> The fee that is paid is not only for current maintenance and upkeep of the distribution platform (which is their store), but also research, development, security measures
There are lots of updaters for the PC that can run from a web server. You can put the update files on Cloudflare or AWS for redundant, highly scalable distribution. The infrastructure is worth basically $0 and there is nothing complex about an updater, especially for a company that already integrates payment processing on so many other platforms.
Apple makes it sound complex and uses it to justify their toll taking.
I said the infrastructure was worth $0. You need to pay for bandwidth no matter where you host your updates. It’s not free from Apple either. It’s just dwarfed by the App Store toll and isn’t split out as an individual cost.
What kind of bandwidth cost do you think there will be for something like an in app purchase of 100 vbucks? It’s $0.0000005 if you do it in a Cloudflare Worker.
There are lots of updaters for the PC that can run from a web server. You can put the update files on Cloudflare or AWS for redundant, highly scalable distribution. The infrastructure is worth basically $0 and there is nothing complex about an updater, especially for a company that already integrates payment processing on so many other platforms.
Apple makes it sound complex and uses it to justify their toll taking.