[librish]

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.

[kj99]

> Wouldn't Stripe be significantly cheaper?

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

[librish]

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.

[kj99]

What are you talking about? Where do they say that they are only charging for payment processing?

[librish]

Right now the only time they take a cut is when they do payment processing. Uber, for example, pays Apple nothing.

[librish]

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.

[kj99]

Thanks for making the distinction between when you are charged and why then charge is for.

Businesses rarely map charges directly into what is being paid for, because that doesn’t work in practice. Charges are made at a convenient point and then used to pay for the service as a whole. This is common practice across all kinds of business.

This matters because people are claiming they it is just for payment processing and then arguing that 30% is too much, which is clearly a dishonest position.

[kj99]

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.