“The app store was genuinely a revolution in software. Bandwidth was expensive, working with third-party payment platforms was a hassle. On phones the only software was carrier-billed and they took 50% of everything.”

The original App Store was a genuine revolution — free distribution replaced 50% carrier cuts

In 2008, distributing software required self-hosted servers, payment infrastructure, and often carrier deals that took 50% of revenue. The App Store collapsed that to a $99/year developer account and a 70/30 split — genuinely transformative at the time. Understanding that original context matters: it explains both why Apple feels entitled to its commission and why modern developers, who have grown up with Stripe and Vercel, find that entitlement increasingly hard to justify.