The reader goes to ExamplePrint and buys the book.

ExamplePrint prints a softcover copy of the book on the spot and ships it out to the reader.

The user pays ExamplePrint, who pays the author some fraction of the user's money.

The reader is a customer of ExamplePrint and reading the author's book.

This is the analogy Apple would like to use for their app store. Apple's print time is almost instantaneous and the marginal costs are closer to zero.

Because if it is the customer of the book that wants to print it they are always welcome to go to PrintExample. But the situation is actually reverse: the customer entered ExamplePrint because they choose ExamplePrint first and then saw the book there. They might not read that book if they would not have been a customer of ExamplePrint => do they are in fact a customer of ExamplePrint that choose to read something they found there.

Yes, but the users are also customers of the owner of the software platform that the developers are developing for. And the owner of the platform gets to set the platform's rules. Microsoft's standard practice for many years was to watch for which third party Windows applications were becoming popular, and build those features into one of their own products, thus cutting the market out from under the third party developer. I'm actually surprised that Apple hasn't done more of that.

At least Microsoft can't ever ban you from selling Windows apps since you're not forced to use their store to sell to Windows users. Apple's grip of the iOS AppStore can be a poison pill for many devs who's livelyhood depends on Apple's automatic ML ban hammer and arbitrary rules which can change as they see fit with no warning.

https://www.verdict.co.uk/apple-watch-keyboard-app-store/?cf...

Ha. Oh no, virtually complete piracy protection, whatever will developers do.

True; but that also means third parties can lose even more when MS pulls the rug out from under them. The developer of the third party keyboard app you refer to said, according to the article you referenced, that they lost a year of revenue. Some third party Windows devs were forced into bankruptcy.

You're just a gift that keeps on giving. How do you come up with this reasoning?

I said no such thing. I said, by implication, that losing a year's revenue, but still having a functioning company, is better than being forced into bankruptcy.

Also, that in no way means that causing a third party app developer to lose a year's revenue is not a bad thing to do. Of course it is.

However, in both cases, the root cause is that the owner of the platform wants to run their platform in a way that third party devs don't like. And ultimately, unless the users of the platform care enough to force the platform owner to change, third party devs are simply going to be out of luck. It sucks, but that's the fact. Third party Windows apps today are for things that MS doesn't care enough about to implement themselves, because Windows users don't care that third party devs get a raw deal. Third party iOS apps are going to end up the same way, unless iOS users start to care about the sucky position third party devs are in. Which, as far as I can tell, they don't.

Apple's walled garden can more easily force you into bankruptcy though since you have no alternative way to distribute iOS apps to customers, therefore your revenue stream can be cut off without warning. Just because that one dev in that example didn't go bankrupt, doesn't prove your argument.

Meanwhile, Microsoft can't stop you from distributing apps on Windows, even though you're clawing to some made up strawman that they can make you bankrupt. You can still sell your apps just fine on your own website and people can easily pay you, download it and install it without Microsoft's permission since you can do whatever you want with that os, just like on MacOS.

I have no idea how you can argue the latter app distribution model is worse than the walled garden one, just through two anecdotal examples.

To be clear I have been an Apple customer since way before the iPhone, but I really feel bad about the new breed of Apple fanatics. To be honest, I have the feeling that some cognitive limitation is part of the reason for being such a loyal customer.