A controversy over the past few days has been about an email app called Hey that was initially approved by the App Store review team, then rejected later. Phil Schiller spoke about the issue in an interview.
One way that Hey could have gone, Schiller says, is to offer a free or paid version of the app with basic email reading features on the App Store then separately offered an upgraded email service that worked with the Hey app on iOS on its own website. Schiller gives one more example: an RSS app that reads any feed, but also reads an upgraded feed that could be charged for on a separate site. In both cases, the apps would have functionality when downloaded on the store.
My opinion is that Apple could stand to reduce its cut from 30% down to 15-18%. But we definitely don’t need other proposals, like downloading apps from outside the App Store like you can on the Mac.