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Comment by londons_explore

7 hours ago

The EU has the right approach. Don't try to legislate exactly what is a fair/unfair amount of profit to make - change the rules of the game by requiring third party marketplaces and payment platforms so apple has to lower rates or lose every app into a third party store.

Apple can easily say "Use our store exclusively and you get our security/privacy guarantees. Go outside our store and you're in the wild west". App developers can then decide how much fee they are willing to pay for access to the user base who refuse to venture into the wild west. Other stores might try to persuade users that they are more secure and more private too via stricter review policies or more locked down permissions etc.

Several years in, I don't believe Apple has lowered rates at all.

If the EU has the right approach, then they still do not have the right implementation.

From a consumer point of view, the best approach would be if devlopers had to sell their app in Apple's App Store (if Apple approves) and could optionally provide other purchasing options on top of that.

It would prevent fragmentation and give people a choice to pay up if they actually value Apple's extra protections (if any).