Indeed, and to further the point, once they get their hands on the material it is fully legal to use and possess. I would expect a lawyer worth even as little as $1/hr would be able to successfully argue that this should be no different.
Source? I've looked through dozens of articles on this issue and found nothing.
anyways, the fuck is adobe going to pay 30% to apple so they can just kiss goodbye to pro market on their pro ios devices.
Adobe does, in fact, have paid apps in the Mac app store, Protoshop Elements 14 sells for $99.99. They have quite a number of free tools available for iOS which are extremely useful in conjunction with Photoshop (including Elements, which they sell on the Mac app store) for the pro market; an iPad or iPhone isn't powerful enough to do professional work where the file sizes easily exceed the available RAM of an iPad Pro. They're useful for tracing, sketching, creating brushes, and working on small elements, but they're definitely not standalone tools, nor are any current iOS devices capable of running anything a professional user might consider a standalone tool; Adobe isn't missing that market, it just doesn't exist.
No, I'm saying they should apply their policies evenly and allow them to put their app in the store without an in-app subscribe option, just as they've allowed Google and Amazon to do with their media streaming apps. Spotify removes the in-app subscription option and Apple says "nope", despite the fact that they do not have a policy against this and, in fact, allow other apps to do the very same thing.
The first update was rejected for that. Do you really think they didn't remove it before resubmitting? Of course they did; they removed it along with the in-app purchase option.
The problem isn't the removal of the sign (e.g. the ad that Apple didn't allow), or Apple taking a cut when Spotify sells through an in-app purchase, it's the denial of the update that removed the in-app purchase option. They're literally being told "sell through us or leave" while others (Google's and Amazon's media apps, for example) are allowed to exist in the store without in-app purchases.
It's actually more akin to setting up tables at a food court and not selling anything than it is to setting up a booth at a farmer's market. They're paying for the tables (their yearly developer fees) that customers can sit at for free to eat their food they bought elsewhere; they're just not selling food in that same food court anymore. Apple is trying to tell them if they close their shop they have to also get rid of their tables, while allowing others to keep their tables up without opening a shop.
For example, another Apple competitor, NetFlix, had an iOS app that worked for years without using Apple's in-app purchasing model
You think that's news to me? From a little further up in the conversation:
It's just not as easy a process for a potential customer to do vs if Spotify continued to use iOS payments.
Now, this is based on actual fact and I can agree with it. However, it's also how Google Play (Music, Video, and Books) and Amazon's counterpart to that work on iOS and people don't seem to have a problem with it.
I stand corrected, it seems they did not pull their app; I thought I had read that in the article, but it must have been a comment elsewhere in the discussion. TFA does, however, clearly state that the claims Spotify is making are quoted from "a letter sent this week to Apple’s top lawyer". Further:
The letter says Apple turned down a new version of the app while citing “business model rules” and demanded that Spotify use Apple’s billing system if “Spotify wants to use the app to acquire new customers and sell subscriptions.”
Apple's "business model rules" include restrictions on subscriptions and sales models, the ad must have been removed or the denial would have been for "advertising of external purchase options" or something similar. Are you insinuating that Spotify's lawyers are dumb enough to tell Apple's lawyer's that Apple is making demands they are not making? Because, well, the information in the article is pulled straight from that letter.
I'm curious to see the actual letter, but it was sent to Apple's lawyers, as well as several news agencies, all of which seem to be reporting the same thing. I don't think there's a conspiracy between every news agency reporting on this to misrepresent the content of that letter, and I don't think Spotify's lawyers are morons.
If it's being reported that the app was denied for a reason other than the (removed) ad and that Apple is insisting that Spotify use Apple's in-app purchasing system, and that these claims are sourced from a letter sent to Apple's legal team, you can bet your ass those are the facts of the situation.
No, Apple didn't "boot" Spotify from the app store. Spotify removed their approved app from the store. There is a world of difference between those two things.
Read that again, in context. Apple didn't give Spotify a choice other than: keep ripping off your customers for 20% of the profit a direct sale nets you, take an 18% loss, or leave.
What specific law prevents this contractual arrangement?
I'm not a lawyer so I can't quite the statute, but it'd be the same one that got Microsoft in shit for bundling IE.
Spotify chose to remove their existing app from the app store instead of removing the feature from their updated app that violated the terms of the app store developers agreement (which is likely the in-app redirection to a web site for payments).
RTFA again. They added the ad (which they'd been allowed previously) and were denied. They removed the violating feature (the ad) and the in-app purchase functionality. They were denied a second time for removing the latter.
I'll forgive you for arguing based on false assumptions if you'll take the time to correct your understanding.
Then Spotify has determined that Apple has a monopoly on potential customers of a streaming music service?
Who ever claimed Spotify determined Apple has a monopoly on anything?
Hell, Spotify doesn't have to pay Apple's cut. Right now they aren't, as they have (it's my understanding, I don't have the app and don't use their service) disabled the in-app purchases for the subscription.
Indeed, this is the update that Apple refused to approve, which is why Spotify pulled the app from the store.
People can go to spotify's web site, even on their iPhone, and sign up and pay spotify directly, Apple doesn't get a cut at all, then they enter their username/password or whatever in spotify's app and they can happy stream whatever.
They sure can, and this is what Spotify intended; however, those very same users now cannot enter their login info into the Spotify app on iOS unless they already had it installed before Apple refused the aforementioned update and Spotify pulled the app from the store; and those users will already have subscriptions, likely through Apple's system. They do have to pay it, in perpetuity, for any customers already using that option.
It's just not as easy a process for a potential customer to do vs if Spotify continued to use iOS payments.
Now, this is based on actual fact and I can agree with it. However, it's also how Google Play (Music, Video, and Books) and Amazon's counterpart to that work on iOS and people don't seem to have a problem with it.
Apple's issue, in this instance, is that they were insistent, either Spotify use in-app purchases on iOS and not tell users they can get it cheaper elsewhere, or they leave. That's precisely what Apple was doing when they refused to approve the update removing the in-app purchase functionality.
The reason this is an issue for Apple is that, thus far, anyone with enough sales for Apple's policies to potentially be an issue and deep enough pockets to take the issue to court has, thus far, not been willing to risk their spot in the app store over it. Apple basically booted Spotify from their store with an ultimatum: keep ripping your customers off on our behalf, take a sizable loss after we take our cut[1], or leave. Since they issue, originally, is that they were tired of ripping their customers off on Apple's behalf, and they need to make a profit to stay in business, they were stuck with option 3. Apple's attempt to force the use of one service (their in-app payment system) as a requirement for continued use of another (their app store) is, de-facto, illegal, and with Spotify no longer in the app store, they don't have that spot to worry about losing anymore; and they've got deep enough pockets to see it through to trial.
[1]: Spotify's margins are somewhere in the realm of 12%, that means a 30% cut given to Apple represents a roughly 18% loss on each in-app sale to an iOS user at $9.99. At $12.99, their margins are 2.33% after Apple's cut. They can't afford a 18% loss on each iOS user, it's just simple mathematics. However, if just 20% of iOS users also use the service on another device and continue their subscription at the $9.99 rate, Spotify will at least break even ditching Apple's platform. This will hurt Apple much more than Spotify.
This. And the only reason it hasn't been brought to court yet is because nobody with sufficiently deep pockets to fight it has been willing to be dropped from the app store over it.
Spotify has sufficiently deep pockets.
Spotify has left the app store.
Grab some popcorn, we're about to see this go to court.
They're tired of having to gouge their customers an extra 30% ($3 of $10 is 30%) to make 9% less (70% - the cut they get to keep - of $12.99 is $9.09, which is 91% of $9.99) when selling through Apple. They don't have >30% margins to be able to afford to eat the cost, so they did the reasonable thing and stopped selling that way; Apple then, took their ball and went home.
Yes, I'm aware I didn't account for Spotify's payment processing cost in my math. Let's assume they're paying something average like 2.4% + $0.10 per transaction, so they're keeping $9.65 per $9.99 transaction. Ok, fine, they're charging their iOS customers 30% more to make 5.8% less. The only one who wins that game is Apple; especially when Spotify's customers have a $3/mo cheaper option (Apple Music) that doesn't have the 30% Apple overhead.
There's definitely nothing anti-competitive going on there, though. Nothing at all, I'm sure.
By insisting on a cut larger than Spotify's margins, Apple did, effectively, set Spotify's price on their platform. Did you expect Spotify would be willing to take a loss just for the privilege of having Apple customers use their service? I'm going to guess you don't own a profitable business.
That price is coming from Spotify who is not will t deduct for credit card fees or take into account fraud costs that Apple is now handling.
If 30% was the standard loss Spotify was taking on their web-based and Android-based subscriptions, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to give Apple a 30% cut of their $9.99 subscription. I can assure you no legitimate business loses 30% to fraud, chargebacks, and processing fees, which means Spotify's costs for these things are much loser than 30%; in order to remain profitable on Apple's platform, they must charge more.
Disclosure (e.g. how I know these costs firsthand): One of my clients is facing the same issue with software sold in packages ranging from $69 to well over $2,000 (there's a package in the $20K+ range that's literally every bit of software and content they offer) and their direct-sales margins range anywhere from 1% to 10%, they absolutely must charge app-store users 30% more in order to profit. As they're becoming less and less comfortable with the situation, they're now talking about pulling out of the app-store and only doing direct sales going forward, in order to continue offering competitive prices to their users. I may have convinced them to keep a very basic offering in the app store for marketing purposes, but they've expressed no interest in continued sales through the platform for these very reasons.
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Watch a few of his videos; they're not good schematics.
Indeed, and to further the point, once they get their hands on the material it is fully legal to use and possess. I would expect a lawyer worth even as little as $1/hr would be able to successfully argue that this should be no different.
Failure rates weren't high enough to drive future sales.
of course the app has a link to spotify.com.
Source? I've looked through dozens of articles on this issue and found nothing.
anyways, the fuck is adobe going to pay 30% to apple so they can just kiss goodbye to pro market on their pro ios devices.
Adobe does, in fact, have paid apps in the Mac app store, Protoshop Elements 14 sells for $99.99. They have quite a number of free tools available for iOS which are extremely useful in conjunction with Photoshop (including Elements, which they sell on the Mac app store) for the pro market; an iPad or iPhone isn't powerful enough to do professional work where the file sizes easily exceed the available RAM of an iPad Pro. They're useful for tracing, sketching, creating brushes, and working on small elements, but they're definitely not standalone tools, nor are any current iOS devices capable of running anything a professional user might consider a standalone tool; Adobe isn't missing that market, it just doesn't exist.
and replaced it with a "enter your email here and we'll send you great information" text field
Can you cite a source for this information? It hasn't appeared in any of the over a dozen articles I read trying to find more details on this.
No, I'm saying they should apply their policies evenly and allow them to put their app in the store without an in-app subscribe option, just as they've allowed Google and Amazon to do with their media streaming apps. Spotify removes the in-app subscription option and Apple says "nope", despite the fact that they do not have a policy against this and, in fact, allow other apps to do the very same thing.
The first update was rejected for that. Do you really think they didn't remove it before resubmitting? Of course they did; they removed it along with the in-app purchase option.
The problem isn't the removal of the sign (e.g. the ad that Apple didn't allow), or Apple taking a cut when Spotify sells through an in-app purchase, it's the denial of the update that removed the in-app purchase option. They're literally being told "sell through us or leave" while others (Google's and Amazon's media apps, for example) are allowed to exist in the store without in-app purchases.
It's actually more akin to setting up tables at a food court and not selling anything than it is to setting up a booth at a farmer's market. They're paying for the tables (their yearly developer fees) that customers can sit at for free to eat their food they bought elsewhere; they're just not selling food in that same food court anymore. Apple is trying to tell them if they close their shop they have to also get rid of their tables, while allowing others to keep their tables up without opening a shop.
For example, another Apple competitor, NetFlix, had an iOS app that worked for years without using Apple's in-app purchasing model
You think that's news to me? From a little further up in the conversation:
It's just not as easy a process for a potential customer to do vs if Spotify continued to use iOS payments.
Now, this is based on actual fact and I can agree with it. However, it's also how Google Play (Music, Video, and Books) and Amazon's counterpart to that work on iOS and people don't seem to have a problem with it.
I work from home, I'm sure I'd pick up on that.
The letter says Apple turned down a new version of the app while citing “business model rules” and demanded that Spotify use Apple’s billing system if “Spotify wants to use the app to acquire new customers and sell subscriptions.”
Apple's "business model rules" include restrictions on subscriptions and sales models, the ad must have been removed or the denial would have been for "advertising of external purchase options" or something similar. Are you insinuating that Spotify's lawyers are dumb enough to tell Apple's lawyer's that Apple is making demands they are not making? Because, well, the information in the article is pulled straight from that letter.
I'm curious to see the actual letter, but it was sent to Apple's lawyers, as well as several news agencies, all of which seem to be reporting the same thing. I don't think there's a conspiracy between every news agency reporting on this to misrepresent the content of that letter, and I don't think Spotify's lawyers are morons.
If it's being reported that the app was denied for a reason other than the (removed) ad and that Apple is insisting that Spotify use Apple's in-app purchasing system, and that these claims are sourced from a letter sent to Apple's legal team, you can bet your ass those are the facts of the situation.
No, Apple didn't "boot" Spotify from the app store. Spotify removed their approved app from the store. There is a world of difference between those two things.
Read that again, in context. Apple didn't give Spotify a choice other than: keep ripping off your customers for 20% of the profit a direct sale nets you, take an 18% loss, or leave.
What specific law prevents this contractual arrangement?
I'm not a lawyer so I can't quite the statute, but it'd be the same one that got Microsoft in shit for bundling IE.
Spotify chose to remove their existing app from the app store instead of removing the feature from their updated app that violated the terms of the app store developers agreement (which is likely the in-app redirection to a web site for payments).
RTFA again. They added the ad (which they'd been allowed previously) and were denied. They removed the violating feature (the ad) and the in-app purchase functionality. They were denied a second time for removing the latter.
I'll forgive you for arguing based on false assumptions if you'll take the time to correct your understanding.
Then Spotify has determined that Apple has a monopoly on potential customers of a streaming music service?
Who ever claimed Spotify determined Apple has a monopoly on anything?
Hell, Spotify doesn't have to pay Apple's cut. Right now they aren't, as they have (it's my understanding, I don't have the app and don't use their service) disabled the in-app purchases for the subscription.
Indeed, this is the update that Apple refused to approve, which is why Spotify pulled the app from the store.
People can go to spotify's web site, even on their iPhone, and sign up and pay spotify directly, Apple doesn't get a cut at all, then they enter their username/password or whatever in spotify's app and they can happy stream whatever.
They sure can, and this is what Spotify intended; however, those very same users now cannot enter their login info into the Spotify app on iOS unless they already had it installed before Apple refused the aforementioned update and Spotify pulled the app from the store; and those users will already have subscriptions, likely through Apple's system. They do have to pay it, in perpetuity, for any customers already using that option.
It's just not as easy a process for a potential customer to do vs if Spotify continued to use iOS payments.
Now, this is based on actual fact and I can agree with it. However, it's also how Google Play (Music, Video, and Books) and Amazon's counterpart to that work on iOS and people don't seem to have a problem with it.
Apple's issue, in this instance, is that they were insistent, either Spotify use in-app purchases on iOS and not tell users they can get it cheaper elsewhere, or they leave. That's precisely what Apple was doing when they refused to approve the update removing the in-app purchase functionality.
The reason this is an issue for Apple is that, thus far, anyone with enough sales for Apple's policies to potentially be an issue and deep enough pockets to take the issue to court has, thus far, not been willing to risk their spot in the app store over it. Apple basically booted Spotify from their store with an ultimatum: keep ripping your customers off on our behalf, take a sizable loss after we take our cut[1], or leave. Since they issue, originally, is that they were tired of ripping their customers off on Apple's behalf, and they need to make a profit to stay in business, they were stuck with option 3. Apple's attempt to force the use of one service (their in-app payment system) as a requirement for continued use of another (their app store) is, de-facto, illegal, and with Spotify no longer in the app store, they don't have that spot to worry about losing anymore; and they've got deep enough pockets to see it through to trial.
[1]: Spotify's margins are somewhere in the realm of 12%, that means a 30% cut given to Apple represents a roughly 18% loss on each in-app sale to an iOS user at $9.99. At $12.99, their margins are 2.33% after Apple's cut. They can't afford a 18% loss on each iOS user, it's just simple mathematics. However, if just 20% of iOS users also use the service on another device and continue their subscription at the $9.99 rate, Spotify will at least break even ditching Apple's platform. This will hurt Apple much more than Spotify.
My client will be EXTREMELY happy about this!
Seems like a simple fix,
From TFA:
Spotify stopped advertising the promotion. But it also turned off its App Store billing option, which has led to the current dispute.
Seems they did that, actually.
they could possibly include a "button" that directs you to their website to "manage your account" if they wanted to and Apple still wouldn't get shit.
That's specifically forbidden by Apple, actually, for the very reason you mention: Apple [...] wouldn't get shit.
This. And the only reason it hasn't been brought to court yet is because nobody with sufficiently deep pockets to fight it has been willing to be dropped from the app store over it.
Spotify has sufficiently deep pockets.
Spotify has left the app store.
Grab some popcorn, we're about to see this go to court.
You don't see studios taking back content from blockbuster
After the fire sale when they went out of business, there was nothing left to take back.
They're tired of having to gouge their customers an extra 30% ($3 of $10 is 30%) to make 9% less (70% - the cut they get to keep - of $12.99 is $9.09, which is 91% of $9.99) when selling through Apple. They don't have >30% margins to be able to afford to eat the cost, so they did the reasonable thing and stopped selling that way; Apple then, took their ball and went home.
Yes, I'm aware I didn't account for Spotify's payment processing cost in my math. Let's assume they're paying something average like 2.4% + $0.10 per transaction, so they're keeping $9.65 per $9.99 transaction. Ok, fine, they're charging their iOS customers 30% more to make 5.8% less. The only one who wins that game is Apple; especially when Spotify's customers have a $3/mo cheaper option (Apple Music) that doesn't have the 30% Apple overhead.
There's definitely nothing anti-competitive going on there, though. Nothing at all, I'm sure.
By insisting on a cut larger than Spotify's margins, Apple did, effectively, set Spotify's price on their platform. Did you expect Spotify would be willing to take a loss just for the privilege of having Apple customers use their service? I'm going to guess you don't own a profitable business.
That price is coming from Spotify who is not will t deduct for credit card fees or take into account fraud costs that Apple is now handling.
If 30% was the standard loss Spotify was taking on their web-based and Android-based subscriptions, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to give Apple a 30% cut of their $9.99 subscription. I can assure you no legitimate business loses 30% to fraud, chargebacks, and processing fees, which means Spotify's costs for these things are much loser than 30%; in order to remain profitable on Apple's platform, they must charge more.
Disclosure (e.g. how I know these costs firsthand): One of my clients is facing the same issue with software sold in packages ranging from $69 to well over $2,000 (there's a package in the $20K+ range that's literally every bit of software and content they offer) and their direct-sales margins range anywhere from 1% to 10%, they absolutely must charge app-store users 30% more in order to profit. As they're becoming less and less comfortable with the situation, they're now talking about pulling out of the app-store and only doing direct sales going forward, in order to continue offering competitive prices to their users. I may have convinced them to keep a very basic offering in the app store for marketing purposes, but they've expressed no interest in continued sales through the platform for these very reasons.
competition is good. Apple kicking competitors off its platform is better
I think that's what you meant to say.
You can buy prepaid Visa cards with cash, as well...
It's bigger on the inside!
Not at all; I'm the one making a 6-figure income, my wife's the unemployed iPhone user.
No worries, see you around, it's been good!