Let's call a spade, a spade. Your position appears to be "I don't want to choose, and I don't want anyone else to be able to choose either".
That is certainly not the paragon of virtue. Letting people choose -- which doesn't affect you at all - is.
Apple has made a strategic decision to maintain this walled garden. This decision is one of the company’s key differentiators.
Your position appears to be “I want to force Apple to abandon a key market differentiator in service of a marginal gain in personal freedom for a marginal segment of customers who would actually care about such change.”
Apple customers are lacking choice in software just as much as Trader Joe’s customers are lacking choice in food brands.
I certainly didn't buy an iphone because I want to pay an extra tax whenever I buy apps.
Yes! And you’re being wilfully dishonest by not acknowledging this point, despite me repeating it to you a dozen times.
> I didn’t buy an iphone because [...]
Well, I did.
> And I pray it stays that way.
If Epic had an alternate app store, you know you wouldn't have to use it right? You could still use Apple's walled garden. Granting me the ability to run more software on my device doesn't restrict your ability to control what runs on your device.
> it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.
You're the one arguing for restrictions about what I can do on my phone. I don't care what you do with yours. Nothing Epic is proposing would stop Apple from reviewing apps and selling them in the app store.
And if opening the door to free and open marketplaces, with the user in the driver's seat is selfish, guilty as charged! Sign me up! The engine of capitalism works best with healthy competition. (And no, the phone megacorp duopoly is not healthy competition.)
Reigning in monopolies is what healthy regulation is made for.
Apple has a clear, technologically enforced, complete monopoly on apps distributed on their phones. And google has a weak monopoly on their phones - you can distribute your app on other app stores, but its difficult for everyone. The situation on Android is slightly worse than Microsoft distributing IE with windows. And when that happened, the feds initiated a huge antitrust case against microsoft and nearly broke up the company.
Does the fact that there's competition in the phone market mean we should forgive monopolistic behaviour in the app markets on those phones? Thats a tricky question. Its too simple to just fall back on heuristics.
Is there monopolistic behaviour in the app market?
- Does the monopolistic provider use their position to block competition? Yes. Apple doesn't allow any competitors to their own software in the app store.
- Does the monopolistic provider rent seek, and extract far more money from the market than they would if there was healthy competition? Uncertain - I'm not sure if 15% is a reasonable or unreasonable cut. 30% almost certainly wasn't reasonable for the services apple provided.
- Do people buy phones mostly because of their app stores? If they do, then phone competition == app store competition. If they primarily choose a phone on other factors (cameras, etc) then these are separate markets and should be considered separately. Answer: ???
Is there a precedent? Its not exactly the same, but Australia didn't like telstra (an ISP who owned most of the cable at the time) renting their cables at unreasonable prices to other ISPs. They stopped anyone else from reasonably competing with them. You could make the same argument - "You willingly bought a house there so you can't complain. If you don't like it, move". But we regulated them anyway. Notably the US hasn't regulated comcast / etc from doing the same thing over there.
Longer answer than you were expecting. tldr; its complicated. Heuristics aren't enough. Personally I don't think competition in phones means its acceptable that we have monopolies in app stores. I find the justifications for letting apple have a monopoly in the app store unconvincing and I favor regulation.
And I pray it stays that way.
I’m sorry mate, but the reality of the situation is that your wishes mean nothing and Apple owes you zilch. You don’t like that, feel free to go somewhere else.
You imposing your views on all of us is not freedom. It’s the opposite of that.
You want open software? Linux is a thing, I should know, I use it every day.
You want a walled garden? Well you should be able to have that choice, too. You want to take that away from me while pretending to do it for the greater good, when in reality it’s just a selfish desire to impose your will on others.