Yes, you're right generally speaking. But I'm just pointing out that for me(!) with a niche app(!) it doesn't work out and I need nothing of the stuff you mentioned. Payments? PayPal and Stripe are reasonably priced and compete with each other. This makes prices reasonable.
Maybe I can make my point more clear by saying what I expect from Apple: Let me publish an app and don't tell me how to run my business. I want to put up an app in store that uses external payments. Apple doesn't want this. Well, kind of, sort of. The App Store Guidelines section 11 are pretty clear on what Apple expects:
Don't charge people outside of the App Store, because we want a share of that pie. And if you do, we ain't gonna like it. We might approve your app, we might not. We might change our mind, too. Depends on how explicit you're selling your stuff.
And for a long time, it was simply not possible to offer apps that are paid for outside the App Store. And now, it's still very vague. You have to offer an app that also works without requiring a paid account.
Anyways, thanks for the input. I take this discussion to reconsider my position and think of a way how I can make this work. I must admit that Apple changed the rules over the recent months a bit. It's maybe a bit more flexible now.
Their payment approach may seem to be a bit overreaching, but it does make sense. Remember they still provide all the services I listed for apps. If you provide your app for free then Apple makes nothing as well, while still providing those services. It isn't unreasonable to then say that if you make money, Apple gets some too.
It also isn't a bad idea from an incentives point of view. Apple make more money if their developers make more money. And the benefits accrue just over double to the developer than they do to Apple. Similarly developers being less successful also hurts Apple. At least the 30% cut means Apple have to keep earning it.
Remember that as a developer you can walk away, and support other platforms instead. You can avoid stores completely and do everything yourself. With rare exceptions, you are very unlikely to do as well.
> At least the 30% cut means Apple have to keep earning it.
I think this is exactly the point that gives me the bad feeling: If Apple really provided "the best service", people would buy their services from them and the price would be dictated by demand and competition (ironically, just like the price of apps in the App Store, which tends to go down over time).
But this is not how it works. People aren't free to choose which services they want to buy from Apple and whether they want to buy from Apple at all (if they want to be in the iOS playground). Apple forces their services on everybody. There is only a single package: Take it or leave it.
> Remember that as a developer you can walk away, and support other platforms instead.
Theoretically it's true, but ultimately, the customer decides. Although I put a lot of effort into a very nice mobile-first web design, which will hopefully render the app unnecessary in the long run. Together with the "always online" trend and increasingly better mobile internet connections, this might work out.
Thanks for your thoughts, I appreciate them. I don't want to sound as if I'm only arguing my position here. I'll think about the stuff you said.
Developers are not Apple's customers - the people who buy the devices are. Those people have freely chosen Apple and continue to do so.
There is another way to look at Apple's cut, even when you as a developer consider it unfair. For the end users it establishes a certain amount of credibility. Apple places certain hoops developers have to go through as well as taking some money. An end user is going to find a solution that can do all that far more credible than one that can't.
It is different now, but a few decades ago one of the functions of advertising was credibility. If a product was advertised, it meant there was an aura of success about it (the money to advertise has to come from somewhere and someone has to stand behind it) and that success was sufficiently great to spend some of the revenue on ads. The bigger the ad spend, the more credible/success there is perceived to be. Everyone will be a lot more skeptical about something that can't even afford to advertise, or does so "cheaply".
The same thing is happening with university education. Someone attending one, spending real money and persevering is more credible than someone taking a few online courses, even though the actual education they could get is similar.
Circling back to Apple, the app store is already saturated, and I suspect Apple will be more than happy to raise the bar some more. The most credible apps are what they and the users will want. Imagine they added a section for folks like you "these apps use none of our services and we take no cut from them". That section would smell like failure, not success.
Maybe I can make my point more clear by saying what I expect from Apple: Let me publish an app and don't tell me how to run my business. I want to put up an app in store that uses external payments. Apple doesn't want this. Well, kind of, sort of. The App Store Guidelines section 11 are pretty clear on what Apple expects:
Don't charge people outside of the App Store, because we want a share of that pie. And if you do, we ain't gonna like it. We might approve your app, we might not. We might change our mind, too. Depends on how explicit you're selling your stuff.
And for a long time, it was simply not possible to offer apps that are paid for outside the App Store. And now, it's still very vague. You have to offer an app that also works without requiring a paid account.
Anyways, thanks for the input. I take this discussion to reconsider my position and think of a way how I can make this work. I must admit that Apple changed the rules over the recent months a bit. It's maybe a bit more flexible now.