> “IAP helps Apple efficiently collect a commission” — for payment processing, but also customer service and the use of Apple’s intellectual property. Without in-app purchases, “we would have to come up with another system to invoice developers, which I think would be a mess.” If Apple let developers tell users about other payment methods, Cook said later, “we would in essence give up our total return on our IP.”
Apple doesn't provide payment processing, customer service or anything on payments made using other payment methods, so there's nothing to invoice developers for. They also already charge developers a yearly fee for a developer account.
Am I misunderstanding the argument, does the article misrepresent it, or does it just not make sense?
> If Apple let developers tell users about other payment methods, Cook said later, “we would in essence give up our total return on our IP.”
Apple believes ("insists"?) that they deserve a cut of your app's revenue--however you might collect the money--because your app is using their "IP" in the form of all the libraries and tooling they nigh unto force you to use to build apps that run on their phone; like, to them, UIKit (I presume), Metal (which many people are only using because Apple refused to implement OpenGL or Vulcan), and (this is rich) apparently even Xcode (wtf: that thing sucks ;P) is so awesome that they deserve 30% of your revenue, and they spent a bunch of time during their testimony trying to show the various ways Epic used--and even liked--their software.
The largest part of app store revenue is games, most games use only a small subset of Apple APIs, and very often only because Apple is not supporting industry standards (like Vulkan or OpenGL)
How is the parent comment at all relevant? Also, and feel free to think this is unrelated, why are so many having such a hard time understanding the basics of anti trust?
> because your app is using their "IP" in the form of all the libraries and tooling they nigh unto force you to use to build apps that run on their phone; like, to them, UIKit (I presume), Metal (which many people are only using because Apple refused to implement OpenGL or Vulcan), and (this is rich) apparently even Xcode
And say what you will about Xcode, but I’m literally building in Vapor 4 (server side Swift) with all of its warts because I experience trauma leaving Xcode. JetBrains and VSCode are painful to get to function like Xcode - but if there are any pointers to make it a better experience I’m al ears...
Edit: just to reiterate. Users want long battery life, fast compile times / snappy apps, better connectivity into life...
And honestly Apple has almost screwed itself executing perfectly on those demands in its native platform.
We forget at the end of the day we all (devs, manufacturers, etc) are working to bring value to a customer, who has other relationships with other suppliers. Those other relationships create multiple Pareto equilibriums based on the utility function of the customer... this case is trying to reweight (with more philosophical reason) how millions of customers have previously and consistently chosen to balance their decisions
I think that's a bit harsh. I'm quite able to be productive in both JetBrains products and in Xcode. I'd say JetBrains is superior due to the whole Intentions debugging system, but conceptual it is not a quantum leap between the two of them.
Really it’s not that specific - all the APIs and features is just back-solving to justify their core belief that iPhone is God’s gift to developers and the economy, and Apple deserves a cut of all (digital) commerce that happens on it.
They are measuring themselves with double standards. On one side they want to defend their App Store tax and its immense height by counting usage of APIs, the store's distribution bandwidth etc. as value the developer pays for via commissions. On the other side they advertise to the world how many millions of free apps they have in their store.
Either those free apps are somehow not using any of their IP, not consuming any bandwidth and not using any support resources, or the entire argument is BS.
For the customer service part, I suppose that if the user has any issue, they'll likely go to Apple first which can't do anything and make the user experience less ideal. As of today, they can refund the user which keeps them happy.
Apple doesn't provide payment processing, customer service or anything on payments made using other payment methods, so there's nothing to invoice developers for. They also already charge developers a yearly fee for a developer account.
Am I misunderstanding the argument, does the article misrepresent it, or does it just not make sense?