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by TillE 873 days ago
It's 15% for any developer making under $1 million. Even if we think the SDKs should be free, you're not going to find a significantly better deal for payment (with Apple handling all sales taxes etc), auto updates, crash reporting, etc etc.

Smaller developers aren't being ripped off, not anymore. There's a philosophical argument that Apple shouldn't control your device, but that really has nothing to do with the 30% they charge larger companies.
1 comments
librish 873 days ago
Wouldn't Stripe be significantly cheaper?

I'm making the opposite of a philosophical argument, I'm making a practical one. Apple is not going to take away the App Store, or make it too difficult for developers to upload apps, since that would be a real threat to their iPhone business.

Developers need Apple, but Apple needs developers too. Currently their market domination makes it an extremely hard collective action problem for developers. Not being on the App Store means losing out on the majority of your revenue, which makes it tough for enough developers to band together against Apple.

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kj99 873 days ago
> Wouldn't Stripe be significantly cheaper?

Can we stop pretending the app store fee is just for payment processing?

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librish 873 days ago
That is currently the only thing they're charging for. Like I said, let them unbundle if they want to. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually end up just taking a revenue hit to keep the ecosystem healthy, which would mean more money for developers.
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kj99 872 days ago
What are you talking about? Where do they say that they are only charging for payment processing?
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librish 872 days ago
Right now the only time they take a cut is when they do payment processing. Uber, for example, pays Apple nothing.
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librish 872 days ago
It feels like you're trying to win on semantics here.

Right now you as a developer pay $X for access to their eco system, and on top of that you pay 15/30% of whatever payments they process for you.

You can say "well actually, that 30% isn't all for the payment processing" but I don't why it matters what Apple's intention behind the payment is.

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kj99 872 days ago
Amazon pays Apple nothing either, because the goods the customer is paying for aren’t being delivered through the App.

This tells us nothing about the charge being only for payment processing.

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