LogFAQs > #895954232

This is a direct quote from a Microsoft developer so I think it would be okay to paste here. It's an interesting story that foreshadows the App Store.

Steve Jobs, when he introduced the Next machine, he had an event called the Next Day; because it was after a presentation to financial analysts and stuff in New York. On the next day he came to Silicon Valley and pitched to software developers, and I was one of the developers he was pitching to in the audience. And everybody loved the Next operating system and the interface builder and all these wonderful object-oriented libraries. It was using Objective C, which was one of the early dynamic languages. You could do it in Objective C. You couldnt in C++. And everybody was just, Oh, this is such an exciting thing. Im dying to do this. And then he said, Oh, and by the way, all of your software will be delivered on this optical drive that well send to every customer once every three months. And somebody raised their hand and said, What? What? Did you just say that I cant distribute software myself? That I have to distribute my software through you? And Steve Jobs said, Nonononono. Youre thinking of this wrong. Were not taking away from you the freedom to distribute your own software. Were enabling you to not have to worry about software distribution at all. And well only take a 30% cut. And we all stood up and walked out of the room. Almost literally. At that point, we all looked at each other and said, Oh, after you. No, after you. Oh no, no. After you. And nobody wrote for the Next machine because nobody was willing to hand over all their distribution to Steve Jobs and Next. Whats funny is. He always wanted to get a piece of the developers action. He always felt, and Apple has always felt, that application developers were parasites, and that there had to be a way to get a piece of their action. And they finally figured it out with the App Store. With the App Store, theyre skimming the cream off the top. It doesnt matter whether you sell one copy or a million copies. Its like the patent business. Patent attorneys get their money up front, before youve made a dime selling your invention. Its the same way with the App Store. Theyre making their percent on everything that sells, whether it sells one copy or a million copies. -James Plamondon

Nowadays that seems to almost be expected.
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Kind Regards,
Darmik