Yes Apple is obviously engaging in rent seeking behavior to profit off developers. But do they deserve to do so?
First they invented the smart phone and App Store. That gives them a right to rent seeking by most people’s standards for a particular period of time. It’s why we have patents. Perhaps you think 16 years is a long time but then Mickey Mouse’s patent expired recently.
Second they managed to stave off competition and still maintain a large market share. Smartphones had a large number of companies get into this business, including all of big tech at one point (remember fire phone?) and yet Apple has not barely managed to survive, instead it dominated. That has to count for something. The real problem is this society instinctively sides for the little guy and against the big guy. Sometimes that makes sense, but just like you wouldn’t try to change the rules to reduce the amount Roger Federer earns, there’s no sense in trying to hobble a winning dominant company like Apple. Even as a developer (who’s never worked for Apple), I think developers should just deal with it even if it sucks because I prefer a society where winners get to win. If your product is good enough, you can make users work to pay you and still be a market leader (think Netflix or Kindle store, both of which I buy from my browser).
"First they invented the smart phone and App Store"
No they did not. The first iPhone was released on June 2007 and Apple had no intent to give anybody else the ability to develop any app for their phone. In fact Steve Jobs was vehemently against any app store.
Apple only introduced app store on the second year of its first iPhone launch, one day before release of new iPhone 3G.
Other types of smart phones and app stores existed before Apple.
For me the issue is that in a perfect scenario, you would be able to adjust your pricing to 30% more and see whether the market could bear it. But Apple ties developers to fixed pricing tiers which doesn't allow this. Maybe the battle should be for removal of these fixed tiers
First they invented the smart phone and App Store. That gives them a right to rent seeking by most people’s standards for a particular period of time. It’s why we have patents. Perhaps you think 16 years is a long time but then Mickey Mouse’s patent expired recently.
Second they managed to stave off competition and still maintain a large market share. Smartphones had a large number of companies get into this business, including all of big tech at one point (remember fire phone?) and yet Apple has not barely managed to survive, instead it dominated. That has to count for something. The real problem is this society instinctively sides for the little guy and against the big guy. Sometimes that makes sense, but just like you wouldn’t try to change the rules to reduce the amount Roger Federer earns, there’s no sense in trying to hobble a winning dominant company like Apple. Even as a developer (who’s never worked for Apple), I think developers should just deal with it even if it sucks because I prefer a society where winners get to win. If your product is good enough, you can make users work to pay you and still be a market leader (think Netflix or Kindle store, both of which I buy from my browser).