Let’s say your company asks you to deliver certain files at the end of the quarter for recordkeeping purposes. You can send them quickly, easily and efficiently by email, but old company policy requires you to copy them onto a USB stick and physically deliver them to the employee who manages the records. You hate politics, but you have to comply with them. So you find the oldest, slowest, smallest USB drives possible and copy the files onto them, filling up a dozen old, slow USB drives and creating a headache for everyone.
This would be an example of “malicious compliance”, the concept of adhering to the letter of a law or policy, but doing so in a way that openly defies its spirit or renders life of others more difficult because the law/policy exists.
New changes to the iOS App Store in the EU, to comply with the Digital Markets Act, have been announced and are part of iOS 17.4 (in beta now, to be released by March) . Apple’s description of it sounds like good news – lower commissions and so on. – but many developers view these changes as a master class in malicious compliance. In fact, Apple’s new terms are listed as one of the examples of malicious compliance in the Wikipedia entry.
Guardian fees
At the center of most developers’ complaints is a new “base technology fee” that is charged on each “first annual install” for developers with more than 1 million users. This is every time the app is installed for the first time in a year, even if it is a free download. So if you have three million downloads (including app updates or downloads from sources outside of the Apple App Store), you’ll pay a base technology fee of $0.50 per user (54 cents) for two million users.
Apple has created a fee calculator so developers can see what they will pay under current and new rules, with options to adjust downloads, sales, whether or not the app is distributed in the App Store and whether purchases are processed by Apple or not. Many developers were shocked to plug in seemingly reasonable numbers and discover that their apps would lose half of their revenue. or more to Apple even if Apple does not distribute the application or process payments. Add to that third-party payment processing fees and App Store fees and…
Well, let’s just say it seems clear that Apple is making it as unappetizing as possible to use anything other than the App Store. Under current conditions, an app with 5 million users and 2 million dollars in annual sales (in the EU) will pay around 46,000 dollars per month. Under the new terms, that explodes to over $197,000 per month, and even if you don’t use the App Store or Apple’s payment processing, you’d be paying over $166,000 per month!
Leave it to Apple to comply with a government regulation regarding “gatekeeping” by creating fees that could reasonably be called gatekeeping fees: fees that developers pay solely for the privilege of accessing the device and that, of course, Apple does not pay. Technically, I don’t have to pay for any of its apps, many of which compete with third-party apps.
Vision Pro needs strong developer support to succeed.
Apple
Vision Pro needs the goodwill of developers
The backdrop to all this is the launch of Apple’s first major new product category in over a decade, and perhaps the most important development frontier since the iPhone: Apple Vision Pro.
We recently wrote about all the apps you won’t to be found on Apple’s $3,499 Space Computer. Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, almost Nothing from Google… the list is quite long. These aren’t just applications that won’t have native “spatial computing” versions, these are applications that specifically have chose to withdraw to allow their iPad apps to run in a window on Apple Vision Pro.
This is a huge problem. With sales less than a million, this new platform can easily be overlooked. Even with less than 10 million sales, most of the companies that make the apps we all rely on may not be bothered. Consider that native iPad apps are still not assured (e.g. Instagram) where Apple “only” sells 50-60 million units per year, and native Vision Pro apps will likely be more difficult to create.
And without lots of great apps (real apps, native and third-party), it will be extremely difficult for more than a few million people to justify spending thousands of dollars on a mixed reality device. Even if the next headset only costs $1,000, it won’t be a big success if the apps aren’t there.
The VisionPro needs goodwill of the developer. Developers need to take a chance and create the apps that make the device desirable. Now is not the time for pride. It’s time for Apple to bend over backwards for developers, making its platforms (all of them – it’s an ecosystem!) as desirable as possible. While none of the new EU terms apply to Vision Pro, at least not yet, they continue to burn bridges with the very people who need to build Vision Pro apps. This seems like the worst possible move to attract developer goodwill with new terms that seem deliberately designed to anger Apple’s biggest critics and provoke regulators just as Apple Vision Pro launches.
