Epic chose to put Fortnite back in the Google Play store after finding that life “outside” was more challenging, so their arguments hold even less water for me.
Both parties have taken extreme positions, but I expect Epic to blink first. As they should. Either complain about the 30% everywhere (Apple, Google, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc.) or suck it up and deal with it as a business decision.
Cheers,
Jon
It looks like for now, Fortnite won’t be allowed back in the App Store, but Apple has been blocked from yanking Epic’s developer certificate.
I’m getting the same error on that site. I can go to YouTube direct and view one of many though. I watched this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h62AhBb5N1Q
I missed the survey as well.
One of the reasons that I chose the iPhone is the managed and curated App Store. I like that there is one place, and one place only, to find apps. There are policies in the App Store that should probably be changed, but I am not at all bothered by App Store restrictions. As for the other questions:
Yes, there should probably be some government regulation of internal app stores. I’m not sure that we can trust for-profit companies with little competition from making nothing but benign choices. There likely should be regulation that farly protect the interests of consumers and developers alike.
I have no idea as a consumer if developers are treated fairly by Apple. My gut feel is that they are.
If side loading is allowed on iOS, I want to make sure that there is a way to prevent it on my iOS devices.
I have no way to know if the 30% fee (and 15% subscription fee after one year) is fair or not. As a consumer I think in most cases if the fee was reduced, developers would keep most or sometimes all of the extra. I do think that some of the fees and restrictions are ludicrous, namely trying to capture fees of items like Kindle books, Netflix or Hulu subscriptions, etc. - I am not subscribing to these services because Apple happened to show them in the App Store - I am subscribing to most services because I heard about them elsewhere. I also, however, worry that other companies will not protect the privacy of my transaction data for internal purchases - I like having as few places to purchase from as possible. As an example, I have a local newspaper delivered to me most of the year, but I am away from home during the summer, so I suspend my delivery. The newspaper has a decent iOS app so I can read the paper during the summer, and I can subscribe using an in-app payment in the App Store. I could also subscribe through the newspaper itself, but when I did this last year, I spent half an hour on the phone trying to cancel my subscription when the summer was over. From waiting for a customer service rep to answer to refusing several offers to continue the subscription before they would finally process the cancelation, it took that long. In the App Store I will just click a button to stop the ongoing renewal and I will be done. There is a something enjoyable about such a simple interaction.
I would prefer that there not being multiple app stores on iOS. One concern is that specific apps might become exclusive to particular app stores, meaning that setting up a new device from scratch would require having to remember which app came from which store. As I said previously, I also trust Apple to keep my purchase history more private than I would other companies. I also worry about something like an app becoming exclusive on one store and then becoming exclusive on a second one at a later period. Would that mean that I would have to re-purchase the app from the second store? Personally I like the fact that there is one place to find apps, and I think Apple has done a decent job with it.
Lastly, and for what its worth, I really don’t want a huge number of apps anyway. I really don’t use more than a couple of handfuls of apps, and some of them are installed mostly so I can get notifications from them (e.g., from my bank to get a notification of questionable charges, etc.)
I can agree with that. I personally like the app store and the convenience and security that comes with it. I don’t like that it’s starting to feel like Apple is using it to stifle market forces.
I too don’t feel the urge to sideload. I do, however, under the current circumstances believe it should be made possible. iOS can give users a switch to lock down to app store-only apps – just like macOS. That way people who value the walled garden above all else retain just that. At the same time people who want to go beyond and make sure Apple can’t just muscle them into a certain mindset gain a new option.
On macOS we know this works. People have the option to go app store-only or to allow downloads directly from devs. We have a working Mac app store and it faces competition from other sources. It’s perhaps a bit weak compared to the iOS store, but that’s most likely for historical reasons (in the iOS case the reverse would be the case) and due to the fact that it competes poorly with what many independent devs have been able to offer. And that’s ok. That kind of competition would serve iOS well for those willing to allow it. And for everybody else nothing needs to change.
What if Apple charged a fee for having a presence on the Apple Store and gave people the choice to buy product on the App Store or go to developer site to purchase? The presence fee would be based on the number of hits a product got on the App Store.
Developer site would offer more detail and support. App Store would just offer purchase convenience. Developers could choose either purchase option and would only pay for presence fees if purchases from their site was provided. If developer site purchase was not an option provided - no presence fees would be charged and the existing 30% would be charged by Apple.
Perhaps the title was off-putting, but we very seldom publish any articles that we do not think are relevant or of interest to all TidBITS readers. Developers have complaints with the App Store, and those complaints directly impact how those developers provide users with apps.
We’re not talking about movies being shown in physical theaters, we’re talking about digital goods that have no marginal cost. As we outlined in the original article, the real comparison is with Internet sales, where developers are charged transaction fees of between 2.9% and maybe 10%, depending on the commerce platform. Internet sales predated the App Store by many years (Kagi started in 1994), and most Mac developers still rely on them. It’s just too easy to run your own Web-based store and process through Stripe or Shopify or rely on a platform like FastSpring or one of the Digital River subsidiaries.
Speaking of marginal cost, Ben Thompson is coming down on the issue much as we are, although he fleshes a suggestion out better than we did in our distinction between digital and real-world charges.
It is applied equally. In addition to Google, Amazon also has an App Store. They also charge 30%:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get/amazonapp
So does Samsung:
As a Mac developer, I think side loading with restrictions is a really good option. On the Mac, consumer oriented Mac Apps are strongly incentivized to be signed and notarized by Apple (unlike open source UNIX apps mostly used by developers). On iOS, requiring all Apps to be signed and notarized by Apple could be a reasonable compromise. This accomplishes three important objectives:
It gives Apple the control they need to ensure the integrity of the platform.
It forces Apple to justify their commission versus other alternatives that might become available. Apple is a fierce competitor and should be encouraged to win on the merits of what they offer.
It will force most developers to see the value of the App Store compared the alternatives.
From my perspective, it attempts to address the biggest issues without fundamentally breaking what’s great about the App Store and iOS.
Agree with the above. My gripe is when you search for an app, the find comes up in second place. That is sleezy.
I’ve been reading a lot in the ad and marketing trade press about Apple eliminating its Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA) in iOS. It means the end of precision tracking and targeting for ads. I got to thinking about whether the IDFA was used for extensive offsite tracking by gaming apps, and it most certainly is.
I was quite surprised about how much off-site tracking was possible via games, and I thought this could possibly be a contributing factor to Epic Games, etc. going ballistic about App Store fees. Epic Games does very successfully sell ads on Fortnight, and they do have extensive, super mega ad buying and PR operations.
This is a rather lengthy article that does a good job of summarizing the magnitude of the tracking opportunities that Apple is slamming the door on:
“Of course, this poll is small and far from scientific,”
No, if your fingers properly counted results, your poll is likely quite scientific; it’s is just not necessarily “representative” of any known universe, except perhaps average TidBits responders to past TidBits surveys. You even nicely report the n, number fo replies, for each question/answer. You even comment how your responders likely differ from the universe of all Apple users (my inference from your implicit comparison, “our audience tends to lean older and toward cautious usage patterns.” Even some of the best polling and polling analyses (eg FiveThirtyEight.com) make estimates and compromises. And so many polls today are based on who can be gotten to reply, often without explicit report, much less data, on how responders differ from known demographic etc data. Daniel Kegan, Chicago, Elan Associates.
Hah! Well-said. It’s likely an accurate representation of the subset of TidBITS readers who chose to respond, and extrapolating beyond that is a stretch. Except when we think we’re right, of course. 
All surveys measure only those who are willing to respond.
I’ve always wondered, when seeing a news report about some poll that says “20% said X and 80% said Y”, about how many people refused to take the survey.
I think the public would have a very different opinion if they reported (for example) that “2% said X, 8% said Y and 90% told the pollster to take a flying leap”.
Reputable advertising market research and media surveys are sent out in waves to random samples in a representative market. They need to achieve a minimum in two or three waves, with three sometimes not passing the smell test. The minimum response rate, depending on the study, is 60% for print, 50% for email, but the bigger the response, the better. If you don’t make it by wave two, you’re allowed a third, but three just passes the smell test. The best and most respected studies are conducted by independent research firms. One of the challenges in the age of new media development is the the rise of an infinite number of new research companies, many of which are rather dubious. And there is also the issue of off the shelf digital research apps.
Polls that are posted on a web page are a totally different animal, as they are only conducted among people who happened to land on the page, weather they have paid to access the content or not.
My younger brother is an econometrics professor who deals a lot with how data gets collected and the methods used to evaluate it. What I have gathered from what he tells me is that truly good polls consist of a huge amount of work to determine which fraction of those 90% that told the pollster to take a hike would actually prefer X vs. Y. Ultimately, the good poll doesn’t tell you what people told the pollster, they aim to tell you what all people (or at least those you’re targeting) really think. That requires a lot of careful modeling, since as you correctly point out, if you rely solely on those who answer, you’re bound to get a skewed result.
I am not a Dev but I have used the App store infrequently. Mostly for updates to apps. But even then, I am greeted by large, obnoxious game suggestions. I don’t use my Mac nor my i-device for gaming. I have a PC and consoles for that. If you like to game on Apple products, then so be it. But I don’t and not given that Option-Out of obnoxious Play Me! And the search…I agree with the others on how it caters to you as an after thought.
As for 30%, I think its reasonable except that there needs to be a tier for Devs that are Small, Medium or Large players. Imagine with your credit cards if they all were 30%. Or that your tax on income was 30%. For some, its not much of a hit. But for small devs that have maybe 2-3 apps, unless hugely popular, 30% is a large chunk. Ofcourse, what lurks behind NDAs?
I don’t care for Fortnight or Epic. And frankly, want Apple to expand and stick with Enterprise apps and support. Nothing more frustrating than working to support Apple in a Business and need AppleID so software. Everything will be on the server, I mean cloud.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Apple removing AFib capabilities from a particular Apple Watch
I’m really not at all a fan of Facebook (to put it mildly), but after reading about Apple forcing Facebook to remove a notice telling users how much of their in-app purchase actually goes to the small business they’re trying to support strikes me as draconian and in no way justified. Regardless of where you stand on the app store debate, can we agree that informing customers ahead of purchase about which portion of the proceeds go to which party is desirable in a free market economy whereas actively complicating customers’ access to such information is borderline nefarious? I can understand Apple will not allow devs to advertise how to circumvent app store purchases within these app store apps, but going so far as to restrict even simple factual information, such as “only 70% of your donation will end up with the donee”, IMHO goes too far.