There's a certain amount of brainwashing I've come to expect from Apple users. My sibling uses a MacBook, but remotes into a Windows machine in order to use Excel and Word, as the native versions on Mac don't seem to have all the advanced functionality. As far as I can tell, there is no specific other use case for the MacBook for my sibling. Yet, they're convinced that their purchase was a great one (I only hear the occasional complaint about how scrolling feels a bit weird, and the lack of certain keys on the keyboard)!

This is a tendency when people buy luxury goods to feel good about and defend their purchases. On HN you alway see the most intense loyalty towards Apple and Tesla.

Maybe we just like their products. You do not need to.

It is free market not dictatorship.

Quoting from the article, "Apple attempts to justify these fees by arguing that the App Store is no different from a mall, where companies seeking to offer their products must pay rent to the owner of the mall (in this case, Apple). This argument conveniently ignores the fact that there is just a single mall when it comes to iOS and no possibility of a competing mall to rent space from. It is not illegal for Apple to own a mall and rent space, nor is it illegal for Apple to own the only mall. What is illegal, is exploiting the fact that it owns the only mall to charge excessively high pricing which harms competitors."

This is a recurring theme here on HN. The fundamental dilemma is whether or not it is a monopoly. The article is arguing that it is.

There is clearly an "alternative mall" on the market, it's called Android. With 75% global market share they are the ones that are much more likely to be a monopoly, yet for some reason all the accusations are instead being leveled at the minority player on the market.

I don't even know why people are getting hung up on this monopoly thing. You can make a perfectly valid argument against Apple's 30% cut or their overly restrictive App Store policies regardless of whether they have a monopoly or not. Those arguments stand up on their own.