When software and systems become sufficiently large, change becomes extremely difficult. Even strong architectures have their limit. I have to imagine that Apple has hit that limit serving payments worldwide.
The real lie isn't that this was a difficult and costly change for their top-notch team. The real lie is that this works at all - some dev out there is waiting with no fingernails left for the bugs to start pouring in.
Absolutely; but I think this new "feature" is the most pure crystallization I've ever seen of the inefficiency inherent to big tech.
Most people who read this press release would probably respond: Woah, that's how pricing on the app store works? Devs can't just set whatever price they want? The natural and totally reasonable followup question should be: Why? There are: reasons! There aren't no legitimate reasons why it is how it is (exchange rates is probably the most legitimate one). But the most significant illegitimate reason why is undeniably: momentum. This is how the system works; this is how the people proximate to the system, internally and externally, understand it to work. We linearly extrapolate how the system works today, to how we want it to work; fill in the gaps on the number line.
That extrapolation is genuinely where the inefficiency bloat of big tech comes from. Kyla Scanlon recently did a great economics-focused summary of big tech's "predator problem", born from decades of extremely low interest rates [1], which I think covers the situation really well. Apple & the App Store haven't had a predator. There has been no pressure for them to become more efficient; to rethink the platform from fundamentals; so you end up with teams whose task was to linearly extrapolate the wrong thing. It probably took many people; a long time; and there are almost definitely extremely smart on-call engineers right now biting their fingernails hoping it works. Its entirely the wrong thing; but it was the easier thing over alternatives without the natural pressure of a predator to add weight to the right thing.
When software & systems become sufficiently large, changes become difficult. Predators prey on an inability to change, but big tech hasn't had a predator to do this.
The real lie isn't that this was a difficult and costly change for their top-notch team. The real lie is that this works at all - some dev out there is waiting with no fingernails left for the bugs to start pouring in.