I don't see how these two things are related, and in fact disagree with both assumptions: 1. that the profit contributes in any meaningful way to the quality of

I don't see how these two things are related, and in fact disagree with both assumptions: 1. that the profit contributes in any meaningful way to the quality of the "hardware", nor that the apps on iOS are some "amazing" bar to live up to. This is all from the perspective of a user, as I haven't had anything on the AppStore in a decade: 1. I'm not sure I'd describe an ecosystem where Netflix and Amazon get sweetheart reduced revenue cuts while small devs have zero negotiating power is one I'd describe as working "cleanly" FOR USERS. Again, forget the devs here for a second, let's just think of the users. The AppStore is not just a "monopoly", it is a monopoly enabler. New platforms are traditionally one of the best places to disrupt the old big players -- and as a user, I'd love a place that let small upstarts be nimble against the likes of Amazon or Netflix. But if Apple specifically lets Amazon compete at reduced revenue cuts, this becomes impossible. No one can compete in an already difficult space like a Music app (or even a Comic Book app!) if Apple is giving the world's largest corporations better deals. Forgetting Apple's dominance in phones, they are also helping me have less choice in terms of these other services. 2. And consider this, 30% revenue split for a small app shop can mean the difference between being able to afford a new dev on your team, or a full time QA person, or full time support person, etc. Literally, if you are a 2 person team, getting that extra 30% would allow you to roughly afford one more hire at the same wage. Those are bug fixes, features, and support I'm missing out on as a user. I sure as hell don't "feel" that 30% from Apple. I already paid them $1000+ for my phone, why do I have to pay them a 30% markup on my ToDo's app? It sure as hell isn't going into writing the 3 lines of code to make even exact string matching work in AppStore search, so I'm fairly certain that money would be better spent by the devs, again, purely from a selfish user perspective. 3. Which brings us to the larger "ecosystem" and store. They suck. It's hard to find anything on the store, it's full of scams, to the point where I am terrified of my kids someday being given any access to it and the casino-like games they allow. An equally "tyrannical" Apple that was values-based and tried to stop both overt scams but also was more opinionated about the subscription-addiction junk they allow to get sold to children, would be far more defendable in my opinion. I might be like "well, philosophically I disagree with this, but you can't argue with results!". Currently, it's "well, I disagree with this philosophically, and wow is this mismanaged. Like, I think you'd have a hard time finding someone that could have less pride in what you see when you scroll through the charts." I think Apple's own Phil Schiller put it best in 2012: "Is No One Reviewing These Apps?" 4. None of the "security" on iOS comes from the 30% cut, or even the AppStore review process. It's all stuff that's built into the sandbox model. If anything, there's an argument that the AppStore makes iOS more insecure since it puts the "Apple Review Seal of Approval" on a bunch of apps that just rip you off. 5. The apps themselves are pretty meh. I don't even know how anyone could hold any opinion on native vs. web anymore, unless you're big into games, at which point, sure, some native thing is going to have better graphics. All the things "native does better" these days are mainly because the browser isn't allowed to do those things, and Apple doesn't allow any competing web engine on iOS. And some things the iOS "wild west web" still does better: like having Picture-in-Picture work everywhere. To be clear: I 100% believe iOS apps used to be clearly better, and they could 100% still be clearly better, but Apple's dropped the ball on their tooling/frameworks/resources and there's just not much exciting taking place there anymore. The Apple Pencil was a big watershed moment with this: they shipped the thing with barely any developer docs so you had the few key players making some cool apps (like Adobe of course), but otherwise nothing really revolutionary was enabled on the iPad. I think the Pencil could have been a game changer, but Apple was more content with selling a couple $150 trinkets to iPad die-hards vs. really expanding their lead in the tablet space by doing something bold (like just including a Pencil with every iPad to create huge incentives to make every Apple developer make their apps "Pencil-ready" just like with all the "in device" features like 3D touch or whatever), or by even just integrating the Pencil more meaningfully in their own OS to lead by example. We didn't get the ability to have the Pencil "just work" in any text field until 6 years after its initial release. iOS is increasingly just something I kind of have to use. Or else lose iMessage or whatever. I think the opportunity cost that more interesting is what if things were different than this. For the record, I think ironically the result would be that Apple would act more like the old Apple, and be forced to make a compelling case for being on the Store and not using a third party to process payments (and I think there's lots of interesting stuff Apple could actually do there, as opposed to... nothing). Again, I'm not arguing about whether they have the right or not to do any of this, just what the consequences would be if they stopped doing it.