Presumably if you buy an AI subscription through an iOS app you also have to pay 30% Apple tax. Nice work for them.

It does work like that.

For me personally, I have used this method to spend my Apple gift cards purchased on a discount. Effectively I got a Claude subscription at 15% off. (You could argue this only works because OpenAI/Anthropic charge the same price across web/mobile, and I agree.)

So, as much as I despise Apple's business model, in some sense I have directly benefitted from it (other than stock price).