[AlchemistCamp]

Charging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading.

Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit from it.

[amelius]

Look I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy ever is.

But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.

[manquer]

UK government is just taking their cut, they aren't returning the money to anyone.

So what difference does it make to the regular joe that the loan shark got shook down by the mafia boss ?

[amelius]

The difference is that the shark is now disincentivized to do it again.

[array_key_first]

It's only somewhat voluntary, as there is literally no other option to get your application on people's iPhones.

For most companies, the choice is: pay Apple, or dissolve your company.

That's not much of a choice, and I think we all know it.

[estimator7292]

There is no choice involved. You either pay Apple the required blood sacrifice or you lose access to more than half of all possible customers for your business.

This is like saying that every American can choose to trash their car and take public transit. It sounds like a choice, but the real world has consequences and in fact most Americans do not have the ability to eschew private transport. That is just simply not how the world works.