So, let's say Apple drops the cost of the 14 Pro Max down to $506[0]. Does it suddenly become legal? What if it's a more reasonable profit margin of $100 perhaps - at what point is it "you cannot make money off your software on the backend"? and, importantly, what makes consoles any different now that they also (A) sell either close-to-cost or at a loss, (B) tend to contain a web browser, and (C) charge a large percentage fee on third-party titles bought for the console?
You were the one who brought up the idea of "but you pay [it for] their R&D from the hardware, to the UI design, to the APIs".
If you want to back to take back that argument, great.
So, the whole idea of "Well you are paying for all this other stuff" is completely off the table, and you can't use it, because people pay 1400$ for the phone.
So lets all just completely ignore that idea, and lets stop pretending like Apple is "owed" anything for the phone that belongs to the user.
The phone belongs to the user, and they paid a fair price for it, so no Apple is not owed money for any of other stuff.
> at what point is it "you cannot make money off your software on the backend"?
Apple can keep doing that if they want. By competing in the free market.
They just can't force people onto that anymore. They will have to actually make a better product, and hope users go to that store, instead of alternatives.
I don't see how this answers my question. It's literally just "does making money on the hardware justify allowing other developers to benefit from your software updates and APIs without paying you?" Because if Apple turns their phone into a console by dropping the price (or even just adding $600 worth of carbon nanotubes to the package) it sounds like you'd still prefer if any developer could make their own app store to get around their 30% fee on purchases.
> "does making money on the hardware justify allowing other developers to benefit from your software updates and APIs without paying you?"
Well the phone belongs to the user. So yes the user should be able to do whatever they want with their own device, including installing other app stores.
So anything at all, that you were talking about, about Apple being "owed" anything, just doesnt matter. Lets just ignore Apple being owed anything, because they sold the device and it now belongs to the user.
> turns their phone into a console
We can worry about the console market once it is a 2 company duopoly, worth trillions of dollars.
It is perfectly fine to care more about the phone market, simply because it is larger, more pervasive, and more market centralized.
Also, thats whataboutism. Maybe there are problems with the console industry. But regardless of that, it should not stop us from taking action on the much larger phone industry.
We can prioritize our actions, to the markets that are the most important, even if you think that other, smaller markets have issues.
