Apple announced this week that it will let US developers link out to external payment options without the usual 27% to 30% commission skimming off the top.
This comes after years of legal slapfighting, regulatory side-eye from the EU, and the kind of sustained public whining from developers that finally wore down Cupertino's titanium shell.
The change applies to purchases made outside the app, meaning you can now tap a link, finish checkout on the web, and Apple gets to sit there with its hand out for a much smaller cut — or in some cases, nothing at all.
For anyone who's ever paid $9.99 for a mobile game currency pack and wondered why the studio acts like they're one bad quarter from shuttering, this is why.
Apple and Google have been taking up to 30 cents on every dollar spent in apps, which is a lovely business model if you're the one collecting it and a slow financial hemorrhage if you're the one writing the checks.
Small developers have been complaining about this for years, and the loudest ones — Epic, Spotify, the whole "we demand fair terms" coalition — basically ran a multi-year PR campaign that made Apple look like a mall cop shaking down a lemonade stand.
So what changes for you, the person who just wants to buy an emoji pack without a lecture on antitrust law?
Prices probably won't drop overnight, because companies rarely pass savings along out of the goodness of their hearts.
But over time, more apps may offer cheaper subscriptions if you sign up on their website instead of inside the app, which is already a thing that feels like a secret handshake.
The catch is that Apple still wants a cut of external transactions, just a smaller one, and it's requiring developers to jump through reporting hoops.
You can practically hear the lawyers sharpening their pencils for round two.
Google, for its part, has been making similar moves in response to its own legal headaches, because nothing inspires corporate generosity like a courtroom.
The bigger picture is that the walled garden is developing a few cracks, and the people who build the stuff you actually use are cautiously optimistic.
Whether that optimism survives the next round of legal appeals is anyone's guess. **Our take:** Apple didn't do this out of the kindness of its heart — it did it because regulators and courts left it no graceful exit.
Consumers and developers don't need Apple to be noble, they just need Apple to be slightly less greedy.
Final Thoughts
Progress is progress, even when it's dragged kicking and screaming out of a trillion-dollar company.