Technology

The #1 thing they provide is exposure.

The vast majority of users simply won't download and install something they find on a website on their phones.

Agreed, If it wasn't a forced arrangement I wouldn't necessarily nave a problem with the price

I suspect you're just repeating arguments you've heard, so don't take this internet rage personally, but that is complete bullshit.

• Hosting costs nothing. Devs will gladly foot the bill for that if given the option. Even if you distribute your apps on AWS (which is notorious for severely overcharging on egress), your expenses will be no where near 15%-30% of your revenue.

• Payment processing is a competitive field outside the appstores. Even 15%-30% is ludicrous when "overpriced" processors like stripe charge 2%-3%

• APIs are not something sold to developers. They build them as part of the operating system because they have to. That's how it works. They could try selling licenses, but it would result in devs not building on their fancy new features.

(you didn't mention the ones below, but people with your argument usually do, so I'm adding them for completeness)

• Security is also bullshit. The Appstore and Play store are FILLED with malware. It is not physically possible to manually review the sheer volume of apps published to those stores. They also are not incentivized to improve the process much, because each time your kid or grandma accidentally activates a $40/week subscription, Apple/Google take a 15%-30% cut.

• Curation/promotion is bullshit. Discoverability on these stores has always been bad, but has been particularly awful since both Apple/Google have started selling search ads in the store. The other day I almost accidentally downloaded a fake ChatGPT app because it was the first result when I searched, it had a very similar icon, "ChatGPT" in the name, 5 stars, and millions of downloads.

These stores also heavily incentivize devs to push subscriptions. I suspect (but haven't confirmed) that the Appstore and Google Play both rank subscription based apps higher than others, and subs tend to pay a lower revshare fee than other monetization types.

I could go on all day about the rotten dumpster fires that are these disgusting stores. The only people who defend them are fanboys and people who have never actually had to deal with them professionally.

The high price is a result of monopolistic exclusivity.

Back in the old days, Android OS used to be Open Source. You can still get firmware built up from the last release, such as CalyxOS, but in order to install it you have to buy directly from Google with the Bootloader Unlocked as a feature.

Yeah Android is Linux. But Manufactures are limiting it so hard that it is sometimes nearly impossible to get a custom ROM on the phone.

This could be the real "pro" iPhone. Running m3, acting as a phone by itself and throwing a full macOS with Office and Adobe Cloud apps when docked.

So a $1,200 thin client?

That's also where the Web is now.

People are saying that Flash was bad and HTML5 with heavy JS and all the functionality of modern browsers is good.

Such people are either fine with it, or don't understand that downsides of Flash (or Java applets, or whatever else) were defined by its advantages, which were much more important.

A lot of kids or young people with no particular interest in IT\CS\engineering would use Flash for animations or little cute things which made their simple, possible back then websites more alive. (I've just looked at such one site, abandoned with some trace of a resurrection attempt in 2019, and it's gorgeous.)

You had to know less to make your own stuff in that old Web than you have to know now.

The Web is by its purpose a networked global hypertext system, a living library with common participation.

That some people want to repurpose it, think they've been successful at it, and think others will go along with their wishes, - is sad, but should have no weight.