| I'm a slammer developer in a similar boat, and while I still think the 15% SPP fee is too high, it's not what really bothers me about being in the App Store. It's the Kafkaesque app review process and the inversion of power between platform holders and third-party developers. I remember a time when I sold my software directly to users over the web. It certainly didn't cost me 15% of my revenue to process payments and refunds, but I'm actually fine paying Apple a few extra percent to cake care of that internationally. Back in those days, the prevailing wisdom was that platforms competed for third-party devs in order to make their platforms useful for their users and increase market share. If you read the arguments around the new EU rules for platforms, there's a lot of talk about the platform holders' "rights" to "monetize their IP" or similar language. Apple says it. Google says it. Gruber and other influencers parrot it. I hate it. Developing the OS isn't free, but the revenue from end users more than pays for it. Developing the developer tools isn't free, but the $99/year revenue from developers more than pays for it. Combined, they probably more than pay for development and hosting of the App Store. I get that Apple has no shortage of people wanting to develop for their platform, so they don't need to compete for third-party developers anymore. I don't like it, but I understand it. I just wish they wouldn't try to rent-seek on top of it. I wish app review weren't so complicated, self-serving, inconsistent, and useless. Apple likes to publish statistics on how many fraud apps they keep off the App Store, but in my opinion, it still has far too much trash and scam apps to argue that app review works well for anyone but Apple. |