The core issue is still that Apple has literally set themselves up as the gatekeeper to their platform. I don't see how they can completely have it both ways.
No they're not a utility. But they are one of only two choices for an absolute necessity today. It's increasingly impossible to function in a society without a mobile phone. There are exactly two software platforms for that. Industries have been regulated over less.
If they insist on fully controlling all software on their platform, then they have to make good faith, non-capricious rules about it. Apple hates Epic so much because Epic so fundamentally disagrees with their platform's rules on principle. Maybe they're right or wrong but has Apple stopped to consider why so many people feel that way, and if it really is, as they say, the children who are wrong?
The entire thing hinges around the assumption that Apple must control all software on their platform completely, and that there is no possibility of running software on iOS without their permission, or even *developing* software without their permission. That seems...excessive. Maybe they do have that right, but now it seems that's for the courts to decide. They didn’t have to play ball this hard.
I think this is what happens when you are successful. We must remember that these rules have existed since the beginning of the App Store 15 yrs ago. This is entrepreneurial risk. Apple spent money to design a product, a system then a dev kit and distribution story and put the contract in front of dev's without a gun to their heads. There was no market share leverage etc.. and guess what, they all willingly agreed to the 30%!
Remember that the 30% was there to subsidise the free distribution of apps as well as the upkeep of the store and dev support etc. Without that initially there wouldn't have been enough devs making any money to bother making apps and the store would not have grown like it did. And many Indi devs were happy to pay the 30% because let's be frank, it was an absolute nightmare for independent developers to write and distribute their own apps back then. Apple was a god send.
So fast forward to now where the strategy of helping Indi devs make money etc has made apple win big time. And this is where the problem starts. It's not that there are only 2 devices on the handset market, thats not the issue here. The issue is that a lot of the good money and good customers are disproportionately on the apple platform! The apple platform only accounts for 20% or so of the EU market. So can Spotify not make money from the other 80%? According to them no (even though the evidence is to the contrary, but I digress).
The reality is (as they say in the music biz) when there's a hit there's a writ! There's a lot of money here and it's big companies that are complaining the most about this, not the Indi devs apple enabled originally.
To them there is no value in Apple doing anything for them because they prefer free and open frameworks as they are big enough to advertise and make their own networks to get paid. They dont really need Apple apart from this one thing they would like.. access to Apples rich customer base. And they would rather remove Apple's core competency and selling point (security and ease of use for customers) in order to make more money! And leave us the consumer with no actual choice about which system we want to use. Making EVERY option available a Swiss cheese old school OS model with obligatory malware scanning system. Something I really do not want.
And thats all this is about to me.
It's been portrayed as a sort of David and Goliath (Spotify is so poor lol) story, or a story for the benefit of consumers rather than a straight up Business 2 Business contract story that it is. With one rich company trying to get more out of another richer company.
No one who is a consumer or an Indi dev will benefit from anything these rich firms like Epic and Spotify are using the EU to get for themselves. I think it's brazen lobbying for the enrichment of a few rich businesses. Same as it ever was...
