When your platform becomes a dominant market it becomes a market and markets are regulated to prevent market abuse, this is what's happening now.
And while Facebook and Google would still be hoarding data, there are a huge amount of games and apps I'd rather pay 5 for that are now ad-fueled invasive crapps and "pay to remove ads" costs 15 instead of 5.
When a significant percentage of the population uses your products and services, expect regulators to prevent you from abusing that significant group.
The capitalism idea that "markets solve all issues" only works when it's regulated so market players play on even-ish odds and the players don't have control of the market. (And even then it doesn't seem to work for public utilities really).
The naive idea that "Apple makes the product let them decide" would fly well for a device with millions of units, but billions is 1000x more and it comes with responsibility, sometimes the responsibility comes late because regulators are slow bureaucrats.
"With power comes responsibility" used to be a thing, now it's "With power responsibility might knock on your doorstep eventually if you abuse it to an extreme level like imposing a third of all REVENUE transacted through their forced store"
Companies should not be regulated just because they are successful. Apple built a really successful app platform. It's theirs to maintain or burn to the ground.
I didn't double check this, but according to a quick search 60% of the adult US population owns an iPhone, you're saying that even though you're operating where more than 50% of your target market has your products you should not be held accountable for predatory behavior?
The thing with this 30% tax the private company Apple imposes on a majority of US adults is reasonable?
When you're "competing" with the government (30% tax sounds pretty government like to a Swede, we have 25% VAT) the government will get involved because you're operating a "shadow government" eventually (you set all the rules and set the tax rate, you're now a government).
Supporting Apple here is unreasonable, sure they should be able to take a margin on the app store, but not allowing other stores OR allowing external payment methods to be advertised is definitely predatory behavior and the government already has a monopoly on that.
And the "core fee" response was entirely unreasonable, it is unreasonably expensive. If Apple were operating like Sony on the Playstation where the console is a loss leader for much of it's lifetime then you ofc deserve a cut from developers since you enable them to build profitable games for your platform which markets the game for you and stuff. But Apple makes a profit of iPhones, they make a profit on iCloud, they make profit on App Store... They make a profit everywhere. It's predatory and I don't know how to agree with them here.
Apple is held accountable by people choosing not to use their device. If iPhone is too expensive for the value it provides people won't use them.
>The thing with this 30% tax the private company Apple imposes on a majority of US adults is reasonable?
By this logic grocery stores have been applying a 30+% tax to all of America since the country was founded.
>but not allowing other stores OR allowing external payment methods to be advertised is definitely predatory behavior
Again comparing to a grocery store I think it is fair for them to prohibit unauthorized sellers to sell within their premises. This is a standard because it can undermine the business model of the business.
>But Apple makes a profit of iPhones, they make a profit on iCloud, they make profit on App Store... They make a profit everywhere.
And that's why Apple is worth 3 trillion and Sony isn't. Apple has created a successful business with large profit margins that people are willing to pay. It's not predatory if people are willing to pay for it.
It might not seem predatory to the end user, but to all developers who want to access these people it's another thing. They can't deliver a mobile app to 60% of Americans without going through Apples little LARP government where they set the tax to 30% and arbitrary rules they see fit to increase their profits.
And in the end that affects the end users because more things become useless adfilled crap because it's more profitable, and everything is more expensive.
I don't even get how you're comparing grocery stores (which do NOT have a 30% profit, maybe 4-6) to Apple passively making 30% off anyone who wants access to "modern day people". Grocery stores don't scale like virtual markets, when you buy something you cost the store money, when i buy whatever through App Store it costs Apple virtually nothing and they make 30% because they like it.
Obviously regulators seem to agree with me and at the end of the day they make the rules, and I agree with the regulators in this case and I don't think many people think what Apple is doing is good and appreciate it. People are forced into the iOS ecosystem because that's what everyone uses in some profitable parts of the world too.
>to all developers who want to access these people it's another thing
Developers don't have a right to access other business's customers. If you want to sell jewelry you don't have a right to have your jewelry put into a nation wide jewelry store chain to be able to access most Americans. Customer relationships are a vary valuable asset of a business.
>passively making 30%
It's only passive if you ignore the billions of dollars they dumped into building the ecosystem and growing a customer base that they can monetize to developers.
It seems we're unable to find common ground. Many governments are pushing back and in the end they're the ones who decide and they don't like Apple taxing everything 30%.
Apple has no choice, now. Their shareholders demand one thing - squeeze money from an audience with no alternative.
If the iPhone's App Store has competition, equivalent to how MacOS already works in America, then Apple has to choose between maintenance or abandonment. In the status quo, Apple is enabled to neglect their platform and users while almost singularly harming developers.
And while Facebook and Google would still be hoarding data, there are a huge amount of games and apps I'd rather pay 5 for that are now ad-fueled invasive crapps and "pay to remove ads" costs 15 instead of 5.
When a significant percentage of the population uses your products and services, expect regulators to prevent you from abusing that significant group.
The capitalism idea that "markets solve all issues" only works when it's regulated so market players play on even-ish odds and the players don't have control of the market. (And even then it doesn't seem to work for public utilities really).
The naive idea that "Apple makes the product let them decide" would fly well for a device with millions of units, but billions is 1000x more and it comes with responsibility, sometimes the responsibility comes late because regulators are slow bureaucrats.
"With power comes responsibility" used to be a thing, now it's "With power responsibility might knock on your doorstep eventually if you abuse it to an extreme level like imposing a third of all REVENUE transacted through their forced store"