[StavrosK]

The problem here is that the majority of discussion around this conflates the iPhone with the App Store. The App Store is a platform, it's fine if Apple wants to charge for curation, distribution, etc.

The iPhone is a hardware device, not a platform, and it's not fine if Apple wants to be the sole guardian of it. Even the court response here conflated the two. Epic doesn't want to be on the App Store for free (that wouldn't be fair), but it does want to be allowed to install its software on iPhones for free (that is fair).