They could be much better. Using Apple iOS products, my "shopping" habits have changed; just for iOS.
I no longer buy via the app. I now, by default, always go to the browser. It is a learned behavior specific to iOS.
What Apple should have is a negotiable percentage and negotiable service agreement. What I am waiting to see is just how bad Apple mucks up the mobile music industry.
FWIW, the experience Apple offers has never been about being the cheapest, it's been about ease of use and convenience. Looking for a good deal (as long as things important to you are not sacrificed along the way) is being a good consumer.
Latest numbers are, Apple has 13 million registered developers. You want Apple to negotiate, individually, with each of them? There are over two million apps in the App Store. You really want Apple to have two million separate negotiations? I think you may have overestimated the size and capabilities of the team that runs their App Store.
And as far as the mobile music industry goes, when Apple entered the picture, the music industry was busy shouting at everyone not to download music "for free" (e.g. Napster and the era of looting music), while steadfastly refusing to offer music in any form other than CDs, because that would be giving in to "the enemy" (aka their potential customers). Steve Jobs did a remarkable thing: he convinced the music industry
not to drive over a cliff, and to try letting him sell their music online instead. He stared at a bunch of music industry execs, held out his hand, and growled, "come with me if you want to live!" And surprisingly they took that chance, and they're still here because of it. And people
buy music downloads now, instead of just grabbing it and running off with it because the opportunity presents itself (that does sound like looting, doesn't it?). AND Apple got terms that were reasonable for customers (instead of what the industry was trying for), so, for instance, you can listen on any device that can handle the format, rather than music being tied to an individual device (the industry wanted very much to sell you separate copies for each device), and you can (mostly) buy individual songs, instead of being forced to buy an album to get the one song you like, and everything sold for the same price, instead of prices being crazily all over the board (yes, now there's a few prices - at one point that was traded to the music companies in exchange for getting them to drop the DRM requirements) - everything Apple coerced out of the industry made buying music online more popular with customers than it otherwise would have been. Profitable for Apple? Absolutely. But also profitable for the music industry, and infinitely better than their original plan of driving off a cliff while screaming at "those darn kids". So I don't think the music industry has much to complain about with respect to Apple.
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You have not addressed - at all - why a TV is a flawed analogy. You've simply stated it is - nothing more - because it benefits you do so.
In fact TV is the perfect analogy as you "stream" content via cable or airwaves (paid or free). ...
You and others here keep arguing over which analogy best explains the current App Store subscription pricing, when all of the analogies are flawed, and the actual reason for the current pricing is really not that hard to understand, no analogies needed.
Apple made all methods of paying for apps and app content cost the same because if they did otherwise, if they had said, for instance, "purchases are 30% but subscriptions are 5%", then essentially all developers and all apps would have flocked to the avenue which allowed them to get the most money, and the other methods would have faded into obscurity. This is also the reason why Apple won't allow you to have your own subscription/IAP billing in your app, or advertise your "pay us on your website" plan in your app (this last being what Spotify tried to do) - if Apple creates a bunch of ways to sell an app that involve Apple getting a cut, and then also a way where Apple
doesn't get a cut (an exception to the rule), the developers will naturally all end up choosing the way where Apple doesn't get a cut - at which point the App Store becomes unsustainable. That's why subscriptions were set at exactly the same percentage as purchases (in actual value-added terms, 30% for subscriptions seems rather high). So now you can all stop trying to invent elaborate analogies to explain the 30%.