I'm not wrong because you chose to make a distinction that I didn't.
If you were specifically talking about ROM files for old games, you should have said so. An 'app' is widely understood to be an iOS
application i.e. an iOS executable you'd download from the
App Store. An emulator ROM is not an iOS executable, and therefore has very different connotations in terms of piracy i.e. it can't infect your phone, and it's not stealing from App Store developers.
Not at all. You're just pretending that the Mac is representative when a trillion dollar malware industry says otherwise.
The 'trillion dollar malware industry' is complex issue. Much of it is going to target business / corporate servers. A good chunk of it is going to rely on people clicking on dodgy emails. The most meaningful comparison here would be to Android, but that's tricky as the big problem with that OS is the tardiness of security patch deployment; this isn't an issue with Apple, regardless of whether the device is using a third party app store.
I never claimed it was a paltry sum.
No, but you did say that only 2% of
developers pay the 30% fee, implying that it wasn't worth worrying too much about. The issue is that the majority of downloads will be concentrated in a relatively small number of apps that get huge numbers of downloads (if you're not in the top ten apps in a category, you might as well not exist). So most of those
downloads will have a 30% fee deducted.
What's "unfair" about charging the market rate?
Depends on what 'market' you consider iOS devices to be in. Are they more like a PlayStation, or a Mac? A proprietary device with strict gatekeeping, or an open platform.
The iPhone is at least superficially more like the former, but there's no real excuse for the iPad - and especially the iPad Pro - to not to be treated like the latter. iPadOS has long been accused of crippling the powerful hardware, with many people asking for a more macOS-like experience. But Apple seem reluctant to let any iOS device be conceived of as an open platform, lest it impact their cash cow, the iPhone.
Not at all. People switch to competing apps all the time. The underlying OS could still be android-compatible, so their favorite apps would be available. Amazon Fire is the obvious example.
I'm not talking about switching apps, I'm talking about switching OS's. That's a much bigger undertaking.
No, we're talking about new entrants into the mobile OS market and what's preventing them.
I'm not interested in the ability of a new smartphone manufacturer to make another me-too Android device. The problem with Android is not a lack of choice in the hardware market. It's that the OS is developed by Google, largely for the exfiltration of one's data.
Nope. It's little "a" android. Forks of open source projects are different products. The current problem is that Google has conspired with 70% of the market to install Google Play Services on top of android in order to limit competition.
OK. That is an issue too. But I'm primarily interested in discussing iOS.