Year: 2020

Why is Facebook not Paying the Apple Tax?

Why should Facebook—the biggest beneficiary of the iPhone, its tools, and its infrastructure—pay nothing, when small developers have to pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars? →

How to Think Different

This week we published two long posts on Monopolies, the Apple Tax, and Subscriptions. Both articles come to the conclusion that lowering the 30% fee Apple charges developers would benefit everyone. The tax is at the core of their Antitrust case, at the core of the developer's business model. And in the end, it is in our common customer's interest to lower it, because profitable development produces better software. →

Subscription or no subscription? That is not the question.

Companies selling apps via subscriptions use drama to sell: "Either subscription or we die.” As customers, we don't like to add more recurring payments to our monthly credit card bill. Begrudgingly we all accept subscriptions as a new reality. There is a limit to how many we can add to our credit card bill before we ask: Is this necessary? Is there only one business model for software, and, well, for anything now? →

On Monopolies, Apple, and Epic

Google has built a complete monopoly on search. Amazon uses the sales data of its resellers to continuously expand and solidify market dominance. Facebook copies the competitors that they can’t bully into being bought to keep their dominant market position. Apple is partying in antitrust land forcing its competitors to hand out 30% of its revenue. The game is rigged. And no one is enforcing the rules. Except for Epic, the maker of one of the most successful games of all time. →

A New Site

Welcome to the new design of iA.net. We redesigned everything. From the layout, to the font, to the logo. We are preparing for the 15-year anniversary of iA in November and the 10-year anniversary of iA Writer in September. There are some rough edges still. Please tell us if you find anything that needs polishing. →