Can we talk about the App Store?

There has been a lot of press around changes to the App Store lately.

First there was a US court decision that forced Apple into allowing apps to include an “alternate payment link”, and just yesterday they announced a sweeping set of changes coming to the EU App Store due to the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that is scheduled to come into effect in March.

Both of these legally mandated changes are being implemented in such a way as to do the absolute bare minimum required and make everyone who decides to use the new options pay for it.

• Alternate payment links have to be approved by Apple, can only appear in one place in your app, and require devs pay the same commission they currently pay for in-app purchases minus 3% (which coincidentally is a fairly standard credit card processing fee). At best you’re paying the same cut of your sales, which is likely going to lead to almost no one utilizing the system.
• The EU rule changes are too numerous to list here, but in almost all cases, the alternate options that Apple is providing to comply with the DMA are seemingly designed to dissuade anyone from opting in, even providing a handy calculator that helps you realize that your current protection money App Store commission is a “good deal” in comparison.¹

To sum this up: the way they’re “complying” with these legal directives is by grumbling “we’ll show them”, and then proceeding to take it out on the people and teams that are trying to build software for a platform they care about, that have contributed to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Political maneuvering at it’s finest [as long as we end up mad at the legislators and judges, and not the angry mob boss trying to convince us they’re trying to help].

What’s the solution?

In my opinion, Apple can fix this. Instead of doing the minimum their legal teams are advising them they can get away with, how about rethinking the way the Apple to Developer relationship works all the way to the core. Instead of justifying why 15-30% is a fair fee, open up the market and offer a compelling service that people will line up to pay for.

There are plenty of things I would gladly pay Apple for as an indie developer:

• A good development environment, including first party frameworks, documentation, development apps, test harnesses, etc.
• Listing my apps in the worldwide App Store directory, including impartial search rankings, being displayed as a related app, and hosting of all the app metadata including screenshots, videos, descriptions, and reviews.
• Hosting my app binaries for easy multi-region downloads without relying on a third-party solution like Amazon S3 or Google Cloud.
• Automatic updating of my apps, allowing my customers to easily use the best versions of my software.
• Payment solutions, including credit card processing, chargeback support, software licenses, receipt validation, and more.
• Editorial content about my app, including best-of lists, topical round-ups, or developer spotlights.
• Preferential search treatment or placement for my apps in the App Store.

With the exception of preferential search placement², this is arguably most of what Apple currently provides as part of their App Store commission (15-30% of revenue). The problem is, if I want to ship an iPhone app, I don’t have a choice to use a competing service for most of these offerings.

If Apple’s in-app purchase flow is better for a customer than say, a Stripe checkout page, it should be able to stand on it’s own merits. Before working on iPhone apps, I spent some time working in eCommerce and checkout conversion is one of the main things you work to optimize. If Apple was able to offer an in-app checkout flow that converted 10% better than a Stripe flow, I would use Apple’s and pay them a similar cut to what Stripe would charge me.

The same goes for any other thing I listed (and I’m sure many more):

• If Apple’s store required a listing fee (even as a percentage of my sales), but that listing fee was leading to consistently finding customers for my apps, I would pay to list my app in that store.
• If Apple’s app hosting CDN was just as fast (or faster) for my customers to download and update from, and it was competitively priced with other hosting offerings, I would use the built in offering.

I could go on and on, but the point is the same: If Apple is providing such a compelling service to developers, why are they shielding themselves from competition by continuing to operate in a monopolistic way?

And again, because it can’t be said enough: the plethora of good apps available for Apple platforms is a boon, not a burden for Apple. Apple is able to continue selling their devices for record profits year after year in part because of the vibrant third-party app ecosystem enabled by the very developers and teams they’re scorning.