They can structure it however they like but the fact is you don't have to pay for the app to get reviewed, that's part of what the customer expects when they pay for the iDevice. Whether or not Apple takes a cut of subscription/purchase - and in the case of something like Netflix it only depends on whether they are the ones processing the payment - makes no difference there.
Think about the eBay app, it gets reviewed and people buy things using it but Apple doesn't get a cut because they aren't processing the payment.

But that's the only difference. What's the difference between a Netflix user on iOS that subscribed using Apple's payment system versus one that subscribed using Netflix's payment system? Apple gets 30% for processing the payment.

Sure but that has nothing to do with the 30% payment processing fee. That's part of the cost of the device that you pay for, that's why you can use the phone, get OS updates and get all the free apps you like without having to pay that 30% payment processing fee. What do think that $1200 is for? Just the hardware?

Isn't that what users are paying for when they buy an iPhone? Pretty sure they wouldn't be able to charge those prices if there were no way to get apps on the phone and no maintenance for the OS.

The payment processing is the only thing they charge for.

They aren't providing that for free, they charge their customers for that, just like Microsoft does for with Windows. They have to provide it because if they didn't then the devices would be useless and wouldn't sell as they'd have no apps since you cannot install apps on them from any place other than Apple's app store.

They do that for apps that they don't charge the payment processing fee for as well, that's part of the assurance that customers who buy and iDevice are paying for.

30% for a payment processing fee though? If you subscribe to these services by not using Apple's subscription/payment system you get the exact same experience, it's just that your payment wasn't processed by Apple so they don't get that payment processing fee.

It's part of the costs of selling devices, they would be completely useless without apps. That's why the "free" apps don't pay anything (even the free apps that only exist to buy stuff like Ebay, Amazon, etc because the payment doesn't go through Apple) and it is only charged as a payment processing fee. Further, this is also why subscription apps like Spotify, Netflix, Prime, etc don't pay a fee to Apple for iOS app users that didn't subscribe using Apple's system, because it's simply a payment processing fee and if Apple isn't processing the payment they don't get the fee.

So do they block it in the Safari browser that they ship with the device as well?

How dumb is the Apple customer persona they are targeting (not necessarily their actual userbase) that they can't manage to simply flick the option over to "contacts only" if this is a problem? Just like the "alternative app stores" discussion, Apple sees their target customer as a nitwit who couldn't even handle being presented with choice because they would overwhelmingly make the wrong one. It doesn't help that they have an army of fanboys and corporate apologists that rush to justify and defend being characterized as morons, reminds me of the Homer/Ned interaction on the Simpsons "You just can't insult this guy. You call him a moron, and he just sits there grinning moronally.".

Who are these people you're talking about? You said they aren't being shadowy so who are they?

Change the record, you conspiracy nutbags have been banging on about this for the last decade, back in 2012 you were saying the same thing. I've had a handful of non-Mac computers in that time and every single one of them either dual-boots Linux or runs Linux exclusively with no problems.

Whoa somebody got triggered! LOL. You're obviously not the least bit involved in the Linux community if you think it has been "infiltrated" by Microsoft employees yet at the same time can't say who they are.

The only thing I use Windows for is running games, you can't use it for real work anymore because you are not in control of it. For example it might just decide to install updates, kill all of your running processes and reboot of its own accord. You can't trust it for doing work so I haven't even bothered to look into what WSL offers to users that otherwise run native Linux, I would be interested to know why you think people would eschew native Linux installs for it though.

Fact is I'm able to tell the difference between genuinelly bad things like stuffing the ISO committee for things like OOXML and baseless conspiracy nonsense behind secure boot and WSL. Save the cry of wolf for when it's warranted rather than getting triggered whenever they do anything.

You haven't presented anything to accept as fact, I asked you who these "influencers" that have "infiltrated" the Linux community are and all you did was get immediately triggered and start name-calling.

Come on, you've already been triggered so don't pretend like you're going to shy away and not respond, we all know you're going to so at least present some worthwhile information :P

Makes what more plausible? You haven't suggested what you think is going on. Hundreds of Linux distributions have been able to be run in VMs atop Windows, booted alongside Windows and even run as a Live distribution yet you suggest though that this WSL is so incredibly good that it is going to make all the users and distro maintainers suddenly switch to Windows?

The reason you get "scoffed" at is because what you're saying is nonsense, a cabal of powerful (yet somehow nameless) shadowy "influencers" infiltrating the Linux community at the behest of Microsoft? Where are the examples of this "influence" being exerted within the community and what positions in the community do these people have?

In that instance people don't care about Linux, they care about Steam. The OS is irrelevant so long as it runs Steam, which is the point of an OS anyway: run the programs the user wants to run.

How would an ad-blocker affect the presence of the "Backup your files"/"Sign up for a Microsoft Account"/"Complete your profile" buttons in the OS? They're not really ads in the same way as ads on websites that an adblocker targets are. Same as on iOS the buttons for free trials for Apple TV+ and Apple Music aren't something an ad blocker will affect.

Have you seen the incessant complaining here when Microsoft releases a new Windows version that moves some setting into a different dialog? How do you think those people would cope in the Linux world where every distribution is different, where you have multiple ways to change the same settings, where you have a whole bunch of different window managers, UI toolkits, init systems, sound subsystems that all do things differently.

Even if people did switch to Linux what would that do for them? Given we're talking about an operating system the best case is that nothing changes, the hardware works and all their programs run exactly like they did on Windows.

But you do get the exact same thing in iOS.

Windows definitely has its problems, for example I left it overnight and when I came back in the morning it had killed everything I had running, installed and update, restarted and changed the "fastboot" setting from "off" to "on".
But then again Linux has its problems too, I have to shut my laptop down when I'm done with it because if I just put it to sleep then when I wake it back up the trackpad just has completely erratic behavior, an unresolved (but tracked) bug that still persists in Linux.
macOS has its issues as well, an update silently removed the "Allow apps from anywhere" option in the Security settings and OS and web browser are tightly coupled so it updated the browser too.
The point is they all have their problems, for every problem on one OS there's one on another OS. Switching from Windows to Linux just trades Windows problems for Linux problems, switching from Linux to macOS just trades Linux problems for macOS problems.

In the end the goal is to run your applications, Blender, GIMP, Houdini and Maya all work the same whether it's on Linux, macOS or Windows. Photoshop and AfterEffects work the same on Windows and macOS but don't work at all on Linux. Solidworks and 3ds MAX work fine on Windows but don't work at all on macOS or Linux. Logic Pro and FinalCut work fine on macOS but don't work at all on Windows or Linux.

Evangelizing an OS is retarded because nobody uses the OS for anything but running applications, the best OS is the one that runs the applications you need to run.

I was trying to be as clear as possible when I said: "unless they can build it as a skin atop the WebKit version that Apple ships with the OS" which is what Chrome and Firefox "apps" for iOS are, it's not the actual Chrome or Firefox browsers running on iOS.

No it isn't because the actual browser engine is still the Safari one, the UI is just Chrome/Firefox. So for example Chrome/Firefox on macOS are different browsers to Safari such that they can support things that Safari doesn't, WebGPU for example. However on iOS they are just skins over the Safari browser engine so they can only suppor the things that Safari supports.