Because it's not just the cut from a credit card processor. It's also fraud handling, forex, invoicing, marketing, distribution, and fees for apple to operate the marketplace, plus their cut. I'm not going to defend 30% as the number, nor the _enforced_ 30% cut, but the 10x cut is not an apples to apples comparison. It's the equivalent of saying "just use OVH instead of AWS"
Now try canceling your idevice for a competitor and Apple will change your messages to white text on green so none of your friends can read them easily (due to the distribution of retinal cone cells).
> Apple will change your messages to white text on green so none of your friends can read them easily
Messages always shows the received message as black text on a grey background.
Sent messages can have blue or green backgrounds. Your Apple using friends continue to read your messages just fine. Re-reading messages they’ve sent you is a different matter.
More surprising is that someone would complain about the SMS experience in 2020 in the context of smartphones, given the breadth of rich cross-platform alternatives that do not charge by the message / picture / audioclip.
