Hacker News Reader

Apple's 30% tax was introduced under Steve Jobs and there were no small business exemptions back then. Jobs died in 2011. It's time to stop extrapolating what Jobs would be doing 15 years later in 2026 if he were still around. Could be the same, could be better, could be worse.

View on HN

In a time were operators where charging up to 90% for other stores.

Those with listings of SMS codes for which app to download, depending on the phone OS.

So it was a great deal back in 2008.

You are talking about phone apps, I'm talking about "software licenses sold over the internet".

If Apple adopted the 90%, they would still be criticized.

The fact remains that it was a very stupid system in 2008, and lowering the percentage doesn't obviate Apple's perverse incentives.

It isn't 'You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain', it's 'You either die a hero or live long enough for people to realize you are a villain'. While it's ultimately meaningless to speculate on what the dead would do if they were living, Steve Jobs in life did have plenty of belief and made plenty of decisions that are perfectly inline with what we are seeing in 2026 and there is no particular reason to believe he would not just be up there with the worst of them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com