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by threeseed 876 days ago
You're simply wrong. And every court and government around the world agrees.

Companies have a right to charge a fee for using their platform.

Apple can not be forced to give you their SDKs, Services etc for free and help you sell that product on their marketplace for free. They have a right to charge something. You can rightfully argue that the 27% is way too high and courts have agreed. But those like Epic hypocritically arguing for 0% no one agrees with.

3 comments

You have a right to compete in a fair market, in the us at least. Apple has a monopoly on app delivery to everyone who has an iPhone, clearly their practices are anti competitive. It does not matter that judges disagree, all that means is that the current laws are deficient.
App Store is not a market and never has been.

So the concept of monopolies and anti-competitive behaviour don't apply.

It's why the courts treated Google differently in their Epic case to Apple.

This seems just completely false to me. People are exchanging currency for goods on the App store. Can you explain how that isn't a market?
There is no doubt at all that both are markets. The only question is whether it’s in the public interest and compatible with the law to regulate them, and courts and governments around the world are figuring that out right now.

Why the courts ruled differently for Google was that they had different deals for different participants in it, while Apple has a uniformly expensive deal for everybody.

How is the app store not a market?
> Apple can not be forced to give you their SDKs, Services etc for free and help you sell that product on their marketplace for free.

The argument is we wouldn't need their marketplace and services if they allowed users to easily download and install software downloaded from regular websites.

you know... the way it always worked and still works in Linux/BSD.

There are obviously security implications to this, but I believe if I own the device I should be able to take the risk.

As far as their SDKs they actually do need to provide those for free, otherwise nobody will develop software for iOS and they won't be able to sell devices.

> As far as their SDKs they actually do need to provide those for free, otherwise nobody will develop software for iOS and they won't be able to sell devices.

It currently doesn’t work like that. To develop and distribute apps, even free apps, a developer membership costing US $99 a year is necessary. Yet there are plenty of free apps without in app purchases or external subscriptions or payments.

EU regulators don’t agree.