Reminder: Apple gets up to 30% of subscriptions set up in any iPhone app! It's a huge tax on the European economy. đź’ˇ Tip: Cancel and resubscribe on the app's website.
Not sure how many people subscribe to anything on Lemmy, but let's give it a try
It would be fine IF iOS allowed other app stores to compete with their own. This is why it's fine when steam does it, because the game developers can always go to GOG or Epic or itch if they want
It has always been highway robbery. Yes, even Steam. Look at how desperate Microsoft was to copy it on their platform that was successful because it's more open (than Apple).
Wrong, Apple does not provide any additional features besides taking a cut. Sure, maybe they provide the payment process, but that's it. The moment you subscribe, you might as well forget Apple exists.
Steam, on the other hand, allows: cloud saves, family sharing, media library, big picture, controller support, Linux support, achievements, community, friends, groups, store with tag search, advanced review features, inventory, couch coop over internet, and fuckton of stuff.
I'd say 30% is pretty generous, given Steam's reach. Also you are not forced to use Steam, you can you GOG, Epic (eww), Ubisoft, EA, Amazon, etc., while with Apple you can't.
The EU introduce the Digital Markets Act that is supposed to force Malus and Gogle to open up their ecosystem. Gogle is fairly open but for some reason another app store hasn't made it big. Malus is just locked down as hell but now has AltStore in the EU.
Malus does however not abide completely by the DMA. Someone mentioned "notarisation" to me recently: they still have to approve apps on alternative stores, which the EU isn't happy about. No one knows how long it'll take for the EU to force Malus to play by the rules and get rid of notarisation though. Maybe with how the US is acting, it could speed that up, but my bet is on 2026.
Gogle is fairly open but for some reason another app store hasn't made it big
Samsung has their own app store which I presume does reasonably well in their ecosystem, and Amazon maintains their own app store for Kindle. F-Droid is also reasonably popular with the open source and privacy focused crowd.
It pays for the development of system apis, update infrastructure, software deployment infrastructure, software development sdks and toolkits, among a bunch of other very expensive to maintain infrastructure. There's the argument to be made to force them to allow competition, but I don't think you can call it robbery from an informed 10000 foot view because everything they provide is extremely expensive and extensively technical to host/construct on your own.
I’ve only ever heard that from Americans. I’m surprised it’s not a thing here in the UK seen as we love copying the worst from the yanks, but on this no one cares.
Hmm, maybe I shouldn't judge so harshly. I'm assuming you didn't want or didn't know of Linux when switching to Malus? Malus is just a stepping stone to Linux? What got you into Malus in the first place?
No, I just can’t do this one, I used to do that but Apple is great at giving my money back, there was a mental health app located in Europe that stole not 200$ but 400$ from me during a period I could not afford it.
They made two mistakes after I had already deleted the app and unsubscribes from the trial.
Apple is great at giving me my money back and I trust them , it takes 15 minutes most of the time.