This part:

   > If commercial real estate charged XX% cuts of all sales from a business

Using another real estate analogy -

Imagine you bought a house from Fruit Builders company. The house came with a pool.

Now unlike every other pool in existence, this is a very special pool that just really cares about your privacy and security a lot.

It won't let you use any random pool toy (it has lasers), no it must be a well-behaved toy that is rigorously tested and officially notarized by Fruit company themselves (= non-employee contractors taking one look to make sure Fruit's cut is not being circumvented).

So you go to the supermarket, purchase a marked-up toy, the toy company reports its earning to Fruit, and Fruit takes their cut.

All for your safety of course.

If you’re going to come up with analogies, at least do something that is remotely applicable.

But sure, here's another -

You can run any company's software on a MBP, downloaded from the internet, without paying a dime to Apple. Similar situation applies to Windows / Microsoft.

The iOS model is advocating for rent-seeking in MacOs and Windows binaries.

Surely Apple's OS/framework that they tried to say they spent so much money developing, sandboxes and protects all running code from said data vacuuming behaviour?

Or did you really believe Apple when they said it would reduce security™

Because the only reason it would is if Apple let it happen on purpose so they can create a consumer backlash by saying "I told you so".

There was a story that a Bitcoin wallet in the store was stealing peoples funds and had Apple had be notified at least 12 days prior. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39685272

So the so-called security is a red herring.

I just can't stand Linux. I've tried several distros and after using macOS since 2009 and Windows since 1995, I just can't be bothered by all the things Linux distros lack, if muscle memory for the other two aren't already the biggest obstacle for me.

I am insanely efficient on macOS, and I almost never have to think about global hotkeys, global search & calculations, managing apps & settings, and seeing nearly zero interruptions while I work -- including popups, notifications, performance dips (if I'm being reasonable with my usage), OS UI bugs, etc.

These all do occasionally happen, but never to the extent I see in popular Linux distros and even Windows. It's just a fact, after nearly 30 years of first-hand usage and comparison.

I also use macOS because it is as extensible and open as I need it to be for downloading and installing packages, and customizing the OS to suit my needs -- which is something iPhones can't do without jailbreaking and such.

I've never owned an iPhone, and seldom use my iPad. I'm an Android guy, and being able to sideload apps in rare, but important, moments is important to me. The openness of Android has been important as well, namely the fact that Firefox has always been allowed to use its own browser engine since the start, enabling the same freedoms I have using it on desktop platforms, as a primary example.

That was a few years ago. Anything older I've forgotten honestly at this point. It's been a long time, and I'm certain things are probably better these days, but I have absolutely no reason to switch. My muscle memory and setups on my current machines are too good to let go of.

I have a Steam Deck -- but their experience is so tailored that I'm not sure it counts. I'm not actively using the desktop environment unless I need to use a different game platform. I wouldn't be using this machine for work at all though.

People complain about the products that are best for them. Nobody (with the power to decide what they use) complains about a product long, unless it is still their best choice.

And suppliers of products being complained about are not companies "not worth supporting". They are making the product that is the best fit for the complaining customer! They are not perfect. They can do better. So customers speak up.

But like...if someone really does like the product but knows that product could be even better, wouldn't they naturally speak up about it?

After trying UI design tools and web development on Windows and Linux machines and finding the experience very sub-par for my needs, I've found macOS, and by extension, Apple's hardware quality, choice of keyboard layout, ease of use, etc. to be superior for my needs. I have almost no complaints about the Mac platform with the ways I've been able to customize it, and its nag-free experience. As they say, it just works™. ;)

It feels made for UI design & development, with minimal to no configuration, no late nights fixing file permissions or access issues, fixing Linux subsystems, fiddling with very limited terminals, and suffering from buggy piecemeal UI shell packages that prioritize fancy, laggy animations over functionality.

On the contrary, I've found not only doing these tasks and multitasking to be very frustrating when getting serious work done on other machines, primarily frequent interruptions (Windows) and major inconsistencies with global keyboard shortcuts.

For what it's worth, I'm also a staunch Android user, never owned an iPhone, occasionally use an iPad for reading and other content creation, absolutely love my Windows PC for gaming and surfing on my TV, and work exclusively on my MacBook. I'm very particular about using the most suitable machines for the tasks at hand, but well-rounded enough not to be completely captured by Apple.

I had 2 macbooks fail simultaneously over the new year, and instead of laying down the $$$ for a new m3 mackbook, I put a linux station together, with the intent for it to be a windows dual boot.

At this point a couple of months later, windows is no more than a KVM/QEMU virtual machine (and runs its DAW/synth apps, significantly faster and with greater stability than either of my dead m1 macbooks ever did.)

Best tool for the job has changed.

An equipment manuifacturer who's goal is for hw failures to trigger a new purchase and not a repair should be enough incentive to ditch them. We all know Apple has fallen way further than that.

They're a litigious, anti-consumer company that hides behind some fake, faded, John Lennon esque / hipster image.

Time to cut them loose, isn't it?

I've heard this since around 2004, and did try it every once in a while. And while I have the utmost respect for the Linux desktop developers... the experience was never comparable to me. I'm a sucker for well-thought out and coherent user interfaces, and the rigid principles Apple developers have to follow are no match for a loose group of open source devs.

I will continue to follow their progress, but as it stands, using a Linux desktop on my main machine feels like swapping a Mercedes with a home-built Gokart.

They are deciding that said product is the best fit for price on their individual criteria.

To "support" would require you to make sacrifices - aka, buy an inferior/worse-fit product from a company you want to support, instead of from the company that actually offers the best-fit for yourself.

Aside from me throwing too much at it (should've sprung for 32GB), it's the single best notebook I've ever owned, and the most reliable.

To say it was the best fit for me is an understatement! It's truly great!

Don't get me wrong, Framework makes a lot of neat stuff, but you can't swap out a Macbook to _anything_ without consequences. It does not take a lot of imagination and empathy to see that for some people, those consequences aren't acceptable at all, or not simply not worth the utterly undetectable sting that a company such as Apple would feel by us not buying a single Macbook from them.

If someone has to alter their entire work environment and process, while Apple doesn't even notice, is that truly worth the moral superiority they'll feel? For a whole lot of people, that answer is "no", and I can't blame them.

And yet we live under capitalism...

No, you can’t avoid capitalism, you’re born in the country your born and you don’t have that choice.

This is more like moving to a capitalist country and then complaining that you live in a capitalist country.

In reality, it's safer to assume that most or all major apps don't have problems with this, so I'm being a little facetious here. Regardless, after nearly 20 years on Android, nobody could possibly pry my muscle memory and features I've come to expect from my cold dead hands. :D

I have owned, and continue to own, all sorts of laptops and phones. I could rant about Apple all day long online, but in the end their product is simply superior.

It is such a powerful and self-evident idea that those computers are still above and beyond the best ones in the world, even with all those years of indifference.

Except Airpods. They're pretty sweet.

That said, my MacBooks have the best laptop batteries of any computer I’ve owned. My wife went through multiple laptops in the time I kept one in college. Turns out some electronics just suck!

Sweet devices that keep falling off your ears. You need AirPod ear hooks to keep them on.

Researching I can indeed see such products exist, although given Apple appear to be selling over 100 million pairs a year[0] (also surprising to me!), I suspect your estimate is inflated. Note this is over 300,000 pairs per day.

Anecdotally, I see people with Airpods daily but have not once ever seen hooks on them. Maybe there's a cultural element at play?

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPods#Sales

I have plenty of computers running Windows and a variety of Linux distros at my home. Laptops, desktop, servers, and weird hybrids of the former.

Same with mobile - I have tried Android, iOS, PureOS, GrapheneOS.

Apple's UX is so far ahead for me. It's just better. But, you obviously disagree. No need to be disparaging.

I'm not sure how that implicitly conveys an opinion.

Saying "the sky is blue" is not an opinion when the sky is blue, it's a fact. Saying something is better is also not an opinion, it's a fact. Saying "in my opinion" or "I believe/think/feel like/etc" makes your statement an opinion, ommiting that is ambiguous and is left for interpretation.

So you bought an iPhone knowing you can’t download apps and then go cry because you can’t download apps?

Then your argument is that well, all my friends have iPhones or there are some other good features, or whatever else you make up?

So you obviously find value in the product, it’s missing a feature, but you will consciously buy it anyway, it doesn’t make any sense.

Does the standard simply change when a company is big enough?

Imagine ordering a steak salad even though the restaurant doesn’t allow modifications to the ingredients, then throwing a temper tantrum when you get it because it has steak. It’s unbelievable.

What "doesn't make sense" is reducing a complex decision down to a specific factor, and then trying to create the narrative that your specific chosen factor is the sole reason anyone chooses a specific product.

It is completely fair for people to prefer iPhone and also argue for Apple changing their policies.

And there are multiple manufacturers that aren’t associated with Google who make phones.

If this were truly such a shortcoming, more companies, in addition to already existing ones, would create phones with side loading apps.

Imagine me pitching my idea to YC, it’s like an iPhone, but with side loading apps! It’s brilliant!

You’d be laughed out of the room.

The issue is you want those good Apple features, you want that Apple ecosystem, the blue bubbles, etc, but you also want to have a feature that the phone doesn’t have and people are crying that Apple won’t give them that feature.

I don’t even care, and I even if I did, decisions already been made so there’s nothing to argue.

This is simply an amusing situation, the grandstanding is simply funny.

> I don’t even care

> This is simply an amusing situation, the grandstanding is simply funny.

Wait till the Commission delivers the punch-line.

It’s possible to not care about something and still submit an opinion. Or maybe it’s the degree of caring that is confusing you, I care enough to comment and have a viewpoint, but I don’t care to the degree that I am upset or will lose any sleep over it.

There you go, hope this helps you understand what I meant there so that you are no so hung up on it so as to feel the need to quote it.

Please do save me the suspense and share the punchline now!

It’s perfectly reasonable to use YC here as at the end of the day they’ve helped launch of ton of companies that are popular with consumers.

Regarding the irony in using them as an example of corporate righteousness, well you did get me there and I agree with you.

Apple hasn't finished their setup! You might be able to guess where it's going though, we've heard this one before.

Of course, native apps that wrap web-based apps is almost the reverse of that, and we still often get laggy, sub-par experiences as a result of broader platform support for lower maintenance costs.

PWAs fill the opposite gap where you get native-like apps at the expense of low performance, distributed any way you like.

What we really need is for high-performance native applications to be distributable via the open web, and that's exactly what the EU is enforcing here, in a way. What would be better is for WebAssembly to take off and offer native performance in apps that can be visited at URLs, just like we're used to.

Why do you care so much that Apple has been forced to give consumers more choice, you can still just use the app store yourself, nobody is forcing you to use apps from alternative stores.

This is the standard "one true religion" reaction imo.

The users should not be forced to run Apple approved applications.

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust-and-cartel...

They're acting like an anticompetitive wuss if you ask me. If Apple is the righteous one here (imagine that), they can pack up their bags and tell the whole EU to shove it. They can individually invite all 27 markets to kiss their ass and watch as the relevancy of Apple products plummets in the first world. Problem solved, Apple saves the day. 中国梦!

Or, they can take the king's ransom of iPhone revenue and surrender their asinine software double-standard. This doesn't end well for them either way, there's no sense it making it last longer.

Show of hands, how many people actually spend multiple minutes (or hours) just swiping through their respective App Store just to find something new and interesting?

Aside from the store experiences, the web's powerful (gasp!) ability to find and download content including Computer Applications™ has always been its greatest strength. App stores are a net detriment seeking to protect the lowest common denominator: the uneducated computer user who hasn't bothered to learn everyday security practices to avoid downloading malicious apps or vetting software developers on their popularity and/or security themselves.

This takes a little knowledge and practice, but this isn't much different from shopping for good produce in a grocery store. Avoid the rotten fruit, and use your friends/family to help you judge what's best! That's the beauty of freedom on our devices, as it enables the power users and enthusiasts to enjoy these devices at their fullest, without senseless obstacles offering unsolicited "protection".

wot...

How was playing that Super Mario Bros with on your Sega Master System back in the day? I don't remember Sega having the 10NES subsystem.

Ever heard of this little place in the early to mid 90s called AOL? Compuserve? Prodigy? Any cell phone company long before Apple's app store

And you act like anyone who has a Kindle or a Nook isn't in a walled garden, at least for 99% of the people who don't know/care that you can install books via Calibre or something.

And you know you can sideload apps on Apple devices right? Even before the EU ruling. It was just a massive pain in the ass and drumroll... 99% aren't going to do it.

This is not new, Apple wasn't the first to do it, and everybody railing again Apple loves to accept it in basically every other facet of their lives.

Microsoft got pretty far, up until "the inquiry".

> And you know you can sideload apps on Apple devices right? Even before the EU ruling.

If by sideload you mean "repeatedly sign apps until your face turns blue" then yes. If you mean "install software like a normal person", then no.

Yep. Exactly.

And breaking free of the walled Kindle/Nook garden is similarly out of reach for about the same number of people that don't care about Apple's walled garden, which is the majority.

Again, they literally exist in every corner of our lives, and the 99% of consumers/normies don't care.

The "walled Kindle/Nook garden" isn't similar Apple's ecosystem. A Kindle or Nook will let you access it's EMMC and put Epub files or PDFs wherever you need to. It functions indistinguishably from a store-bought file and doesn't even make you enable Developer Mode to get there. It's "out of reach" in the sense that you need the skills to follow a Wikihow article to do it - my grandma could figure it out.

iPhones don't let you install IPA files on equal-footing as Apple, ever. That's the problem, and it's what the DMA remediates. I don't care how you or the normies feel about it any more than I consider the public sentiment towards Bell telephone or Internet Explorer.

This is incorrect. Modern Kindles classify books added as "documents" rather than books, which limits their features and treats them as second class citizens.

I doubt most people care, but you're not on equal footing to Amazon loading a book onto a Kindle.

I didnt know that when I entered the apple ecosystem. Can I have a refund for all the apps Ive bought on my phone?

It is totally reasonable to demand a better steak salad from some restaurant that doesn't allow modifications and moreover totally reasonable to point out how asinine they are for not making easy-to-do modifications when you point it out since that is what you as a paying customer want.

Imagine we lived in a world where 95% of restaurants never ever and vehemently so denied any modification to menu items. It is unreasonable then to demand they change? I need to move towns to get lunch?

This is the insanity we live in with the walled gardens of Apple.

The EU is completely lost. No wonder Europe is a terrible place to build a business or innovate. The continent is basically an open-air museum at this point.

- It's always up to date

- Previous values are kept (but hidden)

- It encourages stronger passwords

- Its automation makes it harder for people to put passwords into the wrong/phishing sites.

- You can share passwords across a group

- Remote administration

- Distributed possession: You have them on your phone out and about, you have them at your desk.

Really, a password manager is a really great tool. I don't know your family but I strongly recommend using and supporting one.

It's just easier than fiddling with a buggy mess of auto-fill prompts that only work half the time, and when they do show up, they fail to fill in the password, so then you have to open the app, hunt down the entry, copy it to the clipboard, and go back to the app or site you were signing into.

Multi-tasking on phones is already very difficult for my parents, and they're well aware of it being a feature. Eventually all of these frustrations add up, and the path of least resistance is writing passwords down, as much as it kills me.

This may vary by location and landlord but it absolutely is a thing. And a guarantee for any high-end, high-traffic location.

I have friends in strip mall businesses and they have moved locations for better landlords.

I mean, consultants, they grow on trees and I know what I'm talking about, I sometines interview new hires as part of my job. Developers, less so.

I don't have an explanation for this, it's a strange effect. But it's just an example, I have observed multiple times this unexpected deviation from the law of supply and demand.

My point is, this law is not a sure fire way to explain any price.

I won't pretend to know exactly how their processes work in detail, as I'm an American citizen, so the EU's concerns generally don't interest me much, but if the U.S. Federal gov't versus State governments can be used an analogy, I have similar feelings, in principle.

Then again, I'm not American so I can easily see the influence your country has on most other countries, so to say the "EU have enormous capacity for overreach at the expense of participating countries and their citizens" is completely ignorant and oblivious.

Overall, I'm happy they're actively involved. The hands-off attitude in the US is terrible.

In reality a cookie consent notification can just as well be a small widget somewhere with an accept and refuse button, but it's the builders of these frameworks that have a vested interest in getting you to press accept.

I've applied for a job at one of these companies about a year ago, and I asked them about it. They said to me that according to their metrics, there's about 30% more acceptance if they only bury their Refuse button, so it's a legal risk they are willing to take.

Needless to say, when they invited me for a second conversation, I politely refused.

No, the shitty cookie screens with dark patterns is not the responsibility of the EU - although you could make the argument that the EU should have been stricter or more prescriptive.

I once read a light-hearted analysis of the cumulative time wasted by humanity due to the original USB plugs/sockets being unidirectional. I suspect a similar analysis of these cookie popups would be shocking.

Hah, first Google hit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/billions-hours-now-being-wast.... (Not sure I agree with the numbers used, but the order of magnitude probably isn't too far wrong)

There's no such thing as a mandatory cookie popup. You don't need to get explicit consent if your website needs certain cookies to do what the user wants it to do. Placing a session cookie to log in is fine, for example. And it's also fine to place tracking cookies if and only if the user goes to aforementioned widget and presses the "please track me" button.

But users don't want that, obviously, so websites are built to force you to acknowledge the choice. The problem here is not the implementation of the law - it's the attitude of the website builders.

The problem is definitly NOT THE REGULATION but the way that websites have become a data/cash machine...

I also think it would have been very feasible for the EU to define that a browser could ask for consent once and then apply that to many/all sites by sending a header. So the popup would only be needed for people without a browser that has implemented it.

  > Spain and Austria say one thing, The Netherlands says another

Yes, why not stop there?

https://lokilist.com/about.php

Likewise, a "privacy policy" explains the extent to which your privacy will be violated.

For consent, the old "hide tracking terms in the terms of service" approach is not allowed anymore. That's where the popups come from, the user needs to know what they're consenting to if the data processing isn't actually required for the website to work.

I would like to see something like P3P (but better) to make a return. We have DNT and its followup, but they're not sufficiently scopable in my opinion.

It's absurd how used we have become to wantonly collecting user data that some people can't even imagine not doing that.

  > Maybe we even can have a per browser setting.

In other words, the websites are showing cookie popups in you face because they really, really do want to track you, and for that they need your explicit consent. Nobody forced them to track you. The implementation does not matter; the intentions are crappy.

I think there is a recent court ruling saying websites should respect DNT settings as a (rejection of) consent; if that would be adapted universally, we would be done with the popups.

edit: https://dig.watch/updates/german-court-affirms-legal-signifi...

Companies can comply with the law by following the old and standard DNT header. It's transparent to the user, no pop up of any kind.

They chose not to.

They are the ones you should be angry at, not the EU.

Not true, actually! GDPR is a framework, and every EU country implements a national law according to that framework (e.g. the Dutch implementation is called "AVG"). The specific requirement that refusal must be as easy as acceptance is not in the GDPR, but several countries added it to their national implementation of the GDPR.

The Dutch implementation is called "Uitvoeringswet Algemene Verordening Gegevensbescherming", which, as the title states, is the law that implements the GDPR. "AVG" is just a translation for "GDPR", not the name of the law that implements it.

The Uitvoeringswet describes how the GDPR functions within Dutch law, for example, it describes the role that the Dutch Data Protection Authority plays. You can read the Uitvoeringswet right here: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0040940/2021-07-01

The GDPR (in Dutch AVG, in French RGPD, in Spanish RGPD, etc.) actually DOES state that it should be just "as easy to withdraw as to give consent" in Article 7. The directive (2016/679) can be found here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679.

> "as easy to with as to give consent"

The full Article 7, section 3, in English, says:

> The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.

I think this can be interpreted as, you ask for consent, it doesn't have to be as easy to say no, but once consent is given - it should be as easy to withdraw it as it is to re-give it after it was withdrawn.

Somewhat badly worded, in my opinion. It doesn't unambiguously say "refusing consent every time it is requested should be as easy as accepting it."

You don't need cookie popups! Really. You don't.

You only need to get consent to track users with software you don't run yourself. Or when you sell your data off to other companies.

Both are, unfortunately, the norm. But there's absolutely no technical reason to have these in place. Non at all. Plenty of alternatives for tracking that doesn't need consent. Or just not sell your customers' data off.

I would be infuriated if I found the bakery down the street is selling its security footage with my face on it, next to my sales and spending in that bakery. I'd expect them to at least warn me about this at the door. So I can then buy my bread elsewhere. That's what a consent banner is!

https://www.ghostery.com/blog/how-to-block-cookies-on-most-b...

Also, cookies are not the only method of tracking which is supposed to be disabled when you hit Deny.

Something along the lines of:

"We urge all EU citizens with Apple devices to have an alternate means of accessing critical internet services like banking, to protect themselves in the event we are forced to block all Apple services EU-wide for legal non-compliance."

... then watch AAPL stock drop below NVDA ...

... and Apple come crawling back, suitably obedient.

You literally just described Apple "starting it". They took the initial action (~15 years ago, by your words), starting it, and the other parties reacted, after that action.

> Apple have been running their little fiefdom mostly unchanged for almost fifteen years

Apple could have started out being more consumer friendly from the beginning, and it wouldn't have been starting a fight with consumers. But they didn't, and now they're reaping the consequences.

Opposing a powerful entity's behaviour is not an excuse for sloppy language or misleading hyperbole. In fact it's especially important to avoid it because the powerful entity only needs to re-frame the criticism around that hyperbole and then proceed to factually disprove it.

Regardless, your new framing is still a ridiculous claim. To suggest that Apple was being "anti-competitive" in 2009 is self-evidently absurd — because their marketplace was simply too small to matter with respect to any competition regulation. They grew their marketplace under the supposedly "unfair" rules which means that the rules cannot be framed as an antitrust violation. This is arguably the most significant point of fact which lost Epic their case against Apple.

If you disagree, then you need explain why every two-bit little nobody who creates any kind of marketplace of any size shouldn't be required to follow strict market fairness rules. Under that logic, Tide could force your local chicken shop to sell Tide products, because they should be entitled to fair access to that chicken marketplace.

Indeed, your entire argument relies on some rule about anticompetitive behavior apparently invented just now, something to do with market size? Maybe if we were talking about monopolies, that would be relevant. But a business of 1 user can engage in anticompetitive behavior by locking the user into their ecosystem, or restricting what they can do with their property when it involves competitors.

Apple should have made better choices, earlier: They're engaging in anticompetitive behavior now, so if you claim that they're unchanged, that means they were engaging in anticompetitive behavior before, too. Your framing and claims to the contrary, then, we see are patently ridiculous.

Weird to me how common it has become in the last 5 years for people to gleefully cheer for tyranny and control.

By no means do I agree with the walled garden, I just think cheering for such an absurd idea of the government disabling your phone to fight something most users don't even understand or care about is bizarre.

...The government you also consent to in elections and by deciding where you live?

I'm so sick of this argument: you chose to buy iPhone, it was your decision... But a large part of the law protects citizens against their bad judgement: we don't allow slave contracts or selling your organs.

Within some use-cases, and to a larger degree within some groups of people, Apple is a monopolist. People get *addicted* from Apple ecosystem. If you had a Mercedes house, with a Mercedes charger to your Mercedes Car, that you would park on a Mercedes parking spot near your workplace, it wouldn't be so easy to replace your car with another brand.

I can't get the boomer comic where the guy pulls the calendar and sees the next year is 1984 out of my head now.

How does the GDPR help EU tech companies? I hope you're not about to tell me it's a ploy to bundle up resources for compliance in US companies or it levels the ground for the EU to be able to compete somehow. It caused enough headaches for us too.

Sometimes a good thing is just a good thing. The US supposedly was a country that had laws made without sinister corporatism at work at one point too.

Also known as projection.

That's more or less what happens in real life. If you are having any success with your physical business, you can bet your ass that your landlord will increase rents. They keep a keen eye on this. Sometimes they'll even state that it's not more than fair that they should get more in rent, since your business is doing so well.

I used to enjoy exploring the App Store — I resent it now. I'll download half a dozen apps only to delete them within minutes of launching them because of their rent-ware attitude or just plain shitty functionality.

I'm not going to argue about the signal to noise ratio between e.g. fdroid vs Google Play, but it should be obvious that while the signal looks the same for both, the noise is very different, with fdroid having outdated, "developer UI" apps as noise and Google Play having fraudulent scams and malware as noise.

FWIW, at least in the US, this is actually how a lot of commercial/retail real estate works. Every mall or shopping center you visit charges rent based on sales revenue.

It's of course good to bring up the analogy, but it just means that Apple shouldn't be using American business tactics in the EU, actually.