Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment. And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started. So this week we're going to be talking about, let's see, what's new in SceneKit? We should do some really deep technical, unrelated to the day's news episode that's purely dry and technical. What do you think of What's New in Property Wrappers?
I have a very, very strong opinion. Is there anything that would properly represent? Probably not, but... Yes, clearly that is not what we're going to talk about because this last week has seen... You and I have both been doing this for 17 years or something like that. It's a long time. We've been iOS app developers as long as anybody has been iOS app developers except people inside of Apple and maybe Icon Factory.
Sure. I mean, we've been doing this since 2008. I think it is like when I started. doing this kind of stuff. And it's like, It seems like last week there was a big, you know, the thing we're dancing around is the injunction against Apple regarding their anti-steering provisions in the Epic case that has been dragging on for...
what is it, like five years now? These things have been going dragging on forever. But anyway, Apple had an injunction that said they had to open up external payment methods to a U.S. storefront. which is huge, and is meaningful, and is dramatic, and it is this big thing that is The culmination, and probably the culmination is maybe the wrong word, because I doubt this is the end. I hope it is in some ways the end, but I guarantee you it's not the end. Yeah, but it is potentially...
It is certainly a pivotal moment in this whole thing. It is something is materially different now. because against their wishes, Apple has been forced to do the thing that previously they didn't want to do and said was impossible to do or impractical or all kinds of things that... For all those reasons, for the last 17 years, they've chosen not to go down this path, to be very strict and locked down in the way that payment processing is done within apps.
And whatever the merits of both sides of this case, it has happened. There are apps in the App Store now that have third-party payment processing, and that is a thing that exists. And that is a big change. And that is huge and has lots of consequences that will be far-reaching. The thing when I was thinking about preparing for this episode, because obviously this is what we're going to talk about this week, because as independent iOS app developers, this
is a meaningful pivotal change in the business that we run and the way we run it and the options that are available to us and what's going to be happening with our competitors and all kinds of things like that. There are so many knock-on effects.
But I think the reality of a show like this, and I think a show under the radar over the last 10 years that we've been doing this, I try to have steered us towards the kind of constructive... not deep in the weeds, but just constructively moving the conversation forward and trying to take the perspective of two people who've been doing this about as long as you can do it, to talk about...
How did we get here? Where can we go from here? Like, what is the constructive steps to look back at what brought, you know, why did this thing ultimately have to be done via a judge's order in an injunction to a five-year-old case? rather than being something that was an active choice that Apple made. And then maybe even on the more positive side, it's like, what positive outcomes could this bring? What are the...
what could we see come out of this that's good and hopeful and encouraging to our business? Because the reality is, as an app developer, I don't want to think about As much as we were joking at the beginning, I would rather have under the radar be talking about property wrappers and scene kit and technical things that are the actual job that I want to do. The job that you and I, we got into this business because we like making apps.
And I think particularly we were attracted, you know, in terms of having, you know, you're my friend, my friendship is that we both want to make excellent apps. I think we both strive. towards making good, wonderful apps that solve problems in interesting ways and are encouraging. And broadly, that's what I want to do. I don't want to be thinking about...
courtroom dramas. That's not the life that I want for myself. I want to make things. I want to put this behind me and be able to focus on this. Unfortunately, that perspective and that thing that I've been reluctantly pulled out of doesn't seem possible right now. There is this massive distraction, this big drama that is happening.
that unfortunately app developers are right in the middle of. And there are parts of this that are well outside of our remit and our range where it's like these big... titans clashing about these issues, and that feels awkward because I don't want to catch a stray in the middle of that. I want to preserve our business in that, but it's unavoidable.
I think at its core, the thing that's been really frustrating to me is, I think, and we talked about this a couple episodes ago, our changing relationship with Apple, which was about a slightly different aspect, but a similar kind of thing. There's this general feeling that I've been having where I just wish that Apple... would view developers as their customers.
And that's a funny way to say it, but it's a thing that hasn't really just been sticking in my head. And that is so much of this problem, I think, comes from the complicated, difficult, challenging relationship that we as developers have with Apple.
is that while we pay them large amounts of money every month, I don't think they view us as their customer, that they're not providing a service that we're buying, that we are just a resource to be extracted from and a commodity resource at that, that they don't need to... try and win our customer. We're not a customer to them in that way. They can just sort of rule by
fiat and intransigence against us. And in some ways, that's true. Obviously, they've been having this posture and this approach and this view for us for 17 years to some degree. It has worked out for them, but there are consequences for them having that perspective, for them treating us as not.
a customer to be served. Because the thing that I love about Apple, and the thing that has grew me to being an Apple developer, rather than an Android developer, for example, is that I think Apple's ethos, certainly 17 years ago, and to some degree now, is that their goal was to make exquisite products that delight their customers, that serve them above and beyond the minimum.
And by doing that, they're creating an environment where their products maybe cost a bit more, but are worth it and are worth the extra. And Apple is at its best. when it is serving its customers. And so if I'm not one of their customers, then they're not serving me and they're not at their... is the logical conclusion of that line of thinking. And I think that's where so much of this comes from, this perspective that they have, that they have to fight every little...
that is trying to take something from them in their view. Their developer is coming in and taking something from Apple rather than Apple providing. products and services that developers are scrambling to use and to buy and to, in doing so, help out.
their other group of customers, their end users, the people whose app we're making and then customers are using and they want them to have the best experience and I think You can imagine a world, and maybe this is just me being an idealist, but I can imagine a world where if Apple is serving both its end users as well as its developers and treating them both with respect and
with the desire to serve well, that everyone wins. It's like Apple ends up with two sets of happy customers. Their end users are happier because the apps that they've been working with are better, developers are happy, and desire to invest more heavily into the platform. And you can imagine this three-fold victory where everyone is happy.
But I think that would take change on Apple's part because clearly right now, like reading through the injunction, which is something... I never wanted to get into talking about the parts of this job that I did not expect, that I'd be reading 70-page legalese from district court judges, but reading through it.
it doesn't seem like that's how Apple views us. And I think the discussions that you have in the minutes of meetings and stuff show that. And obviously I know that the injunction is written. to give a certain perspective. And these minutes are not complete and representative of all the discussions within Apple. Obviously, that is true. But they are certainly indicative that there are meetings happening at very high levels.
where the posture and perspective that Apple has is how can we... hold on to everything we possibly can, not give an inch. and squeeze developers as much as possible. Like, what can we get away with is the perspective that they seem to have had in a lot of these discussions. And that is not the posture of how can we serve developers? How can we build a relationship that is mutually beneficial and everyone wins? It is very much how can we win the most and they lose the most.
And that's just not a great place to be. That's not good, I don't think, for Apple. That's not good for me as a developer. And I hope in many ways that this difficult, awkward, complicated thing that is this bomb that's gone off in our community. is hopefully the moment where that changes. Because Apple was forced to do this thing they didn't want to do, hopefully the outcome is that they decide and see that, look, we can keep fighting this battle forever, or we can maybe come to a better place.
I don't know how hopeful I am that that's the outcome, but the part of me that is an idealist and wants to just get back to making cool things and building great stuff, and in four weeks is going to WWDC, looking forward to a summer of hopefully exciting and interesting work. I want to put this behind me. I want to just focus on that part of my job. and be served as a customer and feel valued in a way that I don't really feel that way right now.
I'm less optimistic, but I do wish we would get there. I don't think this will bring us there. I think we can see what has happened with Apple and various regulatory and legal requirements they've been forced to comply with in the rest of the world over the last few years. exactly what they're going to do which is they're going to comply as little as possible they're going to fight every single thing tooth and nail and if they remain having lost the battle
It will only be a carve-out for that country and not the rest of the world. I think if we are hoping for some kind of big change of heart where... Tim Cook says, you know what? It's not worth these battles. Let's just make everything the same everywhere and be a little bit more reasonable in certain points. I think that's a pipe dream, and it's sad to think that way. I've been thinking recently, I've been thinking about making a blog post, but I probably shouldn't.
You know, famously, when Steve Jobs was at the end of his life and he was, you know, kind of handing things over to Tim Cook, he told Tim Cook, don't worry about what I would do, just do what's right. Obviously, there's a few lenses to look at that through. Steve Jobs was shamelessly greedy. And so what he would think was right, I mean, he was here for the beginning of the App Store with the 30% and everything, and he thought that was
a sweet deal. He was all about how great that was compared to other mobile phone software environments and everything and retail. You know, obviously appeared on the web, of course. But, you know, so Steve Jobs was shamelessly greedy and would do it with a big grin on his face and everybody would, you know, complain, but we'd go along with it. That was also a different time. That was a different environment. What would it mean today to do what's right for Apple?
I mean, it depends on who you ask. Many people take a strictly cynically kind of shareholder financial view of What is right for Apple is to make as much money as possible however you possibly can. And if you look at the financial analyst perspective, For a company that makes a bunch of pretty mature hardware platforms that don't have very exciting growth in them anymore, this services category, which I maintain is a misnomer and it really should be called fees. This fees category...
is their fastest growing and probably one of the only consistently growing categories of their revenue. So you might argue that what is right, quote, right for Apple, is to keep extracting as much as they can. But as with many Wall Street financial views of what companies should do, That is, I think, a limited and short-sighted view that does not fully understand the dynamics of hardware and software platforms.
And unfortunately, what I see from many years now of Tim Cook saying things in public, saying things in court, various things that are discovered during court discovery and revealed to the public, What we keep seeing is that at the very top, I keep seeing that kind of thinking from Apple where it seems like they don't fully understand the long-term health dynamics of running hardware and software platforms.
And that's not to say that no one in the company does, but I think there's enough people at the top who show a concerning lack of that judgment that I'm worried. And that's why I've been so critical of Apple these past few years in this area, because I'm concerned. When you have a company that has basically declared war on everyone.
That's not going to go very well. Throughout history, look at various ways that people have tried to fight every battle all at once. It tends not to end well for them. And I worry that...
There's the famous uh metaphor i forget who it was it might have been warren buffett somebody who said like regarding like bill gates they said like if you came over to dinner at your house you would say i'll have all the mashed potatoes I think about that a lot because it seems like that is the Apple way with this area of like, we'll take it all.
And at every single opportunity when they have been challenged by either, you know, governments, regulators, courts, or just kind of common decency or common sense or, you know, maybe prioritization, every single time when they're challenged... Their answer has been, we're going to keep taking it all. 100%. We're going to give nothing. We're going to yield no ground that we don't have to yield by law. And while that is probably fine short term for the financials and everything, that does corrode
A lot of major factors inside that are kind of hard to quantify in the short term. We have seen Apple just declaring war on all developers. And I think what they seem to think... They seem to only think about how this is affecting major companies like Spotify or Amazon. But we all get caught in this crossfire. And there are huge parts of the developer community that Apple...
at those high levels doesn't really seem to think about their invocations on. There are huge businesses that just can't even exist in the current. in-app purchase ecosystem. There are huge swaths of people who would build for Apple's platforms, but are just kind of discouraged or jaded by their attitude in a lot of these areas.
There are platforms that Apple tries to launch, like the Vision Pro, that seem to have trouble getting off the ground because the big companies who make really important apps for it have all kind of said, you know what, screw you, Apple. Why should we help you? Because Apple has, over the last decade, just waged war on everyone else around them in the ecosystem and in the world.
Again, that's been great for their profits short term, but now we have a company that is relying almost completely on the services revenue for a lot of their financial story here because... All that hardware that they keep trying to make and sell, I don't think it's doing as well as it could. I think it could do better if they poured more into the ecosystem. And it seems like they don't see the need for that, or at least don't understand how to do that.
and that's really concerning to me. And so it is kind of, We're thinking, again, going back to our changing relationship with Apple, what is our role here? What should we be doing? First of all, as I said on ATP, Do not build a business relying on this app purchase injunction, because I guarantee you that it's not going to be an easy ride. I would enjoy this in the short term if you can, but I would not count on this lasting.
Certainly not in the long term, but possibly even not in the short term. And I've heard the sentiment many times like, oh, now that the door's open, they will be forced to keep it open. No, they will not. The moment they can close that gate, they will let that gate slam shut no matter who is under it. They don't care. They see this as such an emergency, such an offense.
The second they don't have to do this anymore, they will slam that door shut and everybody will have to take out all this functionality. Do not rely on this for a long-term thing. Again, short-term, have fun. Go nuts if you want to. But this is not a permanent door that's open. But we can focus on, you know, how could Apple serve us better?
And I think to me, I would love to see them cut their rate. I think their rate is too high. I think the market has shown them over and over again. And I think Apple is at its best when it has to compete. Apple does not do well when they get complacent in areas that they don't have to compete, then they stagnate and their products become less competitive. So I hope they do have to compete.
But I also think, like, This would be a good opportunity for Apple to get really honest with itself about what value they are providing to us. A huge part of the internal attitude there is, we created everything, you owe us everything for your business.
And that is a really dysfunctional and toxic dynamic and also a factually incorrect one that, again, at the high levels, they don't seem to value the value of our software that we make for their platform in any way that's not fees we're paying them.
Again, there are other people in the company who are smarter about this and who do appreciate that. But at the top, they don't. They've made that very clear. They don't see the value of having software on the platform if they're not directly making fees from that software.
And that's fundamentally pretty rough. That's a toxic relationship that we have with them, really. If that was, say, a boss or a parent, we would have a lot of different terms for that kind of relationship and that kind of personality. Number one, I hope they...
at some point, develop an appreciation for the value of software on their platform beyond the direct fees. And frankly, again, Tim Cook will never understand that. He doesn't understand computers. He is a finance and business and bean counter person. that will take generational turnover in the top leadership before that even has a chance of being understood. So don't hold your breath. As long as Cook is there, that's never going to happen.
But in the meantime, I hope maybe they can look at, going back to what you were saying in the beginning, Dave, of like, developers are customers too. In fact, we're a pretty big slice of customers. So I wonder if maybe they can revisit If they're going to keep charging these very high rates as much as they possibly can, what value are they giving us? And can they increase that value? Early on, a big part of the value was they had easier payments than anybody else. Well, that's no longer true.
Even without the IIP ruling, the rest of the web has developed really easy payments now. You go to checkout on something that has ShopPay or StripeLink, it's really easy and just as fast as Apple Pay and just as fast as IIP. So that's no longer an advantage. At the beginning we also derived a lot of value from
The built-in promotional possibilities in the App Store, that there weren't that many apps yet, people could search and find our app via keyword searches. There were featuring areas that would feature our app, and we'd get tons of downloads. That is no longer true. And that hasn't been true for a long time. The value of us being in the app store, it used to be that we would get a lot of promotional value from that. These days, that is severely diminished.
And these days, you basically have to pay Apple more money through search ads to get any visibility whatsoever and to get any kind of download. So they're no longer providing downloads. They're no longer competitive on price. They're no longer providing significant marketing value.
So they need to find other ways. If they're going to justify these costs, they need to find other areas that they can say, we are providing you a lot of value. Or they can cut the costs. I think if they want to remain on the good side of things, those are their options. I expect them to do neither.
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It's one of those challenging things, I think. And this is just even from a mental health perspective. What you're saying in the sense of you don't expect change to happen outside of generational turnover type of a thing. It's like history would say that is the more likely to be accurate view. And I think the optimist in me doesn't want to accept that. And I'm fully accepting that that is sort of like a willful ignorance in a certain way that the perspective I have.
is because I want there to be change. Wanting doesn't mean you get what you want, but at the same time, that's the perspective that I think improves my... my mental health and well-being, my sort of continuing to hold on to some form of optimism. And I think It's things like scenarios like what, you know, just happened with this big injunction that give me the hope for just like inside of Apple. I know there are decisions and situations where there are two...
two parts within Apple that are fighting about something. We hear this story repeated multiple times. There are two groups that have a difference of opinion, and one of them is winning out. And my hope is, in some ways, the thing that gives me some amount of hope, that maybe there would be change without a generational turnover, is that at some point, things like this will change a decision that was 60-40 to 60-40 the other way around, or even just 51-49 in the way of change.
And it potentially doesn't need to be that they're going from 100-0 all the way to the other side. It could be a more incremental change that at some point reaches a tipping point. and has a change. And like I said, I completely accept that I'm being sort of willfully naive in some ways and holding on to that hope. But that's what helps keep me motivated and encouraged. and sort of fights against the negative feelings that we've been having to navigate.
these last few months as developers, because, you know, I don't love those feelings, and I just want to make cool apps, man. Like, I want to forget about this, and I want to, yeah, like, feel... feel valued in a way that like the thing that is sometimes frustrating and funny about like the services narrative say like or the fees narrative like you were saying the thing that's funny to me about that is functionally what that means is the fastest growing
or one of the last areas of growth in Apple's business. is the amount that developers pay them. That customer, we're the customer buying the services they provide on the App Store. That is what is happening there. Obviously, you can frame it in all kinds of ways that they're getting a cut of something else.
Sure. We're buying it because they have the guns in this scenario. Yeah, but like, ultimately, that money... It's like how I buy my taxes that I pay the government. But like, that money is coming out of developer pocket. that is the biggest area of growth that Apple has and has been for a while and is their core growth narrative to the core financials of the business is developers
paying them more money over time, right? Like that is, and functionally, what's like problematic, and this is the part of it that in the optimist part of me gives some hope, is that ultimately... if that starts to become at risk and Apple changes to a perspective of, well, how can we grow that, right? How can we, and the path they have been continuing to take is the like intransigent strong arm version of that.
I think another path would be to say, rather than having a big percent of a small number, why don't we have a smaller percent of a bigger number? That is certainly something that is open to them, that the companies who completely have sidestepped all of the in-app purchase stuff and have left the App Store in that way and don't do any of their payment processing throughout. Those companies aren't stupid. If Apple provided a competitive...
option that they took a commensurate fee into that their costs are not going to be the same as what Stripe charges for just raw credit card processing fees. It's a reasonable thing that deals with the fraud and compliance and all the things that go on to that and potentially the convenience fee because it's built into the platform, there's something that they could offer that was competitive and reasonably priced.
I'm sure there are people who would then sign up for and start to use that, and there would be a new market. for these kinds of fees. Whether that's the same or bigger or smaller, like, I don't know, I'm not the CFO, but I certainly know what they may end up with for the path that they're on right now. It seems like they may end up with a big percent of no number because their ability to do that is being taken away from them by legislation and injunction.
And so the hope that I have is that at some point they'll realize, like, let's stop fighting our biggest customers, who is our largest growth area right now within our financials. And let's take care of them. Let's treat them like customers. Let's make their experience better and better and encourage a positive, beneficial, wonderful relationship.
that has growth, that isn't just ossified out of a historical monopolistic perspective that they have, that is something that developers are flocking to their platform because that's a great place to make a business and to be sustainable and awesome. And I think that's possible. I know I'm naive in thinking that, but that's what keeps me hoping Xcode is the hope that one day that will change.
and hopefully an event like this injunction is a stone being put on the other side of the scale that maybe is a tipping point and maybe is a thing that will get that sort of change sooner rather than later. And I hope my optimism is more right than your pessimism in this case, but time will tell. In the meantime, hopefully we can just keep making apps and making things that we're proud of. I hope you're right. I really do. Thanks for listening, everybody. I'll talk to you in two weeks. Bye.