Most specialist stuff is like this. For example, Braille displays and equipment for blind people is outrageously expensive compared to most consumer electronics. But the price tag makes sense because of how few units they sell. So it takes a higher markup on each unit to make money. Solidworks is simpler and more expensive than Windows because it has orders of magnitude fewer users.
I'm unable to downvote this insane take so you get an angry reply instead.
This is the dumbest thing I've read today^1. Charging someone to use knowledge and understanding is insane. Here let me teach you how to do this, now if you ever do anything like this, fuck you pay me? What?!
Both charges are insane. The thread group could sell hardware implementations, or software libraries, that's an ethical way to fund Apple does sell access to it's platform. The extra fees for IP, what essentially is just understanding and know how is so stupid. And society would benefit greatly if everyone stopped pretending like thought crimes were convictable.
^1: which sounds meaningful until account that I've been up for 30m max
Either one of these is expensive or one of these is cheap.