you're right, no top level logic would help you settle on any specific price, hence you need to engage with actual reality instead of simply noticing one party that benefits while ignoring the other that also "ultimately benefits" and "needs the platform to run apps on".
You, of course, want to be their feudal lord and get access to all their customers by right while also requiring them to pay a tithing of their hardware sales to you since you advance "their ultimate benefit" (they wouldn't sell any hardware without software)
> You, of course, want to be their feudal lord and get access to all their customers by right
If someone buys an iPhone, Apple does not have the right to interpose themselves between that person and what they want to do with the iphone they bought. They have no right to a cut of the sales any more than the power company that provided the electrons to charge the battery.
What I want is for Apple to get out of the way.
> while also requiring them to pay a tithing of their hardware sales to you since you advance
What I want them to do, for a start, is to the same thing on ios that they already do on macos. I can already write a piece of software an sell it without forking 30% over to Apple.
The current situation where they feel entitled to a cut of every software sale that happens on ios, and veto power over it, is a wet dream that even Microsoft in the 90s wouldn't have thought they'd get away with.
You, of course, want to be their feudal lord and get access to all their customers by right while also requiring them to pay a tithing of their hardware sales to you since you advance "their ultimate benefit" (they wouldn't sell any hardware without software)