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Comment by lobochrome | Hacker News Reader

The 30% fee is not (only) for payments. It's a royalty for the core platform.

Couldn't they argue that these royalties don't apply if payments aren't routed through the core platform? Such as saying "oh, well, the user paid through the web version of Spotify, not the iOS one"?

Why doesn't the same logic apply to MacOS? Perhaps because that "royalty" has already been paid by users who bought the device?

No, because people wont accept it in the "old system".

Accept what? Greediness?

Apple used to charge for MacOS. And then they made it free because hardware sales more than made up for any costs of the platform.

Apple themselves claim they don't care if AppStore is profitable. Schiller himself suggested they cap AppStore revenue at 1 billion.

If it's so costly for them to run why don't they let devs and users use the alternatives? Alternative payment methods, alternative app distribution etc.?

Edit.

Here's Apple financial report for 2023: https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_earnings/2023/q4/fi...

- iPhone alone generated 200 billion in sales

- The entirety of their operational expenses is 54 billion

Apple's customers have already paid for whatever expenses Apple is incurring for the "core platform"

Apple certainly looks at it that way, but is not legally entitled to collect a royalty simply for making apps that run on its operating system. Instead, they have created a technical mechanism to do so.

The EU and Japan have decided that's unfair.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com