[FredPret]

A legitimate business created an asset. There’s no good reason to believe they should cede ownership simply because 16 years have elapsed.

> But Apple owns none of the iPhones, so why do they get a say?

This is an interesting point. But the key thing is people buy iPhones in part because of the walled garden, and Apple bakes it into the price. Without that App Store revenue, those $999 iPhones would simply see a price increase.

[benreesman]

At one time we had somewhat reasonable sounding protections via copyright and patent.

Today that’s so captured that Mickey Mouse is still in copyright and insulin for diabetics costs more than the saline it’s in.

It defies both the law as written and the human sense that wrote it to advocate for unproductive rent seeking: sixteen years? With a few point patches along the way? Thirty percent.

The Europeans find it ridiculous, the FTC finds it ridiculous, anyone who likes innovation finds it ridiculous.

But it’s mostly ridiculous because history is unambiguous on this point: you tell the peasants to eat cake long enough and you’ll swing from a dockyard crane.

Let’s seek to avoid that kind of thing?

[mcherm]

> Without that App Store revenue, those $999 iPhones would simply see a price increase.

Why would that happen instead of Apple taking less profit overall?

I suspect that Apple's pricing for phones is based on primarily on what the customer is willing to pay rather than on the amount needed to be profitable.

[Dylan16807]

The demand is not for Apple to give up ownership of their own store.

And if they baked the price into the phones, at least that would be honest. But they likely wouldn't increase the phone price by that much.

[FredPret]

If you think they're being dishonest by betting on future app revenue from iPhone users... buy an Android.

[Dylan16807]

I assume you mean "buy an Android and do nothing else", but in that case I think it's unreasonable to suggest I'm not allowed to want companies to be honest 99.9% of the time, and I can only express it once every few years while I'm choosing what phone to buy.

If you didn't mean that, I'm not sure why you gave me that advice. I'll keep it in mind but I'd prefer we keep the discussion focused on what Apple is doing and whether it should be accepted by the general public, both in terms of popularity and legality. And Google too, because this discussion started about both app stores.