[jcstauffer]

Unpopular opinion: the 30% that Apple charges includes customer acquisition cost.

As a thought experiment, if Hey adds In-App Purchase for subscriptions, but everyone who downloads the app has first signed up for their service due to their marketing methods (an increasing likelihood considering this controversy), then nobody will use the In App Purchase, and Hey will send $0.00 to Apple.

If someone discovers the App in the App Store due to an organic search for Email clients, then they are likely to sign up via In App Purchase, and Hey pays Apple an affiliate fee of 30% of first year revenue, and 15% of lifetime revenue after that. This is a customer that Hey would not have had if not for the App Store, so getting 75-80% of lifetime value seems better than not acquiring the customer in the first place.

I realize it's not entirely as clean as that, but cast in that way, the amounts seem merely expensive, and not egregious.

(not to defend any of Apple's behavior - particularly the most recent letter sent).

[ryanar]

Hey is arguing that they want the choice to unlist from the app store entirely so their client would never surface in organic search results, and have no IAP link. That way the only audience they gain are from people they themselves marketed to and purchased a subscription on the web.

But it's unfair to Apple! They get 0.00 for this!

Bullshit.

Every Apple customer who wants to use HEY gets a great mobile experience to encourage them to keep buying Apple products. If enough services like Dropbox, Netflix, Spotify, were not available on iPhone, the consumer might purchase the Android phone on their next upgrade, or the company might switch their fleet to Android devices that actually support their business software.

Basecamp / Hey is providing value to Apple's products by enriching their ecosystem. They should have the choice if they want to pay a 30% cut for organic search traffic in Apple's App Store.

[usaphp]

> Basecamp / Hey is providing value to Apple's products by enriching their ecosystem

Apple is providing value to Basecamp/Hey by providing a smartphone and an operating system that can run Hey app. "Hey" can simply remove the app from App store and provide a web based version if they don't want to pay for convenience of iOS and iPhone.

[parthdesai]

They would, but it's a shame that that everyone is forced to use webkit on iOS and for some reason is refusing to implement push notification API need to make PWA's. I wonder what that reason could be.

[hinkley]

When the App Store launched, 30% was a huge improvement to the rates extracted in the walled gardens the mobile carriers were running.

Ten years ago 30% was entirely defensible. That it hasn't budged at all is a little weird. If it had notched down to 25% and then to 22% with a hope on the horizon of 20%, I think a lot fewer people would be so salty.

In-app purchases are a tricky one, for game-theoretical reasons. With in-app purchases your base app can be a loss-leader, and in an ecosystem where 'free' is allowed then you make more money with in-app purchases than you would with a monolithic app. We are already overusing in-app purchases, if Apple made them cheaper then everything would be in-app purchases. In-app purchases also make QA harder, so whatever curation power they have is diluted and usually not in a good way.

My heart says in-app purchases should have a lower tax, because Apple is doing less of the work. But my brain says that the opposite is the case.

What is really hurting the people I know (which admittedly isn't many) is that upgrade prices aren't really a thing in the App Store. They don't even have bundling options like Steam. Which means you have to cobble something like it together via in-app purchases.

[beowulfey]

I 100% agree. I think if Apple was consistent across all apps (i.e. they allow users to subscribe outside of their ecosystem with no restriction, but only charged 30% if purchased through ecosystem) nobody would be complaining about the 30% at all. The major issue is that a smaller app is being penalized for not having the clout that someone like Netflix has and being able to bypass the rule.

[starbugs]

Try making your app appear in search results via organic store searches. Good luck.

In my experience, you will likely either pay for search results or do marketing on your own using other channels. Both are paid and Apple doesn't do anything for it.

There's really no good case for taking 30% as long as there's no real marketing benefit from the App Store.

[manmal]

I basically agree with the sentiment that the 30% cut is justified in some situations. But, for convenience, some (many?) people will not sign up on the website, and instad just download the iOS app and do the signup and purchase there. They will pay the "Apple tax" for no reason at all, or simply because the App Store already has their credit card data. And this doesn't really sit right with me.

[learc83]

You're forgetting about the people who find Hey through some other channel, but sign up through the app anyway.

And because discoverability on the app store is terrible, of the people who sign up through the app, it's very likely that the majority of them won't have discovered it through the app store.

[hellisothers]

This is a great nuance that seems to be being lost in the holy war.