Reuters:
Two app developers on Tuesday sued Apple Inc over its App Store practices, making claims similar to those in a lawsuit brought by consumers that the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed to proceed.
And:
California-based app developer Donald R. Cameron and Illinois Pure Sweat Basketball alleged in federal court in San Jose, California that Apple engaged in anticompetitive conduct by only allowing the downloading of iPhone apps through Apple’s official App Store.
And:
California-based app developer Donald R. Cameron and Illinois Pure Sweat Basketball alleged in federal court in San Jose, California that Apple engaged in anticompetitive conduct by only allowing the downloading of iPhone apps through Apple’s official App Store.
Apple’s take:
The company has said it enforces its App Store rules evenhandedly, regardless of whether it competes with app makers, and that many competitors, such as Microsoft Corp’s email apps, thrive on the App Store.
Apple has also emphasized that free apps that do not use its billing system are hosted and distributed at no cost to developers beyond a $99 fee to be part of its developer program.
This lawsuit is testing the waters. It is specific to the iOS App Store (you can distribute your own apps on the Mac). Obviously, if successful, this would force Apple to change the App Store model in some way.
Wondering if Apple created a sandboxed side environment for unapproved apps, an environment that is walled off from all the approved apps and the core of iOS, if that would pass muster with the courts.
I have always made it a practice not to buy from the App Store if I can get it by downloading elsewhere – on my Mac. But that won’t cut it with iOS. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, now that Apple is putting more emphasis on services. Used to be we would say that Apple makes hardware and only makes software to go with the hardware, not to make money. That has certainly changed.
This is just silly. The developer can charge anything they want for the app. Apple pays for the hosting, bandwidth, billing, credit card fees, accounting, mailing of the checks to the devs, builds the hardware you are making the money on, gives you all the developers software you need for $99 a year, etc. etc. etc. Waaaaa I don’t want to pay 30%. If you put your video game in a store in a box you’d MAYBE take home 20% on it. MAYBE. The app store is what keeps the users safe, unlike the sea of Malware that the Android users face. To throw out user protections to save 30% of money you wouldn’t make if there wasn’t an Apple app store is insane. And furthermore, because the Apple App store is free from (99%) Malware, that’s why the 15% of the phone market spends MORE on software than the massive Android market. And also, it’s why your software isn’t pirated and available for free all over the Internet an hour after you post it.
let me translate this:
“We cannot make anything good enough and popular enough to make money by selling our apps so we’re going to sue Apple because they have cash!”
I wonder how they feel about consoles that are even more locked down. Or any other closed platform.
I think it’d be one thing if iOS was open and later locked down and kicked out devs…but it’s always been closed. And the royalty rates are the same for everyone for better or worse. And even then, technically web apps are still possible for a lot of stuff, and side loading is kind of a thing since Apple opened that up a little bit a while back.
(…profiles too but uh, that was never really meant for that and Apple kills accounts that use them improperly)
The whole lawsuit is that they don’t believe that 30% is worth paying for hosting, bandwidth, billing, credit card fees, accounting, mailing of the checks to the devs. Especially because the free apps, like Uber, or the apps that sell physical items, like Amazon, get all of that for free, while the apps that charge or sell digital goods cover those costs for everyone.
What I’m wondering is how Apple would prevent such a sandbox from becoming a place to run all developers’ apps for free. Just go to some website that’s far outside the reach of copyright law, download all your favorite apps, DRM-stripped, then run them in the court-ordered, side-loading sandbox. Hopefully, Apple is aware of this danger, and has an internal lab working on a Shazam-like app recognition system that can’t be fooled by cosmetically altering the app. Then they could provide a sandbox that automatically blocks pirated apps.
But guess what. The developers who are suing don’t really want to sell their app on their own website, and have their users sideload it. They just want the courts to specify a lower percentage for Apple. And those developers’ lawyers just want the courts to order Apple to hand them a big fat stack of cash. It’s a shame that cases like this can’t be summarily dismissed on the grounds that there’s nothing currently against the law with charging 30% — or more: BlackBerry was charging 50% before Apple ran them out of the market.