alt Hacker NewsEpic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case
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> Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review. That should be more than enough to compensate the employees reviewing the apps to make sure outside payment links are not scams
I would think making sure outside payment links aren’t scams will be more expensive than that because checking that once isn’t sufficient. Scammers will update the target of such links, so you can’t just check this at app submission time. You also will have to check from around the world, from different IP address ranges, outside California business hours, etc, because scammer are smart enough to use such info to decide whether to show their scammy page.
Also, even if it becomes ‘only’ hundreds of dollars, I guess only large companies will be able to afford providing an option for outside payments.
I don’t feel great about this ruling. Whatever a “reasonable” fee is supposed to mean, Apple will interpret it to some ridiculous amount. Before the ban, they tried to charge 27%
Shared the same in a comment below, but probably worth adding as a top level comment.
Google are doing exactly the same as Apple previously were doing, mandatory from end of next month - January 28, 2026.
Their new requirements: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
Will this help other services like Netflix, Spotify? Or am I misreading things.
My understanding, at least several years ago, that Netflix was paying as much to Apple in subscription fees, as they did for their AWS hosting.
I also noticed when upgrading my Spotify account, I couldn't do that through the iphone app itself - I assumed this was because it would break TOS, or they didn't want to pay a massive chunck of the monthly subscription cost to Apple.
When can I ship my own web browser with my own JIT?
This would be for a clear subset of the web, with strong protections.
Obviously, on this venue the question is rhetorical. But Apple's prohibition on any kind of real web competition is a problem.
Will Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve and another software store have to allow mini stores on their platforms? That's to say software with its own payment system, inside of a free app?
The "reasonable" fees are not gonna be only a few hundred bucks, it'll still be a percentage of revenue but smaller than 27%. Apple will try to extract as much as possible and will not tolerate a non-percentage fee.
It's odd to celebrate having the key sanctions unwound.
Before this ruling:
1. Apple were prohibited from charging any fee for external/referral purchases. Now this is once again allowed and the district court will work with all parties to develop a reasonable commission.
2. External links were permitted to dominate over IAP options. Now they must have equal size, prominence and quantity.
3. Apple were prevented from showing any kind of exit screen, that is now restored (but it can't be a scare screen).
4. Apple were barred from preventing certain developers/app classes from using external links (such as those enrolled in the News or Video Partner Programs) those are now reversed and Apple can once again prevent them.
Epic/Tim Sweeney are trying to spin these recent losses as a win. It's the old marketing playbook of hoping no one reads the fine print.
Is this going to involve any concrete penalty for Apple? If not, what incentive do they have to not keep doing the same thing over and over?
While having Epic Store, Fortnite "mini store", and being perfectly fine with Nintendo, Sony and XBox.
when are we going to finally give up on the concept of the app store?
it is not efficient, it doesn't incentivize high quality products, and the web proves that security / safety can be done in an open way.
> ... the appeals court now suggests that Apple should still be able to charge a “reasonable fee” based on its “actual costs to ensure user security and privacy.”
> Speaking to reporters Thursday night, though, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said he believes those should be “super super minor fees,” on the order of “tens or hundreds of dollars” every time an iOS app update goes through Apple for review.
Wow, one step forward, and one step back. Good job, Epic.
The outcome is obviously going to be that Apple's store will have the most apps, with the most up to date versions, and with the most free apps/games. I'm sure Fortnite will do just fine though.
Unless I'm misunderstanding this, why would the court allow Apple to act as a gatekeeper for their competitors?
Are these the same thing? Different framing, confusing details:
Apple wins partial reversal of sanctions in Epic Games antitrust lawsuit
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... (https://archive.ph/Cbi3f)
Peripheral question: Is there any "real" App Store on Linux except for Steam?
Original Title (too long for title box):
Epic celebrates “the end of the Apple Tax” after appeals court win in iOS payments case
This has never been about protecting users but about mobsters getting a bigger cut of the pie.
Look at the major companies aligned with Epic on this, like Match.com, and what they do.
Why didn't Microsoft, back in the 90s, have an app store that businesses had to pay for to sell Windows applications in?
I mean, it's certainly not for lack of business insight. And you don't need the internet to sell applications.
It feels like courts are not doing a good job promoting "competition".
- Apple shouldn't be able to charge for external payments, come on.
- Force prominent disclosure of refund policies. Epic Games doesn't allow them for IAP. Apple does. Epic knows exactly how predatory that is, betting some kids will find ways to spend thousands and the parents will be helpless. Ideally you'd have a law mandating refunds, but without that, there should be mandatory disclosure on the IAP screen, at least for microtransaction games. You can't have fair "competition" when you have an information asymmetry, and if these rulings don't mandate that, you'll open the floodgate for these gaming companies to screw over parents.
Now let’s ban all probabilistic digital items like loot boxes.
Apple can go to hell, their 30% fee is prohibitive.
If Jobs was still here, he would have fired all the fat management.
shame on you Apple, you are acting like M$!
Now I wonder what this will do to Google ? IIRC, they have been looking into a similar extortion fee for Android Developers.
Tim Cook has been absolutely fantastic for Apple shareholders and absolutely awful for anyone else, particularly the customers.
The walled garden has to end. There is no excuse for making people pay a premium price for an iPad Pro that can't run a third party web browser or do software development in any meaningful way.
Outside of a very narrow use case, the iPad product range is useless, despite the endless rantings of the brainwashed fanboys. Source: used to be one. Left the ecosystem when they started treating the RFCs like toilet paper.
In my opinion, every manufacturer of a programmable device should not be allowed to prevent the buyer from reprogramming it.