[HatchedLake721]

Because by suggesting Apple pay developers to make apps and not the other way around you either don't know history, how markets and distribution work, or you're making a joke.

You strategy played out very well in pre 2008 days with Windows Mobile. It also played out very well for Microsoft paying developers to create apps for Windows Phone, before Microsoft admitted defeat and left the phone market they were in since 1996.

About the 15%.

Have you tried running a business to make a living?

Have you tried building something yourself?

Have you tried selling it in 155 countries?

Have you tried getting access to a market of 1+ billion people?

Have you tried monitoring you don't breach regulations and tax thresholds in 155 countries?

Have you tried registering for VAT MOSS in one of the EU countries?

Have you tried implementing IP geo-location for your European customers, to charge a correct VAT amount out of 27 options?

[varispeed]

This is laughable. You can setup Shopify to sell your physical inventory worldwide plus get an invoicing solution that deals with MOSS etc. for fraction of what Apple charges for hosting a file in an app. Plus they don't allow competing app stores, so they can dictate these extortionate prices.

[HatchedLake721]

I don't know what an e-commerce platform has to do with a distribution platform.

Just because you can create a store with Shopify, or build a website with Wix, doesn't mean you get access to a marketplace with billion people in it.

There's a reason why sellers want to be on Amazon, even when they have their own Shopify shops.

[toyg]

Once you get the foam out of your mouth, you could go and check how the various console markets were bootstrapped. Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well. Windows Mobile was undone by a number of mistakes (like rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch), paying developers was not one of them.

> about the 15%

Yeah, about that. As it is, it’s monopoly rent (and before you bring up consoles - yes, there too). Nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I wouldn’t be happy with 5% or 1% either, because the point is not how you measure the tax, but the tax itself and the fact that it’s not set by the market. Once they allow third-party appstores they can charge 50% for all I care.

[HatchedLake721]

It's very kind of you, but there's no foam coming out of my mouth. Thank you.

Was BlackBerry undone by rebuilding the platform 3 times from scratch too? And Symbian too?

> Paying developers to make apps is just fine, if done well.

Of course. But it hasn't been done well in the mobile world, has it? So why is it relevant here?

I remember pre 2008 when carriers controlled apps on phones. I also remember xda-developers days. Discoverability, distribution and quality was disaster compared to what we have today. And do you know what developers earned from their applications compared to today?

People take marketplaces and what has been done in the last 10 years for granted.

[toyg]

Should we also be happy that aristocracy has been abolished in most European countries, so the Napoleonic regime was excellent and we should have kept that? “It’s better than it was” is no argument for keeping still. Apple’s regime is more open than the previous one was, but it’s still nowhere near a really-open market.

I’m not sure why you’re trying to go through the catalogue of failures in the mobile world. Nokia afaik didn’t even pay developers, certainly not when they were spinning around trying to reboot their fossil OS - no app, paid or otherwise, could save that pile of crap. Blackberry I never followed, but I understand they also crumbled largely from within, I don’t think they ever paid developers either.

> why is it relevant here

It’s relevant in the sense that the lack of success of one particular effort does not mean the strategy is absolutely bad, as you were arguing.