The iPhone is your house -- you own that. The HOA is Apple -- the people who make the rules. The trucks and warehouses are the servers and the internet.

Epic already runs a store they don't need the app store to distribute their apps and do payments. They're only required because Apple gives them no other option.

Apple isn’t an HOA, HOAs dictate what people can do with houses that the HOA had no hand in building. Apple built the houses and the logistics network that made building and selling them possible.

Also, the majority of people do not own their houses, banks do. Try financing a house and then stop servicing your loan. That’s essentially what Epic has done: breached contract.

Epic’s “store” is an app, and evidently they do need Apple to distribute it to Apple devices, unless you can tell me how to install it right now on my device?

You're muddying the issue here on purpose. Mortgages are irrelevant to the analogy. The logistics network is irrelevant. If you buy a TV, there is a big logistics network in making and building them too -- so what?

> unless you can tell me how to install it right now on my device?

This is the dictionary definition of begging the question. You can't install apps on the iPhone because you can't install apps on the iPhone -- that's not an argument.

Software distribution and installation, historically, not required an "app store". That's a relatively new invention.