In that sense, the old system is OK as well, no?
OK is an understatement.
But those would be the requirements of those platforms.
I can make and publish games for the Pico-8 console without any requirements. Could you imagine if Microsoft had the ability to veto any Pico-8 game I wanted to make?
Once tooling catches up, in theory, developers don't have a contractual relationship with apple anymore, except to get notarized.
The devices belong to the users apple sold the hardware and licensed the software to them not app developers. They could charge the users but obviously this would be a terrible idea.
Getting notarized will either directly require payment of the platform fee or will force the use of the official tools which will mandate that.
That is absolutely a win to the common people. And it’s not like other companies taken a hit - they can either stay on the AppStore and have their finances go through their “taxing”, or create an alternative store and find a proper monetizing strategy. They can calculate what makes sense, but it makes it hard for Facebook/google to exercise their network effect for creating a new app store at the expense of users.
I think the issue here is just the additional payment, not the notarization. That part is hopefully rejected as a non-solution to the issue.
To be honest, it's not even like I care that much about the additional payment. Scummy but expected. It's more that the current prices, similar to Unity, seem to pretty much punish any innovative idea that takes off, to a point where Apple will not just make the product unproftiable but bankrupt the developer in the process. Most mobile apps are free so people underestimate how quickly you can hit 1M. At least make it something like $0.05 at a million and ramp it up at 5m or 10m to these larger prices. by 10m downloads you are much more likely a larger business or have figured out a way to properly scale your app.
oh and don't count updates, discouraging devs from maintaining their apps. Devs don't profit from an existing user updating, why should Apple?
Notarization could theoretically be used for "good", even though I strongly dispute its effectiveness. It only ensures that someone's card is on file to potentially aid in investigation after the damage has been done. In the case of malware, that card is likely to be stolen anyway.
The more likely option is that Apple will start abusing notarization as a way to take down apps it finds objectionable in some way, even though they do exactly what they say on the tin.
I think this is another classic case of people getting mad over what they think the law should be vs. what the law actually is.
The DMA targeted different companies in different ways all under the rubric of combatting “gatekeeping.” They then went on to say how different companies were guilty of that crime in different ways. It would not surprise me at all if Apple has complied with what the EU singled Apple out for. It also wouldn’t surprise me if casual observers have conflated all the different flavors of gatekeeping that the DMA has directed at all companies.