The amount of people here who defend apple is insane. If epic wins that would be a win for everyone.
- If i buy some food through a delivery service i would need to pay 30% apple tax on my food.
- if i buy a news paper subscription i need to pay 30% apple tax.
- if i buy groceries online i need to pay a 30% apple tax.
That shit is INSANE!!!!
You keep writing "need". Even if all you had was your iPhone to make purchases and subscribe to services, you don't
need to pay Apple anything to do so since the iPhone comes with a free web browser. The fact of the matter is, you don't even need to use an iPhone to do anything you listed, meaning you have even more options open to you in order to avoid the dreaded "Apple tax". The only way you will ever have to pay that is if you chose to use Apple's own marketplace.
You don't
need have food delivered through Apple, you have thousands of options on where to buy food using your iPhone's browser. Food delivery does not get the "Apple tax" anyways as
Kdad
mentioned. When you do have food delivered through any service though, that cost is included in the price of the goods you bought to have delivered by the company delivering them. All the suppliers have pricing agreements with the services that deliver their products just like the agreement Tim had with Apple for using their storefront. Tim would try to sneak Fortnite fruit snacks into the delivery vehicles along with the food, and demand that he not have to pay for it to be delivered. He would argue that the delivery company has a monopoly on the customers that use that delivery company and that he believes anyone should be able to put their own food product deliveries into the delivery vehicles contracted by Apple to deliver food.
You don't
need an Apple news subscription, you have thousands of options available using your iPhone's browser. When you buy a news site subscription on an iPhone, you can do it from the news site directly without giving Apple a penny. The only time Apple takes a cut is when you buy it directly from their own storefront. News sites make their money selling ad space, which Tim would want to access for free in order to advertise Unreal Engine 5. He would argue that the news site has a monopoly on the people frequenting that site ignoring that the news site had to spend the time and money required to amass that subscriber base in the first place. He would argue that anyone should be able to put ads on any of the sites owned by a corporation.
You don't
need to buy groceries from Apple, you have access to thousands of companies that sell food using your iPhone's browser. Even if you do use Apple's store, Apple doesn't take a cut of physical goods and food items as again
Kdad
mentioned in his post. When you buy food locally though, let's say a Costco, taxes and the cost of delivering those food items to your local Costco are factored into the cost of those goods. You local Costco adds a mark-up to those items as well to be profitable. Tim would go into the Costco, set up a kiosk selling Fortnite Vbucks cards, and demand that the store not charge him to do so. He would argue that Costco has a monopoly on the customers shopping there ignoring that Costco spent billions over the years building up a brand that created the market they hold in the first place. After Cotsco store security ejected him and his stand, he would go on Twitter and cry crocodile tears because he believes anyone should just be able to walk into a Costco and have a garage sale.
Tim Sweeney doesn't
need to put his shit on Apple devices. Apple isn't forcing him to pay a 30% fee, he's free to not use their platform and instead focus on a device that allows side-loading. Tim can already sell Vbucks to iPhone users without paying Apple 30% anyways, Vbucks can be added to an Epic account through store-bought cards or through Epic's website and are tied to your Epic account.
From Epic's site:
V-Bucks purchased on PlayStation 4 or Switch cannot be spent on other devices. Any Fortnite content you buy with your V-Bucks will be available on every device linked to your Fortnite account, regardless of which device the content was bought on.
If you add Vbuck to your account on a PC they appear on your iPhone. If you buy them using the Safari browser on your iPhone they appear in your Epic account on the iPhone. Apple takes a 30% cut
ONLY if the Vbucks are sold using it's own storefront, and under their agreement Epic is not allowed to put links to his own store inside Apple's own store or advertise that you can just open up Safari and load up there. Apple had a clear and concise contract with Epic regarding the matter that Tim previously agreed to. Tim broke the contract by circumventing a legally binding agreement and putting links to cheaper Vbucks in the Apple store.
He put his Vbucks on Apple's store in the first place because he made a lot of money by doing so despite the 30% commission. He
wants to be able to do it for free because he feels that he's entitled to the benefits stemming from the work that Apple has put into creating and growing their brand and the storefront on their device that he would be profiting from. Apple maintains the storefront, Apple creates the devices the storefront is available on. Apple provides the manufacturing of the devices and gets those devices into the hands of millions of people that Tim wants free access to. Why should Tim have access to the fruits of this labor at no cost to himself? Zero overhead for Tim is what he's fighting for, he's just painting himself as a hero of the people to garner sympathy for this abortion of an idea.
I think Apple is a shit company, but I think that if a platform is built and is maintained by someone, they should be entitled to charge others to use that platform.
