The problem is your friend Apple locking up their subscription services behind fees that developers don't want to pay. And please don't tell me they need that money to run the service - a quick look at their profit numbers tells you the margin is significant.
Apple could fix this overnight and choose not to. Therefore they clearly don't care about their users, by your definitions.
Also: who do you think you are to tell developers how much money they're allowed to make? It's their right to decide whether they want to pay these platform fees or not.
And again we are back to the developers and not the users, thank you for proving my initial point here.
I am the user that doesn't want to be taken advantage of by developers who choose to engage in dark patterns.
I frankly don't care how much of a cut Apple takes from payments. Just like I don't care about how much my grocery store uncharges, I don't care what Steam, Xbox, Playstation, or any other marketplace charges.
That isn't on me as the User. I want an experience that I am not at the mercy of developers who have been known to employ dark patterns. This isn't a theoretical thing, it is very much a thing.
That is my problem here. This is NOT about choice for users, this about choice for developers. Meaning my options are being removed from me...
> I frankly don't care how much of a cut Apple takes from payments.
Then you're being disingenuous. The root cause of the problem is Apple, not the developers. You can't just ignore it. The developers are behaving rationally within the rules controlled by Apple. I don't understand how you don't see this.
You keep repeating my problem with this and proving my point.
My problem is that all of the focus on this is on developers and not the users.
The key reason I bought my iPhone as a USER is because of the restrictions put in place on the App Store by Apple.
Do you see the difference?
I fully understand why Developers don't like these restrictions. I am saying I don't care because again, as the user those restrictions are a positive for me.
Many different users want many different things. In your case, Apple's incentives align with yours. In my case, I want to be able to install what I want on my +1000$ device.
Apple could make all of its users happy, and it decides not to.
> that is the developers choice not the users choice
users (should) have options, not choices.
as a user you can choose among the options provided to you.
the more the options, the better in general, sometimes it could be a little bit worse for a single user, but that's alright and honestly very rare to be charitable.
giving users the power to choose in every detail how the product should be developed and distributed will inevitably end up like this
the counter argument is that giving Apple all the power is not beneficial for users (userS, plural)
Imagine if Apple decided what music you can listen to or which website you can visit or what movies you can watch with their devices. Their mobile platform has two main actors: Apple, the owner of the distribution platform, and the developers, who create the products being distributed on such platform. Users are, as the name implies, users.
Your options will be: select the apps only from the App Store, select them from the App Store and the developer website and finally don't use an Apple device. Which is one option more than it was until now.
