downvotes: mind explaining why my naive question is not a worthy contribution/question? or if you just disagree, I'm genuinely interested in understanding what I'm not grasping.
I do not believe Apple's tax for IAP applies for physical goods or services. Only digital products or goods. If those companies are charging more, it might be for another reason.
> 3.1.5 Physical Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry. Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies (e.g. Bitcoin, DogeCoin) provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions.
> but couldn't they markup the In-App-Subscription by whatever % of cut Apple is taking?
They can do this but they are not allowed to inform their customers on the iOS app that the prices are lower elsewhere
> Section 3.1.3(b) Multiplatform Services: Apps that operate across multiple platforms may allow users to access content, subscriptions, or features they have acquired elsewhere, including consumable items in multi-platform games, provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app. You must not directly or indirectly target iOS users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase, and your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase.
Food delivery apps have their own commissions.
You can find plenty of stuff on HN alone if you search for "grubhub" (and probably with any other food delivery app name).
Dropbox Plus is 11.99€ on the App Store as an in-app purchase and 9.99€ on Dropbox.com
Right now there's no mobile-first onboarding flow. That's a completely new thing they'll have to build. They'll also need to update all of their code that checks subscriptions, handles dunning, etc., to now work with multiple billing providers. So yeah, it's going to take a lot of time, which is a lot of dollars.
Both valid perspectives IMO.
They obviously knew that Apple Pay subscriptions were an option when they were whiteboarding the product, and they decided to not do them. That says to me that they weighed the options, did some math, and decided that the numbers worked better if they didn't spend time on that, and kept 100% of the money.