Ah but you're free to not use the app stor- oh wait
Ah but I *like* the 30% cut I'm forced to give for apps on the store like Spotify or Netflix. Because for my sacrifice I am allowed to live in the ivory tower above the plague rats of Android!
I think F-Droid and de-Googled repair-friendly devices like the Fair Phone is the ivory tower, and at the bottom are the Android and Apple peasants arguing which of their favorite anti consumer mega corp is the best to consume. :D
Not if you want decent hardware. I really wanted to go with Pixel 6 with Graphene, but the many bugs (both software and hardware) and especially that emergency call thingy that is still ongoing made me choose the Apple ecosystem (which is unmatched in hardware by any android phone, unfortunately)
Indeed, few Android phones can match Apple's quality, but not every Android phone and OS has such bugs though.
I don't trust Apple's ecosystem one bit, especially after the whole "we're gonna constantly scan your phone (actually our phone since we own it but you're paying for it) for child porn pics and we're gonna limit functionality because it upsets the CCP". This is boiling the frog. Maybe next year they're gonna scan for Pepe the Frog memes on my phone to report me as a right wing extremist to my government.
I'd rather have average hardware but have freedom and privacy, than live in big-corp's authoritarian prison for the sake of comfort.
Proprietary app stores are a monopolistic abuse that must be legislated away. I acknowledge the argument for not allowing the platform to run any executable code the user can get their hands on, but this should not be used against the consumer.
Alternate application stores, that fulfill a basic number of legal and commercial conditions, should always be a choice for any owned hardware, perhaps at the cost of the device warranty.
Modern devices however are unusable without software and the warranty usually covers at least a minimum of software performance.
I understand why manufacturers wouldn't want to deal with bricked devices, which are technically still perfectly functional yet require some exotic firmware download over JTAG to reboot.
That is just wrong. You can get CC agreements with only a percentage fee without any fixed fee per transaction if you need it and have the scale. And at Apple scale they are most likely under 1%.
Credit card fees are usually around 6% if you take everything into account and Apple likely managed to negotiate a discount. That still leaves 24% for Apple.
No, 30% is massively excessive. A very small fraction of this is all that is needed to maintain the store.