no other app market has the audience that Apple has
So, I say, "I don't want to be a sharecropper", and you ask me where else you can be a sharecropper that treats you better.
I'm not talking about app markets, at all. I'm talking about being a software developer. As a software developer, you have damned near infinite options for making a living. And a lot of those options provide more dignity, and more money, than being Apple's bitch.
The notion that selling iPhone apps is a "gold mine" for developers is a bit like saying the lottery is a good investment strategy. Yes, some developers make a lot of money from iPhone applications. Most do not. I suspect that building products for the much wider general software market or the web market would be a much more profitable path for your efforts (at least, that's been where I've placed my bets, and where I plan to continue placing my bets in the future).
the app store provides an easy way to charge your users
My understanding of the process of selling iPhone apps is this:
1. Pay $99 to become an "iPhone Developer"
2. Build your application, taking care not to violate any of the known rules Apple has put forth.
3. Submit your application. Wait for a response. Sometimes for a very long time.
4. Either get notification that your app has been accepted, or receive a terse note of rejection, that might explain why it has been rejected. If the former, celebrate, and maybe start making money...odds are, it'll make a few bucks a day. If it's a knockout app without competition you could make a lot of money (though iPhone apps tend to trend downward in revenue pretty dramatically after an initial spike, so you have to be thinking of your next app pretty quickly).
If you receive a rejection, however...the fun and excitement and "easy" times continue:
5. You study the rejection notice, the Apple guidelines, and random blog posts on the Internet to try to figure out what you've done wrong in your application. You make changes, and go back to step 3. Lather, rinse, repeat. Your application may never be made available in the App Store, it's up to Apple.
Optional step 6 (assuming repeated, seemingly arbitrary, rejection): You blog about your pain, and people share your woe and commiserate with you about their own difficulties with the App Store process. Maybe, if you're a big name developer or blogger, somebody from Apple takes another look at your app, and things begin again at step 3. Maybe you get ignored.
And, of course, every time you release a new version or you build a new app, you get the joy of doing it all again.
This process not only does not seem "easy" to me, it seems like the kind of tedious bureaucratic bullshit that I intentionally became an entrepreneur to avoid. Hell, I've shaped my entire life around avoiding stuff like that.
everyone who needs to do something on their iPhone goes to search the app store even though a web app could serve their needs better
So what? You're jumping through hoops to reach one particular niche market, when the world is wide and their are billions of people who don't use iPhone apps for everything. Developers being so damned eager to jump through those hoops, generally in exchange for a pittance, has just made other companies start trying to build their own fences around their own little patches of land and start their own little app stores, so developers have to become sharecroppers to reach those users. This is not a good thing. Apple is not doing developers any favors with the App Store.
users like the reviews and trust apple not to allow harmful apps in the store
So what? User trust and loyalty can be earned in many other ways. Provide a forum, an open issue/support tracker, testimonials, a clear and generous refund policy, etc. And, of course, web apps can't (generally) harm someone's machine...so, there is no "harmful" web app stigma to worry about. If you're taking someone's money in exchange for software or services, PayPal and Google Checkout provide good assurances to buyers that you aren't going to defraud them or misuse or expose their credit card details.
In short, the "advantages" you mention are all on the side of web apps, not iPhone apps. The only real advantage to the iPhone App Store is that if you want to reach iPhone users directly, it is the only way to do so. So, we probably will eventually release a couple of iPhone applications...but they will be mainly intended as marketing tools, and not expected to be a source of revenue. And, I'll probably pay someone to deal with all the BS of getting the app into the store, because I sure as heck don't want to deal with it.
Our WebKit-targeted theme, on the other hand, we worked on very early in the life of the iPhone, and consider it an extremely important part of our product. We update it regularly when new phones come out, to make sure it always works well with any WebKit based phone browser.
no other app market has the audience that Apple has
So, I say, "I don't want to be a sharecropper", and you ask me where else you can be a sharecropper that treats you better.
I'm not talking about app markets, at all. I'm talking about being a software developer. As a software developer, you have damned near infinite options for making a living. And a lot of those options provide more dignity, and more money, than being Apple's bitch.
The notion that selling iPhone apps is a "gold mine" for developers is a bit like saying the lottery is a good investment strategy. Yes, some developers make a lot of money from iPhone applications. Most do not. I suspect that building products for the much wider general software market or the web market would be a much more profitable path for your efforts (at least, that's been where I've placed my bets, and where I plan to continue placing my bets in the future).