Slots? What on earth would you need slots for? Why upgrade when you can just buy a new one?

Fair enough, they do provide more than a normal payment gateway would provide. But its a huge fee, and it is unavoidable, which is where the problem is. Apple is crowbarring itself into other companies' business models, and some businesses (maybe Epic, maybe not, but see earlier stories about the Hello app) can't withstand it.

If there were an alternative store for iOS devices, developers would likely flock there. As an app developer myself, I can say from experience that Apple is not a great company to do business with.

For Android devices, there are plenty of options outside the Google Play Store. Amazon has its own app store which anyone can download on their device, and there are others like F-Droid. Or you could direct your customers to download your software directly from your website if you wanted, and not have to deal with any of the app marketplaces.

Neither consumers nor developers would accept this level control over a laptop or desktop. Imagine if Dell wanted a cut of your software sales every time one of "their users" wanted to buy it.

iOS users don't belong to Apple, they're consumers in a supposedly free market. The walled garden approach is fine if that's how they want to run their store but they can't also make that the only garden in town.

For me it boils down to this: Are iDevices general-purpose computing devices or are they not?

Yeah sure. By that logic, they'd better take down every VNC/RDP Remote Desktop app and kick TeamViewer off the store as well. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that they launched Apple Arcade. For fucks sake Apple, They bought the damn hardware, let them play steam games that they already own.

The justice dept. wants backdoor private keys. That's obviously not acceptable, but I doubt they'd settle for anything less

I think the cost of access is exactly where it should be. If they really need the data, they'll spend the resources to access it. If Apple or anyone else makes it easier to bypass security measures, then it becomes easier for them to search devices in lesser cases. The 'terrorist case' argument is compelling, but there just isn't a way to only compromise the encryption on devices owned by bad people.

Genuinely curious, what makes you say that democrats are trying to prevent small business relief?

I propose that the largest corporations start paying their fucking taxes.