2. Nobody gives a shit if this is better for developers, do they? Epic could charge +30% on IAP and use the Apple IAP system which is orders of magnitude better than anything else in the market. Developers set the pricing, and Apple handles security, authentication, refunds, etc. Consumers know it's a consistent experience across the platform.
3. The only benefit anyone seems to be able to come up with here is "choice" and a misguided belief that prices would come down as if by magic. Video game publishers took up to 60% of video game sales in physical stores, but the ARP of a video game has risen since 2008 and the advent of Steam and other online stores.
4. Seems like Apple has built a successful hardware/software play at least partially based on the fact that consumers don't have to do bullshit things like entering credit card details into some third party payment gateway to buy things, or deal with different refund policies from different folks. Consumers have flocked to the platform and now its success is being used as the basis of an attempt to strip it of its competitive advantage.
5. Same thing happened in the UK with sports coverage. The English Premier League was only broadcast on Sky until a few years ago. £29.99 a month got you all the live televised top flight soccer. Now to watch all of the televised soccer in the UK you need Sky Sports, Amazon Prime Video, and BT Sport. And Sky Sports prices have not decreased in real terms. (Oh, and BT's tech infrastructure is hot garbage.) I don't know anyone who loves the experience of having three different services to deal with and paying more money. Nobody is bleating about "choice" now.
6. I object to this on exactly the same terms as I object to Spotify's bitching that IAP margins -- which have been the same since before Spotify launched -- are too thin. They operate a business where they pay sixty cents of every dollar they make to rights holders for fuck's sake. Why are they bitching at Apple telling them that if they want to do a monthly subscription and net £9.99, they need to charge £14.28? Why can Spotify try to tell Apple that the HomePod -- a fucking speaker -- should let Spotify onto the device natively (when you can already connect via Bluetooth)?
7. Nearly every online store has serious arbitrary limitations placed on it by the operator of the store. Many of these are to do with the user experience, but many of them are a means of paying the bills for something they fund (hosting, marketing, app review team, developers working on APIs). It helps them sell phones, but it's intertwined with the user experience.
8. Gruber's point stands: if you think it's OK for Microsoft to prevent Sony from selling a PlayStation game streaming service on the Xbox Store, I don't see why you have an issue with this. It's not the same as Netflix: it's more like an app store within an app store.