Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

They're about developers not having any choice. Developers have to release on iOS. There's no other option, because that's where most users are. Apple has a captive audience, and they're using that captive audience to abuse developers, who have no recourse.

The issue with many armchair commentators on HackerNews is that we look at the philosophy of the situation, and not the reality. The philosophy is "its Apple's platform, it's their right to run it however they want." The reality is "a billion people use this thing." The rules change when you get that big; its not about philosophy, its about doing what's best for everyone. To some degree, Apple does have a right to run their platform how they want: Fuck Their Rights.

They do have a choice. You target Apple users and agree upon Apple's terms, or you don't, and publish your app in F-droid/Jolla store, hoping somebody would pay.

The reality is that apple has built an infrastructure which allow you to gain profits and deliver to a huge amount of customers.

> The reality is "a billion people use this thing.

Because Apple put quite a lot of resources to build it. It's their right to operate it as they do.

> Fuck Their Rights

Sure, but let's start with turning your home into a shelter for homeless people for the sake of the society, Fucking your Right, and then we'll fuck theirs. People are always quick to deprive others of their rights as I see.

And here, a perfect example of slippery slope. You are doing exactly what 013a called as "armchair commentators", and not looking at reality.

The reality is that there are two OSs for phones, and two stores. This arrangement is detrimental to developers and consumers, and, as it stands, there's no getting out of it without resources that no one, apart from Amazon, has.

Nope. In reality I've owned n900, n9, Jolla 1 and now iphone. I've owned phones with 4 different OS (not counting symbian).

And of course there are various stores for Android, at least some of my friends live well enough with AOSPs without Gapps.

If you don't like iphone, don't develop for it, you are free to leave.

> there's no getting out of it without resources that no one, apart from Amazon, has.

There is no getting out because people try to force apple to fit their needs instead of giving other platform chance.

Apple is dominating because it's good enough and provides some good merits which other vendors don't (like long term support). As Microsoft's attempt to enter the market has shown, you can't just beat it having the resources, devs and customers need a reason to switch.

I would prefer apple to become less convenient forcing the developers and customers to seek for alternatives and develop for good and more free platforms like Sailfish, making the market more diverse.

Anyways as Windows phone and Sailfish examples have shown, a 30% fee is not a good enough reason to start to support another platform. And if so, I don't see why we should go the authoritarian way forcing apple to change their fees.

30% seems a fair price for using the infrastructure they've built, if it's not a good reason to switch to any other infrastructure, which existed and still do.

CORPORATIONS. ARE. NOT. PEOPLE.

If tomorrow the government fined Apple a hundred billion dollars, for literally no reason except for the fun of it, I could focus my entire being, every ounce of willpower I have, into attempting to expel one milliliter-sized tear, and would still have dry eyes.

When an indie developer spends her days and nights producing a work of passion, only to pay the US Government 25% and Apple 30% of the few thousand dollars she makes, and the next day Apple announces that they made a hundred billion dollars last quarter: I stand with the indie developer, not with the faceless mega-corporation.

I couldn't lose ten seconds of sleep over some perceived injustice that this developer used the piece of literal garbage Apple excretes every year and slaps an "xcode" label on to develop her passion project, and that somehow entitles them to the billions of dollars they make in taxes.

I won't curl up in the fetal position and cry when thinking about how much Apple DESERVES the billions of iPhone users out there, stuck in a duopoly between two mega-corporations who treat ethics the same way I treat toilet paper, people who spend thousands of dollars on that hardware, and thus Apple DESERVES to control what they can and cannot use their phones for, thus Apple DESERVES to control which developers they interact with and how they compensate them.

The gall I must have, to not log on to the internet and defend a trillion dollar corporation against this horrible, mean indie developer for coming after their 30%! Hank Rearden earned that 30%! By god, through the sheer force of paying other people to build a fence, and a little luck convincing customers to live inside of it, they earned it!

There is no such thing as rights of corporations, only rights of people.

According to your logic nobody can turn my home into a homeless shelter, but if I and my friend together build a hotel, it's fine to expropriate it since we are corporation.

But we are still people and it's our rights, we're not a faceless entity.

> When an indie developer spends her days and nights producing a work of passion

Well, it's fine to fuck an indie dev's rights, if she works in a team. They are a corporation after all.