(Incidentally credit card companies, like Apple, really hate it; I think some states have exceptions in their laws to disallow contracting out of it?)

Buying airline tickets online often display the processing fee for using MasterCard/Visa too.

The important part is other options are displayed so I have a choice - iDeal, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, bank transfer, etc.

Man i would really love this! the luxury goods market would be ruined overnight when everyone realizes that most of the time you're paying for the brand!

Online stores profit from the difference between buying at volumes and selling at a higher price.

They don't charge over the market price, they buy at a discount

Apple doesn't buy anything, doesn't have a warehouse, doesn't allow publishers to discuss the terms of the agreement, they take the same fee from everyone, in this regards it is very similar to a flat tax

Apple store is more similar to a market place, a mall in the physical world, in a mall businesses rent the space

They pay in proportion on how much space they rent and the quality of the space they rent

Apple (unfairly IMO) charges the same amount for everyone, even though some apps are promoted by the store and the vast majority of them is practically undiscoverable unless you already know what to look for.

If Apple was a store it would be a store that only place orders on your behalf, just because it's the only store in town and charges a fee on every order, even if they don't do much

If you had the phone number of the supplier you could place the order yourself, but Apple prohibits customers to even ask for it and if publishers try to contact customers directly, they sue them

In this imaginary town people supporting the Apple business say to people sick and tired of their way of doing it "change town"

I hoped we would be better than tribes in 2020

Apart from warehouse all the stock, provide check/out, provide distribution.

Nobody asked Apple to provide check out, distribution and warehouse

They are doing it and forcing everybody to follow along with that because it's best for Apple

In the same way Facebook hosts your pictures because it's good for them

I'm sure companies like Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, epic, Spotify, Google etc. etc. are perfectly capable of doing all of the above, Apple simply prohibits them from even writing in their apps "this is not the only way you could buy this app"

I’ll concede the point that Apple are looking after Apple. I’ll also concede the point that Apple don’t disclose enough about their restrictions to their customers. However, I still find their App Store and fees reasonably tolerable, as a customer. Apple’s approach falls in line with much of how I want my computing to work. They’re not perfect, but compared to Google and FB, they’re by far the more appealing supplier. Compared to Microsoft, I just find Apple’s stuff nicer to use.

Maybe they didn’t ask for it, but they sure as hell use it. No-one has to make native apps.

They can't not use it

That's the point

PWAs are crippled on the iPhone and the fact that the only browser available is Safari is not encouraging for developers, so native it's the only option to have a good experience on iOS

Apple does want you to develop native apps, because to make native apps you have to buy Apple hardware, Apple developer licenses and Apple devices to test them

They could very well not use it.

I’ve chosen not to develop (or learn how) iOS native apps. For now. Almost everything I want to do could be a web app and I’d take the cost of maintaining servers for shelf space, distribution and offline storage. I’d have to use email for notifications. Notifications are optional at point of consumption anyway so they can’t be relied upon, so this UX impairment is minor.

The PWA argument doesn’t work for me. Most of the features I might choose to use PWA abilities for can be implemented in other ways.

No, they can't or they would have done it already

> I’ve chosen not to develop (or learn how) iOS native apps

I've chosen to skip writing mobile apps entirely, that doesn't mean that the company I work for can ignore their users on iOS hence they can't ignore Apple store policies

> Most of the features I might choose to use PWA abilities for can be implemented in other ways.

That's the problem

When the actor that controls 50% of the market doesn't fully implement some standard to drive adoption of their closed platform, development becomes more costly

And it reflects on both development time and price for the end user

I mean seriously people, do you not realise the words you use also affect the way you think about things and not just the other way around?