[jchw]

I hate comments like these. I assume it gives some people who are Apple-loyal some smug satisfaction, but it's incredibly easy to win a bad faith argument against yourself.

There are so many things you could unpack, like for example, the fact that building an ecosystem costs so much now literally because you have to compete with Apple and Google, or, for example, that I don't actually think the issue at hand is how much Apple "deserves" to be able to charge for building an ecosystem, though I'm sure if it came down to it, "30% of nearly all monetary transactions for literally forever on most phones in the U.S." is not the value most people would come to.

I know there's going to be some temptation to argue about that, but sincerely, please don't. It's just not the point. My point really is, why? This thread didn't even have anything to do with this other than being about app distribution.

[danpalmer]

Hey I appreciate the dislike of comments like this, thanks for engaging with points rather than snark.

FWIW I'm not trying to take either side, it's a complex, nuanced topic. But, HN isn't very good at nuance, and I was intending to make a comment on the conflicting viewpoints that many seem to hold, which is a far more interesting situation to me than the specifics of this situation.

You're right that part of the cost of building an ecosystem now is competing with the incumbents, although I'm sure you could make this argument throughout history with different incumbents, if at a smaller scale.