Would Walmart be interested in that? Seems like their retail cut would be sliced to $0 in that situation despite doing the retail work.
But sadly, you bought your home in a neighborhood with an HOA, and even though you own your home, the HOA requires all retail purchases have to go through them, and they take a 30% cut of everything and they won't let you order that TV directly from the manufacturer to put in your house.
But this is ok, because this is what you agreed to when you bought your home.
Is that ok? It would seem that people entered the contract together without duress?
Are there other neighborhoods? Run by other HOAs with better terms? Isn't it a market contest at that point to see which one buyers will prefer?
But the majority of other neighborhoods are also run by HOAs with similar terms. There are a few neighborhoods that are completely free of HOAs that but those houses are not as nice and neighborhoods not as nice. If you want a nice house in a nice neighborhood, an HOA is your only option.
I'm positive some people, if they had the option, would prefer to buy their current house free of the HOA. Others, on the other hand, like that HOA protects their neighborhood and don't care that they can't paint their house a different color or buy TV's directly from manufacturers.
Sadly, the house and neighborhood you want determines whether or not you'll have to enter into that contract with a particular HOA.
I think the HOA tries to argue that this isn't coincidence - its the HOA's policies and governance that have resulted in the niceness (we can cite examples that both support this and contradict this, of course, so its hard to assess whether this is true).
Folks might argue that it isn't fair that the most desirable goods are encumbered, but then its kind of up to them to create or support institutions that can manufacture the unencumbered version. That's the promise of a market opportunity where we can create brand new neighborhoods to test your hypothesis that people will prefer the nice-but-no-HOA version (I think the recent buzz around the Framework laptops is an example of this).
With iPhones I think we have a choice, and while it isn't ideal, we can vote with our wallets and support other institutions or companies.
In this case, the TV manufacturer already has all that infrastructure and they use it in neighborhoods without an HOA. It would be no cost to you or the HOA for you use it but the HOA just doesn't allow it. For obvious reasons, of course, because then they wouldn't get their cut.
If iOS only running Apple’s signed code is so bad why do people keep buying iOS devices?
Epic already runs a store they don't need the app store to distribute their apps and do payments. They're only required because Apple gives them no other option.
Also, the majority of people do not own their houses, banks do. Try financing a house and then stop servicing your loan. That’s essentially what Epic has done: breached contract.
Epic’s “store” is an app, and evidently they do need Apple to distribute it to Apple devices, unless you can tell me how to install it right now on my device?
> unless you can tell me how to install it right now on my device?
This is the dictionary definition of begging the question. You can't install apps on the iPhone because you can't install apps on the iPhone -- that's not an argument.
Software distribution and installation, historically, not required an "app store". That's a relatively new invention.