Apple, Epic, and the App Store

IMO, yes. We make it illegal for someone to come into your home and take your stuff, which ends up with you losing control over it (you have no more access to your stuff), so it also makes sense to make it illegal for someone to decide to not allow you install or modify the stuff you have (again taking control away from you).

The way most of these platforms run is like buying something but by doing so you also give an implicit permission for the seller to come in your house and modify or even forbid you from using what you bought if they do not like what you are doing with it.

Imagine if you bought an oven and you could only bake specific recipes that the over manufacturer allowed. And when you complained you had others telling you "just buy another oven" (until all oven manufacturers were into the game because it made them more money - especially those who are also into selling ingredients - and you had no other options, except perhaps a few cheap models that had a tendency to explode every now and then and their only usefulness is to be used as skapegoats whenever "monopoly" is brought up).

And yes, i know the above comparisons aren't 100% fitting, software isn't a physical product, it is special, but it still feels very wrong to buy a device (be it a phone, gaming console, TV or whatever) and have no control over what you can install or even -in some cases- do with it.

There are a wide range of other parties that dislike Apple’s policies.

Why don’t they build their own platform with their own exclusive and attractive content?

I can see two options:

1. A full blown phone. Hard to do? Perhaps, but if Apple and a Google really aren’t competitive, then it should be possible to take customers away from Apple over the next few years, especially if your device has the games that teens want and can’t get from Apple.

2. Don’t start when a phone. Make a gaming handheld with exclusive content - Epic’s super popular titles, plus XBox streaming. Sell it for $200. Basically an iPod for games, done right. If Nintendo can sell handheld consoles it’s obvious Epic and Microsoft can.

Then just build this out with phone functions, and a great browser for SPA’s etc, leveraging flutter, and eat Apple’s lunch from the bottom up in classic low-end disruption style.

Bonus: have an open bootloader - bootcamp style so that enthusiasts can hack the thing.

#2 seems like they could have a product on the market next year if they wanted.

I could see this strategy easily forking the market into iPhones for productivity and Epic devices for fun, and causing both segments to improve at a greater pace.

Apple simply isn’t unassailable if people are willing to put in the sustained effort needed to compete with them, but to do so will take a similar sustained effort over a similar time period to what it took them to obtain their position.

Also from customer prospective, I feel more comfortable knowing the payment will go through Apple.

You don't lose anything if you don't want to.

You should have to keep doing what you already do.