If iOS was a monopoly, how is it possible to get Fortnite on all these other platforms? That just doesn’t make any sense. The only monopoly Apple has is on selling and licensing their own products.

In the case of Google I would like to disagree, if only for the fact that I have options as where to procure my software and run it in a manner that is intended, but I must concede that it is more cumbersome that I would like. That is the key difference that makes what Apple does so egregious, and why I don't really have much problems with Google at the current time.

For me it is not about the fees or the stores, its that Apple in practice forbids anyone in the digital marketplace to do business with any of their consumers unless it goes through them, as they own the app store and for the average user, their devices only run apps that are on the app store. Epic is in no position to reject the proposition of using Apple's payment service or their store entirely and still do business with the million of customers that are playing Fortnite.

Apple should be definitely be able to charge for the access to their App store customer base, but Epic should be allowed to reject that price and still be allowed to do business with the iOS user base on their own terms, just like they did on Android with side loading before striking a deal to be on the Google Play store.

I’m personally opposed to Apple locking down MacOS to run only signed binaries. If they go too far with that I’ll stop buying Macs, but to what extent do I get to dictate to Apple what software they develop, what products they choose to sell and how they decide to implement them?

On balance I think it’s a good thing the US and EU are looking at these issues. Clearly at the moment there is at a consensus and I think there is a legitimate role for oversight of how these companies operate and enforce the rules on their systems. I’m not convinced though at forced openness on every platform of any kind is tenable.

I wouldnt call it trying to dictate what Apple does.Also I would like to specify that I don't really wanna dictate what software Apple develop or what products they want to sell in their store(atleast beyond whatever code is necessary for sideloading). What I do take issue with, is Apple dictating which companies are allowed to do business with "me" as a consumer, should I be on their platform.

Walled Gardens has not been the norm of Hardware/operating system platforms in the pc/laptop market, and I don't think it should be that way on mobile either. All of the major OS vendors could have implemented similar walled gardens if they wanted to, they just couldn't get away with it. I hope this leads to Apple not getting away with it either.

Conventionally, rent-seeking is a poor quality activity which doesn’t generate any new wealth, it just transfers it.

But that’s not the case here, at least from my perspective, as Apple invests huge amounts in developing their hardware and software and millions of developers around the world (ok, maybe thousands, I don’t know) and their families have benefited from this.

It’s not like they’ve inherited a vast real-estate portfolio that was amassed through violence and war (see British aristocracy, est. 1066) and have invested relatively little into it.

Prior to the 1980s, monopolies were considered bad (or at least extremely dangerous and suspicious) by default, and leveraging one to privilege your entry into another market was a huge no-no (though I'm not sure leveraging a monopoly to create a monopolized adjacent market would always have been seen the same way).

Robert Bork's theory of "consumer harm" as the guiding light of anti-trust enforcement (and further conceiving of "harm" mostly in the form of higher prices, or at least "value for money") has given corporations too much wiggle room and consequently led to a lot of contorted legal and economic arguments, substantially reducing antitrust scrutiny and enforcement (which was the whole point, AFAICT).

Maybe Apple should offer two deals to publishers: 1) Pay £1,000,000 up front and keep all the revenue 2) Pay As You Earn.

The same is true in the case of the iPhone vs. Desktop + web experience: it's different. One way that highlights the added benefit of the iOS app store is that it's safer than the open web.

This puts Spotify in a weird spot. Their only options are:

1) Charge more to iOS users. This seems unfair to them and of course they will complain and blame Spotify when they find out they've been overcharged since Apple explicitly forbids informing customers about their fees.

2)Charge ~10-20% (depending on the share of iOS subscribers) to users of all platforms to compensate for Apple's fees. Why should I as an Android user pay extra so that someone else can make purchases on an iPhone?

3) Status quo - disable subscriptions on iOS entirely, make customers jump through the hoops to figure out how to purchase a Spotify subscription.

I don't have the exact figure, but I imagine that quite a few Spotify customers use their subscriptions on multiple platforms. Apple just wants to take a permanent 30% cut if the the initial subscription was handled through an iOS app. Maybe this isn't such a huge problem for game DLC where there is no fixed unit cost, but companies like Spotify need to pay royalties to music labels, etc.