There is this widespread assumption that Apple is looking out for the interests of developers on its platform.
However, like all large corporations, Apple is and always has looked out for its own interests only. If you keep this in mind, it's easy to understand why Apple does what they do.
If anyone believes a for profit company is looking out for anything but their own interests they are sorely mistaken almost all the time.
The thing with Apple though was there were good reasons to believe that their interests were strongly aligned with their users’ and by extension with indie developers.
At a time when the Mac was definitely not the obvious choice, Apple had a very strong interest in promoting high quality indie apps because that was a differentiator for their platform (they were also not as financially strong, so this pushed some of the costs of building differentiators out to Indies).
At a time when Apple made money solely off selling hardware directly to consumers, there was reason to believe their interests once again aligned with those consumers as opposed to MS who largely sold to OEMs and Google, who didn’t even sell their OS but made money off the user data.
But as Apple’s hardware growth is beginning to stall, it appears they’ve decided they must continue to grow financially, and the only way they can do so is by wringing more money out of their existing base. As a result it’s become more about doing stuff that was earlier being done by 3rd parties themselves. And that means indies are screwed becUse Apple can crush them in a way it couldn’t an Amazon or a Netflix, not that it’s not trying.
> The thing with Apple though was there were good reasons to believe that their interests were strongly aligned with their users’ and by extension with indie developers.
There were good reasons at one time, yes, for the reasons you give.
But there aren't good reasons now, because circumstances have changed.
Something similar happened in the 1990s with Microsoft and Windows. In the early days of Windows, MS encouraged third-party developers to code to it, because it helped to speed up the expansion of the user base. All kinds of good third-party Windows apps sprung up and thrived for a while.
But once the market was pretty much saturated with Windows, a lot of those third-party developers discovered that they were now basically doing market research for MS: whenever they hit on a killer app or feature, MS would simply duplicate it, ship it as part of Windows, and destroy the third party dev's market.
Incomplete. They may set their own interests first, but they reliably demonstrate the priority of users to the extreme annoyance of e.g. Netflix, Amazon, and so forth. For example, Apple is clearly looking out for the interests of users with higher precedence than the interests of developers. Developers chafe at this, but consider an example:
iOS 13 now throws a dialog asking you to confirm that you want an app to be using your location data in the background. Mobile user data resellers noted a massive worldwide drop in sellable location data when this feature was released. Is this benefit for Apple actual, Apple's users, and/or Apple's developers?
It's not for developers, because the developers either used the appropriate location permissions anyways, or are now discovering that their crappy ad frameworks are angering their userbase.
It's unclear whether it's for Apple actual, because there's no financial revenue gain when they institute this, only a drowning of the swamp of data reselling (without any corresponding monetary uptick anywhere). There's probably some indirect possibilities, but I can't construct a significant and plausible case. Perhaps someone else can.
It's absolutely clear that it's for Apple's users, because those are who is concerned about and harmed by data resale. It offers a free benefit at no cost to the user, requiring neither purchase nor subscription.
So it's essential to consider each of these aspects when assessing who's interests Apple is looking out for. Yes, it's easier to argue that Apple is selfish, because it's less work than considering the three-pronged reality of apple/users/developer. It's still worth the effort to do so.
I am not aware of this widespread assumption? Who the heck in the last 2 decades has gone through life thinking Apple is a company that prioritizes its developers over both its users and itself?
Source: literally every word written about Apple and developer relations and developer strategies over the last 20 years.
I'm not saying this to be critical of Apple, everyone has their own strategies and priorities. Rather, my mind is actually blown that you know anyone who thinks Apple is perceived as some sort of generous patron to developers, and even more that you know enough people like that to anecdotally think it's a widespread assumption.
We cant blame people who don't understand how it works for supporting this scheme. Programmers burning themselves on the corporate altar deserve blame for helping with the promotion of such a platform.
Until developers stop pushing this garbage on the rest of humanity Apple is completely right to make their things as Orwellian as they can.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I don't know what you mean by "these kinds of practices" but I agree with you to the extent that Apple is a for-profit company. Anything positive that Apple wants to achieve either for customers and/or society at large only happens if Apple is profitable. No profit, nothing else can or will happen. Profit is priority one as it should be for a business. Customers are next and Apple has succeeded only through driving profit by (most of the time) delighting customers. Developers are somewhere after that. This is how and why companies exist. I don't get why anyone expects anything different.
Amazon has leverage so their negotiation is different. Apple would be a poorly run business and less successful if they didn't negotiate and work deals in a manner consistent with reality. It is not good or bad, it is just the real world.
However, like all large corporations, Apple is and always has looked out for its own interests only. If you keep this in mind, it's easy to understand why Apple does what they do.