What infrastructure?
Beyond the store's front end (web servers) and a trivial amount of storage for the actual app, (which doesn't cost billions btw), the rest of the infrastructure (payment processing, app content storage, iCloud storage, etc.) is not required by companies like Amazon or Netflix since they host their own content and can process payments themselves.
They don't depend on a huge chunk of what Apple WANTS them to depend on.
Without apps, the iPhone and iPad are fairly limited in what they do out of the box.
If every dev left today, the iOS platform would wither and die pretty quickly.
This.
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The whole iOS ecosystem.
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I didn't realize that the DOJ could force Apple to do stuff because they think it's unfair. I figured that Apple had to break some sort of law. Home court advantage isn't illegal.
The whole iOS ecosystem? What is that? iOS is an operating system and we use the same developer tools to create our own software programs for it like we've been doing for MS and the Mac for years. The difference right now is that Apple has forced the In-App and 30% head tax on many developers. In OS X, it's not like this. And you can still go to Google to buy an App direct from the developer and install it outside of an Apple virtual software store.
Apple's In-App purchasing is a payment processor. The average transaction fee is 2% in business with payment processors. Apple doesn't host our content. Apple's not responsible to our end customers other than an In-App purchase related issue on their end. Even if they wanted to help our customers, they couldn't... because they have nothing to do with our business or software.
The App Store is nothing more than an index... a search engine, just like Google. Imagine if Google took 30% of all of your revenues if someone came to your site from their index?
And here's something to make your little brain hurt: imagine if Microsoft charged Apple 30% on all of their iTunes Store for Windows revenue...
The point the DOJ made here is that Apple lied in court saying every developer gets charged 30% on their revenues... that they all have to use the In-App purchasing. Well, it turns out that's not the case at all. Zappos, and other like it, as the DOJ pointed out, don't have to use Apple's In-App purchasing. With the Steve Jobs Email layered in, it's clear and as the DOJ advanced... Apple changed their policy to discriminate against a subset of developers because Apple's anti-competitive.