[deutschepost]

Although this is good news, Epic will still have to pay Apples Core Technology Fee.

For most developers this will be a deal breaker, because it also applies to free software which most of the time is only supported by donations.

[johnnyanmac]

Unity got raked over the coals for this. Real shame Apple more or less got away with it with its ransom bekng to stay inside the walled garden.

[moooo99]

> Real shame Apple more or less got away with it with its ransom bekng to stay inside the walled garden.

Given with how much Apple got away for years, I am not surprised. Either many people don’t have particularly much insight or a severe case of Stockholm syndrome.

What bothers me the most is apples double dipping. You as the consumer basically pay a fee for apples technology. And then they expect the developers to pay the same fee, which will ultimately be paid by the consumer as well. Also ignoring the fact that Apples platform would be completely worthless if it weren’t for the developers building the apps the users want

[troupo]

That's what infuriates me about this discourse. "Do you want Apple to continue to develop stuff and just provide it to developers for free?".

iPhone sales alone are 3x Apple's entire R&D spend. And developers pay more than fair share of that because they need at least two devices (an iPhone and a Mac) if they want to develop anything, and a yearly fee.

Apple doesn't just double dip. It triple dips, and wants to quadruple and quantuple dip.

[cafed00d]

Why can’t a business be built solely without giving Apple a dime? The web is free — as in freedom and as in gratis. It has a developer tools system funded by hundreds of companies, developers and community members.

There’s hardly any order of dipping, if any.

Why doesn’t the web compete away Apple’s “dips”?

[immibis]

Because Apple limits the viability of non-native apps on its mobile devices? Same reason it refused to allow Flash. It wants you to stay in the walled garden with the expensive fees.

[troupo]

Android has been the dominant mobile OS for over a decade. Additionally, desktop browsers have been a thing since forever.

Where is the multitude of amazing native-like web apps that we keep hearing about?

[cafed00d]

Reading the comments is convincing enough to believe there is no viable business to be built on the mobile web. It's great technology, sure; but not a great business. Mobile web apps won't pay the bills for people who build them. It seems worth everyone's time to have those mobile web devs instead build native apps. Ergo, Apple's "dips" are justified costs of doing business.

[dzonga]

on the web - people forget there's google tax.

i.e ads or search engine placement.

countless of public companies have it in their reports that mobile app users generate more revenue compared to web whether desktop or mobile.

and i'm not talking about game companies.

[troupo]

> Why doesn’t the web compete away Apple’s “dips”?

Because the web sucks at building apps? Because the web can barely render a few lines of text and several images without lag and jank? Because the web lacks useful and powerful primitives and controls to build anything but the most primitive UIs? Because...

[rambambram]

The web is more than good enough. There's just a lot of people drinking the kool-aid and believing big tech's subtle and not so subtle messages about the web being shite. Of course the web is shite on devices from companies that compete with the web. They actively undermine it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> web is more than good enough

For content delivery, yes. For deeply-interactive apps, not in my experience: every vendor that went web-only that wasn’t just serving up text, in the end, forced me to a competitor.

[troupo]

In my experience, the only people drinking kool-aid are those claiming that the web is good enough, and failing to deliver web apps that can do anything beyond the absolutely primitive stuff.

With very few notable exceptions which are notable precisely because they are so few.

[throwitaway1123]

The web is absolutely more than good enough for the vast majority of apps. I was playing Quake Live in the browser on a thermally throttled dual core laptop 15 years ago, but the hive mind here at HN will have you believe that the generic social media apps that dominate the charts all need to be "close to the metal": https://apps.apple.com/us/charts/iphone/top-free-apps/36

[johnnyanmac]

the web isn't shit per se. But it's horrible in the one way it matters to business; it is very hard to monetize web content compared to apps. That's a small part of why flash games quickly gave way to mobile.

But it's hard to deny there are quite a few technical shortcomings. Shortcomings only just now starting to dimish as WebASM/WebGPU gain traction.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Agreed. There is no free! I bought your freakin phone, that's your payment!

[dagmx]

Unity got raked over the coals for *retroactively* changing the licensing fees for developers in a way that negatively impacted a common existing business model amongst their customers.

It’s fair to not like the Apple fees but the scenario isn’t equivalent.

One was a rug pull. If they did that all along it wouldn’t have been as big an issue.

[johnnyanmac]

I'd say it's still equivalent. I just think apple was smart knowing most people are comfy in the walled garden and won't throw up a fuss.

Similar to Unity, these pricing ding the smaller people the most. But unlike Unity, the bigger players aren't joining the protest. I guess I was just foolish thinking businesses would at least think in the middle-term of "what if we want our own storefront one day ". I guess the EU might pick up that ball, but the Apathy from other devs is a bit disenheartening. The same Apathy that let these companies enshittify the net and turn into trillionaires as punishment

[ffgjgf1]

> Unity, these pricing ding the smaller people the most

I don’t think that’s true. A very small proportion of smaller developers might have been disproportionately affected but Unity was just complete garbage at communicating the changes (not trying to downplay the retroactive bit, no excuse for that). Most people just didn’t bother reading the fine print or calculating the actual fees themselves and just looked at the published headlines.

[johnnyanmac]

>A very small proportion of smaller developers might have been disproportionately affected

I don't think it was a small portion. The main point was that the lowest cost plan was horrible and a ploy to get you to buy Unity Pro. If you weren't a free (as in freedom) app, it as a complete negative to be on the base plan.

[ffgjgf1]

IIRC you weren’t affected if your revenue was under $100k and you couldn’t use the free version before the change anyway if it was over that. I might be wrong but I’m almost sure that that proportion was close to zero.

> it as a complete negative to be on the base plan.

With the changes if you didn’t get pro after surpassing the revenue it would have gotten price but that wasn’t even an option previously.

I think it was actually a significant improvement for some people in that position:

- the cap was now per game/project instead of company

- you could still surpass the previous cap a bit and save some money by paying for install instead of immediately being required to get pro.

Everybody just seem to ignore that/ didn’t notice it because Unity did such a garbage job explaining the changes.

(I’m not really defending them, they only had to introduce this few because they almost literally burnt billions between by pointlessly buying random companies and going on some deranged hiring spree for no reason..)

[dagmx]

How are they equivalent other than a fee existing at all, and how is that different than a revenue share that Epic do? Apple hasn’t added a new fee to existing devs. The reason you see apathy is that this doesn’t negatively change the status quo.

It provides new options. Granted they might not like the terms of the new options , as you clearly don’t. But nothing has been taken away from them in the process. It is completely unsurprising that there is apathy.

Unity tried to change the terms from under people which changed their livelihood prospective negatively.

If the only equivalence is that there’s a fee, then that applies to a lot more to the point it’s meaningless. Epic do a revenue share. Unity should have done a revenue share but did something more trackable without requiring regular audits.

Ultimately it wasn’t Unity’s actual fee that was the problem, had it been a new tier. But it retroactively changed things for people.

[johnnyanmac]

If you had any plans at all to maybe think of an alternative app store, it's equivalent. You have an expectation from a competitor who allows this and IOS instead will charge you despite not using their own store. Pricing that is worse than staying in the walled garden.

If you were apathetic/supportive of Apple and would stay on the App Store anyway, nothing changes. And I suppose a lot of businesses are in this group.

>But nothing has been taken away from them in the process. It is completely unsurprising that there is apathy.

Yes, that's my core problem. But the last two years should have taught me thst companies aren't looking in the long term these days. Epic is, sort of. if only because they have no option given their whole kerfuffle.

[KronisLV]

> Unity got raked over the coals for this.

It's kind of crazy, because all of the super high numbers and companies that said they'd go bankrupt were looking at the Personal tier, which basically acted as a sales funnel towards the Pro tier, where the prices would not be as outrageous, even in the original version of the Runtime Fee: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/unity-runtime-fee-a-look-at... (under "How bad is it, really?")

Of course, they since revised it so my article isn't relevant anymore, but if you look at the platform fee cost per install, then it becomes quite obvious and the initial pushback didn't seem to take this into account: https://blog.kronis.dev/images/1/6/-/f/e/16-fee-per-install-...

Aside from that, though, I guess companies will always try to take a part of the profits that anything offered through their platforms generates (Apple's App Store, Google's Play Store, Valve's Steam etc.). It's good to see things improving at least somewhat, though, since we can't express a lot of progress overnight.

[ffgjgf1]

> It's kind of crazy

It’s crazy that Unity’s PR people (and the CEO himself) were so objectively dumb and incompetent while being paid that much.

The retroactive part was probably indefensible but they did such a horrible job at explaining the actual fees initially that it utterly jaw dropping…

[martijnarts]

The fee is being investigated by the EU now, so they may not get away with it entirely.

[ffgjgf1]

And Unity’s terms were/are much more generous than Apple’s

[AnonC]

> For most developers this will be a deal breaker, because it also applies to free software which most of the time is only supported by donations

If the app is taking donations or any sort of payment, then the Core Technology Fee applies after 1 million first installs in a year. If it’s a completely free app, this fee does not apply. This fee also does not apply for educational institutions, nonprofits, and government agencies (with a fee waiver).

Quoting from “ Understanding the Core Technology Fee for iOS apps in the European Union” [1]:

> Developers whose apps do not surpass one million first annual installs per year and nonprofits, educational institutions, and government entities with an Apple Developer Program fee waiver do not pay the CTF. The CTF is also not required for developers with a no revenue business that offer free apps without monetization.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/

[lozenge]

What about free as in beer software which includes some ads?

[hk__2]

This doesn't count as "completely free":

> Apple provides many conditions where developers do not pay the CTF: […] Developers that earn no revenue whatsoever. This includes offering a free app without monetization of any kind (physical, digital, advertising, or otherwise).

(from the link above)

[arghwhat]

For now, Apple has been found non-compliant with DMA and will probably have to remove it.

[Longhanks]

No, for now, there are investigations whether Apple is compliant or not. Vestager's opinion does not automatically become the truth.

[awelxtr]

I love Anki, but it is a tough sell to Apple users because it costs 20 frigging bucks where on other OSs is free