Comment on Don't expect iPhone apps to get cheaper now that you can pay for them outside of the App Store
kirklennon@kbin.social 5 months agoIf you are a developer, what right does Apple have to seeing your finances for all purchases made in the app that they sold on their store?
It's a commission for sales that came from the app, meaning from Apple's platform, where they have roughly one billion above-average income users with a reputation for buying apps and subscriptions.
I’ve definitely noticed that basic tools on iOS and Mac OS tend to cost money compared to their Android / Windows / Linux counterparts. But still, just because they can, doesn’t mean they should… Or at least, that they should be legally allowed to.
I won’t shed any tears for Amazon etc having to give Apple a huge chunk of cash, but this sounds like a way to frustrate small developers who don’t have a whole team to devote to their finances.
I won’t shed any tears for Amazon etc having to give Apple a huge chunk of cash
Amazon doesn't have to give Apple a huge chunk of cash though. Apps don't pay anything to Apple for real-world stuff being sold. Amazon pays nothing for the tens of billions of dollars purchased every year from iPhones. The only thing they pay Apple for is if someone uses the Prime Video app to buy or rent something or subscribe to Prime Video, but who does not already have an Amazon account (with saved card) that they're signed into. We're probably talking a number measured in the thousands of dollars. Uber, for example, pays Apple nothing other than their annual developer account fee (or fees, assuming they have multiple accounts).
this sounds like a way to frustrate small developers who don’t have a whole team to devote to their finances.
Nobody is going to actually use this program so there's no real world extra accounting cost. Previously Apple charged 30% for a combined payment handling and commission. A court determined they had to let developers handle their own payments so Apple complied and said the commission is 27%. It's invariably cheaper to just stick with Apple's 30%.
Everyone always wants more money. Developers would love to pay less; Apple would love to make more. The 30% max fee (in practice less for many developers) has been pretty successful for everyone involved. I think people can quibble over the "right" number, but I don't think it's wrong that there's a sales commission for access to a profitable platform.
Important to note that the 30% cut is also only on developers that bring in >$1M in revenue from the App Store and in app purchases. Which is less than 1% of developers.
For those under $1M it’s only 15%, which is on par or cheaper than what developing your own payment processing or to use another third party processor.
15% is not cheaper than using your own payment processor, don’t be silly. Stripe costs me around 3% and can be set up in five minutes.
Except if you choose not to use the Apple default, Apple charges you 15-30% on top of the solution you chose yourself, correct?
In other words, Apple is trying to crowd out competition by encouraging independent developers to avoid any option that does not have their all-encompassing logo plastered on it, all while claiming to give them choice…
It’s a commission for sales that came from the app
Now where are Apple’s detailed sales reports, poving that this isn’t paid with the device?
pennomi@lemmy.world 5 months ago
XCode is also a steaming pile of shit. For example, it took them literal years to get syntax highlighting stable for Swift. You’d just be typing and poof, all the text would turn black.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Meanwhile my Visual Studio Professional at work will crash if I decide I want to delete a folder, the syntax highlighting will just stop working randomly and I’ll have to quit and re-open the solution.
Never used Xcode for any meaningful length of time, but VS Pro isn’t perfect either.
pennomi@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Yeah Visual Studio is terrible too, and slow as dirt. VSCode or any Jetbrains editor is where it’s at these days.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
I love VSCode as a text editor. Shame work makes us use VS Pro as our IDE. We do get CoPilot integration though which is neat.
MonkderZweite@feddit.ch 5 months ago
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Did I?
They’re all with their own faults is what I am trying to get across.