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App Culture vs. Free Culture

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zridling:
Once an app store has you locked in to its "buy-here-or-get-out" structure, what's to keep the owner, e.g., Apple, from taking 35, 40, and eventually 50% of your 99 cents? If you protest, what are you going to do -- shut up, take less, and be happy for the privilege of being ripped off.

If you know of an example where a "payments technology company" such as Visa or PayPal ever take less and reduce fees, I'd love to hear it.

tomos:
Once an app store has you locked in to its "buy-here-or-get-out" structure, what's to keep the owner, e.g., Apple, from taking 35, 40, and eventually 50% of your 99 cents? If you protest, what are you going to do -- shut up, take less, and be happy for the privilege of being ripped off.
-zridling (July 08, 2010, 05:47 PM)
--- End quote ---
true,
that's could be the biggest problem for the developers, and possibly for the users in the end


If you know of an example where a "payments technology company" such as Visa or PayPal ever take less and reduce fees, I'd love to hear it.
-zridling (July 08, 2010, 05:47 PM)
--- End quote ---
when they are in direct competition with other like companies.
Apple is in competition with others but once they get people to buy into the hardware it's back to your first point ;)

Renegade:
btw for the record i think that 30% is way way too high, and is the kind of mark up that you could only get away with by having a near-monopoly control over access by consumers.
-mouser (July 08, 2010, 02:49 PM)
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Yes and no. 30% isn't too high if the store is doing some work. The iTunes store does exactly zero work -- it adds zero relative value. It's the ONLY option for consumers. If anything, as pointed out above, it acts to the detriment of consumers. Good software doesn't rise to the top --- good SELLING software rises to the top. i.e. You are charged 30% for the 'privilege' of being admitted to the store. Freeware is admitted because if they didn't, consumers wouldn't buy the iPhone at all.

If someone goes out and gets customers, then 30% is fair, and even low sometimes. The app store doesn't do that. It robs you of 30% for sending you to the bottom of the LOOOOONNNNNGGGG list and scraping 30% off the sales to the 3 people that find you...

For percentages, think of it this way --- I will give anyone out there a 50% commission on sales for getting me customers that I would not otherwise get. It's good for me and you. After all, 100% of nothing (customers that I would not get otherwise) is nothing, where 50% is something.

For other software, 3% could be "high".

There have been cases of paying for customers for freeware, and they have added value.

It's a VERY broad topic, and I think each case needs to be evaluated on its own.

My $0.02 anyways.

mouser:
What Renegade said is right, but i think it's actually much much worse.

Look around at all these hundreds of shareware listing/cataloging sites, that work hard to make nice websites where you can find and read about software, download it, see update information, read reviews, etc.  And they do this all without charging the software authors or the users.  Why? Because they are making money on the web advertising from the traffic.

It's not to hard to see why these App Store ideas are getting popular.. They have figured out that if they can create a virtual monopoly in terms of being the *only* gateway by which people find and buy and download software, they can charge everyone and make money off of everyone involved in the process. 

It's a goldmine for them, and the more they can set up a system where by users ONLY go to the App Store to get software (or music, etc.) the more they can charge authors for access to the customers, since the authors no longer have any viable alternative.  Then they double their money with advertising and charging people to artificially promote and place their products, and the situation just gets worse and worse for small developers who are at the mercy of the middle man.

It seems like a huge step backward for small artists and developers, who were just starting to throw off the chains of the big record companies, etc. and connect directly with their fans and end users.  Now we seem to be flirting with the idea of going back to a system where the artists and consumers are again separated by a monopolistic middle-man determined to squeeze as much profit and exert as much control, and set up as many ways to jack up profits through advertising and promotion deals as ever.

I know this sounds a bit extreme but the more i think about it the more concerned i get.

It seems essential to me that we support a development platform where the channel for getting music/software is NOT controlled by an organization whose incentive is to make money from this channel.  It means we have to choose a platform (whether it be computer, mobile device, etc.) where there is a concerted effort to not come between and exploit the developers/artists and the users.

By all means let everyone make some money from what they create.  But stay away from anything where someone else is making a profit by setting up roadblocks between you and the people actually creating things for you.

app103:
Don't forget that despite not coding one line in your app, Apple willingly takes 30% of your profit off the top. That's effing greedy, folks!-zridling (July 06, 2010, 04:59 PM)
--- End quote ---
As does Google if you sale in their market, and I believe Microsoft said their mobile store would be the same or similar.  Is 30% that bad when you consider it means you don't have to set up a store, actually handle credit card fees, or pay for the bandwidth? I'm seriously asking as it doesn't seem that bad to me.

I dislike Apple's policies and the corporate attitude they project, but I'm not sure I see this 70-30 split being so outrageous.


Now the fact that a developer interested in selling an iOS app to non-jailbreaking users has no other choice but to accept Apple's 70-30 deal is absolutely maddening.
-TheQwerty (July 07, 2010, 06:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

Don't forget there are 2 other issues involved:

1. You can't try before you buy, so there is a risk involved with buying crap and not being able to get your money back.
2. Donationware is not supported.

They only support 2 types of apps, completely free and you are not allowed to ask for donations, and pay up front before you get to try it. There is no room for a donationware model or try before you buy shareware model. Neither one of these makes it easy for them to snatch their 30%, so it's not allowed.

Now, how do you think this will play out when Microsoft starts their own app store for Windows? If they do it the Apple way, then it will hurt freeware, open source, and completely destroy shareware. And the download sites that mouser mentioned, that have worked hard for years to make something useful to users, they will be put out of business. And if you can only install software acquired through the official app store, then what happens to this site and all the coding snacks, NANY submissions, etc? And what about software that comes shrink wrapped, sold through brick & mortar stores?

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