alt Hacker News> In a fair market, I'd say that Apple can offer their services as an option
But… they do offer their services as an option. One option is to use their devices and services, and another is to use a different, equally popular company’s devices and services. Why should they be forced to make hardware that can be used in ways they don’t think it should be?
I agree that Apple could change or build many of the things you’ve described. You’d like them better if they did. Maybe I would too. I still don’t understand why they should be required to. It feels odd to say that the market would only be fair if they were forced to be more similar to their main competitor in one of the core ways in which they’re different.
> I still don’t understand why they should be required to.
It harms the market. There are good indie devs and companies being unfairly punished for trying to ship good software on iOS. Apple's double-standards are the #1, red-alert issue.
The secondary issue, and one that upset me, is that it encourages Apple to make worse products. If Apple has an adjustable taxation knob that users have no control over, they can extort developers in exchange for making the platform worse. Apple knows that alternative App Stores and billing methods will destroy this status quo, which is why they invest millions lobbying against Europe's common-sense DSA/DMA laws. If the United States adopted a similar regulation, then Apple's financials would crater, jeopardizing their company's future simply by making iOS behave like a normal Mac or PC.
Apple should not be gambling their future on an exploitative status-quo, they should be reinvesting in capabilities, security and making products that people want to buy. Just like Google and their AdSense monopoly, I think Apple's terrible choices are informed by a captive revenue stream that they abuse to boost their quarterly reports.