> Isn't that a little like comcast charging websites for access to their customers?

Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver the binary of its app. Basecamp can’t be said to be ‘freeloading’ on Comcast.

Basecamp would come back and say ‘well, we pay our developer fees’ but developer fees don’t differentiate whether Apple has to maintain app updates for hundreds of downloads or millions.

Edit: Was clearly referring to the app binary.

>Not exactly, as Comcast don’t provide the infrastructure to Basecamp to host and deliver it’s service.

Neither Comcast or Apple provide any infrastructure to Basecamp for hosting. They are just in charge of delivering the ways and means of accessing their platform.

They provide all the infrastructure to deliver the iOS app binary, receive notifications, etc.

Only because Apple set it up like that. For example, you could presumably have an app store that is only a lightweight directory of signed URLs and hashes, where the developers have to host the blobs themselves.

They could do any number of things, and that might affect what they charge.

But they do what they do, and they charge what they charge. The comment I replied to, said Apple provides no infrastructure. That is categorically false, and thus I replied.

Positing alternate realities where they might operate differently isn't really a relevant response, IMO.

There’s no reason why Apple would do that though: you’re a hosting outage on some shitty VPS box away from the download button not working when you click the button, and the URLs are then discoverable on the open internet for anyone to be able to download at will. Or an indie developer hosts on S3, the app becomes wildly successful, and the developer is unable to pay the AWS bill.

I don’t know why people expect Apple to be the kind of company that would behave in a way that is antithetical to itself and in many ways it’s own customers out of a puritanical devotion to ‘openness’. Most of these ‘Apple could’ changes would cripple the product.

Comcast also doesn't restrict all its users to exclusively acquire software from the Comcast Store™. Apple does.

Apple would say tough potatoes and point out that billions of users worldwide are very satisfied with such a deal. You also very rarely hear stories of malware / fake apps on the Apple store.

But basically all apps on phones are dystopian now.

If I could block apps from network access, including apple apps, then that would prove they're not playing both sides.

You literally can disable cellular access for every app on the phone, including Apple ones.

Yes, so it's time for an antitrust lawsuit.

remember when comcast was blocking/throttling netflix until they paid?

I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't host basecamp...

I was making an analogy from when comcast was charging "transit fees" to netflix for instance. In the end, the customers are paying twice.