I hope we see this act cut billions out of these platform rent seekers bottom lines
I would encourage anyone to try doing a fully 1:1 app in both web and native iOS for good measure to judge for themselves. Perhaps you could say 30% is a 'premium'; however after 1 year it drops down to 15%... objectively, I struggle to characterize the dev ecosystem as 'rent-seeking'
Mac app store has to compete with developers doing their own app distribution and we can see pretty clearly that its adoption is kinda meh.
They believe the App Store is one part of the total value of the iOS platform, and one which they chose to monetize.
And while the Mac App Store is a solid counter example to "do users value this?", the other counter-example is the Play Store, where, despite the availability of side-loading on Android, the Play Store is still, by far, the preferred way that users download and install applications on their Android device.
The Mac App Store has failed because Apple didn't make it good enough for developers to make it useful enough to users.
30% is probably too steep of a cut, but I don’t think it’s wrong for them to to take some percentage (the 15% rate they give to small devs who ask for it seems closer to reality).
This is also a strange argument. The "platform, SDK, and developer tooling" are actually funded by device sales because those things are inseparable form the cost of developing the operating systems themselves, which in turn is included in the device prices.
This can be seen in the difference in the rate those things improved between when macOS was the flagship platform and when iOS took that crown. All of that sped up dramatically after the App Store really took off, with AppKit largely getting left in the dust compared to its iOS counterpart UIKit and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Ah. One can dream.
(edit: I mean from PC to IOS and Android)
My point was less related to the cause-and-effect, and more focused on the undeniable need for user control. Apple is the reason why the Digital Market Act exists - go read it, you'll very quickly realize that the language targets them. It also (rightfully) implicates Microsoft and Google, but it very explicitly paints Apple's relationship with the iPhone as a "Gatekeeper" situation. The reasoning should be obvious; OEMs don't deserve that level of control. Apple could implement all of their meaningful features competitively, as-is, without being the sole trusted distributor of iPhone apps.
Plus, even if you love Apple and hate Europe, features like this let you meaningfully resist European mandates. If Europe demands that SMS apps have a backdoor (fancy that), Apple users would have options that aren't provided by Apple. In a world where FAANG is bought and owned by the US government and gets regularly subpoenaed for data, that might be an affordance you value.
This makes no sense. If Europe makes rules about backdoors or outlawing E2E, they will apply to every app store and every app, not just Apple.
The EU isn’t doing any of this to support some principle of end-user freedom. It’s all just a consequence of lobbying and politics. They aren’t going to do anything that reduces their own control.
I think the reasoning was pretty concise although throwing shade, referring to it as unhinged is uncalled for. I think I see this a bit too much on HN but bears repeating: your favorite trillion dollar company does not need to be defended. It is unlikely you'd be calling it unhinged if similar sentiments were expressed about Google, Microsoft or Facebook.