That's exactly it, so many users are afraid that this will mean every random app you download will have a credit card entry field. Nope. Those random apps will still benefit from the simplicity of the system IAP, one tap, auth, done. The ones asking for a credit card will drop in ratings and search results.
The big players are the ones that will switch, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc. And beyond that, competitors like Square and Stripe will release SDKs that make purchasing just as easy as the system IAP, and will actually force Apple to improve their system.
If Apple thinks hosting costs are of any consequence, then charge people for hosting if they don't actively use IAP. For 99% of apps hosting is pennies on the dollar, but for games like Fortnite it may actually cost a decent amount, especially for the binary size.
The end point is that there are no technical limitations to anything here, it is all political and Apple has the ability to change this at any time. There just isn't any point when they can continue to rake in 30% of every digital subscription service on the internet that wants to exist on their platform.
It's more than just one-time IAP, though. I'm generally "whatever" on what payment processor people use, but one of the things that does concern me is subscription management. To me there is a lot of value to having a central place where all my subscriptions are and where they can be canceled easily, even if I don't have the app installed anymore.
YOLOing something with Stripe doesn't give me that without a bunch of fundamentally opt-in stuff on the part of the developer, and that's pretty concerning. If the platforms can (and do) solve this, then I feel a lot better about it.
> If Apple thinks hosting costs are of any consequence, then charge people for hosting If they don't actively use IAP. For 99% of apps hosting is pennies on the dollar, but for games like Fortnite it may actually cost a decent amount, especially for the binary size.
I don't know how this is on iPhones, but on android (large) games are usually still a small download with just the binary and no assets from the app store, and the game assets are then downloaded from the game company server by the game binary itself.
That also allows them to push some updates (think e.g. balance patches) that don't require a new binary to be pushed without having to wait for appstore approval again.
So there's a decent chance they may already do that because it also gives them other benefits.
I haven't heard of any actual regulation or court proceedings that would end with Apple Pay being removed as a payment option from apps.
Apple can always require an Apple Pay option for any app in its app store which collects payments. And honestly it'd probably be okay if they require devs to charge users the same amount regardless of how they pay.
The issue is that they ban other options entirely, which reeks of monopolistic anticompetitive behavior.
Just let devs tell their users about Apple's 30% cut, then let devs give users an option to pay however they want.
> The ones asking for a credit card will drop in ratings and search results.
Ratings and general search are already useless in appstores, dominated by apps filled with pay2win dark patterns and optimized/gamed to be higher in ratings. The times where you could go to top games section and find a genuine good app are over more than a decade ago. So you can find the app you need only be it's exact name or via link from external source.
So now appstore is nothing more than a very restrictive guardian/censor. No value lost.
The big players are the ones that will switch, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc. And beyond that, competitors like Square and Stripe will release SDKs that make purchasing just as easy as the system IAP, and will actually force Apple to improve their system.
If Apple thinks hosting costs are of any consequence, then charge people for hosting if they don't actively use IAP. For 99% of apps hosting is pennies on the dollar, but for games like Fortnite it may actually cost a decent amount, especially for the binary size.
The end point is that there are no technical limitations to anything here, it is all political and Apple has the ability to change this at any time. There just isn't any point when they can continue to rake in 30% of every digital subscription service on the internet that wants to exist on their platform.