If they simply listed all major Mac apps, e.g. linking to their web sites or download links or whatever, they would hugely increase the value of the Mac platform and bring enough direct benefit to developers to be worth some kind of fee (and of course Apple gets $99/year anyway). Instead, they tried to port the same clueless, greedy, review-burdened scheme to that store, layering completely unnecessary requirements on top (like poorly-thought-out sandboxing). And since developers had a choice, they mostly said No.

Pretty sure apple’s developer documentation would still be bad though.

Every app delivered on this store must go through the same review process whether it's internally built or not. This has led to healthy innovation on the app store and deep empathy for the 3rd party developer.

To be fair, it is possible to ship components that are part of the core platform outside of this mechanism, but I think just having one subset of internal development go through the same review/approval channels as 3rd party apps has been very positive for our developer community.

I'd love to see the same thing here.

It doesn't actually need this. The phone app can just ask for permission to access your location, which you would then give it when you call 911 because you want the emergency responders to know where you are.

Anyone who really wants to can already deny the phone their location by using a Faraday cage with a WiFi access point in it so the phone has internet but no GPS or cellular triangulation. You can't prevent it by not allowing the user to deny the permission.

There is no excuse for special permissions.

It doesn't need special permissions. You should be able to deny it your location if that's what you really want to do. It just needs good defaults.

For example, Apple Music should not have privileged access to location services - it should be using the exact same location APIs and permissions as 3p apps.

> Every app delivered on this store must go through the same review process whether it's internally built or not

Believe it or not, but internal Apps go through an even more stringent review as they have Apple branding. The exception is they're allowed various privileges that wouldn't be appropriate for 3p apps (security or even that a framework isn't quite ready for prime time & needs some bake time with internal users for whom back compat isn't a concern).

There are other standalone arguments calling for a breakup, but agreeing with the parent doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that a breakup is required.

It works in theory, but when the application team and review team both report to the same CEO, the review team will be pressured to bend the review policy.

The evolutionary history matters a lot in these things, since they set the culture and precedent on the platform.

Macs and desktops started (or at least, became popular) as an open environment where users obtained software directly from vendors. iOS and Android (with the caveat that it has always supported sideloading) started as closed systems, and the vast majority of customers are used to getting their software from the official app store.

UPDATE: Fixed a typo

Not necessarily alternative app stores / install mechanisms, which is a separate issue.

Seems very related.

Perhaps the iOS and Android app stores are also middle men that provide close to zero value but forced themselves onto mobile phones.

Not so much for the rest of the world, though.

As a thought experiment: how many companies would leave the official iOS App Store if offered a choice tomorrow? Epic Im sure... but the experience on Android suggests to me not that many. As with Android, I think a lot will still want a presence on the default/"official" store regardless of the 30 percent take. Don't forget Apple have also done the hard part of getting a customer to enter their CC number to their iCloud account for their store, removing an enormous amount of friction in the sales process too.

- every app has their own licensing system

- I have to keep track of emails, license key files, logins and other bullshit manually instead of having it synchronized automatically at application install. Not to mention I have a boatload of shop accounts that have collected my payment and other personal data (e.g. postal address) and whom I have to trust now that they keep their data secure enough to not have it stolen.

- for subscription stuff, I have to update payment details for an awful lot of individual shops instead of having one single place

- refund policies vary wildly, as is tax compliance for foreign companies

I agree that Apple and Google must be reined in - 30% cut are absurd rip-offs, and the fact that stores can censor legal content (e.g. anything marijuana/tobacco/drug related or adult content) is troubling - but the central store model does have advantages.

At the same time, MAS is not suitable for many business customers. Eg. some companies buy software exclusively through resellers -- not possible on the Mac App Store. So you need to sell licenses outside the store as well, at which point you may ask yourself: Why bother with the app store?

Suppose you could buy iOS apps from Google Play and vice versa, and also buy both kinds of apps from Amazon, Microsoft and Epic. They still take care of all the payments and licensing bullshit, but now the developer gets to choose how to distribute their app, so the competition drives down fees.

And then once all the stores are charging low fees because otherwise nobody would use them, developers tend to put their apps in all the main stores and the user can choose the stores(s) they prefer to buy through.

Whether or not Apple permits alternative payment systems for iOS/iPadOS, all the apps will likely remain sandboxed.

You'll pay the same price, but instead of getting a license you can run on unlimited of your own machines, or sometimes a fixed number like you can register it to 3 machines at a time, you can only install it on other computers that are managed by the same iCloud account. I've learned this the hard way with a bunch of productivity apps, if you want to use it on a personal machine and a work machine in the same way you can easily install all the free apps that you use on both machines, you're out of luck if you bought it on the Mac App Store. I've ended up re-buying a few different productivity tools over the years that I made the mistake of buying on the Mac App Store first, so that I actually had a portable license I could use that wasn't tightly coupled to making my personal text messages and iCloud files available on the same computer I want to use the license on. You also can't install mac app store apps via homebrew in a setup script or any kind of tooling you use to manage the computer (maybe this is getting better with shortcuts, but I'm not aware of a way to do it).

If it's a cross-platform app, you pay the same price but lose the ability to ever run it on Windows in the future if you buy it from the app store. If it's one of the few AAA games that support MacOS at all, if you buy on Steam you usually get a cross-platform license and there will often be a bunch of bundles that include extra DLC packs at a discounted price. Once a game is a few years old it will start going on sale all the time on Steam. The mac app store version usually won't go on the same sales and usually doesn't have any bundles available either.

If you have multiple user accounts created on a computer, you can't even upgrade a free app that a different user installed via the Mac App store, even if your user also has admin privileges. Only the same user that originally installed it can upgrade the app even though the app is available to every user on the machine.

There's really no reason to ever install anything from the Mac App Store, other than first-party Apple apps where you have no other choice (like XCode, Garage Band, Keynote, Final Cut, etc.)

I hate anti-steering so much that I hope any future legislation against it also enforces retroactive refunds for a significant period of time. Whatever money they have made is basically entirely due to pulling wool over users’ eyes, and they need to be losing millions from this as a punishment.

There's a choice of app store in Android and almost nobody uses Amazon App Store, F-Droid, Samsung App Store and so on. It's great that they can exist, but I don't think the Mac App Store (which has been neglected since day 1) offers any guidance.

People mostly use what they know or are giving by default. In desktop, be it Windows, Linux or macOS, people aren't used to app stores.

It's a shame because the old Fire tablets were pretty good for kids, but now the malignant ad and micropayment cancer has returned so it's no good anymore.

You also can't install the various alternate stores themselves through Google Play and Google purposely makes installing APKs a pain for regular people.

And then it's "see, nobody wants them" after they purposely put a wall in front of them which most people can't get past.

So developers still need to be in Google Play to get all the users who can't figure it out, but if everything is in Google Play then even the customers who could figure it out have no incentive to go through the trouble.

At the very least Apple should improve the store to make it Amazon level in feature set. But it feels like they abandoned it.

Not Mac user but I guess it is the same as for Windows. I have some desktop products for Windows. The thought of releasing them to MS Store had never crossed my mind.

https://panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/

MAS requires sandboxing, distribution outside the store does not. That said, Apple turns the 'default sandboxing' screw another half turn with every release.

In addition to subscription revenue, upgrades are possible by releasing a new product version (e.g. "OmniGraffle 7" in MAS) with a free tier ("read-only mode") and in-app purchases for new users as well as upgrades from OG 6.

I believe you can read purchase receipts within your developer team to determine upgrades.

But I have concerns about additional stores, not about entropy and all the multistore problem from a UX perspective, but as a privacy threat. I like the current Apple politics "we are a hardware company, not another user data selling platform," and they do great things in that way.

But what happens, if Facebook move their apps to their store without any restrictions on privacy? So they can do anything they want, and not only they. If now App Store got strict rules about privacy, what will happen in that situation?

It's not so unbelievable that Facebook will try to get back their "data profit" from Apple users.

They’re moving to selling subscriptions and data is critical to that.

Strict rules would actually give them a huge edge over their other services competitors on platform and if they could couch it in anti-trust, that would be quite a coup.

At least they kept it out of Buddy this time haha.

That would take away from the smaller person's chance.

That list grows stale and complaints over who is on the list starts.

Apple released their phone in 2007, the App Store in 2008, and in-app payments in 2009. During that time their marketshare was fairly small, and it didn't start to really grow until they expanded availability to the Verizon network in 2011.

Right at launch of the App Store, Apple announced its sales commission would be 30%. Then they extended that same fee to in-app purchases a year later. At the same time they set the rules that third-party app stores were not allowed, and that third-party payment processors could not be used.

I'm mentioning all of this history to make this point: Apple made these rules when they were not a monopoly by any definition. They released these products, with these rules, into a free market and let the market (both users and developers) decide which products to use and which products to develop for.

Now, obviously, between 2007 and 2021 the iPhone has been a wild success. Its platform has grown in users and developers every year.

So in terms of the framing of "market abuse", at what point between the launch of these rules and now did Apple cross that threshold between free-market competitor who can legally control their own platform to monopolist abusing its power?

I'm asking this question not just to make a point, but because I think it will be instructive for future companies to understand where in the growth curve the rules they started with can potentially cross over into being "abusive".

But the rules and scrutiny changes once you become large enough to be "considered" a monopoly i.e. once your decisions and policies start affecting a significant portion of the market/ecosystem, then your policies are going to be subject to new regulation.

Google supporting side loading from the very beginning was a smart idea, even if its too complex and scary for the majority of Android users. They should have done the same for payments.

This statement feels like an oxymoron.

> This statement feels like an oxymoron.

Only if one lacks the imagination to expand "monopolistic abuse" (note the quotes) into "abuse that would be 'monopolistic' if the perpetrator were big enough".

It was merely a less awful deal than most other indie commission models, with sites like Kongregate and their ilk demanding >80%. Against that kind of flaying and skinning, 30% was an improvement!

I've said it before. A very good agent, who actually works for their client and arranges them with repeat lucrative contracts, gets 15%. App stores, as gatekeepers to their walled gardens, extort twice that.

Btw - if they want to get into recurring payment scene, let them compete with payment processor fee structures. For the privilege of arranging trusted, mostly secured payments and handling the back office accounting, 3% should be a damn good ceiling. The payment industry is making money hand over fist with that kind of cut.

That was not at all obvious to anyone in 2008. It's a pretty typical margin from the console industry, which was the main point of reference at the time. Apple spent several billion building the App Store infrastructure, the SDK and setting up the review and payments system and it took years for App Store revenue to catch up with the sunk investment and expenses. Also practically everyone in the industry at the time was saying Microsoft and Google would imminently wipe Apple out of the mobile market.

This is a tough one, I think 30% made perfect sense in 2008 but does seem steep now. Apple makes huge profits on the App Store, but it mostly seems to have happened by accident, their original strategy seems to have genuinely been to just break even and maybe make a modest margin, with the store mainly just being a competitive advantage. The huge success and profits have been a windfall.

However that all happened and we are where we are. I don't object to Apple's app store margins or IAP charges, it's their product, their rules.

I do think banning developers from informing users of how to get subscriptions and such outside the store is foolish. That's clear overreach. I see why they do it, otherwise subscription services can cut Apple out and free-ride, but they probably just have to take the hit.

You are right. It's a question of incentives. The Apple/Google duopoly is incentivized towards control because it allows for abusive profit extraction. They have less incentive to open their platforms and both continue to invest heavily to avoid doing so, because their product, their rules is extremely profitable.

>I do think banning developers from informing users of how to get subscriptions and such outside the store is foolish.

From the Apple/Google perspective, it is foolish in only one respect: it so outrageous that it invites legislative and regulatory response.

From the Start? Credit where credit's are due, 30% for software was good enough for a lot of independent developers. Even to this day. Handle Processing charges, distribution, Tax etc. For a lot of categories 30% isn't that bad. Especially for Software.

The problem start when they are enforcing 30% on Services and not on Software. Signing up a Teaching Class with Real instructor on iOS? 30% to Apple. Signing up Services like Web Hosting, Video Streaming, or whatever it is, 30% to Apple. Apple had to made exempt to each and every category after people complain. At this point when the whole world is moving to digitisation, 30% no longer becomes a cost of Software but a Tax on all things.

Apple has always deferred charging cards to minimize processing fees by bundling multiple purchases together.

I have artist sales records predating the iPhone.

Edit: Also worth remembering that iTunes is/was/is the iTunes Music Store (itms) and that Apple sold apps via it for the click wheel iPod under the same percentages.

https://nypost.com/2004/05/07/apple-tunes-up-price-of-hits-m...

Except it wasn't. Try getting an app published before the app store. It was 70% if you were lucky enough to find someone to publish it.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

The things people complained about were the opaque, buggy, barely documented code signing processes; inconsistent, undocumented, NDAed rules (no published review guidelines and you couldn’t tell people why your application was rejected!); and incredibly slow review times (weeks!).

The idea that Apple introduced the 30% fee and people recoiled with horror is revisionist history. People jumped in with both feet for that because of the convenience Apple was offering around easily getting people to pay money and having it end up in your bank account.

So to answer your question: it potentially crosses over into abusive as soon as you are restricting customers from doing anything. And it gets less likely that you'll get away with it the more dominant your market position (as a scale), and the greater the importance of your product or service to society (which is why game console currently get away with these practices but utilities don't).

probably the most important thing here. One press in the settings app vs calling some retention person that tries to keep you paying or something that can only be cancelled via fax or carrier pidgeon

Of course where the seller has no control or dominance over the tying product so that it does not represent an effectual weapon to pressure buyers into taking the tied item any restraint of trade attributable to such tying arrangements would obviously be insignificant at most. As a simple example, if one of a dozen food stores in a community were to refuse to sell flour unless the buyer also took sugar it would hardly tend to restrain competition in sugar if its competitors were ready and able to sell flour by itself. (https://casetext.com/case/northern-pac-r-co-v-united-states)

Whether Apple has enough dominance over the smartphone market to cause an unreasonable restraint of trade in the app distribution market is up to a court to decide at this point.

No, if regulators do their job, nobody gets to ask that question because there is continuous competition. Getting to that monopoly or oligopoly requires sustained effort from would be monopolists, it's a strategy they have been executing for more than a decade. And if you do that, you must expect there is a moment where society says: ok, it's time to regulate it and not let company X extract economic rent solely based on market dominance.

You're presuming that market abuse has occurred and that market abuse is the only way to get popular, but I don't see that's a given. Maybe people simply genuinely like iPhones just the way they are, and maybe network effects just legitimately lead to the most popular platforms dominating.

Apple don't have a monopoly on the phone market anyway, they only have 27% of the South Korean phone market. In the US it's 65%, high but not a monopoly, but it only went over 50% in 2020.

What changed to make them a market abuser and when did it happen, as you allege? That's the question OP is asking.

There is no clear line or answer, as the topic is incredibly complex.

Electronic devices are not just gadgets anymore, but tools to participate in modern life. We never had that situation before.

So by traditional meassures like absolute market share, apple might not be a monopolist, but because of the massive lock in and market dominance (of the luxory segment), with all its implications, I surely would say they abuse their power since a long time. But I also do not believe in regulations as the magic bullet to really solve it, exactly because the lines are too blurry.

There is no reason why Apple should have to support any of that. They design and build the product, and they decide what features it has. The vendors don't provide support for running an alternate OS on Symbian phons, or the Gameboy, or an XBOX, or your car's infotainment system. You either like the features the product has and buy it, or you don't.

>at every step Apple has taken steps to make sure competing is extremely hard to do.

How exactly? There was and is nothing to stop a competitor bringing out an alternate platform, in fact that's exactly what Google did. MS and did as well, and at that time smartphones were a small minority of phones overall.

The thing is what Apple, and Google did is very, very hard. It takes massive investment and very sophisticated technology. Once you have a platform and services and apps, network effects kick in and it becomes beneficial for people to converge on platforms used by their friends and family, but there's nothing manipulative or illegal about network effects, there's no coercion. It's just rational customers acting in their own interests to prefer one product over another. How do you regulate that away, or make it illegal? Why would you even want to?

No one's asking them to support it, but there's a large difference between not supporting and actively thwarting.

> How exactly? There was and is nothing to stop a competitor bringing out an alternate platform

The answer is in your own phrasing. You talk about platforms. Apple has so restricted their products that the only way to compete is to build a whole platform. You can't build an app store, there's nothing to run it on. You can't build hardware to compete with Apple, iOS won't run on it, you can't replace the OS because the hardware requires signed code. The only place to compete without bringing a whole platform is Android. If Android didn't exist, there would be zero question as to whether Apple is a monopoly based on their actions, and I don't think that the fact that there's one other provider necessarily absolves them of the responsibilities for their actions. The anticompetitive behavior underneath is the same regardless.

> The thing is what Apple, and Google did is very, very hard. It takes massive investment and very sophisticated technology.

Not nearly as hard as you make out. The market is so lucrative that it makes sense for investors to throw some billions at a capable competitor and eke out some percentage of the market, but they don't. They don't because everyone is so locked into their ecosystems that any competition is at a real disadvantage. That's why the behavior is anticompetitive. It prevents competitors from entering the market to provide choice. A duopoly is obviously not enough if there's no competition at all in some areas.

> It's just rational customers acting in their own interests to prefer one product over another.

Is it? What if a separate app store existed that guaranteed that if the app existed on multiple platforms, your purchase was good for all platforms? How many more people might feel free to switch platforms and try new things if they knew they could get most or even all their purchases moved with them?

I generally buy Samsung phones, ranging from top of the line to budget models over time. There's a Samsung app store. I've never once been inclined to use it when the Google play store exists and means if I get a non Samsung phone that my purchases are still good. If there was an app store that worked on iOS and Android, I'd likely us that instead. That would be one more barrier preventing me from getting an iPhone at some point if I thought it was worth the switch. The same goes the other direction.

But is anticompetitive behavior in itself illegal? If so, why is it only being investigated now, 10+ years later?

Yes. See https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices

> If so, why is it only being investigated now, 10+ years later?

By it's nature and the nature of our system it's often hard to prove or hard to actually prosecute, as those that engage in it are often large and powerful.

We have laws regarding monopolies not because they're "monopolies", but because it's a specific subset of anticompetitive behavior that was seen that the legislative body wanted to make it easier to prosecute, and easier to prevent before it actually happens (which is why the government rejects some mergers as bad for consumers).

That we didn't prosecute this before likely has many causes. From the token appearance of competition between iOS and Android to an unwillingness of politicians to go after companies that are seen favorably in the public eye and/or that have lots of money and contribute a lot of funds to reelection campaigns. Until a sizable chunk of the public is behind them, few politicians have the desire to be the first to call for reform that would be a major impact to some of the largest companies in the world, for multiple obvious reasons ranging from funded competitors to worried stockholders to how many people that company employs and if it will affect that.

Edit: Also, there's not usually a rush to investigate small or medium size businesses, or markets that are so new that it's plausible that competitors haven't shown up yet. That's the other half of the "Android and iOS aren't really competing" point. Initially it looked like competitors were around, but it wasn't always obvious that certain things just weren't on the take as competition until it became impossible to ignore. That everyone charged 30% and then all of a sudden there was massive change just as legislation was being considered is a dead giveaway, but also not something those companies could afford to not try in appeasement.

To answer your question - when developing for Apple went from being a choice to a necessity to run your business.

First, with regards to the App store or Music store, Apple is the Market maker. It controls who gets to sell Apps on their market similar to how NASDAQ or the NY Stock Exchange controls which stocks are listed. Korea is saying Apple you already control the market, but you shouldn't dictate the payment systems too. I expect Apple will start raising the fees it charges to list Apps on their App store.

Second, this article is about South Korea. South Korea doesn't care about the historical context of the US. Korea is saying if the Apple App store want access to South Korean customers, you must play by our rules. This is not unlike the European Union saying if you want to store data about EU citizens, then you must comply with GDPR.

For the past few decades, we had assumed there was a monolithic global market for software apps. We are seeing now the fragmentation of the internet and the software market as countries assert their power over big tech.

In any case, though, that's not what's going on with this Korean law. Antitrust violations of existing law are generally determined by courts and or regulatory agencies, whereas this is a new law from a legislature signalling that they want to encourage a competitive marketplace in this manner. Of course, with lobbying and nationalism, it's quite possible that this law was guided by powerful Korean interests or nationalist parties who simply want to hobble foreign entities in favor of local companies: still not an example of antitrust, except possibly in the other direction.

in any case, in the US it's not monopoly that's against the law, it's that market power being used to abuse market participants or influence prices. And there is no clearcut answer, but there are "guidelines", for example if you control 70% of a market and your major competitor controls 25%, you have a good basis to say that you are not a monopoly. Notice that Microsoft invested to prop up Apple when Apple was on the ropes in the late 90's. That type of action shows how tricky and pernicious these regulations can be, Microsoft gets the excuse "we have a major competitor" and also benefits from the success of the competitor.

But that's the market share part of the equation. The additional aspects are "can it be shown that the price of the good is being manipulated upward?" So, Microsoft offering big discounts to PC manufacturers to get them to exclusively offer MS OSes on their platform: are those discounts abuse of the market?

I'm not a particular expert on this, there are many places to quibble with what I've said, I'm just trying to offer the flavor of what I thought when I read your questions.

Oh, at what point did Apple cross the line? Has Apple even crossed the line now? Is not really the question. By the time enforcement actions are taken, companies are generally well over the line. The real question is "how much can we abuse our market power and get away with it before the clamor to regulate us gets too strong for politicians to ignore? And what is the temperament of the administration in office?"

2. iPhone was really, a phone, an internet communicator, and a wide screen iPod. That was arguably true all the way until 2014 when the larger screen iPhone 6 Plus was introduced.

3. But today's Smartphone are more like Pocket Computer. Games, Video Consumption, Facebook. At a point when some people were laughing about phablet. Now vast majority of phones on the planet are phablet. They replaces consumer computing. They are no longer a phone in the sense of phone in 2007.

4. You now have a phone that replaces everything, Smartphone becomes a pocket computer that is the centre of our modern society. Access to everything digital.

5. The problem starts when Apple decided to focus on Services Revenue. Remember before the success of iPhone Plus, people were writing off Apple as their sales number did not grow as much as the Smartphone market. And Wall Street was putting pressure on Apple. Service Revenue was Tim Cook's answer ( or middle finger ) to shut these people up.

6. So Apple start breaking out services revenue, stopped reporting iPhone Unit sales, rework iOS, macOS, Map, iCloud and other cost from their product segment to paying $10 per unit to Services Revenue. And announce their target of Services Revenue by 2020.

7. Apple started enforcing rules on 30% as access fees. If it was coming from iPhone, Apple want 30% of it. It wasn't much of a problem with an App. It is much more problematic with services that use App as access. Wordpress blog, Domain Name, Teaching Class, Video Streaming Site, Creator Selling Digital Asset. Until someone complain, Apple started adding exemption to their rules of collecting 30%.

8. Services Sector works different to products. Software like Pixelmator or Photoshop are Software products. Netflix, or some Cartoon Network are Services. Apple used to turn a blind eye on many of these services. Once they start enforcing it because they had to chase their services revenue target. You start seeing lots of complaining.

9. Why should Apple dictate everything that goes through iPhone? If the world is going digitisation, does that mean everything that goes through iPhone will be charged 30% more? How is that not a tax? When it is Applied the same ( or nearly the same ) everywhere. How is this even sustainable?

10. Customer signing up a Email, when majority of cost are in Server. Or Signing a Real Person tutoring, where the cost is the Teacher in front of Screen. Why does Apple demand 30% of it? And how did this 30% number came from for their industry?

11. Lots of argument about Apple wrongly focus on consumer and completely ignore business. SMB are still large part of our society. And they are complaining just as much as big companies like Netflix or Spotify.

12. It is made worst when COVID hit, it speed up the whole digitisation of our society by at least 5 years if not 10 years. Explosive growth in e-commerce and other Digital goods or services. Why is it so hard to deal with Apple?

13. And they are not a niche anymore, they have anywhere from 20% to over 60% in key markets. Despite Tim Cook flat out lie about this. ( His likely defence is the term Market Share could be defined as Unit Sales and not unit usage ). And despite court doesn't like to define market themselves, if iPhone's owner are higher spending group and vast majority of your customer are iPhone customer, is that 30% an abuse of their market power?

Didn't Apple have the only app store for iOS devices at that point? For that matter the competing app stores of the time (for Symbian devices) were dreadful and all of them are long gone.

I've been saying this awhile, most notably when Apple (of course followed by Google) introduced a discount on commission for smaller developers.

This is completely backwards.

I know why they did it. They wanted some positive PR that didn't cost them anything. Thing is, it's the larger publishers who are going to lobby regulators and challenge things in court. It's those same publishers who already have their own payment processing systems where the 30% is pure overhead (minus the CC fees). Small publishers actually get a lot of benefit for that 30% (IMHO).

So what Apple/Google should've done is give larger publishers a volume discount. Of course this should force them into binding arbitration and otherwise challenging the discount should void that discount.

Why? Because it changes the calculus for Epic, etc. Currently that is:

Option 1: Keep paying 30%

Option 2: Leave the app store

Option 3: Challenge the 30% cut in court

Game theory will tell you that there is essentially no downside to (3). Worst case you will be back on the app store at 30% or will leave.

But what if the options were:

Option 1: Keep a volume discount and pay 10%

Option 2: Leave

Option 3: Challenge the cut and possibly end up paying 30% or leaving

Now they have something to lose.

More importantly, it takes the sting out of efforts to lobby regulators because now we're talking about the difference between 1-2% (CC fees at volume) and 10% not 30%.

I stand by my position that end users don't actually want competing third-party app stores. That's just a usability nightmare. But backend payment processing is something else entirely and is the likely first step in breaking the stranglehold.

> Of course this should force them into binding arbitration and otherwise challenging the discount should void that discount.

So you want apple and google to act as even more monopolistic bullies ...

I see that you're taking this position as what you would do if you were Apple or Google, not what is the best course of action for all stakeholders. But you then opine that this is justified because the status quo is better for consumers.

The thing is, we already know that it's not. Apple and Google allow third party payment processors for _some_ of their apps. Would it be your best interests as a consumer to pay 40-50% more then you currently do for Uber and GrubHub? There's a reasonable argument to be made that those businesses simply would not be economically viable if they had to pay a 30% apple/google tax on every transaction. How many other apps or services went under (or were never made in the first instance) because Apple decided that their business needed to pay them a 30% cut of everything.

Which brings us to another salient point. Apple claims that they need to charge their 30% cut to pay for the cost of running the app store and for the developer tools they provide. But if this is the case, why should Uber and Facebook get to use them for free?

Are you asserting that this is the case in reality, or that we should strive for a society and economic system in which this would be true?

And really what I would advocate for is stricter regulations so we don't have to rely on the good will of corporations in general. Their track record is terrible.

Companies aren't accountable to some infinitely long running algorithm or timeless dynasty of shareholders, they are accountable to living breathing greedy humans who want to make a buck NOW, not when they are dead or for their heirs.

Yet, it's not out of the ordinary to presume apple and google have good strategists among the management ranks... so what gives? What do we not know?

Probably very few apps fit this. This rule basically only applies to digital goods, which are "free" to manufacture. There is some fixed server/dev costs, but its practically "free" to serve n+1 users.

This applies especially true to games where you buy in-app "coins". They're free to the dev, and giving our more / de-valuating the currency is a not-issue.

Of course, it probably takes a toll on licence-based apps like netflix/spotify and mostly server-heavy apps like Hey (by basecamp)

These missing smaller players are the deadweight loss from the cut. You either need the scale to cover your fixed costs from a reduced revenue stream, or a revenue stream which avoids the 30% (like ads).

Or perhaps their business wouldn't be viable if iOS and Android were Windows-esque free-for-alls with rampant spyware and malware, making a good portion of their potential user base wary of installing apps.

Or perhaps their business wouldn't be viable if people haven't become accustomed to spending money in App stores without worrying about credit card fraud, etc.

Or perhaps their business wouldn't be viable if iOS and Android had no mechanisms to protect against app piracy, and 30% of their potential customers pirated the app.

From Apple/Google's perspective this is a terrible strategy.

The problem is that, if we assume the Pareto Principle holds, the larger publishers probably generate 80% of revenue on the App Store.

So assuming 5% is operating at cost, you are talking about them probably sacrificing 70%-75% of their current profits (i.e. moving to 5% margin vs 25%, profit for high-grossing apps is probably closer to 1/5th previous rather than 1/3rd).

So they avoid the lawsuit, but they also lose all the profits they are trying to protect anyway.

If they charge 30%, most small developers don't use it and then if you choose to pay, you get to be featured on a list without that many of your competitors. You're paying for exclusivity. Then you reach an equilibrium where small developers pay to be listed next to Valve's first party AAA titles, until there are enough of them that the exclusivity is sufficiently diluted to stop attracting more developers.

That doesn't apply to Apple because anyone who wants to reach iOS customers doesn't have any reasonable alternative way to do it, so there are millions rather than thousands of apps in the store and the exclusivity of being listed is already diluted to nothing. But they still charge the same rate.

That's not how the economy works - it's a very simplified view which IMO is incorrect in this instance.

Companies in theory only offer volume discounts when it makes commercial sense to do (i.e. 'second degree price discrimination'). Price discrimination opportunities happen when you believe that you will sell more to a customer by changing the price for a particular segment / volume target (companies in theory always try to sell at the maximum price that the buyer will accept, and price discrimination is just strategy to help sell at a higher price to certain segments if the market will accept it). Companies will also only do deals which are profitable (sometimes higher volume deals are profitable while lower volume deals aren't, for instance it might be practical to sell 1 million cans of beans to a large supermarket chain for 20 cents, while it's only practical to sell 10 cans of beans for 50 cents each to a smaller shop).

In the AppStore in reality this would mean you would need to believe that the reduction in fees would encourage enough big developers to the platform to offset the change in fees (at the moment I'm assuming the profitability threshold is met - as Apple is clearly already making money on the bigger apps here).

Now in order to pay for the 30% to 10% swap, you would need to bring c5 times the number of big developers to the platform to offset the reduced margin, which is very unlikely to happen, particularly as Apple have the dominant platform (i.e. most developers are already probably on iOS that are going to be on iOS).

Now if the industry was heavily competitive, and mobile developers could leave and go to another platform with lower fees and reach the same audience, then the competitive pressure would exist to do what you are describing and volume discounts may become a thing - but because Apple can block any competition in this space they don't need to offer any discount to encourage these big developers to use their platform - the developers have to keep using them (which is what the lawsuit is about).

i.e. Apple's market position allows them to act as a market-making monopsony, which means it's not in their interest to provide a discount as they can exploit the situation to generate super-normal profits. Economics & business strategy 101.

There are lots of reasons why volume discounts exist:

- To encourage more use;

- It's aspirational in that users believe they can get big enough to get that lower per unit price;

- Every customer has fixed and variable costs. Volume discounts account for fixed costs. Generally speaking, a large customer will be less overhead for the provider in cost per dollar of sales;

- Bargaining power. Some customers are price takers. Others are price makers;

- Anchoring. Supermarkets in malls will tend to pay lower rents (per square foot) because mall owners know their presence brings in customers that frequent other businesses. Likewise if a customer is accustomed to buy Fortnite skins through your ecosystems they're more likely to spend on other things;

So basically I don't accept your premise so the rest is kind of irrelevant.

"Companies in theory only offer volume discounts when it makes commercial sense to do" - Encouraging more use makes commercial sense because it yields more money overall even with the discount (if done correctly) - Users aspiring to buy more makes commercial sense because people buying more means more money - It makes commercial sense to give discounts because large customers cost less relative to small ones due to fixed costs not changing based on customer size

...and so forth. You're saying his premise is irrelevant but giving a series of examples of why his premise is relevant.

The main thing your comments miss is how apple is going to make up for the immediate shortfall in profit from your proposed changes. Bear in mind, they need to increase revenue 5 times to make the same amount of profit.

It's fine to hand-wave about how Apple should provide volume discounts because everyone else does, but you don't really provide a reason for why they should do that from a financial perspective and how they can do it without loosing a majority of their profit (everything is a soft-benefit which doesn't account for the huge financial losses this would incur).

I don't mean a bullet point, I mean like "I think a reduction of the fees to 10% would translate to a 20% reduction in the price of apps, and that would encourage people to buy 5 times more apps".

Or that all the money these big companies make will be so inspirational that 5x new developers will enter the market and these will, on average, be just as successful as the previous developers with zero cannibalisation.

But in this context, the fixed and variable costs are already split out. iOS developers pay the $99 fixed charge that should cover any of Apple's fixed costs and pay 30%. If you're already paying the fixed costs explicitly then the unit price only needs to cover the variable costs and higher volume yields no change.

And they're starting off from a PR hole because the rate so obviously has no relationship to their actual costs. It costs them the same to distribute a 100MB app whether the developer charges $1 or $100, but they charge $0.30 in one case and $30 in the other. A developer with a 10MB app sold for $10 pays ten times more than a developer with a 100MB app sold for $1 even though their distribution cost to Apple is ten times less.

Ordinary competitive markets don't work like that because otherwise a competitor would come in charging prices more proportional to their costs and everyone being overcharged would switch to the alternative.

Worst case is you want to be on the app store at 30% but are not allowed back in.

> I stand by my position that end users don't actually want competing third-party app stores

I disagree. More stores bring more competition. Both in terms of platform costs and in terms of promos for customer acquisition.

The epic game store is kind of crap, but their weekly free game setup has offered some great content. I haven't given them a single dollar and I've gotten a number of titles including Control, Enter the Gungeon, Alien Isolation, etc.

I say let them fight

If 30% cut of your revenue is big enough, Apple will let you back in even if the two companies apparently just tried to murder each other in court.

Money talks.

Companies keep massive clients and vendors that they are locked in lawsuits with all the time, just look at Apple and Samsung.

They sort of tried this at the beginning of the dispute when they claimed anything running Unreal Engine was a security risk and should be kicked. They overplayed their hand with that one and a court blocked it.

Game theory applies to Apple too. What's their upside from banning Epic from the App Store? They face the risk that a court may take that decision out of their hands. And while they're doing it they are losing out on that 30%.

Is it a usability nightmare? Perhaps. But device makers shouldn’t make that “choice” for their users. Likewise you might not like the fact that your city has small businesses instead of a single large warehouse store on the basis of convenience and usability. But the public would not agree with you and that’s why we enact laws against anti-competitive behavior.

Waay less.

Unless you're suggesting Apple ignore them which would be insane.

It should be legally required that any device that is marketed as a general-purpose computer, whether pocketable or not, and is shipped in a locked state, is fully unlockable by the end user. Without a single network packet sent to manufacturer's servers. That's the only way we as a society could fix this dire situation.

In other words, if I buy a phone from Apple, I should have the choice for this to be the only interaction I have with Apple. They sold it to me. I gave them money, they gave me an iPhone. It's mine now. They're no longer in possession of it. I thus should be able to run arbitrary code on it with highest privileges possible with no hindrance.

South Korea is already doing significant laws that are at least related to this conversation.

I expect more countries to pass similar laws soon.

You will love in a world where you own nothing, and have less control over your life than a medieval surf - all devices are becoming 'smart', frok door locks to toasters

I have 9 chat apps on my phone. I just counted, and that's skipping things like email and basecamp that I might have included to inflate the number. It's not ideal, and the downsides can be exaggerated for the sake of banter, but overall the chat app situation is fine. Similarly, I wouldn't mind having more app stores.

I expect there'd be one all the free software hardcores believe in, one that fills the role Steam does on PC, another with all the "too hot for TV" content that Apple and Google won't touch with a 10 foot pole, a few developer-publishers big enough to get traction, and dozens of also-rans that nobody uses. Yes, slightly more inconvenient like all the chat apps, but in reality it'd also be fine.

I don't think it makes sense to say what consumers do and don't "want," because largely they don't understand the terrain the App Store and Google Play put down. Ask people if they'd like a 2nd store that lets them install apps that contain porn without putting it behind hidden curtains in otherwise general-purpose apps, then we might expect positive responses. Ask people if they want an app store that contains more malware because the app store monopoly provides a chokepoint to enact user protection that on-device sandboxing can't, then we'd expect negative responses.

But you know what's expensive? Private lawsuits, government lawsuits, a court or legislature deciding the outcome, compliance with legislation, compliance with consent decrees, compliance with judgements, etc.

The biggest issue is that third parties will end up deciding the outcome. You're almost always better off heading off government action by instituting the least bad solution for you.

What if the outcome of governent action is completely independent third party app stores? Apple and Google certainly don't want that. I would argue that neither do end users actually. A vocal minority thinks they do but they're wrong. That could happen if the wheels of the US or EU regulators start turning against you.

Binding arbitration is a uniquely US-legal system thing that is not legal elsewhere. (And imo it is better to have a more neutral third party than an arbitration private firm that has one of the parties as a recurring customer)

The big players are the ones that will switch, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc. And beyond that, competitors like Square and Stripe will release SDKs that make purchasing just as easy as the system IAP, and will actually force Apple to improve their system.

If Apple thinks hosting costs are of any consequence, then charge people for hosting if they don't actively use IAP. For 99% of apps hosting is pennies on the dollar, but for games like Fortnite it may actually cost a decent amount, especially for the binary size.

The end point is that there are no technical limitations to anything here, it is all political and Apple has the ability to change this at any time. There just isn't any point when they can continue to rake in 30% of every digital subscription service on the internet that wants to exist on their platform.

YOLOing something with Stripe doesn't give me that without a bunch of fundamentally opt-in stuff on the part of the developer, and that's pretty concerning. If the platforms can (and do) solve this, then I feel a lot better about it.

sorry, but you should be the one paying for that convenience.

I don't know how this is on iPhones, but on android (large) games are usually still a small download with just the binary and no assets from the app store, and the game assets are then downloaded from the game company server by the game binary itself.

That also allows them to push some updates (think e.g. balance patches) that don't require a new binary to be pushed without having to wait for appstore approval again.

So there's a decent chance they may already do that because it also gives them other benefits.

Apple can always require an Apple Pay option for any app in its app store which collects payments. And honestly it'd probably be okay if they require devs to charge users the same amount regardless of how they pay.

The issue is that they ban other options entirely, which reeks of monopolistic anticompetitive behavior.

Just let devs tell their users about Apple's 30% cut, then let devs give users an option to pay however they want.

Apple overstepped, and they are going to get reeled back.

I’m guessing though that the South Korean market is be significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day. I guess this is, in some kind, a victory against the huge companies.

But… personally I do find sad that this would be detrimental to South Korean app UX. Stripe isn’t a thing here, and most of the home-grown web-based payment systems have… like super shitty UX that require (on the desktop) native plugins running a server on some bespoke port. It did come a long way since from when we were the country that required IE6 for web banking, but the UX is still not really there.

I’m hoping that Apple will provide APIs for showing payment screens and Apple will still control the ability to show all subscriptions, cancel them in one single place, etc… but I don’t think Apple will ever do that. Unfortunate…

I think that's right. The next step would be for a large enough market to have a similar law, and then they'll just have that as their policy globally. That probably means EU or US.

Or the UK, which has a larger economy than South Korea. Although going after big tech is not, as far as I know, on the radar of the UK government.

They now have a reason to make it better, since they can now actually compete with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Indeed would be nice to centralize all subscriptions, we have yet to see how they would interface with 3rd party payment options. But on the whole this should be a win - if anything, those competitors will have a strong incentive to improve their UX.

I always found this line of argument disingenious and disturbing.

Disingenious because it doesn't happen historically, so it sounds like a tired threat

Disturbing - are we saying we would rather kneecap our democratic institutions, right or wrong, than live without iPhones?

We'd die to defend our lands and laws from demands of foreign governments, but fold to demands of foreign megacorps?

Case in point: China or post-Brexit UK.

You use this hyperbolic rhetoric to describe the situation but it really is an every day occurence.

How many companies have pulled out of China or post-Brexit UK? I can't think of many.

No, it's just that this is the choice these companies have. They can completely stop doing business in a country (or countries) if they don't want to obey the relevant laws/court rulings of that country. The only thing SK could do then is sanction Apple products so it becomes illegal to import them (reminder that a sizable portion of SK's economy is directly attributed to Samsung/LG).

Hasn't this happened several times with Google-news?

I'm not sure that Apple can do it without being an intermediary in the process - managing the billing. And... well... that's what Apple Pay is.

In order for Apple to be the one to show and cancel subscriptions, they need to be the ones billing you and then processing that transaction (possibly batching it up with others to reduce processing fees).

Likewise, if there's a dispute - for example a child made a few hundred dollars of in app purchase and the parents would like to refund that... Apple can reverse those transactions ( https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204084 ). If you're dealing with a 3rd party payment system... you're going to have to deal with the 3rd party payment system on your own.

Another "it can be gotten around" when you leave the App Store and payment processor is the in app purchase constraints ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204396 ) in that a developer wouldn't have to honor that check at all.

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The future of 3rd party payment processors that developers ask for really means taking Apple and its APIs out of the process. Entering in the credit card information (making sure that developers aren't trying to bypass access constraints on the wallet) and sending that out themselves.

For example, PayPal charges 4.99% plus a fixed fee that's about $0.10 per transaction ( https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees ). This is comparable to what a developer would have to pay to Visa or any other payment processor for doing micro transactions of their own. Having Apple do it means that Apple would really like to charge at least 5% + $0.10/transaction which for a $0.99 is $0.15 and that's 15%... which is the amount that a small developer shop would have to pay for doing it through Apple.

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And so, I return back to the question - how would you see Apple opening up the APIs for doing payment processing without doing the payment processing themselves (and insuring extra expenses)?

1. Put your app on the store. (but only reachable via direct link)

2. Have Gapple verify that your app does not represent any obvious security threat. (or else warn users upon install)

3. Make your app appear in search. (organically)

4. Make your app eligible as a recommendation. (organically)

5. Use Gapple payments.

6. Have your app appear in search. (guaranteed placement)

7. Have your app appear as a recommendation. (guaranteed placement)

(and probably many others)

I'm not sure how well that would go down with developers, but I view it as a more honest way for them to create a developer offering. If they want to then go ahead and bundle some of these and offer a discount for developers purchasing more of them, so be it, but unbundling allows developers to pick & choose the value they want provided.

Why does everyone pretend like this is hard?

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edit: The things I have a hard time explaining to my grandmother are when she asks "How do I turn this off?" or "Why did everything change and why can't you change it back?"

I hate to be crass, but this is such an unfathomably bad argument you present.

My grandparents are all dead, but my dad is 75 years old. He knows his way around a computer like the best of them, despite a life of working in transportation relatively disconnected from computers (Excel toward the end of his career, and that's about it). The other day he messaged me that, with a little help from a local computer repair shop guy, he managed to track down some new DDR3 memory for his aging desktop, and install it himself. In addition to that office PC, he runs a little Mac Mini with some hard drives connected to it, where he rips all of his old classical music from CD to FLAC.

My mom is the opposite. She still uses a Galaxy S8. We tried upgrading her to an S20, which we thought would be similar enough that she could handle it, while still getting security updates and such. Hard pass. Back to the S8. She'd look at an iPhone, apparently the apex of what you'd consider "good system design for old people" and have notaclue what to do with it. We're not sure what we're gonna do when that thing finally gives out in a way harder to fix than a screen or battery replacement. The phone may actually outlive her!

Turns out, I know this is crazy hard to understand: Everyone is different, but if there's one thing most people are the same in: We're generally kinda smart, and surrounded by technology. Today's grandmas may or may not look at a laptop and have a clue what an Internet Browser is. Tomorrow's have grown up with it! I'm gonna blow your mind here, one second: Today, as we speak, there exist grandparents who were born after Microsoft was founded.

We can't keep building tech for grandparents. Yes, technical literacy still varies wildly, but I think "going to a website and clicking download", while inherently risky, is not outside the realm of expectation for most people. Especially considering, in Windows 11, it probably won't even be necessary! Microsoft is opening the Windows Store to all apps, regardless of binary type, technology, payments framework, monetization framework, etc. I'll hate on Microsoft until the day I die, but that's a fantastic step forward in accessibility, freedom, and security; by comparison, Apple and Google are stuck in the past.

I actually find some inspiration in Satya's closing remarks from the Windows 11 announcement keynote [1]. Feel free to replace "Windows" here with "Linux", but definitely not iOS/Android; it ends with: "When I reflect on those chapters to come, I'm reminded of an analogy from a 19th century philosopher who compared creators to objects in our solar system. He wrote about meteors which flash and fade away, planets that burn longer but whose energy is confined to their own orbit, and compared them to stars that are constant and light the path of their own. That's our ambition with Windows; to help other stars and constellations to be born and thrive." What he describes is an unfathomably large problem; to be a platform of platforms, to lessen control and dictation over how people & developers use the platform, while still doing their best to keep it secure and easy to use. Its a significantly harder problem than, comparatively, Apple and Google's playing around in their little walled garden sandbox. But nothing in the world of computing would exist in Apple and Google's world. That doesn't mean their world isn't valid, but that world has become the entire world of computing for billions of people; the amount of innovation and value this has stifled may never be reclaimed, but we can at least do better moving forward.

[1] https://youtu.be/LIv5T3CvcbM?t=2366

this extremely selfish, I've seen whatsapp let old people enjoy internet like we did as kids.

if you want to be a responsible member of the tech community at least take the time to educate your own grandma.

when someone I knew got hit by ransomware I felt responsible so I offered people close to me help understanding basic computer hygiene to prevent this sort of thing, and a lot took my offer.

The only downside I see to multiple app stores is having to download multiple stores to get certain apps, kinda what it is like with purchasing video games on steam versus origin, etc. That is although minor, still an inconvenience.

It also agreed to let developers inform their users about payment options outside the App Store, using the email addresses that users gave them. Google said that it would only take 15 percent of developers' first million dollars instead of 30 percent.

Combined with "competition for monopoly" elements like paying Telcoms not to develop their own app stores or support 3rd party ones, the whole thing stinks to high heavens.

Once upon a time, "net neutrality" had wide support, and there was understanding that it required constant vigilance. Google, ironically, was a big defender of net neutrality... even as they established their own dam immediately downstream of ISPs.

https://www.theversed.com/2754/riot-games-seek-court-justice...

Net Neutrality is not just about “shoveling YouTube streams without having to pay.” In one case, an ISP was deliberately dropping packets for a popular online game (which, if you didn’t know, online games are known for requiring very little bandwidth), and extorting the game developer with the loss of ISP’s customers if they did not pay up.

ISPs are monopoly-abusing extortionists. They deserve every bit of ire they receive.

Once upon a time, flip phones had 'app stores' also maintained by a solo telecom.

Similarly, an iOS app which substantially relies upon (and must be compiled with) Apple's libraries in order to work is subject to whatever the terms Apple includes in their software license. Of course Apple isn't requiring code to be open source like the GPL. Apple could choose whatever terms they want. It would be perfectly within Apple's right to require a revenue share for use of those libraries—say, the Metal graphics APIs—just as Epic Games does for the use of Unreal Engine libraries.

Therefore it's entirely reasonable to imagine that if third party payment gateways are permitted, Apple could still organise things so that they are legally entitled to a percentage cut of app sales. Again, just like Unreal Engine.

I didn't vote either way, but I'm not sure that this is the way the GPL works. As I understand it, you can distribute only binaries as long as you supply _on request_ the source code. FWIW the link to the GPL reads as quite tenuous and what I would guess the downvotes were for.

> Similarly, an iOS app which substantially relies upon Apple's libraries in order to work is subject to whatever the terms Apple includes in their software license

Yes, they are free to do what they want, barring regulation. Which is what this is. Deliberately loopholing around the legislation is an option, but a risky manoeuvre that might just invite more legislation.

> FWIW the link to the GPL reads as quite tenuous

The link is that any developer—whether they're Linus Torvalds or Apple Inc—should be allowed to choose the terms in which they release their copyrightable works into the public.

• One developer could choose the GPL.

• Another developer could choose a license which requires a flat, one-off fee.

• Yet another developer could chose a license that is free up front but mandates a revenue share under certain conditions, such as Epic Games does with Unreal Engine.

In all instances, it is copyright law which enforces these license terms. So if you like the fact that Linus can distribute Linux under the GPL, you must also accept that some other company will have the right to distribute their software under their license.

The issue is not that your argument is controversial. It's that it falls flat because it's based on an incorrect assumption.

> Apple could choose whatever terms they want. It would be perfectly within Apple's right to require a revenue share for use of those libraries

No they can't.

There are a broad set of laws restricting how companies can or can not do business. These laws severely limit the terms Apple can set. Laws restricting anticompetitve behaviors would be part of this set, same for the new regulations in South Korea we are currently discussing.

Are you suggesting that Apple charging developers a percentage-based license fee for use of their work is unlawful anywhere, under any law current or proposed?

The crux of the discussion generally focus on the parts of the contract preventing developers from using competing works in addition to the fees. That seems to fall squarly into your "whatever terms they want". And yes, I do personaly think there is a case to be made that Apple licensing terms are anti-competitive, an opinion which seems shared by the EU’s competition chief.

Your opinion seems to be that Apple could just stop charging a fee for using the App Store and charge it for the use of a different but similarly unavoidable part of the system instead. But that's merely a technicality. It doesn't fundamentaly change the question.

Tell that to Nintendo. Sony. Microsoft. Canon. Nikon. Garmin. Alpine. Pioneer. LG. Samsung. Volkswagen. Hyundai. The list goes on. Software is all around us. The traditional general purpose computer platforms are the exception, not the rule.

It's about control. Apple control how and which apps get to users, and use this control to impose terms, license or otherwise, that maximize their revenue and other goals.

Perhaps you are right that Apple could reengineer the business model to charge software licensing fees rather than payment service fees. They could also make the 30% a publishing fee. There are probably other options too. You can do a lot when you have the power that they have.

That said, practicalities matter. If you want to take a cut of a large number of apps' revenue... the place to do it is point-of-sale. Take your cut before app devs get theirs. If payments go to app developers via some other payment system, Apple now needs to chase down a revenue linked licensing fees from 2m apps... that's messy and impractical. They don't know how much they are owed, for one thing.