A car dealership is a middleman. A auto manufacturer is a platform. The car dealership sits between you and the manufacturer, making it easier for you to buy the car, but taking a cut. But you don't need the dealership in order to use your car. Spotify makes it easier for you to find music, but once you've found music, you don't need Spotify anymore (not a perfect analogy since you need to pay to purchase the music from a real store if you're ditching Spotify, but close enough). The auto manufacturer actually builds the car, supplies the replacement parts and manuals for repair, provides software updates for the car's computerized systems, manages any kind of in-car network GPS systems, etc. This is Apple. They develop the whole OS, including all the frameworks that developers actually use to build their apps (and the developer tools too, for that matter), they keep it updated, adding new features and fixing bugs. Apple provides ongoing value to both the user and the developer over the entire lifetime of the app.