The Fahrenheit 451 analogy sort of falls apart though when they give open access to the internet via Safari. What Apple does with the App Store is maintain a safe & friendly environment for users, where they can trust they won't run into things like viruses or pornography. This creates a healthy market for developers who don't necessarily have the notoriety of a Netflix / Spotify / Amazon to push their product, and instead rely at least somewhat on organic App Store searches to be discovered.
So if these larger companies want to bypass that sales funnel, and they can afford to do so, it's not a huge deal. They're still providing value to the platform in making iOS a better experience. The 30% cut is something along the lines of "Hey, we spend a lot of time maintaining this market place so that users will trust the download button, and we're giving you this opportunity to benefit from that by paying us a cut so you too can benefit from being found organically via our curated market place."
From the standpoint of a fledgling app company, I'd rather pay them to maintain that sales funnel for me. Whereas a Netflix / Amazon already has the brand strength to where they don't need it, so the 30% is very expensive for them (because they can generate plenty of sales on their own, and aren't reliant on organic searches for users to discover their product).
On Google Play, the market is very different and since it's not curated, there is so much more fluff to sift through for users, and it makes it much harder for a brand to gain notoriety through Google Play alone -- hence why so many new app products start on iOS and then grow into Android. The sales funnel created by any non-curated market place will never be as strong as a curated one (assuming the curation is carried out in the interest of promoting welfare of the customers/users on the platform, their privacy, safety, satisfaction, etc.).
Your parent is arguing not that it's wrong to charge a 30% cut to list in the app store, but that it's wrong of Apple to prevent loading apps from any source besides the app store.
Well fine, and that would be a great point, except that Apple actually doesn't do this. First of all, absolutely anyone can download Xcode today and load any app they want onto their own iPhone - or any iPhone in their possession (assuming they have access to the source code of the apps they want to load). This will completely bypass the App Store.
Second, there's Ad-Hoc distribution. Many enterprise apps are distributed Ad-Hoc and the process does not require App Store review.
There are several reasons why well executed curation can lead to a healthier market for both buyers and sellers: buyers are more trusting, and therefore more likely to buy, and due to the better buyer dispositions, good sellers can make more sales. This creates a positive feedback loop when better sellers gravitate towards curated platforms first.
At the end of the day, plenty of people are still going to buy Android phones because a large majority of buyers buy on price, not on the quality of their platform's app ecosystem or whatever. This argument of not being able to side load apps, despite not being true, is one you'll often run across in people trying to avoid admitting that they really bought based on the price of their device. Hey I mean, it's their money, who am I to say they made a right or wrong decision with it? But just be honest about it.
The app sandbox argument is a better one, because it's actually true. But it's a matter of whether you think app sandboxing is a good or a bad thing.
But find me an Android user who bought a MORE EXPENSIVE phone then an iPhone, and argues for easy-sideloading and no sandboxing, and their arguments about platform quality become a lot more compelling. Problem is, they are few and far between, if they even exist at all.
Essentially its probably difficult to charge 30% in a market where people have reasonably easy access to multiple markets in the same way its hard to charge $20 per gallon of milk in markets where people can drive to other grocery stores its a monopoly rent.
It's true that it would be technically trivial for Apple to censor web access on iPhones. However, they don't do this, and it doesn't seem reasonable to expect them to in the future.
Sandboxing apps / discouraging side-loading are categorically different than going the way of Communist China.
Where is the user value in censoring web sites?
You don't believe the Chinese government would force companies that want to do business in China to censor things they don't agree with or you have failed to notice the US trying to force companies to use compromised encryption so that they can spy on all communication?
Apple can always threaten to walk away from China if they request something like that. Apple also doesn't play nice with the FBI over those kinds of requests. This fantasy of yours is just getting wilder and wilder
So if these larger companies want to bypass that sales funnel, and they can afford to do so, it's not a huge deal. They're still providing value to the platform in making iOS a better experience. The 30% cut is something along the lines of "Hey, we spend a lot of time maintaining this market place so that users will trust the download button, and we're giving you this opportunity to benefit from that by paying us a cut so you too can benefit from being found organically via our curated market place."
From the standpoint of a fledgling app company, I'd rather pay them to maintain that sales funnel for me. Whereas a Netflix / Amazon already has the brand strength to where they don't need it, so the 30% is very expensive for them (because they can generate plenty of sales on their own, and aren't reliant on organic searches for users to discover their product).
On Google Play, the market is very different and since it's not curated, there is so much more fluff to sift through for users, and it makes it much harder for a brand to gain notoriety through Google Play alone -- hence why so many new app products start on iOS and then grow into Android. The sales funnel created by any non-curated market place will never be as strong as a curated one (assuming the curation is carried out in the interest of promoting welfare of the customers/users on the platform, their privacy, safety, satisfaction, etc.).