[shuckles]

They also write and maintain the primary frameworks by which one creates software on their devices, a set of tools that help developers create apps far better than any competing mobile operating system. These frameworks are available for all developers to use for free!

I propose Apple start charging some pennies for every million UIView calls.

[grishka]

What is the price of devices for then? It's a sane expectation that when you buy a device with a preinstalled OS, you pay for both the hardware and the R&D costs for the OS.

[shuckles]

Apple sets prices and there’s no reason they need to charge customers for the R&D costs of supporting public APIs. In fact, if they charged developers per call, maybe customers could pay less. It used to be pretty standard to charge for better application development frameworks. Heck, people used to pay for compilers!

[grishka]

I remember how Microsoft wanted non-insignificant amounts of money for its official SDKs and Visual Studio (and I always pirated them).

But Apple always offered Xcode for free and, iirc, some Macs even came with an Xcode installation CD in the box. But major macOS updates were also paid back then. But the version that came with your computer out of the box was still free. So no, I feel like "we need the $99/year and the 30% to support the R&D cost of our APIs" is a mostly made-up excuse. It's not like Apple would operate at loss if they remove the $99 and 30% fees tomorrow.

[shuckles]

Companies set prices however they want, not based on "need". They don't need excuses.

[smoldesu]

True or false, then: does Apple really need the European market to access the first world as a userbase?

[shuckles]

I’m not sure what you mean by that question. If you’re trying to imply that usage based pricing for their APIs is banned by the EU, it’s not.