If push notifications are an important value add, which go through Apple's servers is it reasonable for Apple to have companies that make money using there services subsidize the free ones?
Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"?
There's a question of "How does Apple pay for services?" Yes, it is currently quite profitable. If moving to a 3rd party payment processor with no associated fee causes the App Store to become unprofitable, what steps is Apple allowed to take to return it to a profit center?
> Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"?
I think this has been a missing piece of the conversation for the most part. Apple needs to pay for servers, upkeep, development, etc. and deserve to make (some) profit. Why is the conversation about whether Apple can charge 30% or 0% or somewhere in between per transaction rather than based on actual usages and costs associated with operating the platform?
AWS offers similar features and technologies but we don't see them charging based on your product's revenue. Why should Apple?
Price setting is obviously a problem though if Apple continues to be the only company allowed to provide a service like "App Review" or "10k push notifications".
> The determining factor of the pricing structure for creating Skills depends primarily on their complexity.
> In other words, the more complicated the request being processed (and therefore, more cloud services required), the more it will cost to publish the Skill.
With that model, free skills cost their developers money.
If apple charged for the actual costs it would be a non issue.
Instead they charge 10x the industry fees for credit card transactions and gives the rest for "free". And that puts any app that has considerable running costs at disadvantage.
And gives competitive disadvantage to Apple's own products that get to pay for the actual costs.
Why do they have to go through apple’s servers? Why can’t users select an alternative push provider? Why can’t apps be allowed to just maintain their own socket if the user is ok with the battery impact?
Another part to this is that people have been highly critical of Apple when their battery performance is poor, not realizing that its an app that is consuming the battery. That has been mitigated some by Apple showing which apps are consuming the battery the most, but people tend to blame the OS rather than the application when something goes wrong.
> The most impressive things to read on Raymond’s weblog are the stories of the incredible efforts the Windows team has made over the years to support backwards compatibility:
>> Look at the scenario from the customer’s standpoint. You bought programs X, Y and Z. You then upgraded to Windows XP. Your computer now crashes randomly, and program Z doesn’t work at all. You’re going to tell your friends, “Don’t upgrade to Windows XP. It crashes randomly, and it’s not compatible with program Z.” Are you going to debug your system to determine that program X is causing the crashes, and that program Z doesn’t work because it is using undocumented window messages? Of course not. You’re going to return the Windows XP box for a refund. (You bought programs X, Y, and Z some months ago. The 30-day return policy no longer applies to them. The only thing you can return is Windows XP.)
While Apple doesn't go that far to preserve backwards compatibility, they're still the ones that take the heat when a popular app is excessively battery consuming as its the battery indicator that's going down.
Alternatively, if everyone who is publishing free on Apple is using an alternate payment system, and Apple doesn't collect anything from those apps, would it be reasonable for Apple to have some sort of "Developer pays $10 for every 10k push messages from a free app?" and "Developer pays $0.25/month for each app on the App Store"?
There's a question of "How does Apple pay for services?" Yes, it is currently quite profitable. If moving to a 3rd party payment processor with no associated fee causes the App Store to become unprofitable, what steps is Apple allowed to take to return it to a profit center?