2024-01-27 13:30:00
On April 28, 2003, Apple announced the iTunes Music Store. As a result of an agreement that Steve Jobs reached with the then five largest record companies on the market, the store opened its digital doors that same day, with a catalog of 200,000 tracks, each costing US$0.99.
At the time, the recording industry was in serious trouble. MP3 sharing programs, such as Napster and the Kazaaoffered two great advantages compared to traditional CD purchases: instant access and, of course, everything was… let’s say… “free”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFaxD8wev8k
The launch of the iTunes Music Store completely solved the instant access problem and partially the cost problem. There were those who continued to download the songs illegally, of course, but a significant part of the public agreed to pay US$0.99 in exchange for the ease of accessing the tracks legally.
On another scale, years later, it would be what Netflix would present to combat film piracy, albeit under the subscription model rejected by Jobs for the music market.
The problem is that, as time went by, this agreement between Apple and record labels proved less and less beneficial for the music industry.
It’s true that, at first, earning US$0.99 for each song on an album sounded better than earning US$0.00 for an entire album. But soon, the artists began to feel undervalued, especially thanks to the fact that few people were buying entire albums. Pricing the fruits of his labor at less than a dollar per song became an increasingly difficult pill to swallow.
To make matters worse, record companies began to depend almost exclusively on the iTunes Music Store to survive, giving Apple all the power in this relationship. The discomfort was so great that, in 2011 (when there was already a similar business model aimed at the film and TV industry), a studio executive Miramax these that the iTunes Store had been more harmful to the entertainment industry than piracy itself.
A was from the App Store
It doesn’t seem like it, but the gap between the launch of the iTunes Music Store and the App Store was just five years. If you were scared by this fact, welcome to the club.
In February 2008, when it was no longer a secret that the entertainment industry was increasingly uncomfortable with its dependence on Apple, it was up to Steve Jobs to explain what the rules of the game would be in the App Store.
At the event, the first thing Jobs said regarding the iPhone app store was that every developer would be book to choose the price you want for your application. It was the first step in telegraphing to the market that the App Store would take autonomy to developers, unlike criticism of the iTunes Store. A few minutes later, Jobs explained to the sound of applause that downloading free apps would not generate any costs for the developer.
It’s worth remembering that, at that time, having a native system way to centralize, market, make available, distribute and update apps easily, without hosting costs and without credit card transaction fees, was something really powerful and practically unheard of.
Well then. Just as it was with the iTunes Store, the dynamics of the App Store, which initially seemed pleasant to developers, proved increasingly restrictive over time. In 2024, it borders on unsustainable.
Today, in addition to developers, the App Store rules also bother regulatory bodies in multiple countries around the planet. And whenever Apple is questioned regarding this in court, it throws away the opportunity to demonstrate good faith and doubles down on its antagonistic attitude of not giving in to any request unless legally obliged.
To make matters worse, even when it has to, Apple does it in a way that borders on pettiness. A perfect example of this is the recently announced changes to the US App Store. Another, to a lesser extent, are the details of the restrictions and rules for complying with the Digital Markets Law (Digital Markets Actor DMA) in Europe. Both, by the way, will certainly continue to reverberate in the coming months and years.
quick note: I explored in more depth the delicate relationship of antagonism and interdependence between Apple and developers in this other text. This is not an easy problem to summarize, and there is no absolute right or wrong.
A era do Vision Pro
Well then. We come to the present and the apparent problem of the lack of great apps for the Vision Pro.
In recent weeks, market giants such as Netflix, YouTube and Spotify have confirmed that they have no plans to develop apps for Apple’s new platform. More than that, many developers are actively coming turning off the native integration that visionOS will have with iPad apps, further reducing the initial application offering.
It is true that a responsible developer may be waiting for the opportunity to personally test their app on Vision Pro before making it available to users. millions tens of thousands of users of the product, but it is also true that we all know that, in the case of apps from truly giant and important companies, access to the development kit has never been the problem.
With Vision Pro, Apple is, for the first time in a long time, in disadvantage in the relationship with developers. This is a rare situation in which it needs them more than the other way around, and many are taking the moment to reflect on whether they want to help the company establish yet another platform that will make it even stronger in this relationship.
If you were Epic Games, Spotify or Netflix, would you help Apple make Vision Pro a success? Few large companies seem willing to assist Apple in the task of building yet another application platform with the same rules and restrictions that have soured the relationship between the parties over the last decade and a half.
It is true that, if visionOS really takes off and gains millions of users over the next few years, it might be costly for Netflix, for example, not to have a presence on the system. But these days, it’s naive to think that more than three or four Vision Pro users will actually cancel their signatures just because they can’t see “My Favorite Demon” on the headset. Would Netflix gain new subscribers by having a presence on Vision Pro from day one? Perhaps. Will you lose many? Unlikely.
The current situation seems a little surreal. In a span of two weeks, Apple announced the controversial 27% commission for subscriptions made outside the American App Store, the way it will control the opening of access to iOS and the App Store in the European Union and, at the same time, that it will launch a new platform whose usefulness will depend 100% on the same developers who have long been asking for a more equal relationship.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that the range of good apps in the inevitable Vision product line will be failures in the long run. But the slope to success will likely be much steeper than it needs to be, and that is entirely Apple’s own fault.
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