> When Apple introduced the iPhone, it didn’t have an App Store. From the moment the iPhone was announced, everyone speculated that it was only a matter of time

> When Apple introduced the iPhone, it didn’t have an App Store. From the moment the iPhone was announced, everyone speculated that it was only a matter of time until one was created, and a bit more than a year later, Apple announced it would allow developers to create iPhone apps and sell them in the App Store. This is not exactly accurate. Everyone speculated about an SDK (like for the Mac). When it was finally announced, the locked-down “App Store” aspect of it was a surprise. And it was generally greeted positively; after all, at the time it was pretty hard and expensive to go to market with new client-side software. Websites were way easier, and in fact that is one reason Apple initially were all-in on web apps for the iPhone. (There were also honest concerns whether Apple had the chops to adequately secure a phone SDK so that calls would always work.) The bad feelings about it built over time. One could say that people have started taking the existence of the iOS ecosystem for granted. But the world has changed around Apple. It no longer looks hard to go to market with software, so people no longer think Apple’s cut is fair. And I think the article is correct that Apple has increasingly viewed it as a tax, not pass-thru expense.