The App Store Commandments
It’s time for Apple to re-write and re-think the App Store rules. Because it’s 2020, not 2010. Or 2008. Or 2003.
When the Lord had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, he gave Steve Jobs the two tablets of the App Store Testimony, tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
Given Apple’s recent statements and more importantly, their recent actions, you’d think the above actually happened. That God himself wrote the App Store rules and guidelines and handed them down to Steve Jobs, who in turn spread the knowledge throughout the land of Apple, never to be questioned.
On Twitter, I used The Constitution analogy. I think it works too — perhaps even better, because regardless of your religious beliefs, everyone acknowledges that the documents which helped form our nation were written by human beings. And they were written in a very different time for a very different world. We still largely hold these as truths, but they’ve been amended over time. And many would suggest they should be amended further. And they will be, over time.
But it takes a lot of time because, well, politics. These are the laws that guide and govern our nation. As a private enterprise, Apple can unilaterally change their own rules — those of the App Store — as they wish. And I wish they would. Because the increasingly arbitrary handling and tweaking of their rules without acknowledging some other, obvious truths is ripping their community apart.
Again, the App Store rules are not written in stone. And even if they were, Apple should feel free to cast them down from the mountaintop, shattering them into a million pieces, to come up with new ones. They were written in a different time. For a different world.
Yes, the App Store is only twelve years old. In the grand scheme of things, that is nothing. But in the age of technology, that’s ancient history. For all the ruckus Hey, a new email service, is causing this week, it’s fun to look back at the press release announcing the “iPhone 2.0 Software Beta”, which highlights such groundbreaking functionality as:
In addition to these new iPhone network and security features, the beta iPhone 2.0 software provides several new Mail features such as the ability to view PowerPoint attachments, in addition to Word and Excel, as well as the ability to mass delete and move email messages.
Move email messages! On your phone! I joke, but this was a big deal at the time. As was the addition of Exchange. That’s mobile in 2008 in a nutshell. When the App Store launched, there were no in-app payments. Netflix was still primarily delivering DVDs by mail. Spotify launched later that year.
Without question, Apple has helped these and thousands of other companies flourish thanks to the App Store. Businesses have been created out of the cloud in thin air. But Apple has flourished too.
“Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a billion-dollar marketplace at some point in time,” Jobs said in 2008. How about a half-trillion-dollar marketplace in 2019? He was off by two orders of magnitude and then some, and counting…
And where did the 70/30 split come from? It wasn’t from God, it was likely from iTunes:¹
The 70–30 split, are the economics of this working out the way that you had said when we last spoke, which is that you might make some money, but you don’t expect it to be a big source of profits?
Yeah. It’s just like iTunes.
Even with the huge popularity of this, you don’t…
No. It costs money to run it. Those free apps cost money to store and to deliver wirelessly. The paid apps cost money, too. They have to pay for some of the free apps. We don’t expect this to be a big profit generator. We expect it to add value to the iPhone. We’ll sell more iPhones because of it.
It’s now, of course, a key pillar of Apple’s all-important services narrative.
And, as cynical as it may sound, that may indeed be the answer as to why Apple doesn’t want to change the rules. The App Store is so important now, that it would fundamentally alter a big part of their business equation.
But again, go back to the beginning. To Steve Jobs. The goal was never for the App Store to be a massive business for Apple. It’s great that it has become that. And no one is saying Apple shouldn’t be able to make money — they are offering a real service that provides real value. Everyone should and will happily pay for this. But again, the model doesn’t match that service. Because it wasn’t created to. The goal was to move iPhones. The rules should be revisited and rewritten to acknowledge these new goals and this new world.
There is so much back-and-forth about the Hey situation, the Spotify situation, the Netflix situation, Rakuten, Epic Games, Facebook, the list goes on and it will continue to go on. Until Apple re-writes the App Store rules from a decade ago for our 2020 reality. And if they don’t, they may be forced to, regardless, by the folks that are beholden to the aforementioned Constitution.
To beat the dead horse: the App Store guidelines and policies were created for the world as it was a decade ago. The world is not as it was a decade ago. Apple should create new guidelines and policies for the world as it is now. It may not be that easy, but it really is that simple.
¹ There is perhaps nuance here. Jobs may have been simply saying that he didn’t expect the App Store to be a big profit driver for Apple, as the iTunes Store wasn’t. But I think he’s also pointing out that it’s the same model down to the split— and I’m not the only one. If that’s true, it’s truly insane that the 70/30 split we’re now stuck with is actually a decision about individual song sales made back in 2003. 2003! Also, the music industry, the best model for everything, obviously.
