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What worked well for the past 50 years was freedom. None of those operating systems were forced to provide dev kits at no additional cost. They did it to compete. If Apple's additional costs' value proposition was not there, they would not be successful, they would not be able to attract good developers creating good software. Apple is not a monopoly either, there is competition. So forcing them to provide a service at no additional cost is just theft. And corporations can circumvent the hit they will get from being forced in innumerable ways in a capitalist system, all at the expense of the consumer.

The point is, nobody is disallowed from competing with Apple and its ecosystem on its merits. If Apple didn't provide enough value in return to what they ask, they would fail. Signaling that you will punish success with force means that the next Apple will be a lot more cautious about how they do things. Jacked up prices (as long as value proposition is there, people will pay, they will just pay more), requiring dev kits (can you force a company to change their hardware design so that it can be developed on? where is the limit?) / expensive partnership agreements / increasing the barrier to entry... Unless companies are "state owned" they have infinite ways to keep their profits at the expense of consumers. Apple's existing deal was a good deal - it was working, competition was (and is still) there. Now they will have to do the things that will just inconvenience users as a side effect, which is what they don't want to do, but they will be forced to do regardless.




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