This is of course very different from apple business model.

Apple does have their app-review thing - but they said it’s paid-for by the $99 fee, so the 30% cut with all the other Kafkaesque restrictions is not a tenable position.

Anyway - my company stopped publishing to the iOS App Store over a year ago and switched to PWAs and no-regrets here at all.

Apple, on the other hand, wants to take a cut of every non-physical item purchase on their platform regardless of what it is. They also don't want any non-physical item purchases to occur off their platform. Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Apple's platform is a gateway to all kinds of businesses selling all kinds of goods, both physical and digital, with a range of business models.

Apple could even take a cut of physical item purchases if they wanted; they just decided they don't want to (for obvious reasons).

I agree it's similar but it's also not exactly the same.

In terms of business relationship and product something like this can't exist on gaming platforms. Game platforms are strictly for publishers to sell their own gaming content.

iOS is a gateway to businesses selling both physical and digital wares of all types. By their good graces, they don't force physical items through their payment processor but they do for digital goods regardless of what that good is (with a few notable exceptions).

Also, that's a "but they do it too" fallacy.

Why is this so controversial for you?

The number of restrictions on top of Apples cut is what makes the difference. The mafia wishes they could enforce the same restrictions. Apple makes them look reasonable.

Edit: your point seems to be revolving around the access to physical disks for playstation/xbox, which is 1. Limited to devices that have a disk drive, 2. Limited to software that would similarly be sold on the sony/xbox stores, and 3. Still gives sony/microsoft a cut of the sale.

Edit 2: No, I'm not talking about webapps. You can sideload apps with a free developer account, similar to xbox.

Edit 3: Right, well I guess I'm being "purposely ignorant" and am actually talking about web apps. This was fun HN, lovely discussion.

Edit 4: It does indeed only require a free developer account, and you can strip and resign apps without needing to compile from source.

This is disingenuous. Not only do you need a paid developer account, you are limited by the number apps you can sideload, you need to compile them yourself and sign them with your key, and they must be resigned and installed every 7 days. You also need to do all of that from a Mac.

Edit: Can't reply further, but the way of doing this is much the same as installing unsigned apps on an xbox. Using a (free) developer account you can sideload things quite easy using something like https://github.com/ios-control/ios-deploy

Anyone who pushes Web Apps as a viable option is being disingenuous about what it provides or purposely ignorant.

Edit: So the only way to do it besides jailbreaking is for literally everyone who wants to do it to pay Apple an extra $100 on top of what they already paid for their iDevice. (Sharing will get your certificate revoked.)

Using the web apps as a defense only shows that you won't admit to the massive problems with it - from bluetooth restrictions to lack of hardware level driver support.

That isn't a realistic option... it's a deflection from the subpar user experience Apple supports to enforce their mafia level protection racket.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22421912/iphone-web-app-pw...

Anyone who pushes Web Apps as a viable option is being disingenuous about what it provides or purposely ignorant.