Linked List: April 18, 2022

Monday, 18 April 2022

Facebook on 30 Percent Platform Fees: ‘Hold Our Beer’ ★

Jon Swartz, reporting for MarketWatch:

Meta said in a blog post Monday it is allowing a handful of Horizon Worlds creators to sell virtual assets that could eventually include NFTs. Virtual-reality platform Horizon Worlds is considered an integral piece of Meta’s unfolding metaverse. The company said it will take up to 47.5% on each transaction, which includes a “hardware platform fee” of 30% via its Meta Quest Store, as well as a 17.5% cut on Horizon Worlds.

“We think it’s a pretty competitive rate in the market. We believe in the other platforms being able to have their share,” Vivek Sharma, Meta’s vice president of Horizon, told The Verge. [...]

“Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store — and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn,” Apple spokesman Fred Sainz said in an email to MarketWatch. “Now — Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.”

Did Zuckerberg lose a bet to Tim Cook or something? I can’t imagine a better gift to Apple and Google regarding their app store commission fees.

Here’s Zuckerberg all the way back in June 2021:

To help more creators make a living on our platforms, we’re going to keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and our upcoming independent news products free for creators until 2023. And when we do introduce a revenue share, it will be less than the 30% that Apple and others take.

Here’s Andrew “Boz” Bosworth this weekend, trying out the same lame argument Epic Games has used regarding why they’re purportedly upset about Apple and Google’s 30 percent fees for mobile games but not the 30 percent (or higher!) fees charged by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for their dedicated game platforms:

Apple takes 30% of software and a significant margin on their devices. They’ve capitalized on their market power to favor their own business interests, which comes at great expense to developers.

Good luck with that argument.

Audio Hijack 4 ★

Rogue Amoeba:

With an all-new JavaScript engine and API, building programmatically-driven workflows in Audio Hijack is now a reality. Scripts can run automatically when sessions start and stop, and process recordings as they’re created. A whole new world of automation is possible with this ability to manipulate sessions.

Scripting isn’t just for power users, however. Even if you’re not fluent in JavaScript, you can streamline your use of Audio Hijack. The built-in scripts make automation possible for anyone, and on MacOS 12 (Monterey), Audio Hijack even integrates with the Shortcuts app.

Rogue Amoeba CEO/Lackey Paul Kafasis and I discussed Audio Hijack 4’s new scripting and automation support at length on the most recent episode of my podcast. There’s so much other new stuff, too. I just love Rogue Amoeba’s user interface design — it’s simultaneously Rogue-Amoeba-y and yet feels standard, very idiomatically “Mac-like”. When an app looks cool, it just makes you want to use it.

Android Apps on Windows 11 Review ★

Will Sattelberg, writing for Android Police:

As for the app selection, it’s as bad as you might’ve guessed from the jump. Forget Google apps, obviously — they aren’t on Fire Tablets, and they aren’t here. TikTok has been predominantly featured on Microsoft’s press images for the Appstore since it was announced, and for good reason: it’s the only major social network with a listing. Forget Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — you’re stuck with TikTok if you want to experience the social side of the web.

Games don’t fare much better. Looking at the top paid titles, I only recognized two names — and that was because I knew the Nickelodeon properties they were based on — not the games themselves. Free titles didn’t fare much better; you’ll find Subway Surfers and the Talking Tom series, but not much more. None of our favorite free-to-play titles appeared in a search: no Among Us, Call of Duty Mobile, or Roblox.

Granted, you can fill all of these absences elsewhere on Windows 11. Many of these titles have versions on Steam or the web — you don’t need the Android version of Among Us to play on Windows. The same goes for those missing apps, from Google services to social networks to recipe apps and smart home controls. It’s not hard to access Gmail these days, even if it’s not in a dedicated app, and that all begs the question: why does this service even exist?

It sounds a lot like running iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac, except at least through Apple, the selection of apps comes from the platform’s main app store. With Windows 11’s support for Android apps, you get a non-native platform experience and a poor selection of apps.

Better than nothing? Maybe. A big deal? Apparently not.