Wait what? The nonprofit organisation thing seems very significant. That makes it fairly easy to get around if you’re just developing an app for fun, or for open source organisations to get apps distributed.
So what are we left with? Apps where users are the product, like Facebook, and freemium apps where you end up paying to get anything useful done with it anyway. Apps where the parent company is making millions if not billions. Is anybody upset that those guys have to chip in for iOS development?
I personally think Apples approach is the lesser of two evils. We don’t pay for OS explicitly anymore. But look at Windows and Android… you end up paying somehow in the end anyway. I’d rather it be through fees on apps than more insidious approaches.
And no. Paying for the phone is not a viable way to pay for the OS. That incentives the phone maker to ditch OS updates for old phones. And we know that’s a real issue. As long as we pay through app fees the phone makers are incentivised to keep releasing OS updates for old phones.
I wouldn't call that "fairly easy" in most senses of the term.
For instance I didn't even have an idea of what's required in my place to get recognized as non-profit. And it turns out it's specific to each region, and I need to go ask for the paperwork in the first place.
If the requirement is really a non profit legal status, Apple just raised the bar from "apps that just make no money" to "apps that registered to their local governing bodies that they have a goal of not making money", and that's a huge leap with a crazy high barrier for a random dev (imagine a kid in uni) to push a free app.
In the academic/semi-governmental, it was often easier to set up a non-profit in the US and get things for free (e.g. Slack) than to figure out how to do billing for them in a rigid system that wants POs
Here in the US at least we have the concept of "fiscal sponsorship" in the non-profit space. A registered non-profit organization acts as sponsor for smaller groups and projects. The activities still have to be compliant, but the small groups don't have to go through the expense of setting up a free-standing organization. The Linux Foundation does this for quite a few open source software projects, for example. This is likely a good model for open source apps in this situation.
That depends... I don't know the situation in the EU, but based on personal experience in the US:
If you are expecting less than $25k in revenue (donations, grants, program service revenue, etc.) in each of your first three years, you can use the IRS's abbreviated process and get setup within a month (for the cost of setting up a corporation with your state government). If that exemption doesn't apply, it can take the IRS over a year to approve your application for tax exempt status. There are also significant compliance costs that can be burdensome for a small organization.
The TLF is a big dog for big dog projects, and I was just using them as an example of the structure. The Apache Foundation has their own flavor of governance, as does Numfocus (which sponsors a bunch of scientific computing projects). I'd expect that this move will probably trigger the creation of some "mobile app developer collective" organizations that specialize in this kind of thing, kind of like a "digital makerspace".
Assuming there is some legal framework allowing a smaller entity to piggy back on Mozilla or the Linux Foundation's non profit registration in the developer's country, the dev still needs to at least register as an official entity, which can be awkward depending on their status (do student visa residents get a right to do that for instance ?). There's also the more complex cases of a for profit business publishing an open-source app. Do they need to register a different non profit entity to avoid paying for the open source part then ?
To then explain to Apple how the arrangement is made and have them approve it is another story as well, as we're already seeing that Apple has no intention to make things simple regarding any of these rules.
All in all, there will be clear cut cases that will show it can be simple, but I totally see a long tail of devs stopped at any point of the process, and it's probably by design.
There is no mandatory government registration of non-profits in Sweden. You can get a like a tradename protection by registering like a company name. Suppose you would like to start a non-profit or any other organization. You need a yearly meeting to take the signed protocol to your local bank if you need an account.
If you like to have an organizationalnumber, you need to apply to the tax authority. If you do business activity and like a local name protection you need to apply to bolagsverket. Depending on the size of the app these steps might be helpful. I don't think our local chapter of FSF, has done any of the registrations just as an example. They run local conferences and other simular works.
Gaming apps. A huge majority of Apple's revenue (from IAP) came from gaming purchases. This would continue to be the case. A gaming app would have ads + options for purchases (none can survive without it) and Apple now earns both on downloads and IAPs. Many games cross the 1M threshold once they are popular enough. Gaming apps have low retention, and a power curve in paying users.
Only if the app makes a series of decisions that lead to that outcome.
They can either stick with the 15%/30% commission without install fees. Let’s assume it has a revenue of >$1m, so that would be 30%.
Or they can opt into the new EU offering.
Then they’re immediately subject to a €0.50/unique install in 12 months per install in the EU over they reach a 1M installs in the EU.
The baseline is just that, that install fee. Which Apple calls the Core Technology Fee (CTF), in other words a fee for using Apple’s IP in your app.
If they also choose to distribute via the App Store then they’ll pay a commission of 17% and if they also choose to use IAP then they pay an additional 3% in processing fees.
Ironically, the CTF pushes bigger devs to use alternative stores, assuming they will offer a lower commission rate than 17%.
But it’s definitely possible to only pay the CTF if so desired.
It makes sense for apps which have a high ARPU. In gaming and related sectors, the number is notoriously low, even for large developers. The flow is new user installs app -> fraction keeps the app -> even smaller fraction pays. Typically even for a 10% paying users for an app like fortnite. Apple earns more with new terms compared to older terms.
I agree devs dont have to go for new terms and could stay with existing terms. The whole convoluted way of introducing this is meant to have that effect.
> Only if the app makes a series of decisions that lead to that outcome.
Isn't that convenient, a series of (dis)incentives which ensure the house always wins, not just on average, but 100% of the time. Something that a certain piece of anti-trust regulation is intended to change?
As someone trying to contribute to an open source iOS app, an app store that doesn't require me to pay money to use the NFC entitlement, muck about changing bundle IDs to be able to build an open source app and run it on my own device, or build an app that I can use for longer than 7 days without publishing to an app store, I take issue with your framing of other app stores. The original app store is already shitty, this legislation will make it not worse, but it will not be the solution to my personal woes with the shitty app store.
Apple has successfully delayed an equivalent to F-Droid for iOS users for another year.
Plenty of useful apps like the Orca card reader (see your transit card balance by just tapping your card, no internet required), fun games like Antimine, and such where the devs will only target barrier free platforms as it's a passion project are missing in action on iOS.
Not with the Core Technology Fee, nor with the Apple app review process standing in the way. These are severe restrictions that prevent something like FDroid from being operated on iOS.
> Windows and Android… you end up paying somehow in the end anyway
I'm not sure why I have to mention this, but you could be paying for something and get screwed over at the same time. The issue isn't that Google/Microsoft/etc NEED to make money this way, but that this is legal to do.
Also, Windows isn't exactly cheap and I personally couldn't fathom paying more than 100 bucks for an OS and still get treated like crap. I'm sure Android at best only makes 10 bucks from their users with their current model throughout the device's entire lifetime.
>I'm sure Android at best only makes 10 bucks from their users with their current model throughout the device's entire lifetime.
I'm pretty sure Google pays Apple more than $10 per year per iPhone user to be the default search on iPhones and Mac. They were paying 18 billion back in 2021. I don't think Apple's marketshare is over 1.8 billion active users yet. Do you think Apple users are just that much more valuable to have searching?
> The nonprofit organisation thing seems very significant. That makes it fairly easy [...]
I give Apple credit for making this clear rule: Having fewer than 1 million users on iOS in the EU means no fee, and you don't need to worry about status at all.
But if you have more installs, I don't think you'll get an easy to get a pass by just by sending Apple a note like "I'm just developing my app for fun" or "My app is open source". Maybe that works, but I wouldn't assume it without testing.
If your app has 1 million+ users, it's not at all convincing to say you made it just for fun, even if that's the truth. And we all know some open source apps are written with intent to make a profit, or given away free to promote related commercial activities or reputation, so saying it's open source isn't convincing either.
Anecdote: I ran a non-profit org, a hackerspace. Not only was it truly a non-profit organisation, it was legally constituted as such. The members had no legal rights to take any of its funds and resources out, those resources came from members and could only be used for the organisations's stated purpose, and because of this structure no tax was due when its funds grew, as they were primarily from member fees and donations. However, it was not a registered charity. It could have been but we decided the administrative overheads were too high.
Unfortunately, we were unable to convince Paypal we were a non-profit despite providing all the organisational documents Paypal requested to prove it (about 10 documents IIRC). This meant we weren't able to use Paypal for significant quantities of funding, i.e. to take membership payments. We could do a tiny amount for a couple of people, but it was capped at a very low limit.
If it's impossible to convince Paypal that a formally constituted non-profit qualifies as such, I wouldn't assume it's easy to convince Apple with casual claims, for an app with 1M+ users.
Do you need to be an "official" nonprofit, or is it sufficient just to have an app which generates no revenue? If the former, how difficult/expensive is that in the EU?
Yeah, the non-profit organization requirement is insurance for Apple that you aren't making money off your app some other way. Yeah, it's inconvenient for people who legitimately want to give stuff away for fun, but it isn't an insurmountable obstacle.
>We don’t pay for OS explicitly anymore. But look at Windows and Android… you end up paying somehow in the end anyway.
MS, you pay one time for the OS. Android you technically don't need to pay at all if you go AOSP. Both still require hardware to support the OS, though.
>And no. Paying for the phone is not a viable way to pay for the OS. That incentives the phone maker to ditch OS updates for old phones.
They do that anyway. mobile support is much lower than desktop which tends to guarantee a decade or so. And it's not like IOS is licensing out to other OEMs anyway.
In Windows you pay every time you open start menu and get blasted with tabloid news, ads and paid article placements. Or you pay in your time (again and again) turning it off each H2 update.
People say this but I just turned off a lot of that at the beginning. I generally do clean installs so I never worry about bloatware and I use Everything (void tools) to search because yes, Windows search just sucks somewhere around the middle of Windows 10.
I don't doubt the ads are there but I avoid them easily enough. Fortunately I get the option to get around that stuff, unlike Apple's environments.
That's cool and all, but I either can wait for that to happen or not happen (which is not a certainty), or I can just use macOS (or a flavor of Linux).
Sure, the EU will fix things like they've managed to do in the past with other internet-related stuff (e.g., cookie notices). And I will definitely re-evaluate this take once things change in terms of ads for Windows. But until that happens, I don't see "the EU will fix that" as a valid point in favor of Windows.
> It seems like with Apple, you're just paying for a lot of nothing.
These days Microsoft screws their users hard in terms of stealing every scrap of personal data they can from people's devices and shoving ads and unwanted software down their throats. An Apple computer might be highly overpriced, under-powered, and restrictive, but Apple isn't the privacy nightmare that Microsoft is and while Macs aren't perfect when it comes to privacy protections I can't fault people for seeing value in their privacy and being willing to pay for it.
That said, most apple users are overpaying for a status symbol and/or an identity rather than strictly for the privacy benefits and for tech savvy users with privacy concerns a PC with linux is the way to go since it's even better at protecting their data and doesn't come with Apple's restrictions on what you can/can't do with your own computer.
> most apple users are overpaying for a status symbol and/or an identity
I have never understood this viewpoint. The world isn't rich enough, or Apple devices exclusive enough, for identity to weight so heavily in Apple's favor.
I think convenience silently overshadows cost for many daily use products. People with modest incomes pay enormous annual sums for convenient daily coffee.
For many, relative reliability and lack of cruft make Apple products more convenient. For others, the inconvenience of Apple's "garden walls" drive them away.
> I have never understood this viewpoint. The world isn't rich enough, or Apple devices exclusive enough, for identity to weight so heavily in Apple's favor.
Apple has been a status symbol for ages but the iphone made it undeniable. If you've been unaware of that just check out articles such as these:
As for identity, you may have never met an "apple" person, but it's absolutely an identity for many. It's a subculture (https://www.wired.com/2002/12/mac-loyalists-dont-tread-on-us...). People have called apple users "cult-like" and their devotion to the Apple brand a religion (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3712458). I have met people who were convinced that they couldn't be a "real" artist without owning Apple products (in one case the person was talking about ipods specifically, not computers or cell phones). The influence of marketing on Apple users can be extremely powerful.
As for expense, even in the US the majority of the population (60%) lives paycheck to paycheck and their standard of living is in decline. The high price of the iphone drove up the cost of other brands so the price gap is smaller at the highest end, but most households can't easily afford to get everyone a $1,000+ phone and android devices offer a wide range of prices and features for families who can't afford the top of the line. Even those that can will probably still get more for their money with a flagship android device. Apple users also have to pay much more for software (https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/06/iphone-users-spend-apps/) and that's not even counting the 30% extra apple charges for their cut of in-app purchases that's been talked about so much lately. Iphone users spend and have more money in general for a reason (https://www.marketingdive.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spen...) and convenience isn't it.
That said, I agree that the perception of Apple being easier to use does drive sales and for people already used to Apple's weirdness there would certainly be a learning curve in switching away from the platform which encourages people to stay.
You are ascribing broad motives and discounting alternatives.
I am sure their was some iPhone status effects, especially in iPhone's early days. But status effects follow other effects and die quickly if a product doesn't deliver.
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I get fans.
I also get the anti-fan simplification syndrome of people who don't understand why Apple products have often appealed to others. Especially when those others are passionate at all.
Googling up articles that obscess of finding non-practical reasons for Apple enthusiasm isn't a good argument.
Apple has typically (for decades, with relatively few fails) had a cleaner level of design and polish vs. Microsoft and other alternatives.
That can be very hard to give up for those that appreciate it.
(Similarly for other consistently distinctively constructed product lines, emphasizing some other area of benefit, of course.)
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Replies to every one of your links:
> "New research shows that owning an iPhone is the most common sign of wealth"
The article talks about a statistical link with wealth. Not psychology. I don't find it surprising that the wealthy are less price conscious.
> "Why the iPhone Is the Perfect Status Symbol"
The Huffington piece is a complete puff peice. ("A friend got an iPhone because she could not call Uber cabs on her Blackberry. [...] If there is any prospect of drinks on the horizon, she leaves her iPhone safely at home" [..] "There's irony somewhere in this but until Apple comes up with a product called iRony, and livestreams its launch we won't get it.")
Re the "iPhone Effect":
> Apple has always positioned themselves as an aspirational brand. The emphasis on unmatched quality levels, a clean user experience and a distinct and consistent design is at the core of what makes it the most valuable company in the world. [Emphasis mine.]
That is a lot of practical daily non-status value for less price conscious people to buy.
> As for identity, you may have never met an "apple" person, but it's absolutely an identity for many.
I get there are fans. But Apple fans for the most part have had good practical reasons. One big reason wasnt Apple so much as the cruft and shovelware (and now in OS advertising) of other vendors that for some of us gets achingly frustrating. (I have generally had Macs and Windows machines for decades. Pro's and con's for each, but good lord, Windows is still a bag of inconsistency, disorganized plethora's of niggling settings, and trashy interface choices in comparison. Even though I appreciate many reasons others preferred Windows.)
> It's a subculture
Again, Apple products are distinctive in a way that impacts people at a practical level. And that article is from 2002.
> People have called apple users "cult-like" [...]
People often have trouble understanding other people's choices. Article from 2001!
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TLDR; Just because something can confer status, doesn't make status the reason people buy it. Especially 16 years after a high utility daily use product has been introduced and alternatives abound.
Takeaway: Let other's explain their own motives. Don't project narratives as if they are facts - regardless of how much they are repeated or satisfy you.
One serious research paper showing 60% of 10,000 iPhone owners across diverse demographics listing "status" as in their top 2 purchasing factors would realistically make the argument you are trying to make. Not the articles you listed.
The kinds of articles you thought worth quoting say more about you than Apple customers.
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Devil's advocate: Apple has not always delivered, other vendors have other benefits, and Apple's legacy of user interface design is seriously marred by "flat design" in my experience. (Design should make usage simpler, not reduce pixels, color, texture, visibility of options or status, or other affordances. Don't get me started on Ives need to eliminate ports people actually used, or flatten keyboards into unreliability.)
So what are we left with? Apps where users are the product, like Facebook, and freemium apps where you end up paying to get anything useful done with it anyway. Apps where the parent company is making millions if not billions. Is anybody upset that those guys have to chip in for iOS development?
I personally think Apples approach is the lesser of two evils. We don’t pay for OS explicitly anymore. But look at Windows and Android… you end up paying somehow in the end anyway. I’d rather it be through fees on apps than more insidious approaches.
And no. Paying for the phone is not a viable way to pay for the OS. That incentives the phone maker to ditch OS updates for old phones. And we know that’s a real issue. As long as we pay through app fees the phone makers are incentivised to keep releasing OS updates for old phones.