[scottjg]

i think there are a lot of folks who would be willing to have a 27% discount (allow for ~3% card processing fee) and forego those features.

if apple was saying you had to support their payment processor alongside others (so you could opt into paying +27% and getting easy cancellations), that would be one thing, but they don't allow you to have any other options available in the app, which i think is where the anticompetitive complaints start to feel more valid.

[jrflowers]

> i think there are a lot of folks who would be willing to have a 27% discount (allow for ~3% card processing fee) and forego those features.

This makes sense because companies are used to making 70%, so obviously when given the choice to make 30% more overnight they will simply lower prices to avoid having to deal with all that extra revenue

[AnthonyMouse]

Unlike phone platforms, phone apps are a fairly competitive market, and competitive markets have low margins.

Which means that if you remove 30% of revenue as a cost, one of two things happens. Either the price comes down because the suppliers who lower their price get more business, or the customers aren't very price sensitive in which case developers who use the additional money to improve their apps get more of the market and then users get better apps.

Either of those is better for the customer than having the money go into a megacorp's money bin and have them use it for competition-reducing M&A or unrelated empire-building projects or just have them add it to their cash mountain and have the customer paying that money in exchange for nothing.

[troupo]

> This makes sense because companies are used to making 70%,

I would love to live in the world you're living in where companies have 70% margin on $5 apps and $10/month subscriptions. And where they ever had those margins.

[jrflowers]

I agree, I would also love to in a world where “revenue” means “profit”

[goku12]

It's the other way around. The app devs select the nominal price and offer it on platforms that don't take the massive cut - on their website, for example. And when Apple forces them to give up 30% of their revenue, they instead raise the price and pass the extra cost to the consumers.

That is bad enough. But here comes the infuriating part. Many app devs don't want their customers to pay extra. But Apple forbids them from providing an alternative payment interface or even informing the customers that such an option exists. And the icing on the cake is that Apple used to forbid the app developers from even providing an alternative, until the courts forced their hand. Is this an anticompetitive practice or just plain extortion?

But if you ask Apple or their fanbase, they would say that it takes resources to review and host the apps. But that rings hollow when you consider all the other ways in which Apple wrings both app developers and customers dry. Then perhaps allow the users to sideload the apps? Oh no! That will break Apple's perfect safety record. How about just making it slightly hard instead? No! The user must be protected at all costs, including by holding them hostage! At this point, I'm convinced that either Apple is astroturfing, or the fans suffer from an extreme form of Stockholm syndrome, or both.