[gordonguthrie]

> Fundamentally as a developer if I want my app to sell for more money, I should make it bring more value to the customer, not hope for minimum pricing constraints on all apps.

Fundamentally, you are making a major category error. iPhones and iPhone apps are complementary products. You can't use an iPhone app without an iPhone and an iPhone is useless without apps (clue: Apple advertise the apps available for an iPhone - not the iPhone itself). Apple's marketing approach is to 'commoditise the complements' ie charge high prices for their side of the pairing whilst driving down prices on the app side. Market Theory (see Michael Porter's book Competitive Strategy - Techniques For Analyizing Industries And Competitors) indicates that pricing pressure between a company (Apple) and its suppliers (app developers) lies with the party that can most easily expand its operations into the others market. It is easy for Apple to write an app that duplicates your app - it is hard for you, as an app developer, to launch your own global smart phone. Therefore Apple has prices pressure against you (make you apps cheap, give me 30% of in-app purchases). The Windows team have less competitive price pressure to apply - therefore the price per app sold is higher than the Mac (but your volume is likely to be less).

Apple have (consciously) structured the market to capture the value for themselves - don't kid yourself otherwise. Anti-competitive legislation is designed to mop up this sort of behaviour - when it becomes extreme - I don't think Apple is in the monopoly position yet, personally, YMMV.