But that’s the whole point: Apple spent billions of dollars to create a set of phones that are good, built a strong OS ($$$$), and advertised like crazy to get it to where it is now.
The sale of the phones is not enough to cover that, plus all the customer service (they are famous for being very good and accommodating with their support & warranty). Their plan has been to have a store to actually make the bulk of the money.
Now, years and years after they continuously spent $$$$ to get it to a good place, developers are saying “but but but I want this whole thing for free”. If they want to, go make yourself a phone, an OS, and all the rest, don’t force them to changed their business plans.
I’m a developer too, and I fully understand that 30% is a bunch, but I wouldn’t try to force them to open it up to me for basically free
But the whole reason why they’d want to run it on their devices is because Apple spent billions to get people to use the phones (and R&D, and writing an OS, and advertising, etc)
This is basically saying “I know you spent years and billions to make iOS become a very profitable place for me to publish an app successfully, but… I don’t wanna paaaayyyy! Apple is the big meany and they should do it for me because reasons”