For me, the price of the app isn't really the distinguishing characteristic of whether you're 'inside' the app or not.
If I'm using a free app, and a bug causes it to break, would I report the bug to Apple or to the developer? If I saw something objectionable, or ugly, would I say that iOS is ugly, or would I blame the developer? I think that regardless of the price, when I'm using an app and I find myself in the state of attributing the experience to the developer instead of Apple, that means I'm playing in the developer's space, not Apple's. Getting past all of the analogies, what Apple is doing is saying that you're not allowed to mention competing storefronts even when you're inside your own space.
In contrast, if I went to a app store page and the app store crashed, or the app didn't download, I'd contact Apple, because I'm not in the developer's space there, I'm in Apple's.
There is some fuzziness there, and there's also some fuzziness around whether or not it's OK for Apple to decide what you can and can't do inside your own 'app space.' Different people can have different opinions on that, and ultimately the courts/Congress will probably end up deciding whether that is Ok.
But that's the non-analogy, purely app-centric explanation I would use -- Apple is dictating what you can say to customers when you're in your own space, and they're doing that to a degree that goes beyond protecting users from malware or fraud. I personally think it's very difficult to argue that keeping people from mentioning prices elsewhere is a restriction that's purely designed to protect users. It's not really the same as restricting phishing attacks or fraud inside of an app would be. So to me, that makes me feel less charitable about arguments that Apple should be able to have that kind of control about what happens in the developer's space, because I don't see a compelling reason for them to have that power.
If I'm using a free app, and a bug causes it to break, would I report the bug to Apple or to the developer? If I saw something objectionable, or ugly, would I say that iOS is ugly, or would I blame the developer? I think that regardless of the price, when I'm using an app and I find myself in the state of attributing the experience to the developer instead of Apple, that means I'm playing in the developer's space, not Apple's. Getting past all of the analogies, what Apple is doing is saying that you're not allowed to mention competing storefronts even when you're inside your own space.
In contrast, if I went to a app store page and the app store crashed, or the app didn't download, I'd contact Apple, because I'm not in the developer's space there, I'm in Apple's.
There is some fuzziness there, and there's also some fuzziness around whether or not it's OK for Apple to decide what you can and can't do inside your own 'app space.' Different people can have different opinions on that, and ultimately the courts/Congress will probably end up deciding whether that is Ok.
But that's the non-analogy, purely app-centric explanation I would use -- Apple is dictating what you can say to customers when you're in your own space, and they're doing that to a degree that goes beyond protecting users from malware or fraud. I personally think it's very difficult to argue that keeping people from mentioning prices elsewhere is a restriction that's purely designed to protect users. It's not really the same as restricting phishing attacks or fraud inside of an app would be. So to me, that makes me feel less charitable about arguments that Apple should be able to have that kind of control about what happens in the developer's space, because I don't see a compelling reason for them to have that power.