> Who the hell needs an OS or a device that can't run third party apps?

The first iPhone didn't run third-party apps. Also, the average number of apps paid for per smart-device is < 1. Most people just use free apps.

Those free apps — and their users — are essentially free riders on the CapEx of OS framework development, since Apple can't put a tax on income an app doesn't have. So the remaining apps need to be taxed at a higher rate to compensate.

> Those frameworks aren't optional frills for the sake for developers' benefit, they're basic functionality that end users already paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for.

There are basic OS frameworks that are just table-stakes for having a mobile OS, yes. But there are also some incredibly-specialized frameworks — things that differentiate iOS development from Android development. Reasons devs choose to build an iOS-exclusive app.

Apple has, for example, a 3D AR framework, with specialized (neural-network; depth-sensing) hardware in every device put there just to enable the 3D AR framework. No first-party apps really use it for anything. It's just there for third-party devs.

That's not "basic functionality." That's an extremely-specialized tool that only a few apps will take advantage of, and for those apps, it's a large part of what makes the app a distinctive experience that can't be had on Android.

If not for the fact of requiring special hardware that only Apple can add to the phone, it wouldn't be an OS feature; it'd be a fancy standalone SDK that Apple recoups costs on by selling to developers. Same as they sold e.g. WebObjects, back when.

Think of it like this: a city will build most roads "for free", with no increase to your taxes. Those roads are table-stakes to running city infrastructure. They take them out of the budget by reallocating funding away from other things, because citizens would riot if their taxes went up with every road built.

But some very-capital-intensive roads that not everybody in the city needs equal access to — e.g. bridges — are built by the city to be toll roads. The business model for these roads is different: rather than the costs of building them coming from the treasury, they're passed on directly to the people who are most advantaged by the road being built: exactly those who will still use the road even with a toll, meaning exactly those who are economically gaining from travelling the road.

More often than not, that's businesses (e.g. freight/logistics services.) The 18-wheeler delivering your groceries is paying to use the more-efficient route over the bridge, because that route saves it money, and so increases its profits; and the trade still makes sense even when a part of those increased profits go to the city.

> It's amazing how far people will go to justify a monopoly squeezing everyone it deals with just because they have a good brand and make nice products.

I'm just trying to explain here why Apple think they're owed 10% of devs' money. I'm not saying they're right in that perception. Just that it's clearly a tempting chain of logic from their perspective.

Also, it's a chain of logic that I believe is correct when applied to small businesses (like the aforementioned small music artist getting deeply sampled by a song that makes a lot of money.) I don't see any difference in applying it to a monopoly.

Apple's App Store monopoly enables the extraction of "what they think they're owed" on a scale not possible with regular market players, and I'd say that that's definitely bad — but the answer isn't to reject the whole chain of logic of "your profitable thing is 90% my copyrighted IP, so I want royalties" being a valid business model. It just means that Apple should have the power that enables that extraction taken away.