[stouset]

Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements.

If you want to compare it to desktop computers, great! Compare it to the macOS App Store which… takes a 30% commission.

Whether or not you personally agree that 30% is a reasonable fee, you can't simply deny that operating the app store costs money and resources. Further, it isn't unreasonable for them to try to recoup those costs or even to make some profit off of providing the service.

[justinclift]

> Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store.

Isn't that a forced situation though, unlike with macOS?

With macOS anyone can throw an application on a website (GitHub, etc) and the users can download the application and run it.

To get rid of the scary warnings, there's even a $99 dev membership that can be used to sign the macOS binaries.

iOS developers don't have any choices to host their binaries elsewhere though.

The EU "allow side loading" thing might allow for some improvement there (hopefully), but I'm not sure.

[xyzzy_plugh]

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure signing and notarizing is required on macOS now, without disabiling SIP. At least for things downloaded from a browser. My interpretation is that $99/year is required if you want to avoid your users needing to use the terminal.

[lxgr]

If they’d simply allow the same on iOS, I’m willing to bet that essentially all of their lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny would disappear overnight.

[kmeisthax]

Right-clicking an app bundle and clicking open gives you the option to run the app even if it's not signed and notarized by Apple.

[xyzzy_plugh]

This doesn't work if the app is quarantined.

[grishka]

It's not required. I made a macOS app recently and no way in hell am I paying that $99/year. People are still able to run it. But there is a scary warning.

On my own Mac I keep gatekeeper disabled.

[abhinavk]

You can still run an unsigned binary using right-click menu > Open.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac

[justinclift]

Ahhh. I thought that there was still a button in "System Settings" -> "Security" (or similar) that let users launch an unsigned app anyway.

But it could indeed have been removed in some macOS version without my noticing. :)

[willsmith72]

> Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements.

They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year.

They charge 30% and restrict other installation methods because they can, but you cannot justify it based on those costs.

I firmly believe this model isn't going to last. If it didn't hurt Apple's bottom line so much, PWAs would be far more prevalent already than they are, and that's right now. In 10-20 years, this thinking will be gone. They just have to milk it as a long as they can for the shareholders.

It's their hardware, for now they can do what they want. Most consumers didn't even know about the 30%, and probably still don't. Guess who it benefits to keep that under wraps? Or convince the world they need an expensive app store to vet their apps before downloading them?

(And don't say "there's nothing like a native app experience". It's completely irrelevant. If there was a will to build it, the UX would be identical)

[selectodude]

>They CHOOSE to do this. If there were a free and open market for app stores, competitors would pop up, who would similarly host, distribute, market, and "review" apps. And they would do it for a whole lot less than 30% and 99USD/year.

Would they? There are plenty of storefronts that sell games on Windows, yet Steam is the dominant one and charges, you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue. Epic charges 12 percent and loses money on every transaction. It might actually cost somewhere between 12 and 30 percent to make it a profitable and sustainable venture.

[TillE]

> you guessed it, $100 and 30% of gross revenue

There is one interesting difference, which is that Steam charges a one-time $100 per game, rather than annually. It's very slightly cheaper in the long run, which is nice if you just want to distribute a completely free game on Steam, or if you're a part-time game dev with low sales.

[willsmith72]

if that were true then

1. they wouldn't have to fight so hard to keep their not-monopoly

2. the app store would be operating at-cost, with no margin

i think everyone agrees they have a margin, the question is how much. right now i think apple could make a profit with a 10% of revenue, and most likely at 5%. now they've done the hard work of creating an entire market, and invested huge sums to get there, so maybe they deserve a markup on that

but that's the beauty of startups and capitalism. a new product can skip steps, learn from your mistakes, work without your tech debt and bloated organisational dysfunctions, and disrupt your industry. it happens in every industry, and no company is immune. apple will fight to keep things as-is with everything they've got, but capitalism will win.

[eblanshey]

But they don't allow alternate app stores.