As you point out, awinder, it would be possible to rort the rules by charging zero for the app, and then making the bulk of the revenue come from the IAP, if the former costs 30% and the latter costs 0%.
Apple could overcome those technical nonsensibilities by simply defining a second tier lower charge of say 10% in a common sense way, and then granting second tier status to the kinds of transactions that deserve it in a common sense interpretation.
Without a second tier to app store pricing, Apple is not going to please all the people all of the time. Dissatisfaction is inevitable.
With a second tier, sensibly applied, everyone's a winner, all of the time.
When you say "devoid of content" is that a criticism because you don't agree with my proposal that Apple introduce tiered pricing? Or something else? Would you care to elaborate?
For example your walmart analogy isn’t an analogy of anything in this situation and you don’t explain that.
And of now you are talking about Apple using common sense rules to decide what is an is acceptable, which of course is what they think they have been doing all along. People disagree on what is common sense.
The pattern is that you appear to be making interesting but flawed suggestions and then not taking seriously people’s responses to them.
Wondering if instead Apple should look at pricing breaks when a customer spends over a certain amount on IAP or certain repeat transactions. In effect trying to differentiate the take they get for whatever initial bit but incentivize monetizing customers for the long haul. That has precedent with the subscription model they have been pushing to achieve similar pricing breaks as a compromise down to 15%