People don’t understand the power of consumer friendly digital experience

Google worked hard to set all of this up. Apple should pay Google for using the Google global platform.

Especially if you opt to not use any of said platform services.

App distribution != online services. They are two distinct markets.

You also have to understand when you buy into apple's philosophy the experience you sign up for is seamless where you don't need to worry about who controls what, that requires you to sacrifice choice ,

- I cannot choose to change my RAM or hard disk or other h/w to vendor of my choice on a MacBook,

- I cannot choose my own Desktop Environment or Kernel I boot in MacOS.

- I cannot choose how sign-in or payment is handled in Apple.

Payment handling allows them to provide the same experience to all apps for refunds or other problems etc. Is it worth the sacrifice ? depends on what you value the most.

Many people do not want or need these choices, Apple is designing products for those people, If you value your choices as I do, you should not be using Apple in the first place. I don't blame Apple for setting stringent rules to give that experience to people who are willing to pay for it.

But I don't see how that applies here. There's too many random carve outs for me to take this as being in good faith. If you can trust 37Signals to handle their own logins and payments for one app but not another, you're making stuff up.

From Apple's perceptive allowing one vendor and not another is going to difficult, next vendor may not be as trustworthy as 37Signals, it is considerably easier to say no other system than theirs. They have never traditionally encouraged ecosystems unless they have been forced to.

I am not saying it is right, but it is consistent with their product philosophy.

Same reason they absorb features from apps into the OS itself, it sucks for the developer, but it benefits the user. For example having the flash light as OS feature than an app is considerably safer, better experience.