I guess I just don't understand the indefensible greed on display here from Apple. If Apple's App Store & development software truly were still world-class & easy to build/rely on then at least one could defend a "quality tax" of sorts. That'd still be bad, but it's something.
As it stands currently, with the quality of their software & App Store benefits they should be discounting all fees by like ~50% at least.
> I guess I just don't understand the indefensible greed on display here from Apple.
The point is that greed is so embedded in the culture today that they don't even have to defend it.
People put up with it for the last fifteen years or whatever; why would they care now?
I mean, you can't say "this service isn't good enough so I won't pay". The justification is surely the cost of hosting the platform and building it out, in fact if you try and demand higher quality libraries they'll probably raise the price to fund it. It is frustrating though, I wish there were a more open and free phone OS
It is just that. Greed. They would do it on macOS too if they could get away with it, but they know they can’t and so don’t make the argument. What? macOS doesn’t require investment into the platform?
That alone settles the matter for me when the apologists inevitably show up.