Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon | Hacker News Reader

Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

news.patreon.com

1,168 pointsmiiiiiike1,018 comments

Another point that Patreon isn't really emphasizing here that seems relevant to any conversations about "fairness" is that Apple's fees on Patreon subscriptions in-app are now higher than Patreon's fees.

It's important to recognize any time that we're talking about the market that services charge what they can, not what is fair. The market does not have a concept of fairness, only competition. This is why there is no such thing as a benevolent monopoly that charges fair prices - because fairness does not exist in the market, only competition.

BUT... since fairness gets so often brought into conversations about Apple's fees, often with the implicit suggestion that Apple "deserves" to be compensated for all of the work they're putting into hosting and curating apps and for (in heavy quotes) "creating" a market that they supposedly also don't have duopoly control over: does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

Like, if we're going to talk about what's egregious and what's not egregious, charging higher fees per-transaction than the platforms you are hosting seems like it might be a good indicator that things have gotten out of control.

Kind of like how realtors make more money on a house transaction than the closing attorneys who draw up all the paperwork and execute it legally.

Or, I would argue, like if a realtor made more money off of the sale than the person selling the house made.

that is easily true. You buy a house for $500k. A year later, you decide to move. The house's value remains at $500k. Realtor commissions of 6% cost you $30k. You lost $30k on the total transaction, the realtor made $30k (not including the original buy).

Surely the realtor shouldn't work for $0 just because your investment didn't pan out, though?

Only on HN would I see someone argue that depreciating or stagnant assets are the same thing as a 30% transaction fee. This community is smart enough to be able to tell the difference between a tax on revenue and a tax on profit.

Apple is imposing a tax on revenue that is higher than the revenue that Patreon pulls in from each transaction fee.

There is no equivalent situation in a realtor market. In no world would a realtor sell your house for $500k and then tell you that they deserve a higher cut of the revenue than you do.

I don't know if that is a good comparison. Our realtor has spent a lot of hours over the past few years showing us homes and writing up more than a few losing bids. It's not constant attention, but so far it's all unpaid.

One is necessary to have a legal transaction, while the other is rent-seeking. People buy cars all the time without agents. We have excellent websites to educate us about car features and locate cars for sale. Realtors keep their racket going by working with each other to get houses sold, while ignoring FSBO homes. In fact, buyer's agents have a conflict of interest in that they get paid more if you pay more for the house. How people accept this befuddles me.

I’ve never had a realtor suggest an offer price or apply the slightest bit of pressure to offer more. Maybe you should find a new realtor.

> It's important to recognize any time that we're talking about the market that services charge what they can, not what is fair. The market does not have a concept of fairness, only competition. This is why there is no such thing as a benevolent monopoly that charges fair prices - because fairness does not exist in the market, only competition.

I agree with you that the reality of markets is quite different to the "common sense" model. Unfortunately I rarely find either in the press or just talking to people myself, that anyone gets beyond this kind of price=cost(1+a little incentive) thinking.

I don't like this action form Apple, but I don't agree with your assessment of market economics here.

The problem with "fairness" is that there is no objective measure of it. Everybody evaluates fairness according to how it aligns with their own personal interests.

This is one of the key problems a free market economy solves. Price discovery is the intersection of what somebody's willing to sell something for, and what somebody else is willing to pay for it. Both of these parties will have a completely different idea of what's fair. That's why fairness is not a valid price discovery mechanism, and I don't think any free market economist has ever advocated for it.

Would this view conclude that there should never be regulation of any sort? Or is there possibly a level of “fairness” that’s evident to the average person?

Regulation is itself neither objective nor fair. Additionally, regulation is not immune from market pressures as the legal environments and incentives they create are also subject to competition. No nation-state has a monopoly on hospitable business environments.

Fairness at its most objective is merely a process. It's not and should not be proselytized as a guarantee of equal outcomes irrespective of circumstances.

> Or is there possibly a level of “fairness” that’s evident to the average person?

The "average person" does not exist and thus doesn't have an opinion representative of an arbitrary individual or group of individuals. A rational flesh-and-blood person can only speak for himself.

>Fairness at its most objective is merely a process.

so basically, you don't care about moral fairness and are fine letting monopolies rule markets and societies. The extreme side of "equal opportunity".

I won't make a moral argument here, but merely a logistical one: country governments have a lot of incentive to not let this happen. For the sake of technological progress, for the sake of ensuring the non-upper class economy (aka, taxable income that won't play Matrix with them in terms of evasion) is healthy enough, and for the sake of minimizing risks of a hostile takeover (be it from the monopoly or foreign powers).

So a truly "free market" only works in a vacuum with benevolant dictators and a united world government. That may take a while.

>The "average person" does not exist

hence why we have multiple fields dedicated to approximating such a person. Because averages are still valuable for many things. From government policy, to targeted marketing, to identifying societal biases.

Oh god how tiresome these libertarians can get. Particularly when they've let their brains be turned into mush by reading too much Ayn Rand, or Mises et al. Hope you grow out of it.

I don't think the parent comment's main point was about using fairness to judge anything - the two main good I questions I got from it are (a) does Apple provide more utility in hosting the apps than the entire Patreon service? and (b) if not, doesn't the fact that it costs more show that something, somewhere is very wrong with the economic model?

I'm a mild advocate of the Apple ecosystem in that I really like the fact it all works together pretty flawlessly for me, with many security headaches taken off my plate. (I'm always reminded of this when every ten years or so I think about trying to save money with a Windows laptop and come running back). But I think the parent comment's suggestion that this isn't about fairness as such, but whether that kind of arrangement is egregiously wrong hits home, and it does make me feel that this is the kind of weird economics that can only come from an unhealthy duopoly of iOS and Android.

What to do about it? I'm not sure the parent or I have any particularly good answers...

This is extremely well phrased.

I will say, I do have opinions about what to do ;) But parent comment is right that I'm not trying to advocate for those opinions above, someone might completely disagree with me about how to respond to the situation, and that's fine.

I'm more just pointing to the situation and saying, "this seems really weird, right? This is not the outcome that any of us would expect or want. Maybe you disagree with me about how to solve this, but this does seem like something we should try to solve."

> The problem with "fairness" is that there is no objective measure of it. Everybody evaluates fairness according to how it aligns with their own personal interests.

With respect, this sounds a little bit like you're agreeing with me?

Another way of phrasing "fairness is not a valid price discovery mechanism" might be to say that fairness as a concept "doesn't exist" in the market, only competition: ie, what people are willing to pay to acquire a service from the available options they have before them, ideally within an environment where low barrier-of-entry to the market allows prices to fall if a service can be legitimately offered cheaper elsewhere, and where regulation sets the (occasional) market cap on how exploitative businesses are able to be. Fairness as a concept is not applicable to market prices: they don't get set because they are "fair", they get set because businesses calculate the maximum amount that people are willing to pay for products before going to a competitor (assuming there is a competitor to go to).

BUT, if people on HN insist on bringing fairness into discussions about anti-competitive behavior (which very often happens in discussions about the app-store), I think that Apple's fees in this case, and the impacts they will have on small-market creators, are unlikely to line up with most people's personal evaluation of "fair".

A sibling comment phrased this in a really good way, I think this is a situation where regardless of how you feel about fairness, you can look at the market outcome and think, "wait a second, something is not right here."

> This is one of the key problems a free market economy solves.

This is one of the key problems a competitive free market economy solves. The distinction is particularly relevant in this case.

> Another point that Patreon isn't really emphasizing here that seems relevant to any conversations about "fairness" is that Apple's fees on Patreon subscriptions in-app are now higher than Patreon's fees.

they are both rent seeking middle-men who abuse network effect, its just one has more power than another.

This gets brought up a lot in conversations about Apple.

In one sense, I agree with it. Patreon is a rent-seeking middleman who abuses network effects. 100%.

But the creators on Patreon who's income are going to be most affected by this don't care about which side of the debate is more likeable to you, and I'm kind of sick of pretending that policies that affect a huge swath of people (often people with limited options, virtually no power, and few backup resources) can be treated like popularity contests.

The video essayists, programmers, artists, authors, and indies doing weird, wonderful work supported through Patreon get their revenue squeezed even tighter, being forced to either bleed revenue or subscribers due to new fees, being forced to abandon revenue models and subscription models that Apple doesn't like.. and, I mean, honestly, "I hate both companies" just is not a valid or acceptable response to that situation.

The solution to rent-seeking middlemen is not to make more of them.

I am wondering why Apple and Patreon even a thing in this market. Most of the content is distributed through Youtube, so Google can just step in, create patreon interface and cut both of them, get some extra revenue, and be a good guy.

Because not everything is distributed on YouTube. I support writers and artists on patreon. That's the bulk of what I support. Even if we say Google, youtube creators already complain about youtube and how it squeezes them so is it really better? Youtube even has a patreon like thing, but creators prefer to diversify the platforms they are on. Especially if, as is common, what they are selling on patreon are things that aren't allowed on youtube.

:shrug: It would be nice to have alternatives, like you say, it's not like Patreon is particularly good at this. I understand that payment processing is kind of hellish to deal with, but that wouldn't be a barrier to a company the size of Apple/Google.

Internet payments/subscription platforms are in desperate need of more competition, even partial competition.

I thought for a while that Youtube was experimenting with paid subscribers? But it's possible that I misunderstood or that Google just got bored and abandoned it.

Youtube already has this through channel membership subscriptions [1]. Billing is through web only.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/intl/en_uk/join/

I am curious, do you think there is an ethical way to be a middleman like this? Would making some one-time fee of maybe $1000 be more or less limiting to potential content creators on Patreon? Would a subscription to keep the Patreon page up be better?

Ultimately, Patreon isn't fundamentally doing something that even a non-tech user can't whip up for their own website. May need to resort to a payment processor (another middleman) to get donations going, but it's possible. I can take my ball home.

Current factors on IOS make it impossible to do the same on IOS, even post DMA they want to rent-seek outside of the App Store. I think that's what makes IOS worse in my eyes.

> I am curious, do you think there is an ethical way to be a middleman like this?

I think ethics is not applicable here. Corps are for profit enterprises, and seek every chance to bring gain to shareholders.

Regulators goal is to support competitive market and healthy business environment, they totally can go after monopolists who abuse network effect and/or put limit on rent amount (say 5-15% from transaction) to support value creators.

>I think ethics is not applicable here. Corps are for profit enterprises, and seek every chance to bring gain to shareholders.

Sure, but the act of charging money for a service isn't inherently unethical. I just want to know where and what lines you draw.

>Regulators goal is to support competitive market and healthy business environment, they totally can go after monopolists who abuse network effect and/or put limit on rent amount (say 5-15% from transaction) to support value creators.

They could, but I'm not optimistic. I think many regulators are out of touch and don't realize how much upkeep digital commerce is saying. They see 30%, assossiate it to the days of brick and mortar which charged much more than that and say "well that's reasonable, Apple needs the money". All while ignoring the different landscape of how much people need to survive these days and how utterly hand over fist the middleman make.

There's just not a lot of empathy these days, and if all these Apple/Google lawsuits as is hasn't changed much, we need that empathy to make change.

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

I'll bite, kind of. People get emotional about particular companies so let's abstract them away: is it possible for a second-tier distributor to bring more value to a first-tier distributor than the first-tier brings to suppliers?

Looking at it that way, sure. It seems obvious. If a local distributor picks up a local product, and then a national distributor buys from the local distributor, it's pretty obvious that the national distributor brings more value.

Looping back to the specifics, if Apple was the primary means that people discover Patreon and the creators on it, sure, it would make sense. But for Patreon specifically that's not the case (I think). The economics would suggest that Patreon should do away with their iOS app, focus iOS users on the web, and everyone would be ahead.

> The economics would suggest that Patreon should do away with their iOS app, focus iOS users on the web, and everyone would be ahead.

Apple doesn’t let web apps do everything that native apps can do. Their App Store is the only way people get apps on their device and if a search for ‘patreon’ in the App Store returns nothing, that’s a lot of confused or angry people that are going to wonder what their monthly bill is for. Maybe some very low double digit percentage of these people will try to load a pwa from patreon.com

In particular Patreon can host things like podcasts so has a media player. The app isn’t just about configuring billing

So Patreon will need to become a reader app like Spotify/Kindle then that can do all this offline but you cannot subscribe or pay in the app.

The problem is that Patreon wouldn't even be able to tell people they can donate to their creators elsewhere due to Apple's assinine anti-steering provisions

This is honestly the main problem I have with that. You can argue that in-app purchase brings convenience etc. etc. and Apple deserves a cut and so on. But this enforced secrecy makes users unaware of the cost - they can't actually decide if the cut is worth the convenience or not. Apple relies on people not knowing the cost of the fees and that feels very dodgy.

That's really a solved problem. As an example, Google manages to have a web version of Youtube that works on iOS mobile Safari adequately. (It's not perfect but it works.)

There doesn't seem to be anything snowflake special the Patreon iOS app needs to do that a web app cannot handle.

Does it support playing media even when it’s backgrounded? Stuff like Picture in Picture?

Youtube is unusable on any platform without ad blocking, so who cares :)

Yep. It works with Democracy Now!'s web player.

> Their App Store is the only way people get apps on their device and if a search for ‘patreon’ in the App Store returns nothing, that’s a lot of confused or angry people that are going to wonder what their monthly bill is for.

I just searched the App Store for Patreon:

The top hit was an ad for Ashley Madison. Seriously.

The second hit was the Patreon app.

The third hit was ChatGPT for some reason.

But if the Patreon app was not in the App Store, no doubt there would be a bunch of scammers trying to pose as the official Patreon app.

Isn’t the whole point of the 30% apple tax to make sure their App Store isn’t full of garbage?

Yep, interesting how that massive cut of revenue doesn’t do a thing to actually help consumers, who as a consequence are shunted with the bill anyway.

Not only but also; as with a real tax from a government, all the money goes into a big pot, gets mixed around, and then the expenses come out unevenly from that pot.

I'm not at all aware of where the boundary is between "that's fine" and "that's abuse of market dominance to fund uneconomical expansion".

Does anywhere have a specific "national defence" tax and another "police fund" tax etc. for each expense, rather than "income tax" and "sales tax" for each source?

IMHO profits should be ringfenced by activity and taxed accordingly - otherwise you end up with funds from one activity being used to subsidize another without taxation, creating an unfair environment for competition. Youtube being the perfect modern example.

That Ashely Madison listing is a paid listing. The first one or two items in results are always paid listings.

We're all aware of App Store Search Ads. I even said, "The top hit was an ad for Ashley Madison." But thanks for the mansplaining.

Jerk

What? I have many many many monthly bills that are not iPhone apps. My gas bill may or may not have an iOS app, but I'm sure as hell not confused and angry if it doesn't.

Your gas bill is probably charged and billed directly by the gas supplier.

People get confused very easily when small digital subscriptions are charged through third parties on behalf of sellers whose name is often different from the app or service.

I'm not sure a shop app fixes that though. Better communication and better choice of names seems far more important.

I’m not sure who is regularly hitting the App Store to search for apps. I did back when the 3GS was out(, and maybe through the 5, but I assumed it was mostly boomers and the silent generation doing that.

Are you implying a significant portion of the population who stop paying things like their water bill when they find no hits within the iOS App Store?

> Looking at it that way, sure. It seems obvious. If a local distributor picks up a local product, and then a national distributor buys from the local distributor, it's pretty obvious that the national distributor brings more value.

That isn't obvious at all. In both cases the distributor's margin will reflect how much competition they have. If there is only one distributor, their margin will be large. If there are a thousand, competition will force their margins down. Whether they're local or national.

Moreover, in this context Patreon is the national distributor who needs to distribute content to everyone whether they have iOS, Android, web or something else, and each of the platforms is a local subcontractor for a subset of the customers. Which leads to exactly the problem. The notion that Google and Apple are in competition with one another in this context is false, because to distribute to Android customers you need Google and to distribute to iOS customers you need Apple. You can't switch from one to the other because Google can't distribute to iOS customers. They're each a different market serving different customers, and then they collect a monopoly rent.

What the usual trope that analogizes this to Walmart or Target is missing is that "Walmart customers" are also customers of Target or Amazon, but the large majority of iOS customers are not also customers of Google Play or any other app store.

> The notion that Google and Apple are in competition with one another in this context is false, because to distribute to Android customers you need Google and to distribute to iOS customers you need Apple.

It is still competition even in this context, it just happens on a slightly slower cadence. The Apple customers, by and large, are paying good money to avoid Google's app store because they believe Apple is a better steward on net.

Every time I buy a phone I have to ask if Apple's bad software decisions outweigh the costs of signing up with Google. So far the answer has been one sided in Apple's favour. Consideration of things like this with Patreon come up at phone purchase time.

You are wildly overthinking it. The average apple customer spends money on the apple app store because there is no alternative. Simple as.

> It is still competition even in this context, it just happens on a slightly slower cadence. The Apple customers, by and large, are paying good money to avoid Google's app store because they believe Apple is a better steward on net.

You're looking at a different market. The customer in this context is Patreon and the product is app distribution. Patreon needs a way to distribute their app to all of their customers. Many of their customers have iOS, so Patreon needs app distribution to customers with iOS, and there is only one supplier of that.

>is it possible for a second-tier distributor to bring more value to a first-tier distributor than the first-tier brings to suppliers?

In the sense that [bigger company] can make more money and reach more people than [smaller company], yes. But if all they are doing is sitting there and using that bigger presence, you can see how that roads ends in antitrust.

>The economics would suggest that Patreon should do away with their iOS app, focus iOS users on the web, and everyone would be ahead.

two big issues.

1. No one wins. Users lose the convinience of an app, Apple loses money from a potential large customer, Patreon loses views from being visible on the app store. It's just bad buzz all around for no good reason.

2. The underselling point that Apple has actively sabatoged web apps and PWA's which is part of why the DMA is coming down hard on them. We're well past a monopolistic power using its power to stifle competition.

Let's not pretend this trillion dollar company that already forces devs to use IOS hardware to develop (and took down their server OS's to boot), and charges a yearly membership to dev is scaping for cash here.

> In the sense that [bigger company] can make more money and reach more people than [smaller company], yes. But if all they are doing is sitting there and using that bigger presence, you can see how that roads ends in antitrust.

I don't follow this at all. If a big record label strikes an international distribution deal with a small label, the big label brings more value to the artist than the small label does. Is that necessarily antitrust?

> Let's not pretend this trillion dollar company that already forces devs to use IOS hardware to develop (and took down their server OS's to boot), and charges a yearly membership to dev is scaping for cash here.

I think you replied to the wrong post? I certainly didn't assert that out of pretense or otherwise. Though it's hard for me to fault "forcing" devs to own the hardware they are developing for. Phone software and iOS software have enough quality issues without letting developers ship stuff that has never been tested on real HW.

>If a big record label strikes an international distribution deal with a small label, the big label brings more value to the artist than the small label does. Is that necessarily antitrust?

it ultimately comes down to what they are doing with that money in my eyes. Are they actually distributing as a presence inernationally, helping you gather talent, helping you to navigate the industry outside your area, introducing contacts and deals to you, and overall being pivotal to your small label? Sure, they get a bigger cut. They are actively growing you as a company.

Or are they saying "yeah I'll put you on our Spotify", pay you 10% of ad revenue, claiming exclusivity on your portfolio, and calling it a day? No, there's no value there that couldn't be done yourself. But you're paying for the "platform" they have. That is very much using their presence to exploit you. The key isn't necessarily "are they a monopoly" here, it's "are they abusing their position as a monopoly".

>Though it's hard for me to fault "forcing" devs to own the hardware they are developing for.

It's a tech specific sitution, but the main point wasn't the target platform, but development platforms. I can setup a Linux server rack with android emulators and use my Windows device to develop and deploy to said rack. I am forced to use mac as a development platform and they disconinued Mac's server OS. So I can't even scale up a test suite for IOS, I need to buy multiple iPhones or beefy desktop Macs to run a few emulators each.

>iOS software have enough quality issues without letting developers ship stuff that has never been tested on real HW.

great use of my subscription fee to maintain crappy emulators. They don't even have platform excuses like Android does.

Again, what am I really paying for here?

Does Honda bring more value to customers than your local dealership? The world may never know.

Does Warner Brothers being more value to customers than AMC?

Unfortunately this is in the nature of suppliers and retailers.

Supermarkets make more profit on a litre of milk than farmers. Way way way more. Because they know farmers in practice have to sell _all_ their milk, not just some of it.

And what Apple really has, and knows it, is the only supermarket on the main road out of iBorough. And there are no corner shops.

Often milk is a 'loss leader' for supermarkets. They put it as far away from the entrance as possible so you have to walk through the whole store.

Is this really true? Maybe it just makes sense to put high demand refrigerated products in the refrigerated room near the loading dock where the refrigerated trailer is unloaded?

Yeah, I hear people repeat that a lot, but it doesn't entirely align with my experience. A lot of the grocery stores I shop at (mostly Kroger and other national chains,) have a cooler right up front with the most popular dairy/refrigerated items for the people that are just there to pick those up.

All the Krogers I've been to have had the dairy opposite the entrance.

Milk is not a loss leader: they aren’t losing money on it to get you to spend elsewhere.

It’s profitable for supermarkets.

(They definitely do manipulate milk prices to get consumers to shop with them rather than competitors, and sometimes they artificially lower the prices. But they don’t ever do this at their own expense. They do it by forcing farmers to supply below the true cost of production. Because dairy farmers can’t just sell some of their milk. Essentially as soon as a dairy farmer can’t get a buyer for the totality of their product they are out of business. It’s remarkably precarious. So most are pressured into selling below cost for long periods of time.)

Supermarkets might be using it to get customers deeper into the store but milk is also heavy, awkward, refrigerated, and shorter shelf life, which means they are always going to put it closest to the back of the store.

It’s time for tech (not just Apple) to be broken up. If only we haven’t defanged the regulatory agencies …

> It’s time for tech (not just Apple) to be broken up. If only we haven’t defanged the regulatory agencies …

I think you mean we should de-FAANG the regulatory agencies.

Broken up in what way, and how would it help?

Generally, the Apple Store would be a separate company from Apple phones. A user gets to choose which store they want to use on their phone. Along with other things like which map app is the default.

This way, the different stores could compete - by charging lower fees or offering more services. Like the android store does a bare-bones check of the app and so it only charges 10%. Apple checks every app throughly, so it charges 15%. Some open source store might have 0% fee, have no app checks, no payment processing, and it is 100% on the user not to download infested software.

Although I agree in principle, the counter-argument to this is that Apple would ultimately be blamed in the minds of consumers for not keeping those devices protected from bad software. They could say I told you so, but that doesn’t help them after the golden goose of the App Store has already been cooked.

>the counter-argument to this is that Apple would ultimately be blamed in the minds of consumers for not keeping those devices protected from bad software.

To be brash, maybe consumers need to learn how to protect themselves or move to dumb hardware that is impractical to hack. I don't understand this trend of blaming corporations for not being the de facto gatekeeper of security. They should help minimize spam/malware, but if you're going out of your way to disable those securities (likened to turning off Windows Defender after 2 warnings), your insecurities are self-inflicted.

Many "opponents" aren't asking to change the default experience. They simply want the reigns to take those risks and tinker. Most people can barely even find the theme settings on Android; I won't believe a signifigant portion will get through idiot-proof safeguards just because "well they have a chance to now!"

I don’t know look at all those people turning off sound check (volume leveling between songs) on their iPhones based on complete fabrications and misunderstanding of what it is and how it works. It’s buried deep, but people still do it.

As a technically minded person, I must say I don’t know how to protect myself from secretly malicious apps.

A weather app needs my location and network access. It doesn’t need to sell ongoing location tracking information associated with my device identifier and IP addresses to marketing companies.

> It doesn’t need to sell ongoing location tracking information associated with my device identifier and IP addresses to marketing companies.

fortunately, GDPR covers that already. Or CPPA if you reside in California.

But that's not quite what by Malicious. Malice implies intent for bad desires. A company selling your weather tracking data with dubious consent is simply greedy. It very likely wouldn't be in your top 10 list of perpetrators if your phone was hacked, wiped, or stolen.

I've been a software engineer for a while, but I don't solve this using a technical approach. I've avoided having apps abuse me by choosing apps written by folks that have no incentive to abuse me. This means going to open source and community-driven apps as much as possible. Of course there will always be proprietary apps and in those cases I need to look at the entity that wrote the app and how much I trust it in terms of their development practices and incentives.

I've used Android for more than 15 years and have never had an issue with malware or viruses or anything of the sort. 90% of this is refusing to install apps that I don't absolutely need. And the rest of it is probably using open source and community apps instead of corporate apps whenever possible.

Unfortunately, the approach of "de-commercializing your phone" is not something that Apple will ever support or allow because it doesn't make them any money. Luckily on Android, I have access to FDroid, which makes this entire approach possible.

> To be brash, maybe consumers need to learn how to protect themselves or move to dumb hardware that is impractical to hack.

Most people can't use systems well enough to take charge of their protection. Ideally they wouldn't need to use systems beyond their competence any more than I should have to synthesise my own ibuprofen from scratch (I wouldn't know where to begin), but software ate the world so they can't opt-out either.

Old survey now, but I doubt the results would be significantly different today: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/a-quarter-of-adults-c...

> I don't understand this trend of blaming corporations for not being the de facto gatekeeper of security

Governments, the alternative place to seek security, can't do it. The attacks are global in origin, cross border government cooperation isn't at that level, while all Apple local corporations worldwide are all aligned with the one in California.

This trend was preceded with "install antivirus", which had some overlap with "don't connect to the internet" back when that was practically possible.

> They should help minimize spam/malware, but if you're going out of your way to disable those securities (likened to turning off Windows Defender after 2 warnings), your insecurities are self-inflicted.

Those warnings are themselves seen as Apple trying to prevent people switching to other stores.

> I won't believe a signifigant portion will get through idiot-proof safeguards just because "well they have a chance to now!"

What counts as "significant"?

For example, 1% of a nation having their bank accounts drained would be a huge issue — I think that's about 15 times what ransomware currently costs per year.

I've yet to encounter a system so well designed that it's at the 99% level of "idiot-proot", the closest they get is by being the exact opposite: too hard to use so the idiots hurt themselves some other way first.

> I don't understand this trend of blaming corporations for not being the de facto gatekeeper of security.

Not only security. Keep in mind that most of these gatekeepers come from a country where they prefer violence to sex.

What a cluster fuck that would become.

I can see it now: needing to have 15 different stores with subscriptions to get apps who all have different deals with different apps for exclusivity.

No thanks.

I think an important aspect is that exclusivity deals should just be illegal in general. In that scenario, or with movie streaming right now, the different stores/platforms don't actually compete with each other. They are in a money throwing contest over who can get the most exclusive licences. Their actual product, streaming a video to your device, isn't relevant to competing at all.

This is also the sole reason why I will refuse to install the epic games launcher. They whine about steams dominant market share while they try to force people to use their platform. Instead of actually competing with Steam, because that would require epic to make a better product and that needs effort.

And yet that isn't the case on Android, macOS, Windows, etc.

This nightmare scenario only exists in your own mind and you're spooking yourself over it.

Android store is the only one anyone gives a shit about, and even there, to suggest that android is anything but a monopolized store is you living in a land of rainbows and unicorns

We are already seeing it on PC where epic is buying titles. Microsoft it’s trying to make my exact nightmare scenario a reality each passing day.

Just cause you lack imagination of corporate bullshit harming consumers in an unending chain doesn’t mean everyone is unable to see it.

Windows store, steam, Xbox game pass, epic… That’s just off the top of my head, then you have the package mangers like WinGet and chocolatey.

Compare how many toxic practices there are in steam games with phone games and yeah, I massively prefer that over the app store monopoly.

App stores encourages shitty practices over healthy ecosystems, the model for computers has resulted in much better products with less consumer hostile practices.

Apple isn't an expert on games, they shouldn't decide what games to suggest and what games should be allowed on the phone, a dedicated game store would be a huge upgrade.

Edit: And no, phone games aren't consumer hostile because they are on phones, they are consumer hostile since the appstore encourages the games to be consumer hostile. You don't see many in-app purchases or ads in steam games since steam doesn't encourage those, while the appstore encourages it.

So you see phone games be shit because the appstore, do you really like phone games as they are or would you prefer them to be like steam? I don't think anyone prefers the phone game in-app purchase toxicity we have now.

> needing to have 15 different stores with subscriptions to get apps who all have different deals with different apps for exclusivity.

the stores are just that. These aren't PC launchers that monitor every game for achievements or act as communication hubs.

The store pops up (and not even the whole store, just some financial popup or webpage) when I need to pay and is otherwise just some icon in a drawer idling. I don't see managing subscriptions anymore annoying than managing 15 subscriptions from different websites. And if that's annoying there are apps and sites to manage that. Just like any other utility bill you have).

Alternatively: don't download any other stores. Again, these aren't games: how many times do you need to search something up and don't find at least 10 different apps that solves the problem?

Remove app stores completely, kill the "app" concept, and force platform providers to offer to browsers the same capabilities as apps.

Browser capability has been stiffled by the drive from Apple and Google to favor apps (e.g. Safari is the IE of 2024). It's high time this trend is reversed.

If it was an open platform, then Apple couldn't charge any more than Steam which is on an open platform, because nobody would pay that much unless forced to.

Wait, Steam charges more?

Never mind.

If you're suggesting that Steam doesn't have an effective monopoly on the PC market, I have bad news for you. One of the biggest differences between Steam and Apple is that Steam does a better job of hiding the effects from users who will lash out at creators who talk about problems on the platform.

An indie creator I follow recently implored fans to buy their next game on Steam and not other platforms... because in order to be profitable they absolutely needed to get their game to be ranked on Steam above a certain review threshold, and reviews of the game would only count towards their ranking if matched with specifically a Steam purchase. And once again, I get this weird feeling. I'm struck that at the point where a creator is begging users to reinforce the most dominant PC gaming platform because if those users buy the game somewhere else that has better creator terms and fees, the platform will (in effect) punish their store listing, something might be going wrong with the market.

Sometimes Apple advocates will point at similarly bad situations in other markets and say, "what, are you going to regulate that too?"

Don't threaten me with a good time.

A huge difference is Steam doesn't come pre-installed on your computers nor does it block you from installing other game managers.

Fair point.

I do think Steam is engaged in anti-competitive behavior, but that doesn't mean they're the full equivalent of the app store. And we can see on the PC market the large number of indie games that very literally would not exist if PCs were locked into only using Steam.

My point here is more that Steam is not really a good argument for justifying a pricing model. But it's a good clarification that in many ways Steam has "only" mostly locked down the PC gaming market, where Apple has gone further and locked down the actual software that can be loaded onto the phone.

Unrelated, I've noticed for a few years now, several of those HN similarity things claim we're proximate.

Perhaps they just think we both say Apple a lot.

Huh, that's interesting. I've never really looked into them before, but could be. Might also be speaking style or which articles we comment on.. I don't really know what metrics they look for :shrug:

I always buy on Gog first because they really care about the user. No DRM, the ability to download safe copies in case some lawsuit happens and things get pulled out (e.g. like half the music in GTA San Andreas!).

I understand you as a creator prefer steam but I wouldn't obey that, sorry. Also, reinforcing their market position is not in my best interest as a consumer.

I think you may have accidentally misread my post, or maybe I didn't word it carefully enough (in which case I apologize for the confusion). I don't prefer Steam. As a consumer, on principle in most cases I refuse to buy from it.

Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.

In a normal market, having a diverse set of users across multiple platforms would be a good thing as a creator, it would give you security and give each platform less power over you. Steam uses their review system to punish smaller creators who have a diverse userbase, and it uses their response to cement its market dominance even more and to give itself more power over those creators and their players. I would argue this is bad for the market.

My bigger point here is that Apple advocates will sometimes point to Steam and say "they charge high fees too, what's the problem?" There's are multiple reasons that Steam is able to charge higher fees than most of its PC competitors and remain the dominant platform for PC games, some of them due to the way that it methodically weaponizes incentives for both players and creators against alternatives. Comparing Apple to Steam does not make me like Apple more.

Supporting your "I don't prefer Steam" point, I make a point of supporting Gog (and SetApp!), only to find out that many of the games sold there are crippleware. Deep in the fine print of the non-DRM'd version distributed as 44 floppy disks (OK, not quite, but it feels like Slackware from the 90s nonetheless) is that this non-DRM version cannot multiplayer, not even offline LAN in the household.

Even more surprising, Gog's DRM'd version multiplayer may require ... STEAM! ... to run.

This is galling.

(For the game that most annoyed me, Baldur's Gate 3, this may have changed once Larian introduced their own cloud sync. I haven't tried again, the first experience was that tedious.)

>Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.

Main difference is steam is pretty clever about how they do this. They will pull out very fast if customers start to complain, maybe reworking it later on (paid mods -> steam workshop). Meanwhile, devs on the wrong end of the stick can get some of the worst customer service out there behind the curtain. The only way to get steam to respond is to be lucky enough to cause enough customer ire (e.g. Stein's Gate prequel not being approved for Steam. Despite having an ESRB rating... until customers complained).

That's how you get stuff like the Wolfire lawsuit but people chastising Wolfire instead of Valve.

Most other companies don't even pretend to care and just eat the PR hit. That cynicism will build up over the years, so there's much less sympathy for Apple.

How can you call any of that "punishment" or anti-competitive?

Steam offers the far superior platform, in every possible aspect. Every thing you've said is them OFFERING (not FORCING) better solutions to things.

For example, in what universe do you think it's sane to think a store front should accept random reviews from random people? Having bought the game is the one of the best metrics to tell if a review is even approaching sincerity.

Not having random reviews in the steam reviews is a feature.

And in the context of Android or iOS, the PC gaming market is SUPER DUPER EXTRA diverse. I own games in like 5 different stores, but always prefer Steam or GOG where possible.

Offering better services and getting more user because of it is not malicious or anti-competitive or monopolistic. It's the best possible outcome (assuming you like capitalism).

I see the parallels that you're drawing and I agree with you, but I still see major distinctions.

The biggest example I'd like to call out here is that I recently moved from Nintendo Switch to Steam Deck. I was astonished by how much the Steam Deck is just a Linux computer. And I was fully able to install Heroic Launcher, which is compatible with GOG, and install all my GOG games on my Steam Deck and have them work just fine. This is light years away from where Apple is. If Apple had anything remotely like this, I would be a customer quite quickly. But it's the lack of freedom and choice that I find so objectionable.

> If you're suggesting that Steam doesn't have an effective monopoly on the PC market, I have bad news for you.

Not what I'm suggesting. In fact, you're making my case beautifully.

I'm agreeing that the PC being "open" isn't what makes the difference.

People are barking up the wrong tree. Your argument is much as the one I made elsewhere in this thread for why there's Amazon when there's Alibaba, and Amazon can charge not percentages more, but many times the price, for same products.

Tangentially, "imploring" people reminds me: I encourage Mac and iPhone toting friends to try SetApp. It's like Apple Arcade but for utilities. It's not from Apple, and people are confused it works for iOS. Once they try it, they set it and forget it. I don't know if it's working for the app owners there, but the value/reward seems much more balanced than the world where every widget wants $119.88 to 239.88 a year (12 x $19.99).

Less tangentially, there are ways to exploit users and ways to add value. The second is harder.

Apologies, I misunderstood what you were saying. Generally good reminder to me to regularly take a step back and try to figure out when I'm reading more into a comment than what was intended.

> I'm agreeing that the PC being "open" isn't what makes the difference.

This is a good point, but I do think the "open" part is possibly a pre-condition to making a difference. But that's kind of squabbling over details, I completely agree that iOS being open to sideloading would not be enough to change the dynamics.

And we know this because... well, Android exists. Android is a really good example of how sideloading is great and something that I love, but also not sufficient on its own to curb anti-competitive behavior.

You're comparing apples to sofas, in my opinion.

The issue with monopolies isn't just their existence, it's their active efforts to keep their monopoly and the negative effects this has on the customer.

Apples monopoly hurts customer, reduces freedom and extracts rent from developers that HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE.

Steams (supposed) monopoly comes entirely from offering the better product to users and developers. Did you know you can generate Steam keys of your game FOR FREE, and sell them away from Steam, giving Steam 0% cut and 99% of the distribution costs?

Compared to Apple, the vast amount of options on PC to acquire software or games means Steam isn't even close to a monopoly. At the very least, they don't have the power to do monopolistic practices and they also just don't abuse them.

Steam is genuinely the closest thing to a perfect company (at least if you like capitalism).

Your "nobody" is doing all the work. Steam distributes to Windows, but you aren't required to use Steam to distribute to Windows, and then many people don't. Adobe isn't paying Valve to distribute their suite. Epic doesn't use it for Fortnite. Random enterprise software developers have nothing to do with it.

It's like pointing to the existence of people who willingly buy a BMW as a justification for forcing everyone to buy a BMW whether they want it or not.

Adobe isn't paying Apple either.

You buy Adobe from Adobe, "Get" Adobe from Apple, and log in with an email.

Also, a minority of consumers by headcount choose Apple. A majority of wallet share is spent by those who do choose it. That's behind most of the sour grapes.

48% (uk) ain’t no minority. This is a duopoly

> You buy Adobe from Adobe, "Get" Adobe from Apple, and log in with an email.

This is the sort of thing where Apple is playing politics, disallowing the same behavior for others while carving an exception for the ones with enough influence.

Ask yourself why Adobe can do this but not Patreon.

> Also, a minority of consumers by headcount choose Apple. A majority of wallet share is spent by those who do choose it. That's behind most of the sour grapes.

This argument makes no sense. People don't want to be paying 30% to Google Play either. Maybe this is why they complain about Apple more than Google, but the nature of the complaint is the same regardless of how the user base is distributed.

Adobe absolutely supports in-app purchasing for Creative Cloud. So does Microsoft with O365.

These conversations often seem to miss that Apple’s requirement is that consumer purchasing be presented as the singular option in-app, not that you have to pay Apple a cut for purchases outside the App.

Even Amazon Video supports in-app purchasing of a Prime account restricted to Prime Video access. They just know next to nobody is going to use it vs an actual Prime account.

>It's like pointing to the existence of people who willingly buy a BMW as a justification for forcing everyone to buy a BMW whether they want it or not.

products aren't markets. Steam is a market and many games only launch on Steam. That's a sign of a monopoly, be it deserved or not.

Still, I'd rather have some aspects investigated because monopolies are historally dangerous.

Steam is both a store and a promotional system, but the fee for the promotion is built into their cut for selling your product in their store.

If people are willingly paying this because the promotion is worth it, that's not necessarily a monopoly. And you can tell if they're willingly paying it because they have the option to distribute to the same customers by other viable means, without paying the fee but also without getting the promotion. And then as we can see, some people pay and other people don't.

You could make the different argument that they have a monopoly on games promotion by itself. I don't know if you'd win that one or not, but regardless it's distinct from what Apple is doing.

I don't want to too into the weeds of Steam here, so I'll keep this one really brief:

>but the fee for the promotion

I don't think 'putting product on shelf' is 'promotion'. IF that's your only reason and begging the question leads to "becasuse we have 90% of the userbaase", that's a monopoly. Steam is lauded by their audience for only using their local history to recommend games (i.e. they have a realtively simple tagging system they rely on to serve games), so I wouldn't say this is anymore promotion that Google Search is promting "best game 2024" when I search "best game 2024" (in some utopia where the first 3 results were SEO slop).

>If people are willingly paying this because the promotion is worth it, that's not necessarily a monopoly.

I really hope people day understand the difference between "monopoly" and "monopolization", because this seems to always come up in this topic.

"Monopoly" is a very mechanical, neutral term, legally speaking.

>The term “monopoly” is often used to describe instances where there is a single seller of a good in a market...However, despite the general animosity towards monopolies, not all monopolies are illegal. Examples of permissible monopolies include... Monopolies created purely by one seller having a superior product, business acumen, or having good fortune (ex. online search engines, social media sites)

So yes, you can in fact say Steam is a monopoly (in an objective, legal sense), but also argue it not being illegal because "seller has a superiod prouct/business". Monopoly is not a scary word by itself.

In terms of its 90% marketshare and indusry warping effects, it'd be very hard to argue that Steam isn't a monopoly. It'd be easier to argue Google/Apple in mobile aren't monopolies; At least they have each other to shield from their duopoly. Steam has no contender in the US.

"Monopolization" is a scary word.

>In United States antitrust law, monopolization is illegal monopoly behavior. The main categories of prohibited behavior include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing.

One leads to the other, so I don't blame people for conflating one or another, but it's an important distinction if we're going to start trying to talk about what is/isn't a monopoly, or monopolizing behavior.

----

So, does steam engage in monopolization? Yes, but in much more subtle ways than what Apple/Google are doing. They are very smart about it because they care a lot about consumer feedback, and consumer feedback drives a lot of discussion on social media. But that's a discussion for another inevitable day.

People choosing the better product is not and has never been a monopoly. It requires active anti-competitive actions to maintain that monopoly that makes it a monopoly.

At least, that's the way I've seen people speak of monopolies exclusively.

> Wait, Steam charges more?

Yes, and no? It's funny because steam works the opposite way. They charge 30% but reduce the cut if the publishers makes over $X million a year (I think it's 25, but I can be wrong). Apple charges 15% if you're under 1m/year or 30% otherwise.

but yes, Steam was another early adopter of digital commerce and is leveraging its (slightly illogical, IMO) network effects.

Apple doesnt need to be broken up, they just need to be forced to open their devices. No proprietary apis that only they have access to, when you open the phone for the first time you should be able to pick what store to use and they have to allow alternative browsers

I agree that consumer ownership rights to their computers are the more pressing issue, but Apple should probably also be broken up. The problem is how to do that without destroying the value they bring to consumers, i.e. where do you draw the lines internally?

I don't think it's possible to break them up without immense value destruction.

Breaking up standard oil famously created a lot more value.

Apparently that's still controversial (I learned just now while trying to learn more about the breakup). However, it was easy to see cut lines in Standard Oil.

Breaking up (and privatising) the UK national rail network didn't work so well; a few years after it happened, the party who did it lost power, and had apparently forgotten they had even done this to the trains as they were running ads saying "you paid the taxes so where are the trains".

Apple's iPhone can clearly be split into "hardware" and "software" because Android QED; but that's not sufficient because the Play Store gets much the same criticism.

Likewise the App Store can obviously be split off, the technical issues are demonstrated by what already exists. But, the Samsung store isn't stopping the criticism of the Play Store, so alt stores are also not enough here for iOS either.

I was expecting anti-trust issues before it reached "just" one trillion dollars of market cap, let alone three, so who knows.

There is such a thing as a natural monopoly. Usually these are more efficient when run by the government because they inherently cannot benefit from the advantages of market competition.

My guess is that, whenever there's a possibility of innovation then competition is great and private corporations are the best; but when that period comes to an end, when the private corporations naturally merge together to save money by eliminate duplicate functions or improving scale efficiencies, then government buy-outs, nationalisation, is the best — everything that would have been a shareholder dividend, instead becomes a taxpayer saving.

Even if this is correct (unlikely, I'm not an economist) I have no idea how it would interact with globalisation/multinationals.

I'm not sure what amounts to "personal computing" is quite a natural monopoly, but it is important and foundational enough for modern life that it deserves special protection.

Personal computing is not quite a natural monopoly because it's easy to buy a different device but the rent seeking app store and not letting users install their own software is absolutely an anti competitive monopoly.

I think payment collection needs to be. Any sufficiently large payment infra becomes a vehicle for religious evangelism, and at that point it needs to be removed from private hands.

Nah, just Apple. Whenever any other tech company tries bullshit like this, alternatives pop up and people switch to them. When Apple tries it people make excuses for them.

If only we haven’t defanged the regulatory agencies …

FTC is more active than it's ever been under Liza Khan, particularly in this sphere

Fair is what two consenting adults agree to in the market place.

>does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

I will. If most apple users refuse to go outside the app store for their content, Than clearly they care more about the ease of access than the content itself.

I agree that the high proportion t of take between the two firms says a lot about the state of the market. It also says a lot about the users, and what they care about.

I think people are shocked by these outcomes because they aren't used to thinking about transaction costs as meaningful. Transfer, trust, and triangulation are critical parts of an exchange, and their costs can be even greater than the good itself.

> Fair is what two consenting adults agree to in the market place.

This has been known to not be true since capitalism was first conceived. I am the biggest free market capitalism proponent and what apple has on their app store is not free market capitalism, its pure rent seeking.

Apple users should be able to decide what software and stores run on the device that they own.

> Apple users should be able to decide what software and stores run on the device that they own.

They do decide, right when they buy their phone.

And since we live in a democracy with laws where Apple's current arrangement can be voted to be made illegal, we can also decide to force Apple to open their device ecosystem (which may already be illegal).

Yeah we could. But just because we do, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing or the smart thing to do. Once upon a time alcohol was voted illegal and even now marijuana is federally illegal.

I personally think it’s a shame when the government takes something interesting and working and makes it illegal. Patreon could easily not be an app on iOS, but they really want that money, so now the government has to make laws on apple. Doesn’t make sense to me

do we really call "give us your subscription money or get banned" an "interesting and working" system? That's pretty much peak antitrust fuel there. This is quite literally what Epic spent years in court fighing over.

> "give us your subscription money or get banned"

This is literally so many businesses. Are you kidding me? Get a membership at a gym. Then stop paying the subscription. And see if they kick you out or not. Or stop paying your netflix bill. See if netflix bans you. Btw, stop paying your patreon, see if you still get the videos. Every subscription business is literally give us your subscription or get banned.

I don't care what Epic is fighting in court over. Why is that mega corp the good mega corp? Mcdonalds spent years in court fighting the responsibility to pay for some woman's burns.

>it’s a shame when the government takes something interesting and working and makes it illegal.

Do you also think monopolies should be allowed to operate uninterrupted, then?

No I don't, but I get the feeling that you missed an assumption in the middle which is that Apple/iOS is a monopoly.

It's clear to me Patreon is not forced into having an iOS app. They do so because they think they can make more money. But they could be web only.

All of these entities already have a presence on Android + desktop/web and can operate just fine on those. They just want to make more money from the iOS audience.

In theory, you could. In reality, however, you're not going to. Maybe the EU will, but it won't happen in the US.

You know that's not what the OP meant.

"Apple users should be able to decide what software and stores run on the device that they own."

It should be able to be decided while owning it, not before. The point is that a phone that doesn't give the user the same level of control over the software that the manufacturer has simply should not exist. It should not be left to market forces.

Yeah I know that’s not what OP meant. The problem is OP is not fully thinking things through with principles.

All these “problems” with walled gardens are well known and consenting adults keep opting into it time and again.

I think it’s arrogant to look at a system you aren’t even participating in (can we assume op doesn’t have an iPhone) and say “no those people are doing it wrong”

I don't like this "you consent to the walled garden" approach for a very simple reason: you can do both. Jailbreaking has existed for over a decade but no one was complaining about the walled garden collapsing.

Opening up IOS doesn't mean you need to open up too. The garden isn't going anywher. Take it from an android user that has had choice and google play is still the dominant platform. It's just nice that when/if I need to I can download open source stuff, or games in foreign languages, or just sideload some random apps I tinker with without paying $100 for something I don't plan on releasing to the app store anyway.

These are all very niche uses and I don't understand how my existence inconvinences the garden.

>I think it’s arrogant to look at a system you aren’t even participating in (can we assume op doesn’t have an iPhone) and say “no those people are doing it wrong”

I do it with Russia and North Korea, so call me whatever you want. I'm not just going to dimiss it as "well its their culture" if their culture breaks fundamental principles I was raised on.

> I do it with Russia and North Korea, so call me whatever you want. I'm not just going to dimiss it as "well its their culture" if their culture breaks fundamental principles I was raised on.

Are you really equating the human rights atrocities of those nations with Apple business practices?

Here's the difference - Putin kills people who disagree with him. If you want to leave Russia, people with guns stop you (see East Berlin).

And you want to equate that with simply making a choice to not buy an iPhone and buy another phone instead?

I agree, under the assumption that users jailbreak their devices. In my mind Apple has zero obligation to enable it maximum leeway to obstruct it. The people don't want they locked down single function phone, they shouldn't buy one.

>under the assumption that users jailbreak their devices

if that didn't void warranty, I'd accept it as a reasonable workaround. But on top of that I'm pretty sure Apple acively fights with jailbreaking and jailbreakers in particular.

>In my mind Apple has zero obligation to enable it maximum leeway to obstruct it.

They might soon, given DMA. In my mind, Microsoft got dinged for antitrust decades ago and Apple has gone so beyond that line that I'm surprised Europe had to step in before the US. Even Mac OS isn't locked down this hard (helps that it started fundamentally as a BSD fork) so it just tells me this is exploiting its monopoly.

>The people don't want they locked down single function phone, they shouldn't buy one.

opposite argument works as well. An open world does not stop you from staying in the walled garden. If you really don't want to use anything other than the App store, that's fine. You just miss out on a few apps like you have for 16 years with Android stuff that Apple banned.

> If most apple users refuse to go outside the app store for their content, Than clearly they care more about the ease of access than the content itself.

Does Apple's refusal to allow apps to tell users about lower prices elsewhere make this claim more likely to be true or less likely to be true? If this is a free choice that consumers are making, why does Apple need to hide it from them?

I'm reminded of the same arguments that Facebook made about privacy before Apple (very much to their credit) made opt-outs a requirement for apps. And it turned out that lots of users did care about privacy when they were able to make an informed choice about it. Facebook's arguments ended up being mostly crap. Users, when educated and when given valid options, stopped making the choice that Facebook wanted them to make.

But now Apple has flipped over to Facebook's line of reasoning and is arguing the opposite.

I think your argument would have more weight if Apple didn't consistently demonstrate aggression and fear over their users being informed about the effects of app store fees. In this case, the vast majority of Patreon subscriptions for most users are going to become 30% more expensive. Apple appears to have an incredibly high vested interest in it not being explained to them why that happened.

That doesn't sound to me like Apple itself is confident that users value their app store enough to pay that fee willingly.

This is kind of the crux of the matter to me. Apple, in this instance, is basically a credit card with a 30% transaction fee, and it's using its dominance in the mobile phone market to force everyone who uses their phone (via their app store policies) to use their credit cards instead of ones with 3% transaction fees, which is pretty classic behavior outlawed by antitrust legislation.

> Does Apple's refusal to allow apps to tell users about lower prices elsewhere make this claim more likely to be true or less likely to be true? If this is a free choice that consumers are making, why does Apple need to hide it from them?

In many markets, Apple does let a dev link users to external payments options.

But the dev agreed to basically pay Apple an origination fee to publish an iOS app in their store. They require a dev to track purchases made on that external system and pay a (slightly reduced) fee. You agreed to be audited to make sure you are making the proper payments. You may have to pay Apple a cut in more scenarios since the payment system is no longer cleanly isolated.

In-app purchasing is not an expensive credit card processor. It is Apple’s simplest method of collecting their contractually obligated royalties.

So this link is not cheaper if you are following your contract. It is cheaper to buy on your site when those users aren’t coming from the app.

Note that it can still be worth a dev using an external payments options system for other reasons - it is just that a lot of them are dark patterns. Things like variable rates for different people for dating services, no-consent charging for gambling apps, gathering additional tracking information so you have additional ways to monetize the user, making unsubscribing from a service more difficult than Apple makes it, etc.

> But the dev agreed to basically pay Apple an origination fee to publish an iOS app in their store.

This is its own can of worms, but doesn't really change much about what I said above.

That might be exactly your point though? That Apple has multiple tools to leverage to make sure that it's impossible to compete with their payment processor if you're building an app? Sometimes I misjudge the intent of a comment.

Apple's restrictions on origination in places like the EU reinforce that Apple does not see these price increases as a tradeoff for quality that customers are willingly going along with, and does believe that if customers were able to be informed about alternative payment methods that already exist that are cheaper, they would take them. In instances where it can't hide alternatives from users, it imposes fees at the point where users are informed about those alternatives: fees that make it impossible for alternatives to be cheaper than Apple's own inflated cost.

Apple's origination fees are a lot less about compensation and a lot more about making sure that on iOS, a less expensive payment option will never be offered. This is not the action of a company that believe that it is adding value to the purchasing experience, it is the action of a company that believes that its purchasing systems would not be chosen by many customers if they were fairly stacked up against existing alternatives.

> That might be exactly your point though? That Apple has multiple tools to leverage to make sure that it's impossible to compete with their payment processor if you're building an app?

Apple wants you to use their payment processor because it is more convenient than auditing/p and potentially suing companies for breaking their contractual agreement around revenue sharing. They force transactions where they collect a royalty through in-app payments, and actually forbid other transactions from using it (like booking an Uber).

It is also a better end user experience.

But you aren’t paying 30% for a particular end user experience feature. You are paying what Apple put into the agreement as what they think they are owed from the value their ecosystem provides.

So Apple split their “payment processing” to 3% and their “using our tools, platform, store and infrastructure” to 27%. It’s certainly possible to undercut 3% for payment processing.

The real problem is 27% of revenue excludes entire categories of services, but that isn’t something regulators can easily force - they can push for services to be unbundled, but not that a company otherwise charges too much for a nonessential product.

> It is also a better end user experience.

If this was clearly true, Apple would not forbid apps from telling users that other payment methods exist. You don't have to hide alternatives from a user if what you're offering them is the obviously superior service.

It's fairly safe to say that Apple doesn't believe that their user experience is obviously superior. At least, not so obviously superior that customers are willing to pay a 30% surcharge for it. Apple isn't confident that if Patreon told users at the time of checkout, "heads up, this is going to cost you 30% more because you're using the app" that those users wouldn't jump-ship to the browser.

Apple phrases this as the price of iOS overall, that this is the most convenient, user-friendly way to collect a payment that provides value to every iOS user. But again, if they believed that, they wouldn't need to hide it from the user. Apple's policy is not that you can't collect payments through Safari and you have to use an app. Apple's policy is that you cannot tell users about surcharges on the iOS store or advertise lower prices through alternative payments.

This is not the policy of a company that believes it is acting everyone's best interests.

> they can push for services to be unbundled, but not that a company otherwise charges too much for a nonessential product.

I don't know what regulators can and can't force; that depends entirely on the countries and jurisdictions involved. But I do know that as users, we should view a 27% tax on every subscription paid to indie creators as evidence that something has gone wrong with this platform.

It is weird that Apple believes that their ecosystem provides more value per-transaction to indie creators than the actual platform that those creators are using. I know that creators don't agree with that assessment, they're telling users to stop using the app. And it is weird that Apple is not giving Patreon the choice to opt-out of the supposed value that their platform is providing by disabling transactions in the app. I don't know what line you personally use to decide when something becomes rent-seeking, but saying "the platform provides value" isn't enough of a justification; every single rent seeking behavior on the market from every company can be justified by saying "we control access to a valuable resource, we're providing value by providing access."

At a certain point, you have to look at some of this through a the lens of just human sensibility and say, is this what we actually want a phone platform to look like? Do we want a phone ecosystem where 30% of every dollar you donate to some starving creator goes to one of the richest companies on earth? Is that actually representative of the value Apple is adding via iOS, or is it a parasitic, rent-seeking behavior from a platform that uses its userbase as a bargaining chip to extract value from unrelated services on an ever-increasing level?

Of course Apple will tell you that everyone owes them 27% of their revenue regardless, that this is just the easy way to collect it. Literally any company in their position would say that, regardless of what they were doing or why. The question is whether anyone believes them. The question is whether we believe that it's an accident that they've priced their agreements in the UK to be so arduous that you are guaranteed to lose money by leaving their ecosystem. Is that actually unbundling, or is it punitive fees designed to shut down competitors.

Only regulators can decide, but normal people can guess.

> If most apple users refuse to go outside the app store for their content, Than clearly they care more about the ease of access than the content itself.

You can't really argue that it's a fair choice when Apple does everything in their power to make going outside their walls a worse experience.

Case in point, they hobble WebKit, but also forbid any alternative to WebKit. Are users choosing WebKit? Nope.

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

There is a video link on the page from the original post where the Patreon CEO explains and reiterates the issues.

Notably, at one point, he says that Apple Platform brings in the most money to Patreon.

So there, looks like Apple brings in the money for Patreon. Apple seems to want a cut of that.

> Importantly at one point he says that Apple lpatform brings in the most money to Patreon.

I'm not surprised.

The dirty little secret people won't talk about is that monetizing anything is so much easier on iOS because Apple users have, in some combination, more disposable income to offer, and are more willing to spend money.

This has been the elephant in the room for my entire career, almost 11 years working in apps. Monetizing on Apple is easier. Getting Apple users to put down money for good software is easier, and Apple users will pay more for the software they want.

There's a lot of reasons for this, many of them socioeconomic in nature that mark out the differences between your average iPhone user and your average Android user, and I don't want to get into that quagmire and be called elitist: all I'm saying is, when Patreon says the vast majority of patrons are buying from iOS powered devices, between iOS being easier to monetize and the general populace being on their phones far more than their computers; yeah that makes complete fucking sense to me. I believe him.

> I don't want to get into that quagmire

I'm not sure it's a quagmire: iOS devices are more expensive compared with the competition. I don't think this is up for debate.

Given that, a null hypothesis might be that since their owners are happy to pay more for their device that they have more disposible income?

I don't think it's up for debate either, but it doesn't change that a lot of people I've interacted with, online, at work and even at conferences don't like talking about the... differences in monetizing on the two major phone platforms.

Hmmm - it's been well known and talked about when I've worked for large B2C apps! In London.

>The dirty little secret people won't talk about is that monetizing anything is so much easier on iOS because Apple users have, in some combination, more disposable income to offer, and are more willing to spend money.

That fact is neither dirty nor secret. I know you were using a figure of speech, but still. Everyone knows it.

>This has been the elephant in the room for my entire career, almost 11 years working in apps. Monetizing on Apple is easier. Getting Apple users to put down money for good software is easier, and Apple users will pay more for the software they want.

That's also pretty obvious, and likely because Apple users, whether mobile or computer, tend to spend more per capita on hardware than Windows or Linux users, simply because Apple hardware is more expensive.

It was already true on desktop, before laptop, and before mobile, on Apple devices.

I think another big reason why Apple users are more willing to spend money is because they haven't normalized providing 'free' services the way Google has. But, I think Apple's gradually starting to encroach into pushing it too far though.

American-manufactured automobiles bring in the majority of money to drive-thru restaurants too. Should they get a cut of drive-thru restaurants' revenue?

If they were as smart as Apple, they'd probably try!

I think the example is a strawman

if American manufactured automobiles were bringing in substantially more money to drive-throughs than Japanese ones - and if American made automobiles had a way to influence where you drive ... I think they would also get a cut from the drive throughs

"a cut of that" is doing a heck of a lot of work here to handwave the amount they're asking for.

A "cut" in this case means such a high percentage of the transaction that if Patreon didn't pass the extra cost on to consumers/creators, they would make negative dollars on each iOS subscription. That really genuinely does not strike you as odd at all?

It doesn't strike you as weird or maybe like a possibly negative market effect that Patreon as a platform should be more profitable for Apple than it is for Patreon? I think most people would say that's a signal that something might be going wrong.

> So there, looks like Apple brings in the money for Patreon.

Apple users bring in the money for Patreon.

I own an iPhone. I am not Apple, and Apple does not own me. Why should Apple be able to charge money for "access" to me, as if I were a prostitute and Apple my pimp? I'm simply using a computer, which I paid for.

>I own an iPhone. I am not Apple, and Apple does not own me. Why should Apple be able to charge money for "access" to me, as if I were a prostitute and Apple my pimp? I'm simply using a computer, which I paid for.

really solid point. they shouldn't be able to.

So I'll start by saying that companies like Apple need to be regulated, as they're misusing their market power to the detriment of everyone but them.

However, your argument isn't what you think it is. It's extremely common for companies to sell/gatekeep (Or "pimp" as you put it) access to "their" user base. Think credit cards (Amex can charge merchants more as because their users tend to spend more) or even club memberships like Costco (They're certainly not letting telcos sign up users for free.)

This is a very strange analogy.

I didn't buy my credit card. I don't own it. The credit card is just a little piece of plastic, totally useless without the line of credit, i.e, the service provided by the credit card company, in stark contrast with my computers, which can be used quite extensively without the App Store.

The credit card company is not gatekeeping "access" to me. I can pay for things with cash, a debit card, a check, etc. If I choose to pay with a credit card, it's because I wish to take advantage of the specific features of the credit card, the primary one of which is the ability to pay for the product later rather than at the moment of purchase.

>This is a very strange analogy.

You can be both an Amex and a Visa card Customer.

You can also be an iPhone and Android Customer at the same time as well. As well as a web user.

Amex charges higher fees, and offer specific services to their customer base.

> You can be both an Amex and a Visa card Customer.

Yes, which supports my point.

> You can also be an iPhone and Android Customer at the same time as well.

Who does this? Barely anyone. Most people can't afford to buy two smartphones, and even if you could afford two, why in the world would you use two of them simultaneously? That sounds extremely inconvenient, for no apparent benefit. Practically speaking, a smartphone is an exclusive relationship; you pick one at a time.

Yours is such a bizarre hypothetical.

In any case, the crucial difference is that a smartphone is a product of independent value that you can buy, whereas a credit card is not. The piece of plastic is just a container for your credit card number, a means of accessing the service, a line of credit.

>In any case, the crucial difference is that a smartphone is a product of independent value that you can buy, whereas a credit card is not.

This is missing the broader point, which is that companies absolutely do gatekeep access to "their" customers all the time in several industries in and outside of tech. Customer acquisition costs a lot of money, and one of the ways businesses recoup their costs or boost profits is by monetizing them by selling access.

The problem with Apple doing it is that they're abusing their market power.

> This is missing the broader point, which is that companies absolutely do gatekeep access to "their" customers all the time in several industries in and outside of tech.

You're still in need of examples, because I've already explained how credit card companies don't gatekeep access to me.

> Customer acquisition costs a lot of money, and one of the ways businesses recoup their costs or boost profits is by monetizing them by selling access.

iPhones also cost a lot of money. Apple sold almost $40 billion worth of iPhones just last quarter. I'm quite certain that Apple is recouping its costs via hardware sales.

There are plenty of examples out there, but keeping it to the ones I've already pointed out:

Costco makes the vast majority of its profit from membership sales, and not from the items they're selling. They absolutely gatekeep access to "their" customers, and regularly play hardball with their suppliers to keep prices low, even major ones like CocaCola. Suppliers that don't meet their terms don't make it to their warehouses. Same as Apple.

The difference is their market power.

You don't seem to understand what gatekeeping means.

In the context of iPhone, it means that the owner of an iPhone is not able to install software on their own iPhone without Apple's permission. It's a restriction on the owner's freedom.

Neither credit cards nor Costco memberships are analogous, because in the first place, there's no ownership involved, as I already explained. With a Costco membership, you certainly don't own part of Costco. You're simply buying temporary access to the store. In the second place, there's no restriction of customer freedom. A Costco member is free to walk across the street and buy Coca-Cola at any other store. Coke is Coke: it's the exact same formula in every can or bottle. It may be more expensive elsewhere, of course, and that's the point of the Costco membership. But there is absolutely nothing in the world restricting Coke and customers of Coke from coming together.

I have no objection to Apple having an App Store and setting terms for its App Store. It does this on the Mac too. My objection is that unlike on the Mac, the iOS App Store is the sole source of software, and iPhone owners are not free to shop elsewhere, again unlike Mac owners. The iPhone gatekeeps its owners in a way that the Mac does not.

It's not really about market power, because iPhone owners have never been free to install software from outside the App Store, not even way back in 2008 when iPhone sales were vastly smaller. And that's always been wrong.

If you want another example of customer gatekeeping, I'll give you one: John Deere tractors using DRM to prevent tractor owners or third-parties from repairing the tractor. That's wrong too.

>You don't seem to understand what gatekeeping means.

You don't seem to understand that gatekeeping doesn't mean your myopic understanding of it.

In the examples given the businesses restrict access to (i.e. "Gatekeep") "their" customers to those that want access to them. In the Costco example, if Coke wants to sell to their customers, they'll have to come to terms with Costco before doing so. No agreement with Costco means no access to Costco customers, which is a lot of customers. That's all it takes to meet the definition gatekeeping, because that's what it is.

If you want a 1:1 example, then just look at gaming consoles, their whole business model depends on the same one giving Apple antitrust issues. Same gatekeeper restrictions.

Which then leads to market power. It's not that the business model is, or even should be, illegal per se, but abusing their market position to amass undue control over the market they operate in. That's when antitrust laws come into effect, and why we're seeing Apple in the crosshairs of the DOJ and not Nintendo.

It has everything to do with market power.

> No agreement with Costco means no access to Costco customers, which is a lot of customers.

Specifically, it means no access to Costco customers inside Costco. But again, Costco customers are not forced to shop in Costco. They can shop anywhere they please, including but not limited to Costco.

That's the essential difference. iPhone customers are forced to shop for apps inside the App Store. They have no access to alternative stores, unlike Costco customers. Costco cannot prevent their customers from shopping for the same goods in other stores.

> If you want a 1:1 example, then just look at gaming consoles, their whole business model depends on the same one giving Apple antitrust issues. Same gatekeeper restrictions.

Agreed.

> It's not that the business model is, or even should be, illegal per se

I think it should be. In my opinion, it's one and the same with the right to repair. Once I pay for my computer and walk out the door, it ought to be mine to do with as I please.

I don't want to get into a debate about what "is" legal or illegal in the United States. As I see it, the law is whatever a majority of the Supreme Court decides it is on any given day, precedents and principles be damned. And antitrust enforcement has been practically nonexistent since Microsoft got a slap on the wrist a couple decades ago. I don't expect Apple to have much trouble here in the near future. Of course Europe is another matter.

>The problem with Apple doing it is that they're abusing their market power.

I think it's even more base than that. Valve does it and users are happy (I have hot takes on this, but that's a later, inevitable discussion for another post). Because they continually re-invest in Steam to add more features, niceties, and convenience. Customers feel respected. Costco does it because ultimately customers who buy in bulk get deals that pays the membership back, as well as a very cheap food court.

What's the last "rewarding feature" Apple's really done to the app store that made customers feel respected? Not something like the Play Pass where "you spend 500 dollars and we'll give you a 5 dollar coupon!".

I'm genuinely asking as an android user and I can't even think of an answer on the Play Store. I had to look it up and family sharing seems to be the most recent option from 2021/2022-ish.

>The problem with Apple doing it is that they're abusing their market power.

Agree on every point. But I think I will stop here. As this isn't the first time OP has been at this. It is also clear he doesn't understand difference between market access, market power and exclusivity. He is also rude and not the first time either.

> Why should Apple be able to charge money for "access" to me, as if I were a prostitute and Apple my pimp? I'm simply using a computer, which I paid for.

I had the same feeling but I couldn't put it to words that well. But you hit the nail on the head. Thanks for this!

I dont think, the customer, or in your example "you" does not even come into the equation.

It is straightly Apple and Patreon. And in terns of Apple, they do think Patreon is accessing their customer base ( You ) and hence they want a cut of it.

This comment makes no sense to me and contradicts itself. First sentence:

> "you" does not even come into the equation

Second sentence:

> Patreon is accessing their customer base ( You )

Of course I come into the equation. Apple does not and cannot subscribe me to a Patreon without my initiative and consent.

>without my initiative and consent.

You are acting as if someone is forcing you to do it.

>and contradicts itself.

To word it better, You the customer does not come between Apple and Patreon.

If you can afford an iphone, you can afford sending money to a number of random strangers without seeing a blip in your monthly budget. That is pretty much the reality.

> Does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

This isn't a Creators/Patreon/Apple phenomenon, this is a consumers/distributors/(publishers|labels)/creators phenomenon.

See page 12:

https://articles.unesco.org/creativity/sites/default/files/m...

"Apple isn't being doing anything bad, they're just like the music industry" is a heck of an argument to make. Do you think the average person would argue that the music industry isn't exploitative?

I didn't make that argument.

Fair enough, we might be aggressively agreeing with each other. Apologies if I misunderstood you.

Let's take this to an extreme. Imagine an app that does little except thread together the basic UI components provided by iOS. In other words, something that most people here could write in an afternoon. Now imagine it ends up on the Apple marketplace. Given how much work goes into building iOS, the UX, and the app store, by your argument Apple should get 99.9% of the fees. The person who created the app just spent a few hours and Apple spent bazillions of hours (amortized over many apps).

> by your argument Apple should get 99.9% of the fees

No, by my argument, even if someone believes that Apple is somehow morally entitled to a specific level of compensation for running the app store, it is absurd to argue that the amount of work they're putting into making specifically the Patreon app available is higher than the amount of work that was put into building Patreon.

If you want to argue that they're not morally entitled to a certain percentage of revenue, great! Then let's talk unemotionally about antitrust, customer steering, and effective market competition without falling into the trap of worrying about whether or not Apple is getting "bullied" by that discussion.

The trap that people fall into so often when talking about Apple is trying to set this up like there's a hero and a villain, like people looking at the market are somehow trying to bully Apple out of something it justly deserves. But come on; when you see market effects like this it becomes so much more obvious that if there is any bully here, it's Apple.

"You can't reasonably expect Apple to-" Nah, this market outcome is bad. This is not the outcome that most of us want from an app store market. We should do things to make that market more competitive and to curb anti-competitive app-store policies.

But the app ecosystem is also a selling point for users to actually buy an iPhone, on which they already make a huge margin compared to the rest of the industry.

I wonder how much of the software you're proposing Apple get paid 99.9% for is open source? (Including the xkcd-famous "one guy in Nebraska" who's been doing his thing for over 20 years)?

How much do all the contributors of these projects get paid?

https://opensource.apple.com/projects/

And all the stuff not listed there too, like OpenSSH, curl, all those little things that pretty much _every_ OS uses?

And the predecessors? BSD, Mach, FreeBSD...

One important feature is that in the Apple store the consumer is sure that the unsubscribe button works immediately. Not weird tricks to keep you subscribed forever.

This should be a federal law, and if such button does not exist than a email or letter should be a legally mandated fallback.

Taking money after cancellation should be treated as thert

I'm in Argentina, I think I subscribed to some app from Spain. I'm not sure if a federal law is enough.

Not to be political, but what a timely comment: https://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/new-biden-administrati...

I hate when companies try to draw out or sidestep attempts to unsubscribe, it's a huge issue with subscription services. I'm really encouraged about recent pushes to ban this kind of behavior.

That being said, I've just checked and Patreon does not appear to block or sidestep attempts to unsubscribe from a creator. It's two clicks, you hit "cancel membership" and then the confirm button.

I'm open to claims that Apple's system might still be marginally more convenient (you do have to go to the actual creator page in order to unsubscribe, which is a little inconvenient, I guess).

But is it so much more convenient that most users would literally pay 30% extra on every one of their subscriptions in order to use it? And even if it is, isn't that something that users should be able to choose as an educated decision instead of it being Apple policy for Patreon to not be allowed to tell users in the app that other payment methods exist?

This of course makes sense, because Patreon's incentives are the same as Apple's here: they don't want to trick you into paying more for one subscription, because they want you to be confident to subscribe to other creators on their site.

Only people who have zero understanding of the value of distribution in business would write this. Apple provides tremendous value to app developers.

If we were having this conversation in the late 1800s I'm pretty sure that you would be arguing to me right now that the trans-continental railroad provides "tremendous value" to shippers.

It's become an increasingly common argument in discussions about Apple to phrase their value as one of "distribution", or sometimes less subtly as "access." But no one would ever credibly argue that the actual physical distribution costs, hosting, and bandwidth of the Patreon app is more valuable than the entire platform itself. That would be absurd. Instead, what people actually argue is that access to Apple users is the value that Apple quote-unquote "creates"[0].

I think a lot of people look at this and see it for what it is: rent seeking. But it's a marvel of the modern tech landscape that we've trained so many people to not only accept that they are the product for the platforms they use, but taught them to be proud of being a product. We've gotten people to come around to the idea that companies have done such a good job turning them into a product that the companies now somehow deserve some kind of special reward for doing so.

Excessive use of customers as bargaining chips inevitably creates bad incentives for companies, which become increasingly defensive of their "assets" and increasingly more and more hostile to consumer choice and freedom to move from ecosystem to ecosystem. These negative effects play out again and again in multiple industries both inside and outside of tech, to the detriment of both consumers and the overall markets. But when tech companies come up (whether we're talking about Apple, or Steam, or Nintendo, or whatever) -- for some weird reason people suddenly become very defensive about the rights of companies to treat them like cattle.

TLDR, no, access to iPhone users is not Apple providing value to app developers. It's just rent seeking.

----

[0]: As if iPhone users would somehow stop using smartphones now if the iPhone went away.

John D. Rockefeller argued against Standard Oil being broke up on the grounds that it only was so big because it is just that efficient and innovative.

It also kept the price of kerosene low for the consumer.

If it was broke up it would also hurt the economy overall. They also argued it wasn't really a monopoly and they have other competition lol.

Tech companies are such a brilliant monopoly they get the consumer to mindlessly puppet Rockefeller's exact points for them.

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

Well, there is a simple way to test this... just get rid of the Patreon iOS app and just use a web version. Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based?

I wish fewer companies had apps. I don't need an app for everything. I don't need every hotel I stay at to have their own app, I don't need an app to order food at a restaurant.

So why do companies make them? Because people spend more money when they can just use the in app purchase functionality. It is CLEARLY worth the 30% to most companies, because they keep pumping out single use apps that would be better as a mobile web page.

How many of the apps you're complaining about are paying 30% to Apple? Hotels and restaurants definitely aren't.

Also a lot of companies make apps so they can get more tracking info. That value doesn't come from the Apple Store.

It's things like games that really get an advantage from being native and in the store. And that's largely a red queen's race, they need to stay on top and they'll pay out the nose to be the easiest install. Paying lots of money in a zero-sum situation doesn't mean they're getting much value in a more zoomed-out sense.

The ability to get more tracking info comes from producing an app which in turn comes from the Apple Store. I’ve never found myself wanting to use a Patreon app instead of their website, just like I found the substack app a complete waste of space and immediately deleted it.

Not everything needs to be an app.

> which in turn comes from the Apple Store

I strongly disagree with that. The store is not the reason apps are good for lots of things. You can assign a lot of value to phone and OS, but Apple does not try to take a cut based on making the phone and OS because it would be hard to defend. The store pales in comparison.

> How many of the apps you're complaining about are paying 30% to Apple? Hotels and restaurants definitely aren't.

If the CEOs could sign a petition that had a sure chance of antitrust action against Apple's fees, every single one of them would be itching to sign.

Maybe s/he doesn't want to waste their time doing that and instead the company is politely signaling to their users that they're being charged junk fees by continuing to use the iOS app. Which is quite fair and transparent behaviour. Why take on Apple when you can correctly inform your users and push them to give Apple the boot?

In the EU that's what they are doing. In the US, Apple will lock your account for snitching about the Apple tax to your users. See the Epic lawsuit.

> Apple will lock your account for snitching about the Apple tax to your users. See the Epic lawsuit.

Mob boss behavior.

When a mobile web page uses apple pay, does it also give 30% to apple?

If not, what’s the difference between it and an app?

No, it does not. You can buy anything from anywhere on the web.

Apple Pay and in-app purchase are different.

Apple Pay is a percentage paid by the bank, not the merchant.

In-app purchase is for an app being used to buy digital goods and services consumed in-app. The agreement for publishing apps says that you will give Apple a cut, and upfront purchase price and in-app purchases are how they collect it.

You can’t use in-app purchases to say order dinner to be delivered.

I think you're missing the point. You're focusing on the technical differences, but it's not outlandish to imagine Apple demanding a cut of all transactions on iOS over time.

It would start slowly, with a minor value-add (e.g., making it easier to put/use CC info in the secure enclave, or whatever incremental step they choose), and an announcement that in exchange for "easing payments and making them more secure", Apple will be charging X% of transactions with their system.

Apple Pay is a wallet that can be used in various places. For a store to accept Apple Pay, the merchant is given a virtual credit card to charge for payment. This costs the merchant the normal credit card processing fee, usually 2.9% + 30 cents.

On iOS, In-app-purchases (IAP) are used inside an app to purchase content. Because it's on Apple's device using Apple's SDK and APIs and hardware, Apple takes a 30% cut of the fee, so you charge $10, Apple takes $3 and gives you $7. Inside of the app, it uses Apple Pay, but because it's in the app, Apple takes 30%.

> Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based?

because apple gimps their web browser capabilities & performance to incentivize developers to enter the walled garden

Source?

I use the web version on my phone instead of most apps, and they work fine.

That's because it's just like IE was back in the day. No web dev is going to build a web app that doesn't work on it, no matter what a turd it is.

Then we should all be thankfull for Safari restraining web "devs".

While true in most cases (for anyone who disagrees look at PWAs being restricted in EU), Patreon’s app sucks butt and is honestly a worst experience in most ways than their mobile website anyway.

That bullshit to be honest. Not the lack of features in Safari, that's very real, but you don't need most of it. There is nothing that Patreon needs to do that could not be done by a 15 year old browser, let alone the newest version of Safari on iOS.

I can understand that developers would like to use certain feature, or that they'd make the job easier, but they are not required. Patreon isn't cutting edge web development, you could make it work on an IE8 if you cared enough. There it absolutely no features currently lacking in Safari that would prevent Patreon in moving to website only.

Exactly, it doesn't need native access to every bit of hardware to fulfill the needs of a simple app. If needed, Mobile Safari can do push notifications.[0]

0. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

It needs:

* An easy way to "install" the app. People want an icon on their home screen.

* To work offline and have a decent amount of storage for images and such.

* To start in a reasonable amount of time, even if the network is flaky.

And a bunch more of requirements. But just these three are hard to accomplish as a PWA. It should be possible, sure, but you'll be investing a lot of development time in what eventually amounts to an inferior experience when compared with a native app.

If that were true, we'd see great amazing native-like web apps on Android where none of this perceived gimping is happening.

Apple's mobile Safari has enough capabilities to serve a mobile-like simple app for managing a subscription service.

> Why does patreon need its own app?

Wondering about that, too - I always use the website on my ipad since a browser allows me to enlarge the font size when reading novels on Patreon (a feature that the app does not offer).

I use the web app if possible 100% of the time, but there are other generations that only (or mainly) use cellphone apps.

Not only can you increase the font size, but Safari has an immersive "reader mode" where you can change the font and color scheme, and even have Safari dictate the page to you. A massive percentage of organizations that develop native iOS apps do so because:

* Users have been indoctrinated by years of marketing (e.g. the "there's an app for that" ads).

* Safari hides the "add to home screen button" deep within the share menu, and home screen real estate is incredibly valuable. Native apps have the advantage of Smart Banners [1].

* For several years Webkit didn't support notifications, and as much as I hate annoying notifications, it's undoubtably useful from a business perspective to be able to ping users and remind them to use your application. Even after allowing notifications in Webkit, they made sure to introduce Live Activities which are exclusive to native apps.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39181567

It's also an issue of onboarding and discoverability. Creators would see a marked reduction in subscriptions if Patreon was not allowed placement in the app store.

Why? What makes the app itself so attractive? Do Apple users not know what Safari is, or how to type in a link?

And it should be noted most Patreon users find their way there via YouTube, which itself automatically opens links to Safari, where Patreon can be subscribed to easily.

No, they actually don't know how to type in a link. Most people still don't know how URLs work. People still type in Facebook to the Google search box.

It's about friction. you could give users a PO box address and ask users to get out an envelope and write a check, and say if users really wanted to pay they'd do that. But we all know you're gonna lose out on a ton of money if you make it that hard for people to give you money. So it's about how much friction there is, and for some, an app is preferable to some website where I have to wade through a bunch of crap. Depending on what it is, if it bounces me to Safari, I might just get distracted and "just do it later" aka never.

I honestly don't think this is true. I think people tend to discover a creator they like first, and then click through to their Patreon. I don't think the reverse happens very often; I don't think many people install the Patreon app so that they can look through lists of people they could give money to. And if they do, they're clearly aware enough of Patreon to be able to use the website instead.

Assuming the average user accesses Pateron by clicking a link, there's really no reason for a dedicated Patreon app to exist. Apple Pay works just fine on websites, without demanding the App Store fee.

> It's also an issue of onboarding and discoverability.

AppStore is horrendously bad for discoverabilty. It's overrun with scammy ads, fake reviews and fake apps.

> Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based?

Apple & Google Pay is my guess. Which I don't use, just because it's rent seeking and leads to this.

I use the websites. Don't want to install bloody apps which request every permission available. My browser has most of those set to denied. Don't even ask for permission, outright deny.

You can use apple and google pay on normal websites that have it set up.

Apple Pay and Google Pay work with an existing card for normal (non-IAP) purchases. I don’t like rent seeking either but in this case it’s the standard CC payment flow. Nothing additional, just better security.

What makes a normal CC better?

> What makes a normal CC better?

One doesn't need a phone or battery to use it, just a bank account and the plastic. Google and Apple now want to become Visa. Yes, their system is more secure.

Heh. I didn't even know there was a Patreon app. There is an issue though. A lot of people (not me) use phone as their main computing device. And Apple is well known for keeping web app experience subpar compared to native app experience. Safari is lagging behind all the other browsers regarding modern APIs support. Bugs are not getting patched for years. At the same time other web rendering engines are not allowed on the main official app store. The other app stores are hard to get to and I consider them non-existent for regular users.

So, platform developers have to take iOS support very seriously or miss a lot of profit.

Is Chrome on Android complete in terms of modern APIs? If so, do people use it instead of apps on Android?

In this context, Chrome is just a browser, just like Safari is on iOS. The "problem" is less-technically-savvy folks (especially -- and ironically -- tech native youth) don't understand/care about the distinction between Apps vs a Website Bookmark/Shortcut.

That Patreon is even considering keeping the app is proof of this.

Depending on how overt Patreon's app is about ringing the alarm bells (imagine a "JUST MAKE A SHORTCUT and save 30% on everything!!!" popup) would just get them banned too, no doubt. Presumably criticizing Apple is a bannable offense.

>That Patreon is even considering keeping the app is proof of this.

No, that Patreon is "even considering" keeping the app is evidence that they get more valuable information about users and their habits from the app than they could from a website.

That's not disagreeing with me, but instead adding yet another argument for users to avoid as many Apps as they can.

If the experience in an app is form, graphs, and payments... use the website. It apparently saves that company 30% and, to your point, keeps your computing habits yours.

I doubt it. What evidence supports your claim? I took a look at the Patreon app permissions in Android, and it doesn't even ask for location which is probably the most valuable thing about users they could ask for.

The broad argument holds, regardless of what Patreon itself does right now.

Facts are simple here: Apps grant easier access your habits and identity as compared to a relatively-sandboxed browser.

I use Firefox on Android (which I can't on iOS) and I use it instead of apps wherever I can. Why should I install an app for every single thing?

That’s fine as an anecdata of n=1. But it doesn’t seem that apps are unpopular on Android, where as the GP seemed to suggest that Safari was the reason for app popularity. That just doesn’t seem to be true, given on Android we don’t see a large inversion.

They can take their time, although they seem to implement the worst parts of it. Remote attestation and manifest v3. Who else could ever live without these features?

Heh, Safari may lack some APIs, but it’s irrelevant for 95% of apps including Patreon.

It’s not like Patreon would be unusable on iOS without an app.

I still remember when they refused to support forms constraints (there was the JS API, but not the UI designed to show users what they got wrong with their form, so you had to polyfill that specifically for Safari).

Forms are pretty darn important to 99.9% of web apps, this felt like active sabotage.

It is baffling how some random people will come to Apple's defense from the most unimaginable angles. "Safari is lacking but should be enough for 95% of the apps". Why do we even have the App Store then? For the rest 5%?

> Why do we even have the App Store then? For the rest 5%?

No. We have AppStore for the hundreds of thousands of apps that cannot be implemented using web tech. And for hundreds of thousands of apps that people could implement using web tech, but don't want to for various reasons, both big (too many workarounds) to small (abysmal performance for the simplest tasks)

> We have AppStore for the hundreds of thousands of apps that cannot be implemented using web tech.

These are not disconnected, though. The web COULD be made to support more of these use cases, but Apple wouldn't be able to collect 30% of the profits. Safari was a laggard for many years while the App Store was being entrenched.

> The web COULD be made to support more of these use cases

No, it couldn't

> but Apple

Apple has nothing to do with the fact that the web can barely render a page of static text and images without stutter. Almost every single app made with web technologies is a slow bloated abomination barely capable of doing a few primitive things right. And those that aren't have insane amounts of effort poured into them.

If you believe that Apple has something to do with it, why isn't there a flood of amazing smooth native-like apps on Android where none of the real or perceived limitations exist? Why is there a Google Play store with hundreds of thousands of apps?

oh you think your shitty swift app is any better?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41239006

There are a truck load of crappy SwiftUI apps that make your average bloated web app look like lean, FTL starships. They stutter so much with broken animations that you are afraid that your phone had a stroke.

And crappy Swift apps invalidate my point how exactly?

Note how you addressed nothing I wrote.

Your argument that almost every web app is bloated is dumb. Where did you get that data from? Based on what you say the native apps aren't as bloated? You are talking out of your A.

Thank you for confirming that there's no point in engaging in a conversation with you.

Adieu.

> Note how you addressed nothing I wrote.

Not sure what to address in your post since only your contempt against the web was of especial note. There are more apps in the Android Play Store than the iOS App Store. There are also third party app stores offered by Amazon, Samsung, including OSS ones like F-Droid. So..I am not sure what point you were trying to make, sorry.

I’m really not defending Apple here. I’ve always been pretty vocal against Apple practices, especially with the App Store policies.

But I do think that the situation we are in where any company have to develop an application when the web does it nice enough (and it’s especially true for products such as Patreon) is pretty ridiculous.

Of all the companies around, Patreon is one who could easily avoid this in app fee nonsense just by avoiding having an app in the first place (or at least having an app for subscribers, maybe the app is useful for content creators).

I’d totally prefer a situation where Apple wouldn’t act like dicks but by accepting this situation, Patreon is just legitimizing Apple behavior.

How can you be vocal against App Store and in favor of Web and Apple's effort on that front while Apple/Safari blocks multiple attempts of making the Web a good platform for web Apps.

That's the biggest complain of every web app developer but you are saying that Safari is already great for that while excusing Apple's behavior. Wow.

Please quote where I excused Apple’s behavior and where I said that safari didn’t lag behind other browsers. I just said that Patreon ran fine on Safari and so that Safari had enough features / API to do the job for Patreon. I didn’t say anything about safari being a good platform for web apps in general and I don’t understand where you read that in my comment.

So let me repeat my opinion : yes Safari lacks a lot of features and APIs to be a good application platform. Yes, Apple is a shitty company especially when it comes to app policies. But, in the current state of affairs, Safari is enough for simple applications/websites such as Patreon.

The problem is cultural: a growing population do not know what the Web is.

When they are asked to search for a website, they open the app store and search there. If there is no result, they give up.

Then make an app whose sole purpose is to open a website in the browser

It wouldnt matter that your app is just a web view of your website, as accepting payments that bypass the ios payment system gets your app banned.

... Thus the conversation in the first place.

But browsers, which are apps, can accept payments that bypass the ios payment system, no?

Won't be surprised if Apple blocks this too or redirects URLs to open the app in the app store.

That is disallowed by section 4.2 of the App Review Guidelines[0]:

> Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website.

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

The irony of so many apps being electron wrappers is apparently lost on Apple. I'll just be happy if Teams could stop eating battery for once.

Though honestly jokes aside, this rule still doesn't make a lot of sense (to me). Webapps are capable enough. What does Uber's app, or the Google app do, that's different from their websites? Heck, even Apple's own notes app is simple enough that I'm fairly sure you could make a webapp out of it. I think tasks.org already has such a webapp/website.

Few iOS apps are based on electron, I would think.

Discord joins the conversation.

Then make an app whose sole purpose is to display bookmarks as icons on a scrollable and searchable canvas.

For good reason. The web is a cess pit which people will avoid if they can.

A term which in no way also applies to apps, that have vastly more ability to spy on you, and DMCA protections against interop and modification. /s

At least the spying is efficient, I guess.

The app store is also ridden with scams and crap. But the web is a horrible experience for normal people compared to apps, which the down voters here don't seem to understand, because they have adblockers etc.

Normal people need ad blockers about the same way they need clean water. I wish advertising was a viable revenue model for publishers, but it has been abused by large actors for so many years that large US government entities like the FBI recommend an ad blocker[1], and even the FTC lightly suggests it [2].

[1] https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221

[2] https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-websites-and-apps-coll...

The advertising industry is a malware services market.

Many apps are also ridden with ads, can collect way more personal info than a web site, and unlike sites, it's way harder to block their ads. (E.g., installing a PiHole on your network vs installing a browser extension.) Altering an app is a DMCA violation of whatever cryptography they use; altering a web site is your legal right via extensions/userscripts.

"The problem is cultural: a growing population do not know what the Web is."

I'd love to know where this idea started, because I'm not convinced it's actually based on any kind of real data. If it is, I don't think it's accurate for the past 5+ years.

Knowledge of the web is probably flat. And apps and smartphones have peaked in the West. Those are my anecdotes to add, since that seems to be what we're doing.

This line of thinking could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy the more it's spread, too.

The idea that Safari is lagging behind is nonsense too. People live in their own fantasies. Press someone to explain what bugs or missing features they're specifically saying are holding the web back and you will probably get a very short list of nonstandard or experimental APIs like WebUSB.

Here's a site that lists a few [0].

I will say that if you've spent any time trying to develop a web-based app it becomes painfully obvious that Apple is doing the absolute bare minimum to support the browser on iOS. PWAs are barely functional.

[0] https://ios404.com

Played your role, as expected. No actual problems described and a link to a list of mostly "draft" and "candidate" items. Every fucking time.

Do people search for applications in the App Store or on the Web?

This 2023 study[0] indicates 48% of people discover apps by browsing through the App Stores, compared to 21% that discover them through Web search engines.

Is this a trend?

This 2015 study[1] indicates 40% of people browse for apps in the App Stores, compared to 25% (“1 in 4”) that discover them through Web search engines.

Does this apply to Patreon?

The CEO of Patreon had this to say:[2]

> iOS is actually now the most used platform for communities on Patreon.

[0]: https://www.semrush.com/blog/app-store-optimization/

[1]: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and...

[2]: https://youtu.be/L-LoTH3PzgM?si=F1xraTOFxx8SJN0C&t=61

We're talking about "knowledge of the web." As in, the ability to recognize what a URL is and use a browser to access it.

I posit this segment of the overall population in non-developing countries is flat for the last 5+ years. Apps surged for a decade and caused a lot of handwringing about the web's future, but it's clear the web is here to stay. The new AI craze wouldn't have even gotten off the ground without the web's corpus of recent and relevant data.

The web is just too frictionless. It's old and crufty and for old fuddy duddies (I don't know how Gens Z/Alpha view the web vs. apps, but that's not this conversation -- they know it exists and they're savvy enough to use it when necessary). It's like email. Will it ever be sexy "again"? No. But I think it'll always be there.

Kids don't use email... until they need to for their job or college, etc. Email will never die. The web will follow a similar trajectory.

If the money flees the consumer side of the web (more focus on paid native apps, the death of third-party cookies and possibly the ad ecosystem, etc.), that inches the content back to the 90s/early 00s ideal, which I'm all for. But that might be overly optimistic.

My daughter’s boyfriend just bought a MacBook for college- his first Mac. He was immediately flummoxed going to the app store looking for apps that on a Mac are just websites.

He was somewhat appeased when I helped him find the Spotify Mac app though. Just going to their website just presented the music interface, with no links to the app download (which isn’t available in the Mac app store I would guess, since the BF hadn’t found it.)

Developers not allowing iPad apps to run on M-Series Mac’s are really hurting themselves with the younger set.

> Apple is well known for keeping web app experience subpar compared to native app experience.

Web apps are subpar compared to native apps.

I'm not surprised Apple is in no hurry to further enable lowest-common-denominator shovelware.

Electron is a plague on macOS.

30% is deliriously high. Make it 10% and maybe then we can talk.

It's monopolistic extortion.

Rent seeking behavior.

more and more people use mobile phone than ever and less and less people do googling and use "Apps" than bookmarking link to a website

You may not like it but programmer reading news in HN is not common in global scale

plus mobile apps is just value added, same reason you have dekstop app vs webapp

Yep. If I were Patreon, I would ditch the iOS app. Apple doesn't deserve a 30% gotcha capitalism mafia extortion fee.

I’m a creator and have many supporters on patreon.

I didn’t know there is an app and I don’t care.

Actually Patreon has played it perfectly by offering an android app, ios app and a website, and increasing the prices on the ios app to cater for the fees. The next thing should be to provide a clear notice on the ios app that lower prices can be found on the other apps. Then they will be able to objectively tell how many people value the app store's value additions enough to pay extra

Afaik from other discussions of this Apple do not allow apps to inform users that they can pay cheaper outside the app

You can't put a notice saying your prices are increasing due to Apple, it's against the App Store TOS :)

Is it allowed to put a notice that Android and web users are given a 30% discount on the normal prices, which accidentally are only for iOS users.

Or just add a clickbait title: "See here to find out if you are eligible to discounted prices!" to a link to the web site.

Of course buyer has to be able to disable the 30% discount on the web site, to make it plausible that the normal prices are the ones on iOS. And all billing lines in the invoice always have to include a 30% discount line on Android and web purchases.

> Is it allowed to put a notice that Android and web users are given a 30% discount on the normal prices

No. You are not allowed to provide customers any details about other payment options. Apple has provisions that basically say, "you must not encourage the user to use a different payment option." And Apple can interpret that quite broadly; telling users that another platform has a discount would be treated as a violation.

> "See here to find out if you are eligible to discounted prices!" to a link to the web site.

This would be a violation of Apple's policies.

I sort of understand why people have a hard time grasping this, and I don't think it's through any fault of their own. It's because it's such an obviously anti-consumer, anti-competitive policy that I think normal people assume "it cannot possibly be the policy that Apple has."

There's almost a defense in audacity: Patreon must be lying about its options because, come on, Apple wouldn't seriously ban links, right? No company would be that bold, right?

The policy is so blatant that people assume there must be something they're misunderstanding about it.

Exactly, they should be sued for this. I think the only people who are defending Apple are the ones who did not read the ToS carefully.

There's an advantage to using in-app purchases when you doubt the developer, so either you think they're going to overcharge you or make it difficult to cancel. However this is not the case with Patreon

So I don't know what's the case here, but sounds like people who get confused by bubbles of different colors

> Why does patreon need its own app? Why can't it just be web based?

There is the simple solution taken by companies like Spotify and Netflix.

Have a free app for users, but only accept payments through your own website.

In which case, Apple doesn't get a dime.

Spotify had a nightmare of a time getting to that point.

Same with Floatplane, a streaming platform from LTT.

If you actually try to copy Spotify / Amazon you find out very quickly they have exclusive deals and their own account managers. You actually will not get approved for 5-6 months if you try to copy them, and even use their same exact UI and verbiage.

This is the part of the problem with Apple app store.

As far as I've seen, this isn't any sort of exclusive on Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store.

Free apps that allow users to access paid subscription content aren't required to accept payments for the subscription through the app.

> Offer subscriptions through your own website or app rather than the app stores. This allows you to process payments directly and avoid the 30% fees. However, you'll need to provide your own payment processing and customer support.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-avoid-paying-a-30-co...

Here is just one example about how hard it is to get approved, and reflects my experience as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzQw3kEbEio

You can say it's easy, but if you try to make your app only take payments off platform you will fight with Apple for months.

Apple will gladly say they aren't preventing you from taking payment off platform and then make your life hell. They are big enough that this isn't some accident, this is 100% on purpose.

The whole LTT saga went on for nearly 2 years, you can watch all of it through their podcast: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=floatplane+appl... AND they had the benefit of having millions of viewer leading to them getting an active account manager... Imagine some random company.

This is actually only an option if you qualify under Apple's definition of "reader" apps - ones that are pure content-consumption, nothing interactive etc.

If you don't qualify as a "reader" app, what you're suggesting actually isn't allowed - you're _required_ to offer IAP if you provide access to the service in-app

3.1.3(b) - "may allow users to access content [...] provided those items are also available as in-app purchases within the app"

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#oth...

The app I work on is a content app, but they decided it did not qualify as a "reader" app because we had polls alongside the content, which were interactive and therefore excluded us from the definition.

> Why does patreon need its own app?

Notifications. Performance. Responsiveness. Bandwidth. Offline access. And a lot of users simply find apps to be more convenient than browser bookmarks. I use the web interface for Patreon, but I can see why some users would want the app.

Why does Apple themselves have apps for things like maps, news, stocks, weather, video chats, etc? These all rely on web services and could theoretically be handled in the browser. I don't think any of these examples even provide users the ability to buy anything. Clearly Apple recognizes a value in some services being available through native mobile apps.

> Notifications.

No thanks.

> Performance. Responsiveness. Bandwidth. Offline access.

Isn't Patreon basically a web site where you can pay a subscription to ... something? Why would it need all that? Does the subscriber content get delivered through Patreon?

You and I may not want notifications, but a lot of people do.

> Does the subscriber content get delivered through Patreon?

Yes. Many of creators deliver media content through Patreon.

Announcements, updates, Q&As, early access to regular content, bonus behind-the-scenes content, and sometimes exclusive content. It all depends on the creator.

Ah so it's more like Steam than like just subscription management. Thanks.

I think your information about lack of notifications is outdated.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

> So why do companies make them? Because people spend more money when they can just use the in app purchase functionality.

I assumed it was so they could skirt around the privacy built more consistently into web browsers. Or that they are still stuck in the "There's an app for that" era that I think we have collectively left behind.

> It is CLEARLY worth the 30% to most companies, because they keep pumping out single use apps that would be better as a mobile web page.

Based on the context given in the OP, this conclusion does not follow and is not fair.

1. Patreon is passing the 30% on to customers by default, or allowing creators to pay for it out of their existing income, so Patreon isn’t making any value judgement at all. They are leaving it up to creators and users.

2. Even if they weren’t doing (1), there are other factors in play that don’t make this a fair “experiment”. Most notably that established platforms like Amazon and Spotify _don’t_ find the value here, contradicting your assertion that most companies do.

Note: I didn't think Apple historically allowed (1), which also invalidates the “experiment”, but maybe terms have changed recently.

> Patreon isn’t making any value judgement at all. They are leaving it up to creators and users.

That’s incorrect. They are phasing out two of their three payment options (per creation and first of month) for all creators in order to have the right to operate an app on iOS. That’s a value judgment - Patreon would rather have an app than continue to make independent business judgments. They could have said “well, people can just use their browser on iOS” and it would have meant far fewer changes to their business. The browser only approach is clearly not preferred.

Clearly, having an app with easy payment infra is worth a lot, just as the person you’re replying to suggested.

The question is why the web never developed effective single sign on payment solutions.

In the OP Patreon leads with a pretty strong assertion that they would not be making these changes to their subscription model on merit alone. “Do this or you’ll lose X% of your users” is not Patreon making a value judgement on 30% margin, it’s post facto extortion.

Nothing is answering the question, “would Patreon itself take a 30% hit to margin just to operate natively iOS”? I am pretty dubious.

My point still stands that none of this is fair first principles representation of the value the platform provides. I’m sure the product conversation and user research inside Patreon HQ is much more along the lines of “fuck you Apple you’re making me choose my 10% iOS user base over the 7% of global users that happily use per-creation billing”. Not “oh Apple was right subscriptions are a more consistent payment model for users why didn't we realize that before thanks Apple here’s your 30% rev share for the idea let’s just pass that cost on to our iOS users they won’t mind”. LOL

I’m not taking about all that, I’m disputing your assertion that Patreon was not making a value judgment. They absolutely are. They are contorting their offering heavily to be able to stay in the App Store. Clearly they get some value from it.

You say there is extortion pushing them to do this. I don’t dispute this. But Patreon has a clear choice. Exit the extortion game and just be on the web not in the App Store, or stay in the App Store and deface their own business. They chose the latter yet you claim they made no value judgment. They did, they chose the Apple extortion path. It takes two to keep a dysfunctional relationship going.

I’m not suggesting this is good or defending Apples behavior. I’m saying they absolutely made a value judgment and went heavily to the “stay in Apple’s good graces” side. This is not some neutral thing.

Even if the web developed effective single sign-on payment solutions, it would make utterly no difference for iOS, since Safari would never support the same. You can easily bet your life, that Apple would reject this or only maliciously comply.

https://httptoolkit.com/blog/safari-is-killing-the-web/

YES. So much this. Patreon doesn't even mention the web version in their blog post.

Stop making apps when a website will suffice.

> But remember, Apple’s fees are only in the iOS app. Your prices on the web and the Android app will remain completely unaffected. You can always send your fans to this Help Center article which explains the iOS in-app fees relative to other platforms, so they can better understand the implications of where they choose to make their purchases.

Patreon allows creators to for a fee serve additional media content via it's app which is agnostic of media type. (IE music, coding, youtube etc.)

Most people pay for things for convenience and perceived value. There is very little convience or perceived value in having to go to a mobile/safari/ios website, log in, and then download a for example 1gig podcast tothen have to find it in my "downloads" and then play via some media player.

Not all parties to a transaction provide value to everyone in a transaction. A union, lawyer, real estate agent, etc is optimizing value for one party but not both. As long as one side of a transaction has a monopoly you can end up with “middlemen” favoring the side that picks them, thus why Ticketmaster still exists.

Patroon is chosen by content creators not customers as such its goal is creating value for content creators not customers. As a customer it’s providing negative value with their policies to immediately cancel service the instant someone unsubscribes rather than letting the month play out etc. Thus why their website can be so unbelievably terrible for customers and yet they stay in business. So for customers Apple/Google/whatever may provide literally infinite more value not because it’s significant but because they are on their side.

Does Apple's change do anything at all to help alleviate any of the concerns you have?

You have fewer subscriptions options for creators (1st-of-month billing and per-release billing is going away, despite the fact that creators regularly use them to simplify the experience for subscribers). You're going to pay more (I promise you, creators on Patreon are not rich enough to swallow a 30% transaction fee on iOS subscriptions). You're going to use the same app that you were using before. And this will change nothing about when Patreon cuts off service when you unsubscribe (incidentally, I'm pretty sure this is a creator decision and creators can choose to extend benefits to the end of the month).

What is Apple doing that is making any of this better for you?

Maybe you sort-of marginally have an easier time unsubscribing? But it's not hard to unsubscribe from a Patreon tier, and it's difficult to argue that Apple is providing infinite value by organizing your subscriptions into a list.

What are you actually paying this fee to Apple for? They're "on your side" except in the sense where them being on your side creates any tangible or significant change in your experience using Patreon. Seriously, what about the iOS experience using Patreon is better (or even different) than the experience elsewhere?

> is providing infinite value

Not infinite value, just any value versus 0 value. IE: infinitely times 0 is less than 0.0000001%. So the same relationship is true if you’re using Firefox to access Patron.

Apple charging fees is definitely a reason to drop Apple, but you personally can’t force creators to drop Patron which is why they can be so toxic.

> Not infinite value, just any value versus 0 value.

I'm not a fan of Patreon by any means, but it seems pretty silly to me to argue that Patreon offers literally zero value to consumers. Patreon's interface is still better than using Paypal to subscribe to a creator. Patreon still offers me as a user a modicum of privacy, I don't have to give my billing address to every creator that I support.

You don't have to like the platform, but zero value? Do you really believe that?

> but you personally can’t force creators to drop Patron which is why they can be so toxic.

I also want to push back on this a little bit. I know creators on Patreon, and most of them don't like the platform. You know why they use Patreon? Because it's the only place anybody goes to subscribe to content. If you set up a Ko-Fi account as a creator, you will receive a fraction of the subscriber-base that you'll receive on Patreon.

I'm not saying this to say that Patreon is somehow justified in its abusive behavior, but it's kinda silly to argue that the only reason Patreon is popular is because creators prefer it. Subscriber preferences play a huge role in this, and the fact is that most subscribers refuse to use alternatives.

If creators felt confident that they could move to platforms like Ko-Fi, Gumroad, Subscribestar, Librepay, etc without permanently losing all of their subscribers, they would. They'd leave in a heartbeat. Fewer fees, better websites, less VC-weirdness: creators don't really like Patreon. And many of would be able to move if it was worth their while; Patreon doesn't (as far as I know) have any restrictions on joining parallel donation platforms. But every time I've seen a creator do that, the majority of their revenue continues to come through Patreon. Subscribers refuse to leave the platform even when other options are being advertised to them.

There is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in that some creators end up only using Patreon because it's the only platform that brings in enough revenue to make it worth their while, which in turn means it's the only place to subscribe to them -- and yes, that can help reinforce network effects as well. But the biggest thing keeping creators on Patreon is consumers themselves.

If you want creators to leave Patreon, you do actually have at least a small amount of agency over that: find the creators you follow that are on multiple subscription platforms, and subscribe to them on those alternative platforms. By and large, most consumers are not willing to do that.

> but zero value?

Value is the net worth of something. I judge it as negative because IMO if it didn’t exist we’d be better off which isn’t to say it has zero positives just that the negatives outweigh the positives.

Your free to disagree, but I think it’s a reasonable argument.

Sure, I suppose.

I do want to re-state that if the majority of Patreon users (not creators but users, subscribers) agreed with you, Patreon already wouldn't exist. There is no conspiracy among creators to keep the platform afloat, they are constantly criticizing it. There are alternatives. Many of the alternatives have their own problems; the actual competitive coverage in this space is very low. But the biggest problem that all of them have is that they have a fraction of the userbase that Patreon has.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything, as far as I know you already use alternate services and you already support creators directly through other means. This is not an accusation against you, it is a general encouragement to everyone who dislikes Patreon, to please very literally put their money where their mouth is and go subscribe to creators on other platforms.

> As a customer it’s providing negative value with their policies to immediately cancel service the instant someone unsubscribes rather than letting the month play out etc.

is this recent? I definitely remember my service playing out the month when I cancel subs. Because for most subscriptions period I cancel the moment I subscribe.

I think the caveat here is that you are charged on the first, no matter when you sub. Be it on the 2nd or the 28th. But generally I can still access that month's rewards, so it's still not as bad as it could be.

I would probably sooner point out that by far the most money Apple makes off of their platform (and you don’t even have to look this up or have inside knowledge to know it is true) is from a TON of addicts gambling on gacha boxes in pointless video games. They are incentivized by predatory behavior.

Edit: seriously, even the casinos and bars will eventually tell you you’re done.

> and you don’t even have to look this up

It wasn't surprising, but having hard facts always helps. Apple v. Epic revealed Apple makes 70% of app store revenue from mobile games, which is generated by less than 10% of app store users:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/apple-vs-epic-70percent-of-a...

> does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

For people who would never give Patreon money by going to Patreon’s website? Sure, why not? That sounds like a niche market that Patreon would be completely unable to participate in without Apple’s help.

Sounds like a fun experiment. I'd be interested in Apple allowing Patreon to test that theory by disabling purchases within the app. Is this really about access to a niche user group of users who would never sign up elsewhere?

Apple seems to be very invested in forcing Patreon to either not be in the app store at all (and given the limitations of web apps, this is a significant penalty), or offer exclusively Apple payments in the app. Then Apple goes a step further with rules blocking Patreon showing links to other purchase methods in the app. These are not the actions of a company that believes that its users can be trusted not to make a purchase elsewhere.

If these users would never give Patreon money by going to Patreon's website, Apple wouldn't be scared of a link to the website payment options inside of the app. But they are scared of that, because they know that many of their users would choose to pay less online if they were informed about the choice or if Patreon decided not to offer payment options in the app.

I think the fact that Apple is (according to Patreon) not offering a choice of whether or not to accept payments in the app pokes a lot of holes in the idea that iOS users would never use a website to subscribe.

> These are not the actions of a company that believes that its users can be trusted not to make a purchase elsewhere.

Well yeah, the charitable interpretation is that of course Apple thinks their users will have a worse experience on average with subscriptions outside Apple’s ecosystem than inside of it. And it’s hard to disagree!

So... they would give Patreon money by going to their website?

Is this a niche market that would never have been available to Patreon that Apple is helping Patreon access, or is this Apple needing to en-mass protect its users from themselves as a result of them being too.. I don't know, weak willed(?) not to pay for Patreon using another method?

It's not both.

Well, for a popular and somewhat mainstream service like Patreon, it likely would be both.

Patreon likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and who would never go to the Patreon website but who would be comfortable making an iOS in-app purchase.

And Patreon also likely gets some users who first discover Patreon via the iOS app and would be comfortable going to the Patreon website to subscribe if the iOS app didn't have in-app purchases.

I was referring to that first group, which I suspect is a small portion of Patreon's total userbase, but I suspect it's a niche that Patreon is very interested in (both because Patreon can't engage them through any other channel, and because they probably have above-average discretionary spending).

The whole "protecting users from themselves" thing is just a very tired argument. You might as well say that an operating system implementing memory protection is "protecting users from themselves." Or a software vendor offering security updates is "protecting users from themselves."

> but I suspect it's a niche that Patreon is very interested in (both because Patreon can't engage them through any other channel, and because they probably have above-average discretionary spending).

It's interesting that the existence of this supposed niche is entirely contained within the larger group of people who are kept unaware of the choice being made. Makes it a little hard to estimate or talk about what that niche actually is since they're always going to be an invisible subset of the users who are unaware of other payment methods or of the increased fees they're paying, and who are by Apple policy not allowed to be informed.

> You might as well say that an operating system implementing memory protection is "protecting users from themselves."

I guess readers can decide for themselves whether a store banning telling consumers about an alternative payment method is the same thing as memory protection.

I would suggest that one key difference between antivirus/memory protection and Apple's app store policies is that antivirus doesn't need to desperately try to hide the fact from me that it exists.

> It's interesting that the existence of this supposed niche is entirely contained within the larger group of people who are kept unaware of the choice being made.

I doubt a significant portion of this niche is “being kept unaware” that Patreon has a website. They probably would simply never, ever find themselves on Patreon’s website. This is basically the polar opposite of myself, who has used Patreon for many years but have never remotely considered using their smartphone app. Different people are different.

> I guess readers can decide for themselves whether a store banning telling consumers about an alternative payment method is the same thing as memory protection.

The question isn’t whether they’re “the same.” A better question to ask is how satisfied are Apple’s users compared to users of other competing products, and what can that be attributed to?

> I doubt a significant portion of this niche is “being kept unaware” that Patreon has a website.

If this was true then Apple wouldn't have provisions against informing them.

People keep on saying that this is some informed choice. It's not. If it was an informed choice, Apple would not have a policy against informing them.

> A better question to ask is how satisfied are Apple’s users compared to users of other competing products, and what can that be attributed to?

We don't know how satisfied they are compared to others, because Apple has a policy against informing them about competing products.

This is an apple-to-oranges comparison. If your grocery store charges you $10 for a loaf of bread and the store down the street charges $5 and you don't realize that you could get the bread for $5, then you'd probably be satisfied with your purchase.

It doesn't mean you're not being exploited.

> I would suggest that one key difference between antivirus/memory protection and Apple's app store policies is that antivirus doesn't need to desperately try to hide the fact from me that it exists.

There is in fact an enormous industry of software and operating system features designed to make it as difficult as possible for the user to circumvent.

> difficult as possible for the user to circumvent.

But not as difficult as possible for the user to be aware of. If an antivirus installed itself on my computer without my knowledge and hid the fact that it existed from me, we would call that malware.

Apple doesn't have a provision that makes it difficult for the customer to use other purchase methods, it has a provision that makes it difficult to inform the customer that alternate purchase methods exist.

And again, there is no reason for Apple to care so much about that unless they think it's beneficial to Apple for the customer not to know what choice they're making. Apple's policy is not the equivalent of an antivirus program or a security measure, Apple's policy is the equivalent of a car salesman trying to make it impossible for you to comparison shop or look up competing prices.

Because "you'd have a worse experience" if you used a competitor. Sure. That's definitely why Patreon can't inform users in the app that they're paying 30% more per-subscription. /s Also I'd have a worse experience with another Internet provider and that's why Comcast needs to make it difficult to compare price rates with other companies. Come on.

> Apple seems to be very invested in forcing Patreon to either not be in the app store at all

Does it? It seems like they are enforcing their developer agreement as written, and likely have been advised they need to enforce it uniformly due to regulatory scrutiny. I believe Google hit this in India where it was ruled they could not start collecting their royalty after several years of non-enforcement across certain categories as it amounted to a bait-and-switch.

> and likely have been advised they need to enforce it uniformly due to regulatory scrutiny.

I'm not certain what the category difference is between Patreon subscriptions and Youtube/Amazon/Spotify subscriptions, all of which don't allow payment through the app.

This is actually something I would really genuinely love Apple to clarify because Patreon's statements on it are surprising; why is Patreon not allowed to stop offering payment options at all in the app. Are they lying about that? Why wouldn't they be allowed to turn it off when other companies clearly are?

> as written,

That being said: if their policy as written has these terms in it, then that doesn't make me feel better about Apple. I would still question why Apple is so scared of consumers being notified about payment options across the board.

An abusive policy designed to give customers less information about their purchases is still abusive even if it's applied uniformly. It still speaks a lot to Apple's priorities and about whether they are genuine when they say that they believe customers prefer their pricing schemes. You don't have to hide things from customers that they prefer.

> fairness does not exist in the market, only competition.

The first part is undoubtedly true, but competition doesn't exist here either. That Apple is getting away with their anti-competitive practices is a full-blown scandal.

> The market does not have a concept of fairness, only competition.

The market exists through legal means, which also include mechanisms for fair competition.

> for all of the work they're putting into hosting and curating apps and for

More for creating the OS, releasing updates for free to all users, and licensing new and existing developer APIs for free to all iOS developers in perpetuity.

In lieu of their app store fee you get Unreal Engine-style licensing anyways where a percentage of your revenue becomes subject to royalties.

As a small b2c low cost subscription app provider I was initially taken back by the fees of the app/play stores.

However, after looking at the competitive international payment processing and tax management solutions available, the fees started to make a lot more sense. Just the fact that there's no transaction fee on top of the percentage they take makes charging a low monthly fee much more competitive. Once you add in not having to think at all about how much tax to charge in each local, how to report on it, etc, the cost side became much more reasonable.

And the reduced friction and trust concerns for users when they know it's apple managing their financial data instead of a small business is pretty significant as well as others have pointed out.

Would I like to be charged less for all these benefits? OF COURSE. Is the service they provide to smaller businesses with under $1mil in annual revenue a decent ROI? I think it probably is.

I agree that Apple should be pressured to allow alternative modes of payment and/or lower fees in more cases. The duopoly problem you talk about is a real and serious issue.

But on this point:

> often with the implicit suggestion that Apple "deserves" to be compensated for all of the work they're putting into hosting and curating apps

This is a huge misunderstanding about what these fees are actually for. I remember a time when major operating system updates cost a fair bit of money. The kind of free significant feature updates we see for phones these days were almost completely unheard of both in the PC and the phone market.

Apple now provides fairly significant feature updates for phones/tablets, going back many years. The App Store business model is what incentivizes this development. Doesn't matter if you don't buy a new phone.. they still make a fair bit of money on you when you use the App Store.

The App Store fees are not to cover hosting/review. It's a way to get a continuous revenue stream from the users of their hardware/software. There is only one realistic alternative to this business model: to use more advertising to extract value out of your users.. which is the path Microsoft and Google seems to be heading in. Neither is ideal. But IMO it's good that there are at least two options with different approaches to this, so we have a bit of choice.

A third alternative would be going back to paying for major OS updates. But I don't think that business model is viable anymore. People expect free updates.

Currently the majority of Apple's Safari revenue comes from Google search deals.

Do you believe that if Apple got rid of those deals, it would be justified in applying similar restrictions in Safari to support development of the browser? What incentivizes them to build a functioning browser? Is it feasible to have an Open web while incentivizing the massive amount of work required to build browsers and web APIs?

And if so, what is different about native APIs?

I don't know why you are getting downvoted except that your opinion is unpopular in this thread. It's a legit counterargument though. However, speaking for myself as an N of 1, the reason I buy an iPhone is because of the assurance that it will receive updates -- especially security updates -- for several years. Android doesn't seem to hold that promise.

My last Android phone was an HTC that came out with this promise of delivering Android updates within 15 days -- a promise they did not keep. https://www.engadget.com/2016-08-25-htc-one-a9-android-updat...

As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support, the news is terrible: Patreon informed me that all creators must switch to a monthly subscription schedule instead of the per-creation schedule that I and many other currently use. The whole point of per-creation is that it allows me to take time off, and only charge people when I release something, thus incentivizing me, and being fair to my supporters. I'm really annoyed by this change, and will start pushing back, but if it happens as planned, I may be forced to switch to another platform, or come up with some other solution.

If you're able, my artist friend has had a lot of success running their own site and doing their own payments through PayPal.

Am I misunderstanding, that PayPal can workaround Apple's payment rules which Patreon is complying with?

As long as you're not using the paypal app on an apple device

You are misunderstanding, the suggestion is to do it yourself instead of using patreon.

think p2p transactions are exempt - apple doesn’t get 30% of my venmo or zelle.

no clue why patreon doesn’t count though

It's not p2p. 2 transactions happen: you pay patreon, patreon pays them.

likewise with venmo, no? who gets to decide what constitutes a transaction

If we're being honest, private backroom deals based on a variety of business factors and debates. Venmo is Paypal, Paypal has Musk's and Thiel's deep pockets. They can and will settle something.

There is no real line, just imaginary ones apple draws arbitrarily.

It seems this bypasses both Patreon and Apple.

Meta:

So the negative point value, currently -1, tells me that I am asking a rhetorical question and I should have said that I'm asking a rhetorical question.

Back on topic:

I am an expert on in-app purchases circa 2020 and do know that there's no working around it unless you have a deal with Apple. Used to be my job.

Paypal or any other financial transaction entity Is all the same to Apple, the user is sending their money while using an apple hosted app, and apple wants to make sure that users don't get fleeced! So Apple taxes those transactions ostensibly to provide oversight Services.

So the only way for patreon to get around this is to not mention in their app that you can also sign up on you know patreon.com To give money, and to allow users who have signed up and sent money on patreon.com to use the iOS app.

How do they deal with the taxes?

1. Building and running your own site is a lot more work than using Patreon.

2. Now you're at PayPal's tender mercies, which... well, you do you, but I wouldn't advise it.

Keep it simple, use templates.

In fact, how amazing would it be if someone who was about to embark on yet another decentralized protocol fiasco instead just released a Patreon-like template? There are other payment providers.

>how amazing would it be if someone who was about to embark on yet another decentralized protocol fiasco instead just released a Patreon-like template

they probably exist already (minus payment processing). Network effects take hold as usual, though. Patrons are more willing than average to jump, but I can see hesitation signing up and adding payment for a new/unknown website

and honestly all payment providers suck in some unique way. Though most of the fault lies in Visa/Mastercard. That's a monopoly we need to tackle one day.

Everyone's heard horror stories about Paypal, though. Doesn't seem like a platform that you want to become too reliant on.

I've heard horror stories about Patreon as well. Your best bet is probably to spread your risk by being on Patreon, Ko-fi, PayPal+Web, YouTube memberships (if you do video) etc.

managing so many fronts with such different medium (you can host all media on patreon, only really videos on YT but also more limited videos than patreon. then you can't host at all on ko-fi), sounds like a pain both logistically and financially.

How can another platform be better about this? Wouldn’t they be subject to the same thing? Or is there some component here that is not tied to the Apple demand?

That's a great question! How far does Apple's control extend into markets that are unrelated to their core business? I always prefer using mobile websites on my own android phone instead of downloading apps because of security concerns and general notification spamming, ads, and annoyances, and it seems to me this would be a great solution ie just replacing "apps" with bookmarks. For the current situation, I may look into services like Nebula, doing PayPal directly, YouTube subscriptions and donations, or setting up an online store. Or even.... sponsored videos!! (just kidding)

> it seems to me this would be a great solution ie just replacing "apps" with bookmarks.

I think there are several reasons users gravitate to apps, but the biggest pain point apps mitigate is the login UX. I'd wager that you use a password manager, most people do not and cannot be convinced to do so. With an app, one can create an account and log in once, then stay logged in and never think about the password again until they get a new device, at which time the password can be reset via email and then immediately forgotten.

It’s bad, yes. It would be good if Patreon allowed sticking with the billing systems which Apple is forbidding, but I do understand that they may no longer be able to justify the business expense of maintaining them given the anticipated changes in usage patterns.

Practical suggestion:

Maybe you can project a certain number of releases per year, reduce that projection slightly to give yourself a margin of flexibility, announce that target to your supporters, be explicit wit them that the rate of output throughout the year will be uneven, and then charge a monthly subscription price of 1/12 of the total price for your annual target output?

Assuning a good projection would smoothly have approximately the same financial outcome for everyone as the status quo in most cases. I can think of ways in which this could be gamed, but most of those who would want to bother gaming it are probably cash-poor enough that you may not mind, or if too many people do this to preserve your financial objectives I can also think of workarounds for most of the potential abuses.

Yes, it's a reasonable workaround. I believe Patreon also allows creators to "pause" their account, suspending payments for an indefinite amount of time. So, I could just keep the account paused, then unpause for a month when I make a video. Although, I believe that Patreon doesn't want the per-creation model themselves, since charging the same amount each month is simpler, and easier to project revenue, etc, so they are probably just bundling this unpopular change with the Apple announcement.

So why is Patreon doing this if even they don't like it?

Patreon doesn't have a choice. Apple is too large to give up having an iOS app - too many customers will just walk away instead of using the alternative (or so they think - but I don't blame them for not being willing to experiment - if they are right it will cost a lot of customers)

Well there is a choice, but it is questionable if suing will or will not result in any change. Even if they win in court it will be several years and millions of dollars in legal fees, and it isn't clear they will win.

iOS market share is near 60% in the US and a bit over 25% worldwide. They can't afford to leave that on the table.

They can _not_ charge through iOS though. It’s a very small matter for me to navigate to the Amazon website to buy a new book, then load it up in the Kindle app.

I imagine they already crunched the numbers of doing the Spotify approach vs. kowtowing to Apple. Unlike Spotify and Amazon, Patreon does have non-negligible competition to consider who will take advantage of the more convenient payment.

I've seen some creators on Patreon "pause" their monthly subscription when they have nothing to release on a given month, so that patrons won't be billed for that month. That could be a workaround for your use case.

Do we know whether or not iOS's subscription model supports pausing?

I guess I assume Patreon would mention if it didn't.

It does not. Apple do all the billing. You have no mechanism to link up users and bills or change users billing. The only way would be to notify all subscribers to cancel their subscription, hope they do that, and then notify them all to resubscribe afterwards, which would obviously be catastrophic for subscription revenue, as well as a terrible user experience.

I wonder why Patreon isn't hammering this point more if that's the case. This seems to me to be an almost bigger problem than the loss of the per-creation billing.

Not that losing per-creation billing is good, but Patreon has been threatening it for a while, and there are ways it could in theory be simulated. But this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... without continuing to charge patrons. It's a really commonly used mechanism from what I've seen, this would be a loss of a really important flexible tool for creators.

I'm not distrusting you, I just feel like I'd like to see some confirmation from Patreon before I start making accusations about it. Maybe they have some deal or know something about a future unreleased API that I don't know?

But losing the ability to pause a Patreon page would be a very, very big deal. Arguably even a bigger deal than the 30% tax, since I assume this change would affect everyone regardless of where they subscribe from. That's something that people should be talking about if it's the case.

> this makes it effectively impossible for creators to go on vacations, take a sabbatical, whatever... without continuing to charge patrons.

"I will want to withhold money the moment you go on a break" is not "patronage".

Patreon does not require creators to pause payments when they go on break.

But that should obviously be a choice that is available to creators, for a variety of reasons. They might be treating Patreon more like a subscription service than a donation platform. They might have personal psychological hang-ups (read about why per-creation pricing is so popular with some creators). I would criticize Patreon if it forced creators into that decision. Forcing them out of that decision is also worth critiquing.

It ought to be a creator's choice when they do and don't charge their patrons. It is not Patreon or Apple's job to decide with that level of detail what the relationship between a creator and their fans should look like. And creators who voluntarily decide (for whatever reason) to temporarily pause charging fans are not doing anything wrong.

> Patreon does not require creators to pause payments when they go on break.

I didn't say it does, but someone apparently thinks they should. That someone doesn't get the idea behind patreon

> It ought to be a creator's choice

There's plenty choice. Sell your stuff, there are plenty platforms for that. Sell physical media. Stream. Patronage is a specific thing.

> but someone apparently thinks they should.

To be 1000% clear, the someone who is demanding this feature... is creators. This is a feature that creators heavily use, by their own choice, because it helps them psychologically or because they prefer this style of interaction with fans, or for whatever reason because they don't have to justify their decisions to anyone, least of all commenters on HN.

> Patronage is a specific thing.

Patreon has not been a donation-specific platform since tiers were invented; and this kind of control over payments was always part of the platform for both creators using it as a sales platform and to creators using it as a donation platform. Patreon hosts a wide variety of creators who approach audience interaction in a variety of ways. This has always been the case.

It's wild to me that you're going to jump on here gatekeeping creators off of Patreon, and to act like it's somehow improper for me to suggest that the significant portion of the creator-base on Patreon that uses the platform in a way that makes them happy... should be allowed to keep using it that way.

People have this weird habit of taking creators who are making in many cases at or below minimum wage doing things that they love and subjecting them to purity tests about whether or not they're living up to some platonic ideal of what some random person on the internet personally believes fan-creator relationships should look like.

Are you seriously offended that some creators like having the ability to choose when they charge their patrons?

> doesn't get the idea behind patreon

The idea behind Patreon is that creators should be able to make money doing things that they love in a way that is comfortable to them. Your aesthetic attraction to the idea of a donation platform is not really relevant to that goal. You're not sticking up for creators if you gatekeep how they interact with fans. And your ideal of how patronage is defined has never been the exclusive model for how Patreon as a platform has worked -- nor is it consistent with the model that Apple is forcing creators into.

> To be 1000% clear, the someone who is demanding this feature... is creators

I'm a creator, not on Patreon due to sanctions and I have a dayjob for now.

This would be an anti-feature for me because if it's implemented then there is pressure to pause payments when I don't create for whatever period of time I estimate is "too long" for some average patron. What a freaking can of worms. Turns creators into service providers.

> Patreon has not been a donation-specific platform since tiers were invented; and this kind of control over payments was always part of the platform for

Tiers is basically "choose how much change you can spare to support me". Most creators I support just have different text on them and no other difference.

> both creators using it as a sales platform and to creators using it as a donation platform

Using Patreon as sales platform is a cheaty workaround to save on fees. If you want to sell stuff you better look at Etsy or whatever fits your niche. You'll make more money too

> Are you seriously offended that some creators like having the ability to choose when they charge their patrons?

Nah. Only when you call it "patronage".

This is not providing a service in return for money. I create, my choice. You want to support me, your choice. Thanks but I don't have a responsibility to create. If you feel like I have then it's too much money for you, choose a smaller amount. Or don't pay at all. You don't have a responsibility to pay. See also Github sponsorships.

> The idea behind Patreon is that creators should be able to make money doing things that they love in a way that is comfortable to them

By definition not. There is no generic "creator". People are different. "Comfortable" is different for different people. Patreon is focused on one specific model. They sorta try to do more ("pay per post") but that's feature creep and worse than using a dedicated platform. As patron I hate "pay per post" bc I have to do some math to even tell how much I'm paying you. Just obscurity for no good reason. As creator, see above.

> I'm a creator, not on Patreon due to sanctions and I have a dayjob for now.

Great. Not to be blunt here, but if you're not on Patreon then who the heck cares what your opinion is on this? I feel like it's kind of reasonable to care more about the opinions of the creators using the platform than the creators not on the platform.

As far as I can tell, this "anti-feature" has existed for the entirety of Patreon. Features like pay-per-post are not new, they're not Patreon expanding or losing its way. Quite the opposite, Patreon has tried multiple times to get rid of some of these features, and they were stopped because of creator backlash. Learn the culture of the place you're criticizing.

And maybe this just isn't the platform for you? But it's a wild thing to go to a platform that has always worked in a certain way -- a platform that you are not using as a creator -- and to say, "oh, this is an anti-feature." Who are you to decide that?

> Most creators I support just have different text on them and no other difference.

Great. That is a thing that creators are allowed to do. It is not representative of the entire platform, and it's kind of gross to dismiss the concerns of creators who don't work that way.

> Using Patreon as sales platform is a cheaty workaround to save on fees.

What in the heck does it mean to "cheat" on fees? Patreon works great as a subscription platform, and people have used it that way for years, and both creators and fans benefit from it. This isn't a sport, it's not a bad thing for creators to be able to support themselves. I am genuinely thrown off by the idea that someone would look at a creator building things that an audience loves and say, "but they didn't do it fair."

> Thanks but I don't have a responsibility to create. If you feel like I have

Very literally nobody has said that you do. What I've said is that other creators do not have a responsibility to ask you how they should create or how they should engage with their fans.

They don't have that responsibility. You can go off and create however you'd like. You can even use Patreon and not pause your service. Patreon has zero requirements to send regular updates. I follow and support creators who put out one update every year. I kick a few dollars a month to a creator who has not posted an update in nearly two years. Do what you want, but stop getting mad at other creators because they're using a platform in a way that has always been officially supported and allowed by the platform.

> If you want to sell stuff you better look at Etsy or whatever fits your niche.

Or -- and this is going to be difficult to hear -- creators can do what they want because they don't answer to you. It is wild to me that you are trying to dictate who is allowed to use Patreon as a creator... as someone who is not even on Patreon. Since when do you get to decide who does and doesn't belong inside of a community that you are not even a part of?

> Nah. Only when you call it "patronage".

I don't care what you call it, I don't think quibbling over semantic definitions matters more than people's livelihoods.

> By definition not. [...] Patreon is focused on one specific model.

I mean, no, objectively not, given that Patreon supported exclusive tiers and rewards from the very beginning. I'm sorry if you thought it was focused on something different, but creators on the platform have literally never universally treated it as a donation model. Your idea of what you'd like Patreon to be has nothing to do with what it has always been. Of course, Patreon can be treated as a pure donation platform, and many creators do. And of course, some creators who do treat it as a donation platform still choose to make use of paused payments or pay-per-post, and have written en-length about how that's better for their personal creative process.

Again, I want to point out how incredibly wild it is to walk up to a community that you are not a part of, that has always included a particular set of people, and to point at them and say, "they don't belong there, we're by definition not supporting them."

> As patron I hate "pay per post" bc I have to do some math to even tell how much I'm paying you.

Set a maximum pay-out, this isn't hard. As a patron, you should use the tools available to you to control your spending rather than requiring creators to fit into your model. I feel like for all the nobility you're ascribing to being a "patron" of a creator, asking you as part of that to accommodate the preferred donation styles of creators you support is fairly reasonable.

Nobody is forcing you to support creators who use pay-per-post. But they don't have an obligation to you to handle their funding in the way you like.

> As creator, see above.

As a creator not on Patreon. And that's fine, there's lots of spaces that you can be a creator. But it doesn't particularly matter what your opinion is on what a separate community from you should and shouldn't allow.

Pro tip, don't overuse the word "creator". We are just normal people. And literally no one cares if you are on Patreon or not.

Then, chill. No one is telling anyone what to do. But there are good reasons Patreon may choose to not offer you that feature. Like standing it's original idea and not wanting to compete with a bazillion alternatives like Twitch/Bandcamp/Etsy in each niche. Like not turning creativity into a service business. Some hustlers or professional artists may want it, but most don't want it (even if they don't realize it because they didn't think about the implications)

> Like standing it's original idea

Patreon's original idea included the features you're calling antifeatures.

You are imagining a fictional version of a platform that has never existed and getting mad that the real platform has lost its way from the fictional platform that only lived in your head.

The original idea that you're upset about Patreon abandoning existed only in your head. It has always been a platform for both pure donations and for transactional subscriptions. It was never the idea to serve one of those communities exclusively. That is a thing you have imagined.

> No one is telling anyone what to do.

> if you want to sell stuff you better look at Etsy or whatever fits your niche

Sure.

> But there are good reasons Patreon may choose to not offer you that feature.

Patreon offers the feature. This is a conversation about whether Apple might remove a feature that Patreon chooses to offer.

I don't know how to make that clearer? Again, the platform you are imagining does not exist; there is no version of Patreon that was positioned against creator services or the ability to pause transactions or per-creation payments. Yes, Patreon could choose not to offer these services.

But they did choose to offer them.

And only one person here showed up and got really mad about the fact that Patreon used the word "patron" in relation to a service they have as far as I can tell, always offered.

> Like not turning creativity into a service business.

> Some hustlers or professional artists may want it, but most don't want it (even if they don't realize it because they didn't think about the implications)

I don't know if you get to tell people to chill at the same time you're calling anyone who uses Patreon in a way you don't like a hustler, accusing them of ruining creativity, and questioning their ability to know what they do and don't want?

And again, only one person here is mad that Patreon is... doing what they have always done, under the direction of a community that wants them to do it, despite what people who are not part of that community want. Only one person showed up in an unrelated comment thread and said, "stop calling it patronage if a creator chooses not to take someone's money for a month."

I mean, yes, it is irritating and frustrating to hear someone who's not using Patreon as a creator badmouth a significant portion of the community that is doing stuff that people love, and to belittle them and tell them that they don't know what they want or they're hustlers and shouldn't be on the platform. If it means something to you that it's irritating to hear that, congrats! That is irritating and annoying to hear. I'm not sure what that proves, but yes, good job. Belittling creators will make people mad at you, you have cracked the code.

> Arguably even a bigger deal than the 30% tax, since I assume this change would affect everyone regardless of where they subscribe from.

I wouldn't assume this until confirmed. The way I read these news is the typical Apple scenario, where if you subscribe from the app, there's an added 30% subscription fee and a loss of all control from the subscription by Patreon, all control and all limitations handed over to Apple, all subscription cancellations, all billing complaints, everything.

But you can still have a parallel system without the fee on the web, the cannot be advertised or guided to it from the app (at least this used to be the case), but it's also as usual completely handled by the developer.

Patreon is probably removing the on-purchase pay model even on the web because it's inherently incompatible with the basic Apple model and would cause a major disconnect in what the user can expect.

But I don't think the scenario with paused subscriptions is quite the same. Patreon would simply allow them to be paused, while if subscribed with Apple, the button on the web could simply be disabled or gone, or heck, the entire subscription page on Patreon gone, with just info text "This subscription is managed from your device". I mean, many devs do it like that at least.

I think the platform you should switch to here is Android. This is Apple's fault, Patreon doesn't seem like it likes the changes any more than you do.

do you think that they can switch their customers platform? this comment doesn't make any sense at all.

Does the app give any benefit over the web? Asking customers to use the browser over the dedicated app doesn’t seem unreasonable.

Does apple allow that?

I think there are rules about telling people not to use IOS method.

Not sure if that would extend to content displayed in the app too from creators?

Take Apple out of the loop entirely.

Why does Patreon need an app? Have users go through the website. Send them updates when people post new content.

I've never used the Patreon app on either Android or iOS. I support a number of creators and I have no idea why I'd want an app. Money is taken from my account. Receipts are sent to my email. Articles from creators are sent to my email, and if they're long enough I click a link and read the full article (or view the pictures) on the website.

Exactly what I do, subscribe through the web. Don't need another app on the phone. Subscribe and forget.

The app's useful for audio posts. But mostly it's just an extra chance for them to make money. Push notifications, the home screen icon, etc. Most people I know, their inbox is barely functional due to the marketing emails, and they're reliant on features like Gmail's "Important" which only highlights real people, not Patreon content.

You're not the average user, and if the average user gets a billing email and hasn't bothered to read their content email, visit the site or open the app, they are more likely to end their subscription.

Can't you do all those things with a PWA?

What does the Patreon app do that a PWA can't?

Aside from many users not being familiar with PWAs and not wanting to install them, I believe they’d also have to drop support for older iOS versions, as for example PWA push notifications were only added in iOS 16.4.

Given Apple's back and forth history allowing or not allowing and limiting or not limiting PWAs, I'd be hesitant to risk my business model on them. Which is exactly what Apple wanted I guess

Remember your password.

I made a very simple PWA and every time after reboot I have to re-log in. Of course, the browser will auto-fill my password but same page as a PWA it won't.

I also did some testing with macroquad [1] and I was finding that occasionally as a PWA the GL stuff just didn't work. I suspect Apple was disabling the GL stuff in the PWA as an anti-fingerprinting technique; there's no way they do anti-fingerprinting for an app.

---

PWAs just can't do the same things that native apps can. This is probably intentional otherwise who would give not only 30% of their revenue but allow them to be a middle man between them and their customers?

[1]: https://macroquad.rs/

PWAs are only able to be limited by technical measures, not business measures. For instance, anti-fingerprinting logic wouldn’t be needed in an App Store. There, Apple can say if they find out you are fingerprinting users without going through Apple’s specific ATT user consent process, you are in violation of our developer agreement and may be permanently banned from the store.

Each update of an app is reviewed, while a website can change completely at any moment (or have different versions served for different people). This is why for instance web extensions are heavily reviewed and audited.

This means they are pretty fundamentally different models.

The prompt for location is different for example because Apple enforces you are using the location information you gather for a specified reason, and has the aforementioned business penalties for misuse, and has tied all that to a real world identity. The browser can’t know if the page asking for location data is for mapping, for marketing tracking, or so that someone can drive to your home. The two features are going to look and behave distinctly.

I know PWAs can't do many things that apps in general can. But people were suggesting that Patreon should just be a website and not an app. And that's why I said PWA. If you can be just a website, you can be a PWA and be a bit better than just a website.

> visit the site or open the app

There's another erm... "creator oriented" Patreon-like service that works entirely through the web. Specifically to avoid Apple and Google's cut. And they seem wildly successful, although perhaps the type of content may influence user's decisions.

It's probably a generational divide now. For many middle/younger gen z and the upcoming Gen alpha, apps "are" the web. Not having an app to look at may as well not exist. Especially true of IOS users.

I’ve been trying to figure this out. Just guessing since I have limited Patreon usage.

They don’t want to just be a payment middleman for creators, they want to be “sticky” like Facebook.

So they might add things like chat, media playback (with DRM), creators being able to post with notifications. Maybe you can sign up for additional private streams or even 1-on-1 sessions (like a gamer offering tutorials).

But by having an app to consume digital services, Apple says you have to provide a way to pay for services in the app (because that’s apple’s revenue model, a portion of software sales and resulting digital goods and services off of the App Store)

Sure Apple allows it. However it is much easier to have a good UI experience with a custom app than a web app. Some people also think they must have an app for everything and so even if there is a good web experience they will demand the app anyway.

They used to forbit it, but court cases struck down the "anti-steering rules"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/apple-lets-devs-....

Apple forbids even mentioning alternative payment methods within the app.

It is patreon, creators will just ask people to use a browser to subscribe.

That will be just great when Apple finds a creator doing that during App Review and bans Patreon over it. Patreon is going to be forced into the position of policing it for Apple, I'd guess.

Policing what creators say on instagram/twitter? good luck with enforcing that :)

If I click my subscription on my iOS Disney+ app, it just launches a browser to manage.

If you sign up for new service via the app, it does in-app purchasing.

After that you can maintain your account via the web.

I think that's changed: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/apple-lets-devs-....

> However, the rulings established that Apple's so-called "anti-steering" rules—language prohibiting developers from mentioning cheaper or alternative purchasing options that might be available outside of an app—were anticompetitive.

> Apple has updated its App Store rules to allow developers to provide external links to other payment options, technically circumventing its normal fee structure.

Yes but then they get to charge a commission for anyone following the link.

Google forces apps on the Play Store to use Google's payment methods and give them a 15% to 30% cut of revenue, as well.

You can sideload, but the duopoly exists and they're shaking 99.9% of users down for every dime they can get out of them.

I guess I'm having a hard time understanding why a Patreon app is even needed or wanted. ApplePay I understand.

True, but Android at least allows alternative app stores, and there are a few. Obviously it's not as easy as the native store, but if enough developers are dissatisfied, there is a way out.

My understanding is that Patreon does not use Google's payment system and isn't subject to a cut of the revenue. This is why the article says "Your prices on the web and the Android app will remain completely unaffected".

At least until 2025 when Google implements the exact same policy change. Every questionable hardware choice Apple does is something Android vendors or Google Play copies within a year.

Remember when Samsung made fun of Apple for removing the headphone jack?

unlike Apple who has managed to dodge scrutiny, Google is being reemed hard by the US courts over multiple antitrust issues. It may happen eventually, but I think the courts doing their jobs will stall such pivots. The last thing they want to do is make their store sound more like a monopoly.

You are aware that you cannot purchase ebooks through the Amazon apps on Android, right?

What you say may be true today, but tomorrow is unknown territory as far as these sorts of agreements go.

I can purchase ebooks on my Amazon Kindle Fire that runs Amazon apps on Android fine.

I bet I would also be able to purchase ebooks on the Amazon Kindle app installed from the Amazon Appstore on my Google Pixel phone.

Your bet would be wrong - they stopped allowing that a little while back. It's annoying.

> As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support

How long until YouTube (Google) demand "their" cut of your Patreon income? What will you do then?

pateron can upload an apk and bypass google's play store

I know what you are trying to do, but this is he host of an 800k channel. They already generate millions for youtube. Google will at best try to steer that channel to use Youtube's recent-ish dontation and memberships features.

No reason to disrupt money directly from someone they are paying; if they want to do it sneakily they simply change their payout rates and argue over that instead.

I don't understand why Patreon has to drop the per-creation model. Can they not just not offer that on iOS, and continue it on other platforms? (Perhaps with a "convert from susbcription to per-creation" feature online?)

Most likely because this feature existed on iOS before

User confusion - if they block users from subscribing to those creators on iOS they will inevitably have support tickets to deal with it. Hence their 16-month project to remove non-iOS-compatible plans.

From the article:

> Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.

In other words, every Patreon creator has to be billable through iOS App Store or you get kicked off.

Someone should get the FTC or EU involved. This is beyond the pale.

> Someone should get the FTC or EU involved.

I agree, but I also wonder why Patreon needs an iOS app.

It's 2024, you don't need an app for everything. See OnlyFans, they're doing fine even without being able to access the proprietary stores.

This is speculation: for younger people, apps are the web. I think there is some age/line where on one side, your first instinct is to open the browser on your phone and navigate to a website, and on the other side of the line, you open the app store and navigate to an app.

Personally, I agree. I want better/first class mobile websites over an app. I don't want apps for most things. That said, I didn't grow up in a mobile first/mobile only era.

> This is speculation: for younger people, apps are the web

I don’t think age is the driver. For most people, for the last decade, all software in their phone has come from the App Store. Everybody is trained to check there first. Even if you think to google it first, you’re just going to get App Store link in the top results. Company’s own site might be at the top and you’ll instinctively look for the ‘get on App Store’ badge when you click through.

Some small number of android power users are the only people that really know that downloading an app from not the App Store is possible.

following this to its logical conclusion you would never install an app if they offered a web version which also means if you get a DM from a creator on pateron you have to load the website instead of easy access to your app drawer.

> See OnlyFans

i bet they would do even better as a native app.

also let's remember that apple goes out of their way to not support PWA in an effort to maintain control https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/15/apple-confirms-its-breakin...

I don’t know if that link supports your point?

people always say turn to webapps as an alternative to native apps but on apple for years pwa lacked feature parity

It's 2024, if you want a viable business that caters to mobile users, you need an app. There are users who don't care or even prefer the web version, but we're a minority.

> or disable transactions in the iOS app

This should be beyond illegal right? Other apps do this without issues.

Apps in certain categories (ebooks, music, video, news) can choose to not support purchasing at all in apps, or to use in-app purchases.

Outside these categories (eg a email account as a service, group classes) you are expected to always have in app purchasing.

There have been interesting ways people have explored getting around this, but obviously Apple thinks they should be paid what they are contractually obligated.

Having control of distribution means it is easy on Apple’s side to solve disagreements. You only see it brought to lawsuit by the other side (e.g. Epic’s lost case in the US)

I could be wrong, but I think you’re misinterpreting it. They could remove all billing from the iOS app just like eg Audible does. But I’m guessing they don’t want to. Patreon is looking out for themselves, not their creators or subscribers.

Hard to say. Audible, Netflix, and Spotify have a lot more weight to throw around. Enough that even Apple can't ignore it. I can see these being backdoor deals for them specifically.

Patreon from its very model does not. A very sad exploitation of the little guy, even if this is one of the biggest little guys.

I wonder if you could argue this is comparable to Amazon allowing you to buy some things in the app but not others, like ebooks. Obviously Amazon is much bigger but I don’t see why an app shouldn’t be able to allow buying some things but not others. Especially when the limitation is from Apple’s functionality like in this case, rather than their fee like in Amazon’s.

This is truly egregious. "At risk"? This is sheer blackmail.

"Nice store you have here. It'd be a shame if anything... bad were to happen to it. A 30% cut for our legitimate businessmen's club should assure you peace of mind... "

hey, i answered your email about aleph last wednesday; no stress if you're answering slowly, i just wanted to check to see if it had fallen into your spam filter

unfortunately i don't think i have any other way to contact you other than email and hn comments

The per-creation model isn't even offered to new Patreon accounts, or those that have switched away from it. I'm not sure why

Something about too much transaction fees?

You're aggregate-charged monthly, not individually when the work is created.

Because they've already been on the road to moving off of them for a while now (for this reason)

For what reason? iOS fees? I'm not sure they're related. Patreon has been pushing away the per-creation model for many years now.

Apple has quietly been one of the biggest culprits in the proliferation of subscription software. They still don't support upgrades/upgrade pricing. Subscriptions are also the easiest way to implement a software demo or trial in the App Store. Finally they use their control of the App Store to coerce anyone doing something different than monthly/yearly subscriptions into that model (as we see here).

It sucks big time.

> They still don't support upgrades/upgrade pricing.

What would this mean, exactly?

You can sell people a demo→full-version permanent unlock as a one-time purchase, same as you can sell DLC in a game.

And you can also have subscription tiers, where you get more features out of the higher tiers of subscriptions.

And you can, in theory, freely mix these — e.g. charging someone a subscription for the base version, and then charging them a one-time fee to unlock a specific feature.

If you want, you could even charge for app features as consumables (just like F2P games do) — where you pay to have a block of credits that you use up, or you pay for one month and then have to buy it again when it runs out.

What's the missing revenue model here?

What's missing is you pay for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and it's yours forever. Then when CS3 comes out you can upgrade with a nice discount.

Ah, alright.

There's nothing actually stopping you from doing this — it requires two things:

1. either a third-party licensing server (and thus some SSO auth system — but just require Apple's own SSO for it and it'll still be a clean-ish workflow) to share/sync the transaction status from one app to the other; or a local Group Container plus logic in each app to write the transaction statuses fetched for the given app into the group container for the other app to read

2. never charging for the app as a whole, but instead breaking your app's pricing down into a set of IAP-purchased feature entitlements (whether charged for individually, or as a bundle, the important part is that each entitlement has its own price.) Then, making the new version just a superset of the features of the old version — and so, when you're buying the old version, you're buying features A+B+C; and then when you're buying the new version (with the app being able to see whether or not you've bought the old version), new customers are buying A+B+C+D+E, while existing customers are buying D+E.

---

Note that there's an even easier way to do this (and I think this is the way Apple would prefer you do this): don't release V2 as a separate app from V1.

Instead, have V1 auto-update to a v2.0.0 release — which converts the V1 app into a launcher with an "edition" (major version) selector. Either compile in both the V1 and V2 codebase into this app, or better yet (for download/on-disk size), package separate V1 and V2 "engines" as executable DLC packages, submitted to Apple for review along with the app, downloaded on-demand when the app needs to run them.

With this approach, the app would either start up the first time still within V1, and allow/offer people the option of "seamlessly upgrading" the app to V2; or the app would start up with an "edition launcher" UI that allows people a choice. (And either way, you could offer the ability at any time to freely switch between V2 and V1, re-launching the app with the other engine enabled. Like dual-booting Operating Systems, but at the app level.)

Here, you could charge for the V2 "upgrade" ahead-of-time, before allowing the user to switch over to the V2 engine; or you could allow the user to switch between V1-fully-licensed and V2-demo modes (or even between V1-demo and V2-demo modes), where purchasing for each edition is separately available within that edition's UX.

The expectation here is that all the user's existing feature entitlements would keep working as long as they continue to use the V1 engine — as you said, the V1 engine was a one-time purchase, and so even with this edition-launcher abstraction introduced in v2.0.0 of the app, V1 itself should still keep working for them forever.

The benefit of doing this multi-editioned-shared-app approach, together with IAP feature entitlements, is that V2 can inherit some of the V1 entitlements, and then simply charge for the V2-novel entitlements. So V2 gets discounted for V1 purchasers inherently, by the fact that by buying V1, they've already bought half of the components of the V2 purchase-bundle.

Have you actually done this? Is there a common example on the app store?

When did it become possible to download additional executable bundles on iOS?

Re: feature entitlements shared through a shared SSO auth backend and/or Group Container — yes, apps do this. Mostly this is in app "suites" where you can IAP a feature entitlement in one app in the suite, and the entitlement should then become available to the other apps in the suite. (I think the Omni Group apps do it? Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Re: multi-edition shared apps — I'm not sure if this has been done with the App Store in particular, but it's just a combination of things App Store apps can do (basically, moving code out into dylibs, and then marking those dylibs as On-Demand Resources.) I know that this is a common approach to supporting netplay (and especially replay of historical netplay) in competitive-eSport multiplayer game titles on Steam et al, where players need to be on the same exact version of the game engine + netcode to sync (and so those engine libs are downloaded on-demand before the match begins); and where you need an exact ABI version of the game engine to replay a netplay recording (and so that engine lib is downloaded on-demand when you go to replay the recording.)

ETA: looking more into this, I'm finding conflicting reports on whether executable-code On-Demand Resources are currently allowed on the iOS App Store: it looks like the Apple docs say no, and yet some apps (from not-bigcorp devs!) are doing it anyway and getting away with it (and have for many review cycles.) Very confusing. Maybe those devs are part of an alpha-test rollout for executable-ODR?

So whereas authors used to ship a new version, and let people upgrade to that version at a discount, the author now assumes the burden with each new release of maintaining and testing V1 (that’s with all the feature flags turned off) as well as every feature flag between V1 and Vcurrent turned on. One at a time. Sounds like insanity to me.

> One at a time.

That would be a choice, not a requirement. It's literally a flag. You can do whatever tf you want with it. It would be trivial to have "V1 full app unlock" feature be the same as "V2 full app unlock" feature.

@jayd16 - it’s been a few years since I read the Apple Developer Agreement but at that time downloading code and executing it within your app was forbidden by the agreement. A sensible security safeguard IMO.

iSH does it. Not sure how they get away with it, but the dev is around on here so maybe they can explain.

AFAIK, even the iSH developers were never given a proper explanation. iSH was actually removed a few years back[0] and then reinstated with an apology but no policy changes or clarifications.

This was before the change to allow Delta on the App Store, too.

[0] https://ish.app/blog/app-store-removal

There's a lot of nuance here. Some of it is ours, some of it is on Apple's side. Before I get into it I will say that most of what I say about Apple's side is largely not a position they will clarify or take publicly, and some of it is our interpretation. When iSH was removed from the store we did push them to clarify this in the App Store Review Guidelines but they chose to not do so.

When you run an App Store that involves human review the big problem you have is apps that mask their behavior during review and then end up breaking the rules later. My understanding is that the "don't download code" policy is intended to prevent this, at least in spirit. I think, at least at the highest level of the company, the intent is to keep to somewhere near this at least for submissions made in good faith and not prone to opening them up to a slippery slope. There are distinctions here, though, and policy enforcement is also complicated.

My (and iSH's) position is that "code" should be interpreted very broadly, including native code (which the platform blocks from loading anyways) but also things like embedded webviews updated server-side or those "code-push"/"run JavaScript in an interpreter in your app" things. And going even beyond that, I feel that to provide a full experience for the review team when you ship a feature flag you really ought to list all the behaviors that the app can possibly have, and let the review team test that if they want.

From this perspective you will note that code isn't even really the interesting part here, it's the behavior changing that matters. So this leads naturally what we have described as "scripting apps", which download code but do not change their behavior. Their entire point is to download code. Like, App Store is an app store, regardless of whether you download TikTok or Google Maps from it. iSH is a a Linux environment. Nothing you will do in the app will change that. And notably we have zero ability to change that ourselves, short of submitting a new app. It's not like we can just add Windows emulation as a downloadable JavaScript package without going through review. From our discussions with leadership, I think they agree with us on it, but are not willing to commit to it publicly, because then people will take creative bad-faith interpretations of it to argue what a feature of the app versus something a user does in the app is, or something like that. Or they just want to hold all the cards and reserve the right to take this away. Either way I strongly disagree with them doing this, but for now iSH remains on the store.

You will note that the changes we make (see our blog post about repositories: https://ish.app/blog/default-repository-update) continue to support that position. Again, I cannot say for sure whether this is the interpretation Apple uses, or if they even have a consistent position. It's just an attempt on our side to show good faith. As a final note our experience has been that the higher you go the more consistent and reasonable review becomes, but the front-line reviewers often take stupid, unreasonable positions like you'd see in a Hacker News comment (it says code therefore your app for coding is bad). But again, this is just our experience; we have no idea if Phill will hit his head tomorrow and decide to pull iSH tomorrow because he thinks Linux is the child of the devil.

What you've said largely tracks with my interpretation of Apple's actions here.

> I feel that to provide a full experience for the review team when you ship a feature flag you really ought to list all the behaviors that the app can possibly have, and let the review team test that if they want.

After Epic added direct purchase gated behind a feature flag to Fortnite, I'm genuinely surprised Apple didn't start requiring full control over and documentation of all downloadable configuration files as part of App Review.

While being vaguely on the side of review being not very useful I would agree with Apple doing that if only to make their position more consistent, even though I am sure every developer would riot if this was the case. (Although I vaguely remember someone saying we provided feature flags to Apple when we submitted builds at Twitter. But do take it with a grain of salt, since I wasn't on the release team and my view of them is vaguely positive in that I think they generally didn't try to use tricks to get through review.)

Odds are their "front line" reviewers are not highly technical, so Apple wouldn't want to commit to that. They are more than large enough to afford a few inefficiencies and pick fights the few times something like iSH "slip in".

>As a final note our experience has been that the higher you go the more consistent and reasonable review becomes, but the front-line reviewers often take stupid, unreasonable positions like you'd see in a Hacker News comment

A sadly universal experience. Especially when the not-so-secret is that that frontline is often contracted or outsourced. They do not understand (by design) the subtleties of submission of creative content. They are simply cheap help to do the bare minimum to remove liability, and if a few false negatives happen during that time, oh well. thousands of other apps in the sea.

So like everything else, if you havev the money, clout, or simply sheer persistence (which shouldn't be necessary) then you can force yourself to someone who can actually help. But few will get there, even with persistance.

Lot of stuff can skirt by until it doesn't. That's how stuff like Beeper suddenly explodes into a kerfluffle in a matter of days over some dang blue bubbles.

The model is the "old school" model for software sales.

The first version you sell to a user at full price and offer a discount for upgrading (something like 40% off). It lets the customer pick when they feel the value prop is worth the cost and lets you offer a loyalty incentive to the user.

Right now the choice is "keep paying for it to keep working" or "fully price for every upgrade".

Bundles can be used for upgrade pricing, you put the new version up for full price (ie. $20) and and a bundle with the new and old version (ie $30, for a 50% discount on it) for those who own the old version. When you buy a bundle you don't pay for the one you own.

Are there any examples of apps that do that? As a consumer, I haven't ever heard of an app that offers this (e.g. goodnotes, LiquidText, MarginNote, Audulus and Things have new major releases and don't seem to do this)

Couple of the old school macOS dev houses tried this once this hack became visible and little birdies said the hack WAI. (ex. OmniGroup)

Since then, people have backed off.

If you're going to this much work to help users workaround Apple nonsense, you really care about helping them save money, and the support + refund costs of people accidentally buying the bundle with the old version they don't need is > just building out your own server-side system, versus a combinatorial explosion of bundles in the App Store that creates a confusing minefield for users.

By jumping through hoops, tying unrelated tools together, confusing users, and reaping an extra $10 you didn't want to take + support costs thereof, yes, it is possible. It is not what we expected or asked for when we started asking for this in 2007 (we = iOS devs).

FL Studio (fka FruityLoops) is an outstanding exponent of this old method (but once, free upgrades for life)

Free upgrades are problematic themselves: once you've saturated your market (a good place to be, right?) you no longer have income to provide upgrades.

FL Studio has had free updates for +23 years and is a company with profit.

It does not look like a problem for them.

Do you have an example of a company that saturated the market with free upgrades and went down because of it?

Given that I'd never heard of them (and I've played around with a few DAWs), I don't think they've saturated their market.

Again, do you know any company that closed because free updates? Or you just make things up?

I don’t exactly remember how it went but ~5 years ago Goodnotes 5 came out and they offered a “bundle” of Goodnotes 4 and 5 together at the same price of Goodnotes 5. Maybe owners of version 4 had some kind of discount on the bundle because they already owned half of it?

That isn't officially supported and is super error prone. People can end up getting charged more if things don't work perfectly.

There are several vendors who do this, for instance 1Password and the Omni Group both do. You have an in-app purchase option that is unlocked by a previous receipt. The challenge is that Apple does not provide tools to help or guidance. They do indeed think e.g. requiring users to buy an upgrade to keep the app working on a new annual iOS version or macOS version is a bad model for users.

Panic even had an upgrade for MAS users when they released their new version of the now defunct Coda outside the MAS (for sandboxing reasons).

I really hate how the current pattern is

1. Download seemingly cool app on iOS (free with potential payments)

2. Go through a 30min quizz

3. Required to subscribe for $150/year to start using the app

It’s not free, it’s false advertising

Yeah I hate how to get Logic Pro on my iPad I have to subscribe not purchase

Funny how UX only matters to Apple when it doesn't cost them $$

They added "in app purchases" indicators in the store for this. I use it all the time. "In app purchases" on something that claims it's free is not free.

Apple's longstanding App Store guidelines always forced a certain level of "quality" and good customer experience, yet they're now allowing apps that are the exact opposite.

Most of these apps use dark UX patterns to trick new users into scammy free trials which convert to $100+/yr subscriptions after 1-3 days. These apps also make it difficult to close out of the subscription window, or make it seem like you have to subscribe when you don't.

It's entirely contradictory to everything Apple once stood for in justifying their gatekeeper App Store experience.

Apple could easily ban these types of scammy UX patterns, but they won't because it benefits them. That's my point.

> scammy free trials which convert to $100+/yr subscriptions after 1-3 days

I’m fairly certain this is because it’s the only way of offering a trial that Apple allows?

Yeah but you can’t filter on it, dark patterns at work.

In the days of the ipod every single user of it I encountered had apple's UX wipe their music collection.

But maybe that was by design as they decided to call their music shop by the same name as their ipod management software. That is the essence of Apple's UX. Shiny destruction of your property. It remains so.

The UX everyone wanted was copying files onto and off the device presented as storage on any computer it was plugged in to.

Maybe that awful ad of Apple destroying perfectly functional instruments was more accurate than I expected.

Don't forget censorship/banning of nude images. The tumblr fiasco (among others) was their doing.

That's not totally true. Twitter/X is fine, in this regard. The toggle is web based, but there's no censorship once it's toggled. The large amount of age restricted content on YouTube, with nudity, is another example.

It appears that people aren't aware that twitters is a porn app, for many users.

Porn is allowed: https://apnews.com/article/x-twitter-musk-porn-adult-content...

And interest in porn is growing: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/twitter-crypto-pornograph...

They've certainly encouraged subscriptions but the big driver is the drive for recurring revenue, which can be valued up to 20X what one-time revenue is valued. In some cases companies with investors are instructed to not even care about non-recurring revenue since it doesn't matter. Revenue is recurring or it doesn't exist.

Recurring revenue has always been highly valued. What changed is that the Internet and modern automated payment networks have made it so much easier to implement recurring revenue models. Now everything can be a subscription and now companies that don't have subscriptions are at a massive valuation and fund raising disadvantage. The more companies figure out how to add recurring revenue, the more companies have to figure out how to add recurring revenue.

This is why your car company, appliance company, etc. is trying to get you to subscribe to something.

Can you imagine the hellscape Steam would be if they adopted this phlosophy? It may have fundamentally ended PC gaming as we know it. Literally throwing free money away.

>Now everything can be a subscription and now companies that don't have subscriptions are at a massive valuation and fund raising disadvantage

It won't alter this course, but given recent news I sure hope Biden can do one last kick to this stupid model. The biggest reason subscriptions do this is because so many forget to unsubscribe. An issue as old as fiat currency. discouraging recurring subscriptions could be the US's version of GDPR in terms of how utterly devastating it will be to companies.

Apple also takes a smaller share via subscriptions after a year (30% -> 15%).

It has basically made their app store completely unusable. I am not going to manage a bunch of subs for what amounts to zero effort crapware.

Not being able to set custom price points for subscriptions is also painful

The only way to put an end to this is if more people stop installing apps that are just website skins, and just use the open web instead.

Yeah, though the problem with this is that from my experience with Android, the web version of Patreon is practically unusable. Not that the app is much better, they seem determined to come up with the most horrific UX anyone could imagine across all platforms, but it at least can somewhat consistently handle playing the podcasts I subscribe to without cutting out every five minutes.

What do you mean, unusable? It's simple and straightforward.

It's slow with tons of loading spinners.

Apps are now forcing you to use their website skin even though its damn easy to offer a mobile web alternative that doesn't squander ever precious local storage.

Reddit is probably the worst at this, really annoying.

absolutely dreadful. It is quite literally unusable to use the mobile site. I don't even know why they bother hosting it.

Only site where I simply toggle desktop. And now FF mobile can even install RES so that helps mitigate the otherwise clunky navigation (though, I have been unable to enable cloud backup. I can restore local copies though).

There is also Sink-It for Reddit. It’s an open source Safari extension to make the website more usable if you need it.

Which apps? The only one I know about is Reddit, where the web version is crippled compared to the app. (You can’t read all the comments). But old.reddit.com works fine on mobile - even if you have to constantly zoom in and out.

ultimate-guitar.com is a big offender. The mobile site jams lots of things in your face to and get you to download the app (including an entire fake tab page that you can't interact with but can scroll past on iOS devices). Then on the mobile site you can't tap on any of the chords to see the fingerings (very important!).

You can if you choose to request the desktop site, but then you get an obnoxious bar going across the middle of the page blocking some of the tab.

If you fold and finally download the app, you're greeted with a 10+ page unskippable questionnaire that after you're done ends with a paid subscription call to action. If you then force close the app, and open a tab link from the browser into the app, you are finally allowed to view a tab.

Tiktok and Instagram don't force you to, but remind you that you really should be using the App.

There was an Australian low-cost airline (Bonza) that only allowed bookings via their app. It went under very quickly (I wonder why...).

Bonza went under because Qantas/Virgin maintain a lock on airport "slots" in the primary markets of Melbourne and Sydney.

That's why every day, there are flights from both airlines that are "cancelled" and everyone moved to the next flight. Qantas got so outrageous that they were selling tickets for "flights" that they knew were never going to fly.

Australia's airport and airline "markets" are monopolies (airports) combined with oligarchies (Qantas/Virgin).

Like most consumer industries in Australia, there is a natural oligarchy or regulated market size, thing supermarkets (Coles/Woolworths + Aldi/IGA), banks (the "big 4"), Fuel, Hotels/Pubs, etc.

Uber lets you use mobile web. You try that on lyft they text you a link to download the app. As a result a bookmark to mobile web uber lives on my phone rather than the 300mb lyft app.

I don't think this is up to the consumer. The companies should just pull their apps from the Apple marketplace. If something can be a website, just be a website. Why even mess with an app at all? It's not like consumers are clamoring for these apps. Everyone I know hates that you have to have an app for everything these days.

>The companies should just pull their apps from the Apple marketplace. If something can be a website, just be a website. Why even mess with an app at all?

the sad reality is that mobile pretty much "solved" an issue corporations struggle with on web to this day. A closed down (i.e. no adblock), centralized (i.e. you can pay to game the platform to highlight your product), scalable system that can be easily and conveniently monetized. They don't like it, but those corps would 99/100 times take that 30% toll from Apple/Google to gatekeep the adblockers if it means they get more consistent ways to serve ads and subscriptions. That's why being open didn't change most company's decision to serve on Google Play vs an alternative store, nor on the web.

Yep, and don't forget the deep analytics that they gather as well. That's a huge motivator

Applied Science in the wild! Your videos look expensive, does per video patreons tend to cover them?

Does Patreon let you see what percentage of your subscribers signed up through the iOS app?

Write to your Representative and Senator Wyden before you switch.

Oh you too. Glad to know I'm not the only one who's really liked per-creation for years. "I pay my rent if I can do eight posts of comics pages/art/etc a month" was a good kick in the ass to keep working.

Patreon's been trying to kick everyone off of per-creation for like half the time I've been using it, so I'm sure they're pretty delighted to have this excuse to nuke that mode. I don't think I've seen a single Patreon-like that has it and I don't want it badly enough to try and cobble up something out of a few Wordpress plugins.

OG Patreon is monthly. The whole point is to support creator in tough times, not buy her stuff on discount.

It is, but monthly subscriptions are too "sticky". There are creators that haven't released anything for several years, but they still earn thousands of dollars from their patrons, because people don't really care about saving $5 a month.

At the same time, people do care about spending an extra $5 on top of $50 they already spend on patronage, so new creators in the same field find it harder to amass a sustainable number of patrons.

Is it really a problem? Right now I am skint so every time I sub I unsub from someone else. Patreon makes it super easy. It shows how much I spend on who and I can see who was inactive for years.

Patreon launched in May 2013. I joined after one of my fans asked me to set one up so they could give me money; my first post there is in February 2014. My account is on the "founders" plan, which has Patreon taking 5% ("plus applicable fees and taxes") rather than the 8/12% (plus applicable fees and taxes) that's what they offer now. Does that qualify me for "OG Patreon" status?

Pay-per-creation mode was available then. It might have even been the only mode. I can't recall for sure. It's certainly the one I chose, if there was an option, and I haven't changed that for ten and a half years. Looking at archive.org's earliest capture of the site (June 2013), it says this:

Pledges are only charged at the beginning of each new month based on whether the artist created any content that the artist specifically labels as supported content after your pledge. Artists can, of course, post new content that doesn't count as supported content.

You'll get notified each time the Content Creator posts new content that the artist specifically labels as supported content, but you won't get charged each time. Artists can also, of course, make posts on their activity feed and even upload new content that isn't labeled as supported content. Charges are aggregated and done once at the beginning of each new month, and you can edit/cancel your patronage at any time. Additionally, you can set a max limit for how much you'll be charged, so you never need to worry about paying for too much content!

This sure makes it sound like the original model was pay-per-post. There's nothing in there about a monthly subscription. "Support me through a monthly recurring tip" existed back then via Paypal's tip jars and some creators were getting by on it but it was a much harder sell before Patreon came along.

(https://web.archive.org/web/20130608123152/http://www.patreo...)

Any chance we could chat about how per creation works? I'm working on a competitor. @shokuonproduct / "shokunin." On discord

You are my favorite youtuber by a mile! I appreciate that you always prioritize quality over quantity in your videos.

I remember reading that per-creation billing is a very important feature for Patreon creators, because it removes the moral obligation to produce content just to justify a subscription.

If Patreon really doesn't want to kill the feature itself, but is just responding to Apple's enforcement, then it seems like a really clear illustration of monopoly power - pushing unrelated markets to change their own structure and products just to fit Apple's preferred billing flow.

Patreon also stands to gain from this change. Come think of it, the new arrangement is a win for everyone involved - except the actual patrons ofcourse.

Is there any evidence that Apple has actually made this "threat"? I'm not seeing anything other than what Patreon has claimed (and it seems that they are only recently going to begin to allow iOS purchases, which might mean they are bringing this upon themselves).

I am suspicious, because the specific change to per-creation billing is overwhelmingly positive for Patreon (and, as you pointed out, not for its users), from a business economics perspective (assuming they don't lose too many users over this). It also seems odd for Apple to press that point specifically.

Apple has been on a crusade against all payments not going through them for many years. I absolutely believe this is Apple’s fault, although I would have expected this to have happened much sooner.

I am a creator on the per-creation model and I got a very unambiguously worded email from Patreon this morning basically saying "if we want to be on the iOS store, Apple requires that we remove all billing methods that are not compatible with their payment method, and yours is not; in November 2025, you will be switched to the one billing method that Apple allows us to still have. If you would like to start earlier go to this link and hit this button to start the process." They used more words but they were very clear that this is a thing Apple is imposing on them as the price for being on the iOS App Store.

Right but just because they said it doesn’t mean they’re not playing fast and loose with the messaging. I’ve never heard of a single app where the off-app billing affected the inclusion of the app in the store. I mean maybe it’s true but that seems like it would be breaking new ground in App Store rules. I suspect Patreon is playing semantics here but would be happy to see evidence otherwise. To be clear, I’m taking about the case where Patreon could decide to show no billing details or links at all in the App Store, just like eg Audible. I think the problem is that Patreon still wants to offer billing options in the app.

> I’ve never heard of a single app where the off-app billing affected the inclusion of the app in the store.

most apps don't do payments like this to begin with.

>To be clear, I’m taking about the case where Patreon could decide to show no billing details or links at all in the App Store, just like eg Audible.

To be frank, I don't think Patreon has the same market force as Audible. Audible can definitely appeal to apple and make a deal that others don't get. Maybe Patreon did desire some of this, but I do put the blame on Apple. This is hardly the first time they arbiriarily played hardball.

Apologies, I somehow missed the memo three years ago that Audible turned on in-app purchases(1). I was thinking of the pre-2021 policy.

I’m still pretty sure that if an app has zero financial interactions at all in the App Store that Apple has no limitations on how the app’s financials work outside of the app. But I can understand that once you want to do anything in app, Apple might have restrictions on hybrid models.

1 - https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/16/you-can-now-buy-audiobooks-di...

> I think the problem is that Patreon still wants to offer billing options in the app.

We probably will never know which of Apple or Patreon is guilty, unless Apple is forced to yield it in a future discovery, or is raided by some agency in a probe.

Not really. There are a lot of creators I watch who only make content once a year. Sometimes they'll have 2 videos a year if they're lucky. With the per creation model, I have no problems supporting them but if it's billed monthly then the price becomes a lot steeper. Alternatively they could reduce the cost to support them but then the fees becomes much higher for both the creator and patreon (29c + 5% IIRC).

Agreed - the market will respond to these higher costs in a predictable manner. A smaller market.

Taking away the options is not a win for the creators

How can they gain after losing 30% to Apple?

Relative to not having predictable monthly recurring revenue.

Patreon doesn't lose anything to Apple - they give creators on Patreon a choice - charge Apple users more to cover the 30%, or eat the loss. I don't know what Patreon's take is, they are going to take the same either way. However they know their customers and users will lose from this and it is good for them to look out for their customers (it doesn't costs them much)

Customers leave when prices rise above their willingness to pay. Some customers will realize on their own that they can bypass Apple's fee by subscribing through the browser, but most won't (since Apple forbids even mentioning this trick).

This, imo is a solid argument for "fine then, we're just gonna pull our app and use mobile web exclusively."

Only if the users follow. If users decide they won't use the mobile web then patreon and the creators they represent lose. Nobody knows for sure, but there is a general belief that users will not follow (or at least enough won't follow).

If patreon pulls their app, and the former app users still want access to the content they patronized, they’ll go to wherever it is.

I think you'll be disappointed in little many users care once it's not 2 buton click convinient. Truly sad state of affairs for modern society.

Perhaps, although that requires experimenting the new fee model first.

It's too big of a decision to take without actual numbers, and having gone through it for a few months also helps on the communication side: on the surface Patreon at least gave it a try, and there's even a chance users are pissed off enough by the new model to campaign for that change and defend the move to their fans.

Why would that require them to do anything (except pull their app?)

But patreon earns off of those purchases, right? And since a 30% price increase deincentivizes purchases for customers, they'll have less purchases.

Or, of course, eating the 30% fee yourself deincentivizes you to use the platform (or upload content as regularly) if you opt for that one

I'd say it's a loss for everyone involved except for Apple. Since Apple now gets a cut from all transactions its hard for me to see this as anything else except hostile and arrogant

Patreon's take will not be the same. Apple's fee is charged first. So for all the creators that don't raise prices, Patreon is also getting 30% less, because they charge flat fees. And every creator that does raise prices will probably end up with fewer patrons, or patrons donating less, and will probably have a similar effect.

It also just kinda harshes everyone's vibe when they eventually realize they're being gypped and paying a lot more than others for the same thing, and that can cause people to just unsubscribe.

I believe Patreon's fees are a percentage of the total cost. i.e. if the payment is $10 and Patreon takes 10%, they'll still get $1, Apple get's $3, and the creator gets $6.

I'm not sure how Patreon will explain things to their creators, but no matter what the effect will be similar; about 30% less income for Patreon and creators alike.

According to App Store rules, you're not allowed to disclose the App Store fee to users. So Patreon is not allowed to explain to users that 30% is going to Apple, nor to explain that there are other options. I'm not sure if Apple regulates messaging to creators as well.

Fewer patrons is a likely consequence, which would not be a win.

Maybe I am missing something but Apple supports consumable purchases. Think any game with purchasable virtual currency.

Can't Patreon support a ton of different-priced SKUs and let creators use those SKUs for one-off purchases?

I think what your missing is that these aren't one-off user initiated purchases. I back a couple of patterns that are a per-video model, so if the content creator produces 2 videos I'm charged 2x $amount that month. If they produce nothing I'm charged nothing. Apple doesn't provide a way of doing this. In the scenario you described I'd have to monthly count up how many videos said content creator produced and manually submit an order through the app... And users aren't going to do that. Hell, I'm not going to do that.

Ah yeah. I definitely was not aware that's how it worked. I was thinking user-initiated purchases, not purchase-on-demand.

That's distinct from the existing per-creation billing in a few ways, with the most obvious being that the existing method is automated while consumable purchases require user input. Trying to create a SKU for every possible per-creation price is also just incredibly janky and hacky in a fundamental way that would never scale and would probably make accounting next to impossible.

Where did you read that? I worked at Patreon from 2018-2021 and per creation was a much smaller group than recurring during that time at least. (Think per creation was even disabled as an option for new sign-ups for a while.)

I'm surprised to hear this, I thought it was the main selling point of Patreon. I have per-creation subscriptions to a few people on Patreon who produce very high-quality stuff very infrequently, and I will probably cancel if they are forced to switch to monthly billing. Their stuff is great, but not so great that I'm willing to sign up for a monthly fee that I forget about and then realize 3 years later that they've stopped making stuff.

I don't follow one-off creators like that, to me the selling point of Patreon was that I could support 20 different creators each with $1-$2/mo, with 4000+ fans in aggregate it supported their lifestyle. And by billing monthly, it meant that the card fees were spread among all the creators so that 50% of the $1 didn't go to the bank/VISA, basically making microtransactions feasible.

They're also killing the once-a-month billing so that use case is also gone. I'm not sure who Patreon is for anymore.

IIRC, Patreon now passes along full transaction costs to every creator, even if behind the scenes they may be consolidating transactions.

I don't have the source anymore, but it was an article about why Patreon is successful and other similar platforms/systems aren't. The per-creation billing option was described as a way for creators to create on their own schedule without having a moral or business requirement to produce enough content every month to justify a subscription. (The business requirement coming from the problem of one-month paying subscribers getting much more value than the creator can afford to give away at that price.)

The thing most aren’t thinking about is that per-creation billing is an absolute nightmare, and I don’t blame Apple for not supporting it. Can’t even begin to imagine the support nightmare/chargebacks etc.

It’s not all about the 30% cut.

If it was easy and trouble free, they would support it.

Imagine what a great time apps would have if Apple let them charge you an amount whenever they wanted, without user authorisation?

> charge you an amount whenever they wanted, without user authorisation?

It's a simple matter of user communication: you make it clear from the start that the billing will be unpredictable, and potentially provide a ceiling for monthly bills to let the user stop if it goes out of hand.

I follow per creation billing creators and it's fine. Amazon also offers an option to auto buy new volumes of a series.

The customer not knowing in advance how much they'll be billed isn't common, but it's not complex in itself.

Patreon has been trying to kill it for like half the time I've been using Patreon. They haven't offered it as an option for new campaigns for years, and their last redesign completely removed what little data was available in the web UI - you wanna know how much money you can expect? Download a CSV and do it yourself, we can't be bothered to give you even the simplest data of "your next three posts will be worth $x, $y, and $z" any more.

I am pretty sure there were people at Patreon who said "Oh god finally we have an excuse to kick everyone off this damn thing". The writing's on the wall for this model, no Patreon clone ever offers it, and I sure do not want to cobble together my own version out of Wordpress plugins, or get involved in making a Patreon-like that does offer it and recapitulating the whole growth cycle of "oh god nazis are using my platform, what do I do about it" to "oh god now I have to make enough money to pay all these moderators" to "oh god we're big enough for the payment processors to notice how much porn we have and tell us to stop", and finally to "oh sweet fuck we're big enough for Apple to inform us that we must pay their tithe or leave iOS, are we big enough to hook up with Epic Games's suits".

Although if anyone on HN looks at that last paragraph of Growth Problems and says "sign me right the fuck up, convincing a bunch of VC money that they want to support the arts by running a Patreon-like at a loss for a decade and taking a couple tenths of a percent off of the top of the money flowing from fans to creators through my pipe sounds like a great way to spend a few years of my life", hey, I'll gladly give you input on your MVC, maybe even draw some art for your site or something.

Off topic: this was really entertaining to read, thanks

Thanks!

If you think that last paragraph sounds like fun I be delighted to accept a lucrative position on the advisory board for this enterprise. :)

We can't know if they wanted to kill it because of Apple or for some other reason. I don't see why they would want to kill it if it weren't for Apple.

Patreon really hates their good features.

Like the best one they've had, bundling every charge for the month into a single transaction so that $1 payments aren't wasting a huge percent.

The world where Apple is just completely fine with Apple users paying $13 instead of $10 for a subscription if they do it through an app is an interesting one.

Obviously this makes a lot of money for them but when you think about it they must think very little of their customers treating them with disrespect like this. This is how 'Tim Cook's Apple' should be remembered.

Apple users (I'm not one of them) seem fine with that arrangement.

Apple is making sure that it is not easy for Apple users to find out about this fee.

Hardly! The fee has been a hot topic of discussion since day one.

Hot topic of discussion where? Amongst developers, right? How many non-developer Apple users are aware of Apple’s shenanigans? I doubt not many.

Even if the end users are aware and accept it, that doesn’t make Apple right.

We as a society accept a lot of things - from the security theatre at airports (last week, I saw photos of passengers taken, for domestic flights) to Amazon workers peeing in bottles. As long as we get our crap the same day, we’re good with some unfortunate souls peeing in bottles. If it bothered us, we’d stop shopping at Amazon, for example.

All this to say, we’ve been trained very well to tolerate and even accept a lot of bad behavior if it helps with our laziness. Doesn’t mean it is right though

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-plans-new-fees-rest...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/01/17/apples-...

https://www.insightpartners.com/ideas/do-you-have-to-pay-the...

Yes, there is far more discussion in tech/nerd spaces, but it's also being talked about in non-tech areas too.

If you talk to people with iphones on the street of Anytown, USA, they will tell you that Apple is good because it doesn't ruin picture quality in texts like the androids do.

That is who the average iphone user is.

Well no kidding. But posting 3 links isn't really evidence that the "normies" of the world have any understanding of what is going on.

Nobody is discussing this outside of tech and nerd spaces

It could be that nobody cares outside tech and nerd spaces.

Apple users mostly don’t know about the fee and almost all of them didn’t know about it when they joined the apple ecosystem.

When you're born into a cult, it's much harder to see it or the outside world objectively.

In a survey of my non-technical friends, only a very small minority seemed to know that Apple took any cut whatsoever.

How would they know and why would they care?

Good question. But reading this thread and every one of these has multiple people saying "Apple users know and choose to have this experience, we've opted in."

We have to go further than that. Naming and shaming Tim Cook hasn't changed anything from Butterfly keyboards to cringeworthy "mother earth" interviews to exploitative Chinese manufacturing schemes. Apple doesn't speak your language, you can only communicate to them by showing them a world where they hurt.

So outlaw this. Follow the EU's lead and fix this decade-old problem that has damaged the progress of personal computing irreparably. Apple's legacy should be the least of their concerns when they're forced to pay the piper for what they've done. If their recompense was proportional to the money they've stolen from creators and developers then I doubt Apple would even be solvent.

Butterfly keyboards are gone.

All it took was four years, an impending major redesign and a few class-action lawsuits over switch failures. Apple was definitely super responsive about that one. Or maybe it was their courage speaking.

While that's all very true, I find it notable to point out that the company stopped making butterfly keyboards 5 years ago. The folks out there that are still bitter about this really need to find something else to occupy their mindspace.

In related news, I just got my keyboard settlement check!

I'm not bringing it up apropos of nothing; it's evidence that Apple doesn't listen to blatant (and epistemically correct) outcry from their customers when they make a mistake. When the Butterfly keyboard released people were literally shocked; I remember getting messages from people asking if their Macbook keyboard shipped broken after the honeymoon phase wore off. There were SGA members on Twitter bemoaning how they hated their job on the new laptop; programmers everywhere plugging in USB-C keyboards to make their Starbucks workstation tolerable. It was inconceivable that you'd pay a price premium for thinness when all it got you was a miserable keyboard and thermal issues.

For crying out loud; you just got your settlement for a hardware flaw Apple doesn't admit exists 8 years after they shipped the flawed product. Mankind cannot sustain this pattern of business refusing to back-down from demonstrably harmful practices that their customers can identify and isolate. The Butterfly keyboard is a microcosm of how Apple ships deliberately flawed products in an attempt to market a solution they are exclusively qualified to sell. And despite all this, people still rush to Apple's aid like it's wrong to call them out for being so greedily obstinate. The reality distortion field is still in full effect.

I think you’re really blowing this out of proportion and treading into conspiracy theory territory. I don’t think this is at all an example of a deliberately flawed product, that’s a tall accusation.

I don’t think any corporation goes into product design hoping to give out free repair service and settle class action lawsuit claims.

Remember that when Apple finally introduced the 2019 MacBook Pro that reverted the keyboard design, it was only 3 years after the original 15” MacBook Pro butterfly model came out. It’s not like they were sitting on their hands for an extremely long time ignoring their customers as you accuse. They completely reverted the design in about 3 years and seemingly forced their lead designer into retirement.

As far as admitting the problem exists publicly, offering proactive refunds, etc, find me a public corporation that will do that and I’ll give you a pot of gold. And recall that the service bulletin and offer to provide free repairs is an acknowledgment of the problem.

There's nothing "theoretical" about it. Apple has a history of deliberately designing their products so they are both fragile and impossible to traditionally repair. Examples:

1. iPhones (starting with iPhone 6) being constructed to have fragile and DRM-encumbered components (display, battery, camera)

2. Macbook topcases with unibody constructions that can only be replaced as a single $600 finished assembly

3. Macbook bottom chassis for using glue instead of tapped screws to prevent safe disassembly and repair

4. Airpods being entirely impossible to service in any way (and conveniently removing the 3.5mm jack for alternatives)

5. Vision Pro being designed to stop functioning if non-essential features like the eye-tracking or the glass panel up front are broken.

Why is this a conspiracy? Because we can easily prove Apple knows about the pressure they're creating for customers. At first it was AppleCare that capitalized on these insecurities, giving the rich a solution that doesn't even repair their Apple products in the first place. Before being criticized for it, Apple themselves did not even want to repair Apple products. They'd rather trash your old one and give you a new one. Then the criticism came in, and instead of designing their products better Apple creates a new first-party repair program with worse DRM problems. Worse yet, they're still forcing you to buy entire component assemblies to fix a single broken part. Did your display's power IC break? That's a $2 Texas Instruments component you'll be paying $150 to get replaced. Don't forget your $49 repair kit rental. $200 to fix a $2 part.

You might say this is all very smart, on Apple's behalf. Too much so; with the DRM scheme they've created it's impossible for you to do cheaper repairs even if you wanted to. You have to buy first-party components, and even donor-boards won't work as sources of cheap spare parts. So Apple went out of their way to stop third-parties from being capable of performing profitable repairs. They've prevented users and repair shops from buying the components they need and using software they have blocked you from even attempting to fix things yourself. Sound like John Deere yet?

You know why Apple takes 3 years to sheepishly fix a mistake they don't admit exists? Because they make money off it. People stuck on old models are forced to get one with a usable keyboard. Hell, before they started (2 years after shipping btw) the free repair program as a response to lawsuits, they were charging users for new keyboards. It's a racket; you would have to be actually blind to look at Apple's history of behavior and assume it is not arranged for profit over any other single value.

BTW, this is not my opinion but instead a re-hash of the criticisms that Apple-certified repair stores have levied against Apple. People have been complaining about this since 2016 and if you step outside HN you may notice that people care about Right to Repair.

Yes, how much time do you think a redesign takes?

How much time do you think it takes to go back to the working 2015 design?

Probably about a year.

Apple laptop chassis generally have 4 years in the market before refreshes anyway so although it felt like they were pressured and it took 4 years it was more it was shown to be faulty when it hit the market and then the next iteration arrived on schedule and fixed the issue.

Still shocking such a bad an sonically ugly keyboard launched though.

Usually schemes like this have terms like “you’re not allowed to offer a cheaper price outside the ecosystem”.

My understanding from reading the Apple v Epic court documents is that Apple is unique in that it doesn’t force cheaper prices outside the ecosystem. I might be wrong though.

This has got to be helpful in arguing in court that there's nothing wrong with the apple tax.

I vaguely recall them imposing an anti-steering kind of provision, though, didn’t they? Where you can do what you want on your own channels, but you can’t tip off the iOS user to that fact at the point of sale in the app?

I vaguely remember the courts being unimpressed with that requirement, and Apple maliciously complying with the judgment by allowing something hilariously minimal and uninformative, like “one tiny in-app link to your main website but you can’t say the word ‘cheaper,’” something along those lines.

(Edited to add: yes, sounds like that came post-Epic, and involved an even more Dantean set of caveats than I’d remembered. Among other things, not only can there be no more than one link, but that one link can only ever appear in one place in the app, it can’t “discourage” in-app payment, and its one appearance can’t be during the payment flow:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/24/01/16/apples-app-store-... )

In Apples case they changed that several years ago so you can definitely charge your Apple users more.

However you will get the app rejected if you show any sign of showing users that you can buy it cheaper elsewhere than the Apple system. You can potentially get away with it by keeping things vague, but even then you might get rejected for “discouraging the in-app purchase system”. This doesnt apply to the EU in which these specific rules were changed very recently.

I don't think that's unreasonable - the user found your app through apple. Imagine if I sold tools, and I hung out in Home Depot next to our tools display telling people "hey, if you buy them directly from me, you can save 30%"

I can't see that lasting very long.

So if I see an app on TV, go to the app store and download it, somehow I found it through Apple?

No, I very obviously saw it on TV and got it from Apple because that's the only way to install native apps on iOS.

It's arguably unreasonable in a physical space but this is virtual space we're talking about.

In more open ecosystems like the web browser, you can literally install extensions that tell you where you can buy something for cheaper. I'm sure Amazon, Walmart, and friends would love for that to be impossible.

The virtual space only "belongs" to Apple because they've deliberately walled it off.

In Patreon's case, I don't think the user found the content "through Apple". The customer found the creator, and the creator said "Pay me through Patreon". The user, only having an iOS based device is now trapped by Apple's restrictions on the transaction, which brings dubious benifits to the table.

Am I not allowed to visit the Patreon website from my iOS device?

As long as Apple provides a standards-compliant web browser, of course you are.

That horse has left the barn. But if there was a conceivable way and leverage to get a cut on paid content on the open internet, I'm sure apple would find a way to coerce money from those visits too.

One analogy: By offering only Fairplay DRM on iPhone, they get a cut that might otherwise have gone to Google (widevine), Microsoft (playready) or some other third party.

Since creators point people to their patreon page, surely that gives Patreon the ability to show a lower price in the browser even for iOS users.

> ... the user found your app through apple.

Not necessarily. They may have heard about it on the internet and then looked in the app store for it.

When was the last time you bought any large item from a physical store that didn't come with advertisements in the packaging for direct services?

If you buy a Disney DVD from Walmart, there will be advertisements inside the DVD case for direct services (heck, last time I checked there were ads on the outside of the case). If you buy a Roomba from Walmart, there will be advertisements for direct parts and addons from the manufacturer. If you buy a hecking Apple Ipad from Walmart, Apple will include advertisements for its direct services once you start using the product.

People bring up this comparison all the time and it's very simply not true. You can advertise direct services inside physical products you sell at stores. What Apple is saying is not that you can't advertise prices in the store page, Apple is saying that you can't advertise alternative platforms in the app itself.

There is no physical equivalent to this for storefronts like Walmart. Home Depot does not have a restriction on whether a physical product you buy from them can have an advertisement for direct manufacturer services inside the box or software that comes with it.

If we want to be consistent about this, Apple really should be paying Walmart a fee for any app-store purchases made on devices that were bought from Walmart. After all, the user got the device from Walmart, right? Shouldn't they get their cut of app store purchases? That's how Apple sees the world.

Looks close - those services are typically not the same as what you can get at Walmart. You can get parts, but often the device itself isn't sold (instead they list places you can buy). Or if you can buy direct it is cheaper from Walmart. Walmart is a large enough customer that they won't let you sell it for less (either you don't undercut Walmart, or you will sell zero at Walmart).

Walmart does, in fact, sell devices, and Apple uses their devices to advertise third party services to Walmart customers which compete (e.g. Amazon app)

> those services are typically not the same as what you can get at Walmart.

Several things:

A) Apple doesn't sell a creator subscription service that's the same as what you can get from Patreon.

B) You can advertise inside of a box for services that Walmart does provide (yes, that includes devices).

C) Is your implication that if Walmart did open up a music streaming service that suddenly it would be improper for iOS to advertise Apple Music on devices purchased from Walmart? Because that's a wild thing to suggest.

D) Just re-stating B more directly: Apple advertises direct hardware purchases from the physical Apple store - a direct competitor to Walmart's tech hardware sales - for hardware that Walmart actively sells. And Apple advertises that hardware on devices and within packaging for devices that are bought from Walmart.

Apple's website homepage for the iPad has in big block letters halfway down the page: "Why Apple is the best place to buy iPad." Under Apple's rules, they would not be able to link to this page within an iOS app.

There is no equivalent to this in hardware land.

> Or if you can buy direct it is cheaper from Walmart.

I'm not going to drive over to Walmart to check this, but I severely doubt that Walmart is consistently offering all of its Apple hardware at a cheaper price than an Apple store.

> Walmart is a large enough customer that they won't let you sell it for less (either you don't undercut Walmart, or you will sell zero at Walmart).

Which is still egregious and anti-competitive! But amazingly, somehow less egregious than what Apple is doing. Ask yourself, how anti-competitive and abusive does a company have to be in order to be worse than Walmart? That's almost an accomplishment.

Walmart carefully avoids anti-competitiveness in these deals. The OEM cannot sell for less than Walmart, but the target down the street might.

I have been using patreon for 5 years, and I "found" it via the artists I like who use it as a platform. If I buy my first iPhone tomorrow and download the patreon app, that's not because apple helped me discover anything.

It might even be vice versa: in theory, as an Android user you might have learned about this thing called "iPhone" in an Patreon banner promoting the fact that Patreon can be downloaded through the Appstore.

You should be able to list the individual components of the final price which might then include "30% Apple app store fee" for having your customers be more informed about what they spend their money on.

The App Store model was specifically implemented and approved by Steve Jobs. There's old internal e-mails from him complaining about Amazon's reader app making it too easy to buy books without paying the (increasingly literal) Apple Tax.

In fact, the reason why antitrust lawsuits seem to never stick to Apple is because all the mens rea was stored in the mind of a guy who tried to cure his pancreatic cancer with fruit juice[0]. Everything Cook does as a businessman is just the "maximally extended" version of what Jobs either already did on a smaller scale, or had been planning on doing before dying.

The failings of any organization are more often than not the fault of the people who were in charge during the good times.

[0] Fructose speeds the growth of pancreatic cancer.

I'm going to guess that the antitrust lawsuits don't stick because iOS has a 27% global marketshare, and because Apple has a very well-paid legal department.

The difference between iOS and a game console in terms of antitrust law is "not a whole lot."

The EU has been able to get further with restricting Apple's policies because their laws and courts work a lot differently than the US courts. The EU is all about preserving an equal single market economy in every aspect of their economy. The US will let corproations do whatever they want until they are 1990s Microsoft-level dominant.

> The US will let corproations do whatever they want until they are 1990s Microsoft-level dominant.

*The US will let corporations do whatever they want while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges.

while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges

There is a lot of corruption in the US. So yes, at times, they will allow that too. But in this case, the commenter was correct.

We can't be going into courts of law making poop up. Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" is almost on the level of being insulting to the justices. Judges and attorneys are not being corrupt bribe-takers when they laugh us out of court for making that argument. They are just following the law. There's not corruption involved.

People seem loathe to accept the fact that it's time to go the other route, where you just change the laws. Apple is not now, and realistically, probably never will be, a monopoly. Antitrust and monopoly laws do not address what Apple is, and it's time to either make laws that do address what Apple is, or just be honest and say we don't, as a legal system, have any issue with what Apple is.

But this political theater where you make an issue of what Apple is, and then try to address it in court knowing that it won't work is getting really old. We need some leaders who will actually write some new laws and put them up for a vote.

> Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly"

Usually courts don't care about their global market share but their local market share, which IIRC in the US for mobile was somewhere in the 60%. Whether that is enought to make a monopoly claim is debatable, but I assume it is enough to argue abuse of dominant market position.

Regarding your laws paragraph, I do agree that "free market" doesn't really work at the level that the US currently is. There are a lot of problems I have with how the market in the US is regulated (or rather lack thereof), but I don't live there but in the EU, which I honestly am glad of.

How is that insulting to the judge? If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market and exercise monopoly-like control. Especially considering all the colluding occurring.

* If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market*

Not if your competitor, android, controls 70% of the market.

That's what I meant about being insulting. In court, when we're making these kinds of claims, we shouldn't talk about what could be, we must talk about what is.

70% worldwide. 30-40% in the US.

And "Android" is a bunch of companies, not one.

Google Play Store is one company.

The Brown Shoe Company merger in the 1960s was shot down, even though it would only control around 7% of the nation’s shoe supply.

It’s important to not just consider the quantitative impact of the monopolist (percent of market share) but also the qualitative components (is it vertically integrated? is it hurting consumers?).

I’m not sure whether or not Apple is a monopolist, but I certainly think there are some arguments.

Yup, and at the time of the Paramount Decree the movie studios had 17% of theaters and 45% of film revenue. And that was across 5 independent studios.

Apple has over 50% of smartphone marketshare in the U.S. and over 60% of mobile app revenue.

US Antitrust law generally is about pricing, collusion (over pricing or market access), and competition more so than just monopoly power. It is straight up not illegal to be a monopoly, only to abuse the position.

I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts at a "tying" argument against Apple's App Store and their platforms, but I'm also not a lawyer. It has what looks like a pretty clear, long history of being considered an anti-competitive practice by the courts. You can buy a Brother printer and not have to buy paper or toner from them, why should I have to buy my apps from Apple? And to be clear, that is precisely how Apple thinks of the relationship between the user and the app. Apple owns that relationship. They mediate. They manage. They facilitate. No one else. Users don't buy apps. Users pay Apple. Apple pays the app developers.

> I'm surprised there haven't been more attempts at a "tying" argument against Apple's App Store and their platforms, but I'm also not a lawyer. It has what looks like a pretty clear, long history of being considered an anti-competitive practice by the courts.

Epic tried to make this argument in court and failed, mostly because tying is generally not illegal if the consumer is aware of the tie when purchasing and has the option to purchase an alternative product without such a tie.

In other words it would be absolutely legal for Brother to sell a printer that only uses Brother-branded paper and toner, because if you don't like those restrictions you can simply go and purchase a non-Brother printer instead.

Literally majority control has never been a requirement to be a monopoly.

The real answer is just don't use apples stuff. The fact that you can fairly trivially just get an android phone and a windows/Linux computer and do pretty much everything demonstrates that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on anything.

I was an iPhone guy. Switching to Android was honestly trivial.

Apples biggest crime IMO is doing everything possible to hide the 30% tax from common knowledge, not that they charge it.

> Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" is almost on the level of being insulting to the justices.

Market share is irrelevant, though. As we can see in this article, the ability to force an unrelated business to transform its business model to fit your needs is monopoly power.

gifts to judges aren't applicable to tech yet, at least not as far as I know.

> *The US will let corporations do whatever they want while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges.

Cite please? IIRC, the present day antitrust precedents were set in the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ri....

Global marketshare is irrelevant, Apple has over 60% of the mobile OS market in the US and are responsible for 70% of all mobile app sales in the US.

Google's legal department is also very well-paid, but they've lost both the Epic lawsuit and the DOJ lawsuit. In some markets (e.g. search) they have dramatically more market share, but 27% of phones is still high enough to have some market power.

Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition. Government-granted monopolies (e.g. copyright law) have partial antitrust carve-outs: I can't sue Disney for owning the copyright over their own films[0] even though that's extremely anti-competitive. Apple was savvy and couched their defense around their ownership of iOS: i.e. "you can't tell us how we sell our OS". Google could not avail themselves of that argument in the Epic case because they had explicitly open-sourced Android.

But that's not the biggest problem. The Google lawsuit is unique in that not only did a lot of Google's own internal e-mails basically spell out exactly what crimes they were committing, but they also got caught spoliating evidence[1] by aggressively pushing relevant persons in the company to turn off chat history and recording functionality that was legally required to be enabled. In contrast, most of the decision making at Apple was "whatever Jobs thought was best" and people just did what he said. You can't subpoena a corpse. And while there were internal tech emails discovered in the Apple case, none of them were as damning as the Google ones, at least by the standards of a legal system that considers monopolies to be OK as long as you can pretend to be a starving artist.

As for games consoles, the argument[2] is that consoles are special-purpose devices while iPhones are computers. I personally disagree with this, consoles have "apps" now just like phones and they have the exact same positioning that allows them to gain supra-competitive profits like Apple does.

[0] More peripheral claims, such as having a monopoly over theatrical distribution, can and have give rise to an antitrust lawsuit. You have to prove that the market power they are using is above and beyond the market power the government intended them to use.

[1] "spoliate" as in, illegally destroy evidence relevant to ongoing litigation.

[2] Provided by Epic, oddly enough. I know they argued it to try and narrow down Apple's market definition, but I also suspect that was to avoid console manufacturers asserting some kind of universal default[3] / reverse class solidarity move and pulling Fortnite off PSN/Xbox/eShop until Epic drops the Apple lawsuit.

[3] Universal default is a clause added to loans that says that defaulting on any other loan defaults on this loan, too.

>27% of phones is still high enough to have some market power.

27% Worldwide

And that's a single company vs 70% of all the Android device makers.

In the US thats 60% for apple, it is basically a monopoly when your closest competitor is at 24%.

And, to add, 87% of teens in the US has an iphone.

80 fucking 7 %

To add again: the 70/30 worldwide market share is perfectly rappresented in europe (67% and 32%).

> Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition.

Yes, but "only when it harms both allocative efficiency and raises the prices of goods above competitive levels or diminishes their quality."[1]

[1] https://law.stanford.edu/press/congress-hears-challenges-to-...

Killing per-creation billing and demanding a 30% cut that will be passed onto the consumer sounds like a pretty obvious example to me.

I'm not going to fall all over myself defending Apple, but it's not as cut and dry as being a price gouge. Apple spent mountains of money on R&D to create wildly popular consumer devices, build and maintain the systems, build and maintain infrastructure, security systems, app distribution systems, and operate payment systems.

There's no reason Patreon must use Apple's store. They could run their whole iOS experience out of the web site. iPhone users could use Patreon to their hearts' content, and Apple wouldn't collect a dime. So it's almost as if the services Apple is offering do have value, and people are just arguing about the bill.

I don't have an explanation from Patreon as to why they didn't ship a webapp, but I can at least provide some plausible explanations.

The thing is, while iOS is only 27% of the global phone market, that percentage increases when you look at high-value customers. That is, the people with disposable income to spend on fancier phones[0], the people who pay for apps, and the people who would, most critically, donate to an artist's recurring crowdfunding campaign. This isn't even something I made up, it's specifically one of the allegations in the DOJ's lawsuit against Apple.

Now, you are a counterparty to this $3tn megacorporation[1] who owns all your customers. Said corporation is altering the deal: you either bill through our royalty-bearing[2] payment processor or we kick you off the platform. You have two options:

- Upend large sections of your business model to comply with Apple guidelines, including killing an unusually quirky billing model some fraction of your creators make use of, or,

- Leave the platform where all your creators' customers are, hope said creators can get people to follow along through Apple's convenient and extremely discoverable six-step process[3] to install a PWA, and enjoy degraded access to push notifications[4], having to fight Google SEO spam for discoverability, and the ongoing business risk of Apple having complete and total editorial control over how your webapp works on iOS[5].

I'm sure Jack Conte looked at Patreon's numbers, looked at how many subscriptions they get through the app, how many people browse through patreon.com, and realized not being on iOS would screw creators over more.

[0] To be clear, high-end Android phones cost more than iPhones now, but iPhone is still a status symbol.

[1] Incidentally, this is about half the current budget of the US government.

[2] Apple's argument in the Epic lawsuit was that the 30% is a copyright royalty for the use of iOS, which doesn't quite make sense but the judge bought it.

[3] Navigate to the website, press the Share button, scroll down to "Add to Home Screen", fill out the form to name your new home screen icon, tap "Add", relog into the PWA again

[4] Yes, I know iOS added push notification support. I'll believe it when the Google Fi PWA actually notifies me about text messages on my iPad.

[5] Yes, this risk is higher for webapps. Apple can't modify submitted apps after-the-fact (just refuse to host them), but they can modify webpages behind your back by changing Safari. To quote Cory Doctorow: "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it." If users can block ads, Apple can block whatever else they want, too.

> I'm sure Jack Conte looked at Patreon's numbers, looked at how many subscriptions they get through the app, how many people browse through patreon.com, and realized not being on iOS would screw creators over more.

This is just hand-waving away my point, though: they can absolutely be on iOS through the browser and nobody has to pay Apple a dime. The fact that they've done the math and decided they must be a distributed iOS app in the Apple App Store means it offers undeniable value. Whether or not it 'screws over creators' is incidental to Patreon, their business model is extracting revenue from creators. Of course they're going to chafe at competition and make sure creators blame Apple for the business expense Patron is passing on to them.

Undeniable rent seeking. iOS is a company town. Be careful before you move your digital life there.

> Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition.

Not sure how this myth keeps getting perpetuated. The antitrust laws that are relevant to the lawsuits against Apple (specifically Epic's and the DOJ's) absolutely care about market share for the purposes of proving monopolization or attempted monopolization under the Sherman Act.

(Yes, technically it is true that some antitrust violations can occur with low levels of market share, such as price fixing, but those are not really relevant to the lawsuits against Apple.)

>In fact, the reason why antitrust lawsuits seem to never stick to Apple is because all the mens rea was stored in the mind of a guy who tried to cure his pancreatic cancer with fruit juice[0]

You don't need antitrust. Just consumer rights.

The bigger we let companies get, the bigger the government has to get in order to enforce the law. At some point (which we've already passed) both governments and corporations are so big and all-controlling that they act as one, and there is no "keeping them honest". Consumer rights go out the window because nobody is willing to enforce them when being a good government employee precludes becoming a corporate employee later on.

Antitrust is a necessary precondition for consumer rights.

>The bigger we let companies get, the bigger the government has to get in order to enforce the law.

I don't see that at all. A very small government that is willing to jail execs for infractions would go very far. It's just that the will is not there.

Not that I think Steve Jobs was a super nice guy, but he clearly cared about Apple's brand, including the part of about users and developers not thinking of them rapacious and hostile, which is sort of how I (and many others) view their pricing model today. I like to think he'd have seen how bad this choice has played out for Apple's brand and changed his position by now, if he were still around.

You mean the guy that literally had to be fired from his very own company because he refused to change course, the guy that most probably died earlier than necessary because he did not change his stance on pharmaceutical medicine?

I believe he would very much love the current Apple Tax system and would eagerly fight the EU in court for this, both out of spite and out of arrogance for "his" Apple.

> You mean the guy that literally had to be fired from his very own company because he refused to change course

Kind of a ridiculous complaint because we all know what happened to the company afterwards. He was more right than they were.

> guy that most probably died earlier than necessary because he did not change his stance on pharmaceutical medicine

Hilariously irrelevant.

> both out of spite and out of arrogance for "his" Apple

I don't see it. He cared about developers - the 30% rate, when he introduced it, was better than any other rate in the industry and was seen as a screaming deal. Before he died, it would have been unfair for Amazon to be getting around the rate while small developers had to pay it. Nobody, in 2011, was calling the rate exorbitant. At the time, your competition (publishing on PC) basically required calling a publisher and agreeing to a 50%-60% fee. Same for Verizon and "dumb" phones - every carrier had their own app store and they all charged 50% or more.

Both him getting fired and possibly dying earlier are directly related to the fact that the man does not easily change his mind. For his company, this turned out to be the better way, yes. For his body, it may have been better to go some other way. Either way, the point is that Steve Jobs does not easily change the course that he himself set.

  …him complaining about Amazon's reader app making it too easy to buy books without paying the (increasingly literal) Apple Tax.

Heh. Attempting to buy a book from the Kindle app was how I first became aware of these policies. Was fruitlessly searching for a buy button, but could not find anything. Did a web search to figure out why I was an idiot who could not spend my money. Only to discover that I was purposely getting a worse user experience because some mega corporations all wanted a taste of my transaction.

At least the Android app tells you that you cannot buy ebooks in it. :-)

Under Steve Jobs the company ate the fees not the users. You were not allowed to charge more in the app than via your site.

This is the difference I'm getting at: "We want a cut but our users shouldn't have to pay more" vs "We want a cut and our users can pay for it"

Which is why it's specifically the approach of Tim Cook's Apple to it's customers.

Wouldn't Apple users have to pay $14.29 for there to be $10 left after a 30% cut?

Yes: https://twitter.com/KenneyNL/status/1822996361551184290

From Apple's perspective they say they are helping their customers with things like making subscriptions easy to cancel and Apple thinks that's genuinely worth 30%. The fact that Apple doesn't want their customers to know they are paying more is an interesting wrinkle though.

That's funny, I actually hate Apple's subscriptions because they are a pain to cancel. My wife has an iphone, she travels regularly to different countries for work. Because apps on apple store regularly have country restrictions (apps are not available in different countries), she has multiple apple accounts to deal with that.

Now this is also a problem with Android (and it's the fault of the app developers), but Android make switching to a different account easy. Apple, doesn't. So, when you have 3-4 apple accounts and want to cancel subscriptions, it's a pita since you need to logout and login to whichever account has the subscription.

Now, you might think that's not a typical use case, but I can assure you that in South East Asia, a lot of iphone users have multiple accounts. One recurring thing about Apple products is that they are designed by people who are not internationally minded (see for example the fact that you can't change the currency when using apple pay in a website and recalculate the totals without stopping the entire flow, or the fact that dual sim in iphones is an after thought and badly designed)

What you’ve described is not an Apple problem but a specific use case scenario that is in direct violation of Apple user agreement.

Apple’s policy is one account and other family sharing or child accounts.

First, please show me where exactly in the user agreement having two different accounts in different countries is a violation. I've looked and I can't find it. Don't go inventing violations of user agreements...

Second, what I've described is a problem that a lot of people have because seemingly no one at Apple understands that if you move between countries for work and need to have access to banking (or any other apps that are specific to that country) in those countries, the only way is to have different IOS account per country.

And it's even somewhat supported in ios, if she needs to redownload an app that was deleted due to lack of space, ios prompts her for that specific account's password (not the one I'm currently logged in). So it's somewhat shoddily supported. Nowhere near as good as android, where you can be logged in to multiple accounts and just click on a a menu and chose which account to use.

I mean, this is exactly why I go out of my way to pay for subscriptions via the App Store whenever I have a choice. I don't want to go through some rinkydink "please don't cancel bro" cancelation process on somebody's website, I'd rather just open the App Store and cancel it in one tap. Not to mention the subscriptions and purchases are automatically shared with my wife.

Previously, Apple specifically prohibited charging more though AppStore for services that are available to be purchased elsewhere. I'm not in the mood to sift though current version of Apple's legalese, but I'd be surprised if they dropped this requirement, that'd be very uncharacteristic of them.

they didn't prohibit charging more for App Store purchases, they prohibited mentioning it in the app. i.e, you cannot mention something like 'purchase this in-app product for $3 cheaper on our website'.

To be more specific, previously they prohibited telling about any other ways to buy elsewhere:

"Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other thanuse in-app purchase, except as set forth ...",

And that includes sending promotional emails if said emails were gathered via app.

It is actually 14.29. To give Apple 30% of the new payment, have to increase your original price by 42.9% or so.

In my eyes the most egregious aspect of this is it’s a financial transaction between two people that they’re taking a 30% cut of. I see 30% as fine for things like IAP for digital games and such, but somehow in this lens it feels wrong.

One proposal for a compromise that would feel fair: Apple gets 30% of the app creator’s take rate.

IE if patreon’s take rate is 8%, Apple should get 30% of that, not 30% of the full transaction. This could generalize to physical goods as well. It would require more reporting, but would feel more fair in the eyes of the creators and the users.

I run a similar service to patreon where I charge a flat $1 fee on subscriptions, regardless of the size of the subscription. A $50 sub suddenly getting only $34 after my $1 fee and apple’s $15 fee feels wrong. There’s no amount I can reduce my take rate to cover Apple’s take. But I’m entirely ok giving them $0.30 on my $1 take.

Basically - I’m entirely OK having 30% of my net profits taken by Apple. I’m not ok with 30% of my gross.

I expect Apple and platforms would not be happy with this model. Apple now has to trust that platforms are properly reporting their gross take. Platforms now have to give detailed financial records to a (potential) competitor.

The current situation with Apple as the middleman lets them ensure they get every dollar without any accounting shenanigans.

If it was a financial transaction between two people, then Apple couldn’t possibly take any cut of it.

They force you to use their billing system exclusively

Developer + Guitarist makes an iOS app and sells $10/mo subscriptions to their guitar tabs in it.

Guitarist sells $10/mo subscriptions to their guitar tabs through the Patreon app.

Why should these be considered any different?

What if it isn't an app, though. They're still taking a cut of it, even though they're not paying for anything related to apple. The only thing apple is doing is hosting the patreon app, not the thing being bought.

And if you think that it should be different when buying something that runs on an apple device, logically that should also apply when buying it from a computer.

Since at least the 1980s, IT had the concepts of "open systems" and "interoperation", to support market competition and innovation. And we later did things like the Web and other open standards.

Then Apple comes along, and uses its market position as a hardware and OS vendor, to make a nonstandard software download thing that could've been a Web site.

In parallel, Apple also made open-standards Web apps unattractive on their hardware in various ways. (Often through foot-dragging when other vendors were trying to make Web apps a smooth experience, but sometimes also going out of their way to make Web work worse.) (See also: making kids look like losers to their peers in chat, if they don't have iPhones.)

Apple then imposes predatory rates and terms on other businesses who are pretty much forced to use the Apple proprietary app store, due not to the merits of the app store so much as Apple's dominance of hardware and conflict of interest when implementing open standards.

I assume many consumers don't understand the situation, and how much of an overbearing abuser of its market position Apple can be. Or they have some idea, but pragmatically have to accept it. Also, this affords Apple a lot of money for really first-rate PR.

What I don't understand is why regulators haven't smacked the snot out of the Apple app store, with finality. For example: Apple may only charge a few-percent administration and payment processing fee, and that's it; and they have to permit other app stores with first-class access to the system, as a compromise given the proprietary lock-in mess they've made. (Making them support other open standards better, even to the exclusion of prorietary ones, is more complicated.)

> I assume many consumers don't understand the situation, and how much of an overbearing abuser of its market position Apple can be.

Here is an awesome graph (scroll down 1 page) charting out the 3 options -- 1 web, and 2 overtly expensive for iOS.

https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/27991664769677...

Since at least the 1980s, IT had the concepts of "open systems" and "interoperation", to support market competition and innovation. And we later did things like the Web and other open standards. Then Apple comes along,

Wow. I don't know if that's selective memory, or revisionist history, but you've got a huge dose of the stuff.

No, interoperability isn't perfect now, but it's a heck of a lot better than it was in the 80's.

> No, interoperability isn't perfect now, but it's a heck of a lot better than it was in the 80's.

It was much worse, but, surprisingly, the desire to improve it was much more widespread. Lots of hard work got done to make it, in your words, "a heck of a lot better". As a consequence, the design philosophy held by the people that had done that work then was that an open standard was a good thing (e.g. RSS).

Nowadays, though, it seems like the dominant philosophy is that creating walled gardens is better, and while interop is much better than it used to be in some aspects, the direction we're taking for new infrastructure isn't so good (e.g. messaging and the way the mainstream messaging apps disregard open standards).

AFAICT, all the best things on the internet came from people giving things away; although usually with some kind of way to send them money later.

Open core, Royal Road / Patreon pipeline, Linux itself…

Apple is currently facing anti-trust action so it's not like regulators are sleeping on it.

>What I don't understand is why regulators haven't smacked the snot out of the Apple app store, with finality.

I imagine that part of it is that Apple's stock backstops a lot of activity in the financial markets. No one wants to kill the golden goose to protect "a bunch of Millennial and Zoomer phone addicts"; you have to remember, we're the cows everyone else is happy to milk dry for their own needs.

Bingo - give this guy a cigar.

The EU had a tenuous relation with Apple from the start. Apple spent the past 20-odd years manipulating Irish subsidiaries to avoid paying a dime in taxes on any of their European operations. Despite being called out on it and partially settling the back-taxes in some jurisdictions, they still owe billions to multiple EU members they haven't payed back. There's no history of love, between Apple and Europe. They conspire against Apple because Apple conspires against them.

Then Apple had to kick the hornets nest and piss off the Dutch regulators with the Tinder case. Apple forfeit quickly but it set the stage for everyone else joining in on the fines. This was the perfect catalyst for the DMA and the DSA, which would be copied in other countries like Japan (which coincidentally also has tax feuds with Apple).

Good luck to the shareholders They won't take kindly to the news that the Apple of their eye is a big fruit-shaped bubble.

This is the most shocking part to me:

> Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon […] disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.

Absolutely astounding that removing transactions from the platform could result in being removed.

How is the EU going to respond to this since it is literally blackmail with Apple's market dominance?

When they respond Apple changes policy for EU users, not for anyone else.

Already users based in the European Union with an iPhone have the ability to install apps using alternative app marketplaces or web distribution, in addition to the App Store.

Is that so? I’ve been waiting to try app sideloading but haven’t seen any app repositories or so that work with the app marketplace APIs

Yes. It has been just few months. It takes some time to catch up.

Mobivention (b2b specialized) https://app-marketplace.eu/

AltStore https://altstore.io/#Downloads

Sometime in the future, Epic Games Store, MacPaw’s Setapp

I wonder how far those rules from Apple go.

I don't know a ton about Patreon, but what if creators have exclusive content available via the app and use that to encourage fans to subscribe outside of iOS? What if creators start an education campaign on YouTube telling their fans to avoid subscriptions on iOS?

I wonder if Apple is playing with fire on this one. If the creator and influencer markets turn on them, I think it could have a non-trivial impact on Apple's brand, especially with younger generations. Many modern creators are also smart business people and they're not going to see much value in Apple taking 30% of their revenue when Patreon is already providing all the services they need for about 15% at the top end IIRC.

Right now I think the biggest change that could help the average consumer would be for legislators to allow, or maybe even require, app owners to split platform fees into separate line items. For example, something like:

    Donation              $1.00
    Patreon Platform Fee  $1.18
    Apple Platform Fee    $0.50
    ----------------------------
    Total                 $1.68

WordPress had the same problem: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-says-wordpress-doesnt...

They had to remove payments completely so that it's a "free standalone app".

I strongly suspect Patreon is playing fast and loose with the wording here. Note they say “if creators on Patreon disable transactions…” but not “if Patreon were to disable all transactions.” I’m pretty sure they could still go the Audible route where they remove all mention and links to billing options off app. But Patreon doesn’t want to go that route across the board, they still want people to be able to sign up for things in app.

Easy to fix, give creators an option to make all tiers cost one quadrillion USD on the iOS app (or whatever the upper limit is for in-app purchases). Technically they are complying with Apple's demands while also allowing creators to give Apple the finger.

I dislike Patreon because they keep making their UI worse over time but that said, I'm furious at apple for this. I like Patreon to allow creators to do per-creation schedule and I hate that Apple has enough power to impact me despite being an Android user (specifically because of these kind of behaviors).

So, to people who say that with only 27% of global marketshare there's no case for an antitrust lawsuit, well if they can impact users outside of their ecosystem, there's a clear case for antitrust.

DoJ agrees with you lol.

Absurd. What next, they want a 30% cut from me when I set up automatic payments for my credit card through the banks iOS app?

No! They want 30% of your net worth each time you connect to your bank over the internet using an Apple device.

30% of a negative number, I'll take that deal in a heartbeat.

Interesting that is exactly what investment specialists do…

Yeah I can't understand why people think that inviting new middlemen into their transactions is acceptable. It's time to stop prostrating ourselves to these companies.

It's complicated.

Apple has given me a simple way to manage many of my subscriptions, a single pane of glass, which I appreciate. I'm fine paying a little extra for that.

It would be more valuable to me if Apple didn't charge too much, which turns away service providers.

Exactly, it's the percentage that's just too damn high.

> can't understand why people think that inviting new middlemen into their transactions is acceptable

Same reason people use credit cards or Gmail or hell Patreon. It reduces the number of counterparties you have to deal with and trust.

That attitude made sense when Google was trustworthy, I guess.

It's not a Google-specific attitude - it's the value proposition of all middlemen everywhere.

Facilitation of transactions and assuming the risk.

It's worth it to many. I gladly pay Apple the extra 30% or whatever because it adds up to <$10 per month for me and I don't have to jump through hoops to cancel subs.

Because the people who truly value freedom are outliers, seen as weirdos.

It's fine for App Store developers to complain about their costs of doing business like any other business. I'm not sure what the point of bringing up nonsensical hypotheticals like bank payments is.

Until 3 days ago, demanding a cut from sales generated over outbound hyperlinks was considered a nonsense hypothetical too.

Except this is a clear racket and not a regular cost of doing business. Imagine Microsoft tomorrow deciding to require 30% of even a fraction of things happing on windows. Imagine Apple trying to do this on the Mac. It's laughably anti-competitive and the only reason they're not doing it on the Mac is because it would expose the absurdity of the situation on iOS.

That, and Apple probably requires a shit load of third party utilities that do "naughty" things like read the file system or be "not sandboxed" in order to actually get any work done. They need the Mac to write APIs to charge people 30% on the App Store for the iPhone.

Think bigger, Apple Intelligence will now detect that you are ordering a new TV over the phone and they will want their cut.

Apple doesn't charge 30% for physical good sold through apps on ios.

Yet.

You use your bank's app? Guess what, Apple gets 30% of your account balance. Look at your 401k balance? Believe it or not, Apple owns 30% of that.

The point is that since they keep broadening what they do want 30% of, we expect the next thing they'll do is removing the exception for physical goods.

It's always been 30% for virtual goods; definition hasn't broadened.

That's an interesting idea.

What if, instead of 'subscribing' for $10, you purchase a grain of sand for $10.

The grain of sand is available for collection from somewhere, doesn't matter where because nobody would bother to collect it. Your physical purchase comes with free access to digital content.

This wouldn't work, unless you actually have some legitimate way to obtain the grain of sand.

So Patreon would have to actually staff a location somewhere that distributes the sand.

So sell air which is only available for self-service pickup.

> The grain of sand is available for collection from somewhere

> staff a location

still costs less than 30% of all ios revenue

Or just say you shipped it. Neither party would have incentive to say 'they never shipped it/it never came'. Mail a postcard if Apple wants tracking.

Its funny, because this is the exact opposite of how some cannabis dispensaries operate in Washington DC. It is illegal to sell cannabis there, but not to posses or to gift it. So you buy a $50 QR code that lets you access "digital art", and they give you a free 1/8 of cannabis with your purchase as a "gift".

This is the old eBay shipping trick. Ebay charged vendors a percentage of the product sale price, but nothing on shipping. So I'd often buy posters for $0.99 with $14.99 shipping (US Media Mail shipping was a lot lower than that).

At Apple, that will take at least 5-10 years before they get to that state. Siri is barely usable beyond simple “create reminder” or “set timer” queries/commands.

Hope by then, we see government intervention and break up big tech

Close. They already get a % whenever you use Apple Pay. In fact, it's part of why the EU demanded Apple provide NFC APIs to allow third-party replacements of the built-in Wallet app.

https://paymentdepot.com/blog/apple-pay-fees-for-merchants/

>Q: What fees does Apple charge merchants for using Apple Pay?

>Apple does not charge merchants any fees for accepting Apple Pay payments. However, merchants may still be subject to fees from their payment processor or bank. Remember, credit cards and debit cards are behind each Apple customer purchase.

>Apple Pay fees are generally lower than traditional credit card processing. Credit card issuers charge small businesses substantially more. As such, many SMBs ask employees to encourage Apple Pay transactions.

>Merchants, on the other hand, aren’t charged at all to use Apple Pay on physical and eCommerce transactions.

Looks like Apple Pay is cheaper for everyone except banks:

>Major banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Capital One are unhappy with their cut from Apple. So much so that they’ve formally requested that Visa, “change the way that it processes certain Apple Pay transactions.” In other words, pay Apple less in transaction fees.

This website has a better breakdown of costs under the "What are the fees" section, but no firm figures, and the only estimate is from 10 years ago:

https://www.applemust.com/how-apple-pay-makes-money-merchant...

Ok, so that sounds like Apple muscled banks out of their swipe fees.

30% cut of digital sales top line revenue of every physical business you enter with your iPhone turned on.

Let's not forget that if Apple created something called "Apple Creators", they would instantly gain 100% of the market share because there would be no fee (assuming feature parity)

This forcing apps to use your payment platform through extortion is anti-competitive. Full stop.

>would be no fee

Because fraud doesn't exist?

Why would Apple charge itself a platform fee? They are the platform.

Unless you are talking about CC fees, which are like 2% compared to the 30% that Apple is extorting you for.

Can you explain your comment?

Apple charges you a fee for publishing your App on their Store.

What makes you think they wouldn't ask for their cut, if you could publish other content on their marketplaces?

I don't think you read this thread correctly.

At this point, we are talking about Apple not paying fees for its apps on its marketplace.

Why does patreon really have to be an app though? It works just fine as a mobile site and it doesn't do anything complex that would require it to be an app.

And this goes for most services with an app, the main reason they have apps (and try to force their users to use those) is to collect more data from the user as an app has more opportunity to do this than a mobile site.

Of course for a supposedly 'noble cause' app like patreon they shouldn't be doing this at all in the first place.

I’ll note their app actually sucks at least for reading serial fiction from a few people I subscribe to.

What does require an app though is sending notifications. As a result I have their app just to receive notifications of new chapter releases, then go read the post on the website.

If Apple stopped locking this functionality into applications then something like Patreon could just be a website that you pin on your homescreen.

Now another alternative is email notifications but I will tell you email sucks and most people won’t bother with it. If I start allowing notifications from my mail client I’ll get a ton of notifications that I don’t give a crap about. There is a real spam problem there which application based notifications don’t have.

Notifications don't require an app. I get many website notifications from my browser app. At least on android.

Since Apple now purportedly supports PWA this should also work.

I was planning to write about how iOS PWAs didn’t support push notifications, but it seems they added it since I last checked.

They were a bit late on that but with that finally here there really is no excuse for Patreon to not be a PWA.

What a total dick move by Apple. 30% of the money donated to independent creators will now go to Apple, the richest corporation in the world. How is this legal?

According to App Review Guideline:

3.2.1 (vii) Apps may enable individual users to give a monetary gift to another individual without using in-app purchase, provided that (a) the gift is a completely optional choice by the giver, and (b) 100% of the funds go to the receiver of the gift. However, a gift that is connected to or associated at any point in time with receiving digital content or services must use in-app purchase.

Many years ago in China where WeChat said Apple was about to collect fees on reader's donation to writer's article (whether paywalled or not). WeChat was taking a cut on such donation. Later WeChat agreed to not taking such cut on donations and the payment not fullfilled by in-app purchase but rather WeChat Pay (as a means of fund transfer).

However, in the case of Patreon, often people are not donating to the creator, they are paying money to gain access to the creators' work (early access, exclusive membership content, etc.), thus Patreon is selling the product produced by creators.

Edit: I want to add that there should be a cut for Apple in this case, but not 30% or 15% (via subscription).

I don’t give a shit what’s written in Apples TOS. If they wrote they were entitled to a 10000% processing fee, would that be OK?

Apple are using their status as software/hardware vendor to force their users to use their App Store. This is obviously illegal. There is no excuse for this.

> 30% of the money donated to independent creators will now go to Apple, the richest corporation in the world.

Can you guess how they became the richest corporation in the world? ;)

I’m a huge Apple fan in general, but this isn’t right. Feels like a leader is getting ambitious, trying to squeeze revenue in a couple quarters instead of building new stuff that would generate new revenue

Maybe they have data suggesting people were using Patreon as an easy way around in-app payments?

Can’t imagine this generates enough revenue to offset the long-term reputation cost among creators (what I would imagine is disproportionately an Apple user base)

Is there a reason why Patreon doesn't just pull out of the App Store? Whenever I got Patreon rewards, I'd just get them in an email notification and the link there took me to the website. Worked great without having to download an app.

The 30% fee is steep, but conversion rates using in-app purchase are astronomical compared to regular webpages with a credit card form. Everyone hates it (developers, I mean), but it works very well.

This isn't going to hit developers.

The developers part relates to having to deal with Apple and Google’s review process, hence the dislike.

If they pass the 30% on, sure. Not so easy for smaller apps. Patreon might pull it off.

In case anyone wants to know why this is: it's because 1) I don't have to enter credit card information 2) Apple allows me to cancel subscriptions in a central location as soon as I sign up

If your service forces me to auto-renew my subscription, I'm probably not gonna buy it.

Patreon has been pushing an app-based approach for awhile now; every email I get from them has callouts to open the notification in their app.

I don't know why they badly want this - presumably for more user tracking, or because studies show that people engage more, or whatever - but pulling out of the app store would be at odds with this desire to push everyone into their app.

My assumption would be that if you have a company's app installed it allows them to spam you with marketing notifications for different things. Much harder to do when you can only use emails, because too many emails can get you put into spam.

Companies that send me too many notifications for crap get their notification privledges revoked... Can't Apple users do that too?

It's not just the notifications; it's the other data that can be more easily collected through the app than through a browser.

Browsers can have things like adblockers that keep you from collecting a very valuable commodity: data.

Sources seem to be pretty consistent in saying that on average, native app users are significantly more profitable for companies than web users. While I'm sure that's partially because the most dedicated users of a given service are the most likely to install the native app, an app does afford more opportunity to collect data about the user and to attempt to grab the user's attention.

As a user, I strongly prefer websites for this sort of thing. I'll pay attention when it suits me, not when the service wants me to. It does explain why Patreon wants to have an app though.

I hope the automatic price offset is separated out and labeled in the cart/checkout as "Apple's user fee".

This isn’t allowed in the US, not sure about the new EU rules regarding this specifically. Best they can do is show a “deduction” only on web/other platforms that shows they’re getting it cheaper than iOS iirc.

> This isn’t allowed in the US

Can you cite the US law for it?

I think it's specifically Apple that doesn't want it because it would give more visibility to Apple's abusive behavior.

I believe the poster means, it isn't allowed by Apple's guidelines, ergo your app will be rejected because of it. Nothing to do with the law itself.

Should have specified, isn't allowed in the US App Store.

Apple doesn’t allow this

That would be golden!

where’s the line between buying something on amazon, ordering a ride on uber, and patreon?

why do some purchases get exempt and not others?

Subscriptions I expect....

Whatever you get as a Patreon patron isn't typically a physical product, unlike something you buy on Amazon (generally speaking) or a physical car ride. It's closer to a Netflix or a newspaper subscription, and Apple wants 30% of those too.

Some Patreons I subscribe to do include stuff like postcards, signed posters or prints, so it's not quite as black and white

That's the reason why Kindle doesn't sell ebooks on iOS

Apple is threatening to remove the Patreon app if they do the same.

Whether Apple believes it can strongarm the related companies.

Arbitrary Apple rules. Apple decided that "physical" goods & services in app purchases don't get taxed (e.g., clothes, uber rides). Digital goods do because they feel like they can get away with it which is why you can't buy eBooks from Kobo or Amazon on iOS, can't buy or rent movies from Google on iOS. People will tell you this is for "safety" and to keep you from getting scammed but there's nothing stopping malicious actors from creating apps that promise to ship physical goods and just don't. At least with digital goods you should get whatever you pay for immediately after purchase.

But Apple doesn't take a share of Venmo or PayPal or Zelle either.

And Patreon sure feels a lot more like those -- you're sending money to a creator.

Sometimes you get extra content, but sometimes you don't.

The line is wherever Phil Schiller fucking says it is.

In many cases, it isn’t even a “purchase“ in any reasonable sense of the word - it’s a donation. Supporters don’t get anything other than knowing they’re helping a creator keep making something they like. This is akin to Apple wanting a 30% cut when you send your buddy $5 through Apple Pay. With this, Apple isn’t just interfering in business relationships, they’re interfering in personal relationships.

I’ve been pretty sympathetic to Apple in their tangles with the EU - I want my phone to be a locked-down appliance. But this is too far- it’s clear that Apple both has a lot of power and is abusing it.

The line is "can you use the purchase solely in the app distributed through Apple's infrastructure". I think their fee is outrageous, but that does seem like a defensible line.

Except they're stepping far over that line! You can use a Patreon subscription on all platforms, same as a Spotify or Netflix or Kobo... and yet they want a cut even when they have no part in the payment processing. Totally indefensible imo.

No, I think you misunderstand. It's not "can you use it elsewhere?", it's "if the user chose to, could they use the purchase solely inside the context of the Apple ecosystem?"

That is, if someone wants to, they can use Patreon's iOS app, not interact with Patreon in any other way, and get all of the benefits available to patrons.

I do wonder if a workaround here is buying a physical postcard from a patreon creator that comes with a free monthly subscription. A 50c mailed card would be cheaper for any subscription above $2.

I'm not sure you'd need to ship it. You're buying a 1/100,000 share of a physical postcard that exists at the Patreon offices. You can visit the office and see the postcard displayed out front under glass. It just so happens that buying such a postcard includes a free month's subscription to a Patreon creator.

I think it's fair to take a fee for payments through Apple's infrastructure... but 30% is egregious.

Patreon doesn't currently and doesn't want to us Apple's infrastructure. They're being "forced" to do so, hence this post.

they should have just gone the same route as amazon with ebooks and removed the ability to subscribe in the app.

If you can't pay money to content makers, what's the point of a patreon app? It's the whole purpose.

Seeing the content you paid for when using a non mobile device?

I’ve happily been using Patreon for years and didn’t even know an app existed. Has the world entirely forgotten about websites?

Native apps are better than websites on mobile. I know you know this.

What do you do on Patreon that only a application could do, and not a website?

I subscribe to a bunch of Patreons, and most of them are videos (which I can view on a website) or they're downloadable assets I use my PC for accessing anyways, wouldn't make sense on mobile no matter app or website.

For what? Clicking a “pay this person $5 a month” button? Maybe commenting on a post or watching a video? I don’t see how the platform could affect that in any significant way.

The app is better for viewing the content you paid for. Patreon is not just for subscribing to creators. They also deliver content. This isn't hard to understand.

What does the app do that <video> <img> and <audio> cannot?

Any sort of audio/video control for sure, which is a substantial portion of patreon content. Also, if you want to support offline content, it's nearly impossible to do it in a browser.

What’s wrong with the native html <video> tag? Or <audio>? I use those for everything and i’ve never been unable to control media.

And whose fault is that? Apple's!

Hell, Jobs originally wanted there to be no iPhone SDK, and for everyone to create webapps. Man, that would have been a better world. Initially it would have sucked, but the mobile web platform would have improved so much faster, and APIs for doing native-y things would have been complete and useful 15 years ago.

> Has the world entirely forgotten about websites?

Perhaps, if only the segment of the population forced to use a browser that didn't support PWAs for over a decade. I can see why they would forget about websites over a long enough period of time.

This is confusing to me, does this mean Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify will be in violation as well? None of these companies allow subscription or digital goods transactions in their iOS apps.

I’m not sure why Patreon couldn’t replace the “subscribe” button with a “wishlist” button within the iOS app. They could add a link that opens your wishlist in the browser too. It turns what should be 1 click into 3, but it seems far more sensible than accepting the 30% fee.

Admittedly, I also wondered about this. I'm taking Patreon at their word (for now), but I would welcome Apple making some kind of statement indicating that Patreon is allowed to disable payments in the app.

And if it is true that they're not allowed to disable payments, I would also love to know what's special about Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify (other than their size) that would allow them to "get away" with the same behavior.

Or drop the app. And explain to everybody why you're doing this

Patreon works fine in a web browser.

And watch loads of creators lose a good portion of their livelihood and leave the platform?

If they drop the app, then they are free to send users directly to the web site.

There's a decent chance they are about to watch the same thing

One could create a web app based Pateron and use the web based push notifications. https://imgur.com/a/JccxAIs for the process for how to do this on an iPhone.

The challenge (as always) is accessibility and discoverability. The functionality is all there.

> The challenge (as always) is accessibility and discoverability.

And that's the challenge that actually matters, and is more or less insurmountable on iOS.

This is part of Apple's argument why they think they are owed 30%. They have built and nurture the most affluent set of mobile users with a CC ready to charge. A company leaving Android is ho hum, but leaving iOS is business ending. How valuable then is it to be on iOS? 30%?

I'm not making a judgement on right or wrong, but I see many people just thinking about infrastructure and not realizing Apple sees iOS user base as one that would not exist without them. And, they want to get paid for access.

Should Microsoft get 30% of everything you do on a computer? That'd be utterly absurd. Apple already got paid for those users when the user bought the device. Why do they get a share of the profits of a completely independent transaction between two other parties? It's ridiculous.

> Should Microsoft get 30% of everything you do on a computer? That'd be utterly absurd.

This is what happens on consoles today. Apple views the iPhone as a closed and complete ecosystem where licensees are allowed to write apps - like a console. The hardware, OS, and App Store are viewed as a single entity and not distinct.

Not saying I agree, but it's important to understand Apple's argument. Given the ruling from the Epic case I think Apple will win the majority of any action taken against the AppStore (not a monopoly, business terms are irrelevant). IMO where Apple is vulnerable is interop like with messaging. I can only guess Apple's lawyers think the same, hence Apple's fairly recent push into RCS.

> This is what happens on consoles today.

Except no, actually, it isn't. Neither Xbox nor PlayStation attempt to collect a 30% royalty from any of the streaming apps nor block them from steering.

Consoles have a significantly more harmonious relationship with the developers, whereas Apple's is drastically more abusive. This is not an insignificant difference, both morally and legally.

We don't have numbers on how much Patreon usage comes through the Apple app.

Patreon does.

I'm inclined to think the "write off the iOS app entirely" option was one of the very very first things they pondered, and the odds are that it's pretty clear that was going to be a very, very expensive option.

Putting it in quotes is misleading, they are actually being forced:

> Putting it in quotes is misleading, they are actually being forced:

They're not literally forced, they have a choice: A) abide by the rules of the platform or B) leave the platform.

I agree that it's shitty by Apple, but if you start playing the game (being on the AppStore), don't be surprised when you have to continue playing the game by adjusting how you do things.

Let's not forget that if Apple created something called "Apple Creators", they would instantly gain 100% of the market share because there would be no fee (assuming feature parity)

This forcing apps to use your payment platform through extortion is anti-competitive. Full stop.

Don't they already have this for podcast subscriptions? I feel like this is a direct move to get more customers over to Apple Podcasts, which can now be 30% cheaper for customers.

I'm unsure, but I'm pretty sure Spotify had this exact issue recently and decided to make payments via only their website.

But, IIRC, Apple makes it nearly impossible to offer off-app payments without breaking their TOS, including linking to them (don't quote me on that).

That's not really a choice. That's "either do what we say, or your business will be destroyed".

It’s odd how Apple picks and chooses where to enforce this requirement.

Netflix has been using their own billing system for years, yet I can still download Netflix on iOS, tvOS app stores.

Makes me wonder if there is an under the table deal between Netflix and Apple.

On the topic of Patreon vs Apple. I am not a lawyer but this seems to have the same basis as the Epic Games vs Apple litigation.

AFAIK this is because you can not make changes to your subscription within the app. You have to visit the Netflix homepage. There is no “pay” button in Netflix, so they do not have to use apple’s payment system…

If this is the case, I don’t understand why Patreon and other sites cannot adopt the same approach. Very easy to remove buy buttons in apps, and redirect users to patreon.com to manage subscriptions for content creators and “per content” payments.

iOS and Google apps just used to view content.

Patreon is a relatively small company so velocity to complete this effort even amongst multiple teams should be at most a few weeks. If this was a Fortune 500, I would probably estimate it at 2-3 months.

If you do that Apple still takes a 27% commission today even after going through their special entitlement process.

https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitl...

All purchases must still be allowed as in app purchases as well.

so, I give 30% to Apple for the “entitlement” to provide an external link?

No, thanks. I’ll do it the Netflix way. Apps have read only content. No links to manage subs. Creator subscriptions managed strictly on desktop or browser.

Or just do away with iOS App Store distribution until US government gets their shit in gear and break up these monopolies

I know for awhile Netflix had this weird thing where you called a phone number and they would direct you to the Netflix website to sign up.

It's not having their own billing system, but allowing purchases to be made in-app that triggers the requirement. Which as far as I can tell, Netflix does not allow. I just checked and I can't change my plan in the app.

Maybe Patreon could leverage this loop hole as well.

You can view content from creators in app. But only patreon.com can be used to manage subscriptions to each creator. No in-app purchases on Google or Apple App Stores.

UX takes a small hit, but better than giving up 27-30% to Apple or Google.

I like being able to cancel subscriptions from the App Store, it’s a huge advantage because companies will usually try to make it difficult to cancel.

Apple could add an API for 3rd party subscriptions to integrate with that screen.

But Apple prefers to insinuate that you either pay them 30% or get scammed, and there is absolutely no option in between.

30% is too high. Charge whatever Visa charges.

Without commenting on the appropriate level of charges, Visa and Apple provide very different services. For example, with Apple, you get administration of taxes in many locales as well as dealing with currency exchange. Also, I don't think sellers have to deal with chargebacks, although Apple might have their own version of a chargeback, but I am not sure.

> Also, I don't think sellers have to deal with chargebacks, although Apple might have their own version of a chargeback, but I am not sure.

They absolutely do, just through Apple, "Disputes".

Apple will refund the user the full purchase price (that's fun, $10 app, you get $7 after the Apple cut, and on refund, you have to refund $10, so you're actually out money).

And too many disputes will get your developer privileges restricted or revoked.

That’s pretty shitty of Apple.

You mean for Apple to charge that on top of the Visa charges, which Apple is paying out of the 30% now, I assume? Apple is the merchant of record for App Store txns and pays all the transaction fees, as well as all their other costs, out of the 30%. (I don't know how much all that adds up to, but the total is strictly greater than sum of the credit card fees.)

What would you pay to have access to the most affluent mobile users with CC's preloaded and ready to buy? That's what Apple is charging for. It must be worth quite a bit since people either pay or complain up and down they are forced to pay it or they don't have a business.

IIRC, the judge in the EPIC case even said there was no issue with 30%.

> Apple could add an API for 3rd party subscriptions to integrate with that screen.

They could. And the third parties would absolutely ignore it or make it a front door to their own subscription management, which could mean anything from something as simple as the current iOS subscription management (highly unlikely) or a link that opens a browser page that tells you to call a given phone number to cancel your subscription that is always "experiencing high call volumes" and "thanks you for your patience" after half-an-hour on the phone.

A service that is effectively un-cancelable really is the dream product: the person doesn't want it, so they don't actively use it (meaning you have no expense in providing it), but also don't want the hassle of putting up with your "are you sure?" tactics to cancel. Businesses make hundreds of millions of dollars annually on hard-to-cancel subscriptions in the US.

But then Apple could use their market power to remove those cheating apps from the app store, just like they are doing for the billing changes.

Maybe. Or they could just keep doing the thing that earns them the most money, which is what they're doing now.

I'm just saying, it's a strawman argument to claim that Apple is doing this to "protect users". That's what they want you to think, but they're actually doing this to make a massive amount of revenue at the cost of literally everyone in the market, users and creators alike.

Edit: Econ 101 - the more inelastic the demand, the more the tax burden falls on consumers. One would assume that demand for Patreon is relatively elastic, at least when compared to things like food, housing, transportation, etc. Thus most of this tax burden will actually fall on the producers (i.e. Patreon and the creators), which explains why they're not willing to just take the 30% cut and will instead charge more for Apple users.

The thing is, it does protect users, in some ways. It just happens to earn them a ridiculous amount of money too.

I'd prefer to see them cut the rate from 30%, because it doesn't give anyone that much value, but it does create some for the users of the App Store.

I would prefer to see them forced by legislation (like the Digital Markets Act) to allow some sort of fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing on the App Store. Ideally they would be required to allow third-party marketplaces and self-signed app distribution, then marketplace competition could push their take rate towards 0%.

I understand that some things are hard to cancel and some companies are malicious about this. Back in the pre-app days, this came up with "free samples" and gym memberships. The general solution back then was to either (a) not get scammed or (b) use a unique credit card that you could easily cancel. With the advent of things like Privacy cards, you can pretty easily do this without an App Store intermediate.

That said, they could keep the benefit for users and the fee for Apple Pay, but then not require that apps exclusively use Apple Pay. They could even require that all apps call an API to issue some scary warning that the subscription will not be manageable in your Apple Pay dashboard, make sure you trust this app developer, are you sure you want to continue? etc etc

Plus there are plenty of other billing services that can do this. I already mentioned Privacy cards. If you sign up for PayPal recurring payments, they also have an authorizations dashboard that you can easily use to revoke payment permissions. Neither of these companies needs to charge a 30% fee to offer that. Both charge somewhere around the "standard" CC fee of 3%.

Honestly, that's the one thing I don't want out of all of this... a secondary iOS app store.

There's real value for me, the family IT guy, not having to worry about my parents, who are in their mid-60s and not tech-savvy, getting told by their "friend" through email to download malicious software to their iOS devices. Right now, you just can't do that. If something wants to execute code on an iOS device, it has to do so through somewhat-sanitized means. It's not 100% foolproof, but getting malicious executables onto an iPhone without someone knowing about it is currently beyond the capability of most threat actors.

Is it as open or cheap as us tech people would like? No. But if I want that, I go buy an Android device.

That's fine, but that doesn't happen on Android where the restrictions are more lax. (Well, it does, but in rates that are too low to justify imposing the excessive measures iOS employs)

I empathize with your struggle, but it's a pathetically weak argument against letting Apple continue abusing their position. If your parents are clicking on random email or SMS links, that's an issue outside of your OS security policy. They could be autofilling their credit card details on a malicious site in Safari or iMessaging their SSN to someone with a spoofed CallerID. My parents both use Android and let me tell you, worrying about them activating Developer Mode on their phone is the last thing I go to sleep worried about. In a post-Pegasus world you and I both know there are bigger fish to fry.

Do your parents a favor, talk to them about digital security if you're actually worried about them. Your other choice is to let reductive paranoia consume you until you're only comfortable when their web browser and contacts list is locked in a straitjacket.

> I'm just saying, it's a strawman argument to claim that Apple is doing this to "protect users".

It can absolutely be both, which is why this isn't such a cut and dry issue.

I'll bet if you polled most people, even non-Apple customers, they'd be okay with paying a little extra for the convenience of an app store. The problem is that it's 30%.

I thought it was 15% for the first million in revenue, then 30%.

But that's not designed in a way which considers that despite the app bringing in millions in total revenue, each individual creator makes far less than that.

The problem is that it's the only option across the OS. There's no reason this option couldn't exist with other options, built by the app developer so it cost Apple nothing.

The problem is that the fee is not charged to the Apple user on a line item in addition to the content price. Like all markets are supposed to operate. It's information hiding.

Do you know the markup at any retailer? Maybe in aggregate if I look at the financial statements or some specialty retailers like car dealers?

I can find that price by bidding down or calculating it. Retail is no mystery.

Will you still like it enough that you're willing to pay a 30% premium as more and more services start passing the Apple Tax on to the consumer?

This is why I love capitalism!

Unequivocally, yes. I already do so.

The beauty of capitalism is that you can choose.

You don't even have to have a smartphone at all and if you decide to have one, you don't HAVE to have an Apple device.

There are countless other brands to pick.

If you truly hate the 30% thing, then don't buy an iPhone.

And yet the point of this post is that, thanks to Apple's dominance, all users will lose the "pay per finished production" payment option regardless of whether they use an iPhone or not.

The beauty of capitalism is that you can choose the color of your car as long as it's black.

You act as if all the iPhone Patreon donations would've rolled in regardless of the app / app store, but also that Apple is somehow going to kill it. It's logically inconsistent.

1. If Apple plays a key part in getting those donations, then the 30% is not a problem: the content creator is not getting 70c on the dollar; the content creator is getting 70c instead of 0c. Apple gets people to donate that wouldn't otherwise have done it. There's a ton of money flowing through the Apple ecosystem purely because Apple made it a premium experience.

2. If Apple does not play a key part in getting those donations, then the 30% is still not a problem: the content creators / app makers / Patreon can simply switch to some other platform and get the same results.

The beauty of capitalism is that we used to have horses and shoes only, then black cars became an option, and now you can buy any color you like. I guess some people think they appear to be clever, thoughtful, and fair-minded finding an issue with every step forward.

> The beauty of capitalism is that we used to have horses and shoes only, then black cars became an option, and now you can buy any color you like.

I'm pretty sure it's at best wildly misleading to argue that the reason cars were invented is "capitalism".

I don't have any Apple devices, but as a Patreon customer, I'm going to be affected by this requirement that Apple is forcing upon Patreon.

The entire point of this article is that Apple is abusing their market power to force other companies to do things that affect people who are not even Apple customers.

But regardless, your argument is laughably wrong. We don't have "countless other brands". We have iOS and Android. They are not fungible. There are pros and cons to both platforms, and sometimes it's impossible to reconcile a showstopper negative on one platform with a different showstopper negative on the other. Or to reconcile a must-have feature on only one platform, even though that platform also has a showstopper negative.

Yes, it's nice that there are many Android manufacturers, but they are still largely very similar products, with the "differentiation" being annoying most of the time, not a benefit. The idea that we have "choice" is hilarious.

Anyway, any time someone suggests "don't have a smartphone at all" as an alternative, my respect for their opinion drops to zero.

Patreon built their organization partly on how easy it is to get donations from Apple users through the app ecosystem. As an Apple user, I personally spend a lot more on apps every month than in my pre-Apple days because it feels secure, easy, and premium.

So even as a non-Apple user, you benefited from Apple's system. The same is true for Patreon, and for the content creators.

As for your complaints about the dearth of ecosystems, I guess the rest of the world can only apologize to you for not pouring even more hundreds of billions of dollars into developing an ecosystem that fits your requirements * just so *. (By the way, I was talking about phone brands, nice work shifting the goalposts)

> Anyway, any time someone suggests "don't have a smartphone at all" as an alternative, my respect for their opinion drops to zero.

Well, I am devastated. But "no smartphone" is indeed one of the options, as is "Apple smartphone", "Samsung smartphone", "flip-phone", and many others. Can't find one that is perfect in every way? Welcome to the real world.

While I agree that the peace of mind for subscribing through a service like Apple or Google is nice (or any other service that you know will be easy ahead of time), Patreon's model is the same. It's really easy to subscribe and unsubscribe from individual creators. There's no benefit to the user from adding Apple into the mix.

Fun fact: governments can solve both problems! They can break up monopolies AND regulate dark patterns.

Then you should get the option to pay a 30% surcharge for that privilege.

Others can choose to use virtual credit cards that come for free (or cheap) from their bank or privacy.com for that purpose.

If you find this much value in it then you'd be happy to be shown the alternatives at -30% the cost and you'd still use it. But Apple doesn't allow users to see this information.

This is what the world looks like when you give up the ability to download and install an app from anywhere.

If any part of your face, voice, or any text that is ever written by you, or any kind of software or code you have written, has ever touched an Apple product, you better be prepared to kiss the ring of Tim Cook & Apple if you want to even THINK about making a dollar of it. Apple gets their cut, and yes, if you don't or can't pay they will shut you down. Not even your business account, they will come for your personal accounts, phones and any devices you own or have owned in the past and shut them down as well.

Let it be a lesson to anyone trying to skirt out of paying their fair share, Apple is due AT LEAST 30% of what you make, plus developer fees. If you don't like it, TOUGH LUCK, PAY UP!

611 comments and not a single mentioned yet.

I am not familiar with Patreon on iOS but Why is it Patreon only get charged 30% now, and not previously. After all their competitor also have 30% requirement for a long time, so Patreon had been the special case all these years?

It is unfortunate Google isn't even competing hard. Microsoft doesn't seems to be interested in Mobile any time soon.

I’m getting extremely annoyed that I have to keep paying ~30% more than other platforms for iOS subscriptions.

I’ve already bought the device. I’m already paying for iCloud. How much money does this business really need to squeeze from me?

If I could download and install apps directly from their makers, I would. Just like I can on my Mac.

We shouldn’t let this business model continue.

I think one of the reasons Apple feels entitled to do this is almost monopolistic US market share. People should stop buying iPhones for this, but it's not hard to foreseen it won't happen.

Apple has a far from monopolistic US market share for mobile devices. They might be one of the largest single vendors, but if I want to go buy a new smartphone that has decent app and service support from the marketplace, I can absolutely do that without giving so much as a penny to Apple.

Apple has just over 60% of the US market share and employee a whole arsenal of tactics to create artificial friction with other platforms in order to increase that market share.

That's big, but in the minds of most, that's not a monopoly. Duopoly with Google, sure, but convincing a court of a monopoly when a lot of people in that court have living memory of Windows being 80%+ of the total OS installs in the country is going to be a tall ask, especially considering that didn't even stick, long-term, as a rationale to keep MS under the original terms of its punishment.

Windows (Microsoft) never tried to charge 30% on top of all commerce occuring on the platform.

What would your opinion be if they did?

IMO, it's the interop that that will potentially get Apple. The stuff about the store and fees will likely end up nowhere in the US.

I don't think this simplistic view of "monopoly" is all that useful today. This article, IMO, is proof of that: Apple is forcing an unrelated company to change something fundamental about how they take payments, which (negatively!) affects that company's customers (both patrons and creators), even those who do not use Apple products at all.

If that's not abuse of market power, I'm not sure what is, then.

What advantage does the Patreon app offer to iOS users that the Patreon website is unable to offer? Why does Patreon even need an app?

Being able to consume Patron-exclusive content on the go, probably.

iOS is the most-used platform for Patreon, according to the CEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-LoTH3PzgM (0:57)

There's a few things:

1. Some iOS users don't realize there even is a web browser, and only look for apps. If there's not an app, they give up.

2. The patreon app has features like playing music and video (patreon rewards), notifications (new posts and messages and such), etc.... and while those features would work for a webpage on android, they either don't work on iOS, or are more difficult to implement, buggy, and feel "non-native" for the user.

Notice how the other two replies assumed "web page" didn't mean "using safari on iOS". If hacker news commenters have trouble with the concept of "using a webpage, not an app, on iOS", what hope does the general populace have?

Why does Patreon need an app?

If nothing else, to get consistent notifications from the creators you are a patron of, as Apple dragged their feet on web app notifications for many years, and they are still crippled and unreliable.

So for nothing then.

Nothing for you. Important to others.

Email works just fine? Seriously, absolutely hate the trend of making apps out of websites.

Me too, but shockingly there are a lot of people who don't have a computer, just a phone. I even know people in their 40s like this.

Phones usually have a web browser installed.

mmmhmmm, indeed. You need to consider the mentality of the people who chose to live this way. Most don't want want to type an address into a browser, ever, they want to tap an app.

I don't think it's anything to do typing the address. It's that there are a lot of people out there who don't understand what a web browser really is, how a web page is distinguished from an app, or how to get something from a web browser to their home screen.

See also: people who copy and paste images into Word documents before attaching them to emails. Same mental model disconnect.

For sure, I was using a simplistic description. My point is that my experience (and it's just my experience) is that many people don't care to understand what a browser is or how to use it properly, they want apps. I stress this is just my experience but I'm one of those people who tries to (unsuccessfully) teach them. They just don't care (though I'm probably a bad teacher).

And yes, see also people who print emails so they can scan them XD

I can read my email on my phone, and also get it to notify me when I get a new one from a particular address. It's not as easy as installing an app, but it's really not that hard either.

Even webbrowsers can use push notifications for webapps IIRC, so that would also be a thing (ignoring that Apple kneecaps PWAs, dunno if they allow this).

I love Apple stuff. I'm all in, iPads, iPhones, AirPods, Apple TVs, HomePods various *Books everywhere.

I wish Patreon had more apps. It's a pain to watch videos on my TV. I have to mirror my iPad and keep tapping the screen to keep it from locking and ending the session.

But they're being forced to use a payment platform that they don't want to use and have to alter/drop one of their best features to do it.

Feels like getting a dry cleaning bill from the guy who stabbed you.

It sounds like the problem is that you're using a combination of devices that makes it unusually hard to just play a video from not-your-TV on your TV.

Or, Apple could stop coercing Patreon into setting 30% of donations on fire and Patreon could make the Apple TV app. Everyone wins.

Apple should have a carve out for small donations/creator support just like physical goods.

I agree with your sentiment. I tried the app a few years ago and found it offered nothing of value. Most content you can get by supporting an artist is best enjoyed outside the app anyway, like goodies they send in the mail or high-res art that looks better on a bigger screen.

The only use cases I can think of for an app are 1) Socializing with other supporters who support the same artist, and 2) Searching other creators on Patreon and discovering similar artists you could support.

But Patreon's social features were (still are?) terrible, which is why all the creators took their social communities to Discord instead. And ever since the beginning, Patreon has opposed adding search. So their app, to me, is totally worthless. I'm astonished they're still in business.

Everyone is focused on the money but I'm mostly fascinated by the requirement to not mention there are other ways to pay.

There is also adsense forbidding you from talking about adsense earnings on pages with ads.

Youtube demanding advertisement friendly speech.

Platforms taking a percentage of second hand goods bought and sold by users don't want you to use the chat to take the deal outside their walled garden.

It all seems so reasonable!

Of course there are also tons of topics you should never mention on HN, X or Reddit but their users guide offers very limited guidance. It is, shall we say, not fashionable to be specific.

Maybe they are all wrong? Perhaps there is room for a more rigorous industry that specifically instructs us how to behave.

We are "secretly" already at the internet cult level of things.

It gets more funny if you hold that thought and picture how the controllers are constantly hammering us with spam. People are so nice they cant imagine outlawing advertisement for the annoying troll it is.

Take this bit from the adsense TOS:

> A "Sensitive Event" is an unforeseen event or development that creates significant risk to Google's ability to provide high quality, relevant information and ground truth, and reduce insensitive or exploitative content in prominent and monetized features. During a sensitive event, we may take a variety of actions to address these risks.

You see? Telling you straight up how to behave is much easier than to try to make sense from this.

I'm to old of course but for the younglings there is still hope.

https://studentsfororwell.org

I suppose they should stop trying to push me into their app then? Every time I visit their site, I have to ignore several messages about how it would be easier to do this in the Patreon app. It’s a mess they could avoid by sticking to a web based app. It still sucks for the creators who relied on them to avoid issues like this.

Taken to an extreme, Patreon just drops the app and requires mobile users to use a web interface. Then what? Apple tells browser makers they have to skim a cut of any payments to any sites and give it to Apple or else your browser isn't allowed in the app store?

This just seems kind of insane to me in that it really burns up a lot of consumer goodwill towards Apple, especially from creator types, who are way more influential than regular customers. And it also seems to invite regulatory scrutiny which could end up killing their golden goose if they are forced to open up their platform and strict limits are placed on what they can charge for facilitating transactions on the platform. That kind of regulatory crackdown is really not unprecedented-- just look what the US did the phone company back in the day, or to banks and credit card companies in terms of interchange fees. This is just extremely silly behavior to engage in from a dominant company.

Why is there even a Patreon app? Should've sent people to the website.

You bought into the platform, so you have to pay by their rules.

> Why is there even a Patreon app?

Considering its tendency to overheat your phone even when displaying pure text posts, it's there so you can warm your hands in winter.

The Patreon website is equally shitty, at least it was when I last used it last year. Haven't tried the app though. So you hands should remain toasty.

But I do agree, why not just send Apple a big "fuck you" and create a really good mobile website?

Apple is still really pushing it with the 30%. I do agree that they should get cut, or straight up charge app developers a yearly fee for being in the App Store (which they already do with the developer licens), perhaps a smaller fee per update and a fee for using their subscriptions feature (which I do like as a consumer).

Patreon need to tread really carefully, because what Apple does not that different from Patreons own business model. Creators are similarly complaining about Patreons fees.

Still 30% is a lot, but I don't know what the actual cost of running the App Store is.

Is this going to affect people who don't use patreon through the apple app store?

From my understanding: no.

> If you have not switched to subscription billing by this November, your fans will not be able to purchase new memberships in the iOS app.

Basically, you just won't be able to make purchases via the iOS app. Which is just really not great for creators.

The per-creation billing is where this really stinks. I much prefer to have this all managed in Patreon rather than Apple. I'll be able to manage just fine, but this is going to cause confusion. Honestly, this is why the web is so important. At least you can still use the website to get around paying for this.

It sounds like they're outright killing per-creation patronage, so...yes? This seems to affect all their users?

I only recently started using Patreon (as in giving someone money).

I really never thought of the app and I just went to the website.

Is there some reason to use the app?

If you wanted notifications there instead of email.

But I've been using the website for over a year and don't feel like I'm missing out.

I don't feel SUPER bad for patreon here. They're been trying to push people to their app super hard instead of their mobile website. And the mobile website is barely usable.

This is kinda what happens when you put yourself into a situation where you can't make your product work WITHOUT apple or google's store.

I'm a long-time Apple fan and this news just sucks.

Apple have been openly pro-creativity and pro-artist for a long time, and now they're actively hamstringing one of the best online platforms for facilitating that, for... profit reasons?

Maybe the ill-fated "crushing creativity" advert was just the beginning.

The arguments in HN and elsewhere about monopoly seem to be missing the point imo. My problem isn't even with Apple's 30% take rate!

I use Patreon on the web on a non-Apple desktop computer. Apple is simply not part of the equation in my transaction with Patreon. But because of Apple's App Store policy, Patreon has to remove useful features from the web app. That seems like an abuse of power to me.

If you have Apple goggles on and disagree, I ask you to consider a reverse situation. Imagine that your favorite third-party iPhone apps delete features because some other company in charge of some other platform demands it. Technically the app developer could simply pull out of that other platform, but they do the math and conclude they will lose less revenue by degrading the iPhone app and pissing off iOS users. Doesn't that seem outrageous?

"Apps" suck. Use a web ui and tell Apple and Google to shove it. If anti-trust and/or our consumer protestors in various US legislatures won't fix the app stores by breaking them up, the app devs can just drop making apps. I've done many apps and would estimate that 90% have no real need for the API toolkits that Apple and Google give you, they can just as easily be done as "web apps" -- if, that is, everyone dropped the apps and used web apis so cooperation of apps would be based on them, not the toolkits. Exceptions do apply but they are in the minority IMHO.

I don’t understand one part: why can’t a creator just decide to not appear in the app?

Are they changing the donation structure for everyone regardless of their interest of the Apple platform? Why should YouTubers be bothered by this change, for example.

They said that if they offer different options for people who are not in the app, Apple threatened to remove them from the App Store.

I smell lawsuit. Apple should not force a company to change their ways outside the Apple ecosystem for a chance to publish an app. I bet the EU won’t like this one.

If the App Store is a place where creators can also sell their own content (story apps, etc.).. isn't it a direct competitor to Pateron as a creator's platform, and so should be treated (and maybe regulated) as such? In the manner that Apple need to allow legitimate platforms such as Pateron to survive and compete fairly in the iOS ecosystem?

(A parallel is Netscape Navigator vs Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer)

Lastly, a gentle reminder since I too sometimes slip up and fondly recall the good old six-colored apple... that Apple has been the top 3 largest company by market capitalisation for more than 10 years. They are underdogs no more.

Apple used to create products for creators. Now it creates revenue streams for investors

Could this backfire on Apple? Patreon may not be able to point out to users that they will save 30% if they use the web interface, but thousands of creators will, guiding them along with a few choice words about Apple.

The solution is so fiendishly simple I am astonished not to see it suggested elsewhere yet.

Back when I were a lad, there was this thing called the world wide web...

Apps as a crappy, less capable front-end for what is just a webpage anyway is not a new trend, but it has gotten crappier and stupider over time. Patreon should just pull their app entirely from platforms that behave as predatory rent-seekers and work on making their mobile web interface top-notch. It's not that hard.

I wonder what would happen if a third-party made an app for viewing Patreon content.

Would Apple accept that the third-party client cannot accept payments on Patreon’s behalf and not require the Apple tax?

As a user, I welcome this change if it means it becomes possible to easily cancel Patreon subscriptions with a single click in my device settings instead of having to go through Patreon’s cancellation process. Patreon makes it a completely unnecessary pain in the ass to cancel multiple subscriptions.

It seems like only Apple gives a shit about making things easy to cancel and I find it hard to have any empathy for companies / developers that make canceling things painful.

Due to their app store monopoly, Apple is probably one of the few companies whose version of enshittification often involves enshittifying the products and services of other companies.

So wait, if I donate $1000 to a creator via iOS app, Apple takes $300? That can't be right, can it? Seems like literally robbery.

Actually what would happen is that you would pay $1400: $1000 to the creator and $400 to Apple.

The only reason I'd want to use a Patreon app over their website would be to play creator's videos on a large screen. As far as I can tell, they don't have an AppleTV app.

This, TBH, is why I've never supported a creator via Patreon, as I have no idea how I'd access a creator's supporter-only content in a way that was convenient for me.

Can't you just play a video from their website full-screen, and AirPlay that to your Apple TV?

AirPlay is the general way to get anything from your phone or Mac to your Apple TV.

Airplay doesn't qualify as "convenient" for me. First is the frustration of even getting it to work, and second if I have a phone or mac open, I'll ignore the TV and get sucked into work instead of relaxing.

It's usually two taps, three at most. Hard to see how that isn't convenient. And what's frustrating about getting it to work? It's generally extremely reliable.

Man I can’t wait to unload this iPhone and finally leave the Apple ecosystem. The watch was the last straw for me. They’ve really nose dived in design and quality. Seeing stuff like this just makes me hate them more. This company went down the tubes years ago and is just running on branding.

The app store is not Home Depot or a book shop or Walmart. Apps are not cars or cans of soda or real estate. Can we cut the bad analogies and talk about what is real? These analogies do nothing to clear anything up and lead to insanely stupid irrelevant discussions about entirely different things.

If I understand it correctly, if I build an Android app, I can offer in-app payments through a variety of integrations: Google, Stripe, Amazon, etc. If I build an Apple app, in-app payments can only be offered through the Apple payment system. Is that more or less correct?

I'll probably get down voted to oblivion because of all the "apple" supporters but looking at all the moves that apple has made, that should be enough to leave their entire ecosystem. Don't be so stingy, the web was not built for one entity to have this much power

Does this scheme also apply in Europe?

I guess it must, unless you're using an alternative app store.

Yes but the EC is busy fighting Apple on it. Until now the conversation was mostly focused around app developers, but of course it has implications for the actual activity behind every app (like the creators using Patreon and alike)

cf. https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-sends-pr...

Patreon shouldn't need an 'app' to begin with.

We have very capable web browsers on mobile these days.

When ignoring for a sec. the questionable 30% cut and duopoly: In the age of subscriptions, being able to see all your recurring payments on a single page and cancellable with two tabs without questions asked, is a feature worth paying for.

> In the age of subscriptions, being able to see all your recurring payments on a single page and cancellable with two tabs without questions asked, is a feature worth paying for.

This is a service the banking system should clearly provide natively though - there's no good reason Apple is the only one capable of this, nor any good reason why they're best placed for this (there's plenty of non-Apple subscriptions where this would be useful).

Your card provider is well aware of what recurring payments are currently authorized, and should be perfectly capable of providing tools to cancel those authorizations (and inform the merchant of this when doing so).

That that doesn't work is a failure on the part of financial firms (who could provide it) and regulators (who imo should oblige card providers to offer this, and oblige companies to treat cancellation notification like this as equivalent to written notice). Recurring payments are an increasingly fundamental part of consumer banking, but banks provide effectively zero tools for consumers to manage them.

The argument against is that some of these payments might have ongoing obligations you can't just cancel without consequence, and you'd be effectively just be refusing to pay your bills - but you could equally well have no balance available or something so the payment fails in existing cases anyway, so this seems like an entirely solveable issue (if a business that you _must_ pay receives a notification that you've cancelled the card billing authorization, they're going to need to get in touch with you about it just as if your monthly charge failed).

Yeah they should get together and create a standard protocol for managing, transferring, and paying subscriptions.

Imagine if you could manage subs through your bank, but also transfer the sub to a different bank as needed.

Could even have protocols for payees to verify payer sub status. Maybe there could be two "ends" to a sub; payer and payee end. Like a money wormhole.

Would be cool if that was the customer's choice and not forced down your throat from a monopoly.

Even if we have to accept all the BS from Apple, at least customers should be aware of the information at the purchase time that they're paying 30% more money compared to other alternative options. This asymmetricity of information is playing good only for Apple at the cost of all the app creators and their customers.

Apple are really such filth. Imagine thinking it's ok to take 30% of every transaction like this, and like they already do on their app store. I don't know how anyone thinks this is ok. It's worse than credit card rates.

Gotta be honest, I don't get the vitriol.

Patreon wants to advertise and publish content in an iOS app. Apple says you must allow in-app-purchases. Either there is value in being on the platform or there isn't. Patreon seems to think there is.

To creators there is no cost, by default the price of their subscription offerings will be bumped up so they get the same revenue. Patreon will also increase revenue by taking the same % of the higher overall price.

Users will have the choice of subscribing through iOS or through the website. If the higher cost from within the app isn't worth it to them, they will go to the website.

Who cares?

Why the F are we letting apple tax 30% of the hard work of people. They do not deserve it. If they had a platform with organic "discovery", maybe 10% would feel less like rape (including processing fees)

Obviously Apple will back down here. They have enough issues with regulators. Their rules currently say any form of tipping has to use in app purchases - so I expect this rule to be changed.

Obviously Apple is testing how much teeth the rules have.

I don't know Google's Android policy for Patreon, but I expect it is or will soon be similar, if the inability to buy ebooks from the Android apps is any precedent.

Walled gardens suck.

> Walled gardens suck.

Let me fix that for you. uhuhm. Duopolies suck.

How much time do we have till Apple blocks addresses of services that provide web apps instead of iOS apps or just crippling web apps altogether even more than they are now?

>Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop.

>remember, Apple’s fees are only in the iOS app. Your prices on the web and the Android app will remain completely unaffected.

If this means Apple will take 30% of funds I send to Patreon, then time to dump Apple Pay.

Yet another reason I avoid Apple, seems they are in a race with Microsoft to be the biggest abusers to their users.

Why even have an iOS app in the first place over a simple web app? Is there any additional functionality that the iOS app can offer over web?

Folks that still buy Apple: what are you waiting to boycot this draconian business? Every Apple device you buy feeds this monster.

Did I miss something? Did Apple acquire Patreon?

It’s the same argument for apple, you use our infrastructure host/distrubute/secure/pay, you pay the same.

We need to kill the phone duopoly

A big part of it is restrictive and onerous standards on cellular firmware that act as a compliance moat for Apple and Google (and seem designed to enable surveillance more than anything), but if we fail to get open-source alternatives via commonsense regulatory reform the antitrust guns need to come out. When smartphones are often the only authentication mechanism accepted by major payment providers, workplaces, and other contexts that most people can't opt out of, a (fairly cozy, collaborating as often as they compete) duopoly on viable operating systems is unacceptable

> We need to kill the phone duopoly

We also need to save the world wide web. Most of these 'apps' have no need to exist.

Strongly agree, but the existence of platform-integrated DRM is a moral hazard that current incentives don't seem to have a mechanism for overcoming, and the only mechanisms that seem to work require open or at least regulated platforms

I think we should strive for making all "middle-man" platforms non-profits. App stores should be run by non-profits. Food delivery platforms should be non-profits. Rideshare platforms should be non-profits. I think it's the only way to defend against the natural process of enshittification that occurs when the platform itself is has a conflict of interest from the two parties that it connects.

That goes for Patreon itself by the way - why in the world is a platform for connecting creators to fans itself a for-profit entity? A non-profit would be able to offer significantly less transaction fees - for example, Every.org. There's also the question of what Patreon's "exit strategy" will be...

This is an interesting idea. Though I think it'll be tough to differentiate what exactly constitutes a middle man, and therefore hard/impossible to enact. Would marketplaces (such as Amazon) be considered a middle man? If so, good luck making any traction on this plan. If not, then why would app stores be considered middle men if Amazon isn't? It would have to come down to some very particular and very exact legal points, and you can bet every middle man would try very hard to be just barely on the OK side of the law.

Yeah you could try to enforce it with a law, that's one strategy. But there's also the strategy of just getting in there and outcompeting the encumbents! As a consumer, I would certainly favor a new, non-profit player in this space.

Apple creating an ecosystem of mobile apps is causing all this. Just go back to the Internet’s universal UI: the Web

Isn't Patreon essentially just a website to pay creators? What added value does the iphone app even provide?

The only reason I installed their iOS app was because their mobile website is essentially hot garbage that made it impossible to navigate through a creator's media playlist, let alone cast it to a television.

How does it work when I order food through an iOS app? Apple gets 30% of the food order price?

Basic question: does the use of the Patreon iOS app incurs some sort of additional expenses for Apple?

Why do you need an app. Is this downstream of the awful state of american bank transfers?

Next step: if you do any transaction in your smart banking app, 30 per cent go to Apple.

all of this app services stuff and apple can't find a way to stop burning any of its good will, shame really

there's got to a good middle ground where all parties are happy and one where apple's goodwill isn't torched

There's no middle-ground that makes Apple happy. Their goal is to have their cake and eat it too, which regulators won't allow. It's basically guaranteed at Apple's scale that they will keep pushing new pricing schemes until the threats to their profit are substantial enough. Over the next few months, we're going to watch regulators inch down the guillotine until Apple finally settles in on something reasonable.

Shame indeed, but I'm fine letting Apple get it out of their system. Their public image is long overdue for a reset anyways.

Patreon should just remove the ability to subscribe from the app, and just offload the process to Safari. Let Patreon users purchase their memberships using Apple's own browser app. Let Apple decide if they want to try to take 30% of all transactions made using their browser and see how that works out for them.

If they tried that, Apple will just remove the app from the App Store.

Yes. If you have a link to a site that has the ability or even another link to another place where you can buy something, Apple will block publishing of your app. They pulled this on us earlier this year after three years of publishing with no problems. All we had was a link to our support site, which had a link to our main site (where you could buy a subscription), the latter we had to remove or they refused. In fact, if we even try to give users materials on subscription details or talk about (not even providing a link) how to find those details, Apple blocks it. They need to get smashed with the antitrust bat hard.

It's still comical to me that Google lost their anti trust suit while Apple does blatant offenses with their 30% fee.

Seems like this just validates the idea that Patreon did not need to be an app. The website works just fine and I doubt people are using the app for discovery or content creation?

I know Patreon wants to capture as much of your time as possible, because they are now on the infinite growth destruction trajectory. So the app is going to stay and they will keep pushing it and probably remove features from mobile web because of it.

Imagine if Patreon was just a for-profit company and not a growth monster.

Do creators have an option to opt out of allowing transactions from the iOS app?

One more reason to avoid app stores and build/use PWA or just web apps.

Already hitting me to the tune of $30/mo. for my family to do laundry.

The article is filled with despicable stuff, but this one stands out:

> Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patreon’s subscription billing model. Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.

Apple needs to get the Standard Oil treatment.

I can see a fee for facilitating...but that in my mind is 1% not 30%.

This is so shitty, imagine taking 30% from donations to creators. It should only be 30% from the money that Patreon itself makes off of subscriptions.

What's the advantage for Patreon to have a native iOS app?

If apple was a young startup, struggling to get market share, or struggling to turn a profit, I can understand why they might want a cut of profits here.

But they literally have more cash than anyone in the world... why bother with this?!

Ah, but isn't it the other way around? If you are a young startup without market share (but well funded), you don't care about the extra margin. Uber was cheap before it killed the taxis.

They have to make more and more money or their stock goes down. This is the gross world we live in now. There’s a reason Warren Buffett sold half of his Apple holdings. They’ve squeezed blood from the turnip about as much as you can.

Can creators disable payment or delist from Apple users?

403 - can't read it. Patreon blocks Tor network.

I am happy I removed Apple from my business workflow.

just use the web. porn companies do this and they're still in business.

uber / lyft etc i'm 98% certain don't pay apple tax.

How can this go on? It is a tax on innovation

Hot take, Patreon doesn't really care about fighting this because they get more revenue from monthly subscriptions. I'd bet most creators using this model do it because the publish less than once a month and don't want to be charging their patrons for more than they make.

Can’t Patreon just use a link to a website?

Where is Lina Khan when you need her, eh?

I suspect we'll be hearing from her soon. She's not been shy about taking on anti-consumer monopoly behavior.

They should move to the Epic App Store.

One more reason to stop using Crapple

Non North-American here. I've read that Biden passed a "Hidden costs" bill. Wouldn't this Apple charges account as a hidden cost?

You are presented the final cost up-front. There is no "hidden cost" here.

When you sign up for a hotel room and they add on room cleaning charges at the end of your stay, that's a hidden cost, especially since the charge is the same no matter what you do while you are there.

Ironically, "sales tax" feels like a hidden cost to me. Yes, everyone knows it exists, but not everyone knows what the local value is wherever they are, especially on vacation. It should be on the sign. I guess it's not surprising that the government exempts themselves from this law.

The reason sales prices are quoted without tax in North America is because there's a million different permutations governing what the sales tax is going to be in different situations (who's buying what, from whom, where, when), and this changes all the time.

Local governments can shift their taxes at any time to encourage or discourage certain things. I'd argue this flexibility is very good, but the downside is calculating sales tax in the US is complex enough that there are companies dedicated to it.

So everyone quotes pre-tax pricing.

If we only had databases and computers which can track and calculate those advanced math stuff.

Well, yeah, but you can also see how the key piece of information a company discloses is the pre-tax price.

To show each customer the right post-tax price, you'd have to know where they live and where they will buy your product. It would be impossible to advertise a price en masse on your website / in a brochure.

When I'm standing in a store, they absolutely know what the tax is going to be at the register.

Online, I admit it's harder... But they still need to figure it out at checkout. I would be fine without a disclaimer that until the shopper's location is specified, the final price can't be calculated, but if they're logged in and it's set, it should show it.

Everyone quotes pre-tax pricing because it tricks people into thinking the prices are lower than they are, just like $9.99 feels cheaper than $10.00 when you're making a quick judgement, even though that penny is inconsequential. And it's why gas stations add the additional 9 behind it, making the actual difference even more pointless.

30% is fucking disgusting and the only way they can get away with it is a captured regulator. It’s so despicably greedy and arrogant. It’s like they’re rubbing it in your face that they can do this: “what are you gonna do about it huh?”

Yay. More Enshittification and Chickenization due to monopsony power in a walled garden.

I hate it here.

Any reason why Patreon can't go Netflix/Spotify way? they charge their customers via the web thus bypassing Apple paywall.

As a Patreon user who primarily subscribes on a per-creation basis, I will be ending all of my affected subscriptions if they make this change. That was kinda the whole point of Patreon for me. I can support my creators but only if they actually produce some content. If they take a long break, they don't get any money from me, but they will also get paid automatically if and when they come back.

I use this model as a creator and I just hope/assume that my users will use the website instead of an app. It doesn't remove the per-creation model, it just makes it absent from the iOS app.

Ah okay, that's fine then. I'll just keep using the per-creation model. I don't use Apple hardware so I won't even notice the change.

> I'll just keep using the per-creation model.

Until Patreon takes it away:

> As a result of Apple’s mandates and in order to make sure that you can continue getting new members in the iOS app, we've started a 16-month-long migration process to bring all creators onto subscription billing by November 2025, supported by a roadmap of new features and tools to make sure the billing model works for you, your community, and your business. To be clear, this means that first-of-the-month and per-creation billing models will be discontinued in November 2025.

Damn, that's really disappointing. I publish a Windows-only open source software, I don't care about the iOS app. Why should this have any impact on my project?

I'm fine with my page not being available from the iOS app at all. Why do they have to remove this payment model from every other platforms? It makes no sense.

OK I read this in their FAQ about this:

> You will maintain control over how frequently your members are billed. By default, members are billed monthly, but creators will also be able to offer less frequent billing options, like annual billing, to reduce the pressure to produce something new for fans on a monthly basis. We’re also committed to maintaining the ability to pause billing when you need to take a break.

Yearly billing seems better for me I think.

As a per-creation consumer, yearly billing seems worse to me. Now I need to decide once a year if I am still comfortable supporting each channel, and I can't revise that based on whether the channel has decided to go totally idle throughout the year, or any other relationship.

So I guess I'm back to my original position - I will cancel 75% of my Patreon subscriptions when this lands.

And yet so many people here seem to think that Apple doesn't have monopoly power, and doesn't abuse their market position.

Go figure.

Not gonna defend Apple here, but I think it's also kinda sucky that Pateon is simply pushing the problem downward to the end users. They should have made a decision to either take the hit themselves or leave the apple store altogether. But of course this is too much to ask from a company who also has a dominant position in the market of creator revenue, so more enshitificacion for everyone.

Fuck Apple.

That is all.

You beat me to it. Others will say "but Apple gives us beautiful products and since the app store is theirs they have every right to charge fees like this".

Yes I understand the "overhead" of an app store but since it's required it seems sort of monopolistic practice to me

fcking apple... has itself become the IBM of 1984. What a fall!

Shit hits the fans

never build your house on rented land eh.

Not a fan of Apple's policy, but I am a fan of consistency.

It was unfair that Patreon was able to operate on the App Store without paying this 30% cut, it basically gave them a monopoly that no similar Patreon-like platform could compete with.

No mention of suing Apple, no mention of reducing their cut. Doesn't really seem like Patreon has got creators backs.

I'm sure Patreon is just itching to take on the wealthiest company's legal department. Even the wealthiest nation states are struggling to reign this in.

Their cut is 8%.

Apple's cut is 30%.

If Patreon went to 0%, creators will still be getting 22% less.

What would, according to you, be a good reduction on Patreon's side?

Patreon only takes 5%-12% , even if they gave it all up it wouldn't the Apple Tax.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com