That's literally not the deal. The deal is you get a phone with an OS, and an App Store on which you can get free or paid apps. Plus dynamic content via web bro

That's literally not the deal. The deal is you get a phone with an OS, and an App Store on which you can get free or paid apps. Plus dynamic content via web browser etc. Developers know they have to pay a fee if they want to transact with these customers. The only people here trying to break the "deal" are consenting developers that decided they want to have their cake and eat it too. I built an entire company on top of a similar platform in the past. The take rate isn't the issue, it's the developer experience and associated operational costs, but since there isn't' a great narrative to rally the general public around to force Apple to provide better docs, this is the approach Epic and co have taken. PS. An operating system may be by definition a way to run apps, but it is not by definition something you can do anything you want with. For example, I can't take the Linux kernel make it closed source.