[jalfresi]

What nonsense. As an Apple customer, the App store is the number one reason I use them - I dont want malware or scummy developers on my phone and I am happy with Apple charging a fee to developers in this manner.

It's not like anyone going to switch phones because your app is not on there. Your app is just one of many other apps I use on my phone.

Developers are very much looking at this the wrong way - the 30% fee is the price developers must pay to access Apples customers.

[endemic]

> I dont want malware or scummy developers on my phone

Despite what many folks say, the App Store review process doesn't protect from bad developer behavior. See the various controversies surrounding social media apps that used many shady tracking techniques. And those apps are among the most popular... you'd think they would be "reviewed" more thoroughly!

[specialist]

What would a future perfect review system look like?

How well do Apple, Google, Microsoft perform against that perfect system? What resources do they dedicate to the task?

There's apparently some ways for malware to avoid detection. So yet another arms race whackamole.

Frankly, as a noob consumer, it's exhausting. It definitely impacts my spending.

FWIW, one of my besties worked on an audit tool which runs apps in a sandbox, screening for malware and whatnot. My impression was that it was a lot of effort for little reward.

In conclusion, sorry for braindump, thank you for reading this far:

Freemium will be sidelined into its own wasteland. Like that recent piece about journalism: "truth is expensive, lies are free."

[DoubleGlazing]

But what if an Apple customer wants to deal with a developer directly? Apple wont allow me to do that even though I own the device.

That's my bugbear with Apple, If I own a iPhone I should be able to install software from any source - even if it is risky.

[willtim]

Many people buy Apple hardware because that's where most of the apps are, especially the iPad. I purchased an iPad for my kids for precisely this reason, and regarding the actual software that Apple provides, I am not at all impressed (e.g. app store is a mess, app approvals for kids is very broken). I am also aware that this extortionate 30% transaction cost is likely being passed on to me.

If I could get all the games and educational apps we use on the iPad on another platform, I would ditch Apple in a heartbeat.