App stores, trust and anti-trust

RIP your app on iOS if you remove it from the app store.

There is very little an iPhone user can do if their phone isn't rooted.

The quoted idea you are trying to defend in your article--explicitly, forcibly, and frankly even a bit condescendingly (via "a certain type of person") :(--is that Apple having a closed ecosystem was a necessary prerequisite to the iPhone's success, that removing this aspect of the product would destroy its value, and that it takes "a certain kind of person" to believe that the success of the iPhone somehow wasn't because of this closed up shop. You are trying to make this argument from a position of strength.

However, we have the most direct evidence possible for this assertion being false: the iPhone in fact had a "switch" (in the form of exploits for security holes that were packaged up as consumer-friendly tools to "jailbreak" the device) that let users do the strongest possible variant of what anyone talks about--allowing the user complete decision making over all of the software running on the device, not merely to install some banned apps--and not only did the world not end but somehow the iPhone was still a success.

We therefore know, without any trace of doubt, because it already happened, that if Apple didn't have centralized control over an App Store--and even if users were able to opt out of the sandbox, which notably isn't actually the argument being made by Epic! that is just something you threw in for dramatic effect and yet even still ignores the history ;P--that not only wouldn't the world end from user self-inflicted malware, but that the iPhone would still have been a success, because we actually saw this play out.

Now, you can make an entirely different argument that this freedom to install software from third parties should come from something other than a "security hole": I wouldn't disagree there, and neither would Epic! However, you aren't making that argument: you are arguing that the entire concept of undermining Apple's centralized control via their App Store is itself a security flaw and that if it didn't exist would have destroyed the iPhone's ability to succeed... which again, we know--without speculation--is false.

Or you could try to make a speculative argument that maybe the iPhone could still have been a success even if it had always been a locked down and closed ecosystem the way you want. I think that would be a difficult argument, and in fact I have already provided some seeds of the opposite argument: that if the platform in fact had been locked down the way you seem to think it had been, that it might not have been as much of a success as it was. This could be a fun argument, FWIW, but it again isn't the argument you are making.

I am trying to understand why is this business model from apple not acceptable, from my point of view the way apple makes money on the apple store is with the 30% fees on transations. In exchange they give out tools, libraries and services for free. Do i get that wrong?

with that in mind isnt the request of Epic something like: "We want access to all your platform and tools for free?"

If I have an ebook store and want to give iOS users a nice experience when buying books Apple will make the books more expensive with 30% and on top of that if I want to give my users information that they have the option to buy cheaper from my website I can't , Apple is preventing their users to get informed/educated on how to get cheaper stuff because this information costs Apple money.

Btw you can have apps that do not use any of Apple SDKs (for example engines will use the OS core and neither of the fancy GUI toolkits and languages)

You notice that Epic isn’t insisting on in app payments for any of the consoles, why not?

Can I use in app payments within the Epic app that allow me to bypass Epic and get virtual currency even cheaper than Epic?

Epic gets to choose how people buy currency on its platform. What’s the difference?