nobody's going to use a phone that isn't supported by applications. In fact every application provided by developers to the apple ecosystem increases the marginal value of the phone. In what world is that free riding? And why would anyone support this egregious behaviour of giant companies commanding around the rest of the market?
My real issue is that there is no alternative. You can’t opt out and use a different store.
I think this would be a strong point if commissioning the store was the primary means of income for apple. But apple strategically uses the fees to attack their competitors. Squeezing spotify for example with a 30% fee while at the same time pushing out apple music for a ~30% lower price.
That in my mind is not a content agnostic platform seeking to make money as a service provider, but leveraging a platform to attempt to gain monopolistic power by force.
In the world where there exists a platform where paid software on that platform gets 30% of its revenue automatically sucked out just by virtue of existing on that platform