At Apple, that will take at least 5-10 years before they get to that state. Siri is barely usable beyond simple “create reminder” or “set timer” queries/commands.
Hope by then, we see government intervention and break up big tech
What if, instead of 'subscribing' for $10, you purchase a grain of sand for $10.
The grain of sand is available for collection from somewhere, doesn't matter where because nobody would bother to collect it. Your physical purchase comes with free access to digital content.
Its funny, because this is the exact opposite of how some cannabis dispensaries operate in Washington DC. It is illegal to sell cannabis there, but not to posses or to gift it. So you buy a $50 QR code that lets you access "digital art", and they give you a free 1/8 of cannabis with your purchase as a "gift".
This is the old eBay shipping trick. Ebay charged vendors a percentage of the product sale price, but nothing on shipping. So I'd often buy posters for $0.99 with $14.99 shipping (US Media Mail shipping was a lot lower than that).
The point is that since they keep broadening what they do want 30% of, we expect the next thing they'll do is removing the exception for physical goods.
Close. They already get a % whenever you use Apple Pay. In fact, it's part of why the EU demanded Apple provide NFC APIs to allow third-party replacements of the built-in Wallet app.
>Q: What fees does Apple charge merchants for using Apple Pay?
>Apple does not charge merchants any fees for accepting Apple Pay payments. However, merchants may still be subject to fees from their payment processor or bank. Remember, credit cards and debit cards are behind each Apple customer purchase.
>Apple Pay fees are generally lower than traditional credit card processing. Credit card issuers charge small businesses substantially more. As such, many SMBs ask employees to encourage Apple Pay transactions.
>Merchants, on the other hand, aren’t charged at all to use Apple Pay on physical and eCommerce transactions.
Looks like Apple Pay is cheaper for everyone except banks:
>Major banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Capital One are unhappy with their cut from Apple. So much so that they’ve formally requested that Visa, “change the way that it processes certain Apple Pay transactions.” In other words, pay Apple less in transaction fees.
This website has a better breakdown of costs under the "What are the fees" section, but no firm figures, and the only estimate is from 10 years ago:
Yeah I can't understand why people think that inviting new middlemen into their transactions is acceptable. It's time to stop prostrating ourselves to these companies.
It's not a Google-specific attitude - it's the value proposition of all middlemen everywhere.
Facilitation of transactions and assuming the risk.
It's worth it to many. I gladly pay Apple the extra 30% or whatever because it adds up to <$10 per month for me and I don't have to jump through hoops to cancel subs.
Apple has given me a simple way to manage many of my subscriptions, a single pane of glass, which I appreciate. I'm fine paying a little extra for that.
It would be more valuable to me if Apple didn't charge too much, which turns away service providers.
It's fine for App Store developers to complain about their costs of doing business like any other business. I'm not sure what the point of bringing up nonsensical hypotheticals like bank payments is.
Except this is a clear racket and not a regular cost of doing business. Imagine Microsoft tomorrow deciding to require 30% of even a fraction of things happing on windows. Imagine Apple trying to do this on the Mac. It's laughably anti-competitive and the only reason they're not doing it on the Mac is because it would expose the absurdity of the situation on iOS.
That, and Apple probably requires a shit load of third party utilities that do "naughty" things like read the file system or be "not sandboxed" in order to actually get any work done. They need the Mac to write APIs to charge people 30% on the App Store for the iPhone.
