> I’ve said before that even if they were allowing (or better, forced to allow) competition, people would still pay a premium, maybe 10%, to have all subscriptions in one place with one-click unsubscribe. They simply don’t believe their own product can stand on its own without crutches, for some bean counter reason.
The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS in order to get users into their dark patterns where you have to call to unsubscribe; can you imagine what shady game developers would do?
Just to clarify, you are referring to companies, not necessarily their developers.
> Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS
No they don’t? I just check their app listing and you can use Apples own IAP. In either case, NYT can have reputable reporting while still being complete slimes when it comes to subscriptions. And even so, it strengthens the argument that Apple and other subscription aggregators deliver value (relatively - our CC centric payment world is abysmally bad), meaning users are willing to pay, meaning merchants are willing to use it to get sales they couldn’t otherwise.
> can you imagine what shady game developers would do?
If what, they could do whatever they wanted? Apple (or any other curator) could still police against fraud and misleading consumers. What does that have to do with the 30% tax?
The users aren't the issue, the developers are. Companies as reputable as the New York Times are willing to forgo easy subscription flows inside of iOS in order to get users into their dark patterns where you have to call to unsubscribe; can you imagine what shady game developers would do?