Afaik there are currently no exceptions to apple's 30% fee. There are some apps, like netflix, that dont have to provide a link to subscribe, but I think thats the biggest exception.
And there won't be since Google just got caught giving Spotify a lower rate and now face anti-trust issues. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't give certain apps certain permissions. AFAIK, Apple gives Google special permission to enable VP9/AV1 formats decoding [0] and that's just what we know of.
Whether you like it or not, we're heading towards a future where Apple and Google choose who wins and who loses. A good app built on merit will never be able to compete.
The Epic v. Apple trial showed that no one got special deals. And Epic v. Google did show Google gave many companies special deals, like Spotify. Ironically that played a big part with the jury deciding against Google.
What are the differences between using AVPlayer and MPV?
AVPlayer is a system player component delivered by Apple. It provides best efficiency, performance and system integrations, but number of playable videos formats is limited. This means for Invidious/Piped videos the maximum resolution you can play with it is 1080p. There's no way to play higher resolution files as they are not provided in the right formats. Obviously, modern Apple devices are more than capable to hardware decode and play these formats. And in fact, Apple seems to be giving special entitlement to Google that allows them to enable VP9/AV1 formats decoding. Just remember that next time you hear how Apple treats all developers equally.
It’s from 2020 so it might’ve changed but it proves Apple gives certain apps special privileges. Who knows which other apps are given privileges and to what extent?
I think Apple will be a lot more hurt by not having Youtube on their devices than the other way around. Youtube is ubiquitous and has no alternative. If I was Alphabet, the price would be 0.
Not likely. I haven't had YouTube installed on my device in 18 months (mostly because of Google's insistence on using it as an authentication verifier).
YouTube works in browser, but the native iOS app offers a much more polished experience than the mobile web UI, especially for actually browsing the library.
It can ask for permissions like push notifications, I can't install ad-blockers on it, and they otherwise get more control over it. They even seem to intentionally treat web users a little better, cause I just got a full-sized homepage ad in the app for TikTok of all things, with a download button. The site doesn't have that, and I made sure to disable my blocker. Maybe they consider app users more captive of an audience, or they simply bring changes to it first that are generally about further monetization.
Not a huge deal though. In the past, pre-iOS-10 Safari was immune to the "no background playback" rule the app had, and before that, the site had no preroll ads while the app did, so it was a clearer difference.
> if Roblox, Youtube and Netflix went Android only then I'd be replacing all of our iPads with Android Tablets post-haste
Sure. Most wouldn’t. YouTube and Netflix would lose tens of billions of present value overnight. Hell, Apple might capture a good fraction of that surplus.
Yeah sure, people will give up on YouTube and Netflix to use iOS, that's not going to happen. They'll suffer through using Safari to access those and that'll reduce the perceived value of iOS devices for future purchases since it will be seen as clunky and not seamless.
Not being able to use YouTube properly is also one of the reasons (among others) of why Windows mobile failed.
Youtube is a monopoly and there's no way around it.
> they have a 100% market share on this kind of format
YouTube videos being the format?
Google owns YouTube. Google pays Apple tens of billions to keep its search front and centre. If Google thought YouTube had the leverage you do, wouldn’t you think they’d try swinging that around?
Yeah sure there's a few countries where it's not the case, that's why I mentioned that but it's rare.
People can usually replace the app X with an app Y but there's a few apps which are categorically needed on a phone otherwise it hurts the phone itself. Banks & government apps are part of those and Youtube is one as well.
Those are the ones really preventing a third company to join in.
> Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.
You can stick with the existing terms, or switch to the new ones (which is when the core technology fee kicks in) -- you only have to switch to the new ones if you want to use your own payment processor or distribute on another app store.
So they've basically made distributing popular free apps on an alternative app store really unappealing.
"Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms. Developers must adopt the new business terms for EU apps to use the new capabilities for alternative distribution or alternative payment processing. "
Yeah apparently they will be according to the article…
“ iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.”
