I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!"
For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done for profit.
> I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!"
I feel like fines aren't even an appropriate remedy for this. They're both inherently arbitrary and not something that actually fixes it. And that combination gives governments a perverse incentive, because they get $2B to put in their own pockets while leaving the monopolist to continue monopolizing so they can come back and extract more later instead of actually solving it.
What they should be doing is breaking up companies that do this sort of thing.
The UK could give Apple a choice: Either pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products will be seized on import.
To achieve the thing you wanted, word the law vaguely and have a judge interpret it. You know, the same way the law is applied to poors like you and me. Nobody gets off a murder by saying "Your Honour, when I stabbed that man to death, technically I didn't meet the criteria in point 3 subsection 12 and therefore I am innocent." Why should corporations get that privilege? (I note they may be found innocent of murder but guilty of something like manslaughter - which is fine! Different degrees of violation of the law can result in greater or lesser sentences. Proportionality is a good thing. Apple should only have to pay half the fine if the judge estimates they've done half what they should)
> pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly
Reaction from the US government would be swift and extreme, especially with this administration. 1000% tariffs on British exports or something like that...
But even under a normal/sane administration, doing something like this to an US tech megacorp would be unfeasible without a backlash that would outweigh any benefits.
> Either pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products will be seized on import.
That's what breaking them up is. "Stop being a monopoly" is breaking them up.
Leaving them in one piece and trying to pass a separate rule against every monopolistic practice they can come up with while they remain in one piece is an exercise in futility.
> Nobody gets off a murder by saying "Your Honour, when I stabbed that man to death, technically I didn't meet the criteria in point 3 subsection 12 and therefore I am innocent." Why should corporations get that privilege?
Some people do, in fact, e.g. because the evidence was seized unlawfully and the government's penalty for that is not getting to use it, or because the charges were filed in the wrong jurisdiction etc. This is why rich people often get away with things -- they have money to pay lawyers to trawl through thousands of pages of regulations to find the mistake the government made or bamboozle the jury or the court. See e.g. O.J. Simpson.
But the problem in cases like this is much harder than that, because there is no murder without a body. It isn't a normal thing to be having to decide if the person who killed someone is guilty of murder because it isn't a normal thing to be the person who killed someone.
Whereas it is a normal thing for companies to sell things for money and enter into contracts etc. Which means you're not trying to decide if they did something wrong in an outrageous event that happens zero times in the median person's life, you're trying to decide if they did something wrong in any of the millions of transactions they take part in every day.
Is requiring a fee or the use of an identification service in order to publish an app just recovering their costs, or is it a ploy to inhibit people from doing it? Is preventing third party software from performing certain system functions a security measure, or a means to prevent competitors making an app store that actually functions properly?
You can't be getting into the weeds like that or their lawyers will eventually come up with something the government accepts as the former while it still has the effect of the latter. You have to remove the structural incentive they have to do it to begin with, which comes from these separate products all being tied together within the same company.
You can imagine things a country could do in this respect. Require the devices they sell in your country to be completely unlocked with respect to third party app stores and operating systems, but also with respect to regions so that people can buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere. Invalidate their copyrights in your country so that third parties can ship phones with iOS. It's punishment, they're not supposed to like it. There are plenty of things they wouldn't like.
Also, putting aside whether the UK could actually break them up, the US or the EU could actually break them up.
This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices.
> regions
People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate.
> buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere
In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region is needed.
> EU could actually break them up
I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU.
> This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices.
Why are you excluding phone-like devices? That's where it's currently the bigger problem. You can't do it at all on iPhones and Android devices malign you with locked boot loaders, attestation failures and undocumented blob drivers tied to an ancient kernel version.
> People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate.
It's discriminating against the poor people of any country that also happens to have rich people in it. Both the poor and rich people of that country should want it banned there for their own benefit and they're the ones who get to decide that.
> In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region is needed.
The point of prohibiting the region locking in this case is that it also allows the unlocked versions of that vendor's devices to spread across the world, making them feel the remedy. But also, it would be fine for everyone to just prohibit region locking everywhere. Price discrimination is an arbitrage opportunity and it ought to stay that way.
> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU.
International companies aren't "based" anywhere in particular except for on paper, but Apple has significant operations in the EU. Moreover, they sell a significant number of devices there.
The way a breakup works anywhere is that the government says "separate these business units into a separate entity or you can't operate here" and then if they don't do it, they both lose >$100B in annual revenue and cause there to be a large economic region where they don't exist which becomes a breeding ground for new competitors that can then spread into other regions. Given that choice, investors might be pretty unhappy if the executives choose that over just separating the company out into ones that collectively get to keep all of that revenue.
Actually not, for me *smart*phones are PC-like devices. Smartphone, especially modern one, is obviously a miniature personal computer.
> It's discriminating against the poor people of any country that also happens to have rich people in it.
I think, poor people are discriminated in every country generally if they need to buy products designed by an international company. While I've mentioned average income, it should be strictly speaking median income.
> Price discrimination
I mean that countries with lower median income deserves cheaper products. So that relatively there should be only minimal difference for poor people to be able to buy such products, regardless of the country of origin.
> International companies aren't "based" anywhere in particular except for on paper,
That's a good question. This "on paper" is crucial for all the legal stuff. US-based companies must obey not only EU rules but also US. Especially problematic is when they'd need to break a EU law to comply with the US law but they are never allowed to do this vice versa. This way I'd define where a company is based.
> anywhere is that the government says
It will be problematic due to multiple governments would be involved (typically US, EU, UK, China).
> I mean that countries with lower median income deserves cheaper products.
So if you make $20,000 and live in a country with a median income of $40,000 then you should pay higher prices than someone who makes $200,000 and lives in a country with a median income of $10,000? Why?
Also, that's not really how prices work for non-monopolies. If everyone can profitably produce something and sell it for $100 in e.g. South America and then you try to charge $200 in the US or Europe, your competitors are just going to take your customers by charging $100 there too. The ability to engage in price discrimination shenanigans is evidence of an uncompetitive market.
But actually, of course, it would be fair to make individual prices. E.g. there is a photo-camera for 7000, it makes very very good photos. Someone makes every day money with photos and buys it. Someone else wants also very good photos for non-professional private use, family and even for posts in WEB (without a fee, only donations). But this someone else must pay the same 7000.
Needless to say that in case of individual prices, additional rules and locks will apply.
BTW, some electronic devices are sold cheaper for academics (universities, students).
Everybody keeps saying that Trump is eroding US power etc. etc. Are they all lying or is the EU just too chicken to actually do it when it comes up? According to the TACO principle it goes the other way, right?
E.g. EU companies could replace China 5G. But with US chips. While some new tiny FPGAs appeared recently (using obsolete manufacturing process), huge FPGAs from Xilinx(AMD)/Altera(Intel) cannot be replaced. China can make both US and EU calm down with rare earth materials. US can tame EU with chips and whatever else. And EU... no idea.
Oh he certainly is. But he is eroding it. It's only just starting and the EU is only just starting to disconnect itself from the US. So right now he still has a lot of pull.
> considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like this.
This seems backwards. The reason they can't be broken up is because of the pressure that huge companies like this put on individuals in government.
No different than why a small town mayor can't jail the organized crime ring that runs his town. If he tries anything, they will shoot him; or at least put up posters all over town accusing him of being a pedophile (and pay somebody to file charges against him that will eventually be dismissed for lack of evidence.) He wouldn't have become mayor in the first place if they hadn't supported him and attacked his potential competitors.
You can jail decision makers that work in the company. You can also jail the CEO, if they are ready to accept those big salaries they should also be ready to accept consequences.
It's also not really desirable to punish a company or dissolve it. It's mostly made up of laborers - you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay. Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP. That stuff is useful.
You absolutely want to burn the IP in the sense of make it freely available to use and build upon. Every time history has weakened IP protections for the few, the many have benefited.
A lot of the success after WW2 was the immense amount of patents that were no longer protected and could be built upon without 25 years of monopoly extraction. You can't rent seek something that isn't patent protected, so you have to build and improve.
For example, several German and Italian patents around good motorcycle engines were completely nulled out, and every company that built motorcycles made a popular model from it. It basically invented a portion of the industry.
The same elimination of patent protections after WW1 boosted tons of chemical industries, and spurned immense innovation in pharmaceuticals, dyes, explosives, etc.
"Oh you want to do illegal anti-competitive stuff? In addition to any fine, you have forfeited your IP benefits"
Breaking antitrust laws and similar is an explicit admission that you cannot compete fairly, and therefore it does not benefit society to let you continue to monopolize anything and someone else should be allowed to take your place.
> you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay.
No but that's why it should be possible to hold them personally accountable IMO. I think them getting away with everything is what's wrong with the world these days.
Also, a company is a culture. Labourers will find another job. But probably in a company with a better culture. Which is good for them too.
Yeah I guess the "fix" would be legislating that such platforms require OS makers to provide an open market of software either by allowing manual installation or third party app stores.
It is not just Apple. The UK is going after every company with their porn filtering laws. Imagine the response if people did not stand up to their tyranny and the Uk kept pushing their agendas further and further. This is why the UK needs to be broken up.
That's having the causation reversed. The porn filter laws are them breaking themselves up, because they're a hidebound own-goal and they're causing significant damage to themselves for no advantage.
But censorship laws and antitrust laws are two different things. It's possible for the same country to get one thing wrong while simultaneously getting a different thing right.
I get the argument, but "country" spans many orders of magnitude in size. I mean, deliberately extreme example, but I'm fairly sure the smallest of the discount supermarket chains near me is more powerful than the country of Tuvalu:
Also, one party being stronger doesn't mean fighting them is worthwhile, e.g. Iceland threatening to withdraw from NATO to win the Cod Wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
And and, also why the People's Republic of China hasn't taken control of the Republic of China after all this time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
Countries that small are outliers and aren't really the point. It's about the size of the company, not the size of the country. Being too powerful for the smallest country isn't that interesting. Being too powerful for the median country seems like a problem, much less for the UK, which is at the ~90th percentile by population and #6 in the world by GDP.
Investors don't control Apple, the CEO of Apple does. The investors are random people holding shares of it in their 401k. The company being so big is also they reason they can't control it effectively, because the people holding it are so diffuse that they have significant coordination costs.
In the same way, one could say that the president, prime minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy.
Investors are "one share, one vote", rather than democracy "one person, one vote". The recent thing with Musk/Tesla and his trillion dollar options is being voted on, and Apple face campaigns and have votes, too: https://apnews.com/article/apple-dei-shareholder-proposal-an...
> In the same way, one could say that the president, prime minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy.
That depends how big it is. For something the size of the US, sure, and that's a problem. It's one of the reasons the central government was meant to have limited powers.
For something the size of a small town or local business, absolutely not, because then each vote both matters more to the outcome and has more direct consequences to the voter, which dramatically lowers the coordination costs. A single individual could change the outcome just by convincing a small number of local people who are each more inclined to care about it.
You invested in Vanguard, and Vanguard invested in the company and promises to give you the same amount of money they get from the company, but doesn't pass through other rights and responsibilities.
Whether that behaviour is good or bad have nothing to do with the economic system in place. Pure capitalism have obvious flaws. To me, a company being more powerful than a country is one.
Yes, but capitalism is just a name for the bad thing. We don't actually say that we have capitalism, if we did we would basically be saying 'capital ownership by some to the exclusion of others is good actually' and that isn't compatible with having society.
You say things like 'free markets are wonderful and efficient and we don't believe that they lead to the kind of outcomes that people who have come up with terms like "capitalism" believe they will'.
Charging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading.
Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit from it.
Look I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy ever is.
But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.
There is no choice involved. You either pay Apple the required blood sacrifice or you lose access to more than half of all possible customers for your business.
This is like saying that every American can choose to trash their car and take public transit. It sounds like a choice, but the real world has consequences and in fact most Americans do not have the ability to eschew private transport. That is just simply not how the world works.
Whatever they did could be quite legal in those other geographies. What you are saying is like say a country in middle east prosecuting you for smoking weed or drinking alcohol somewhere else when you visit.
Laws apply to jurisdictions, there are no universal laws which are legally binding.
Even if it is illegal, it is for them to collect their own fines for that crime .
That's not really a meaningful comparison, either. If you assume every engineer makes ~300K at Apple, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is "Apple loses ~7K engineers for 1 year", which seems a bit more than a slap on the wrist as you are suggesting.
Because it's a UK fine. The "monopoly" is driven by Apple making very good products for a long period of time and the UK putting its money almost anywhere but into people who might invent the next iPhone-like thing and make people's lives better worldwide.
Why? You probably know just how long these cases take, so it is not like all other countries are now going to do the same.
If that's the case then using their total profit seems the only proper measure. What it says is that these companies lose these cases but it's so infrequent that they can just price it in. It's a cost of doing business.
If we were to fine Tim Cook 1000$ for doing something that paid him 1M would that have the 'effect' of keeping him from doing that again?
Countries with similar laws might very well consider doing the same after reviewing the case and considering how well it matches their own situation.
Other than that I agree with you - the fine doesn't make much of a difference unless the risk becomes so significant that it effectively threatens the jobs of people not to address it, and it will only threaten jobs if it becomes more expensive to continue ignoring these laws than paying fines if/when individual countries take them to court.
Limiting it to App Store profit doesn’t make sense. The App Store is not an independent corporation (although it’d be great if some regulator forced it to be!) Apple makes the decisions about its behavior.
> “developers were overcharged by the difference between a 17.5% commission for app purchases and the commission Apple charged, which Kent’s lawyers said was usually 30%.”
> “The CAT also ruled that app developers passed on 50% of the overcharge to consumers.”
And that's why I stopped buying Apple products - ultimately it is the end user that pays for everything. Apple exploits both developers and its consumers.
In which situation does the end user not pay for everything? Even a fine or a tax on a company ends rolled up in the price paid by the end user. Same thing with programs paid for by the government. It’s the taxpayers who foot the bill.
I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
> I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
There are many things that now require you to have a phone that runs iOS or Google-approved Android. They both monopolize their respective markets and charge 30%, locking out competitors with attestation systems etc.
Two incumbents that each divide up the customer base between them while locking out other competitors is called a cartel and it's not actually a competitive market.
Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme, has a range of app stores with different options. Unfortunately, Amazon shut theirs down, but charging a 30% convenience fee is a choice there.
Inside of the EU the same is true for iOS, of course, although Apple still somehow charging developers per install makes it hard to provide apps for free.
> Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme, has a range of app stores with different options.
In order for such a competitor to be viable for use by developers, it has to be installed on the devices of customers, which Google has acted to prevent. Google Play has over 90% market share on Android and has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other stores installed and used other methods to prevent any alternatives from establishing a network effect.
And now that regulators are getting after them about doing those things, they've sprung this "verified developers" trap to keep it going.
This has the simplest evidence of anything. If other stores are a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
> has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other stores installed
Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store. I don't know about any vendors that even wanted to ship app stores outside of their own, but I don't recall Google preventing them from doing that.
> If alternative stores are a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
Because people like Google Play? All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished they could get rid of them. Personally, I find Google Play to be the best app store around, even compared to iOS' app store, in terms of search functionality and responsiveness. And that's a low bar to clear, given the absolute garbage Google will throw at you with some searches.
With Amazon closing its app store, the only independent app store that has the ability to charge people money has disappeared. That doesn't mean Steam or Epic or Microsoft couldn't set up their own stores if they wanted to. Hell, even with the "verified developer" system, alternative app stores are still possible.
> Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store.
Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors who installed third party stores and punishing them in various other ways.
The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the network effect.
> All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished they could get rid of them.
Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave up.
> Because people like Google Play?
That wouldn't explain it. If they like Google Play and ten other things then they would each have ~10% market share. If they only like Google Play, that implies something fishy is going on, because you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard to set up an app store. Unless it is that hard, and then why is that?
> Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors who installed third party stores and punishing them in various other ways.
Interesting, do you have a link for that?
> Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
They have the same problem Apple's app store has: they lock you into a particular brand if you decide to spend money. Annoying, I agree, but 99% of app downloads are free anyway.
> The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the network effect.
The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
As for software quality, 90% of smartphones is all software. If they were as bad at software as you say they are, smartphones would be unusable.
> Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave up.
F-Droid is widely used but only a fraction of consumers care about the things F-Droid cares about. Everyone who cares about open source on Android is served either by F-Droid directly or by another app leveraging the same ecosystem. There's no money to be made selling apps you can download for free elsewhere, though.
> you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard to set up an app store
But it is hard to set up an app store? The code for the app store itself isn't all that exciting, but convincing developers/publishers to use your app store is. Then things like localisation, payment, distribution, and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges that are much harder to solve.
There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only independent software stores left for video games other than buying games from publishers directly.
The lack of a network effect does make it hard to compete with the status quo, but part of that is that nobody really tries. What the big companies really want is to get the benefits of Google Play without having to pay the price. That's why they sued to "open up" the Google Play store rather than to force Google to make alternative app stores possible.
There are stores that do have the network effect, as they come pre-installed on billions of phones. But, as you said, "nobody wants those".
Trust me, I'd love for Google Play to get a repository feature where you can add and remove your own software sources so I wouldn't need to deal with the laggy F-Droid UI or the unmaintained Amazon App Store app, but the technical hurdles for getting app stores on phones is rather minimal.
For what it's worth, I think Netflix is the second biggest OS-independent proprietor of software apps, as their app comes with an Xbox Game Pass/Playstation Plus/Apple Arcade-style games catalogue available with your subscription. They use Google Play for binary distribution, but payment itself happens through your standard Netflix subscription. Again, a lot of people are angry that this alternative even exists because it's "bloat" but the network is there, ready to be leveraged.
They adopt the Google framing that they were "being paid" to exclude third party stores, but that's a subjective description. If you get paid X for search revenue and you get Y less if you include third party app stores, that's a penalty.
> The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
Stores inherently have a network effect. To get users you need apps; to get apps you need users. That's a network effect. Which is why, if you can keep alternate stores off of most devices, you can suppress them.
Microsoft, for all their other faults, wasn't doing that, which is why Steam on Windows is a thing but Steam on Android is conspicuously lacking.
> F-Droid is widely used
No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share.
> convincing developers/publishers to use your app store is.
This is exactly the issue. Google put up barriers to getting people to use them.
> Then things like localisation, payment, distribution, and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges that are much harder to solve.
None of these are that hard. Payments are the most difficult and every company that sells something still manages it somehow.
> There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only independent software stores left for video games other than buying games from publishers directly.
Video games weren't traditionally sold through "software stores" to begin with. You'd just buy them directly from the publisher. Which is the other thing Google suppresses on Android. Try downloading an Android app directly from the publisher's website the same as people do with games on Windows and see how many hoops you have to jump through.
This isn't about the tiny percentage of people who are stubborn or technically inclined enough to make it work despite the barriers. It's about the other 99% of people who should have access to NewPipe too.
The cases are not about the consumer's choice to buy an iPhone. They're about other companies' options to reach consumers of iPhones. Apple (and Google) can not be in the middle of 2-3 billion phone owners and every company that wants to access those phone owners. Government are not going to allow it. No companies should have that much power.
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything?
If you want to get technical about it the field of economics addresses this question. Its called Tax Incidence. The short story is that the side of the market that has the least elasticity of demand (IE, they respond to price changes the least, and don't buy more or less because of price changes) is the entity that suffers the costs of taxes and gets the benefits of subsidies.
Intuitively this makes sense. Imagine if there is a luxury good that you don't need. If taxes increase significant on it, you may just choose not to buy it. That has a high elasticity of demand. Meaning that the tax incidence isn't going to be on the consumer and will instead be on the produce.
Whereas, think about food. People don't eat much more or less based on how much it cost. You can't physically eat more than like twice as much, and if you don't have any you die. Meaning that its a low elasticity of demand, meaning that the consumer pays the taxes.
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything? Even a fine or a tax on a company ends rolled up in the price paid by the end user.
New costs are covered by a combination of a cut from the seller's profits and an increase in the buyer's price, and the proportion of each varies greatly depending on economic factors.
For example, imagine you offer that ugly sweater in an online marketplace. Can you just charge whatever you like (cost + desired profit)? No way. You can only charge as much as someone will pay, and that may work out to be a loss - for less than your costs. If somehow your costs go up - you spill something on it and need to dry clean it - can you just charge more? You can try, but there's no reason buyers will pay you more because your costs have increased; they don't care. Now imagine an inventory of 1,000 sweaters to sell - you might get lucky with one desperate buyer, but it's even harder to raise prices when you need 1,000 buyers.
Companies sell some things for huge markups, such as a bottle of soda, and for losses - even if the cost is $500, $100 is better than nothing. Think of sales and clearance sales.
Like you, companies price things to maximize revenue, where R = price x volume. Theoretically, they already price things for maximum revenue before they incurred additional costs, so how can they raise the price?
One way is to shift consumer perspective by blaming X for the price increase - government is a popular excuse, or oil prices - saying they must pass on the additional cost, and persuading some consumers that they must or ought to pay more. But when they say that the new tax will have to be be passed on to the consumer, they are full of $#!+ - when they buy the CEO a new private jet, do they pass that on too? - because they also can and do pass on the cost to their shareholders.
> I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
People don't necessarily choose the option that is better for them long term. The existence of monopolies stifles innovation, so users are worse off. For example, Apple's ecosystem works great if you go all in, but what would have happened if Apple had opened the garden to every one and embraced open standards?
That sounds like a fun thought experiment. What exactly would happen?
I think is why the EU and UK pushing so hard to open the gates is so they have the excuse to take control themselves and slam the gates back shut hard. I predict the outcome in even a ten year period is all apps will need governmental approval.
Opening the gates is not necessarily the best long term decision either.
You have to remember most governments are corrupt and it will devolve into a situation on who pays the best bribes over the current flat rate extortion.
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything?
In situations where the company needs to continue to compete, and factoring fines into prices would push it out of competitiveness, so it needs to find other ways to offset the fine.
Apple's unlikely to be in this situation, and probably has massive buckets of cash just sitting around in various offshore places anyway. I doubt a couple of billion are much danger.
> apparently people are fine with apple’s practices
I'm happy my mum has a phone that can only install apps and stuff that are sanctioned by apple.
She's not savvy enough to know differently, she doesn't really do apps, and frankly her best defence against any sort of tech-based scammers is likely to be "Oh, well, I wouldn't know how to do that", but otherwise extra-strong rails are a really useful thing.
Monopolies are bad but the current ecosystem is so good, and for me other app stores aren't that interesting. And for some less savvy users they would be an outright threat.
I'm so sick of hearing this, the current smartphone market is an american megacorp duopoly, both of whom are locking down their phones to such a degree that you cannot even claim you own the hardware anymore. There is essentially no choice.
And not buying a smartphone is not a choice either, if you want to actually exist in the modern world.
Google is still held back by the fact that their Pixel line isn't selling. They can't dictate terms to Samsung or Xiaomi.
Apple owns the hardware and software.
But that would only work if the end user refused to pay whatever price the company asks for. In the specific case of Apple, people line up to buy their product.
You don't think that developers of Android apps pass on their fees to Google Store to the consumers? Or the developers of web apps pass on the fees of Stripe to the consumers?
No, Google isn't less bad (and I avoid them using Sailfish OS and non-Google ROMs (Lineage OS / Graphene OS). I don't believe either Google or Apple (or any other BigTech) should have any role in deciding what apps I install on my phone or how I choose to purchase (not rent) an app. (I mean, they just act as an unnecessary middle-man and gatekeeper to extort money). The smartphone is just another computer. I don't pay Apple or Microsoft to install software from other developers / companies on my desktop computer. Why should it be any different for me on mobiles? Just because they can abuse their monopolistic power?
Apple (and subsequently many other copy-cats in the tech industry) have done a phenomenal job convincing people to think of their fully capable mobile computers as "appliances", and this really shows.
Only because it's limited by software. Hardwise I would say both gaming consoles and smart phones are a lot like a personal computer, in fact I think they pretty much are personal computers.
I understand what you're saying, but some on HN have issues with EU's fines against Apple, Google, Meta, etc. Some in the UK also like (or liked, before brexit) to deflect blame towards the EU.
So I think it's important to be clear about who made the decision: it was a London/UK court.
"The CAT said in its ruling that developers were overcharged by the difference between a 17.5% commission for app purchases and the commission Apple charged, which Kent's lawyers said was usually 30%."
Where does the 17.5% come from? I can't find it here or in the link Reuters article. Is that just the number that the tribunal decided was fair? If so I'd love to read the analysis of how they got there.
919. The comparators available to us (the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store and
Steam’s lower headline rate) suggest that the competitive rate of commission
would be in the range of 12 to 20%. We do think it is reasonable to make some
adjustment to that range to accommodate the points made by Apple about its
premium brand, the quality of its offering and its established market position.
However, we do not think those would be sufficient to displace the upper end
of the range and are likely to operate mainly at the lower end, where the
offerings are arguably less attractive to users for those reasons.
920. Applying again an approach of “informed guesswork”, on the basis of the
evidence before us, we find that the likely range of Apple’s Commission for
iOS app distribution services in the counterfactual is between 15% and 20%.
For the purposes of quantifying the overcharge (for both the exclusionary abuses
and the excessive and unfair pricing abuse) we will use the mid-point of that
range, which is 17.5%.
Judgment can be grounded in reality or it can be picking a random subrange of a list of somewhat random ranges and then picking a midpoint because why not.
It cannot be grounded in reality precisely because it's a monopoly. The whole point of laws against monopolies is to let the market figure out the fair rate, or to define the "fair" rate as the one that emerges in a competitive market. So by definition of what the whole case is about it is impossible to give a fair rate in this case. If you don't want to be subjected to guesswork, stop being a monopoly and let the market figure it out.
Wow sounds very comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered. Sounds like you agree with me that they just made it up? Or are you saying that it's fair to exclude the app store of an open platform which has plenty of "free market" competition from side loaded and 3p distribution apps because ~vibes~?
Not considered? The words "Google Play" are in the judgment 47 times. Maybe you could read it?
By your logic, each of the two companies could use the other as an example and then both get away with breaking competition law. Two wrongs don't make a right.
They have a literal section "(6) Description of the “comparator” platforms" where the very first item is "(a) Google and other Android platforms"
There's a section "112. On 10 June 2022, the CMA published the final report in its MEM Study, which contains a number of findings in relation to both Apple and Google."
It's amazing that you never even tried to read the actual document but already immediately assume a position that is trivially proven wrong.
> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered
Interesting to accuse people of not reading the document in a post where you don’t read a 3 sentence comment (and reply to the wrong one, but we can chalk that up to HN UI).
Imagine if you actually read and understood the document instead of pressing on with your ignorance.
The court considered Google Play. And explained how Google Play has the exact dame issues as AppStore. So whatever Google Play is doing is irrelevant to a case against Apple.
It's not a difficult document to read and understand. Just lengthy.
I would quote relevant sections, but that would be a completely wasted effort.
I think both third party app stores (without aggressive scare screens) and third party payments will be globally available on both platforms in the next few years. But it will take some time for enough piecemeal jurisdictions to require it for it to become burdensome for the companies to have different options in different regulatory regimes, and to make it no longer worth blocking in jurisdictions which haven't ruled against them yet.
Yeah but Apple always required signing, and Google is moving to that too, so they can simply charge you an exorbitant amount to get your app signed, moving the money maker from the store to the dev environment.
Now that the regulators are actually saying this is a problem I suspect these schemes will be addressed much faster. I'm pretty stunned Google announced that just after losing the case, because it's so remarkably stupid. Judges do not like being screwed with.
The police does not like being screwed with either. These aren’t good things. People with significant authority perform a duty and ought to act independently of their personal feeling.
and google is surreptitiously flagging several of the top alternatives to their spyware bloatware on android, as a prelude to the change.
this is clearly an action that can be easily attributed to incompetence, but is a thinly veiled way to ensure a flood of verified open source joining early on the ransom for signing whitelist.
Scare people enough times without reason, and they'll stop listening. An increasing number of people already have. It'll be amusing if the word "security" becomes meaningless soon, or is perceived negatively by the majority of the population. Only then can freedom win.
If they won't hold those deserving it accountable, then I guess they themselves should become accountable. Failure to punish should be punishable. Every single fine of this magnitude should also be accompanied by at least one person going to jail. Or, if you send all of those accountable to jail then maybe the fine could be waived for the benefit of those who remain.
Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something.
As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me to install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent others from producing equivalent competing devices via patents (i.e. government granted monopolies), zero.
It's not that it's not worth something, it's that they're abusing their patents and monopoly to extract further compensation after I already bought the device.
> As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me to install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent others from producing equivalent competing devices via patents (i.e. government granted monopolies), zero.
Right, that's the thing. And zero should also be their revenue and their asset value as long as they continue along that path. The fines should continue to escalate, and should also be applied to individual executives and board members, until they become high enough that the behavior actually changes.
$2 billion is a good start. Apple's revenue in 2024 was about $390 billion. Fines in excess of that amount should be considered.
Does it matter? Apple paid around 300 million pounds of corporation tax in 2024. If the UK poses a landmark penalty of say 50 or 100 billion pounds, thats 167x or 333x the annual corporation tax paid by Apple in the UK.
When you plug in a non-Apple USB cable to charge your iPhone, or use a third-party phone case, or use Anker power bank .. do you wish you had none of these choices, but only use whatever Apple branded cables, and phonecase and power banks existed?
If you want to buy Apple cables because you think it is better, sure - that's great. But preventing ugreen cables from working makes no sense.
You shouldnt say 'buy a different phone' if you want to use ugreen cables.
If you're a consumer, you should be on the side of more choice and more competition. If you're a Apple/Apple employee, you should 100% say what you just did :)
Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market. If you don’t like the charging options of an iPhone, don’t buy an iPhone. If you don’t like the OS of a Pixel, don’t buy a Pixel. If the consumer is choosy and doesn’t like the options available then there is a market opportunity for new entrants.
The nature of a free market is that someone wins the competition, and the winner is then happy to figure out ways to prevent anyone from competing at all (this kind of action doesn't require a complete winner either, but I'm focusing on a thought experiment here).
Ergo, if you care about maintaining a free market, then you care about limiting what kind of moves you can make in the free market, in order to preserve a free market. A truly free market with no rules has an end state where it is not a free market, more like a much more sophisticated version of the nobles of the land owning everything. So we declare many activities that make it difficult for others to compete that are not simply about manking a better product, "anti-competitive" and illegal.
Other than capital what prevents a new player entering the smartphone market? In the US Apple is at ~50% market share and Samsung ~30%. These are not colluding entities so there must be enough theoretical freedom to create a smartphone that claims significant market share.
Other than capital does a lot of work in that argument. Companies will not pop up and optimize much less micro optimize the tradeoffs. This isn’t a stock exchange; it’s a real capital intensive product.
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have plenty of “capital” and they couldn’t create their own ecosystem for their own phone and convince software developers. The hardware is not really an issue. Any company with a few million can sell their own phone and get a Chinese ODM to customize it for them and white label it.
Outside of Apple and Samsung (only because they make a lot of their own parts), the phone market is a commodity race to the bottom
Amazon, Meta and Microsoft tried their hand at making competitive devices and enter the market, to varying degrees of effort but practically identical degrees of failure. All this to say, it takes a lot more than just capital.
That's an incredibly naive take on economics and competition, because it ignores all of the forces that entrench existing participants and make new entrants basically impossible in many cases. You're coming off like a student of ECON100 who thinks they've got it all figured out.
"Free market" doesn't mean consumer rights go for toss. "Free market" also means a level playing field for everyone, which is why we have things like standardisation (e.g. USB-C) to make it easier for other businesses to compete. A monopoly or duopoly is not a "free market". Once a monopoly or duopoly emerges, it becomes an artificial moat to prevent competition and as "free market" has ceased to exist in such a situation, it is incumbent to change the rules to make sure a "free market" exists again and competition can thrive. (And ofcourse, all this has to be done without ignoring the rights of other stakeholders in the society).
This is the actual problem to be solved. The bureaucracy of forcing the hand of tech companies every time consumers scream loud enough is a shitty solution.
And that is exactly the problem that is being solved. It's not about "consumers screaming", but companies, consumers and governments realizing that anti-competitive behavior is harming everybody except the gatekeeper. The solution is competition. Since Apple is such a great and innovative company, they surely won't be afraid of competing on merit.
It just props up the monopoly. Appeased consumers have no reason to buy other products. There is no financial motive for Apple to do good because they can do bad until government forces their hand, and they have no reason to fear competition. It’s an admission we’re all at the mercy of Apple until daddy government steps in.
The fact that even a whiff of potential competition incentivized Apple to half their tax for specific cases shows that anti-trust regulation works and that it's the only thing that will ever force a gatekeeper to reconsider their anti-competitive business practices.
>It’s an admission we’re all at the mercy of Apple until daddy government steps in.
That has always been the case when market participants become too dominant e.g.
United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948)
United States v. AT&T (1984)
United States v. Microsoft (2001)
Anti-trust regulation would have dealt with Apple, Google and co by now if the lobbying weren't so out of control compared to previous times.
This is true of an idealized perfect free market with perfectly rational consumers, but not so much in the real world. The simple fact that profits on phones haven't been competed to zero is enough to show it's not a perfect free market.
I don't think the average consumer spends much time considering the long-term health of the app ecosystem when they purchase a phone. Maybe the wisdom of the crowds is correct here and it's truly not important or beneficial, but to me it seems more likely that it's outside the bounded rationality of most consumers.
Markets have blind-spots and they tend to be short sighted.
That's pretty unfortunately but if you articulate some of your issues with the options, I'm sure I can find an Android option for you that works. Despite Google's attempts, Android is still quite open and many phones allow you to do whatever you want with them.
Or if you only want to use iPhones then it seems like the downsides of the locked down app store aren't worth switching in which case it seems like you've already made your choice.
Android itself is fine, but in most of the world you need Android with Google services, otherwise banking apps, contactless payments, some games, etc, don't work.
The app sideloading changes they're about to introduce[0]? Affects their Pixels, Samsungs, OnePlus, Sony, etc, old and new. It can't be disabled. The work around is to use ADB to install apks.
So while you have more choice of hardware, Android skins with more or less features, different long term support, prices, etc, in practice you're stuck with what Google wants. Your options are Apple or Google.
Whose fault is it if banks, etc require Google services? There's a line somewhere, where punishing a company for providing a great product that everyone chooses to use is blatantly unfair
>I don't like any of the options but still need a phone, now what?
I've always used this method: work out what are the most benefits, with the fewest annoying 'features', between various manufacturers that have items within your budget, and choose something.
In my country we call it 'shopping'.
> Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market.
An unregulated market leads to monopoly and anti-competitive practices.
Capitalism is one of the best models we've discovered, but its markets must be appropriately regulated.
Capitalism should be difficult. An eternal treadmill. You shouldn't be able to wedge yourself into a market as a quarter-century long hegemon.
You shouldn't be able to capture the key touch point of all consumers to their digital life and then tax it for eternity. It's putting incredible strain on innovation and all other market participants.
Companies should die and be replaced by younger startups regularly. It's a renewing forest fire that de-ossifies technology.
Rewarding startups puts the capital rewards in the hands of innovation capital rather than large institutions. Large companies do everything they can to minimize labor costs. Venture funds are even hurting in that the monopolies put a cap on the number of startups that can reach decacorn or centacorn status.
And before I field any complaints that consumers don't care about this - most consumers are laypeople and do not understand what is happening to them. They can't articulate these points. This is why we require regulators to police the system.
I’m not convinced the solution to anything is government picking winners, nor telling other people what they, the government themselves, are going to do with their, the people / companies, money.
And how to I get support for the products I just bought when your government regulators terminate the existing of the product developer / manufacturer.
I personally think this is a reasonable argument in theory, though in practice it's not a free market when governments and large mandatory institutions (like banks) put in place things that force your hand (Digital ID on your attested device, banking apps that require attestation, etc). It also falls down when you realize the barriers of entry are absolutely enormous. Even Amazon and Microsoft couldn't get through them, so what chance do new entrants have?
>Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market.
You're saying, companies should be able to do whatever they want, even if it's bad for the consumer. How can you describe that position as "being on the side of the consumer"?
Or, instead of that, the consumer will have the choice to do whatever they want with their own phone and you won't be able to stop them. The free market wins if you give the freedom to the user to control their own phones.
I don't think you're entitled to an equivalent phone. If we're talking patents on essential things like a cryptographic algorithm required for banking or a technology required to implement 5G, sure, the patent holder should be required to license the patent to anyone at a reasonable price. But not licensing patents on non-essential features like Face ID or health monitors are OK. And all of that is independent of whether or not you can install your own software.
What matters is the competitive situation. Given that you're practically required to have either a Google or Apple device to participate normally in modern society, Apple and Google should be precluded from forcing customers and suppliers[0] to use their other services, like payment services, app stores, delivery networks, ad networks, etc.
But if Apple were the 4th biggest phone platform with at most 10% of the market, Apple would definitely be entitled to remain a walled garden. Even if their phones had features no-one else can implement due to patents.[1]
0: E.g. app developers
1: I'd claim this is the only position that is consistent with being in favor of patents. But I'm mildly anti-patent, so YMMV.
I don't think I'm entitled to an equivalent phone either. I merely think I'm entitled to either (at Apple's option) an equivalent phone OR apple not using it's monopoly on producing equivalent phones to extract further money from me after patent rights are exhausted at the time of the purchase of the phone from Apple.
I.e. I'm entitled to anti-trust protection. Or I'm entitled to patent-misuse protection. I don't really care which set of laws you put it under.
Even if Apple were 10% of the phone market they would still have 100% of the distributing software to devices with Apple's patented technology market, and that should be enough for anti trust protection to kick in.
(I'm also mildly anti patent, but I've been carefully selecting only arguments in this thread that I believe are entirely consistent with a pro patent belief system. E.g. if Apple treated their phones like their laptops - where they also have patents - all the positions and arguments I've taken would not have an issue with their behavior)
Equivalent in the way of having the numerous features small and large that Apple has patents on. Whether that's being a rectangle with rounded corners (yes they have a patent on that, or at least did, and successfully defended it in court. Not sure what's happened in the meantime), or whatever random patents Apple has on making blood oxygen sensor technology just that little bit better.
If Apple believes their portfolio of patents protecting the iPhone is worthless, they should abandon them. That they haven't precludes the argument that they are.
You seem to be confusing Masimo's patent infringement case against Apple over Apple Watch with the notion that Apple has some kind of a patented blood oxygen sensor in the iPhone.
I don't think that supports your case that Apple's patent keeps other phones from being equivalent given that the sensor isn't in the iPhone and it's not even Apple's patent.
For what it's worth, I'm typing this on a Pixel which is also a rounded rectangle, so I'm skeptical that patent is really holding other phones back, either
You're typing that on a Pixel with a bump sticking out the back, which would mean it doesn't violate the design patent.
I wasn't specifically thinking of that case, though it's likely why my mind chose that sensor as an example. Apple has patents on blood oxygen sensors, of course, because Apple has patents on basically everything they do. Here's a recent example that I just picked off of Google https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2024216430B2/en?q=(Oxyge...
I'm not seeing how other phones are being held back by any of this. Google and Samsung have design patents, too, and my Pixel Watch also has a blood oxygen sensor.
All phones aren't equivalent, we agree on that right? Apple has legitimate hardware advantages in places. Faster more energy efficient chips. Better earbuds. Various camera components with various advantages. So on and so forth. All of the minor improvements Apple has made will have patents behind them. All of these patents hold all other phone manufactuers back.
Yes, all the other phone manufacturers also have patents. Yes, these also all hold Apple back. That's the deal we make with patents, you invent something, you get a monopoly on producing that thing.
All the other phone manufacturers are basically respecting that deal. Apple is not - they're taking that monopoly and extending it to a monopoly on distribution of software which just happens to run on the device with the thing. This is what anti-trust law, the doctrine of patent misuse, etc should prevent. Either they don't get a monopoly on the things they invented (and all the other phones get better) or they don't get to abuse that monopoly to extract money from people who already purchased the device - i.e. after the patent rights are exhausted.
It sounds like your problem is with the patent system then. The point of patents is to grant exclusive rights to a technology in exchange for sharing information.
I'm not taking any issue with patents existing here. I'm taking issue with anti-competitive behavior that Apple is executing on top of the patent system. If Apple merely wanted to use their monopoly on features of devices to sell devices with those features I would have no issue. My issue is only when they leverage that monopoly to get a monopoly on the distribution of software to those devices and then leverages their monopoly on the distribution of software to those devices to extract fees for doing so.
Edit: I don't, for instance, have issues with how they use patents with macbooks. There they don't abuse their monopoly on certain hardware features to get and extract money from a secondary monopoly on software.
Equivalent as in a literal exact copy of an iPhone. Lots of factories can produce those, seeing as Apple contracts out production. If we get rid of those patents and give free choice to those factories and consumers, well they would be glad to produce a modified "Open" iPhone.
Lets make a free market by stopping this government intervention of the patent system that supports monopolies.
This (1) ignores the extremely strong network effects purposely engendered by Apple's chronic refusal to implement interoperable standards in any of their products and (2) this is as much about app developers as it is about app consumers, and developers clearly have no choice but to meet their users where they are, which is on Apple devices. The other choice is going out of business.
Since Google is also moving to this direction can I ask you which phone can I buy that is not part of this cartel and works with banks and public services?
Mobile apps mobile app fraud empties life savings accounts. I agree there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't been working. Installing an app shouldn't eliminate 30 years of life savings.
As another commenter wrote, apple is providing a service beyond the typical transaction (like visa or mastercard) does. Similar to the gaming industry's 30% digital sales (playstation, steam, etc).
For small developers, like myself, this is great, because I don't have to put a large upfront capital to pay Apple to audit my app.
If 30% isn't the right number, what is the right number to pay for app store infra, payments, QA services, global tax audits and collection, global licensing limits, etc?
If a bank cannot secure their mobile payments app without requiring the banning of all other apps from the platform, maybe it's the bank that should be shipping their own secure device.
This is the "think of the children" equivalent that is being regurgitated ad nauseam. Anyone who pretends that Apple cares about anything other than profit is lying to others and themselves.
>I agree there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't been working.
It has been working on Android just fine. And if Apple is supposedly so concerned with security, then why did it take them so damn long to implement a simple mechanism to stop thieves from simply changing your password using your pin? Only after relentless pressure did they implement additional security, which took them far too long. The "security" ruse is nothing but propaganda to protect Apple's monopoly on app distribution.
Super confused. What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated.
Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform, because the security model on android is much worse than Apples.
Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been working on android just fine"?
Apple is not a fast moving company, but they do have a great product and have addressed many of the big issues the community has raised.
You aren't confused, you just have a preferred narrative. Hardcore Apple fans and Apple shareholders share a similar bias with different variations of 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
>What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated.
It has been working just fine and Google's claim about their consolidation and its motivations are about as credible as a Rail Robber Baron claiming that his monopolization practices are actually about "security" and not profit, the response to such propaganda was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and today it is the DMA.
More elaborate articles regarding these bogus claims about "security" and its refutation:
>Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform, because the security model on android is much worse than Apples.
Your personal anecdotes are not credible evidence, especially when they are coincidentally contrived to serve as anti-competitive business practice apologia.
Apple's "security model" is supposedly so much better, yet iPhone theft was absolutely rampant on iPhones due to an Apple "feature" that literally helped thieves steal a user's entire digital life. Androids were unaffected.
>Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been working on android just fine"?
For the same reason that Apple is using bogus claims about "security", because they can hardly be honest and say "We can't allow any competition, because it would threaten our taxation funnel"
As Cory Doctorow writes:
"In the meantime, Google’s story that this move is motivated by security it obviously bullshit. First of all, the argument that preventing users from installing software of their choosing is the only way to safeguard their privacy and security is bullshit when Apple uses it, and it’s bullshit when Google trots it out:
But even if you stipulate that Google is doing this to keep you safe, the story falls apart. After all, Google isn’t certifying apps, they’re certifying developers. This implies that the company can somehow predict whether a developer will do something malicious in the future. This is obviously wrong." - https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-01...
>Apple is not a fast moving company, but they do have a great product and have addressed many of the big issues the community has raised.
There is no "community" - there is Apple, its profit motive and the consumers.
Apple was relentlessly pressured to deal with their reckless "feature" that made a mockery of modern security practices, gravely endangered its users and it still took Apple way too long to introduce a basic fix. Apple is a trillion dollar company, so euphemisms like "Apple is not a fast moving company" won't cut it, especially when it comes to security - you know, the thing they pretend to value above everything else.
Your premise has the false dilemma: "If we can't perfectly block fraudsters from by-passing security checks, then we might as well have no security checks."
Another simple test is we can compare the amount of malware running on closed ecosystems with open systems. Which system hosts more malware: linux/windows or iOS?
I want to clarify that I'm not saying there are no financial benefits for Google/Apple. I am saying there ARE financial benefits to users and businesses on these platforms.
There is no false dilemma. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.
"In the meantime, Google’s story that this move is motivated by security it obviously bullshit. First of all, the argument that preventing users from installing software of their choosing is the only way to safeguard their privacy and security is bullshit when Apple uses it, and it’s bullshit when Google trots it out:
But even if you stipulate that Google is doing this to keep you safe, the story falls apart. After all, Google isn’t certifying apps, they’re certifying developers. This implies that the company can somehow predict whether a developer will do something malicious in the future." - https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-01...
You realize in the very WSJ article you cited it said this?
> A similar vulnerability exists in Google’s Android mobile operating system. However, the higher resale value of iPhones makes them a far more common target, according to law-enforcement officials. “Our sign-in and account-recovery policies try to strike a balance between allowing legitimate users to retain access to their accounts in real-world scenarios and keeping the bad actors out,” a Google spokesman said.
I should have elaborated even further, because I already suspected that someone would nitpick that phrasing. So let me explain the difference:
"according to law-enforcement officials" - they are clearly not experts in tech and are unaware of the crucial difference between Apple and Android in this scenario.
The most significant difference is that Google explicitly stated their system includes "reasonable time-limited protections against hijackers changing passwords or recovery factors" - but only if users have properly configured recovery options beforehand.
According to Google's official statement:
"Google Account Recovery flows also have reasonable time-limited protections against hijackers changing passwords or recovery factors set up by the legitimate users - provided users have set up a recovery phone and/or recovery email."
In contrast, the WSJ article describes how on iPhone:
- Thieves could immediately change the Apple ID password using just the device passcode
- there was no waiting period or time-limited protection mentioned
- Once changed, victims were instantly locked out with no grace period
- Apple's Recovery Key feature could be enabled by thieves to permanently lock victims out
Android users on the other hand could proactively:
- Set up recovery email and phone numbers that would be retained for 7 days after changes
- Configure multiple recovery options that created additional barriers
Apple users had limited options, the article mentions security keys could be added, but testing showed "security keys didn't prevent account changes using only the passcode, and the passcode could even be used to remove security keys from the account". This made Android's vulnerability more preventable and recoverable for users who had properly configured their security settings in advance, whereas Apple users were stuck and vulnerable to the pin-hijack until fixed, because iOS did not offer any similar protections such as time-based safeguards.
Well you realize it’s not a good look to post a citation and then immediately say the article is wrong only about the part you disagree with? See “Gell-Mann amnesia effect”.
But Apple implemented features to block that over a year ago.
> Well you realize it’s not a good look to post a citation and then immediately say the article is wrong
I did not say that the article is wrong, don't misquote me. You are also still failing to understand what the crucial difference is:
An iPhone was vulnerable to the pin-hijack, because of its limited security options - a security aware user was as vulnerable as an amateur.
An Android phone was only vulnerable if it was NOT properly secured.
So 100% of iPhone users were vulnerable, while Androids were only vulnerable if misconfigured.
So I was and I am still 100% correct, but you simply decided to nitpick that one sentence of mine that was prone to being nitpicked without bothering to understand what the significant difference between the systems were.
>But Apple implemented features to block that over a year ago.
Yes they did, after a lot of time and pressure. And if you read my comment again, you can see that I have already stated that they have implemented it. So what's the point of you telling me something that I have already mentioned several times?
>If you’d just said all of this upfront, it would’ve come across as more honest / less confrontational.
"I should have elaborated even further, because I already suspected that someone would nitpick that phrasing . So let me explain the difference:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45690226
After me clarifying what I've meant, the response wasn't "Oh I see now what you intended to say, thanks for elaborating", but misquoting me and making hostile and snide comments. That is someone who wants to be confrontational and lacks honesty in trying to understand what was meant in the first place.
This question is valid only if Apple lets apps host their own apps, bring their own payment system.
Apple bans all such activities, has held the entire app ecosystem and seeks rent. If they think their offering is superior, then they should be OK competing. The fact that they have not opened it up says that they are happy to overcharge.
Remember, competition is always good. Let Stripe and Apple duke it out on payment processing, and let the best one win.
Let games me hosted both on Epic Store and App Store, and let users decide where to download it from.
> Apple lets apps host their own apps, bring their own payment system.
And also not require those apps to be also approved by Apple, which they are trying to do with AltStore and the DMA.
Users should be able to go to a dev's website, pay them directly, and download the ipa and install it with a click from the website. Having to go through any kind of "app store" at all should be optional.
Hardly always good. The mobile app ecosystem on both iOS and Android is a morass of freemium games and ad slop, because the market has determined that hooking one whale is more important than creating a quality product.
The competition will find the most profitable process, not the one that serves customers best necessarily.
The biggest change the iPhone users are going to see an increase in spyware. They'll also notice in a few years a bunch of websites go Chrome only.
Not OP, and not that I buy that the App Store serves its purpose given what's currently on it, but I just don't think the two platforms are comparable.
iPhones outnumber Macs something like 10:1. The user base tech literacy is lower on average. The usage habits are different.
The payoff for creating freemium and ad slop stuff on iOS is way higher.
So in this scenario would Epic then need to develop and maintain their own toolchain and SDK for their app store? The development tools and education are also worth something, Epic shouldn’t get that for free.
Epic has a toolchain and SDK for their own app store. So does Valve, and many other competitors, and Apple won't let them install their toolchain on iOS.
> Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Don’t like it? Build your own.
And people will. That's how competition works. If someone thinks they can make a profit by offering a) better product b) same product at a cheaper price, you'll see investment.
Say no one builds their own, and iPhones now only have first party apps. How many people are going to buy them now? How well did the Windows phone sell with no app support? How's the app support on the Apple Vision Pro?
The idea that devs owe Apple for use of their SDKs and API development is absurd. Apple already profits from it as people by their phones due to the amount of third party app support. See how Apple's profits go when WhatsApp, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix Uber, banking apps, are all no longer available on their devices.
What Apple really needs to do is mimic their old policy of no fees except for games. Let everyone develop for it, and then rug pull by making the fees apply to everything
But they can’t do it twice. So the Vision Pro ends up with no ecosystem
If I'm remembering correctly, the community jailbroke the iPhone OS and produced a toolchain and app installer before the App Store's original release.
Add a licensing fee for UIKit, Core Data, Core Text, Core Audio, Core Graphics, Metal, Network, SwiftUI, Quartz and all the other libraries apps use constantly.
Heck, why not for the OS itself? If you don't want to pay, they could conceivably dump you into an isolated VM and force you to write your own OS and userspace device drivers.
As soon as you open the door to side-loading, you'll have scammers and data-siphoners force all their users to side-load so that they can completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security features. The entire iOS ecosystem is built on the App Store review process as a gatekeeper for entitlements and the capabilities they grant (through API access).
How do you solve that problem for side-loaded apps?
Sideloading, AKA "installing software on your device", is something PCs have been handling just fine for decades. It's fine to warn the user when they're going off the beaten trail, but do not lock them in a cage to prevent them from doing so.
If they ignore the warnings and get scammed because they are unable to identify reputable software from disreputable software, they learn a life lesson. Life goes on. There should be no societal expectation that everyone is prevented from ever taking an action that could bring themselves harm, by preventing them from taking actions at all.
There are entire classes of people who have simply given up on PCs and only use a phone, so I would call that substantial evidence that PCs have NOT "been handling [it] just fine." For these folks, PCs are a total failure; a dead end. A danger zone to be avoided at all costs.
If you have a citation that droves of people are abandoning PCs for phones specifically because PCs allow them to install software of their choice, rather than other reasons like the convenience of a computer that fits in their hand, I'd be interested in seeing it. Because that sounds like an absolutely outrageous claim to be asserting as a fact to me.
You can Google it yourself. There are tons of studies showing a decline in technology literacy among younger generations (Z and alpha). Millennials were the peak.
This shows that younger kids aren’t using traditional PCs, at least not to the same degree. They just use phones and tablets. At best they may play games on their PC by installing via Steam. Very few of them are becoming proper technologists (able to install and use any software, script the computer, or write their own software).
No shit. That's completely different from what you claimed, though, which was specifically that people were giving up PCs to become smartphone users because they appreciated the lack of choice that smartphones gave them.
The phenomenon you're talking about now is so completely in another universe that it's insane you would conflate the two. I actually can't finish typing this response properly because it's hurting my head every second I continue to think about your argument. To sum it up really shortly: smartphones universal, required to even participate in society, people now given smartphones from early age, multi-functional as phones, cameras, etc, they fit in your pocket, more than sufficient for normie use cases and in fact more suitable for many use cases that don't entail sitting at a desk at home, computers are specialised tools for specialised functionality that many people have no need for. There are 100000000 reasons why smartphone usage displaces PC usage that aren't because they explicitly abandoned PCs for the crime of allowing them to choose what software to install, which was your claim. Not even having mentioned that globally, 75% of smartphone usage is Android which doesn't lock its users in the cage (for the time being).
I think you overstate how bad said situation was, and to the extent it was a problem I doubt it had any meaningful impact on PC usage rates, and I have not the slightest doubt that such a situation would have had minimal bearing on smartphone adoption. People are drawn to things that offer utility to them, regardless of any downsides. That's why people will happily hand over the entire details of their private life to any internet service that asks it of them, and why the market does not punish any company that has security breaches and loses hundreds of millions of people's personal information. Security and privacy are at the very bottom of a normie's list of concerns in practice, even if they might say they care in surveys. If something is useful to them, they will use it regardless of security and privacy flaws.
Edit: It's also telling that you need to go back to XP to make your case. It's 2025. Security practices have improved a ton to give people more protection from themselves without outright taking away their freedom to make choices.
Also, let's again re-iterate that Android usage outnumbers iOS by three-to-one, so it is clear in practice that people are in fact willing to adopt a phone that allows them to make mistakes (if they try very hard to).
Now you have a multibillion-dollar supranational corporation playing judge jury and executioner for any of your choices.
E.g. App Store prohibits adult content (which is not illegal). Prohibits emulators (which are not illegal) [1]. Prohibits or hinders the use of better alternatives to pre-installed apps (Photos, Camera, Maps, Siri) [1]. Removes any and all apps if there's a hint of displeasure from wannabe dictators.
Basically, you don't have your range of choices. You have Apple's range of choices.
[1] Some of these choices are now better on iOS precisely due to Apple losing the fight against governments. They finally allowed emulators after they lost a battle against alternative app stores. They finally gave options to change some default apps (but not all, and not in all countries, see e.g. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-ma...)
Appstore has been the only app store on IOS for nearly 2 decades. And you are saying IOS has been a perfect safe zone, and you cannot lose any hard-earn money on IOS for 2 decades? What a joke.
> There are entire classes of people who have simply given up on PCs and only use a phone
Which actually makes the case for "Apple cannot control what people install on their devices or demand that apps pay them and can't even use other payment providers"
The same can be said about alcohol, yet all you need to do is reach alcohol age in the country you live in, no "license to drink alcohol". Why PCs should be treated differently?
Thank you for your concern, but I need a phone, not a device to manage dementia. I don't see why nobody should be allowed to have the former just because a few people need the latter.
Search for your preferred PC brand and list of CVEs.
I’ve had Windows / malware roll back a BIOS update to a previous version that had a know (published CVE) remote code execution vulnerability complete with published proof of concept.
There was some point around 15 years ago when it was nearly impossible to download and install Windows software without getting some extra adware and etc. This was true even for 'legit' vendors like Sun and Adobe. (Plus Google would offer up wrapped installers for Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) Honestly if you thought "things were fine", you were ignoring the Linux/Mac people laughing about it.
"Nearly impossible" is quite a stretch. While it was certainly shameful that it ever became as mainstream as it did, it was a matter of unticking checkboxes in the adware installers, and there was plenty of software out there that did not engage in that behaviour to begin with. At any rate, I didn't say anything about operating systems. You can also install software of your choice on Linux or Mac. I'm not really sure what point you were driving at there.
Point being the only real difference between Windows and Mac was marketshare. (Linux doesn't have an ABI, software predominantly comes from the 'store'.)
The PC app ecosystem is a tiny fraction of the App Store's, outside of, notably, Steam's locked down closed ecosystem.
Having a single way to pay, subscribe, cancel, browse apps, beta test versions, and update apps, proved to be a huge game changer for making software accessible while also minting millionaires around the world in terms of small development teams.
In 2024, computer software generated around $373b in revenue while mobile apps generated around $522b. Given that smartphone usage is significantly higher worldwide than computer usage (around 2 to 1 ratio), the stats do not really support your thesis that locking down software access to the whims of a monopoly hegemon results in a massive financial boon to application developers. Even if it did, it still would not justify the harm to the end user entailed, but it also just doesn't do what you say it does to begin with.
Incidentally, while looking this up, I discovered that 2/3rds of that $522b in app revenue comes from in-app advertisements. And here somebody was trying to mock Windows for being adware friendly circa 2005. Good lord.
Credit card and location data is one thing. If we opened up these devices to the Wild West we’d have spyware that tracks every single thing you do on the phone in real time (and logs all your conversations and everything else). We’d also have malware that gets root access to the phone and breaks into your bank accounts.
The context here is mobile. Everyone understands that you're free to break/install things as you wish, in macOS, if you disable the "dumb user" safeguards.
As if the App Store had any sort of those guarantees. I know of people have been scammed via WebView wrappers that purported to be some benign app to pass app store review, which were then pointed at fake exchange websites afterwards. GitLab which was hosting their C&C mechanism took action faster than Apple or Google did to take down multiple scam apps across multiple different developer identities, but the scammers spun up new apps the next day.
WebView wrappers don't have any more ability to siphon data out of the phone than any other app. Scammers can always scam users if they can trick them into entering data into a website. There's nothing anyone can do about that (besides blocking web access).
The point is Apple isn't really helping with the problem because the weakest link is people. If you can get someone to install malicious software how much more difficult is it to have them willingly give it via phishing?
I don’t see how going back to the Wild West of the PC era is supposed to help these nontechnical users be safer. The App Store isn’t perfect but it’s far, far safer than that.
I have vivid memories of loads of relatives in the Windows XP era with browsers laden with toolbars that spy on everything they do and slow the computer to a crawl. Those users see something like the iPhone as a massive breath of fresh air. Nothing you install on the App Store can inject adware into the rest of the operating system like that.
> Nothing you install on the App Store can inject adware into the rest of the operating system like that.
That has literally fuck all to do with the app store. That's called sandboxing - the app store has nothing to do with sandboxing. They are different things.
Point me to an Apple document that says they'll reimburse me if I'm scammed by an App Store app. If Apple cannot offer a guarantee, that means they don't trust their App Store to protect me and if they don't trust their App Store to protect me then they can hardly claim in court that they deny user choice to protect users.
Apple has literally zero "security features" that rely on the app store.
They do not review source code. There is malware on the Apple app store, because they do not review apps for malware. Because they do not review source code.
For me it's not about the percentage, it's that it is a monopoly. If I make an iPad app, my only route to market is Apple.
That is before I get into my personal objection to having to ask permission to put software on a computer I bought. I own an iPad but I can't just install anything I want on it, Apple needs to approve the software first. For me that's just anti-creative and anti-everying-I-love-about-computers.
All I really want as a software developer is to be able to write software and have people use it if they choose to. I don't want Apple or any other company inserted as a middle-man.
Outside of the absolute bare minimum to check this box for a plurality of observers, I can’t imagine anyone actually saying the App Store has a quality control process with a straight face, especially not one that would be championed as acceptable as a market practice.
The App Store "quality control" does its job (or tries to) to make sure developers aren't breaking their arbitrary rules. They would never actually do quality control because they benefit from all the junk being pushed to the App Store through their cut, search ads, etc.
Someone asks this every time, and the answer is always the same. Fair pricing can only be discovered in a competitive market. The problem is that Apple moves heaven and earth to prevent competitive markets from doing their thing.
That being said, this is the UK, where even in a reasonably competitive job market people can still sue their employer for "unfair pay" [1], so maybe the thinking here is a bit different than my silly classical liberal brain
The real issue isn’t Apple’s commission, it’s the lack of choice.
Allowing app installations outside the App Store, as on macOS, would immediately subject Apple’s pricing to market pressure. The fee would drop on its own, without regulation.
Macs have allowed apps from "untrusted" sources for decades - and they’re doing just fine. So no, this isn’t about security. It’s about control and monopoly.
Exactly this. There is no way not to choose the App Store, regardless of the price. Apple goes further by making users believe alternatives are "less secure" and what not (which is not true) so it's not just about distribution, it's also a battle of perception. Even if Apple's App Store tax is 0.00, it would still be unfair and have negative impact on consumers due to the limited choice of apps and experiences they can get.
Even framing it as a percentage is a category error. If they're providing services, we should be able to pay for the cost of those services.
Beyond that, the app store is worth something in aggregate to app developers, but it's worth _more_ to Apple. Without the app store the iOS ecosystem doesn't exist. Without Apple, developers work on the next best platform. Under that framing, shouldn't Apple be paying developers to not leave the platform?
The fact that neither of those things is happening (total rent is disproportionately larger than the services provided, and the net flow of cash is toward the beneficiary of value rather than away from it) points to a monopoly worth breaking down. Those aren't hard rules, but they're suggestive facts.
Actually answering your question: Payment processors charge up to 5% and do more due diligence and have more overhead than Apple, so if I had to name a percentage on every transaction (a viewpoint I already disagree with), 5% would be a hard upper bound. IME, the value Apple provides from their "services" in that space is usually negative aside from the fact that you have to do business with them, so I think the actual price should be much less.
There is no way to define a "fair" percentage. Fairness is entirely subjective. Require Apple to allow alternative third-party app stores and let the free market sort it out.
If Apple thinks what they're offering is worth the price they're charging, why are they so scared of having to compete in the market? Their service is worth what people choose to pay for it, and currently that's 0 since no-one is choosing it.
> ”Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage?”
The UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) believes it is 17.5%.
One issue, IMO, with this determination is the existence of Steam, which reportedly also takes 30% yet operates in a competitive market on open platforms. So there is a case to force Apple to open the platform to other app stores, but the argument to regulate Apple’s pricing is much weaker.
Thing is that's a question for the market to decide. Which is why we have anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws in the first place. We don't want the state setting "fair" prices for anything, it always backfires. We want them ensuring the market is free to set prices. Monopolies granted by the state (trademarks, copyright, patents) are specific and limited, and ideally we want monopolies that arise naturally to be similarly limited, or broken up if they are being weaponised against the public.
How much should we be paying Microsoft when we buy Steam games on Windows? 30%?
I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on the Windows app store as long as they loosened their grip on being able to run what you want, from where you want, without their explicit blessing.
Same applies to Apple. If their App Store is really that good, it can compete on a fair playing field with other options (and no, 3rd party app stores that still require Apple's blessing and taxes don't count).
Anything that isn't signed with certs from Microsoft-blessed CAs, anything that is signed with certs that were revoked either by Microsoft or their blessed CAs, and anything newly signed with old certs that weren't renewed for a $100+/yr fee. That, or you upload your app to Azure for cloud signing where Microsoft decides to bless it or not, and you might pay less than going with a full code signing cert from a CA.
Never claimed you couldn't, try distributing that unsigned code and see if your users can figure out how to run it, or if their OS will gaslight them into thinking they just downloaded a virus, or if they get past that, if they can get past the additional warning window that purposely doesn't show[1] the "Run anyway" button that lets you run what you want.
Running signed apps doesn't require you to know a cursed arcane ritual to run the apps you want to run, you just double click them. Having to travel through several circles of hell, each time being urged to turn around immediately, just to run unsigned code means the vast majority of users are shit out of luck when it comes to running something they want if it's not in good standing with Microsoft.
Well you did claim that, but thank you for correcting. So that warning is bad for a developer because of confused and annoyed users, but in terms of actual user restriction it's not super bad. If defender is set to be too aggressive, that's a one time change, so about on par with Android. And for the normal (I think? Did the default change?) setting you just use run anyway. That's far away from how iOS makes it impossible.
Edit: Everything I can find says that taking away the "run anyway" button is not default. If a user or their sysadmin changes that setting I don't really blame Microsoft.
> I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on the Windows app store as long as they loosened their grip on being able to run what you want, from where you want, without their explicit blessing.
I am talking about their grip on what you're allowed to run with or without their blessing, not that you "can't run unsigned binaries at all". They have a tightened grip, in that without their blessing, running what you want is an exercise in futility for 99% of users.
> Edit: Everything I can find says that taking away the "run anyway" button is not default. If a user or their sysadmin changes that setting I don't really blame Microsoft.
It's exactly what I experienced when running an unsigned binary in a fresh Windows 11 VM with the default Defender settings, which are all on by default. This is how SmartScreen works by default with binaries it doesn't like.
Okay, that new default is a significant worsening.
> what I claimed
Your first comment was fine. Your response to nandomrumber was the problem. They asked about "can't run" and you gave a big list of situations that are interference but not "can't run".
I think the best thing would be if Apple just allowed other payment providers so like Stripe and I'm not sure I haven't followed it totally if they now kind of have been forced to do that but I think then you have a free market where developers can choose whether they want to use apples in app payments which are easier and probably results in better conversion rates or they want to use an external like Stripe or something like that. I don't think it's reasonable to pay for the app hosting or development other than the $100 fee per year that should certainly cover the cost of storing a few megabytes of an app.
It's almost 100% platform development. The iPhone is a walled-garden game platform and Apple treats it like one.
To answer your question, it probably isn't sensible to expect Apple to charge a drastically different platform fee in its game store compared to what is charged for other walled-garden game platforms and stores like the Nintendo eShop.
It may be worth noting that Amazon's Luna game service can work on the iPhone in a web browser, so game streaming isn't exactly an Apple-enforced monopoly.
In the EU Apple is now charging ~12% just to be in the App Store or 20% for additional discoverability. Payment processing is on top of that. These fees seem somewhat fair to me.
If apple made it easy to install other stores. E.g. when you open the iPhone for the first time it would not prioritize the app store (like I think it does with browsers, at least android does).
This would create a more fair market. This would allow for competition. Which would allow prices to even out and be more fair.
Long winded way of saying, I don't know what the fair percentage would be. But I know as it stands now, we cannot even begin to know it.
Allow developers to distribute their apps outside of the app store, the cost apart for firmware maintenance and development will be 0.
Apple is not bringing its users value by prohibiting sideloading of arbitrary apps. Rather, this is an extreme example of rent-seeking which has affected almost all countries around the world. It needs to be regulated away.
The honest answer is that Apple shouldn't own iOS and its main app store at the same time. But there is not legal / regulation framework to prevent that.
Case in point: Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less fuss over it, right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like behavior around Steam? (probably partially) But more importantly it's because Valve doesn't own Windows and Steam Deck is a far smaller fry.
Steam's cut decreases to 20% after a certain amount of money. Also Steam does a lot more to earn their cut than any other platform, by far -- for example, they do a lot of promotion for you, both algorithmic and through things like Daily Deals, for free, whereas on iOS it is very difficult for ad spend to not be a significant part of your budget. The rule of thumb I've heard is, for every organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you one more sale. So their cut feels quite worth it.
A closer example is game consoles, whose associated stores also take 30%, and nobody seems to complain about.
Steam feels like a partnership with developers where Apple is a gatekeeper. I publish free games on Steam and all it costs is a $100 one time fee per game. I get human review and feedback on my marketing material and store page assets.
Apple is incredibly strict with the content they allow to the point that it feels like a they exclusively cater to children.
It’s easier to vibe code the apps that I want under my own developer account because at least I can side load those.
Not sure why this was flagged. Apple is strict and does not allow graphic adult content, famously so [1]. One of the only exceptions you'll find is Twitter/X.
Steam does allow this. But, has recently started restricting some adult content [2].
Steam sells games, which is mostly a "want" good. App Store has apps that have large scale economic and political implications - banking apps, messaging apps, etc. So it is understandable that people/governments care a lot more about reigning in the App Store than the Steam store.
Valve has plenty of competition and let people buy from other stores even on the Steam Deck. Heck, you can even add games bought on other store to the Steam Launcher and still use Valve functionality like controller mapping in them.
> Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less fuss over it, right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like behavior around Steam?
It's because Valve doesn't routinely screw over developers and gamers. Steam never removed a game from Steam because it could cause "customer confusion" because it was too similar to one of Valve's own games. When Valve released the Steam Deck, they didn't layer on a bunch of trash for "safety", they sold gamers a portable Arch Linux box that, other than running Windows games on Linux, also runs local LLMs, games from GOG, and development environments. You can write games for Steam on a Steam Deck, compile them, and run them. It's the exact opposite of what Apple is doing - Valve offers total control, and you can use it to do awesome stuff without having to pay a tithe to some overlord corporation that thinks they still own hardware that you purchased from them.
People are understandably much more amenable to Valve because the company as a whole behaves in a much more cooperative and pro-consumer way... e.g. Steam deck repair options, furthering Linux gaming, and Gaben's general philosophy.
Cult-like or not, I find it reasonable to support companies that do things which you agree with. Valve's non-adversarial approach to business (as opposed to many rent-seeking corps these days) probably helps that perception.
Whatever Apple needs in order to compete with third-party distributors. They can set it to a 105% tax for all I care, just let me use third-party alternatives.
> The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something.
1. I didn't know iPhones are free. Or iPads. Or Macs. Or Apple developer program
2. Apple could just... not host apps or provide payment services, and allow people to install apps from alternatives and let devs use other payment systems
> That’s one of the reasons devs flocked to the AppStore. At the time 70% was exceedingly generous compared to other distributors.
It's quite ironic how the company that disrupted the frankly predatory pricing model standard at the time is now itself predatory.
Somewhat tangential:
It's also complicated by the markets changing: PCs used to be the ubiquitous platform (where you could distribute whatever you wanted however you wanted [1]), and the mobile phone was a luxury-ish product (tightly controlled by distributors). Now mobile phones are the ubiquitous platform everyone depends on... and they are extremely tightly locked down and controlled.
[1] Has anyone paid for their WinRaR license yet? :)
Payment processor fees plus a couple of percentage points. At most.
Apple _already_ gets its money from users of their overpriced devices. They even get at least $300-$400 a year from developers in hardware depreciation because you have to use pretty expensive Apple devices to write software for iOS.
If only there was a mechanism which would allow companies to offer similar services then maybe as they try to get customers they would fix prices so as to make money but gain market shares and the price would emerge. That would be truly efficient. Surely we would then fine companies which do their best to avoid that and not try to find excuses for their practices.
Wholeheartedly agree. 30% fee feels like medicare in USA, an excessive amount because it's as high as developers will pay without giving up and leaving.
The Apple App Store sold more than one trillion USD in 2024, how much of their 30% cut (300+ billion) covers operational costs? ¿10%?
> “The CAT also ruled that app developers passed on 50% of the overcharge to consumers.”
This is complete nonsense. App companies set price based on willingness to pay. If Apple allows custom payments alongside IAP, you might get a temporary gap (naturally <30%) to steer people towards in-house payments, with harder refunds etc. But as soon as they're no longer required to adopt IAP their own prices will go back up to exactly what they were.
The vast majority of Apple's app/IAP revenue is from "mobile game" companies. You think they won't enjoy a 42% increase in iOS revenue (1/0.7=1.42) by keeping prices at a level consumers have already accepted for years? There's no "lower sales" tradeoff, customers are used to those prices.
interesting I suspect the UK uses the same Regan Era definition of monopolistic practice as the US, meaning monopoly is fine so long as prices seen by consumers are low (or rather not provably raised)
The UK adopted the EU antitrust model in the 1990s and still kept it after Brexit. So it's has a lot more stuff about 'fairness' and controlling markets, it's not just about prices or monopolies abusing their market position or blocking mega mergers. At least on paper...
You mean Circuit Court judge Robert Bork's "consumer welfare" standard?
He's the genius behind that.
The same Robert Bork whose SCOTUS nomination got held up by the Senate in a deluge of fire and fury, only for Antonin Scalia to get the job and make the same kind of rulings much more articulately.
> when every single business on the planet has to pay you 30% for access to mobile device users
That doesn’t describe Apple’s situation though. Most businesses don’t distribute software at all; those that do mostly don’t need to distribute native iOS apps; those that do mostly don’t need to pay App Store fees; those that do mostly have to pay 15%. It’s only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that need to pay 30%.
This case only concerns Apple's App Store fees before 2020; it was a blanket 30% charge for paid apps until they introduced those changes following the whole Epic Games legal saga etc.
Apple are not paying a penalty for anything after 2020 when the new rules allowing those with lower turnover to pay 15% came into effect etc.
> It’s only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that need to pay 30%
During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.
> During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.
This is still not correct. The original claim was “every single business on the planet”. That’s ridiculously overstated.
Even if you massively narrow the scope to only businesses that have iOS apps that make money directly through the app, it’s still not true. The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps.
Take Uber, for instance. They make vast amounts of money through their iOS app. They do not have to pay Apple 30%, or 15%, or anything beyond the basic $99/yr developer account fee. They absolutely do not have to pay 30% for access to the platform.
> The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps
This is not correct at all and grossly misrepresents how Apple collects revenues on the store - the 30% applied to the list price of any paid app as well.
Prior to 2020, if your app had a price tag on the app store, you paid 30% of said price to apple on every sale. There is no ifs, no buts, no lower rate for smaller players like today. You had a price tag, you paid 30%, whether you sold 100m copies or 5.
The decision taken by the CAT here concerns the fee for paid apps (what they call the distribution charge) as well as in app fees, the latter of which had some exemptions for specific transaction types from the likes of Amazon, Uber etc (but famously not Spotify or Epic Games, or the Amazon Kindle app etc etc...). The "distribution charge" did not.
What are you referring to when you say “all those percentages”? I only mention two; 15% and 30%. 30% wasn’t arbitrary; it was in line with what other platform providers like Nintendo and Sony were charging at the time. If you’re referring to the multiple fractions of fractions, then obviously a business that has nothing to do with software isn’t being coerced by Apple.
How do web pages accessed from (for example) Safari cost the publisher 30% of a subscription fee, when a subscription might be established off mobile first?
No? Websites are a subset of the software market, not the other way around. Apple can absolutely monopolize software distribution while providing a web browser.
Where does this meme come from? Spotify pays Apple nothing more than a $99 developer fee, and the streaming music business would not exist in its current form without iPhone.
I think you should aggregate by app installs, not distinct apps. The apps to make most impact, are most-installed apps. What if my app blows up to a tune of 1.2 mil? I'll be paying 400k Apple tax just because that's why?
Because the 30% is "opt-in" not automatic, the $1m threshold applies to all your apps and associated accounts apps combined, and $1m is just not a big target anymore considering 8400 people on $10/month subscriptions will get you over that line.
And of course, when they announced this big discount it was reported to apply to about 5% of actual IAP spending, which would make the average commission fee being paid around 29%.
That's a 2020 report,by 2023 Apple was saying the $1m+ developers had grown to 10% of developers and many small developers were now earning $1m+. Correlating of course with the subscription-ification of everything.
Yes. People always think about the law as if it is code. But code means it can be hacked (loopholes can be found, etc.) Therefore, better leave the law open to interpretation and let a judge sort it out.
The UK doesn’t even have a single sourced constitution. Just random things from random times in random documents. Parliament is essentially king and can just make any law it wants at anytime with a basic majority. Nothing is codified. There are no real standards.
The UK is one of the most arbitrarily defined places in terms of law. It’s why they can have and enforce a 2-tier system. “Stirring things up” is literally a charge a judge can arbitrarily rule on. Place is hilarious.
Looks like their net profit globally is like $90-100B per year. If you think of the share of profit that's coming just from the UK, this is probably very sizeable as a penalty.
Why even have fines when they amount to an insignificant cost of doing business? What is the purpose? If the purpose is to deter companies from doing some thing, then a fine that equals a tiny number of days revenue is not providing any kind of deterrence.
The thread is not about other companies. It's about Apple, and they can eat a one-time $2B fine for breakfast without even noticing it. It's not much of a deterrence. I'll be convinced the law has teeth when they're fined $2B daily until they take corrective action.
Yeah dipstick. C-suits quite literally sit around and discuss if it is worth breaking the law or not based on how much they will make vs the anemic penalties. Its a HUGE societal problem that apparently you don't understand.
how can I sue Google and Apple for not letting me change my device’s MAC address (Pixel and iPhone) and internet companies for leaking my IP addresses for tracking my internet activity or to track me. Does it violate GDPR requirements?
For changing your MAC address, randomly generated MAC addresses are the norm unless you change your settings to use a static one. You can set up your phone to use the phone's MAC or to generate a new one every time, but by default it'll generate a MAC address per WiFi network.
As for tracking you and your internet activity, you can file a complaint with your local DPA to hopefully spur them into action, that's free. If they don't take action, or decide that your complaint won't convince a judge, you can contact a legal professional and pay them to take your case to court like with any other legal matter.
I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!"
For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done for profit.
> I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!"
I feel like fines aren't even an appropriate remedy for this. They're both inherently arbitrary and not something that actually fixes it. And that combination gives governments a perverse incentive, because they get $2B to put in their own pockets while leaving the monopolist to continue monopolizing so they can come back and extract more later instead of actually solving it.
What they should be doing is breaking up companies that do this sort of thing.
Fines can work. We should continue fining them one day of revenue every day until compliance occurs.
1% of annual revenue per week until the problem is fixed would absolutely have them adjusting policies.
Why not 300% or more for systematic abusers ??
You believe that breaking them up is geopolitically infeasible but a fine larger than the GDP of Finland would fly?
On top of that, giant bureaucracies are great at "compliance". That isn't the same as doing the thing you actually wanted though.
The UK could give Apple a choice: Either pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products will be seized on import.
To achieve the thing you wanted, word the law vaguely and have a judge interpret it. You know, the same way the law is applied to poors like you and me. Nobody gets off a murder by saying "Your Honour, when I stabbed that man to death, technically I didn't meet the criteria in point 3 subsection 12 and therefore I am innocent." Why should corporations get that privilege? (I note they may be found innocent of murder but guilty of something like manslaughter - which is fine! Different degrees of violation of the law can result in greater or lesser sentences. Proportionality is a good thing. Apple should only have to pay half the fine if the judge estimates they've done half what they should)
> pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly
Reaction from the US government would be swift and extreme, especially with this administration. 1000% tariffs on British exports or something like that...
But even under a normal/sane administration, doing something like this to an US tech megacorp would be unfeasible without a backlash that would outweigh any benefits.
> Either pay a fine exceeding the GDP of Finland, or stop being a monopoly, or every Apple senior executive will have an arrest warrant and the products will be seized on import.
That's what breaking them up is. "Stop being a monopoly" is breaking them up.
Leaving them in one piece and trying to pass a separate rule against every monopolistic practice they can come up with while they remain in one piece is an exercise in futility.
> Nobody gets off a murder by saying "Your Honour, when I stabbed that man to death, technically I didn't meet the criteria in point 3 subsection 12 and therefore I am innocent." Why should corporations get that privilege?
Some people do, in fact, e.g. because the evidence was seized unlawfully and the government's penalty for that is not getting to use it, or because the charges were filed in the wrong jurisdiction etc. This is why rich people often get away with things -- they have money to pay lawyers to trawl through thousands of pages of regulations to find the mistake the government made or bamboozle the jury or the court. See e.g. O.J. Simpson.
But the problem in cases like this is much harder than that, because there is no murder without a body. It isn't a normal thing to be having to decide if the person who killed someone is guilty of murder because it isn't a normal thing to be the person who killed someone.
Whereas it is a normal thing for companies to sell things for money and enter into contracts etc. Which means you're not trying to decide if they did something wrong in an outrageous event that happens zero times in the median person's life, you're trying to decide if they did something wrong in any of the millions of transactions they take part in every day.
Is requiring a fee or the use of an identification service in order to publish an app just recovering their costs, or is it a ploy to inhibit people from doing it? Is preventing third party software from performing certain system functions a security measure, or a means to prevent competitors making an app store that actually functions properly?
You can't be getting into the weeds like that or their lawyers will eventually come up with something the government accepts as the former while it still has the effect of the latter. You have to remove the structural incentive they have to do it to begin with, which comes from these separate products all being tied together within the same company.
You can't jail a company. And breaking one up is pretty much impossible considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like this.
You can imagine things a country could do in this respect. Require the devices they sell in your country to be completely unlocked with respect to third party app stores and operating systems, but also with respect to regions so that people can buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere. Invalidate their copyrights in your country so that third parties can ship phones with iOS. It's punishment, they're not supposed to like it. There are plenty of things they wouldn't like.
Also, putting aside whether the UK could actually break them up, the US or the EU could actually break them up.
> and operating systems
This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices.
> regions
People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate.
> buy the unlocked ones there and use them anywhere
In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region is needed.
> EU could actually break them up
I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU.
> This must be an essential requirement for all PC-like devices.
Why are you excluding phone-like devices? That's where it's currently the bigger problem. You can't do it at all on iPhones and Android devices malign you with locked boot loaders, attestation failures and undocumented blob drivers tied to an ancient kernel version.
> People in different regions have very different average income. As long as manufacturer scales prices accordingly, I think locking to this region might be appropriate.
It's discriminating against the poor people of any country that also happens to have rich people in it. Both the poor and rich people of that country should want it banned there for their own benefit and they're the ones who get to decide that.
> In the case if the price is already the worldwide highest one, you're right, no locking to the region is needed.
The point of prohibiting the region locking in this case is that it also allows the unlocked versions of that vendor's devices to spread across the world, making them feel the remedy. But also, it would be fine for everyone to just prohibit region locking everywhere. Price discrimination is an arbitrage opportunity and it ought to stay that way.
> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU.
International companies aren't "based" anywhere in particular except for on paper, but Apple has significant operations in the EU. Moreover, they sell a significant number of devices there.
The way a breakup works anywhere is that the government says "separate these business units into a separate entity or you can't operate here" and then if they don't do it, they both lose >$100B in annual revenue and cause there to be a large economic region where they don't exist which becomes a breeding ground for new competitors that can then spread into other regions. Given that choice, investors might be pretty unhappy if the executives choose that over just separating the company out into ones that collectively get to keep all of that revenue.
> Why are you excluding phone-like devices?
Actually not, for me *smart*phones are PC-like devices. Smartphone, especially modern one, is obviously a miniature personal computer.
> It's discriminating against the poor people of any country that also happens to have rich people in it.
I think, poor people are discriminated in every country generally if they need to buy products designed by an international company. While I've mentioned average income, it should be strictly speaking median income.
> Price discrimination
I mean that countries with lower median income deserves cheaper products. So that relatively there should be only minimal difference for poor people to be able to buy such products, regardless of the country of origin.
> International companies aren't "based" anywhere in particular except for on paper,
That's a good question. This "on paper" is crucial for all the legal stuff. US-based companies must obey not only EU rules but also US. Especially problematic is when they'd need to break a EU law to comply with the US law but they are never allowed to do this vice versa. This way I'd define where a company is based.
> anywhere is that the government says
It will be problematic due to multiple governments would be involved (typically US, EU, UK, China).
> I mean that countries with lower median income deserves cheaper products.
So if you make $20,000 and live in a country with a median income of $40,000 then you should pay higher prices than someone who makes $200,000 and lives in a country with a median income of $10,000? Why?
Also, that's not really how prices work for non-monopolies. If everyone can profitably produce something and sell it for $100 in e.g. South America and then you try to charge $200 in the US or Europe, your competitors are just going to take your customers by charging $100 there too. The ability to engage in price discrimination shenanigans is evidence of an uncompetitive market.
> Why?
Just because of statistic.
But actually, of course, it would be fair to make individual prices. E.g. there is a photo-camera for 7000, it makes very very good photos. Someone makes every day money with photos and buys it. Someone else wants also very good photos for non-professional private use, family and even for posts in WEB (without a fee, only donations). But this someone else must pay the same 7000.
Needless to say that in case of individual prices, additional rules and locks will apply.
BTW, some electronic devices are sold cheaper for academics (universities, students).
> I think, EU could only achieve that a non-EU-based company leaves EU.
Exactly, also, the US would prevent that geopolitically.
> also, the US would prevent that geopolitically.
Everybody keeps saying that Trump is eroding US power etc. etc. Are they all lying or is the EU just too chicken to actually do it when it comes up? According to the TACO principle it goes the other way, right?
E.g. EU companies could replace China 5G. But with US chips. While some new tiny FPGAs appeared recently (using obsolete manufacturing process), huge FPGAs from Xilinx(AMD)/Altera(Intel) cannot be replaced. China can make both US and EU calm down with rare earth materials. US can tame EU with chips and whatever else. And EU... no idea.
Oh he certainly is. But he is eroding it. It's only just starting and the EU is only just starting to disconnect itself from the US. So right now he still has a lot of pull.
> You can't jail a company.
You can, however, use the death penalty. I imagine a fine equivalent to twice their market cap should suffice.
You can't jail a company, but you can jail a CEO.
Always talking about bigger pay because of bigger responsibility. Might finally start making sense if they actually start putting them in jails.
> considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like this.
This seems backwards. The reason they can't be broken up is because of the pressure that huge companies like this put on individuals in government.
No different than why a small town mayor can't jail the organized crime ring that runs his town. If he tries anything, they will shoot him; or at least put up posters all over town accusing him of being a pedophile (and pay somebody to file charges against him that will eventually be dismissed for lack of evidence.) He wouldn't have become mayor in the first place if they hadn't supported him and attacked his potential competitors.
You can jail decision makers that work in the company. You can also jail the CEO, if they are ready to accept those big salaries they should also be ready to accept consequences.
It's also not really desirable to punish a company or dissolve it. It's mostly made up of laborers - you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay. Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP. That stuff is useful.
>Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP.
You absolutely want to burn the IP in the sense of make it freely available to use and build upon. Every time history has weakened IP protections for the few, the many have benefited.
A lot of the success after WW2 was the immense amount of patents that were no longer protected and could be built upon without 25 years of monopoly extraction. You can't rent seek something that isn't patent protected, so you have to build and improve.
For example, several German and Italian patents around good motorcycle engines were completely nulled out, and every company that built motorcycles made a popular model from it. It basically invented a portion of the industry.
The same elimination of patent protections after WW1 boosted tons of chemical industries, and spurned immense innovation in pharmaceuticals, dyes, explosives, etc.
"Oh you want to do illegal anti-competitive stuff? In addition to any fine, you have forfeited your IP benefits"
Breaking antitrust laws and similar is an explicit admission that you cannot compete fairly, and therefore it does not benefit society to let you continue to monopolize anything and someone else should be allowed to take your place.
> you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay.
No but that's why it should be possible to hold them personally accountable IMO. I think them getting away with everything is what's wrong with the world these days.
Also, a company is a culture. Labourers will find another job. But probably in a company with a better culture. Which is good for them too.
Yeah I guess the "fix" would be legislating that such platforms require OS makers to provide an open market of software either by allowing manual installation or third party app stores.
Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple
> Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple
This right here is why they need to be broken up. Are we supposed to have a company more powerful than a country?
It is not just Apple. The UK is going after every company with their porn filtering laws. Imagine the response if people did not stand up to their tyranny and the Uk kept pushing their agendas further and further. This is why the UK needs to be broken up.
That's having the causation reversed. The porn filter laws are them breaking themselves up, because they're a hidebound own-goal and they're causing significant damage to themselves for no advantage.
But censorship laws and antitrust laws are two different things. It's possible for the same country to get one thing wrong while simultaneously getting a different thing right.
I get the argument, but "country" spans many orders of magnitude in size. I mean, deliberately extreme example, but I'm fairly sure the smallest of the discount supermarket chains near me is more powerful than the country of Tuvalu:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvalu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_(supermarket)
Also, one party being stronger doesn't mean fighting them is worthwhile, e.g. Iceland threatening to withdraw from NATO to win the Cod Wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
And and, also why the People's Republic of China hasn't taken control of the Republic of China after all this time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
Countries that small are outliers and aren't really the point. It's about the size of the company, not the size of the country. Being too powerful for the smallest country isn't that interesting. Being too powerful for the median country seems like a problem, much less for the UK, which is at the ~90th percentile by population and #6 in the world by GDP.
Yes? In feudalism, kings control everything. In capitalism, investors control everything. It's what the system is named after - kinda hard to miss.
Investors don't control Apple, the CEO of Apple does. The investors are random people holding shares of it in their 401k. The company being so big is also they reason they can't control it effectively, because the people holding it are so diffuse that they have significant coordination costs.
In the same way, one could say that the president, prime minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy.
Investors are "one share, one vote", rather than democracy "one person, one vote". The recent thing with Musk/Tesla and his trillion dollar options is being voted on, and Apple face campaigns and have votes, too: https://apnews.com/article/apple-dei-shareholder-proposal-an...
> In the same way, one could say that the president, prime minister, or similarly titled person controls a democracy.
That depends how big it is. For something the size of the US, sure, and that's a problem. It's one of the reasons the central government was meant to have limited powers.
For something the size of a small town or local business, absolutely not, because then each vote both matters more to the outcome and has more direct consequences to the voter, which dramatically lowers the coordination costs. A single individual could change the outcome just by convincing a small number of local people who are each more inclined to care about it.
The investors with effective voting rights are not usually people with retirement funds, but rather the administrators of those retirement fund pools.
So another case of it not being the investors then.
You invested in Vanguard, and Vanguard invested in the company and promises to give you the same amount of money they get from the company, but doesn't pass through other rights and responsibilities.
This is feudalism. Technofeudalism, to be precise. Corporations have created digital fiefdoms and reduced us all to serfs.
Whether that behaviour is good or bad have nothing to do with the economic system in place. Pure capitalism have obvious flaws. To me, a company being more powerful than a country is one.
Yes, but capitalism is just a name for the bad thing. We don't actually say that we have capitalism, if we did we would basically be saying 'capital ownership by some to the exclusion of others is good actually' and that isn't compatible with having society.
You say things like 'free markets are wonderful and efficient and we don't believe that they lead to the kind of outcomes that people who have come up with terms like "capitalism" believe they will'.
I'd love it if a government would decide that the hardware side of the company needs to split from the software side.
Suddenly we could buy macos to run in a VM.
Or we could buy iPhones running android.
We'd have to pay for iOS upgrades.
Which, given my feelings about iOS 26, might be a good thing. I mean, if their revenue depends on the OS actually being good rather than inevitable…
But that would be like a sudden outbreak of common sense.
Or split Apple UK off. And then fine them.
2 days of global revenue is not a good baseline for breaking a single country.
Comparing against their UK revenue is probably a better metric ?
Why? If a shoplifter steals from one shop, the judge will not take into consideration all the shops they didn't steal from.
Charging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading.
Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit from it.
Look I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy ever is.
But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.
UK government is just taking their cut, they aren't returning the money to anyone.
So what difference does it make to the regular joe that the loan shark got shook down by the mafia boss ?
The difference is that the shark is now disincentivized to do it again.
It's only somewhat voluntary, as there is literally no other option to get your application on people's iPhones.
For most companies, the choice is: pay Apple, or dissolve your company.
That's not much of a choice, and I think we all know it.
There is no choice involved. You either pay Apple the required blood sacrifice or you lose access to more than half of all possible customers for your business.
This is like saying that every American can choose to trash their car and take public transit. It sounds like a choice, but the real world has consequences and in fact most Americans do not have the ability to eschew private transport. That is just simply not how the world works.
Whatever they did could be quite legal in those other geographies. What you are saying is like say a country in middle east prosecuting you for smoking weed or drinking alcohol somewhere else when you visit.
Laws apply to jurisdictions, there are no universal laws which are legally binding.
Even if it is illegal, it is for them to collect their own fines for that crime .
That's not really a meaningful comparison, either. If you assume every engineer makes ~300K at Apple, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is "Apple loses ~7K engineers for 1 year", which seems a bit more than a slap on the wrist as you are suggesting.
Don't worry. They can replace those lost engineers with AI ;)
Assuming it's like every other large business, that's an optimization.
Or 26 CEOs for 1 year. (Tim Cook earned ~$75M for 2024).
except that the money doesn't go only to the engineers.
For another comparison: this is about 4 years worth of UK App Store net revenue.
Anything framed in terms of revenue is pointless. Profit is what we need.
True but doesn't it set a precedent for multiple more 2 billion dollar law suits until they fix the problem?
Yeah it’s good. Probably should be both days of revenue and days of profit to account for low profit margin companies.
Or % of market cap would also be good.
Still cheaper than giving up the monopoly position.
I think profit is more appropriate. Still only comes at 4 days.
Is that the profit for the App Store specifically, in the UK specifically?
If not, you’re comparing apples to oranges.
Why the UK specifically? The App Store monopoly is driven by its world-wide presence, I think it should be global revenue, and a fine to match.
Because it's a UK fine. The "monopoly" is driven by Apple making very good products for a long period of time and the UK putting its money almost anywhere but into people who might invent the next iPhone-like thing and make people's lives better worldwide.
Because the fine amount is specific to the harm done by one product line, in one market.
Whereas Apple’s profit figure reflects their total profit across all products and all markets combined.
It’s meaningless comparing these, because it’s not an equal basis of comparison.
Why? You probably know just how long these cases take, so it is not like all other countries are now going to do the same.
If that's the case then using their total profit seems the only proper measure. What it says is that these companies lose these cases but it's so infrequent that they can just price it in. It's a cost of doing business.
If we were to fine Tim Cook 1000$ for doing something that paid him 1M would that have the 'effect' of keeping him from doing that again?
Countries with similar laws might very well consider doing the same after reviewing the case and considering how well it matches their own situation.
Other than that I agree with you - the fine doesn't make much of a difference unless the risk becomes so significant that it effectively threatens the jobs of people not to address it, and it will only threaten jobs if it becomes more expensive to continue ignoring these laws than paying fines if/when individual countries take them to court.
Limiting it to App Store profit doesn’t make sense. The App Store is not an independent corporation (although it’d be great if some regulator forced it to be!) Apple makes the decisions about its behavior.
Hey it’s at least 8 days of actual profit, ok? /s
> “developers were overcharged by the difference between a 17.5% commission for app purchases and the commission Apple charged, which Kent’s lawyers said was usually 30%.”
> “The CAT also ruled that app developers passed on 50% of the overcharge to consumers.”
And that's why I stopped buying Apple products - ultimately it is the end user that pays for everything. Apple exploits both developers and its consumers.
In which situation does the end user not pay for everything? Even a fine or a tax on a company ends rolled up in the price paid by the end user. Same thing with programs paid for by the government. It’s the taxpayers who foot the bill.
I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
> I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
There are many things that now require you to have a phone that runs iOS or Google-approved Android. They both monopolize their respective markets and charge 30%, locking out competitors with attestation systems etc.
Two incumbents that each divide up the customer base between them while locking out other competitors is called a cartel and it's not actually a competitive market.
Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme, has a range of app stores with different options. Unfortunately, Amazon shut theirs down, but charging a 30% convenience fee is a choice there.
Inside of the EU the same is true for iOS, of course, although Apple still somehow charging developers per install makes it hard to provide apps for free.
> Google-approved Android, at least for now until some judge hopefully shuts down the idiotic "verified developers" programme, has a range of app stores with different options.
In order for such a competitor to be viable for use by developers, it has to be installed on the devices of customers, which Google has acted to prevent. Google Play has over 90% market share on Android and has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other stores installed and used other methods to prevent any alternatives from establishing a network effect.
And now that regulators are getting after them about doing those things, they've sprung this "verified developers" trap to keep it going.
This has the simplest evidence of anything. If other stores are a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
> has constrained OEMs from shipping devices with other stores installed
Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store. I don't know about any vendors that even wanted to ship app stores outside of their own, but I don't recall Google preventing them from doing that.
> If alternative stores are a viable alternative, why do they have ~0% market share?
Because people like Google Play? All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished they could get rid of them. Personally, I find Google Play to be the best app store around, even compared to iOS' app store, in terms of search functionality and responsiveness. And that's a low bar to clear, given the absolute garbage Google will throw at you with some searches.
With Amazon closing its app store, the only independent app store that has the ability to charge people money has disappeared. That doesn't mean Steam or Epic or Microsoft couldn't set up their own stores if they wanted to. Hell, even with the "verified developer" system, alternative app stores are still possible.
> Every Samsung phone comes with the Samsung Store. My Xiaomi phone came with a Xiaomi store.
Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors who installed third party stores and punishing them in various other ways.
The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the network effect.
> All I ever read about the app store alternatives that do exist is that people wished they could get rid of them.
Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave up.
> Because people like Google Play?
That wouldn't explain it. If they like Google Play and ten other things then they would each have ~10% market share. If they only like Google Play, that implies something fishy is going on, because you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard to set up an app store. Unless it is that hard, and then why is that?
> Google got caught withholding search revenue from vendors who installed third party stores and punishing them in various other ways.
Interesting, do you have a link for that?
> Those are the phone vendor stores. Nobody wants those.
They have the same problem Apple's app store has: they lock you into a particular brand if you decide to spend money. Annoying, I agree, but 99% of app downloads are free anyway.
The real money is to be made with in-app purchases, but because people don't give alternative app stores a chance, they don't realize how much they're being scammed: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/bnbgmf/samsun...
> The phone vendor stores are all useless specifically because they're from the phone vendors, which means they'll be terrible because hardware vendors are notoriously bad at software, and on top of that they'll only be installed for people with that brand of phone, which again destroys the network effect.
The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
As for software quality, 90% of smartphones is all software. If they were as bad at software as you say they are, smartphones would be unusable.
> Actual competitors would be the likes of Amazon or Epic or F-Droid, but Google's shenanigans have meant they all have negligible market share to the extent that Amazon even gave up.
F-Droid is widely used but only a fraction of consumers care about the things F-Droid cares about. Everyone who cares about open source on Android is served either by F-Droid directly or by another app leveraging the same ecosystem. There's no money to be made selling apps you can download for free elsewhere, though.
> you'd otherwise expect there to be a thousand bad ones and at least a dozen good ones since it's not that hard to set up an app store
But it is hard to set up an app store? The code for the app store itself isn't all that exciting, but convincing developers/publishers to use your app store is. Then things like localisation, payment, distribution, and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges that are much harder to solve.
There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only independent software stores left for video games other than buying games from publishers directly.
The lack of a network effect does make it hard to compete with the status quo, but part of that is that nobody really tries. What the big companies really want is to get the benefits of Google Play without having to pay the price. That's why they sued to "open up" the Google Play store rather than to force Google to make alternative app stores possible.
There are stores that do have the network effect, as they come pre-installed on billions of phones. But, as you said, "nobody wants those".
Trust me, I'd love for Google Play to get a repository feature where you can add and remove your own software sources so I wouldn't need to deal with the laggy F-Droid UI or the unmaintained Amazon App Store app, but the technical hurdles for getting app stores on phones is rather minimal.
For what it's worth, I think Netflix is the second biggest OS-independent proprietor of software apps, as their app comes with an Xbox Game Pass/Playstation Plus/Apple Arcade-style games catalogue available with your subscription. They use Google Play for binary distribution, but payment itself happens through your standard Netflix subscription. Again, a lot of people are angry that this alternative even exists because it's "bloat" but the network is there, ready to be leveraged.
> Interesting, do you have a link for that?
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632806/google-epic-prem...
They adopt the Google framing that they were "being paid" to exclude third party stores, but that's a subjective description. If you get paid X for search revenue and you get Y less if you include third party app stores, that's a penalty.
> The network effect never existed on desktop and Steam is doing just fine competing with the Microsoft Store.
Stores inherently have a network effect. To get users you need apps; to get apps you need users. That's a network effect. Which is why, if you can keep alternate stores off of most devices, you can suppress them.
Microsoft, for all their other faults, wasn't doing that, which is why Steam on Windows is a thing but Steam on Android is conspicuously lacking.
> F-Droid is widely used
No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share.
> convincing developers/publishers to use your app store is.
This is exactly the issue. Google put up barriers to getting people to use them.
> Then things like localisation, payment, distribution, and in-app purchases pop up, which are technical challenges that are much harder to solve.
None of these are that hard. Payments are the most difficult and every company that sells something still manages it somehow.
> There's a reason Steam and GOG are essentially the only independent software stores left for video games other than buying games from publishers directly.
Video games weren't traditionally sold through "software stores" to begin with. You'd just buy them directly from the publisher. Which is the other thing Google suppresses on Android. Try downloading an Android app directly from the publisher's website the same as people do with games on Windows and see how many hoops you have to jump through.
> No it isn't. It's good, but it has ~0% market share
Oh, I'll go tell my dad and brother who have been happily using it to update NewPipe for years. They'll be heartbroken but otherwise unbothered.
This isn't about the tiny percentage of people who are stubborn or technically inclined enough to make it work despite the barriers. It's about the other 99% of people who should have access to NewPipe too.
The cases are not about the consumer's choice to buy an iPhone. They're about other companies' options to reach consumers of iPhones. Apple (and Google) can not be in the middle of 2-3 billion phone owners and every company that wants to access those phone owners. Government are not going to allow it. No companies should have that much power.
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything?
If you want to get technical about it the field of economics addresses this question. Its called Tax Incidence. The short story is that the side of the market that has the least elasticity of demand (IE, they respond to price changes the least, and don't buy more or less because of price changes) is the entity that suffers the costs of taxes and gets the benefits of subsidies.
Intuitively this makes sense. Imagine if there is a luxury good that you don't need. If taxes increase significant on it, you may just choose not to buy it. That has a high elasticity of demand. Meaning that the tax incidence isn't going to be on the consumer and will instead be on the produce.
Whereas, think about food. People don't eat much more or less based on how much it cost. You can't physically eat more than like twice as much, and if you don't have any you die. Meaning that its a low elasticity of demand, meaning that the consumer pays the taxes.
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything? Even a fine or a tax on a company ends rolled up in the price paid by the end user.
New costs are covered by a combination of a cut from the seller's profits and an increase in the buyer's price, and the proportion of each varies greatly depending on economic factors.
For example, imagine you offer that ugly sweater in an online marketplace. Can you just charge whatever you like (cost + desired profit)? No way. You can only charge as much as someone will pay, and that may work out to be a loss - for less than your costs. If somehow your costs go up - you spill something on it and need to dry clean it - can you just charge more? You can try, but there's no reason buyers will pay you more because your costs have increased; they don't care. Now imagine an inventory of 1,000 sweaters to sell - you might get lucky with one desperate buyer, but it's even harder to raise prices when you need 1,000 buyers.
Companies sell some things for huge markups, such as a bottle of soda, and for losses - even if the cost is $500, $100 is better than nothing. Think of sales and clearance sales.
Like you, companies price things to maximize revenue, where R = price x volume. Theoretically, they already price things for maximum revenue before they incurred additional costs, so how can they raise the price?
One way is to shift consumer perspective by blaming X for the price increase - government is a popular excuse, or oil prices - saying they must pass on the additional cost, and persuading some consumers that they must or ought to pay more. But when they say that the new tax will have to be be passed on to the consumer, they are full of $#!+ - when they buy the CEO a new private jet, do they pass that on too? - because they also can and do pass on the cost to their shareholders.
> I’m kinda split on the whole Apple situation. I’m firmly in the camp of “monopoly bad”, but apparently people are fine with apple’s practices. It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
People don't necessarily choose the option that is better for them long term. The existence of monopolies stifles innovation, so users are worse off. For example, Apple's ecosystem works great if you go all in, but what would have happened if Apple had opened the garden to every one and embraced open standards?
That sounds like a fun thought experiment. What exactly would happen?
I think is why the EU and UK pushing so hard to open the gates is so they have the excuse to take control themselves and slam the gates back shut hard. I predict the outcome in even a ten year period is all apps will need governmental approval.
Opening the gates is not necessarily the best long term decision either.
You have to remember most governments are corrupt and it will devolve into a situation on who pays the best bribes over the current flat rate extortion.
> In which situation does the end user not pay for everything?
In situations where the company needs to continue to compete, and factoring fines into prices would push it out of competitiveness, so it needs to find other ways to offset the fine.
Apple's unlikely to be in this situation, and probably has massive buckets of cash just sitting around in various offshore places anyway. I doubt a couple of billion are much danger.
> apparently people are fine with apple’s practices
I'm happy my mum has a phone that can only install apps and stuff that are sanctioned by apple.
She's not savvy enough to know differently, she doesn't really do apps, and frankly her best defence against any sort of tech-based scammers is likely to be "Oh, well, I wouldn't know how to do that", but otherwise extra-strong rails are a really useful thing.
Monopolies are bad but the current ecosystem is so good, and for me other app stores aren't that interesting. And for some less savvy users they would be an outright threat.
> It’s not like they have to buy an iPhone.
I'm so sick of hearing this, the current smartphone market is an american megacorp duopoly, both of whom are locking down their phones to such a degree that you cannot even claim you own the hardware anymore. There is essentially no choice.
And not buying a smartphone is not a choice either, if you want to actually exist in the modern world.
Google is still held back by the fact that their Pixel line isn't selling. They can't dictate terms to Samsung or Xiaomi. Apple owns the hardware and software.
In a situation where profits decrease instead of price increase
But that would only work if the end user refused to pay whatever price the company asks for. In the specific case of Apple, people line up to buy their product.
Are you saying that every single person on the planet bought /lined up to buy iPhones? Or did a lot of people refused to pay whatever price?
You don't think that developers of Android apps pass on their fees to Google Store to the consumers? Or the developers of web apps pass on the fees of Stripe to the consumers?
So then they’re not a monopoly if you can just stop buying their products and buy another. Another that also happens to have more market share.
Do you feel that Google is less bad in this, enough so that you would rather use their products?
No, Google isn't less bad (and I avoid them using Sailfish OS and non-Google ROMs (Lineage OS / Graphene OS). I don't believe either Google or Apple (or any other BigTech) should have any role in deciding what apps I install on my phone or how I choose to purchase (not rent) an app. (I mean, they just act as an unnecessary middle-man and gatekeeper to extort money). The smartphone is just another computer. I don't pay Apple or Microsoft to install software from other developers / companies on my desktop computer. Why should it be any different for me on mobiles? Just because they can abuse their monopolistic power?
Apple (and subsequently many other copy-cats in the tech industry) have done a phenomenal job convincing people to think of their fully capable mobile computers as "appliances", and this really shows.
A modern smart phone is more like a gaming console and less like a personal computer
Only because it's limited by software. Hardwise I would say both gaming consoles and smart phones are a lot like a personal computer, in fact I think they pretty much are personal computers.
The tribunal judgement documents are here...
https://www.catribunal.org.uk/judgments/14037721-dr-rachael-...
This isn't an EU judgement.
(I've taken the liberty of removing "EU" from the otherwise very helpful GP comment.)
[flagged]
It's worth pointing it out as the UK isn't in the EU anymore.
Seriously? I thought that was a joke
[flagged]
I understand what you're saying, but some on HN have issues with EU's fines against Apple, Google, Meta, etc. Some in the UK also like (or liked, before brexit) to deflect blame towards the EU.
So I think it's important to be clear about who made the decision: it was a London/UK court.
But moving on.
"The CAT said in its ruling that developers were overcharged by the difference between a 17.5% commission for app purchases and the commission Apple charged, which Kent's lawyers said was usually 30%."
Where does the 17.5% come from? I can't find it here or in the link Reuters article. Is that just the number that the tribunal decided was fair? If so I'd love to read the analysis of how they got there.
"""
919. The comparators available to us (the Epic Games Store, the Microsoft Store and Steam’s lower headline rate) suggest that the competitive rate of commission would be in the range of 12 to 20%. We do think it is reasonable to make some adjustment to that range to accommodate the points made by Apple about its premium brand, the quality of its offering and its established market position. However, we do not think those would be sufficient to displace the upper end of the range and are likely to operate mainly at the lower end, where the offerings are arguably less attractive to users for those reasons.
920. Applying again an approach of “informed guesswork”, on the basis of the evidence before us, we find that the likely range of Apple’s Commission for iOS app distribution services in the counterfactual is between 15% and 20%. For the purposes of quantifying the overcharge (for both the exclusionary abuses and the excessive and unfair pricing abuse) we will use the mid-point of that range, which is 17.5%.
Thanks for digging that out.
TLDR: they made it up.
What else would you expect?
It’s from a tribunal. They make judgements.
Judgment can be grounded in reality or it can be picking a random subrange of a list of somewhat random ranges and then picking a midpoint because why not.
It cannot be grounded in reality precisely because it's a monopoly. The whole point of laws against monopolies is to let the market figure out the fair rate, or to define the "fair" rate as the one that emerges in a competitive market. So by definition of what the whole case is about it is impossible to give a fair rate in this case. If you don't want to be subjected to guesswork, stop being a monopoly and let the market figure it out.
What would you expect them to do in this case in particular?
Consider Google Play, for starters.
Google play has a dominant market position as well and is presumably next for this sort of ruling
The gang learns what an oligopoly is
Wow sounds very comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered. Sounds like you agree with me that they just made it up? Or are you saying that it's fair to exclude the app store of an open platform which has plenty of "free market" competition from side loaded and 3p distribution apps because ~vibes~?
Not considered? The words "Google Play" are in the judgment 47 times. Maybe you could read it?
By your logic, each of the two companies could use the other as an example and then both get away with breaking competition law. Two wrongs don't make a right.
> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered
Interesting to accuse people of not reading the document in a post where you don’t read a 3 sentence comment.
They have a literal section "(6) Description of the “comparator” platforms" where the very first item is "(a) Google and other Android platforms"
There's a section "112. On 10 June 2022, the CMA published the final report in its MEM Study, which contains a number of findings in relation to both Apple and Google."
It's amazing that you never even tried to read the actual document but already immediately assume a position that is trivially proven wrong.
> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered
Interesting to accuse people of not reading the document in a post where you don’t read a 3 sentence comment (and reply to the wrong one, but we can chalk that up to HN UI).
This is the correct comment to reply to.
Imagine if you actually read and understood the document instead of pressing on with your ignorance.
The court considered Google Play. And explained how Google Play has the exact dame issues as AppStore. So whatever Google Play is doing is irrelevant to a case against Apple.
It's not a difficult document to read and understand. Just lengthy.
I would quote relevant sections, but that would be a completely wasted effort.
Adieu.
What else would they do?
I haven't dug through the linked documents but it's probably in here some where... https://www.catribunal.org.uk/judgments/14037721-dr-rachael-...
The financial penalty is peanuts for AAPL.
More interesting would be if they'd be forced to allow other app stores.
I think both third party app stores (without aggressive scare screens) and third party payments will be globally available on both platforms in the next few years. But it will take some time for enough piecemeal jurisdictions to require it for it to become burdensome for the companies to have different options in different regulatory regimes, and to make it no longer worth blocking in jurisdictions which haven't ruled against them yet.
Yeah but Apple always required signing, and Google is moving to that too, so they can simply charge you an exorbitant amount to get your app signed, moving the money maker from the store to the dev environment.
Now that the regulators are actually saying this is a problem I suspect these schemes will be addressed much faster. I'm pretty stunned Google announced that just after losing the case, because it's so remarkably stupid. Judges do not like being screwed with.
I really hope so, because I was hoping Apple would be forced to be more open, and was surprised that, instead, Google got more closed.
The police does not like being screwed with either. These aren’t good things. People with significant authority perform a duty and ought to act independently of their personal feeling.
https://github.com/deckerst/aves/issues/1802
and google is surreptitiously flagging several of the top alternatives to their spyware bloatware on android, as a prelude to the change.
this is clearly an action that can be easily attributed to incompetence, but is a thinly veiled way to ensure a flood of verified open source joining early on the ransom for signing whitelist.
Scare people enough times without reason, and they'll stop listening. An increasing number of people already have. It'll be amusing if the word "security" becomes meaningless soon, or is perceived negatively by the majority of the population. Only then can freedom win.
If they won't hold those deserving it accountable, then I guess they themselves should become accountable. Failure to punish should be punishable. Every single fine of this magnitude should also be accompanied by at least one person going to jail. Or, if you send all of those accountable to jail then maybe the fine could be waived for the benefit of those who remain.
Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something.
As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me to install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent others from producing equivalent competing devices via patents (i.e. government granted monopolies), zero.
It's not that it's not worth something, it's that they're abusing their patents and monopoly to extract further compensation after I already bought the device.
> As long as Apple requires they make use of those services for me to install software on the computer I bought, and they prevent others from producing equivalent competing devices via patents (i.e. government granted monopolies), zero.
Right, that's the thing. And zero should also be their revenue and their asset value as long as they continue along that path. The fines should continue to escalate, and should also be applied to individual executives and board members, until they become high enough that the behavior actually changes.
$2 billion is a good start. Apple's revenue in 2024 was about $390 billion. Fines in excess of that amount should be considered.
That's a big enough number that the likely result is Apple would pull out of the UK altogether.
Does it matter? Apple paid around 300 million pounds of corporation tax in 2024. If the UK poses a landmark penalty of say 50 or 100 billion pounds, thats 167x or 333x the annual corporation tax paid by Apple in the UK.
What on earth makes you think that Apple would pay if they leave the UK?
I'm assuming if they pulled out they wouldn't pay.
Then good riddance.
That would be an amazing opportunity for competitors who chose to continue operating in the UK.
That's not what would happen. People will just import the iPhones from abroad.
You had the choice to buy another phone.
When you plug in a non-Apple USB cable to charge your iPhone, or use a third-party phone case, or use Anker power bank .. do you wish you had none of these choices, but only use whatever Apple branded cables, and phonecase and power banks existed?
If you want to buy Apple cables because you think it is better, sure - that's great. But preventing ugreen cables from working makes no sense.
You shouldnt say 'buy a different phone' if you want to use ugreen cables.
If you're a consumer, you should be on the side of more choice and more competition. If you're a Apple/Apple employee, you should 100% say what you just did :)
Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market. If you don’t like the charging options of an iPhone, don’t buy an iPhone. If you don’t like the OS of a Pixel, don’t buy a Pixel. If the consumer is choosy and doesn’t like the options available then there is a market opportunity for new entrants.
The nature of a free market is that someone wins the competition, and the winner is then happy to figure out ways to prevent anyone from competing at all (this kind of action doesn't require a complete winner either, but I'm focusing on a thought experiment here).
Ergo, if you care about maintaining a free market, then you care about limiting what kind of moves you can make in the free market, in order to preserve a free market. A truly free market with no rules has an end state where it is not a free market, more like a much more sophisticated version of the nobles of the land owning everything. So we declare many activities that make it difficult for others to compete that are not simply about manking a better product, "anti-competitive" and illegal.
Other than capital what prevents a new player entering the smartphone market? In the US Apple is at ~50% market share and Samsung ~30%. These are not colluding entities so there must be enough theoretical freedom to create a smartphone that claims significant market share.
Other than capital does a lot of work in that argument. Companies will not pop up and optimize much less micro optimize the tradeoffs. This isn’t a stock exchange; it’s a real capital intensive product.
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have plenty of “capital” and they couldn’t create their own ecosystem for their own phone and convince software developers. The hardware is not really an issue. Any company with a few million can sell their own phone and get a Chinese ODM to customize it for them and white label it.
Outside of Apple and Samsung (only because they make a lot of their own parts), the phone market is a commodity race to the bottom
Amazon, Meta and Microsoft tried their hand at making competitive devices and enter the market, to varying degrees of effort but practically identical degrees of failure. All this to say, it takes a lot more than just capital.
Arbitrary software limitations such as apps not running on said phone.
The apple iPhone is a locked down system engineered in such a way to extract maximum value from consumers and developers. It is impossible to compete.
That's an incredibly naive take on economics and competition, because it ignores all of the forces that entrench existing participants and make new entrants basically impossible in many cases. You're coming off like a student of ECON100 who thinks they've got it all figured out.
"Free market" doesn't mean consumer rights go for toss. "Free market" also means a level playing field for everyone, which is why we have things like standardisation (e.g. USB-C) to make it easier for other businesses to compete. A monopoly or duopoly is not a "free market". Once a monopoly or duopoly emerges, it becomes an artificial moat to prevent competition and as "free market" has ceased to exist in such a situation, it is incumbent to change the rules to make sure a "free market" exists again and competition can thrive. (And ofcourse, all this has to be done without ignoring the rights of other stakeholders in the society).
> If the consumer is choosy and doesn’t like the options available then there is a market opportunity for new entrants.
And if new entrants can't enter the market because the existing monopolies make it impractical, then what?
This is the actual problem to be solved. The bureaucracy of forcing the hand of tech companies every time consumers scream loud enough is a shitty solution.
And that is exactly the problem that is being solved. It's not about "consumers screaming", but companies, consumers and governments realizing that anti-competitive behavior is harming everybody except the gatekeeper. The solution is competition. Since Apple is such a great and innovative company, they surely won't be afraid of competing on merit.
It just props up the monopoly. Appeased consumers have no reason to buy other products. There is no financial motive for Apple to do good because they can do bad until government forces their hand, and they have no reason to fear competition. It’s an admission we’re all at the mercy of Apple until daddy government steps in.
The fact that even a whiff of potential competition incentivized Apple to half their tax for specific cases shows that anti-trust regulation works and that it's the only thing that will ever force a gatekeeper to reconsider their anti-competitive business practices.
>It’s an admission we’re all at the mercy of Apple until daddy government steps in.
That has always been the case when market participants become too dominant e.g.
United States v. Paramount Pictures (1948)
United States v. AT&T (1984)
United States v. Microsoft (2001)
Anti-trust regulation would have dealt with Apple, Google and co by now if the lobbying weren't so out of control compared to previous times.
This is true of an idealized perfect free market with perfectly rational consumers, but not so much in the real world. The simple fact that profits on phones haven't been competed to zero is enough to show it's not a perfect free market. I don't think the average consumer spends much time considering the long-term health of the app ecosystem when they purchase a phone. Maybe the wisdom of the crowds is correct here and it's truly not important or beneficial, but to me it seems more likely that it's outside the bounded rationality of most consumers. Markets have blind-spots and they tend to be short sighted.
I don't like any of the options but still need a phone, now what?
That's pretty unfortunately but if you articulate some of your issues with the options, I'm sure I can find an Android option for you that works. Despite Google's attempts, Android is still quite open and many phones allow you to do whatever you want with them.
Or if you only want to use iPhones then it seems like the downsides of the locked down app store aren't worth switching in which case it seems like you've already made your choice.
Android itself is fine, but in most of the world you need Android with Google services, otherwise banking apps, contactless payments, some games, etc, don't work.
The app sideloading changes they're about to introduce[0]? Affects their Pixels, Samsungs, OnePlus, Sony, etc, old and new. It can't be disabled. The work around is to use ADB to install apks.
So while you have more choice of hardware, Android skins with more or less features, different long term support, prices, etc, in practice you're stuck with what Google wants. Your options are Apple or Google.
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[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/google-will-block-si...
Whose fault is it if banks, etc require Google services? There's a line somewhere, where punishing a company for providing a great product that everyone chooses to use is blatantly unfair
>I don't like any of the options but still need a phone, now what?
I've always used this method: work out what are the most benefits, with the fewest annoying 'features', between various manufacturers that have items within your budget, and choose something. In my country we call it 'shopping'.
"the free market is the solution!" you say while defending monopolistic practices
> Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market.
An unregulated market leads to monopoly and anti-competitive practices.
Capitalism is one of the best models we've discovered, but its markets must be appropriately regulated.
Capitalism should be difficult. An eternal treadmill. You shouldn't be able to wedge yourself into a market as a quarter-century long hegemon.
You shouldn't be able to capture the key touch point of all consumers to their digital life and then tax it for eternity. It's putting incredible strain on innovation and all other market participants.
Companies should die and be replaced by younger startups regularly. It's a renewing forest fire that de-ossifies technology.
Rewarding startups puts the capital rewards in the hands of innovation capital rather than large institutions. Large companies do everything they can to minimize labor costs. Venture funds are even hurting in that the monopolies put a cap on the number of startups that can reach decacorn or centacorn status.
And before I field any complaints that consumers don't care about this - most consumers are laypeople and do not understand what is happening to them. They can't articulate these points. This is why we require regulators to police the system.
I’m not convinced the solution to anything is government picking winners, nor telling other people what they, the government themselves, are going to do with their, the people / companies, money.
And how to I get support for the products I just bought when your government regulators terminate the existing of the product developer / manufacturer.
What other mechanism can there exist that would have the power to change the behaviour of these giant corporations, except government?
> government picking winners
Government trimming the weeds using prescribed rules and tests.
Get rid of monoclonal overgrowth to increase ecosystem diversity and health. Make the ecology better at exploring all the nooks and crannies.
I personally think this is a reasonable argument in theory, though in practice it's not a free market when governments and large mandatory institutions (like banks) put in place things that force your hand (Digital ID on your attested device, banking apps that require attestation, etc). It also falls down when you realize the barriers of entry are absolutely enormous. Even Amazon and Microsoft couldn't get through them, so what chance do new entrants have?
>Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market.
You're saying, companies should be able to do whatever they want, even if it's bad for the consumer. How can you describe that position as "being on the side of the consumer"?
> Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market.
What makes you think the "free market" always produces the best outcome for consumers?
Or, instead of that, the consumer will have the choice to do whatever they want with their own phone and you won't be able to stop them. The free market wins if you give the freedom to the user to control their own phones.
What if im on the consumer's side but I dont like britbongs
I did not have a choice to buy another equivalent phone because patents legally forbid other companies from producing equivalent phones.
If Apple wants to take that defence, they should be required to have abandoned every patent they own on iPhones prior to my purchase of the device.
I don't think you're entitled to an equivalent phone. If we're talking patents on essential things like a cryptographic algorithm required for banking or a technology required to implement 5G, sure, the patent holder should be required to license the patent to anyone at a reasonable price. But not licensing patents on non-essential features like Face ID or health monitors are OK. And all of that is independent of whether or not you can install your own software.
What matters is the competitive situation. Given that you're practically required to have either a Google or Apple device to participate normally in modern society, Apple and Google should be precluded from forcing customers and suppliers[0] to use their other services, like payment services, app stores, delivery networks, ad networks, etc.
But if Apple were the 4th biggest phone platform with at most 10% of the market, Apple would definitely be entitled to remain a walled garden. Even if their phones had features no-one else can implement due to patents.[1]
0: E.g. app developers
1: I'd claim this is the only position that is consistent with being in favor of patents. But I'm mildly anti-patent, so YMMV.
I don't think I'm entitled to an equivalent phone either. I merely think I'm entitled to either (at Apple's option) an equivalent phone OR apple not using it's monopoly on producing equivalent phones to extract further money from me after patent rights are exhausted at the time of the purchase of the phone from Apple.
I.e. I'm entitled to anti-trust protection. Or I'm entitled to patent-misuse protection. I don't really care which set of laws you put it under.
Even if Apple were 10% of the phone market they would still have 100% of the distributing software to devices with Apple's patented technology market, and that should be enough for anti trust protection to kick in.
(I'm also mildly anti patent, but I've been carefully selecting only arguments in this thread that I believe are entirely consistent with a pro patent belief system. E.g. if Apple treated their phones like their laptops - where they also have patents - all the positions and arguments I've taken would not have an issue with their behavior)
Equivalent in what way? A Samsung, a Xiaomi, a Google phone have all of the necessary capabilities to live a modern life.
Equivalent in the way of having the numerous features small and large that Apple has patents on. Whether that's being a rectangle with rounded corners (yes they have a patent on that, or at least did, and successfully defended it in court. Not sure what's happened in the meantime), or whatever random patents Apple has on making blood oxygen sensor technology just that little bit better.
If Apple believes their portfolio of patents protecting the iPhone is worthless, they should abandon them. That they haven't precludes the argument that they are.
You seem to be confusing Masimo's patent infringement case against Apple over Apple Watch with the notion that Apple has some kind of a patented blood oxygen sensor in the iPhone.
I don't think that supports your case that Apple's patent keeps other phones from being equivalent given that the sensor isn't in the iPhone and it's not even Apple's patent.
For what it's worth, I'm typing this on a Pixel which is also a rounded rectangle, so I'm skeptical that patent is really holding other phones back, either
You're typing that on a Pixel with a bump sticking out the back, which would mean it doesn't violate the design patent.
I wasn't specifically thinking of that case, though it's likely why my mind chose that sensor as an example. Apple has patents on blood oxygen sensors, of course, because Apple has patents on basically everything they do. Here's a recent example that I just picked off of Google https://patents.google.com/patent/AU2024216430B2/en?q=(Oxyge...
I'm not seeing how other phones are being held back by any of this. Google and Samsung have design patents, too, and my Pixel Watch also has a blood oxygen sensor.
All phones aren't equivalent, we agree on that right? Apple has legitimate hardware advantages in places. Faster more energy efficient chips. Better earbuds. Various camera components with various advantages. So on and so forth. All of the minor improvements Apple has made will have patents behind them. All of these patents hold all other phone manufactuers back.
Yes, all the other phone manufacturers also have patents. Yes, these also all hold Apple back. That's the deal we make with patents, you invent something, you get a monopoly on producing that thing.
All the other phone manufacturers are basically respecting that deal. Apple is not - they're taking that monopoly and extending it to a monopoly on distribution of software which just happens to run on the device with the thing. This is what anti-trust law, the doctrine of patent misuse, etc should prevent. Either they don't get a monopoly on the things they invented (and all the other phones get better) or they don't get to abuse that monopoly to extract money from people who already purchased the device - i.e. after the patent rights are exhausted.
It sounds like your problem is with the patent system then. The point of patents is to grant exclusive rights to a technology in exchange for sharing information.
I'm not taking any issue with patents existing here. I'm taking issue with anti-competitive behavior that Apple is executing on top of the patent system. If Apple merely wanted to use their monopoly on features of devices to sell devices with those features I would have no issue. My issue is only when they leverage that monopoly to get a monopoly on the distribution of software to those devices and then leverages their monopoly on the distribution of software to those devices to extract fees for doing so.
Edit: I don't, for instance, have issues with how they use patents with macbooks. There they don't abuse their monopoly on certain hardware features to get and extract money from a secondary monopoly on software.
> Equivalent in what way?
Equivalent as in a literal exact copy of an iPhone. Lots of factories can produce those, seeing as Apple contracts out production. If we get rid of those patents and give free choice to those factories and consumers, well they would be glad to produce a modified "Open" iPhone.
Lets make a free market by stopping this government intervention of the patent system that supports monopolies.
Google has successfully boiled the frog and implemented all of the App Store's same fees and its most draconian features and policies.
A duopoly is not a choice.
This (1) ignores the extremely strong network effects purposely engendered by Apple's chronic refusal to implement interoperable standards in any of their products and (2) this is as much about app developers as it is about app consumers, and developers clearly have no choice but to meet their users where they are, which is on Apple devices. The other choice is going out of business.
Since Google is also moving to this direction can I ask you which phone can I buy that is not part of this cartel and works with banks and public services?
There are two phones on the market. Android and iPhone.
The Government needs to break up this duopoly.
Mobile should have hundreds of choices, three or four OS options, and free web-based installs without a gatekeeper or taxation.
Mobile providers shouldn't be able tyrannically set defaults for search, payments, or anything else either.
And Apple now have the choice to change their business practices.
As a developer, you have to offer your app on both phones otherwise your business won't get anywhere. There's no choice there.
We also have the choice to make different laws.
not really. I have two options: android or ios. And android is following ios lockstep with practices like the recent changes to play integrity.
Mobile apps mobile app fraud empties life savings accounts. I agree there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't been working. Installing an app shouldn't eliminate 30 years of life savings.
How is this related to app store fees? No, paying a 30% fee on all transactions does not make you 10x safer than paying a 3% fee
As another commenter wrote, apple is providing a service beyond the typical transaction (like visa or mastercard) does. Similar to the gaming industry's 30% digital sales (playstation, steam, etc).
For small developers, like myself, this is great, because I don't have to put a large upfront capital to pay Apple to audit my app.
If 30% isn't the right number, what is the right number to pay for app store infra, payments, QA services, global tax audits and collection, global licensing limits, etc?
If a bank cannot secure their mobile payments app without requiring the banning of all other apps from the platform, maybe it's the bank that should be shipping their own secure device.
Account holders can't afford that. If they could, they can also afford to get a separate mobile device that only they use for banking.
More than decade I was and, surprisingly, still am able to install anything on my MacOS (not for long - I know).
Maybe clever engineers at MacOS could help iOS engineers with this?
This is the "think of the children" equivalent that is being regurgitated ad nauseam. Anyone who pretends that Apple cares about anything other than profit is lying to others and themselves.
>I agree there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't been working.
It has been working on Android just fine. And if Apple is supposedly so concerned with security, then why did it take them so damn long to implement a simple mechanism to stop thieves from simply changing your password using your pin? Only after relentless pressure did they implement additional security, which took them far too long. The "security" ruse is nothing but propaganda to protect Apple's monopoly on app distribution.
[0] https://tidbits.com/2023/02/26/how-a-thief-with-your-iphone-...
Super confused. What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated.
Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform, because the security model on android is much worse than Apples.
Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been working on android just fine"?
Apple is not a fast moving company, but they do have a great product and have addressed many of the big issues the community has raised.
Google is closing down because it saw what exactly Apple got away with in previous lawsuits.
[flagged]
You cant take what google tells you at face value.
>Super confused.
You aren't confused, you just have a preferred narrative. Hardcore Apple fans and Apple shareholders share a similar bias with different variations of 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
>What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated.
It has been working just fine and Google's claim about their consolidation and its motivations are about as credible as a Rail Robber Baron claiming that his monopolization practices are actually about "security" and not profit, the response to such propaganda was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and today it is the DMA.
More elaborate articles regarding these bogus claims about "security" and its refutation:
https://makeuseof.com/androids-sideloading-limits-are-anti-c...
https://infrequently.org/2025/09/apples-antitrust-playbook
>Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform, because the security model on android is much worse than Apples.
Your personal anecdotes are not credible evidence, especially when they are coincidentally contrived to serve as anti-competitive business practice apologia.
Apple's "security model" is supposedly so much better, yet iPhone theft was absolutely rampant on iPhones due to an Apple "feature" that literally helped thieves steal a user's entire digital life. Androids were unaffected.
"A Basic iPhone Feature Helps Criminals Steal Your Entire Digital Life" - The Wall Street Journal, https://archive.is/oW0lD#selection-1872.0-1872.1
>Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been working on android just fine"?
For the same reason that Apple is using bogus claims about "security", because they can hardly be honest and say "We can't allow any competition, because it would threaten our taxation funnel"
As Cory Doctorow writes:
"In the meantime, Google’s story that this move is motivated by security it obviously bullshit. First of all, the argument that preventing users from installing software of their choosing is the only way to safeguard their privacy and security is bullshit when Apple uses it, and it’s bullshit when Google trots it out:
https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-senate-ju...
But even if you stipulate that Google is doing this to keep you safe, the story falls apart. After all, Google isn’t certifying apps, they’re certifying developers. This implies that the company can somehow predict whether a developer will do something malicious in the future. This is obviously wrong." - https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-01...
>Apple is not a fast moving company, but they do have a great product and have addressed many of the big issues the community has raised.
There is no "community" - there is Apple, its profit motive and the consumers. Apple was relentlessly pressured to deal with their reckless "feature" that made a mockery of modern security practices, gravely endangered its users and it still took Apple way too long to introduce a basic fix. Apple is a trillion dollar company, so euphemisms like "Apple is not a fast moving company" won't cut it, especially when it comes to security - you know, the thing they pretend to value above everything else.
Your premise has the false dilemma: "If we can't perfectly block fraudsters from by-passing security checks, then we might as well have no security checks."
Another simple test is we can compare the amount of malware running on closed ecosystems with open systems. Which system hosts more malware: linux/windows or iOS?
I want to clarify that I'm not saying there are no financial benefits for Google/Apple. I am saying there ARE financial benefits to users and businesses on these platforms.
There is no false dilemma. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.
"In the meantime, Google’s story that this move is motivated by security it obviously bullshit. First of all, the argument that preventing users from installing software of their choosing is the only way to safeguard their privacy and security is bullshit when Apple uses it, and it’s bullshit when Google trots it out:
https://www.eff.org/document/letter-bruce-schneier-senate-ju...
But even if you stipulate that Google is doing this to keep you safe, the story falls apart. After all, Google isn’t certifying apps, they’re certifying developers. This implies that the company can somehow predict whether a developer will do something malicious in the future." - https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-01...
You realize in the very WSJ article you cited it said this?
> A similar vulnerability exists in Google’s Android mobile operating system. However, the higher resale value of iPhones makes them a far more common target, according to law-enforcement officials. “Our sign-in and account-recovery policies try to strike a balance between allowing legitimate users to retain access to their accounts in real-world scenarios and keeping the bad actors out,” a Google spokesman said.
I should have elaborated even further, because I already suspected that someone would nitpick that phrasing. So let me explain the difference:
"according to law-enforcement officials" - they are clearly not experts in tech and are unaware of the crucial difference between Apple and Android in this scenario.
The most significant difference is that Google explicitly stated their system includes "reasonable time-limited protections against hijackers changing passwords or recovery factors" - but only if users have properly configured recovery options beforehand.
According to Google's official statement: "Google Account Recovery flows also have reasonable time-limited protections against hijackers changing passwords or recovery factors set up by the legitimate users - provided users have set up a recovery phone and/or recovery email."
In contrast, the WSJ article describes how on iPhone:
- Thieves could immediately change the Apple ID password using just the device passcode
- there was no waiting period or time-limited protection mentioned
- Once changed, victims were instantly locked out with no grace period
- Apple's Recovery Key feature could be enabled by thieves to permanently lock victims out
Android users on the other hand could proactively:
- Set up recovery email and phone numbers that would be retained for 7 days after changes
- Enable Google's Advanced Protection Program, which specifically blocks PIN-based password resets entirely
- Configure multiple recovery options that created additional barriers
Apple users had limited options, the article mentions security keys could be added, but testing showed "security keys didn't prevent account changes using only the passcode, and the passcode could even be used to remove security keys from the account". This made Android's vulnerability more preventable and recoverable for users who had properly configured their security settings in advance, whereas Apple users were stuck and vulnerable to the pin-hijack until fixed, because iOS did not offer any similar protections such as time-based safeguards.
Well you realize it’s not a good look to post a citation and then immediately say the article is wrong only about the part you disagree with? See “Gell-Mann amnesia effect”.
But Apple implemented features to block that over a year ago.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120340
> Well you realize it’s not a good look to post a citation and then immediately say the article is wrong
I did not say that the article is wrong, don't misquote me. You are also still failing to understand what the crucial difference is:
An iPhone was vulnerable to the pin-hijack, because of its limited security options - a security aware user was as vulnerable as an amateur.
An Android phone was only vulnerable if it was NOT properly secured.
So 100% of iPhone users were vulnerable, while Androids were only vulnerable if misconfigured.
So I was and I am still 100% correct, but you simply decided to nitpick that one sentence of mine that was prone to being nitpicked without bothering to understand what the significant difference between the systems were.
>But Apple implemented features to block that over a year ago.
Yes they did, after a lot of time and pressure. And if you read my comment again, you can see that I have already stated that they have implemented it. So what's the point of you telling me something that I have already mentioned several times?
If you’d just said all of this upfront, it would’ve come across as more honest / less confrontational.
>If you’d just said all of this upfront, it would’ve come across as more honest / less confrontational.
"I should have elaborated even further, because I already suspected that someone would nitpick that phrasing . So let me explain the difference:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45690226
After me clarifying what I've meant, the response wasn't "Oh I see now what you intended to say, thanks for elaborating", but misquoting me and making hostile and snide comments. That is someone who wants to be confrontational and lacks honesty in trying to understand what was meant in the first place.
So you agree that government should take over the finances of the people as they can't be trusted to lose it all in gambling, get rich quick schemes.
This question is valid only if Apple lets apps host their own apps, bring their own payment system.
Apple bans all such activities, has held the entire app ecosystem and seeks rent. If they think their offering is superior, then they should be OK competing. The fact that they have not opened it up says that they are happy to overcharge.
Remember, competition is always good. Let Stripe and Apple duke it out on payment processing, and let the best one win.
Let games me hosted both on Epic Store and App Store, and let users decide where to download it from.
That will be fair.
> Apple lets apps host their own apps, bring their own payment system.
And also not require those apps to be also approved by Apple, which they are trying to do with AltStore and the DMA.
Users should be able to go to a dev's website, pay them directly, and download the ipa and install it with a click from the website. Having to go through any kind of "app store" at all should be optional.
Hardly always good. The mobile app ecosystem on both iOS and Android is a morass of freemium games and ad slop, because the market has determined that hooking one whale is more important than creating a quality product.
The competition will find the most profitable process, not the one that serves customers best necessarily.
The biggest change the iPhone users are going to see an increase in spyware. They'll also notice in a few years a bunch of websites go Chrome only.
On Macs, users can download and install apps freely from the internet, and that platform isnt "a morass of freemium games and ad slop".
Why is that for one platform, everything needs to go through AppStore while the other it is OK - and both are equally secure?
Are you sure you're not falling for Apple's reality distortion field?
Not OP, and not that I buy that the App Store serves its purpose given what's currently on it, but I just don't think the two platforms are comparable.
iPhones outnumber Macs something like 10:1. The user base tech literacy is lower on average. The usage habits are different.
The payoff for creating freemium and ad slop stuff on iOS is way higher.
So in this scenario would Epic then need to develop and maintain their own toolchain and SDK for their app store? The development tools and education are also worth something, Epic shouldn’t get that for free.
Epic has a toolchain and SDK for their own app store. So does Valve, and many other competitors, and Apple won't let them install their toolchain on iOS.
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/
Dystopian story plot:
Apple completely opens up the iOS platform. Do whatever you like.
Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Don’t like it? Build your own.
> Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Don’t like it? Build your own.
And people will. That's how competition works. If someone thinks they can make a profit by offering a) better product b) same product at a cheaper price, you'll see investment.
VCs will be pouring money to capture that market.
> And people will.
And it will likely be much better too.
Say no one builds their own, and iPhones now only have first party apps. How many people are going to buy them now? How well did the Windows phone sell with no app support? How's the app support on the Apple Vision Pro?
The idea that devs owe Apple for use of their SDKs and API development is absurd. Apple already profits from it as people by their phones due to the amount of third party app support. See how Apple's profits go when WhatsApp, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix Uber, banking apps, are all no longer available on their devices.
Vision Pro is an excellent example
What Apple really needs to do is mimic their old policy of no fees except for games. Let everyone develop for it, and then rug pull by making the fees apply to everything
But they can’t do it twice. So the Vision Pro ends up with no ecosystem
If I'm remembering correctly, the community jailbroke the iPhone OS and produced a toolchain and app installer before the App Store's original release.
Have you heard of gcc? The entire open source ecosystem exists because people were able to build their own.
It's entirely possible to build apps to run on OSX without touching Apple tools .. except for notarization, which they force you to use.
That would be the best outcome!
We would be back to the real days of computing.
> Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Don’t like it? Build your own.
That's what people literally did, multiple times, for multiple systems, and did a much better job than encumbents
Why stop at xcode?
Add a licensing fee for UIKit, Core Data, Core Text, Core Audio, Core Graphics, Metal, Network, SwiftUI, Quartz and all the other libraries apps use constantly.
Heck, why not for the OS itself? If you don't want to pay, they could conceivably dump you into an isolated VM and force you to write your own OS and userspace device drivers.
> Heck, why not for the OS itself?
We used to pay for OSes and OS upgrades. Heck, you still have to pay for Windows.
How much of a fee do you think you should pay to install applications on your computer? The same amount as that.
Or provide alternative ways to install software.
This is a problem of their own creation.
As soon as you open the door to side-loading, you'll have scammers and data-siphoners force all their users to side-load so that they can completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security features. The entire iOS ecosystem is built on the App Store review process as a gatekeeper for entitlements and the capabilities they grant (through API access).
How do you solve that problem for side-loaded apps?
Sideloading, AKA "installing software on your device", is something PCs have been handling just fine for decades. It's fine to warn the user when they're going off the beaten trail, but do not lock them in a cage to prevent them from doing so.
If they ignore the warnings and get scammed because they are unable to identify reputable software from disreputable software, they learn a life lesson. Life goes on. There should be no societal expectation that everyone is prevented from ever taking an action that could bring themselves harm, by preventing them from taking actions at all.
There are entire classes of people who have simply given up on PCs and only use a phone, so I would call that substantial evidence that PCs have NOT "been handling [it] just fine." For these folks, PCs are a total failure; a dead end. A danger zone to be avoided at all costs.
If you have a citation that droves of people are abandoning PCs for phones specifically because PCs allow them to install software of their choice, rather than other reasons like the convenience of a computer that fits in their hand, I'd be interested in seeing it. Because that sounds like an absolutely outrageous claim to be asserting as a fact to me.
You can Google it yourself. There are tons of studies showing a decline in technology literacy among younger generations (Z and alpha). Millennials were the peak.
This shows that younger kids aren’t using traditional PCs, at least not to the same degree. They just use phones and tablets. At best they may play games on their PC by installing via Steam. Very few of them are becoming proper technologists (able to install and use any software, script the computer, or write their own software).
No shit. That's completely different from what you claimed, though, which was specifically that people were giving up PCs to become smartphone users because they appreciated the lack of choice that smartphones gave them.
The phenomenon you're talking about now is so completely in another universe that it's insane you would conflate the two. I actually can't finish typing this response properly because it's hurting my head every second I continue to think about your argument. To sum it up really shortly: smartphones universal, required to even participate in society, people now given smartphones from early age, multi-functional as phones, cameras, etc, they fit in your pocket, more than sufficient for normie use cases and in fact more suitable for many use cases that don't entail sitting at a desk at home, computers are specialised tools for specialised functionality that many people have no need for. There are 100000000 reasons why smartphone usage displaces PC usage that aren't because they explicitly abandoned PCs for the crime of allowing them to choose what software to install, which was your claim. Not even having mentioned that globally, 75% of smartphone usage is Android which doesn't lock its users in the cage (for the time being).
Do you think smartphones would be ubiquitous today if they had the malware situation that plagued Windows XP?
I think you overstate how bad said situation was, and to the extent it was a problem I doubt it had any meaningful impact on PC usage rates, and I have not the slightest doubt that such a situation would have had minimal bearing on smartphone adoption. People are drawn to things that offer utility to them, regardless of any downsides. That's why people will happily hand over the entire details of their private life to any internet service that asks it of them, and why the market does not punish any company that has security breaches and loses hundreds of millions of people's personal information. Security and privacy are at the very bottom of a normie's list of concerns in practice, even if they might say they care in surveys. If something is useful to them, they will use it regardless of security and privacy flaws.
Edit: It's also telling that you need to go back to XP to make your case. It's 2025. Security practices have improved a ton to give people more protection from themselves without outright taking away their freedom to make choices.
Also, let's again re-iterate that Android usage outnumbers iOS by three-to-one, so it is clear in practice that people are in fact willing to adopt a phone that allows them to make mistakes (if they try very hard to).
You think smartphones give people fewer choices?
Yes.
Now you have a multibillion-dollar supranational corporation playing judge jury and executioner for any of your choices.
E.g. App Store prohibits adult content (which is not illegal). Prohibits emulators (which are not illegal) [1]. Prohibits or hinders the use of better alternatives to pre-installed apps (Photos, Camera, Maps, Siri) [1]. Removes any and all apps if there's a hint of displeasure from wannabe dictators.
Basically, you don't have your range of choices. You have Apple's range of choices.
[1] Some of these choices are now better on iOS precisely due to Apple losing the fight against governments. They finally allowed emulators after they lost a battle against alternative app stores. They finally gave options to change some default apps (but not all, and not in all countries, see e.g. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/14/dma-compliance-default-ma...)
Appstore has been the only app store on IOS for nearly 2 decades. And you are saying IOS has been a perfect safe zone, and you cannot lose any hard-earn money on IOS for 2 decades? What a joke.
> There are entire classes of people who have simply given up on PCs and only use a phone
Which actually makes the case for "Apple cannot control what people install on their devices or demand that apps pay them and can't even use other payment providers"
The same can be said about alcohol, yet all you need to do is reach alcohol age in the country you live in, no "license to drink alcohol". Why PCs should be treated differently?
Thank you for your concern, but I need a phone, not a device to manage dementia. I don't see why nobody should be allowed to have the former just because a few people need the latter.
Botnets, rootkits, virus, malware.
That’s how fine PC’s have been doing software.
Search for your preferred PC brand and list of CVEs.
I’ve had Windows / malware roll back a BIOS update to a previous version that had a know (published CVE) remote code execution vulnerability complete with published proof of concept.
There was some point around 15 years ago when it was nearly impossible to download and install Windows software without getting some extra adware and etc. This was true even for 'legit' vendors like Sun and Adobe. (Plus Google would offer up wrapped installers for Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.) Honestly if you thought "things were fine", you were ignoring the Linux/Mac people laughing about it.
"Nearly impossible" is quite a stretch. While it was certainly shameful that it ever became as mainstream as it did, it was a matter of unticking checkboxes in the adware installers, and there was plenty of software out there that did not engage in that behaviour to begin with. At any rate, I didn't say anything about operating systems. You can also install software of your choice on Linux or Mac. I'm not really sure what point you were driving at there.
Point being the only real difference between Windows and Mac was marketshare. (Linux doesn't have an ABI, software predominantly comes from the 'store'.)
Having an app store does literally nothing to prevent adware. Almost all apps currently on the Apple app store or Google play store are adware.
The PC app ecosystem is a tiny fraction of the App Store's, outside of, notably, Steam's locked down closed ecosystem.
Having a single way to pay, subscribe, cancel, browse apps, beta test versions, and update apps, proved to be a huge game changer for making software accessible while also minting millionaires around the world in terms of small development teams.
In 2024, computer software generated around $373b in revenue while mobile apps generated around $522b. Given that smartphone usage is significantly higher worldwide than computer usage (around 2 to 1 ratio), the stats do not really support your thesis that locking down software access to the whims of a monopoly hegemon results in a massive financial boon to application developers. Even if it did, it still would not justify the harm to the end user entailed, but it also just doesn't do what you say it does to begin with.
Incidentally, while looking this up, I discovered that 2/3rds of that $522b in app revenue comes from in-app advertisements. And here somebody was trying to mock Windows for being adware friendly circa 2005. Good lord.
My precise location data and credit card transactions are freely available on the market.
Just by companies listed on the stock market who got that data "legally" in our current walled and "safe" garden.
I appreciate a lockdown for kids and elders, but let's not pretend our data is locked safely away in this walled garden.
Credit card and location data is one thing. If we opened up these devices to the Wild West we’d have spyware that tracks every single thing you do on the phone in real time (and logs all your conversations and everything else). We’d also have malware that gets root access to the phone and breaks into your bank accounts.
It would be a total disaster!
1. The app store is already mostly spyware.
2. Apps are actively encouraged by Apple and Google to be spyware.
3. An app store cannot prevent spyware.
4. Sandboxing is unrelated to an app store.
5. Most source code is not available on the app store, and Apple and Google are actively hostile to open source apps.
6. There is zero source auditing done on the app store.
How is it that I can load MacOS apps from anywhere, and yet they don't "completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security features"?
The context here is mobile. Everyone understands that you're free to break/install things as you wish, in macOS, if you disable the "dumb user" safeguards.
Does Apple have an explicit guarantee that apps can not scam or data siphon from an iPhone or iPad app?
Yes, assuming that iOS's entitlement security has not been broken.
As if the App Store had any sort of those guarantees. I know of people have been scammed via WebView wrappers that purported to be some benign app to pass app store review, which were then pointed at fake exchange websites afterwards. GitLab which was hosting their C&C mechanism took action faster than Apple or Google did to take down multiple scam apps across multiple different developer identities, but the scammers spun up new apps the next day.
WebView wrappers don't have any more ability to siphon data out of the phone than any other app. Scammers can always scam users if they can trick them into entering data into a website. There's nothing anyone can do about that (besides blocking web access).
The point is Apple isn't really helping with the problem because the weakest link is people. If you can get someone to install malicious software how much more difficult is it to have them willingly give it via phishing?
I don’t see how going back to the Wild West of the PC era is supposed to help these nontechnical users be safer. The App Store isn’t perfect but it’s far, far safer than that.
I have vivid memories of loads of relatives in the Windows XP era with browsers laden with toolbars that spy on everything they do and slow the computer to a crawl. Those users see something like the iPhone as a massive breath of fresh air. Nothing you install on the App Store can inject adware into the rest of the operating system like that.
> Nothing you install on the App Store can inject adware into the rest of the operating system like that.
That has literally fuck all to do with the app store. That's called sandboxing - the app store has nothing to do with sandboxing. They are different things.
Why are we being dishonest.
So... what's the point of all the onerous restrictions in the first place?
Point me to an Apple document that says they'll reimburse me if I'm scammed by an App Store app. If Apple cannot offer a guarantee, that means they don't trust their App Store to protect me and if they don't trust their App Store to protect me then they can hardly claim in court that they deny user choice to protect users.
Apple has literally zero "security features" that rely on the app store.
They do not review source code. There is malware on the Apple app store, because they do not review apps for malware. Because they do not review source code.
Any other opinion is just not true.
Apple gets most of it's appstore money from very shady casino-like game apps which I'm unconfortable giving to my family.
If there's any benevolent gatekeeping, I'm not seeing it.
For me it's not about the percentage, it's that it is a monopoly. If I make an iPad app, my only route to market is Apple.
That is before I get into my personal objection to having to ask permission to put software on a computer I bought. I own an iPad but I can't just install anything I want on it, Apple needs to approve the software first. For me that's just anti-creative and anti-everying-I-love-about-computers.
All I really want as a software developer is to be able to write software and have people use it if they choose to. I don't want Apple or any other company inserted as a middle-man.
“Quality Control”?
Outside of the absolute bare minimum to check this box for a plurality of observers, I can’t imagine anyone actually saying the App Store has a quality control process with a straight face, especially not one that would be championed as acceptable as a market practice.
The App Store "quality control" does its job (or tries to) to make sure developers aren't breaking their arbitrary rules. They would never actually do quality control because they benefit from all the junk being pushed to the App Store through their cut, search ads, etc.
Someone asks this every time, and the answer is always the same. Fair pricing can only be discovered in a competitive market. The problem is that Apple moves heaven and earth to prevent competitive markets from doing their thing.
That being said, this is the UK, where even in a reasonably competitive job market people can still sue their employer for "unfair pay" [1], so maybe the thinking here is a bit different than my silly classical liberal brain
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0817jd9dqo
The real issue isn’t Apple’s commission, it’s the lack of choice. Allowing app installations outside the App Store, as on macOS, would immediately subject Apple’s pricing to market pressure. The fee would drop on its own, without regulation.
Macs have allowed apps from "untrusted" sources for decades - and they’re doing just fine. So no, this isn’t about security. It’s about control and monopoly.
Exactly this. There is no way not to choose the App Store, regardless of the price. Apple goes further by making users believe alternatives are "less secure" and what not (which is not true) so it's not just about distribution, it's also a battle of perception. Even if Apple's App Store tax is 0.00, it would still be unfair and have negative impact on consumers due to the limited choice of apps and experiences they can get.
> making users believe alternatives are "less secure"
Meanwhile searching on Apple's App Store gives you unrelated crypto scam app as first hit. Apple looks so off-brand these days.
Even framing it as a percentage is a category error. If they're providing services, we should be able to pay for the cost of those services.
Beyond that, the app store is worth something in aggregate to app developers, but it's worth _more_ to Apple. Without the app store the iOS ecosystem doesn't exist. Without Apple, developers work on the next best platform. Under that framing, shouldn't Apple be paying developers to not leave the platform?
The fact that neither of those things is happening (total rent is disproportionately larger than the services provided, and the net flow of cash is toward the beneficiary of value rather than away from it) points to a monopoly worth breaking down. Those aren't hard rules, but they're suggestive facts.
Actually answering your question: Payment processors charge up to 5% and do more due diligence and have more overhead than Apple, so if I had to name a percentage on every transaction (a viewpoint I already disagree with), 5% would be a hard upper bound. IME, the value Apple provides from their "services" in that space is usually negative aside from the fact that you have to do business with them, so I think the actual price should be much less.
There is no way to define a "fair" percentage. Fairness is entirely subjective. Require Apple to allow alternative third-party app stores and let the free market sort it out.
If Apple thinks what they're offering is worth the price they're charging, why are they so scared of having to compete in the market? Their service is worth what people choose to pay for it, and currently that's 0 since no-one is choosing it.
> ”Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage?”
The UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) believes it is 17.5%.
One issue, IMO, with this determination is the existence of Steam, which reportedly also takes 30% yet operates in a competitive market on open platforms. So there is a case to force Apple to open the platform to other app stores, but the argument to regulate Apple’s pricing is much weaker.
Thing is that's a question for the market to decide. Which is why we have anti-trust / anti-monopoly laws in the first place. We don't want the state setting "fair" prices for anything, it always backfires. We want them ensuring the market is free to set prices. Monopolies granted by the state (trademarks, copyright, patents) are specific and limited, and ideally we want monopolies that arise naturally to be similarly limited, or broken up if they are being weaponised against the public.
How much should we be paying Microsoft when we buy Steam games on Windows? 30%?
I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on the Windows app store as long as they loosened their grip on being able to run what you want, from where you want, without their explicit blessing.
Same applies to Apple. If their App Store is really that good, it can compete on a fair playing field with other options (and no, 3rd party app stores that still require Apple's blessing and taxes don't count).
What software can’t run on Windows without Microsoft’s blessing?
Anything that isn't signed with certs from Microsoft-blessed CAs, anything that is signed with certs that were revoked either by Microsoft or their blessed CAs, and anything newly signed with old certs that weren't renewed for a $100+/yr fee. That, or you upload your app to Azure for cloud signing where Microsoft decides to bless it or not, and you might pay less than going with a full code signing cert from a CA.
Ran into this fun issue a while back[1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40815488
Sorry you hit that bug but you can definitely run unsigned code on windows.
Never claimed you couldn't, try distributing that unsigned code and see if your users can figure out how to run it, or if their OS will gaslight them into thinking they just downloaded a virus, or if they get past that, if they can get past the additional warning window that purposely doesn't show[1] the "Run anyway" button that lets you run what you want.
Running signed apps doesn't require you to know a cursed arcane ritual to run the apps you want to run, you just double click them. Having to travel through several circles of hell, each time being urged to turn around immediately, just to run unsigned code means the vast majority of users are shit out of luck when it comes to running something they want if it's not in good standing with Microsoft.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4270245/...
Well you did claim that, but thank you for correcting. So that warning is bad for a developer because of confused and annoyed users, but in terms of actual user restriction it's not super bad. If defender is set to be too aggressive, that's a one time change, so about on par with Android. And for the normal (I think? Did the default change?) setting you just use run anyway. That's far away from how iOS makes it impossible.
Edit: Everything I can find says that taking away the "run anyway" button is not default. If a user or their sysadmin changes that setting I don't really blame Microsoft.
No, this is what I claimed:
> I'd be okay giving Microsoft whatever they wanted on the Windows app store as long as they loosened their grip on being able to run what you want, from where you want, without their explicit blessing.
I am talking about their grip on what you're allowed to run with or without their blessing, not that you "can't run unsigned binaries at all". They have a tightened grip, in that without their blessing, running what you want is an exercise in futility for 99% of users.
> Edit: Everything I can find says that taking away the "run anyway" button is not default. If a user or their sysadmin changes that setting I don't really blame Microsoft.
It's exactly what I experienced when running an unsigned binary in a fresh Windows 11 VM with the default Defender settings, which are all on by default. This is how SmartScreen works by default with binaries it doesn't like.
Okay, that new default is a significant worsening.
> what I claimed
Your first comment was fine. Your response to nandomrumber was the problem. They asked about "can't run" and you gave a big list of situations that are interference but not "can't run".
What's Apples profit margins on their hardware? Just from that they're already getting what all that is worth.
The 30% app store cut is just rent seeking.
Well, the market will decide I guess. If this is the case, then competitors won't be an issue. If not, then Apple's goose is cooked.
I think the best thing would be if Apple just allowed other payment providers so like Stripe and I'm not sure I haven't followed it totally if they now kind of have been forced to do that but I think then you have a free market where developers can choose whether they want to use apples in app payments which are easier and probably results in better conversion rates or they want to use an external like Stripe or something like that. I don't think it's reasonable to pay for the app hosting or development other than the $100 fee per year that should certainly cover the cost of storing a few megabytes of an app.
Payment processors like Stripe, Wise etc are typically taking around 1-2% so that's a good anchor.
They can do whatever they want imo, if I'm allowed to install a third party apps and app stores.
> platform development
It's almost 100% platform development. The iPhone is a walled-garden game platform and Apple treats it like one.
To answer your question, it probably isn't sensible to expect Apple to charge a drastically different platform fee in its game store compared to what is charged for other walled-garden game platforms and stores like the Nintendo eShop.
It may be worth noting that Amazon's Luna game service can work on the iPhone in a web browser, so game streaming isn't exactly an Apple-enforced monopoly.
In the EU Apple is now charging ~12% just to be in the App Store or 20% for additional discoverability. Payment processing is on top of that. These fees seem somewhat fair to me.
If apple made it easy to install other stores. E.g. when you open the iPhone for the first time it would not prioritize the app store (like I think it does with browsers, at least android does).
This would create a more fair market. This would allow for competition. Which would allow prices to even out and be more fair.
Long winded way of saying, I don't know what the fair percentage would be. But I know as it stands now, we cannot even begin to know it.
Your list is missing, "concentrating rich payers into one channel," which is why developers pay 30%, even if they don't like it.
They can charge whatever they want. But they can't force exclusivity. Without that, terms and benefits would be equitable.
Allow developers to distribute their apps outside of the app store, the cost apart for firmware maintenance and development will be 0.
Apple is not bringing its users value by prohibiting sideloading of arbitrary apps. Rather, this is an extreme example of rent-seeking which has affected almost all countries around the world. It needs to be regulated away.
The honest answer is that Apple shouldn't own iOS and its main app store at the same time. But there is not legal / regulation framework to prevent that.
Case in point: Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less fuss over it, right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like behavior around Steam? (probably partially) But more importantly it's because Valve doesn't own Windows and Steam Deck is a far smaller fry.
Steam's cut decreases to 20% after a certain amount of money. Also Steam does a lot more to earn their cut than any other platform, by far -- for example, they do a lot of promotion for you, both algorithmic and through things like Daily Deals, for free, whereas on iOS it is very difficult for ad spend to not be a significant part of your budget. The rule of thumb I've heard is, for every organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you one more sale. So their cut feels quite worth it.
A closer example is game consoles, whose associated stores also take 30%, and nobody seems to complain about.
> for every organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you one more sale
I'm not sure what you mean. Every game dev now refers what Steam algorithm gives you "organic sale."
Maybe my wording wasn't good -- I meant a sale driven primarily through a channel other than Steam (streamer, Reddit, ads, friend recommendation).
It's difficult for me to really trust this stat though because purchasing decisions are complicated.
Steam feels like a partnership with developers where Apple is a gatekeeper. I publish free games on Steam and all it costs is a $100 one time fee per game. I get human review and feedback on my marketing material and store page assets.
Apple is incredibly strict with the content they allow to the point that it feels like a they exclusively cater to children. It’s easier to vibe code the apps that I want under my own developer account because at least I can side load those.
Not sure why this was flagged. Apple is strict and does not allow graphic adult content, famously so [1]. One of the only exceptions you'll find is Twitter/X.
Steam does allow this. But, has recently started restricting some adult content [2].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/
[2] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/whats-going-on-with-steam-and-...
Steam sells games, which is mostly a "want" good. App Store has apps that have large scale economic and political implications - banking apps, messaging apps, etc. So it is understandable that people/governments care a lot more about reigning in the App Store than the Steam store.
Valve has plenty of competition and let people buy from other stores even on the Steam Deck. Heck, you can even add games bought on other store to the Steam Launcher and still use Valve functionality like controller mapping in them.
> Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less fuss over it, right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like behavior around Steam?
It's because Valve doesn't routinely screw over developers and gamers. Steam never removed a game from Steam because it could cause "customer confusion" because it was too similar to one of Valve's own games. When Valve released the Steam Deck, they didn't layer on a bunch of trash for "safety", they sold gamers a portable Arch Linux box that, other than running Windows games on Linux, also runs local LLMs, games from GOG, and development environments. You can write games for Steam on a Steam Deck, compile them, and run them. It's the exact opposite of what Apple is doing - Valve offers total control, and you can use it to do awesome stuff without having to pay a tithe to some overlord corporation that thinks they still own hardware that you purchased from them.
You can also mod your Steam Deck to your heart's content. There's a plugin called Junk Store that will let you use other stores.
People are understandably much more amenable to Valve because the company as a whole behaves in a much more cooperative and pro-consumer way... e.g. Steam deck repair options, furthering Linux gaming, and Gaben's general philosophy.
Cult-like or not, I find it reasonable to support companies that do things which you agree with. Valve's non-adversarial approach to business (as opposed to many rent-seeking corps these days) probably helps that perception.
A Fair percentage is whatever the market decides, not Apple. That is why they are monopoly
So you believe quality control is part of the App Store review process?
That's what the market will determine once Apple is forced to compete.
5% tops.
As a professional iOS app publisher, I feel 15% is fair.
Genuine question, is the App Store fee a tax deductible business expense in your country?
Of course. Apple removes their cut first before paying out. I’m in the US.
Whatever Apple needs in order to compete with third-party distributors. They can set it to a 105% tax for all I care, just let me use third-party alternatives.
The platform development is seriously one of the worst in the market, most apps would be fine with Stripe and what QC?
Free apps pay nothing, so Apple has already shown that everything other than payments can be done for free.
Whatever they want, but let me use MY phone to install whatever app I want outside of the app store.
You bought the phone knowing you can only install from the App Store. Buy a different phone.
That's not how the justice system works, kiddo.
> The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something.
1. I didn't know iPhones are free. Or iPads. Or Macs. Or Apple developer program
2. Apple could just... not host apps or provide payment services, and allow people to install apps from alternatives and let devs use other payment systems
> and allow people to install apps from alternatives and let devs use other payment systems
Pre iPhone this is how all software was sold.
Not defending Apple, but independent developers ended up with far smaller piece of the pie.
That’s one of the reasons devs flocked to the AppStore. At the time 70% was exceedingly generous compared to other distributors.
> That’s one of the reasons devs flocked to the AppStore. At the time 70% was exceedingly generous compared to other distributors.
It's quite ironic how the company that disrupted the frankly predatory pricing model standard at the time is now itself predatory.
Somewhat tangential:
It's also complicated by the markets changing: PCs used to be the ubiquitous platform (where you could distribute whatever you wanted however you wanted [1]), and the mobile phone was a luxury-ish product (tightly controlled by distributors). Now mobile phones are the ubiquitous platform everyone depends on... and they are extremely tightly locked down and controlled.
[1] Has anyone paid for their WinRaR license yet? :)
Payment processor fees plus a couple of percentage points. At most.
Apple _already_ gets its money from users of their overpriced devices. They even get at least $300-$400 a year from developers in hardware depreciation because you have to use pretty expensive Apple devices to write software for iOS.
That's way y to find out - stop blocking the competition
IMO: Any number, as long as it is not expressed as a percentage.
If only there was a mechanism which would allow companies to offer similar services then maybe as they try to get customers they would fix prices so as to make money but gain market shares and the price would emerge. That would be truly efficient. Surely we would then fine companies which do their best to avoid that and not try to find excuses for their practices.
50-75%
10%. A finder's fee, like everything else irl. It should be regulated as such for all platforms.
Wholeheartedly agree. 30% fee feels like medicare in USA, an excessive amount because it's as high as developers will pay without giving up and leaving.
The Apple App Store sold more than one trillion USD in 2024, how much of their 30% cut (300+ billion) covers operational costs? ¿10%?
I was unaware finders fee were universally 10%, or even regulated to be so.
> “The CAT also ruled that app developers passed on 50% of the overcharge to consumers.”
This is complete nonsense. App companies set price based on willingness to pay. If Apple allows custom payments alongside IAP, you might get a temporary gap (naturally <30%) to steer people towards in-house payments, with harder refunds etc. But as soon as they're no longer required to adopt IAP their own prices will go back up to exactly what they were.
The vast majority of Apple's app/IAP revenue is from "mobile game" companies. You think they won't enjoy a 42% increase in iOS revenue (1/0.7=1.42) by keeping prices at a level consumers have already accepted for years? There's no "lower sales" tradeoff, customers are used to those prices.
interesting I suspect the UK uses the same Regan Era definition of monopolistic practice as the US, meaning monopoly is fine so long as prices seen by consumers are low (or rather not provably raised)
The UK adopted the EU antitrust model in the 1990s and still kept it after Brexit. So it's has a lot more stuff about 'fairness' and controlling markets, it's not just about prices or monopolies abusing their market position or blocking mega mergers. At least on paper...
You mean Circuit Court judge Robert Bork's "consumer welfare" standard?
He's the genius behind that.
The same Robert Bork whose SCOTUS nomination got held up by the Senate in a deluge of fire and fury, only for Antonin Scalia to get the job and make the same kind of rulings much more articulately.
In English law, is there a clearly defined, well understood, written standard of “fair”?
I don't know, but when every single business on the planet has to pay you 30% for access to mobile device users, it definitely isn't.
> when every single business on the planet has to pay you 30% for access to mobile device users
That doesn’t describe Apple’s situation though. Most businesses don’t distribute software at all; those that do mostly don’t need to distribute native iOS apps; those that do mostly don’t need to pay App Store fees; those that do mostly have to pay 15%. It’s only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that need to pay 30%.
> those that do mostly have to pay 15%
This case only concerns Apple's App Store fees before 2020; it was a blanket 30% charge for paid apps until they introduced those changes following the whole Epic Games legal saga etc.
Apple are not paying a penalty for anything after 2020 when the new rules allowing those with lower turnover to pay 15% came into effect etc.
> It’s only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that need to pay 30%
During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.
> During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.
This is still not correct. The original claim was “every single business on the planet”. That’s ridiculously overstated.
Even if you massively narrow the scope to only businesses that have iOS apps that make money directly through the app, it’s still not true. The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps.
Take Uber, for instance. They make vast amounts of money through their iOS app. They do not have to pay Apple 30%, or 15%, or anything beyond the basic $99/yr developer account fee. They absolutely do not have to pay 30% for access to the platform.
Or Spotify, a common complainant, who pays Apple $0 because they only sign up accounts on their website.
> The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps
This is not correct at all and grossly misrepresents how Apple collects revenues on the store - the 30% applied to the list price of any paid app as well.
Prior to 2020, if your app had a price tag on the app store, you paid 30% of said price to apple on every sale. There is no ifs, no buts, no lower rate for smaller players like today. You had a price tag, you paid 30%, whether you sold 100m copies or 5.
The decision taken by the CAT here concerns the fee for paid apps (what they call the distribution charge) as well as in app fees, the latter of which had some exemptions for specific transaction types from the likes of Amazon, Uber etc (but famously not Spotify or Epic Games, or the Amazon Kindle app etc etc...). The "distribution charge" did not.
All those percentages are arbitrary, none of them are set through natural competition.
Good on the UK for not backing down. 15% or 150%, Apple should not be exempted from participating in a true market economy.
What are you referring to when you say “all those percentages”? I only mention two; 15% and 30%. 30% wasn’t arbitrary; it was in line with what other platform providers like Nintendo and Sony were charging at the time. If you’re referring to the multiple fractions of fractions, then obviously a business that has nothing to do with software isn’t being coerced by Apple.
How do web pages accessed from (for example) Safari cost the publisher 30% of a subscription fee, when a subscription might be established off mobile first?
How are web pages analogous to installing mobile software, in this particular example?
> has to pay you 30% for access to mobile device users
is what the parent comment said, which overlooked web and assumed native app installs
In every single aspect of "business on the planet enabling access to mobile device users".
No? Websites are a subset of the software market, not the other way around. Apple can absolutely monopolize software distribution while providing a web browser.
Where does this meme come from? Spotify pays Apple nothing more than a $99 developer fee, and the streaming music business would not exist in its current form without iPhone.
Why do so many people quote the 30% number?
Only apps with more than $1,000,000 annual revenue are paying 30%. Most apps are smaller than that and are hit with a 15% fee.
I think you should aggregate by app installs, not distinct apps. The apps to make most impact, are most-installed apps. What if my app blows up to a tune of 1.2 mil? I'll be paying 400k Apple tax just because that's why?
Good point.
The percentage rate should go down the more you sell. That’s usually how scale works.
Because the 30% is "opt-in" not automatic, the $1m threshold applies to all your apps and associated accounts apps combined, and $1m is just not a big target anymore considering 8400 people on $10/month subscriptions will get you over that line.
And of course, when they announced this big discount it was reported to apply to about 5% of actual IAP spending, which would make the average commission fee being paid around 29%.
tldr; it's a weaselly discount.
> $1m is just not a big target anymore
Yes it is. The percentage of developers in the App Store who make more than $1 million per year is tiny.
According to this analysis[1], it's a single digit percentage. Hardly anybody pays 30%.
[1]:https://sensortower.com/blog/app-store-revenue-share-analysi...
That's a 2020 report,by 2023 Apple was saying the $1m+ developers had grown to 10% of developers and many small developers were now earning $1m+. Correlating of course with the subscription-ification of everything.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/small-developers-on-t...
No, that's why courts and tribunals exist: to decide what's just in each specific case.
Yes. People always think about the law as if it is code. But code means it can be hacked (loopholes can be found, etc.) Therefore, better leave the law open to interpretation and let a judge sort it out.
The UK doesn’t even have a single sourced constitution. Just random things from random times in random documents. Parliament is essentially king and can just make any law it wants at anytime with a basic majority. Nothing is codified. There are no real standards.
The UK is one of the most arbitrarily defined places in terms of law. It’s why they can have and enforce a 2-tier system. “Stirring things up” is literally a charge a judge can arbitrarily rule on. Place is hilarious.
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Looks like their net profit globally is like $90-100B per year. If you think of the share of profit that's coming just from the UK, this is probably very sizeable as a penalty.
apparently people will make this same comment every single time whether it's a $2M fine or a $2B fine
Why even have fines when they amount to an insignificant cost of doing business? What is the purpose? If the purpose is to deter companies from doing some thing, then a fine that equals a tiny number of days revenue is not providing any kind of deterrence.
Isn’t this a counter factual that can’t be proved? How do you know it won’t deter other companies?
The thread is not about other companies. It's about Apple, and they can eat a one-time $2B fine for breakfast without even noticing it. It's not much of a deterrence. I'll be convinced the law has teeth when they're fined $2B daily until they take corrective action.
(Shrug) Illegal with a fine is legal for a price. Apple can easily afford the price.
That's why you head them off with $3Q fines.
Yeah dipstick. C-suits quite literally sit around and discuss if it is worth breaking the law or not based on how much they will make vs the anemic penalties. Its a HUGE societal problem that apparently you don't understand.
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how can I sue Google and Apple for not letting me change my device’s MAC address (Pixel and iPhone) and internet companies for leaking my IP addresses for tracking my internet activity or to track me. Does it violate GDPR requirements?
For changing your MAC address, randomly generated MAC addresses are the norm unless you change your settings to use a static one. You can set up your phone to use the phone's MAC or to generate a new one every time, but by default it'll generate a MAC address per WiFi network.
As for tracking you and your internet activity, you can file a complaint with your local DPA to hopefully spur them into action, that's free. If they don't take action, or decide that your complaint won't convince a judge, you can contact a legal professional and pay them to take your case to court like with any other legal matter.
What are you talking about? Both iPhones and Android let you spoof your MAC address to a random or fixed value if you want, for privacy.
Also, "leaking my IP addresses" how the fuck do you expect a website to talk to you without an IP address to send the data back to.