You should be able to install any software you like on devices you paid full price for. Apple should make their money selling phones, computers, tablets, an operating system which should run on every PC, and digital content like music and books.

Do you feel the same way about consoles?

No GP but yes, absolutely.

Yes of course.

Microsoft did quite well for decades with Windows, never once charging developers to distribute on the platform. Apple does quite well with macOS. The value proposition of the App Store is access, period.

Instead, Microsoft charged thousands of dollars per seat per development tool, and even more for access to documentation (I have an old set of MSDN CDs around somewhere).

It’s two sides of the same coin, and I think the idea of taking a percentage of revenue does a better job of aligning platform owners and developers.

Indeed.

In the Microsoft model, small developers, who couldn't pay the thousands of dollars for development cost and figure out their own distribution lost.

In the App Store model, everything is free (or very cheap, $99), till you make revenue.

This is just not true. It was relatively easy to obtain a copy of visual studio if you tried for relatively cheap. I know because I used their tools all through high school, college, and beyond and was actually rather poor during those times. They never tried to leech your revenue from you either in a scummy fashion later on once successful either.

Microsoft was very active in giving free licenses out for education, but those licenses often wouldn't allow for commercial use. If you've never been through a license audit, their legal team would usually make you pay through the nose or suffer through a lawsuit if they found you weren't using the right license for your dev tools.

That said, they'd generally target bigger businesses over smaller dev-only shops.

Microsoft charged $1500/seat for MSDN access...

What would be fair is for people to be able to install apps from alternative app stores, and to drive that percentage down via competition.

Some competitor app stores may charge as low as 5%, to pay for processing fees.

And others will charge different fees. And the app store that is the most competitive will get most of the business.