.
Steve Jobs was quite famously against upgradability since the start. That is not something new for Apple.
Honestly I love the current macs, but of course I would like to be able to upgrade them as well. But yeah I also have the feeling that Apple is getting less innovative, more sloppy and more greedy, but I'm not sure I think its become a whole other company.
To me it's felt like coasting. Just release very minimal updates each year to all their main products let others die on the vine like HomePods. iOS 18 marquee features were Apple Intelligence and customizing the home screen. One that didn't ship and one that has been a staple of Android since day 1.
Only real advancement I've seen is in Apple Silicon. Which is fantastic but very much on a tik-tok cycle like Intel. Really wish these companies would cut back on constant model upgrades and instead spend more time polishing the products.
> Steve Jobs was quite famously against upgradability since the start. That is not something new for Apple.
And yet during his time we had upgradeable MacBooks and Macs. Heck, even iPhone battery was upgradeable while he was still in charge.
Heck, even iPhone battery was upgradeable while he was still in charge.
Eh, wot? iPhone battery has never been easily replaced. Yeah, you could do it, but it still involved tiny screws and fiddly bits; you’re not popping a new one in while waiting at a stoplight.
But I do miss the days of throwing some cheap RAM at a MacBook.
Two words: Sales & Marketing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
> screwing Spotify over app commissions
Spotify is the one who screws everyone. They deserve it
> Epic
Epic is another example of a shady company who doesn't want to give a cut from its micro transactions from users (users who are brought to them by Apple's innovation)
> difficult repairability
iPhone repairability score is 2-3 points higher than Pixel's according to iFixit. Only HMD beats iPhone.
>Spotify is the one who screws everyone. They deserve it
How? They pay the exact same percentage as Steam does to it's creators, 70%.
Music royalties are also set by a panel of judges (Copyright Royalty Board). Spotify is not legally able to "screw" anyone. Their pro rata model pays as much or more than the legal requirement. The economics of radio and internet streaming, especially in a world with a democratic explosion of access to recording technology, simply aren't conducive to recording being lucrative.
Record labels are in the business of screwing musicians, though.
1) Using legally required minimum as floor is malicious, this is US we're talking about 2) CRB's ruling is very new and you want us to forget how Spotify was screwing everybody over all preceding years 3) the rates from CRB are based on total revenue of the streaming service which leaves a LOT up for manipulation if the company wants to pay less. Read what real bands and musicians say about how much they get paid from Spotify and others
If you are seriously asking, why not I just link you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify. Just so you know, we are talking about a company that literally has a Wikipedia article JUST about the issues people have with it.
> One word: greed.
This is too easy of an answer. Would you take more money if I offered it to you?
My problem with Apple here is that I believe it's short sighted. Lack of compliance or whatever you want to call it, could threaten the whole business by forcing legislation and legal action.
Beyond the morality of taking money in this situation, Apple soured it's relationship with everyone who makes income off Patreon or other apps with their unstoppable greed.
The idea Apple deserved a cut of Patreon podcaster's monthly subscription fees was beyond the pale.
I agree completely. My point above is that they are really focused short term. The hubris that nothing would change I believe shows how disconnected they are. They could have made some self adjustments and likely made more money long term, but now the entire payments business is threatened.
It's really unfathomable just how stupid and arrogant their leadership is.
I mean, these leaders are supposed to be the best of the best and we're all sitting here wondering how they can be so idiotic and short-sighted.
They had a perfect thing going. Make free money, do next to nothing. All they had to do was make some concessions, not get too overconfident, and maybe reel it back a tad when things get hot. But no. They got so cocky, so arrogant, that now they risk losing it all.
Time and time again I am just shocked at the sheer stupidity behind the biggest companies in America. Any bozo off the street understands the danger of arrogance better than Apple leadership. How are these people in power and how do they repeatedly make such poor decisions?
Whose greed? The executives who are incentivized to make these decisions or the shareholders who put them in place and kick them out if they don't?
> ...except for apps on the United States storefront, the apps may not...
This, honestly, doesn't seem to be in line with the injunction if it still applies to apps published by developers from the United States?
Presumably they are planning to appeal so want to minimize impacted apps when they hope to make everyone undo all the changes later. If it sticks it is hard not to imagine it becoming global, since the app store tax issue has become a topic of concern in like a dozen countries now.
Yeah, I was hoping Apple would read the room and simply change the rules globally, but I guess they will be trying to squeeze us customers for as long as they can.
The entire thing they got contempt of court for was trying to find a way to continue to squeeze customers as long as they can.
This is the Big Tech playbook. Apple and Google know what they're doing isn't legal. But they make so much doing it, that it's worth the lawyer fees to delay and delay and appeal and appeal as long as possible to keep the money train flowing. Historically the fine has never been as big as the profit, so even if they eventually get in trouble for it, it makes sense for them to profit in the short term.
This is exactly it. They’re acting as if it’s something that’s going to be reversed, and are going to appeal.
If they also apply the same rules to other countries, it would hurt their case that this court order is unjust.
They can just get a presidential pardon for now and all future acts. Companies are people. Unkillable people. Unjailable people. They don't sleep. They have a thousand arms, a thousand eyes, a thousand legs, thousand brains. They get better financing, they can walk away from their financing. I can send unlimited money to politicians. They can exist in a thousand places, countries, legal systems at once.
I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make, unless it’s some generic anti-corporate stuff.
Why would you expect Apple to ever "do the right thing?"
They exist to seek profits.
If this was a losing strategy for them, they would've dropped it long ago without the ruling.
Other countries should implement similar laws, not hope that Apple does the right thing.
Hope is a bad strategy.
Apple was doing malicious compliance all along. It’s not surprising. But this is extremely good news, because it dampens FUD and narratives such as ”the EU is only going after American companies with frivolous rules”. If you get punished this hard for anti-trust, in the US, you are so out of line it’s not even funny. So it adds legitimacy to the free market spirit seen in markets like EU, which has been criticized for making up arbitrary rules for self-interest.
In either case, this thing will die with a whimper, not a bang. Apple will have to concede to EU and it would not surprise me if other large markets will demand the same.
So the stage is changing. Apple could have flown under the radar and made concessions with terms they could dictate, letting them simplify their offerings across the world without attracting regulators and mega-lawsuits (and hear me out - maybe focus on products and innovation instead). Now, they fight against multiple jurisdictions at once, which all have different requirements (obviously, since they are different bodies). Even if they fold now, by reducing the tax and making more lenient rules, they’re too late. They already have regulators and judges dictating for them what to do, so their agency is permanently limited.
People forget that in the EU, the ”gatekeeper status” wasn’t just ”go after Apple and Google”. It was the App Store specifically. For instance, Gmail was evaluated but not included.
TLDR Apple has to sleep in a bed that they shat in themselves. They were universally popular and could get away with lots of questionable behavior, but instead angered everyone and are rightfully getting curfewed.
> So it adds legitimacy to the free market spirit seen in markets like EU, which has been criticized for making up arbitrary rules for self-interest.
I'm confused a) who is taking the concept of free markets seriously, especially in this context where markets (and competition) are arbitrarily defined and owned by corporations and and b) who would view self-interested laws as either surprising or bad? Of course laws are in self interest. Why on else else would you pass a law?
This is HN, the Church of the Free Market is well represented. If you haven't yet seen someone give the "free markets create competition" speech on Monday and the "my company aims to capture this space and then entrench a monopoly with economies of scale / network effects / platform effects / two sided markets / last mile dynamics" pitch on Tuesday, just hang around HN a bit more. You won't have to wait long.
A monopoly isn't a free market though, because, well, the market is not free. This ruling is precisely about making the market of payment processing on iOS more free, creating such a market.
Sure, we can say that it isn't true communism -- err, sorry, market freedom -- so long as we acknowledge that the incentives which create, establish, and perpetuate the monopolies emerge due to market freedom and attempts to curtail monopolies are regularly attacked under the banner of market freedom and that actual market freedom requires (metaphorical) mace-wielding regulators to regularly go on (metaphorical) skull-cracking expeditions which will be fought tooth and nail by investors seeking the windfall profits that come from monopoly.
Do we agree? Or will we find ourselves on opposite sides of this fight the millisecond the specifics of this case fade from the public eye?
Yes, regulators must fight monopolies to maintain a free market, as the former are antithetical to the latter.
I had thought the clear need for anti-trust had tickled down to the plebs on here. Unfortunate to see that people still casually refer to free markets as if it's a meaningful concept.
If you really truly think that regulation is dragging down some market, it's easy to talk about in specific terms. It is only possible to employ "free markets" in bad faith.
Yes, but temporarily embarrassed millionaires abound. They eagerly employ the concept of "free markets" in bad faith, propelled by the hope that the corruption can be made to work for them rather than against them. Some of them are right, most are wrong, but they are propelled to spread the faith just the same.
Beneath them, people tend to get good at programming before they get good at spotting exploitation, so there is always a stratum of True Believers to feed the operation. Individually they wise up and graduate, but the stratum remains as it is fed from the bottom by the proverbial sucker born every minute.
Then we have the top of the pyramid which actually does benefit from it all. They are small in number but they have enough money to fund the whole space (more importantly: enough money to have a reason to fund the whole space) so they have outsize influence. They could decide to ban me for saying this, for example.
Endstate of the game theory of free markets is cartel or Monopoly.
All it takes is a single competitor to gradually gain more and more strength and competitive advantage via dumping, regulatory capture, or other means (see: organized crime and syndicates) to win the death struggle.
What has saved us hasn't been some magical free market, it has been the markets themselves, once they achieve trust status, fundamentally undermined by science and technology creating a new market that upends the old one.
I highly recommend reading Schumpeter, both "Business Cycles" and "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy".
He discusses how motivations fundamentally change after profit margins peak and argues that profit after this point necessarily produces less economically efficient processes (in terms of the flow of demanded goods and services, not the shareholder, who does receive further productivity gains). In this context, undesired market advantage (legal or illegal) is just a symptom of profit, but it can be analyzed like any other sort of inefficiency. The core prescription is to nationalize the process or otherwise remove the profit motive around peak profit (which is, to be clear, not always easy or possible to identify... but in the worst case, this would open further opportunity for private capital to invest in the next generation of improvements).
He also discusses how failed investment cycles can resonate into market crashes faster than capital can rationally reallocate. Both of these above observations seem very very relevant to our current situation in the US today, and should cause everyone to look askance at people who aren't concerned about how healthy our political economy actually is.
> fundamentally undermined by science and technology creating a new market that upends the old one.
The kicker here is that there's no reason to expect either to continue yielding the same rewards. Some industries have projectable, plannable, investable growth patterns; others do not. Almost all the industries with predictable growth rely on consumption driven by yields from the lucrative exploitation of frontiers, mostly technological recently as you point out. I suspect that the market is going to get incredibly volatile as capital sees this frontiers dry up and adjusts expectations. ideally by cannibalizing itself and not eating us, but it might need a little help in that regard....
I think a more interesting question is: who is “self”? US is historically more prone to favor business, while EU seems more concerned in protecting consumers. And of course there is the noise generated by incompetence/corruption/lobbying that makes the question of “in the interest of whom are laws made?” very nuanced.
Very good points. I've been trying to figure out whose interest is in our "national interests" my entire life. It sure ain't protecting my interests or those of anyone I love that justifies a trillion dollar a year military.
The trillion dollar military is Americas welfare system. You may be chronically confused why no politician dem/republican/liberal/conservative ever wants to cut funding for it, and toss it up as obvious collusion between mega-contractors and politicians.
Well it is. And it's willful. That trillion dollars is spent almost entirely on US made things by US workers. Only a small slice (still large in absolute terms) goes to those mega-contractors. The rest is the only thing that has kept any semblance of American manufacturing alive. The military buys everything (this isn't an exaggeration, you would be hard pressed to find something in your life that they don't buy in quantity) , and there are countless businesses that pay decent wages with benefits for low skilled workers in every state that are only still in existence because of military spending.
It also functions as an incubator, having special provisions for small businesses, especially those owned by marginalized people or located in especially impoverished areas. Basically "We need need coffee filters, so if you buy the equipment and higher the workers, we'll sign a contract to buy 2,000,000 packages a year from you. (And it's a kick-your-door-down felony if you try to backdoor foreign made filters)."
That's why it is never cut. It's a welfare plan that republicans agree too because it requires holding down a job to access. It comes with the side effects of keeping factories running and getting an overpowered military.
The US military is also an enormous and very successful jobs program.
Also there may be some foreign policy applications.
And it was an explicit pact between US and European countries: you can have socialism and not much military (because who wants a huge German army??), while we will do our socialism via our military, which in turn will protect you.
But now our politicians are so dumb they don't realize that's what was agreed long ago, and think they can have one part of that deal and not the other.
This is true, and it is disgusting.
I am pretty sure if the US decided to get rid of its military entirely, then it wouldnt be long before it was invaded by Russia or China and then the interests of the people you love would be severly impacted.
The world stage is no more a safe place than it has been for any other part of history.
Or invaded by liberating Canadians. We can dream...
Straw man. Nobody said anything about “getting rid of its military entirely.”
> then it wouldnt be long before it was invaded by Russia or China
I would be lying if I claimed I hadn't dreamed of being liberated by a foreign power with more cultural competence at governance (which excludes Russia, obviously, but they probably at least aren't worse), but realistically anything but a slow scale-down in military power would probably entail the bloodiest world (and civil) war in history. Maybe nukes, too.
But, there's a fork in the road. We can choose to scale down our military presence (and control of trade) today, and figure out how we actually want to exist in a global community outside of letting our corporations swing their dicks freely... Or we can blow trillions of dollars continuing to make fools of ourselves rampaging through other countries rather than building high speed rail before we lose our grip on hegemony anyway as a matter of pure economics.
Or, I suppose, we can just murder anyone who disagrees with us until we're just miserably exploiting each other inside of high walls armed with automated guns. Something tells me that's the option we're going to pick.
> US is historically more prone to favor business, while EU seems more concerned in protecting consumers.
Well that's not that obvious... Sure EU is more than willing to protect consumers from foreign(American) megacorporation because the cost of doing that is very low.
Entrenched major local companies? Well stifling competition through excessive regulation and propping up to bit too fall semi-zombie corporations is not necessarily that great for consumers long-term.
Do you have examples of targeted protections against foreign companies? Everything that comes to mind to me applies to all companies local or foreign.
Hypothetical local companies? The type of major tech corporations that are effected by DMA and similar regulations simply do not exist in Europe.
Regulating and fining them is very cheap politically when there are no jobs that can be lost or lobbyists to disappoint.
> who is taking the concept of free markets seriously
The EU. Let me explain, because this was confusing:
In US political debate, free markets have become synonymous with ”let companies do what they want”. Today, most of US ”markets” are neither free, nor (arguably) even markets at all, such as Amazon or health insurance. It is a mix between feudal system and protection racket.
Just like ”freedom isn’t free” in terms of civil liberties, same goes (imo) for markets. If you want to optimize for ”freedom” of markets, that means a non-zero amount of regulating them. This is obvious both in theory and by opening your eyes and looking outside.
As far as how to regulate them, I believe the EU is doing a good job, especially in the face of novel technology and business topologies. Basically, allow everything that isn’t deliberately anti-competitive. Because, drumroll, competition is fundamental for markets to work, at all.
Sorry for the confusion. It’s hard to make points when words mean completely different things in different parts of the world.
My main takeaway from this is that Luca Maestri was a blight on Apple. He steered this company into the most malicious of compliance schemes that only has increased their regulatory attack surface. On top of that, he's the one who discouraged apple from making huge investments in compute for LLMs that threatens to derail Apple and the iPhone's primacy as the gateway to information.
Yes, don't forget Tim Cook, who from what I've seen, is the biggest proponent of milking every dollar out of absolutely everything, regardless of if it's good for the consumer or not*. So Maestri and Cook were a perfect combination, Maestri got to be tough, and Cook got someone to blame.
*Take USB-C, Apple made tonnes of money from MFA, which was the main reason they didn't ever want to pivot to a different connector. Even if it was the better choice.
Crazy. I thought hackernews didn’t care because this happened yesterday and I never saw anything!
We’re updating our app in a couple days this will save a LOT of money.
We will kick users out to web and pass a JWT in the url with a short lifespan to log the user in on web and then prompt for Apple Pay or credit card. Then a link back to our app’s deep link
So many questions:
- Why not just handle all of this in the app? Do you think Apple won't allow it?
- Are you geofencing this functionality? It seems like per other comments this is US only.
- How are you handling existing subscribers (not sure if applicable)? Will you "encourage" them to migrate?
It seems right now the rules are more clear about if you mention or link out, it’s ok. So that’s why.
We should geofence it to US yeah.
We are thinking of sending a push notification with a discount to pay on web and cancel
It'll be a nightmare to get an in-app change like this through their approval process. OP's solution to offload the entire thing to the web is a great stop-gap measure since when it is definitely rejected they can appeal through their App Store rep pointing to this external payment URL decision and have some small chance of getting it approved in the nearest term.
If you pay for something in the app apple gets 30% of that money. If you send users to your website to pay you get to keep it all now that the 27% fee was found illegal.
Because customers can’t trust payments in the app. Unless I’m being bounced out to somewhere I can see the URL and an SSL certificate I’m not paying.
What you’re suggesting is a dangerous anti-pattern.
I don't know about iOS, but on Android you can just pay through a Google Pay pop-up, you don't need to input any kind of payment information to the app itself. Does iOS not have such a mechanism?
iOS does and of course you can call an in-app Safari popup to any payment processor or website (with limitations on JavaScript speed) if you don't want to pop them into a browser and then back into the app.
> I thought hackernews didn’t care because this happened yesterday and I never saw anything!
This is a bit of an "egg-on-face" moment for the community that has relentlessly defended Apple's righteousness.
Would be interested to hear the magnitude estimate of savings.
Presumably somewhere between 30% and 0%. Let's call it...20%?
Related threads,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43852145 ("Apple violated antitrust ruling, judge finds (wsj.com)" — 585 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856795 ("Judge rules Apple executive lied under oath, makes criminal contempt referral (thebignewsletter.com)" — 340 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43859814 ("A senior Apple exec could be jailed in Epic case (9to5mac.com)" — 94 comments)
Only in the US feels like shooting themselves in the foot again. The EU is already cracking down on them for their malicious compliance with the DMA, and it’s only a matter of time before similar pressure builds
The problem is that "shooting themselves in the foot" also translates to "earning more money for a longer time".
We need some courage to give larger fines. It is too common to calculate fines just as financial risk rather than something which you should not do because it is not a good thing. It is obvious that they are making more money than the possible fines are when they still continue doing this. Or just put persons responsible for company's ill decisions and suddenly all problems disappear.
Also don’t forget, only very large companies can make this kind of calculated risk; when the parking ticket isn’t calculated based on your income, the parking ticket for some is just a fee to park while to others it means not making rent that month, the fines stifle competition while the big players can take advantage
Probably true. The EU needs to enact daily fines for non-compliance, going back to the day the legislation came into power.
> In the European Union, developers can also distribute notarized iOS and iPadOS apps from alternative app marketplaces and directly from their website.
Well, this was only possible because the EU had pushed hard toward this openness otherwise, we wouldn't expect Apple to do this.
> For everything else there is always the open Internet. If the App Store model and guidelines or alternative app marketplaces and Notarization for iOS and iPadOS apps are not best for your app or business idea that’s okay, we provide Safari for a great web experience too.
IMO, Safari on iOS do not have a great experience for web devs who are willing to distribute their apps as PWAs, especially when there is no alternative browser that provides additional capabilities, they are all skinned Safaris. Take for instance the Vibration API [1], it has been supported since a long time in Chrome mobile but not in Safari. I believe it does an excellent job in giving a PWA some native-feeling when being used. Still though, I still miss that haptic feedback is not yet supported by Chrome. Bluetooth [2] is yet another missing API in Safari.
Of course, for these (and other) web APIs to be abused by developers, I encourage browser vendors to disable them by default when requested from a website and enable them ONLY on user consent. On the other hand, when a user installs the PWA, these privileges should be granted automatically with the ability to disable them by the user.
To finalize, another excellent API that facilitate the installation of PWAs by triggering an install prompt [3] is not supported in iOS Safari, which does really makes me wonder: "How Safari provides a great web experience?"
___________________
1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Vibration_A...
2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Bluetoo...
3. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...
> … except for apps on the United States storefront, the apps may not…
US based app developers hosting apps on app stores in other countries should also be covered by the injunction. What am I missing? Is the injunction only covering US based app market? And does not cover app developers?
Tim, come back. The deed is yet to be completed.
Apple’s wording is “apps on the United States storefront” [0], so apps on the US app store only.
[0] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#pay...
Right. We get that's what's Apple is doing, but the question is whether it satisfies the injunction.
FWIW, I will claim it does not: it should cover--at least for any developer in the United States--any app published by any Apple-affiliated entity, anywhere, and certainly covers Apple's centrally managed global store.
I’m no expert, but it may be the case that if you place an app on, say, the EU app store, you’re technically doing business in the EU, not the US, and are therefore subject to EU law, not US law. Wasn’t that the case with the DSA requirements? https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/18/apple-purges-apps-without-...
Even if I accept Apple's definition that such a developer is directly doing business in the EU, the injunction applies to "Apple, Inc. and its officers, agents, servants, employees, and any person in active concert or participation with them", which certainly includes the direction they provide to the people they hire to operate their storefronts in other countries (particularly so as this is, as I stated, a centrally-managed system run out of the United States).
Eh, I don’t think it works that way. Apple’s EU subsidiaries are separate legal entities, and everything that happens on the EU app store is not an activity that occurs within the US and would be subject to US federal law. Even Tim Sweeney implicitly acknowledged this: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/04/30/epic-games-apple-peace-...
The EU app store--even as a separate legal entity--doesn't operate independently: it takes its marching orders from Apple, Inc., and Apple, Inc. has been required to not do this thing to developers, not merely directly but indirectly even by persons (which includes corporations) they are merely "in active concert or participation with". The EU app store doesn't even have a separate submission portal or a separate approval process, much less any autonomy in its operation: it is certainly covered by this injunction.
Companies other than apple inc would not be covered. However, subsidiaries should be covered. And app store in europe must be a subsidiary.
I'm pretty sure that international law doesn't work in that way. For example, the foreign-country subsidiary also doesn't have to pay US taxes.
Tax law do not work according to International Law. It works according to State Law. US Law treats revenue as either local or foreign. Local revenue gets local tax. Foreign revenue gets foreign tax. When the profit from foreign revenue makes its way to the US parent company, it is seen as local revenue.
My question also.
In the same article:
Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshitYou’ll have to excuse me for not mourning for game developers having to pay 30% for purchases of loot boxes and other pay to win mechanics.
It came out in the original Epic trial that this is where 90% of in app revenue comes from.
What about the freemium model that is standard in the industry? Not everything is games.
You mean the model that has shifted to where apps that used to be a single $10 unlock, now have a recurring subscription of $24.99/month?
Personally unclear how much less predatory the shift to subscriptions for trivial feature unlocks is than loot boxes...
What app used to be $10 and is now a $300/year subscription?
I bought GoodNotes 5 and love it. One time purchase, and a great little app. Now GoodNotes 6 is out. Their “most popular plan” is an annual subscription. I just tried to look up how expensive it is - but their pricing page[1] lists a bunch of different plans available. It doesn’t list the actual prices. (Why on earth does a notes app have multiple usage plans? Horrible.)
They have a “one time payment” option. But I thought that’s what I already bought from the App Store when I bought it a couple years ago. I guess not. My totally fine, currently working version (v5) will probably randomly stop working at some point in the future and I’ll lose all my notes, because I suppose breaking totally working software is good business.
Wtf.
https://www.goodnotes.com/pricing
That pricing page is absolutely abysmal and indefensible, but has nothing to do with what the parent comment said (small one time purchase vs larger recurring subscription). There's a one time payment option (with no price, which is shitty) on that page for v6. That seems like it has exactly the functionality you wanted?
> They have a “one time payment” option. But I thought that’s what I already bought from the App Store when I bought it a couple years ago.
You said yourself you bought GoodNotes 5, and this is for GoodNotes 6.
Try to keep Tetris ad free. 6.99 a month, and they label that as a "special deal".
And the original official Tetris game was $0.99 ad free one time purchase as was classic Angry Birds
There's thousands of games targeted at children that are exactly this.
There are publishers that drop reskin after reskin of the same game all with individual subscriptions, and they constantly try to kids from one into the other.
Then others clone that game and do the same thing. Fluvsies is an App Store virus.
And nobody is going to drop their prices because of the ruling.
This may be great for some publishers, but doesn’t benefit the consumer in any way. In fact as i consumer id much rather deal with Apple’s payment system than a separate payment mechanism for each app, especially when it comes to cancelling, changes etc
Yeah, it's mobile, so it's not all games with loot boxes and escalating pay to play. Some of it is infinite slop addictionware, brain rot, gambling, payday loan apps, shovelware, and spyware.
Apple sucks for their monopoly tactics, but it's very hard for me to have any sympathy for the rest of the mobile ecosystem. It's probably the most exploitative toxic software ecosystem.
If you’re an Indy developer making less than 1 million a year, you are paying 15%. Is it really not worth 15% (where if your product has value you should be able to charge enough to make up the difference) for credit card processing (3%-4%) and distribution?
I think the issue is not about what it's worth, but what they should be allowed to charge for. To me, the argument about "what it's worth" is fundamentally wrong.
As an extreme example, if some company found a way to charge me $100 every day or my head would explode, that obviously is worth $100 to most of us. However, I'm currently not having to pay any company to prevent my head from exploding, so maybe that's just not something I should have to pay for.
Name one platform or even retail physical goods store that has less than a 15% markup from the wholesale price?
As I said, my point is just that it's not something I should be obligated to pay for.
But, if you're looking for counterexamples to show it can be done for less than a 15% cut, they're around. Almost every eBay category charges less than 15%, for example. And, as another user pointed out, Epic takes less than 15%. AliExpress charges 5-8% on average. Etsy is I think something like 6.5%.
Etsy charges 6.5% transaction fee + 3% payment processing fee + a flat $0.25 fee per transaction. That would end up being more than 15% for most Apple purchases of $1-$3.
eBay charges a final value fee of 12.9% and $.30 - $0.40 flat fee per order. And you pay a fee for international orders.
Why is a middleman required at all? Epic seems happy to process their own payments - they don't need a "platform" to do it for them.
Epic tried side loading on Android and not use Google Play. That ended up being a horrible financial disaster and a security nightmare. https://www.mcafee.com/blogs/mobile-security/fornite-android...
I would say no. Especially since App Store search sucks and you have to pay (again) to show up as a top result for your own app's name.
Contrast this with Steam, where search is better and the top result is not your competitor squatting your product name.
It is everyone, not just loot boxes. Apple could put an end to lootboxes if they wanted to.
I get where Apple is coming from, though, and it's not just the revenue stream. They want to make sure that if you spent money on something in the Apple ecosystem, you can enjoy that for as long as you got a working device with that app installed. Allowing third-party services like license keys introduce a dependency on the vendor to keep their servers up and running.
Apple wants to make sure they get a 30% cut if you spend money on anything within their ecosystem — that's all they really care about.
There are several reports of people having their entire accounts banned, effectively losing access to everything they paid for. And it's basically impossible to get your account back.
.. well, apart from Apple's own ability to vaporize apps from the store at no notice, and their own upgrade treadmill which tends to cause low-revenue apps to be dropped. No, it's just because someone other than Apple is earning money, and this will probably also end up being overturned.
.. wait, so what exactly is allowed for "steering" to your own website, if not subscriptions or content?
> Oof, I don't envy app developers who have to tolerate this bullshit
You're confusing developers with publishers. Developers love this shit, one simple API that's built in to the OS and you can support payments worldwide instead of having to integrate with dozens of payment providers all with their own quirky APIs.
Now for publishers, who want to maximise their profit margins and who don't have to actually write the code to do all those integrations, that's a different story. But I don't think there is a single developer in the world who enjoys integrating with 3rd party payment services.
Developers love paying 30% to a single middleman?
Hard disagree. Developers are often forced to integrate with both IAP and backend workarounds, which creates more effort and edge cases.
Maybe you meant to specify a specific subset of iOS-only developers?
> Now for publishers,
As if there are no developers who are also publishers.
If you're an indie developer who self-publishes, do you want to spend your time working on your app or on payment platform integrations?
Especially the smaller self-publishing developers won't benefit from this at all. It's just the large publishers like Epic who can afford the developer resources to build their own payment systems who have something to gain here.
Apple’s rules leveled the playing field. All this ruling does is give a competitive advantage to the big fish.
> If you're an indie developer who self-publishes, do you want to spend your time working on your app or on payment platform integrations?
Integrating with Stripe is easy. Or with Mollie. Or with...
> Especially the smaller self-publishing developers won't benefit from this at all.
Indeed. No one will benefit from not paying 30% of revenue to Apple.
> Developers love this shit
Somebody needs to alert the developers, because they're currently unaware of how much they love it. I've only ever seen devs complain about this stuff.
Of course, this is a self-selected group because people who are happy with the status quo don't usually talk about it loudly online. Still, many developers, including iOS-only indies, are unhappy with the App Store's payment constraints. Check out mjtsai's blog for regular roundups of their complaints.
Apple's API is atrocious to work with, especially integrating it with a server to handle payment success/failure. It's annoyingly naive and kind of the API equivalent of "you're holding it wrong".
Why not? I'd personally never go somewhere else to pay for your subscription or content. Maybe if you were a big time player that didn't have an appealing alternative, like Netflix. But for the average app, like Planta or Breethe, I'm just switching to an app that has an in app purchase if yours doesn't.
Semi-related, but I also always pick an app that has family sharing of subscription over one that doesn't too (Headspace --> Breethe)
> I'd personally never go somewhere else to pay for your subscription or content.
When "going elsewhere" means "getting stuff cheaper", people are likely going to go elsewhere to pay for any subscription even if setup is notably less convenient.
Depends how much cheaper.
If my Shonen Jump subscription goes from $2 to $1.70, I'd rather pay the 30 cents than have to click and type for 2 minutes, and then have to solve a mystery to cancel it later.
If my ChatGPT Pro (hypothetical, I don't pay for that) went from $200 to $170, maybe worth it.
why not let everyone decide for themselves if they want to pay the extra to do the purchase in app?
Explain to me where I made the argument that they shouldn't?
Your first comment where you said "Why not?" to a comment questioning the clause that apps are required to use in-app purchases would be read as supporting Apple's restrictions, i.e. no user choice.
The wording here seems, to me, to have some silly limitations. For example, there are apps I have thought would make a nice gift for a friend before, and the easiest way to do this is to buy an unlock key and send it to them.
But, with these rules, I guess the goal is that I have to send them a gift card instead? I'll just not bother and get them something else.
Probably.
Though you could make the argument that it would be more complex than it's worth. There's regional issues, like can I redeem your gift code from cdkeys.ru in the US. Can I return the app afterward if I don't want it for a 160 rubles credit? They might already need to handle that stuff for gift cards though.
Apple has an integrated “gift this app” function in their app store. I’m not sure you can use it for in-app purchases, however.
That makes no sense, using Paypal or Stripe is very normal on the web. There is no reason why it should be any different in apps except for Apple trying to gaslight us.
My personal opinion makes no sense? I don't really care if an app only has subscriptions or purchases through their website, I'm just saying that I wouldn't use it when there's an easier and more convenient alternative available.
Adopting the language of the abused to describe being inconvenienced by the company that makes your phone is uhh, something.
They should work with Google and implement a ban on apps that constantly forget your login information.
>The App Review Guidelines have been updated for compliance with a United States court decision regarding buttons, external links, and other calls to action in apps. These changes affect apps distributed on the United States storefront of the App Store, and are as follows:
...
> 3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.
> 3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.
The difference between the quality of software in the Apple App Store versus the Google Play Store is dramatic, in my opinion. Apple has succeeded in increasing the bar to entry and standards to the point where a lot of the blatant trash/advertising malware present in the Google Play Store is caught by the net of the App Store submission process (and the $99 developer fee).
I do believe the court when they say that Apple has engaged in seriously anticompetitive behavior, and I don't look to Apple as some sort of altruistic honest company, but I also am curious to see if this reduces the average 'value' of a given app in the App Store. On the other hand, it could encourage the development of high-quality software since devs aren't paying the 30%+ tax on App Store sales.
They could absolutely maintain that quality of software in the App Store while also allowing people to install software from other sources.
By fighting so hard to keep the App Store as the sole distribution mechanism for iPhone software Apple has invited these compromises on themselves.
I don't get it. Why is Apple changing this in the US now? Is it because the allegation of them lying under oath and being subjected to a criminal review? If so, how does this change absolves them or minimises their fate during the upcoming criminal trial against them?
You're confusing two different things. 1 the court determined that apple subverted the original injunction, and ordered that it comply immediately (specifically calling out all the ways apple was getting around the injunction previously). 2 the court said that to issue a fine so that apple loses whatever money it gained by non-compliance would be considered a criminal matter (unless it becomes clear that there's no other way to force apple to comply with 1 above) even though it may be appropriate, and as such it is beyond the scope of what the court could order in its own, and the court refers the matter for criminal prosecution.
So this change is just apple complying with 1.
"Upcoming criminal trial" implies that there is an upcoming criminal trial, which at this point there is not. The judge referred a criminal complaint for contempt against that witness. The office that received it (presumably some sort of investigative division of the court or law enforcement entity) has to investigate, decide if they want to refer it to a prosecutor, and the prosecutor then has to decide if they want to actually file charges. Then there's a probable cause hearing where a judge determines if there is enough evidence for a trial. Then they set a trial date.
Until a trial date is set there is no upcoming criminal trial.
Ran out of edit time but this is feature, not a bug, and it's not really something ideological like a lot of this kind of stuff can be.
You don't want courts to be able to decide on Monday that you're going to trial on Tuesday. You don't want courts (or any other entity of the judiciary or law enforcement) to decide that you're going to trial independently and the next step is your trial. Regardless of your political persuasion most people agree that fast and efficient prosecution by the state is a Bad Thing. Slow is good. Lots of hands and eyes involved in the process is good. Justice moves slowly by design.
True, but at the same time, "Justice delayed is justice denied"[1]. An excessively slow justice system means that you need substantially more resources (money, and time living under the uncertainty of the outcome) to deal with it, which is part of why the threat of court action against you from a large corporation (or another entity with deep pockets) is so concerning. I know someone who was in court defending against a civil suit for ten years, and the fact that someone is litigious and able to sue is a much larger threat than it should be.
Sure, there's checks and balances, and those are good, but it's ridiculous when we allow cases to drag on and then normalize it.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_delayed_is_justice_den...>
Yes but the maxim presupposes the existence of an injured party, and that's a little different in the context of civil claims (e.g. your example of the large corporation bringing a civil suit against someone) compared to the state bringing criminal charges against a person. There are intentional roadblocks to the state bringing charges, e.g. the separation of powers I mentioned above, that don't really exist on the civil side.
It's good that there are checks, but the core point remains that nimbleness is required for effectiveness. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm observing that the courts are slow, and that the same logic (slow is good) can indicate that is a good thing, which is why I take issue with general application of the concept without limiting context.
This is related to the previous Apple v Epic civil case. The judge recently determined that Apple had not complied with the previous ruling.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
The injunction prohibits them from restricting outside purchases in any way.
This should be applicable across the world, not just US.
Are the requirements still there for e.g. the EU storefront?
I'm pretty sure EU apps can link elsewhere for payment, but they have to show a warning message first saying that the payment is outside of Apple's jurisdiction and you can't get a refund from apple, etc.
This exemption is only there for "reader apps"
" 3.1.3(a) “Reader” Apps: Apps may allow a user to access previously purchased content or content subscriptions (specifically: magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video). ... Reader app developers may apply for the External Link Account Entitlement to provide an informational link in their app to a web site ...
Am I crazy or was this not already possible in the US? When I tried to sign up for Disney Plus to watch the new season of Andor, Disney told me I had to complete the signup outside of the app. Then I got a big warning from Apple saying I was no longer transacting with Apple and wouldn't be able to cancel the subscription or get refunds via the App Store if I continued. Am I misunderstanding what this trial was about?
https://imgur.com/a/zmDEx7v
1. Yes it's already a thing
2. The US court found that Apple's implementation/requirement is bullshit and ordered it to stop. Apple complied, in the US only
Oh, worst of all, the app owners still have to pay apple's cut!
Because all other aspects of their businesses except services beat expectations. So we can't really say if this change will be permanent indefinitely.
Apple constantly says paying through the app store is better for consumers, so why are they so hesitant to simply compete? Unless...
Apple wrote the textbook on malicious compliance.
Why does it have to be a link to a website? Why can’t the app just let me pay, potentially not using Apple Pay?
because thats what the judge said. She ruled that rules banning in app purchases that dont use apple pay is allowed but the anti steering stuff is not.
Do these rules only apply to the United States?
Yes
Hopefully the criminal charge referrals don't disappear.
Tim Apple just needs to make a bigger bribe. Jeff Bozo scooped the documentaries so now he's gotta find something bigger to launder the payoff with.
A win is a win
Apple store needs to die. We have the web.
Ironically the App Store only exists because of the ridicule Apple received when they announced their new smartphone which then only supported 3rd party applications as web apps. Back then, native apps were considered a “must have” feature for smartphones.
How times have changed.
> How times have changed.
They really haven't.
'Web apps' are terrible, both from an end-user and developer perspective. They are a bloated, overcomplicated mess.
What!? Yikes that’s an overstatement. I prefer to use web apps over downloading an app to do a single action and then deleting.
There are lots of good web apps. The problem is that companies more often than not prioritize native (let’s be real, react native) apps over web. And not mobile web, desktop web. So you have a second thought of a second thought when designing and building a mobile friendly web app.
I build most of my clients’ apps as web apps. I target their main platform of choice first and branch out from there. But if I start with desktop, I pre-plan for mobile as well.
You can have high performing web apps if you continually optimize for state and rendering performance.
> They are a bloated, overcomplicated mess.
Id like to hear your opinion on native apps built on a unified framework like react native. IMO they are a much buggier mess than web apps.
Bloated and overcomplicated are design issues, not technology issues. Plenty of native apps are bloated and overcomplicated.
Making good apps is hard.
> Bloated and overcomplicated are design issues, not technology issues.
No, it's very much a technology issue. The overhead just for shipping an entire webbrowser with your app is insane. Building a decent UI in HTML/CSS which were never designed for that purpose, is an absolute disaster. HTML and CSS are for formatting text documents, not for designing user interfaces. There is a reason that there is a framework-of-the-week for webapps.
So now you have this massive webbrowser footprint, with the framework-of-the-week on top and then you have to write your app on top of this abomination in one of the most terrible languages ever invented.
The whole 'webapp' thing exists solely on the false promise of cost savings. Every kid who made a webpage for their aunt's Etsy business calls themselves a 'web designer', which has resulted in a race to the bottom. Web designer are a dime a dozen (sure, a good one may cost a pretty penny, but that's not what management sees). Now you can hire that cheap 'web designer' and they can build apps too, since that's just web tech, right? And since it all works cross-platform, you only need to build it once. What a cost savings!
They will even get an initial version out the door quickly. Look, everything worked out as expected. The problem is that it's quicksand. Your app grows and it gets harder and harder to fix issues and add features, as it's all build on shaky foundations. The more you move, the more difficult it becomes. Soon, you find yourself writing platform-specific code as the cross-platform promise doesn't hold for anything but the simplest functionality. Before you know it, you have this bloated, unmaintainable mess.
At the end of the day, it's easier and cheaper to just develop 2 native apps for iOS/Android than it is to build a 'webapp'. You can use nice, modern programming languages with very few footguns (Swift/Kotlin), good tooling, a UI toolkit designed to actually build UIs with, a set of well designed platform APIs. The whole cross-platform web-app thing sounds nice in theory, but it never delivers on its promises.
You're mixing things up. A web app does not ship a web browser, the user brings their own. You're thinking of electron apps.
When using web apps, the browser you bring is no different than, say, having to install Qt. It's a static entity shared by all apps, with each app "just" being anywhere between kilobytes and tens of megabytes.
Electron brings a browser, but even then what makes the app bloated is still design Theres a baseline amount of bulk included, but it's mostly inconsequential to the actual app behavior - similar to how a standard system has god knows how many libraries and functions available but mostly unusued.
You could easily have an app written with PyQt that's way more sluggish, bloated and complicated despite using a fraction of the disk space. Shitty apps, that's the issue.
> The whole 'webapp' thing exists solely on the false promise of cost savings
Tell me you know nothing about security without tell me you know nothing about security. Desktop software is a nightmare... and they can still be as bloated as the most bloated webapp.
Yes! Ditto for most Electron apps. 1Password, this evil eye is indeed looking right atcha.
Dom api is too low level for application.
Use lit-html (3kb minified)
The App store and native apps are not one and the same. OP didnt say that native apps need to die, only the app store.
Android ecosystem deals just fine with native apps being distributed in .apk format which can just easily be installed by the user clicking on the file. Why cant this happen on Apple devices too?
I didn’t say they are. I implied a connection though. And the reason for that should be obvious: if native apps hadn’t existed then we’d have never travelled down this road with an App Store
If you think the android ecosystem is just fine as it is, why don’t you just use it instead of trying to change one that many other people are happy with?
I do use it, and as far as I am aware I am not trying to change anything?
I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning. It basically goes like this:
1. Read the argument
2. Disregard argument and instead try to read the person's mind or guess "what they really meant" to uncover some hidden agenda that you think must exist since it's simply not possible that somebody has a good argument against your pre-supposed belief.
3. Attack what you think they must actually believe rather than what they actually said.
You can also gas it up with some emotion too, especially if it's something deeply enmeshed in your identity like religion, politics, or Apple.
OP asked:
> Why cant this happen on Apple devices too?
There are many ways to interpret that question - a hypothetical pondering, or a "why doesn't it work this way?" in the most direct sense. I interpreted it as the latter.
> I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning.
Isn't this exactly what you've done to my comment?
> > Why cant this happen on Apple devices too?
> There are many ways to interpret that question - a hypothetical pondering, or a "why doesn't it work this way?" in the most direct sense. I interpreted it as the latter.
Yes, this is actually my point. That question isn't clearly saying, "you should do this on Apple devices too" it's asking, "why not?" The answer to that question could be anything like, "Because Apple and they're users believe it's better this way" or something more technical like, "software architecture limitations in <component>" or anything like that. You broadened your interpretation to assume that OP was advocating for Apple to make the change, but I don't see anything in their statement that would suggest that they are. You could maybe say, "well they should have clarified in the original" but then every comment would have to turn into a long list of what the person isn't saying, which could go on indefinitely. If you're really not sure what they meant, you could also practice the time-honored tradition of asking them and then dealing with their actual position, instead of assuming and addressing a strawman.
> > I think you've been hit with what I call the "hidden agenda" fallacy, which is something many people seem to commit routinely (or almost non-stop on reddit). It's closely related to (and involves) the Strawman fallacy, but includes some specific flawed reasoning.
> Isn't this exactly what you've done to my comment?
Hmm, possibly, I don't believe that I have based on what I wrote above in this comment above, but I will definitely consider deeper whether I've committed the same fallacy.
Btw, FWIW I don't mean anything personal by it. Nearly everyone does this to some extent (including me I'm sure), especially when it's a subject that we've been around repeatedly with lots of different people. There definitely are people taht post with hidden agendas and ask questions that aren't in good faith, so I'm not even saying we're always wrong when we do this. However, I do think it's important for discussion/conversation to strive not to make assumptions about somebody that we don't know. Honest questions can frequently sound the same as the bad faith questions, but assuming bad faith is an instant conversation killer.
Are you a psycologist ?
The itunes store predates the iphone. The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs.
And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone. I remember regularly using the iphone optimized version of Google Reader on Symbian, which of course had its own webkit based browser. Worked pretty well in 2008. I was working in Nokia Research then. Lots of people experimenting with browser based UIs there at there. Also the S60 webkit port came out of one of the teams there around 2005 or so. Nokia had a full blown browser running on smart phones years before the iphone launched. Incredible how they dropped the ball. I'm pretty sure that influenced the thinking in Apple when they were designing the iphone. Because Webkit of course was their project.
> The itunes store predates the iphone.
As does thousands of other online stores but that doesn’t mean they are App Stores too.
> The lack of native apps was resolved within a year of the iphone launch with the second generation. Probably they weren't ready for native developers and freezing APIs.
You’re basically just reiterating what I said here but in more favourable language.
At the end of the day, public demand was for native apps and the App Store was born from that. So all I’m doing is making a throw away comment about how times have changed.
> And in fairness, Safari was pretty capable on iphone.
Oh it really was. At the time it was heads and shoulders above anything else’s available for portable devices.
Hmm. I'm not sure about this aspect of history. iPhone app store launch was July 2008, Play Store launch was October 2008. Symbian store was actually after this (yes, really) https://venturebeat.com/business/mobile-os-company-symbian-e...
Which app stores pre-dated iOS?
Now, Symbian and various others had apps, but you had to buy them through the carrier. And carriers were even worse gatekeepers than Apple!
App Stores weren’t but native apps were:
> Back then, native apps were considered a “must have” feature for smartphones.
Mobile internet has underwent massive improvements since then. In the U.S. at least, there are places 5G outperforms wired connections.
Same goes for mobile compute power (which translates to browser performance)
That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. More and more services have adopted a web-first interface. So the benefits of native applications have dwindled when you’re basically just using web technologies regardless.
And then there is the massive abuse of spyware in mobile apps. For that reason alone, I rarely bother with native apps if I can help it.
So, what keeps all app developers from charging 0 to "buy" the app from the store, then nickel and dime the user inside the app?
This really feels like the beginning of things way worse.
Nothing stops them from doing that today.
But alternative payment flows will put some pressure on Apple to improve IAP features that many developers want to provide better experiences for their customers. Like IAP kind of sucks, unless your revenue model is tricking kids into charging things to mom's CC or finding whales and getting them addicted to your gambling app.
If Apple was worried about this, they shouldn't have flaunted the court order in a way that made the judge say in the subsequent order that "this is an injunction, not a negotiation."
I understand what you are saying, but not what I am getting at. If you were a developer and had a choice between a "one-time fee" with Apple taking 30% vs "free to download" but redirect to an outside payment system, which one would you chose?
I am worried that now game companies are incentivized to abandon "initial purchase" games/apps and go the "loot-box, subscription" route.
Is this the final nail in the pay one time for games coffin?
>Is this the final nail in the pay one time for games coffin?
No, these will continue to be made. Just that the Premium iOS Games market will also stay much smaller than the IAP horror world the rest is.
they already do that. (free to download, in app purchases after)
But apple was getting a cut of the in-app. Now they can't.
Now Apple has less incentive to allow exploitative IAPs and lootboxes on their store. Problem solved.
Competition keeps app developers from behaving badly.
At the risk of not piling on to the Apple dislike here, if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company. I presume even more scam apps will take your money and ignore your complaints; imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it. When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country. Of course this happens on the web too, but apps on your phone very different from web apps.
> When Apple controlled the payment system, Apple could be sued in your home country.
Have any App Store consumers sued Apple? And were they successful?
Apple does refuse App Store refunds all the time. Apple also closes consumer Apple accounts all the time, for some reason or no reason, often refusing to tell the consumer the reason, alleging some kind of fraud, in which case the consumer loses everything they've ever purchased. One of the reasons, though, is consumers doing a chargeback on their credit card, which Apple hates and punishes severely.
fwiw apple has been extremely generous to be on refunds and, while I don't abuse the system, I do get a refund when I think it's deemed necessary, either due to a lack of satisfaction or accidental purchase.
Chargebacks are a huge pain in the butt to deal with and, as someone who's saw this first hand, chargebackery is correlated bad customership (two words that I just made up) to so I can understand that they'd hate consumers doing that instead of going through what's otherwise a pretty fair system.
Dealing with apple support in payments land has been, on the consumer side, one of the less infuriating things that have come out of what is now their support process. That said, the ux for getting refunds and checking on their status is antiquated, perhaps purposefully.
Do they do such a-holish immoral moves also in EU? There could be a billion or 5 fine for them in the waiting, we don't like to get fucked over by greedy corporations, no sir.
We need all the money we can get for killing some russians once they invade our borders in near future, so any contribution is highly appreciated.
Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally? Lots of these arguments could equally be applied to a shopping mall but we don't require all stores within a mall to use the same merchant services provider.
This is probably the best analogy, however I think what might be different is there is somewhat high of a bar for the merchant/vendor to be operating a legal and legitimate business. On the internet and in the App Store, it’s kind of a Wild West.
Edit: Maybe not globalizing App Store apps would resolve this? Or at least if you want to operate an app in a country, you need to incorporate in that country too? I think that might make it harder for overseas companies to get away with fraud.
Sticking to his first point is sufficient: This is what credit cards themselves insulate you from. You don't need Apple to also insulate you.
>Is this not what the credit card system (with chargebacks and liability shift) is supposed to counter more generally?
The credit card system is far less generous than App Store's policies. Apple offers no-questions asked refunds. Credit cards don't.
They don’t always grant refunds for App Store purchases, I’ve heard from many customers whose refund requests were denied after we referred them to Apple. As a developer I would love to be able to refund them myself, but we can’t refund IAPs at all, it’s entirely up to Apple.
If the customer requests too many refunds (say 3-4 within a few months) their Apple ID is likely to be banned from making further purchases.
I feel that this is orthogonal to my point - it's not about how generous or not a given mechanism is, more to question why the App Store is any different from other transactions we need to protect. You either have to argue that App Store transactions need more consumer friendly refunds than other credit card transactions for some reason, or otherwise that credit cards should have no-questions asked refunds.
As another commenter said, in some cases Apple's power in the relationship is detrimental to the consumer - if a user issues a chargeback then Apple can disable their entire Apple account.
I don’t need no-questions refunds. I need fair transactions.
Apple is too powerful in this relationship to provide it. If I have a problem with a merchant I can go to my credit card company about it. If I have a problem with my credit card company I might lose out on that one transaction but I can get a different credit card.
If I have a problem with Apple (or Steam or Nintendo or…) I either have to take the abuse or lose past “purchases”.
And the merchant themselves can do no questions asked refunds anyway.
Then let's allow consumers choose if that service is worth 10x higher fees.
Apple knows it's a rip-off: Apple has explicitly forbidden app developers from ever informing users how much they're paying for Apple's services.
You are free to only use apps that use apple payments if you are concerned about this.
Yes but will it be clear to users when they are using one vs the other?
Presumably Apple could have had more control over communicating this if they opened up external payment options voluntarily.
There's plenty of ways to ensure that. Don't let Apple's bad UI fool you into accepting Apple's bad business practices.
Apple could have created an API for other payment providers to integrate with, so that you could sign up for IAP with whoever you want (imagine your IAP and subscriptions run by PayPal if you enter a PayPal account instead of a credit card).
Banks and payment processors already have tons of policies requiring payments to be presented in a clear way, refunds and cancellations processed properly, etc. There are also plenty of trademark and consumer protection laws that forbid misrepresentation. It's a solved problem that Apple pretends to be unsolvable and spreads FUD about to keep their cash cow.
But then there are apps you were able to use previously that you will no longer be able to trust. That's the problem -- it's taking away trust.
You're not free to continue using Apple's payment system as a consumer.
What do you mean? The app can use Apple's system and its own. If the developers don't want your money on terms fair to you, you don't buy.
Some things are relatively easy to refund via Apple, but not all of them. It's nearly impossible to get a refund for in-app purchases, gift cards, balance top-ups, auto-renewing subscriptions, redeemed digital goods, and so on. Coming from the EU, if I paid for these things directly with a credit card, I'd be able to get a refund in line with our consumer protection laws (if the item was sold deceptively, if it has a fault, if I am not satisfied for any reason within 14 days) that cover more or less all digital purchases - no problem.
To borrow your words, Apple's system is taking away trust. I like the refunds my European bank offers me because it operates under consumer-friendly laws. I don't trust Apple's refunds.
Anyway, opening any system to more choices for the consumer cannot decrease trust. If the consumer trusts the original payment option, they can use that. If that is not provided, but the customers don't trust other payment methods, the app won't make money. The market will soon negotiate so that the payment methods that customers and sellers find acceptable prevail. Apple fears it won't be their extortion (I mean payment system), and rightfully so. Aside from the Stockholm syndrome, there's very little reason to use it.
This is a good point. If an app does me wrong with a non Apple payment processor I can do a chargeback as a last resort. That's not really an option for Apple payment processing because I think it can get your whole Apple account banned.
That is also true. There is a very significant disincentive to charge back against sellers protected by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, PayPal, Stripe, and other similar payment gateways. The consumer protections are, therefore, eroded.
You're missing the part where app developers take away the Apple payment option because that way they can make it much harder to do refunds, cancel subscriptions, etc.
That decreases trust. Period.
You're claiming this is about adding choices, but it's not. App developers will be removing the choice for consumers to pay via Apple.
Saying it's my choice to then not use the app is disingenuous. When a good option is replaced with multiple worse options, there's no benefit to "more choices".
Please re-read the final paragraph of my comment.
I don't need to, that's what I was already responding to. Please re-read my comment.
I really didn't think it necessary to reply to your sentence that "If that is not provided, but the customers don't trust other payment methods, the app won't make money" -- because it's so clearly relying on a false premise.
But since you need it further explained: trust in payment methods isn't binary. I prefer Apple payments but still use my credit card for everything else where it isn't available. If people can't use a better payment option, they'll fall back to a worse one. They usually won't just forego using the app entirely. Just look at the success of Adobe Creative Cloud despite its horrendous billing practices.
Again, that's what's wrong with your argument around choice. More choice leads to worse outcomes when you allow the best choice to be removed.
> You're not free to continue using Apple's payment system as a consumer.
Previously, apps could still require you to not use the apple payment option.
For example, Spotify only let you subscribe on the web because apple's 30% cut is larger than their margin, so they'd lose money if you subscribed in-app.
The "Buy" page in the app was just text saying "You cannot buy a subscription in the app". It couldn't link to the webpage since apple's rule banned that. It couldn't say "You can buy a subscription on our webpage" because apple's rules banned that.
Before, an app could simply not have any payment option in the app, and tell you "You cannot pay here". Now, an app can still choose to have no in-app payment and instead tell you "You can pay on the web", or embed that web payment option in-app.
You are still welcome to refuse to use any apps that don't support apple pay, as you could before.
I’m pretty sure this ruling just lets developers add an external payment option (and charge less for it). Apple’s IAP is still a requirement, so you’ll still have that option if it’s worth the 30% premium to you (it definitely is not for me).
Nope.
Developers are free to include no payment mechanism in the app that would involve an iAP, and tell people to click to go to the website (which can open an in app browser window).
Well in that case, there must be a single endpoint, a common interface, to initiate a payment, track chargeback and view payment histories. Customers should have the option if they want to trust Apple with their payment details or 3rd-party.
You're free to pay the extra 30% yourself.
I already don't trust Apple's payment systems.
This is unambiguously a win.
This is sorta what customers expect. When they want a refund or have a problem, they ask the developer. They don't understand the payments are all going through apple AND that apple is responsible for all billing support. There is no way to even look up a customer or get a list of your customers with IAP, aside from using something like RevenueCat that tries to link your user accounts with the device receipts to figure out who is subscribed. Customers find it ridiculous that you can't help them with any billing questions at all.
Not 100% true, if it's digital you always have your Credit Card company. This is many times easier dealing with Apple or anyone else.
In fact, with apple providing this service, it's objectively worse — if apple declines to refund you and you charge back via card, apple (and Google etc) will just ban your account.
Removing apple and google from the payment chain mitigates this risk.
Canceling a purchase via Apple is generally much easier than dealing with your credit card. I don't know what experience you've had that has been the opposite?
> if you use a non-Apple payment system, and you have an issue, you now need to go to the specific company and payment system, you can no longer demand your money back by dealing with a single company
Just use a virtual payment processor (PayPal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, etc) or any credit card directlyh. I mean, you often can't on an iPhone, and that's the whole problem.
If you have a genuine issue with what you bought via Apple's payment gateway and your bank files a credit card chargeback for you, Apple would even indiscriminately ban you. They are hardly the good guy.
They've installed themselves as an arbiter of what can be refunded and what cannot. But by law, the arbiter is the government, not Apple. So there are many, many problems with Apple's approach. The consumer rights are one, but acting above the law itself is a problem.
> you now need to go to the specific company and payment system,
My credit card company. In fact, this is better because as a consumer, if I get scammed, I only need to deal with my CC company, and when I get my money back, I don't have to worry about Apple closing my account in retaliation.
> When Apple controlled the payment system,
I was beholden to Apple's whims and limitations. If I didn't like Apple's outcome, going to my credit card company was still an option. However, initiating a charge back could result in something happening to my account.
> imagine trying to sue a company in some foreign country to try to get your money back if they stole it
One phone call with my CC company (I don't even know if you still need to do the phone call anymore).
Oh, but... to be fair, I can't go to Apple's subscription page and cancel it there. So, there is that one thing.
If I charge back some random store because I didn't get what I ordered no problem. If I charge back Apple they can effectively shut my phone down and not allow me to install another App.
This hasn't happened to the Android ecosystem, so why should it happen to the Apple ecosystem now?
That's literally the biggest selling point of credit cards too, you don't need to argue with every business you paid, just charge back your credit card. Apple didn't remotely invent "single point of dispute."
People are still able to use Apple payments. They just have other choices now. At least that is my understanding. Wanting choices does not seem like "Apple dislike". To me, at least.
On the other hand, Apple does not let you as the developer do refunds on your own. You can't do full or partial refunds.
That's a fair benefit to apple payment, and if the app vendor could offer apple pay (with the extra fee for this benefit) and their own payment system at a different price I think that would be ideal for consumers, yes?
This is how everything pretty much works outside of the app store ecosystem.
It's possible to file a complaint with your credit card company and if need be do a chargeback.
Well shit dealing with multiple companies sounds like a drag! We should merge all US companies into one entity!
Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP.
When I use mobile apps I like being able to do all my spending in one place. I want to be able to go to subscriptions and cancel everything I don't need at once.
Just yesterday I had to manually stop a PayPal payment renewal since the merchants cancellation process doesn't work ( 2 emails to customer service and I get the vibe this is intentional).
That's not something I want to have to keep doing.
I can imagine Epic being able to convince people to use a 3rd party payment provider, but that won't happen for smaller studios.
> Most customers are probably going to assume your a con artist if you don't use the official IAP.
and this is apple’s reasoning for why their strict control over the app store is warranted. they want it to be seen as trusted and infallible and that can’t happen if 3rd parties have free reign.
for me, the correct way forward isn’t external referrals. it’s allowing multiple app stores on devices. if you don't want the “untrusted” 3rd party store with more lax dev rules than Apple’s, just don’t use them.
>for me, the correct way forward isn’t external referrals. it’s allowing multiple app stores on devices. if you don't want the “untrusted” 3rd party store with more lax dev rules than Apple’s, just don’t use them.
Exactly. Or better yet just let me install whatever binaries I want. Make it clear I'm responsible for what I install though.
From the perspective of the average consumer, it's much easier for Apple to handle the whole flow. If I want to cancel my subscription via the app store it take 30 seconds, not a bunch of unanswered emails to customer support.