alt Hacker NewsMy point is this: you can charge for API use. You can set terms and conditions for API use. You can charge some API users and allow others free usage. That's up to the API vendor.
I simply don't accept your dubious claim that one person's legal API usage automatically allows that one person to subcontract API usage to another, i.e., a third-party developer. And I'd guess that your experience as a lawyer is about as extensive as your experience as an iOS developer.
The individual instance of API functionality is owned by the user, even if the intellectual property itself is owned by Apple. What makes the user's API usage legal is the fact that they own the device and the individual iOS copy inside, not the fact that Apple allows personal use. The EULA is superfluous, an iDevice purchaser is inherently entitled to make use of the iOS functionality merely by posessing the device.
Apple can charge for API use in the sense that they physically can, not in the sense that the law only allows that arrangement.
The law does not forbid people from developing unauthorized accessories to products, full stop. It only protects IP from being redistributed.
The hook that allows Apple to charge for API usage by developers is a technical one, not a legal one.
And there's no need to go for the ad-hominems that you have been going for since the beginning. Why such hostility?