[shaboinkin]

I feel an unintended fallout of an eventual mandate to allow 3rd party stores on iOS would be Apple charging a license for the frameworks and tooling they provide. Something like, "Want to use CoreML? Well, each API call will cost you. Or would you rather take our 30% flat rate?"

[sircastor]

I’m sure there would be piles of APIs supplied by other manufacturers that devs wold flock to. That doesn’t mean that they’d be any good. Part of what Apple did is make its software very performant for the hardware. They want the experience to be good for the user, and the Dev might not care that their app chews through the battery. I doubt that apple try to split their dev base like this.

[mistrial9]

"flat rate" means a fee is a fixed amount of money, not a percentage

[Bilal_io]

I am just being pedantic, but 30% is the opposite of what a flat rate is.

CoreML being a phone feature, then restricting it behind a paywall sounds like something customers would sue apple for. CoreML is already bundled in the price you pay when you purchase an iPhone. It will only work as a cloud service.

[shaboinkin]

As I understand it, 30% pays for all of the frameworks Apple develops that is available to you when you fire up Xcode, as well as everything involved with running the store, and they take their cut when you post on their store and sell stuff. If a law comes by and says Sorry Apple, you need to provide a way for other stores to exist in your ecosystem, well, something is going to have to pay for the development of these frameworks they provide.

>then restricting it behind a paywall sounds like something customers would sue apple for

Slightly difference scenario here but I feel it's similar. In my last job my company bought a system from Oracle that did a bunch of number crunching for processing images to be printed. As I understood it, Oracle charged for utilizing more cores, even though it was an on premise system and everything was already in the box ready to go.

If Apple, or anyone, makes hardware and wants to charge a license to use said hardware, isn't that legal? This sounds like BMW charging a license for their heated seats. The hardware is already there and ready to go, but is behind a paywall.

[smoldesu]

> As I understand it, 30% pays for all of the frameworks Apple develops that is available to you when you fire up Xcode, as well as everything involved with running the store, and they take their cut when you post on their store and sell stuff.

Xcode is free, though. Apple 'takes their cut' when you pay $99/year to be a registered Apple developer. If that's not enough, then maybe they need to review the checkbook again. Whatever the case is, Apple made a mistake by attaching the success of their software platform to the success of their App Store. The future of the internet was never going to be proprietary, they should have known that back when Microsoft was sued over IE. It's not illegal, but they're certainly teeing themselves up for the most radical antitrust scrutiny witnessed to-date.

It's just a dick move. Consumer advocacy groups should have fixed this by now, but Apple's legendary PR and reality distortion field has fended off most attacks so far.

[simondotau]

> Xcode is free, though.

Unreal Engine is "free" too.

Except it isn't. Neither Unreal Engine nor Apple's developer frameworks (shipped alongside Xcode) are public domain or copyleft. They're both proprietary code available under a license that permits certain usages, disallows certain usages, is royalty free under some conditions, and requires payment under other conditions.

> Apple 'takes their cut' when

That's not for you to decide. Epic can decide when to take money from developers who use Unreal Engine, and how much they're entitled to. It's equally Apple's decision which payment represents compensation for the developer's use of their intellectual property, and how much they're entitled to.

[dmitriid]

> Neither Unreal Engine nor Apple's developer frameworks (shipped alongside Xcode) are public domain or copyleft.

You're confusing free with libre. Apple's software and Unreal are free as in "free beer".

[simondotau]

> You're confusing free with libre.

I'm not confusing them. The fact that they are not libre is precisely the point I was making. They are both proprietary intellectual property and encumber the person using them with financial obligations under some conditions.

> Apple's software and Unreal are free as in "free beer".

No, they are not. They're free as in "free beer when consumed on our premises, max five per customer, and if you sell our free beer to someone else we'll take some of that revenue thank you very much".

[realusername]

I don't want to use xcode either, their tooling is terrible and the only reason I use it is because of Apple intentionally obfuscating their build and release process.

That's strange people think as it's providing some kind of "value" which needs to be paid, in reality it's the opposite, it's a problematic byproduct of the monopoly which I would get rid of given the choice.

[natch]

Just compile with command line tools and use any editor you want. The xcodebuild command line tool, which is distinct from Xcode lest there’s any confusion, is pretty well documented.

Under the hood it uses clang, which was developed with Apple support and which I guess has some value…

[smoldesu]

> which was developed with Apple support and which I guess has some value…

Clang was a community project, same as LLVM. Apple came along and threw money at it because of FOMO (very similar to CUPS) and eventually a XNU toolchain followed. Apple didn't really provide any value beyond support that already existed for FOSS operating systems.

[natch]

In name it was a community project. Chris Lattner was an Apple employee and it was his job. After which he also started Swift…

[Apocryphon]

In a different world, Apple would embrace alternate app stores- by having them operate on their own terms.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32170848

Many walled gardens, growing different plants, landscaped in different styles, with different admission fees, but ultimately conforming to basic principles and paying their dues to the Apple botanical society.

Apple Authorized App Merchants.

[musicale]

Nice idea, thought it would presumably shift the dispute over platform fees to a dispute over "Apple botanical society dues."

[Apocryphon]

That is true. I wonder what the payment structure is for Apple Authorized Service Providers or Apple Authorized Resellers. The economics definitely change when it comes to software. Consider a hypothetical iOS version of F-Droid: if such a third party store doesn't charge developers to host their apps, what kind of dues do they owe upstream? Apple would still claim that F-iOS is benefiting from the app distribution APIs and security features they're providing, not to mention updates to iOS itself.

[smoldesu]

> if such a third party store doesn't charge developers to host their apps, what kind of dues do they owe upstream?

In an ideal world? Nothing. Apple builds these APIs because they want people to use them, not because they expect a return on their investment. We established that precedent when Google litigated Oracle so many years back.

Of course, Apple will claim they need whatever they can get. Their lack of candid conversation with the community is exactly why we need to respond by taking away their taxman hat.