[sinnsro]

Another outstanding decision vetted by Tim Cook.

In all seriousness, finance people see everything through the lens of margins and money primarily. Since any company's function is to deliver value to its shareholders, if allowed, bean counters will scorch the earth for it.

Ultimately, this is at odds on how Jobs approached things, i.e., money was not the end all be all.

[WA]

Apple's 30% tax was introduced under Steve Jobs and there were no small business exemptions back then. Jobs died in 2011. It's time to stop extrapolating what Jobs would be doing 15 years later in 2026 if he were still around. Could be the same, could be better, could be worse.

[pjmlp]

In a time were operators where charging up to 90% for other stores.

Those with listings of SMS codes for which app to download, depending on the phone OS.

So it was a great deal back in 2008.

[isk517]

It isn't 'You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain', it's 'You either die a hero or live long enough for people to realize you are a villain'. While it's ultimately meaningless to speculate on what the dead would do if they were living, Steve Jobs in life did have plenty of belief and made plenty of decisions that are perfectly inline with what we are seeing in 2026 and there is no particular reason to believe he would not just be up there with the worst of them.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

Jobs was a greedy bastard like all the other CEOs. The difference is that he also had mostly good taste as far as products go.

[ndr42]

At that time 30% was not something you would consider high in contrast to the situation before the advent of app stores.

[spacebanana7]

Tim Cook is usually good at politics, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Nobody other some CNBC guests really gets too upset when they take 30% from tinder, music or mobile gaming companies. And those types of apps run by unpopular large companies make up the majority of App Store revenue.

However, newspapers and content creators are popular in a way that carries political weight. It'd be wise for Apple exempt these categories and write off the few hundred million in forgone revenue as a political expense.

For example allowing the NYT or Joe Rogan to have nice paid apps with no fees would be a much more effective use of money than the same amount in political donations.

[dwaite]

Apple doesn't do partner exceptions (one of the complaints Epic had about working with them is that Apple wouldn't negotiate lower rates with companies, unlike the game consoles.)

They do have carve outs in the agreement, such as the 'reader' exception. Newspapers I believe also fall under the 'reader' exception.

I have suspected for a while that the 15%-after-the-first-year subscription rate drop was a carve out targeted specifically at trying to retain Netflix IAP. However, Netflix was able to operate without IAP because of the "reader" exception.