I think Apple is going to find itself standing alone by the time the dust settles on this issue. Their 30% tax is a disservice to its own customers, not just app publishers.
Apple tries to counter that the problem is Spotify. It's Spotify that is money-hungry, Apple claims:
Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work.
The only problem with this argument is that Spotify is just one example. App publishers of all sizes have expressed grave dissatisfaction over this issue. Ultimately, this has led to a poorer experience for Apple's own customers in the form of higher fees for in-app purchases or weird, convoluted checkout flow that requires you to goto your browser to finish a transaction.
Yup. Another prominent example is Amazon’s inability to sell books in the Kindle application on iOS, which has the same anticompetitive undertones given that Apple sells ebooks to users of its platform.
That's not a good comparison. An iOS device is not like a book shop. The iBooks application is. Nobody's asking that you can buy Kindle books in iBooks, but you can't even buy Kindle books in the Kindle app because Apple would demand 30% of the book. If you open the Kindle app on Windows you can buy books in there and Microsoft doesn't take a cut of the sale. People would lose their mind over this. Why is Apple different?
But, at the very least, Amazon doesn’t prevent you from reading ebooks from outside their store on a kindle. They just don’t favilate their discovery. (Unless things changed since I last owned a kindle which was quite a while ago)
Apple won't find itself standing alone. Other major distributors like Google and Valve are both happy to take 30% off the top of app sales too, and if the chance comes to speak up in support, they will. But the difference is both of them can be circumvented by competitors, for instance Epic Games, who is challenging both. (Epic is launching an Android store soon.) Apple can't be, and that's likely to be the crux of any action against them.
I currently subscribe to Spotify, use the iOS Spotify App, and do not make payments through in-app payments nor do I pay the 30% Apple tax. So it is circumventable, and Spotify is just "optimizing" their revenues here. So at least compared to Steam, Apple's platform is actually more open since you aren't required to pay through Apple's platform. Though I'm not sure on the current requirements for in-app purchases, so correct me if I'm wrong.
As far as I know you can't do that on iOS. There's also nothing stopping the devs from selling IAP themselves on their own website. So no, Steam is much much more open than Apple's App store. Not to mention the fact that Steam is completely optional and the App store is not.
Discussion or capture of money must go through apple. The hinting of circumventing has to be really vague And creates a weird ux. IMO you have to follow the rules and pay the toll
Let's not forget that you can't buy Kindle books on iOS because of this policy. Apple wants 30% of the cost of every book, which would kill Amazon's margin. (Of course, this is just businesses fighting over the lion's share of the money; the publisher is only going to give the author ten cents on the dollar in royalties anyway.) But Apple will happily sell you books in their store, which smells like anticompetitive behavior.
Steam Link faces a similar issue. Apple, apparently, considers buying desktop games through an app that can remotely play them on your phone to be the same situation, and demand that payments go through them.
Apple tries to counter that the problem is Spotify. It's Spotify that is money-hungry, Apple claims:
Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work.
The only problem with this argument is that Spotify is just one example. App publishers of all sizes have expressed grave dissatisfaction over this issue. Ultimately, this has led to a poorer experience for Apple's own customers in the form of higher fees for in-app purchases or weird, convoluted checkout flow that requires you to goto your browser to finish a transaction.