> 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?