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.
But Apple prefers to insinuate that you either pay them 30% or get scammed, and there is absolutely no option in between.
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.
IIRC, the judge in the EPIC case even said there was no issue with 30%.
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.
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.
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 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%.
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.
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.
It can absolutely be both, which is why this isn't such a cut and dry issue.
Others can choose to use virtual credit cards that come for free (or cheap) from their bank or privacy.com for that purpose.
This is why I love capitalism!
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.
The beauty of capitalism is that you can choose the color of your car as long as it's black.
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.
I'm pretty sure it's at best wildly misleading to argue that the reason cars were invented is "capitalism".
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.
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.