This is business. I don't see the mustachio-twirling evil here unless you're coming from an anti-capitalist perspective. I won't won't debate the merits of that perspective, but this seems pretty mundane strategic business planning by today's standards.
Edit: To clarify further, I'm not saying "the status quo is fine", I would be in favor of legislation that would force Apple and Google to allow alternative app stores as first class citizens, but in the world we live in, I don't think trying to extract profit out of the platform you built is that crazy, this is what every big corp does.
This is Hacker News after all, a lot of us owe our careers to the fact that computers have trended towards open platforms without gatekeepers collecting rent. “Just business” or not, it's sad to see that innovation in commerce has shifted from the relatively open platform of the web to the relatively controlled platform of App Stores.
> This is Hacker News after all, a lot of us owe our careers to the fact that computers have trended towards open platforms without gatekeepers collecting rent.
I daresay a lot of people here owe their careers to the actual (and aspirational, especially considering the site sponsor) gatekeepers collecting rent, too.
A lot of HN is also FAANG and other billion dollar companies, all of which behave exactly the same way. I don't see it as sad, this is the future we, the HN people created.
If they allowed 3rd party app stores or let users install apps directly on their phone, sure. But why should Apple get 30% of a subscription between me and a company?
You could almost argue that it's worth 30% for the initial discovery in their app store (meh), but I just don't get how anyone could think it's fair for Apple to take 30% of a subscription, when developers don't have a choice but to use the platform.
I don't think you need to be 100% anti-capitalist to see the harm. It's a bit of a false dichotomy. A purely liberal capitalist market is bad, so is communism, so what? A market is a highly dynamic non-linear system that nobody fully grasps. We are thousands and thousands of years from having a fair world. We need to keep trying to make it better, by talking about it, exploring it, trying to come up with ways to fix it.
> I don't think you need to be 100% anti-capitalist to see the harm. It's a bit of a false dichotomy
What I mean is that this is not something exceptional, literally every single billion dollar tech corp operates this way, the only way you accumulate insane amounts of profit is by cynically examining every possible angle to extract more revenue from the business.
Sort of, it would be just business if developers were allowed to release and install apps from somewhere else other than the App Store, and if there were allowed to use any type of payment system they wanted to, or even the mere fact if there were allowed to tell users to go somewhere else besides Apples IAP system to make a payment. It's monopolistic and anti-capitalist if you compound all the facts together.
You can't just say "capitalism", there are many flavors.
"Competitive capitalism" is the one which is generally best for consumers, as businesses must compete, which drives down their margins (thus passing savings to consumers).
"Free market capitalism" is effectively hands off. Monopolies can form, and without any regulation it can become quite bad for consumers. Typically monopolies rarely form, but obviously in areas like utilities it happens quite naturally.
Most people strive for competitive capitalism, when used colloquially, IMO. In the general case they are one in the same, but owning whole platforms that are broadly used is new territory, where it bleeds into anti-consumer impact IMO
Edit: To clarify further, I'm not saying "the status quo is fine", I would be in favor of legislation that would force Apple and Google to allow alternative app stores as first class citizens, but in the world we live in, I don't think trying to extract profit out of the platform you built is that crazy, this is what every big corp does.