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Comment by frereubu | Hacker News Reader

"You literally cannot do business with Apple customers."

This sounds rather hyperbolic. Sure, if you want to do business with customers through Apple's platform then you need to abide by their terms, but you can do business with them.

On the surface it feels a bit like complaining that you can't do business with customers through Stripe, because Stripe has Ts&Cs that you need to abide by. Apple's situation is more complex, but I think the underlying reasoning on this specific point is the same isn't it?

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I can drop Stripe as quickly as I can add another payment processor to my codebase and still have access to the same market.

I can't do the same with Apple.

True, which is what I meant why I said the Apple situation is more complex. I was responding more to the phrase "you literally cannot do business with Apple customers."

Sure: by selling them software for Windows on your own website.

It feels a little like arguing you can’t do business with visa’s customers if you refuse visa’s terms.

You could only accept MasterCard, but you’re choosing to limit your audience.

Presumably you can pay visa's customers with cash as well as using Visa and perhaps Mastercard? Possibly even Discover or even Diner's Club (is that still a thing?) I am not sure the analogy holds up. I am assuming merchants are the customers here. You can offer "rewards points" or other mechanisms of remuneration to Visa card holders.

No because Visa isn't crossing markets with it's users. Payment processing is a separate market than mobile operating systems and hardware.

I can't reach iOS customers for payment processing without going through Apple's offering in payment processing (which interestingly enough takes a 10x higher cut than Visa, Stripe, et al.)

If Visa used their market leadership in payment processing to try to dominate other markets, then it would be comparable (and then they should absolutely get antitrust scrutiny).

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