It's not just you, but it is far more reminiscent of being every bit as greedy as console manufacturers demanding licensing fees from cartridge manufacturers (or whatever we call sharecroppers).
Remember that if a developer makes an app and sells it for money, Apple gets 30% of their revenue, period, full stop. That's the App Store deal, if you don't like it, you don't develop an iOS app.
So what happens when a developer builds an app that does almost nothing. He givs it away for free. But to use the app, you go to the developer's site, pay money, and download a level or something, like my maze app example above. Presto! The developer has just done an end run around the App Store, and Apple doesn't like that.
It's a hypothetical problem that doesn't really exist in real-life. Separating people from their money is hard, quadruply so when you expect them to sign up for a new payments account.
This is also why PayPal is the de facto payments platform on the internet - consumers are wary of signing up for ever more payment options. You need to be well established to have enough customer confidence to pull it off - and even then, you're probably taking a large hit in conversion rate.
So sure, you can ship your app for free and try to make an end run around Apple - but it won't work. Even if you're a big, trusted name like EA the number of customers you lose forcing people through yet another payments process is likely not worth the extra sales you get from just giving Apple their cut.
The difference here is if the customer already has a payments solution set up - e.g., Amazon, eBay, etc. In this case the friction is minimal, and you'd want to keep your 30% margin. I don't see a problem with allowing this.
It depends on your margins. If your margins are 100% then yeah, the resulting drop in conversions will likely overshadow the 30% savings. However, if your profit margin is 31% due to the royalties you have to pay for the content, you're looking at 30x boost in profits. And if your margins are 29% you are looking at a difference between profit and loss.
I'm fairly sure ebooks fall into this latter category, hence the kerfuffle.
So what happens when a developer builds an app that does almost nothing. He givs it away for free. But to use the app, you go to the developer's site, pay money, and download a level or something, like my maze app example above. Presto! The developer has just done an end run around the App Store, and Apple doesn't like that.
The problem I have with this is that it is exactly what Apple said they were supporting when they launched the iphone:
Now they are positioning themselves to cut off this mode of delivery to the iphone. I understand that this isn't what has happened yet, but it's a troubling step.
