Your comment is weird for a number of reasons, but i think the analogies might be the worst I’ve ever seen.

> For those who see a perpetual take of 30% of your revenues (pre costs, pre taxes) as a reasonable ask

I think 30% is barely reasonable, 15% is very reasonable however and if you’ve gained enough success that you pierce through the $1M revenue ceiling, then 30% becomes more reasonable.

> I cannot wait to see you on the other end of the pointy stick…

Let’s examine your pointy stick.

> Imagine in a future not far away that car ownership has been replaced by car subscription

I need clarification on your stick. Am I already paying to use these cars through a subscription?

What kind of subscription is it? Is it a flat fee of $99 a year? Or is it a higher and/or monthly fee?

These things matter for me to understand your pointy stick.

> and all remaining 6 car manufactures decide to tell you that since you ride their fabulous IP, you must now pay a 30% surcharge on gasoline you use

In lieu of that subscription fee? In addition to an annual $99 subscription fee? I need more information.

Also, surely the smaller consumers of this service get a 15% rate, right? It’s only the big corporate users of this car service that pay 30%, no? Otherwise this analogy is already diverting a lot from what it aims to mirror.

As for the gasoline, am I earning a revenue on this gasoline consumption? What exactly is the analogy for the 85% (or 70%) in earnings as a developer?

> What happens when you have low income and cannot afford a car?

You tell me.

The situation you’re trying to capture in this analogy provides for this.

If I have low income as an app developer I pay my 15% over a lower amount, so the absolute amount I owe is also lower.
I don’t see a similar mechanic in your analogy.

> Then your ISPs, then your health services, then your grocery stores, etc…

The same questions I asked above come up in those situations as well.

The real answer to your faulty analogy is that people wouldn’t use a service that charges a monthly subscription and a percentage based on consumption without any revenue that is inexplicably tied to said consumption and competitors would be tripping over themselves to offer an alternative to such a ridiculous product offering.

“Aha!” I can hear you say. “But there wouldn’t be a possibility to alternative options and this is simply the status quo as it has developed”.
But that’s just fantasy.

Antitrust actions would’ve been triggered long before that, because in those case market power has been explicitly abused to attempt to create such abysmal conditions.

Which makes it entirely different than Apple’s case. The reason why Apple didn’t slapped around with antitrust remedies is because everything that you and others hate about Apple, Apple did before they gained their market power.

When they were a nobody in the relevant markets.
They are merely maintaining what they then did, and in some cases even loosening the reigns.
So there was no market power to speak of to be abused, which is why it doesn’t rise to the levels of antitrust.

In fact, they rose in market power despite (and in actuality because) of the rules they imposed and commission they charged, which to the courts signifies that the market didn’t actually mind it so much at the time and could withstand those elements.

If tomorrow Apple would introduce draconian measures and insist on taking 30% of every deal made on Apple devices and 30% of every purchase, physical or otherwise, on Apple devices and heck, for good measure, take 30% of everyone user’s paycheck, two things would happen.

1) the courts would rule that to be an antitrust violation because Apple, now that people are dependent on their devices and after they’ve gained market dominance, is imposing these restrictions

2) people would drop their Apple devices in a heartbeat and switch over to Windows and Android

The ramifications of 1 will be directly tied to the possibility of 2

If however Apple did this back in the early 2000s, number 1 would never happen but number 2 would, because Apple wouldn’t have enough market power to warrant #1 and the “natural balance” would be restored by #2

The more #2 is less feasible because of the market power, the more Apple is constrained in taking wild actions like that for fear of #1, but it will never be applied retroactively because the logic is that people wouldn’t have signed up in the first place if the “offender” doesn’t have market power because people would’ve chosen a different option.

> I think the crowd at HN is very smart for some things, but incredibly self-centered and out of touch with the broader reality on many topics. Not everyone makes hundreds on thousands of dollars on Tech jobs, not all devs sell millions of copies, and neither you will make that for the rest of your life.

All of this is completely irrelevant because we’re talking about a commission rate that is directly tied to the revenue of a dev.
So if a dev doesn’t make any sales or or only a handful of sales, then they won’t be paying any commission or a minor amount in absolute numbers, especially when you consider that those devs would pay 15% instead of 30%.

You’re talking about this as if people owe 30% over something that isn’t directly correlated to their revenue and you analogy where gasoline usage is the main driver of what is owed, reflects this as well.

> As I said somewhere on the page, Apple owes large part of what it is today to the dev environment (Things,Devonthink, etc) which created attractive products only available on Mac. IOS or MacOs without third party apps is pretty boring.

True, but the inverse is true as well. It’s a symbiotic relationship, literally a rising tide that lifts both developers and Apple.
If developers aren’t doing well, Apple isn’t doing well, if Apple isn’t doing well developers aren’t doing well.
Which is why it’s a commission that’s tied to revenue. Apple gets more when I get more and Apple gets less when I get less.

I literally couldn’t do my work as a developer if Apple hadn’t provided me with the frameworks and tools I use on a daily basis.

We can argue if the value of what they’ve offered me is worth the 15% I pay or even 30%, but that’s a personal value judgement.

> Apple now has divorced developers and screaming for their share of alimony every month.

Another analogy.

You might overestimate how most developers, especially the small guys you seem so concerned about, care about the commission.

But since you like analogies so much, I think it’s more akin to Apple chartering a plane, providing a pilot, and renting out a hotel for us developers to get to a trade conference hosted by Apple to sell our stuff in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.

Now all of a sudden there are few people on the plane who have been making bank at prior conventions and they want to get off mid flight, because they prefer using their own private jet and mansions and host their own trade show.

All the while the people on the ground a yelling “Yeah! Let all those poor people get off the plane!” and I just want to get where I’m heading.