I think the author forgets that Apple initially told all us developers to forget the idea of a native iPhone app and just deal with having only webapps for the

I think the author forgets that Apple initially told all us developers to forget the idea of a native iPhone app and just deal with having only webapps for the iPhone until iPhone OS 2.0 was released. I think the author also forgets the 30% cut, while making Apple a small profit, is also about paying for hosting the app, running the app store, providing limited support to users, credit card fees, and other such overhead. If Apple really desperately wanted that 30% cut, Mobile Safari would not be supporting HTML 5 features like geolocation that make it easier for webapps to access the same information native apps can. I expect to see further improvements to Mobile Safari that make it even easier to take advantage of the iPhone's hardware. Plus, there is a subscription model for the app store that is not news, but is not yet commonly found on the app store yet. One example would be some of the monthly fee-based GPS navigation apps. The same model also allows for adding more content to applications for an additional fee. I don't disagree that the app store is broken in some ways and needs fixed (wait, I don't see most consumers actually caring about it though...), but the argument is presented without sufficient research on the part of the author, even taking into consideration the date on which it was posted.