Most provide evidence when they claim any IP is being stolen.
Do you have access to a public list of this IP?
Currently no IP is made public. And as with both EU and U.S. rules the APIs are quite on quote ” fair use” and free to be used.
I will put it this way.
Do you think companies like Nintendo and Sony would be happy if a ruling was passed forcing them to open up their console platforms to third party app stores like Epic or steam? Do you think they would welcome the idea of sales revenue cratering as consumers utilise the option to purchase games from sources that they are not able to receive a cut from?
In my opinion, there simply is no question that iOS is Apple’s individual property, and if they wish to charge for it, they have every right to. To insist otherwise would essentially entail taking Apple's property and nationalising it in all but name (while still demanding that Apple continue to take care of it while also footing the bill for doing so).
Benefiting developers is one thing, but developers forget what things were like in the early 2000s. Nobody downloaded apps, which was how web apps even became a thing in the first place. Everyone was scared of malware and the prospect of downloading viruses and getting scammed. Apple recreated a market that had ceased to exist (or perhaps never existed to begin with) via the App Store. And Apple did so with their promises of convenience and safety and security and ease of refunds and Apple has by and large delivered on them.
And in this regard, while it's arguable that it was a win-win situation where Apple owes developers just as much for adding value to the iPhone, I feel that developers owe Apple even more because without Apple (and the iOS App Store), they would probably still be developing JAR applications for Nokia phones, or maybe not be in this industry altogether.
Maybe Apple got "out of line" by very publicly and very indignantly admitting their stance on the whole issue, and it feels more of taking issue with how Apple said it, not what was actually said (because again, I don't exactly disagree with the gist of it - that developers by and large underrate the extent to which Apple not only created a new market for them, but, critically, conditioned customers to love apps and trust the purchase process, in a way that certainly benefited Apple but also benefited developers).
And what the EU want to do now is to disregard all this history, hardware away everything Apple has done to build up their platform, and make it freely accessible to developers. The EU also seems to want to see a return to the days of Windows circa 1998, where users could install whatever software they want, for better and — very often for the vast majority of people in the world — for worse.
While it's perhaps a bit sad that Apple has chosen to stake its claim to its intellectual property and the right to monetise it (via the CTF) in what may be seen as a publicly ugly manner, I still feel it's Apple's right to, and I would urge developers to accept things as they are and stick with the current status quo. If for nothing else but the greater good.
