I get people are use to free, but plenty of companies license software for royalties that does a lot less.
That's what the $99/year fee is for. Apple set that price themselves. It can also be argued that some of the cost of the SDKs is included into the price of the Mac that any iOS developer has to have.
> or OS
That's included into the price of every iPhone because you can't even buy an iPhone without an OS or install your own, like you can do with PCs.
The App store is a highly trusted place to download things on your phone, and that's a value that apple provides and that costs money to maintain. Pretending that it's as isolated as you pretend feels very disingenuous.
If the app store is truly as immensely useful as Apple wants everyone to believe, why not enable full-on Android-style sideloading on iOS and let the app store compete with that on its own merits? Surely everyone would still prefer it if it's so great?
