To play devil's advocate, the original policy was nearly* unambiguously good for users of Apple devices: same content, same price or cheaper, without having to give your payment information to a 3rd party.

*with the very large caveat that it drove (and would have continued to drive) competitors out of the market decreasing customer choice & ultimately innovation. It's possible (though, I think, unlikely) that they didn't really know the extent to which this would throw developers large and small into a tizzy. Hence a lot of the confusion about SaaS etc.

Firstly this is a positive change (not perfect, but better).

But the original rules as stated already in these comments were presumably to see if

a) they could get away with it

b) to stop people using subscriptions to avoid normal purchases

c) to start from the most extreme point to leave room to manoeuvre later

I'm aware this is a positive change, my point is as a developer it breeds ever increasing uncertainty. Apple introduce draconian changes penciled in to come into effect in four months time, everyone complains about it, they don't say or do anything about it for four months and then quietly change policy a couple of weeks before it comes into effect.

I'm not saying apple can't act like that, I'm not saying that it might not be in their own business interests, I am saying that it shows complete contempt for the people developing apps for their platform who have to plan around changes that might or might not come into effect and which might or might not be clarified at some point sooner or later but probably later.

On that point we are in complete agreement :)

Reversing a negative doesn't yield a positive, it puts you back at neutral. This is only "positive" if you don't include the previous negative that was a massive abuse of their position.