You are absolutely right, but this is only Holland. Other countries, from Germany to Italy and from Japan to the United States, have to deal with this as well. This is “we” in your response. We in our small country do not have this influence, perhaps if the European Union intervenes it will be.

And while I’m an Apple user and see benefits in the App Store and subscription model through it, I find that the big tech companies get away with it a lot. The same goes for social media platforms. You earn these billions in no time, in many cases even net profits can be expressed in billions, but any form of morality and social responsibility is very alien to them.

I think the most poignant example is that Apple initially (of course for its own sake primarily) made Apple TV+ also available on smart TVs and platforms from Samsung/LG/Google/etc. It also allowed users to get a subscription there, but they recently banned it. Even in the eyes of the undersigned Apple user who owns an iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple TV and services like Apple One (TV+, iCloud, etc.), this is nothing but pure greed. Like they’re not already making enough money from the subscriptions people get via the App Store…

I’ve always been in favor of allowing the App Store as the only “store” from the point of view of a one-stop-shop and the convenience/overview that the Apple platform is known for. Although I still have doubts whether an alternative “shop” is a good idea from a security and usability point of view, I think a payment method like simply redirecting to the iDeal/credit card/Paypal payment page in the browser is a must . Basically like paying at Bol.com, for example, it works when you order something via the iPhone app. There is nothing annoying about it and it should also work with subscriptions. The biggest argument in my opinion is that many subscriptions are multi-platform. Take, for example, the F1TV Pro subscription that you recently finished, which you can get via the App Store, then F1TV will associate it with your email address, so you can also use any other platform (Windows, Android, Linux, etc.) . However, in this way you transfer 30% of 64.99 € per year to Apple, just because you ‘accidentally’ closed it via their iPhone app and you probably spend most of the time searching on your laptop. As far as I’m concerned, that’s why this needs to be restricted. Good for an in-app purchase where you only buy ads or an iOS game where you buy something extra this way, but once that’s done across platforms, Apple shouldn’t charge a 30% commission if you ask me and they should be obligated to allow alternative payment methods. In the example above I now got the subscription via the F1TV website, at the same price, but then the manufacturer (who in this case is not really in need of money, but that aside) gets at least 64.99 euros in full (separate from what they had invest it in their payment pages).