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Comment by lokar

2 years ago

As an iPhone user I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android). I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

39 comments

lokar

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kmeisthax  2 years ago

When the iPhone App Store first launched, Steve Jobs claimed[0] the 30% was to cover the cost of certifying software as functional, well-designed, and nonmalicious. Part of it was an ego thing too: he didn't want people fucking up apps and making his pet project look bad, so early App Review focused on a lot of UI polish things in order to make people think iPhone software was just inherently better than Android.

Even a few years in there's already evidence that Apple was entirely aware of how much of a cash cow owning the distribution market for your apps is. There's an internal letter asking about reducing the percentage because someone was worried about the Chrome Web Store (?) eating their lunch. Today, App Review is far too inadequate for the level of software submissions Apple gets, and they regularly let garbage onto the store that's specifically supposed to be curated.

I occasionally hear people complain about how Tim Cook "ruined the company" and that Jobs would never do the kind of control freak shit that he literally pioneered and is literally the selling proposition of the Mac all the way back in 1984. The only thing Tim Cook did was scale the business from "luxury compute" to it's inevitable conclusion as a monopolistic nightmare. The way that the App Store business game is played is specifically that you don't keep spending all your money on better app review. Once you have users and developers mutually hooked on one another, you siphon money out of them for your other projects (or your shareholders).

At one point, you were paying a premium for a better App Store, but not anymore. The business relationship just doesn't work out that way long-term.

[0] I personally think this belief was genuine at first.

  • FullyFunctional  2 years ago

    To add more evidence to your point: SJ loved wall gardens and consistently fought against extensibility. The Apple II only got extension slots because the other Steve insisted. All of the compact Macs have very limited to no extensibility.

    It's so ironic that Apple was pushing the (open) Web apps in the early days of the iPhone (out of necessity of course).

    • kmeisthax  2 years ago

      Jobs wanted webapps because it tied the hands of third parties more - it was harder to write a webapp that would burn your battery (and hands).

    • samatman  2 years ago

      Jobs loved excellent user experiences, and, rightly or wrongly, saw walled gardens as an important part of providing them. Sometimes.

      The counterexample is the iPod, with its advertising slogan "Rip. Mix. Burn.". The first iPod used Firewire and was Mac-only, every edition since then used entirely industry-standard technology, USB and MP3. The value proposition was, as the slogan illustrates, easily taking your CDs and putting the music on the iPod. That too was in pursuit of an excellent user experience.

      Later, Jobs fought the entire music industry for the right to buy digital music, not just rent it. And won.

Pfhortune  2 years ago

> I am willing (and believe I am) paying Apple a premium for a well curated and reviewed App Store (vs android)

There is a plethora of evidence that this is not the case. See this recent example: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/08/a-fake-app-masquerading-as...

(Yes, it was pulled, but that was _after_ the public noticed and LastPass had to issue a warning)

> I just wish they would stop “double dipping “ and charging far in excess of their costs (and in excess of reasonable profit) to the app sellers.

That quarterly growth has to come from somewhere! Line goes up!

miguelxt  2 years ago

You should be allowed to stay inside Apple's walled garden while the rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).

  • s3r3nity  2 years ago

    > ...rest of users should be allowed to leave it whenever they want (at the very minimum at their own risk).

    You can, though? Just go buy an Android. There are a billion different options there.

    Heck, you can also still buy old-school type flip phones at Walmart.

  • lokar  2 years ago

    I’m fine with more app stores, let others compete, and ideally compete on review security.

    • giantrobot  2 years ago

      If you want Fortnite then you need the Tencent...sorry the Epic Game Store. That comes with all of the PII leaks[0]. Because their game store will require permissions/privileges to install system wide apps, it won't be constrained on what data it can leak about users or what it can decide to install in the background. I for one can't wait for a dozen app stores to pop up all installing Sony root kits or Denuvo malware on people's phones.

      [0] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...

  • pb7  2 years ago

    The problem with this is that going outside of Apple's walled garden benefits 3rd parties who would prefer to do whatever they want so to use the same apps as before, everyone will have to submit to that risk. Apple's walled garden is a type of regulation.

    • amenhotep  2 years ago

      But I thought all of Apple's users were extremely rational actors who freely chose for their experience to be restricted because they knew it was better. Surely if the alternative app stores were so inferior and dangerous all of these discerning users would reject them, and paying the 30% tax would be well worth the competitive advantage of offering your product at the only marketplace that notoriously lucrative cohort would accept. You're not insinuating that Apple's userbase isn't that sophisticated and doesn't make purchasing choices based on factors other than social vibes?

      1 reply →

    • asadotzler  2 years ago

      So what. If iOS doesn't suck, their apps won't be able to do anything malicious so no added risk. If a kid in China with an iPad testing the app for 3-4 minutes is a real security benefit, I'm Tim Cook.

jocoda  2 years ago

As long as I have to pay Apple a yearly developer fee so that I can load my own software (that no one else will use) on to 'my' phone, it does not belong me. Yes I know you can reload it every week. Not my phone.

I do not understand why Microsoft stepped out of the mobile market.

  • 999900000999  2 years ago

    This is apart of why I use Android.

    It's understood that you can install random APKs from anywhere. As a hobbyist developer, I want to be able to set up a GitHub pipeline and then just download my APKs from that without fighting Apple or paying for an Apple developer account.

    I'm actually open to buying an iPhone as well, iPhones are much better when it comes to music production, by understand I have to abide by Apple's rules and not be able to install my own software.

  • usernamed7  2 years ago

    > I do not understand why Microsoft stepped out of the mobile market.

    Because they failed. And not just once!

    • pjc50  2 years ago

      It's a pity really. The phones were quite good. But they failed for the exact issue under discussion: app store compatibility! They didn't have access to either Android or iOS apps.

kbf  2 years ago

That used to be my stance as well, but the App Store has gotten so bad in recent years. These days if there’s an app I want to install, it’s much easier to find the app store link on the developers page than to search in the App Store. At this point the “user experience” argument isn’t really there beyond easy payments and subscription management.