Well, let's see - when the App Store started out, apple took 30%, and this was clearly reasonable - dealing with credit card transactions costs lots of time and effort and money, as is making installs and such work right, as is vetting for malicious intent, and there's also the promotion and hosting that's all taken care of for you. A few complained, but many saw it, thought it was a sweet deal, and jumped right in.
Now, apple is asking that same 30% for what is effectively no better or worse than paypal or any other payment processor. There's no hosting or promotion of anything. Virtually no vetting for malicious intent (the app review already did that), etc. 30% is completely, utterly, ridiculous. 5% would already be pushing it. So there's problem #1: That 30% was entirely fair for apps themselves, but ridiculous for in-app purchases / subscriptions*. But now, apple, being apple, and the appstore TOS being what it is, everyone is all of a sudden up against the wall. Well, 'everyone' - somebody like book sellers who are entitled to no more than 30% total off of the end user price, which means they end up with literally nothing. They whine. As they should - how else are you going to affect change? However, I am inclined to stick my tongue out and say "Na, Na, Na, I told you so!!!" because this is exactly what's bound to happen when you sign up for a sharecropping model. *) Note that this is hard to fix for apple. If they drop the price for in-app purchases, then everyone will simply market their app as freeware and offer an in-app upgrade purchase. Apple would have to draw up more hard-to-process, arbitrary-sounding legal gobbledygook to attempt to define what constitutes an in-app marketplace and what consistutes a creative attempt at end-running apple out of their 30%. They've kind of painted themselves in a corner here, perhaps. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
