> 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.