1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app
2. Apple rejects it
-or-
2. Apple approves it
3. I ship a new update
4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively.
I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser.
Although I could see how they are trying to appease antitrust regulators with this move - although they should have gone with 0 - 2% range for that. 15% is a substantial markup to price consumers would pay for using apples monopolized mobile software distribution store.
Distributors make a pittance for a relatively risky bet on delivering fruit and veggies. Margins are usually below 10%, often close to 5%, and definitely nowhere near 30%. On top of that, there's the added risk of damage happening to the goods in transit and storage, voiding the entire profit. Google and Apple make money by sitting on their asses and taking a slice off a developer's cheque, which is more akin to a usurious mafia slumlord rather than a tech company. Small farmers are on the short end of a stick, but only because by nature small landholdings are not profitable, and farming is a scale operation for production of a commoditized good by nature. App development is not a scale operation - a developer can be easily profitable with a small group of high-paying customers.
Apologies for the Italian links but that’s all I could find for now:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2020/05/14/frutta-e-verdura...
Access to consumer markets is either via a looooong chain of small, inefficient and parasitic intermediaries or via the GDO, the logistics organizations of these few supermarket chains.
So the farmers are squeezed, they fall in debt and go bankrupt, or sell out to big landlords; and both tend to employ illegal immigrants under inhuman working conditions to meet the prices set by the aforementioned.