You’re Paying into a Broken System Whenever You Buy Something on iOS

Disagree. Every system has problems. Look at what happened with Zoom — unrestricted access to your entire user account on MacOS, for them to do whatever they want. Normal people should not have to even think about a virus or malware scanner on their system.

I like where Apple is going and I like the iOS model. Most of all, I know that people like my parents will be better protected from malware and spyware and crypto extortion.

if the alternative is a malware-infested google play store where every second app phones home 900 times a day or whatever, i think i'll pass.

I'm making my iOS walled garden choice with open eyes.

I'm happy to sideload apps if they're worth it; so far the only one i found that I cared enough about to do this with was Blink, and i wound up buying it on the app store afterwards so the developers could get their cut.

The user will never get the benefit of savings up the chain. That's not going to happen so don't act like it's an option.

Great! Let the iOS App Store compete in the free market on its own merits. I suspect it will do quite well—it's installed on all phones by default, and consumers trust it (for good reason).

The App Store should not be the only way to get software on an iPhone, sans literally hacking the device.

As an end user I approve of the walled garden. I don't mind the limitations on other forms of payment. I think it helps prevent fraud and insecure transactions, and I like the freedom and ease of use that comes with knowing that apps on the ios store went through a fairly substantial review process.

As a developer (though it has been a few years since I wrote code for mobile) Apple's tools, documentation and libraries were so much better than Google's, though that may say more about Google than Apple. And I approve of app store revenue supporting those tools.

But 30% is really, really high. I don't work for Apple, or Google for that matter, so I have no insight into what portion of the money goes to the services mentioned above, but it seems to me that even 20% would be pretty hard to swallow, and 30% seems unreasonable.

I would love to hear from someone with actual knowledge of this how much of that app store revenue is profit.