<story><title>Apple, Epic, and the App Store</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-epic-and-the-app-store/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vageli</author><text>&amp;gt; That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w&amp;#x2F; google&amp;#x27;s similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don&amp;#x27;t want. Hey didn&amp;#x27;t want to accept payments via apple, but Apple&amp;#x27;s market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.&lt;p&gt;In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting access to their shelf space? I personally feel they are different but I cannot put into words why.</text></item><item><author>cschneid</author><text>The Hey saga emphasized that Apple has multiple products interacting in a single app store.&lt;p&gt;* Screened apps - Apple only lets &amp;quot;safe&amp;quot; apps into the store.
* Discoverability - Apple in theory lets users find apps that they didn&amp;#x27;t know about before. Customer Acquisition
* Payments - Apple makes it easy to accept payments, for their 30% fee.&lt;p&gt;One or all of those are useful and great. Where I have an issue is when they use one (the required screened apps aspect) for force you into the others.&lt;p&gt;Hey wanted an app on the store, as an extension to their primarily web based experience. But they couldn&amp;#x27;t purchase just the rubber-stamp that says they&amp;#x27;re not malware and the app store hosting. They were being forced to buy into all 3.&lt;p&gt;That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w&amp;#x2F; google&amp;#x27;s similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don&amp;#x27;t want. Hey didn&amp;#x27;t want to accept payments via apple, but Apple&amp;#x27;s market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.&lt;p&gt;If Apple had a yearly fee of $1000 (arbitrary number, maybe pay per download or device or whatever), for an app to simply be reviewed &amp;amp; hosted, that would be reasonable. They provide a service, businesses can opt into that. But they&amp;#x27;re taking their core value prop of &amp;quot;closed app store helps customers&amp;quot; and forcing their way onto &amp;quot;and now you have to pay us a portion of revenue&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SiVal</author><text>Suppose Apple and Google started making cars and put every other car company out of business. Both made the rule that if you bought their car, &lt;i&gt;every&lt;/i&gt; product or service that went into the car also had to be purchased through them. You preferred the Apple car world to the Google car world. (All Google cars streamed your location and live video of you and your facially recognized passengers back to Google for analysis of who you did what with where and when, for your &amp;quot;convenience&amp;quot;, and Google was the only alternative to Apple.)&lt;p&gt;Avoiding Google surveillance meant you could only buy an Apple car. You could then only buy gasoline at Apple gas stations. People in your town who wanted to change your oil had to pay an annual fee to Apple to even be considered, would have to pay 30% of revenue to Apple if approved, and could be put out of business at any moment with no recourse by whatever happened in secret behind the Apple fortress walls.&lt;p&gt;You as a car owner could not choose to buy tires or get &amp;quot;your&amp;quot; car painted or even get your car washed by anyone without going through Apple. You paid Apple for the car wash, because (no matter what you or the people washing your car would prefer) you were Apple&amp;#x27;s customer and the car you paid for was Apple&amp;#x27;s car.&lt;p&gt;For your &amp;quot;safety&amp;quot;, of course.&lt;p&gt;A phone is as fundamental to the infrastructure of your life today as a car. Any company that could utterly control it would probably become a trillion-dollar company.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple, Epic, and the App Store</title><url>https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-epic-and-the-app-store/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vageli</author><text>&amp;gt; That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w&amp;#x2F; google&amp;#x27;s similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don&amp;#x27;t want. Hey didn&amp;#x27;t want to accept payments via apple, but Apple&amp;#x27;s market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.&lt;p&gt;In order to sell goods in a place like Walmart, a manufacturer is subject to onerous terms. Why is the app store different than a retailer limiting access to their shelf space? I personally feel they are different but I cannot put into words why.</text></item><item><author>cschneid</author><text>The Hey saga emphasized that Apple has multiple products interacting in a single app store.&lt;p&gt;* Screened apps - Apple only lets &amp;quot;safe&amp;quot; apps into the store.
* Discoverability - Apple in theory lets users find apps that they didn&amp;#x27;t know about before. Customer Acquisition
* Payments - Apple makes it easy to accept payments, for their 30% fee.&lt;p&gt;One or all of those are useful and great. Where I have an issue is when they use one (the required screened apps aspect) for force you into the others.&lt;p&gt;Hey wanted an app on the store, as an extension to their primarily web based experience. But they couldn&amp;#x27;t purchase just the rubber-stamp that says they&amp;#x27;re not malware and the app store hosting. They were being forced to buy into all 3.&lt;p&gt;That feels like using an existing monopoly (actually a duopoly w&amp;#x2F; google&amp;#x27;s similar practices) to force developers to purchase products they don&amp;#x27;t want. Hey didn&amp;#x27;t want to accept payments via apple, but Apple&amp;#x27;s market power and decisions were focused on forcing them to.&lt;p&gt;If Apple had a yearly fee of $1000 (arbitrary number, maybe pay per download or device or whatever), for an app to simply be reviewed &amp;amp; hosted, that would be reasonable. They provide a service, businesses can opt into that. But they&amp;#x27;re taking their core value prop of &amp;quot;closed app store helps customers&amp;quot; and forcing their way onto &amp;quot;and now you have to pay us a portion of revenue&amp;quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>romanoderoma</author><text>Because you can buy the same exact item on Zalando and put it on fire if you want to&lt;p&gt;Imagine if you could buy shoes only at Walmart because you bought the shoe rack there.</text></comment>