What exactly is Apple doing to deserve 30% of all Patreon revenue on their platform? At least Patreon has made it so that the cost increase can be put on the iOS users rather than the creators in...
What exactly is Apple doing to deserve 30% of all Patreon revenue on their platform? At least Patreon has made it so that the cost increase can be put on the iOS users rather than the creators in Patreon.
This is a thing Apple (and iirc also Google on android) does across all apps that allow in-app purchases -- and that includes purchasing subscriptions to services like Spotify or, in this case,...
This is a thing Apple (and iirc also Google on android) does across all apps that allow in-app purchases -- and that includes purchasing subscriptions to services like Spotify or, in this case, subscriptions to individual Patreons. This was a big part of the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple, iirc.
They maintain and host all the infrastructure required to process payments and subscriptions, including management of subscriptions. In most cases, I’m all for Apple doing this because I trust...
They maintain and host all the infrastructure required to process payments and subscriptions, including management of subscriptions. In most cases, I’m all for Apple doing this because I trust Apple far more than most other companies and the ease with which I’ve been able to sign up and cancel subscriptions without going through a bunch of dark patterns and spam portals is almost worth that price alone. That being said, this only takes money from small creators so I feel like they need to figure out a better solution for this.
I think that Apple potentially chucking the app out of the store because someone could sign up on the web with a per creation subscription format that isn't easily supported on iOS is a bit of a...
I think that Apple potentially chucking the app out of the store because someone could sign up on the web with a per creation subscription format that isn't easily supported on iOS is a bit of a overreach. I can get charging when using the iOS app because that's on an Apple device, but affecting the options available on the Patreon website is a big extension.
Isn’t that whole thing to dissuade people from accepting payments through other platforms, though? If the main usage of the subscription is using the customers and infrastructure that Apple set...
Isn’t that whole thing to dissuade people from accepting payments through other platforms, though? If the main usage of the subscription is using the customers and infrastructure that Apple set up, why would they not have some kind of restrictions in place to prevent people from going around that while still getting the advantages of that setup?
If I set up a stand at a farmer’s market and the organizers spend money to promote the market and set up the space and booth I’m using to sell my goods, I shouldn’t be allowed to accept IOUs for afterwards to avoid paying the organizers. If I didn’t like the terms of the market, I could (and should) go set up at another one where I can collect payment directly. Apple is not preventing Patreon subscribers from signing up their subs online. They’re just saying you have to sign up through the Apple’s flow if you sign up from within the app.
In your farmer's market example, which is hard to work with since it's a very imperfect analogy, if you tell people you are setting up a shop at the market, you did the marketing to get that...
In your farmer's market example, which is hard to work with since it's a very imperfect analogy, if you tell people you are setting up a shop at the market, you did the marketing to get that customer, not the farmers market. Now you benefited from the space, for whatever reason without that space you couldn't distribute your wares, but it wasn't the farmer's markets promotional spending that got you the customers that you yourself referred.
Of course we know what is actually happening with Apple, they're preventing you from distributing your wares EXCEPT for in their farmer's market, at least when it comes to customers in the Apple ecosystem. So even if you wanted to distribute them somewhere else, and market them all on your own, you can't.
Truly I probably wouldn't have as much of an objection to that model alone if not for the other things Apple has done or is doing. The customers are the ones who are choosing to let Apple hold their spending behaviors against the sellers, meaning that as long as Apple customers are willing to pay a 30% tax on everything over the baseline price the seller would normally offer or put up with less access to certain materials that otherwise just won't be sold, the sellers are the ones that can find a price point or model that works for that system. The main issue I see with that is Apple keeps adding new things to compete with those sellers and they advantage themselves. When iPhones first came out, a lot of the services Apple offers now didn't exist. Apple lets 3rd parties build up services and wait for the markets to develop to see what people want, then they swoop in and steal business by developing what is successful and pushing out established players by advantaging their own services in their own ecosystem.
The other problem I have with it is that Apple is using locked-in effects and sunk costs to manipulate people in their ecosystem, as well as leveraging US communication defaults to harm all users, even non-Apple users, which in turn allows them to lure people onto their platform through harm they cause to non-Apple users, then trap them into inflated costs through lock-in effects. They also make it so their products are purposefully less useful on their own or without other Apple products and services, so once someone has bought in, it often makes sense to keep buying into the Apple ecosystem because other services and hardware are disadvantaged.
They're also abusing the default status that Google just got blasted for in their most recent anti-trust case, on a few fronts. One aspect that was covered in that trial is that psychology of consumer behavior is such that default often ends up being perceived as better no matter what, because that's what consumers become used to. The actual quality of the product or service becomes almost secondary to maintaining a certain habit with the consumer. This removes much of the need to actually compete in the market.
That’s not really how farmers markets work. The organizers advertise for the market. While you can advertise on your own, most customers at farmers markets are the result of the organizers...
That’s not really how farmers markets work. The organizers advertise for the market. While you can advertise on your own, most customers at farmers markets are the result of the organizers marketing. That’s why the App Store analogy fits. Android exists. People can market on their own. There’s a reason the Apple App Store outperforms those other options by a ton.
And you must not be a user of Apple products because most people, when asked, like the fact that Apple is at the reins of all the things you mentioned. What you state as lock-in effects, others may state as bonuses. When you say Apple makes their products less useful on their own, others might say they make them more useful and seamless with other products.
As long as Android exists, people have other options. There’s a reason, at least in the US, that Apple is as popular as it is and it’s not anti-competitiveness.
I know how they work, I was attempting to adapt it to the analogy but it's a very imperfect analogy. I've gone to farmer's markets on a few occasions solely because I knew people who were selling...
That’s not really how farmers markets work. The organizers advertise for the market. While you can advertise on your own, most customers at farmers markets are the result of the organizers marketing.
I know how they work, I was attempting to adapt it to the analogy but it's a very imperfect analogy. I've gone to farmer's markets on a few occasions solely because I knew people who were selling things at the markets, not because I just go to farmer's markets. The organizer's advertising literally was invisible to me and I wouldn't have even thought to go if not for knowing someone who was selling there. So should the farmer's market get 30% of the sale price of what the person sold me? Of course they couldn't ever because they have no way to actually enforce such a rule and it would just make them look greedy and stupid.
Even ignoring the aspect of how I learned about the farmer's market, are any of these markets taking a percentage cut of sales from every seller? From what I've seen, that doesn't seem to be the case, likely because they would also have very little way of enforcing this unless they forced every seller to use a payment provider that runs through the organizers. I suppose there's nothing stopping them from doing it except most sellers would probably just not set up a shop there if they thought it was not good for their sales or not going to recover their costs and farmer's markets are not monopolies, so anyone can run one that isn't a full-on greed operation trying to take 30% cuts of sales.
As long as Android exists, people have other options. There’s a reason, at least in the US, that Apple is as popular as it is and it’s not anti-competitiveness.
You're right, I'm not a user of Apple products, but I've nearly been strong-armed into Apple products in part because of Apple's decisions and manipulations of the market and consumers. At my prior job, I was literally told by my direct superior that I was being kept out of management group chats (thus impacting my ability to get promotions, raises and reducing cohesion with management/coworkers) because I didn't have an iPhone and the company was only providing phones to a few of the upper management, and she told me in reference to the owner 'He hates green bubbles' and the owner was her brother, so she would definitely know. And don't tell me it's just that business that's a problem, Tim Cook told someone to buy their mom an iPhone if they want to make the communications better. I've read comments on here and elsewhere from other people who gave in and bought iPhones solely because of this message issue, not because their first choice was an iPhone, but because it made it easier to communicate with other people who were already using iPhones. Apple deliberately has been sabotaging default communications in the US and even after being pressured to adopt RCS they're still doing it by not implementing E2EE. Yes I know it's Google's E2EE because encryption isn't in the RCS universal profile, but it's not a coincidence that they took this long to support RCS and then are still dragging their feet on E2EE. Apparently privacy and security only matter when it's good for profits, but not good for users.
I also know that the behavior described above about that business owner is not limited to him, there are lots of people who think that way and it does alter how they interact with people who don't have iPhones. Apple has been intentionally marketing and designing their messaging and platform to encourage that behavior.
Also Android itself is only one other option. You say "people have other options", but they have one other option, so not really options, and yes I know the easy response to that is that many manufacturers can make phones running Android with their own flair to it, but they're all very Google-bound in core ways so in certain aspects it's still just one other option.
I likely couldn't really care less what premium people paid for Apple stuff if Apple wasn't doing some dirty tactics, like stealing business from companies that did the work of developing a market first by advantaging their own products/services in their ecosystem, or enabling and supporting increased social friction to sell more iPhones. Let's not forget Google just lost an anti-trust case where they bilked nearly all users with increased ad costs by paying for default search wherever they could, so not only is Google the bad guy there, Apple was happy to take the payout for what amounted to close to extortion pricing for advertising since Google has a monopoly. I'm not going to pretend like Apple didn't know that was happening, and that's why it's also laughable to say there's other options when the other option is Google.
Keep in mind I have a bunch of subscriptions through Apple, and if I were ever to sell a subscription, I would use Apple as the payment processor even if developers could use alternatives. That is...
Keep in mind I have a bunch of subscriptions through Apple, and if I were ever to sell a subscription, I would use Apple as the payment processor even if developers could use alternatives.
That is a terrible excuse for a 30% cut. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. And reportedly Apples tools for payment processor info is terrible compared to the competition. So maybe for the existing customer base or being more user friendly they could justify a higher cut. But only like 5% or 10%. Even 10% seems way to high for the service they offer as a payment processor.
Except it’s not just payment processing so Stripe isn’t an apples to apples comparison (I’m too lazy to come up with another phrase that’s not so on the nose). The 30% also covers hosting the...
Except it’s not just payment processing so Stripe isn’t an apples to apples comparison (I’m too lazy to come up with another phrase that’s not so on the nose). The 30% also covers hosting the actual app, services like GameCenter, update hosting, localization, and payment processing. The reason it’s 30% is because that scales as the app gets more downloads and also covers any free downloads (most apps are free downloads with IAP). They didn’t pull this number out of nowhere. Nearly every online storefront for hardware (Sony, Microsoft, Steam, etc.) starts with a 30% cut.
That’s exactly the problem. Developers who use only the payment processor aspect have no recourse. If Apple had to actually compete as a payment processor, that part of their product would be much...
That’s exactly the problem. Developers who use only the payment processor aspect have no recourse. If Apple had to actually compete as a payment processor, that part of their product would be much better.
There’s no developer out there for iOS that inly uses the payment processor portion. Every app in the app store utilizes the hosting and update features and everyone has access to all the other...
There’s no developer out there for iOS that inly uses the payment processor portion. Every app in the app store utilizes the hosting and update features and everyone has access to all the other features, whether they implement them or not.
Again, that’s exactly the problem. What if a developer doesn’t want those other features? For a company like Patreon, they now have to deal with a second, worse payment processor. So even having...
Again, that’s exactly the problem. What if a developer doesn’t want those other features? For a company like Patreon, they now have to deal with a second, worse payment processor. So even having an Apple payment processor is a drawback, not a feature. I am sure Patreon would be happy to host the app downloads from a random s3 bucket, which would cost close to nothing. Nobody is finding out about Patreon through the App Store, so the “exposure” aspect of that is even pointless for them. Apple provides no value to Patreon, but is taking 30%.
To use an analogy, let’s say Home Depot was the only hardware store in town. Let’s say they require you to spend 30% of each order on a delivery fee where they deliver it to your house/job site. That is a useful value add, and some people will find that worth it. But a construction company already has plenty of ways to get supplies to their job site. So this hypothetical Home Depot charges this construction company an extra 30% for nothing.
Then don’t have an app on the iOS App Store! Use your website to host a web app or make a PWA and send your customers there. The only reason companies don’t want to do that is because they know...
Then don’t have an app on the iOS App Store! Use your website to host a web app or make a PWA and send your customers there. The only reason companies don’t want to do that is because they know they’re missing out on a customer base that has been curated by Apple that spends money on things like apps and donations.
To use your analogy, Home Depot isn’t the only store in town, though. There’s a whole other hardware store with its own storefront and marketplace just across the street. You can pickup your own stuff and haul it to the site on hour own. If you don’t like the first one, don’t buy their wares. But you can’t complain if other people prefer to just pay for delivery if it’s worth it to them.
That would be great if Apple didn’t also control the capabilities of what PWAs can do. The iPhone originally only had PWAs for third party app support. Apple opened up native support because even...
That would be great if Apple didn’t also control the capabilities of what PWAs can do. The iPhone originally only had PWAs for third party app support. Apple opened up native support because even they knew it was shit.
Flighty is an indie train travel tracking app. It can send Apple push notification flight updates while you are on the plane, so you can get real time updates even if you don’t pay for plane WiFi. That’s supported it PWAs, right? Nope.
Citymapper is an indie public transit app. It has an Apple Watch app. That is supported in PWAs, right? Nope.
Patreon supports downloading podcast episodes or video files for offline playback in the app. That’s supported in PWSa, right? Nope. You can download things, but your app can’t then use those downloaded files.
All of these apps support being shown in the app drawer. PWAs have to be on the Home Screen.
To expand my analogy, it’s like if Home Depot allowed other companies to sell supplies, but only at specific locations, and all lumber had to be sold as a 2x6. You want 2x4? Cut a 2x6 down. You want plywood? Idk, deal with it.
Since iOS 16.4, Safari and installed PWAs have supported server-sent push notifications, at least. Not sure about local, but I could see the lifetime of page JS, workers, etc being difficult to...
Since iOS 16.4, Safari and installed PWAs have supported server-sent push notifications, at least. Not sure about local, but I could see the lifetime of page JS, workers, etc being difficult to reason about and increasing power consumption potentially being reason to not support them.
If PWAs were supported on watchOS, I would expect there to be some pretty heavy limitations — that’s an environment where resources are relatively scarce and something like a moderately heavy React app could cause performance and battery life problems.
You’re being a bit disingenuous. We’re talking about a specific subsection of apps that use subscriptions that aren’t really subscriptions. PWAs are still sandboxed just like other apps so of...
You’re being a bit disingenuous. We’re talking about a specific subsection of apps that use subscriptions that aren’t really subscriptions. PWAs are still sandboxed just like other apps so of course they don’t have the ability to work cross-device unless that device also has a corresponding app or PWA.
Again, if app developers didn’t want that, they don’t have to support it or build for it. The only reason they want to, the only reason that matters to them, is that Apple’s curated audience spends money. If you don’t like Apple’s walled garden, then you have to live with the fact that you don’t get access to the people living voluntarily inside of it.
And those are mostly game platforms which serve can more data for a single game than many phones have entire storage. Most apps I use on Android clock in at 200MB or less. The approximate cost for...
And those are mostly game platforms which serve can more data for a single game than many phones have entire storage.
Most apps I use on Android clock in at 200MB or less. The approximate cost for Apple to distribute these apps is 0.
The only reason they're able to have a 30% cut is people have this arcane notion that phones (and consoles) are not general purpose computers.
That cost is not $0. Also, saying that they’re general purpose computers doesn’t convey some kind of magical powers to them. They’re still hardware devices that you have to buy in a capitalist...
That cost is not $0. Also, saying that they’re general purpose computers doesn’t convey some kind of magical powers to them. They’re still hardware devices that you have to buy in a capitalist society. General purpose means absolutely nothing in that context.
The magical power is that you can run literally any software you want on them. The only reason you can't is because manufacturers have been legally empowered to lock you out of doing so. Yes, the...
Also, saying that they’re general purpose computers doesn’t convey some kind of magical powers to them.
The magical power is that you can run literally any software you want on them. The only reason you can't is because manufacturers have been legally empowered to lock you out of doing so.
Yes, the actual cost is close to zero for a single app's distribution. The nominal cost to transfer 1GB of data measures in microscopic fractions of a penny. Sure, cloud providers and ISPs will happily try to charge you multiple pennies/dollars per GB of data, but that doesn't reflect the actual costs to perform data transfers.
If you don’t like that, don’t buy it. No one is forcing you to use an iPhone. The walled garden is what Apple customers are paying for. You don’t like it but some people do. They don’t want to...
If you don’t like that, don’t buy it. No one is forcing you to use an iPhone. The walled garden is what Apple customers are paying for. You don’t like it but some people do. They don’t want to tinker. They want stuff that they know works that does what it says it does.
I don't. It's not just about me as an individual though. Apple uses their power to make my life worse. They absorb services I use and then shut them down. They lobby for laws that make it harder...
I don't. It's not just about me as an individual though.
Apple uses their power to make my life worse. They absorb services I use and then shut them down.
They lobby for laws that make it harder to fix my other devices. Or to breath life into my older device or reuse them. Apple is part of the reason farmers can't fix their own tractors.
Their disproportionate influence means they can make it harder for people to migrate in and out of the Apple ecosystem, further locking down their market.
They condition people to accept that hardware is a disposable fashion accessory. This is certainly ancedata, but I don't know any iPhone user who is using anything older than an iPhone 14, but about 20% of the Android users I know are running phones from before 2019.
They make design choices that I hate, and then all the other manufacturers chase what Apple is doing because they're the market leader.
The walled garden is what Apple customers are paying for. They want stuff that they know works that does what it says it does.
Why is it that Apple spends so much money insuring that the walled garden is impenetrable then?
If the market loves the walled garden so much, Apple should have no qualms opening the gate to let the percieved insignificant tinkerers do as they please. Or allow unlocking their bootloader so third party operating systems become possible.
The real reason Apple (and others tbh) hold the walled garden so dear is because it allows them to continue to exert power over their userbase (developers included) long after the device is sold and prevent other players from competing.
And that at the end of the day, Apple knows that users trust large companies like Microsoft, Valve, and Epic to run an app store front or other software on their hardware with reasonably good QA without any of Apple's infrastructure. And that terrifies the bejesus out of them.
I think there might actually be valid security arguments for keeping iPhone bootloaders locked down. If it becomes possible to unlock them, care needs to be taken to make sure it doesn’t open...
I think there might actually be valid security arguments for keeping iPhone bootloaders locked down. If it becomes possible to unlock them, care needs to be taken to make sure it doesn’t open holes that make it easier to install persistent malware/spyware, especially for more vulnerable users like journalists who often become targets. The current setup makes it such that even if something finds its way in, it gets purged at reboot, limiting damage.
I could see an argument for unlocking the bootloader alongside dropping support, or perhaps making it a deeply technical process that requires steps that make it impossible to be performed without the user’s knowledge.
I think it could be simple as authenticate, force a backup, acknowledge voiding of warranty, reboot, authenticate again (to insure a clean system), final warning screen, reboot to wipe and unlock....
I think it could be simple as authenticate, force a backup, acknowledge voiding of warranty, reboot, authenticate again (to insure a clean system), final warning screen, reboot to wipe and unlock.
I'm 100% fine with "unlock your boot loader and you lose access to all but a debugging interface." I'm sure someone would get Linux running on it inside 6 months.
Then I could have a proper alternative to Android that doesn't require me embracing everything I hate about Apple.
I would add some visible difference in the boot process (logo changes, banner is displayed, etc) like is seen when unlocking the bootloader on some Android devices (Pixels at least do this) so the...
I would add some visible difference in the boot process (logo changes, banner is displayed, etc) like is seen when unlocking the bootloader on some Android devices (Pixels at least do this) so the user knows if e.g. they’re buying a modified used phone or someone other than themselves has managed to unlock it, but otherwise that sounds reasonable.
That’s a bit dishonest, imo. Apple lobbies for laws that help their brand perception. Again, there are a majority if people that don’t care about repairing their devices and the laws that Apple...
That’s a bit dishonest, imo.
Apple lobbies for laws that help their brand perception. Again, there are a majority if people that don’t care about repairing their devices and the laws that Apple has lobbied for are not against people repairing devices. They’re against third parties doing work that isn’t up to standard.
Your anecdata is also just that - anecdotes. I have an iPhone 13. I also own a few Mac computers, though, and a few PCs, a Steam Deck, and a Linux server. The Macs are, by far, my preferred computing device.
Your comments about the walled garden are disingenuous, at best. Apple defends the walled garden because people pay for exactly that. They don’t have to worry about viruses, malware, or any of the other nonsense. It’s fine if you don’t want or need that but you’re in the minority. Not everyone is like you and Apple’s market share shows that the amount of people that aren’t is greater than what you think it is.
That's a hell of a spin. They lobby against right to repair laws and allowing competitive stores, which is enough in my book. But they also are lobbying to make it easier for them to infringe...
Apple lobbies for laws that help their brand perception.
They don’t have to worry about viruses, malware, or any of the other nonsense.
And none of those things really happen on Android. But you still have the option to escape with a single toggle. Or install apps that compete with Google's (or Amazon's) offerings.
Spin? You just completely ignored why Apple lobbied against these things. They’re not against people repairing their own devices. They’re against repairs being made by third parties that could...
Spin? You just completely ignored why Apple lobbied against these things.
They’re not against people repairing their own devices. They’re against repairs being made by third parties that could compromise their devices, something that harms their brand.
They’re not for using slave labor. Apple is the only tech company in the US that actively audits its suppliers for human rights violations. They’re lobbying against that bill because it’s not possible for them to guarantee that every one of their suppliers is not using forced labor because they don’t control the entire supply chain in China. They know this because they’re the only ones doing audits that would tell them this. They’ve also lobbied for requiring these audits from everyone else but you didn’t mention that.
Unless you hold the same view of every other tech company who builds their stuff in China, this position is dishonest.
Those are one and the same. If I can't repair it myself, as the owner of the device, I am free to have any third party I trust do it for me. Which means making parts available (which Apple lobbies...
They’re not against people repairing their own devices. They’re against repairs being made by third parties that could compromise their devices, something that harms their brand.
Those are one and the same. If I can't repair it myself, as the owner of the device, I am free to have any third party I trust do it for me. Which means making parts available (which Apple lobbies against) to non-Apple parties. Google lobbies too, but not to the same extent, according to the people who've been on the receiving ends of said lobbying.
I don't listen to what Apple says, I see their actions. And their actions say "We don't want to suffer actual consequences that would preclude us from using slave labor in China."
And yes, I don't like that other companies do these things too. And why I support the law that actually impedes the sale of slave goods. If sales aren't impeded, there's no motivation to actually fix the problem....merely send out PR blasts to hide it. I'd also criticize anybody coming in to say "Google is just lobbying to defend their brand" as well.
That's all well and good, and I agree that they should get paid for doing that. They get paid in many ways, including the cost of a developer account, the cost of the phone, and even in their...
That's all well and good, and I agree that they should get paid for doing that. They get paid in many ways, including the cost of a developer account, the cost of the phone, and even in their other services. iOS developers also have to pay for at least one Mac to do their development on as well.
The issue is that they don't allow any other options. I would have no problem with Apple taking a cut for providing payment processing, etc. if they allowed other forms of payment. But they explicitly ban any other form of payment if you're outside of the EU. And even then, they still collect a fee from apps installed outside of the App Store.
They do allow other forms of payment. You just can’t advertise those within the app to prevent people from bypassing their infrastructure. If you couldn’t, then people with Netflix couldn’t use...
They do allow other forms of payment. You just can’t advertise those within the app to prevent people from bypassing their infrastructure. If you couldn’t, then people with Netflix couldn’t use the app on Apple devices. Netflix requires a subscription and it’s not processed via Apple. Same goes for Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Costco and several other apps.
I should have been more specific, I meant they do not allow other forms of payment from within the app. They do allow other forms of billing if you are able to figure out that you have to leave...
I should have been more specific, I meant they do not allow other forms of payment from within the app.
They do allow other forms of billing if you are able to figure out that you have to leave the app, go to the app’s website and sign up there. But as you said, they aren’t allowed to advertise that, so it’s nearly impossible to figure out.
It’s not impossible and saying so is just not true. Netflix is the perfect counterpoint to this. Do you think people have issues with Netflix on iOS because the app doesn’t tell them to go to the...
It’s not impossible and saying so is just not true. Netflix is the perfect counterpoint to this. Do you think people have issues with Netflix on iOS because the app doesn’t tell them to go to the Netflix website?
Respectfully, I did not say it was impossible. I said nearly impossible, but I am willing to admit that a better word choice would have been “more difficult”. But yes, it does cause issues. I had...
Respectfully, I did not say it was impossible. I said nearly impossible, but I am willing to admit that a better word choice would have been “more difficult”.
But yes, it does cause issues. I had to explain to my father that we had to sign up on the website, not the app. It didn’t occur to him to go to the Netflix website.
If you’re on Tildes, I assume that you’re at least somewhat tech savvy, or you probably wouldn’t have found this place.
I interact with people from all stripes of life as part of my job and people really underestimate how tech illiterate people are. Not just old people either. There are tons of younger people who just don’t know much about computers or how to use them. Tons of people know how to do what they need to for work and that’s it. It’s not that they aren’t smart. It’s just not something they know about.
I just don’t buy that. My anecdotal experience to counter yours is that I do media training for seniors and teach photo and video apps. I have never had issues with people not being able to use...
I just don’t buy that. My anecdotal experience to counter yours is that I do media training for seniors and teach photo and video apps. I have never had issues with people not being able to use Netflix on their Apple devices. Ever. They download the app, they login because they already have it. Those that didn’t already subscribe to it got the app and then immediately went to Safari and searched for “Netflix” and got what they needed. The Netflix app is clear you need a subscription to use it. It’s not too difficult for people to start one.
Yes, but the whole point of Patreon is that they're not a subscription. They're a subscriptions-as-a-service provider. Users don't subscribe to 'Patreon' the way they do Netflix. They subscribe to...
Yes, but the whole point of Patreon is that they're not a subscription. They're a subscriptions-as-a-service provider.
Users don't subscribe to 'Patreon' the way they do Netflix. They subscribe to their creator who uses Patreon to handle the logistics.
I am a little surprised Patreon isn’t going the route of Spotify and just not allowing purchases of subscriptions through the iOS app. I do agree with some of Spotifys points about it being...
I am a little surprised Patreon isn’t going the route of Spotify and just not allowing purchases of subscriptions through the iOS app. I do agree with some of Spotifys points about it being anti-competitive for Spotify to have to fork over 30% but then Apple Music, since it’s part of Apple, doesn’t have that additional “cost”.
I remember watching a video from Dropout about a similar thing as well (but I think they just eat the 30%, so if you buy through the Apple app Dropout makes less money).
I have…probably more nuanced thoughts on the whole thing than I should.
Purchasing subscriptions through the Apple app is nice, because then it puts all your subscriptions in the same place and gives you a nice overview & easy way to cancel subscriptions. And I think it does make some sense for Apple to be able to charge a nominal fee for providing the platform to do so (similar to how Steam charges a cut of game sales on their platform). BUT- I do think a 30% fee is frankly ridiculous, especially on a recurring subscription (and even more-so on “cheap” ones like Patreon).
I think the “ideal” solution would be pricing transparency laws that would require the (ideally less than 30%) platform fee to be listed to the user when purchasing something, and charged separately rather than coming out of the creators cut. Like I think how a lot of delivery apps are being required to list out their extra fees.
So on iOS it’d show up something like:
Patreon Sub: $5.00
Apple Platform Fee: $0.50
It is pretty ridiculous to me that part of the app store rules are that you can’t include a link out to purchase through the web instead of the app (though this loosely makes sense for Apple to not allow, as then they can’t put it in their subscription manager or get any % for providing the platform), but that the apps can’t explain in the app the Apple is taking a cut is pretty bad IMO.
I'd go beyond "it's pretty ridiculous to me" all the way to "this is blatantly anti-competitive, and shows clearly that Apple needs to be broken up," but that's just me. It's one thing to charge a...
It is pretty ridiculous to me that part of the app store rules are that you can’t include a link out to purchase through the web instead of the app...
I'd go beyond "it's pretty ridiculous to me" all the way to "this is blatantly anti-competitive, and shows clearly that Apple needs to be broken up," but that's just me.
It's one thing to charge a 30% transaction fee for use of their billing system. It sounds a bit excessive, but not out of the ordinary for the industry. It's something else to disallow links to other methods of payment. My business with the developers of the software I use is between me and the developers. The manufacturer of the hardware I run it on is not automatically entitled to a cut of every transaction I perform on that hardware.
I suspect the reason PayPal Patreon doesn't tell Apple to go sniff Steve's turtlenecks is because they expect they'll lose a significant portion of their revenue if they exclude users on iOS. This is clearly an abuse of their market position. It's shameful that regulators didn't step in to put a stop to this ages ago, but considering the sorry state of anti-trust regulation in the US, it's hardly a surprise.
Edit: didn't notice that the phone autocorrected "Patreon" to "PayPal."
Those "reasons" are because they can, and they have faith that regulators won't do anything about it even if it is a blatantly anti-competitive practice.
Those "reasons" are because they can, and they have faith that regulators won't do anything about it even if it is a blatantly anti-competitive practice.
I mean even if they later go after Apple for the "practice", they'll pay back a handful of percentage points compared to the profit collected and it's a write off for Apple as a "cost of doing...
I am a little surprised Patreon isn’t going the route of Spotify and just not allowing purchases of subscriptions through the iOS app. I do agree with some of Spotifys points about it being anti-competitive for Spotify to have to fork over 30% but then Apple Music, since it’s part of Apple, doesn’t have that additional “cost”.
I mean even if they later go after Apple for the "practice", they'll pay back a handful of percentage points compared to the profit collected and it's a write off for Apple as a "cost of doing business" and "making money while they can" model that fucking everyone loathes.
I agree with most of your thoughts. I think it ultimately comes down to the absurd 30% these storefronts picked up, as if they have millions of brick and mortar to upkeep. Financial transactions...
I agree with most of your thoughts. I think it ultimately comes down to the absurd 30% these storefronts picked up, as if they have millions of brick and mortar to upkeep. Financial transactions are 3-6%, Patreon and Kickstarter is 5% (and I believe most other crowd funding takes a similar lead).
Even Google with a similar issue has a few stipulations for that 30%. First million annually is 15%, so that at least helps out the smalller businesses (Apple also has this but it is all or nothing IIRC. You go over a million, you're hit with thr full 30%).
I'm still not sure how I feel in general for that cut to affect subscriptions though. Apps are "free", but I feel that was a self inflicted problem over IOS/Google causing a race to the bottom. IOS in particular are triple dipping since you need apple hardware to develop, and a license with a yearly subscription on top of that.
It makes sense for games utilizing the hardware to take that cut, but what's ultimately a website front end feels like a shakedown. Especially when Apple spent over a decade making it as inconvenient as possible to develop web apps to being with. Very monopolistic.
Can't wait for the DMA to come down hard on them. Decisions like this will definitely make it easy for a competing IOS store to draw in large customers.
The more I think about it, the more I really do want a requirement for anything taken out of the final price to be listed as part of the checkout process. Like how Humble Bundles (do/did?) it with...
The more I think about it, the more I really do want a requirement for anything taken out of the final price to be listed as part of the checkout process.
Like how Humble Bundles (do/did?) it with the sliders where you could choose amounts for Humble, the Devs/Publisher, and the Charity. Not enforcing sliders, but just something at checkout of digital goods to be like:
Creator: $X
Storefront: $X
Payment Processor: $X
Like sure there are still things taken out from the creator’s portion (like publishers or engine fees or whatever else). But I think having storefront fees listed would be a good way of increasing both transparency and possibly storefront competition. (And would also make it easier to eventually go after exuberant amounts or “junk fees” like I think the US gov is starting to do for hotel bookings, airlines, and food delivery apps).
Agree with you, but small correction on this point: Apple (also) has it at 15% until the first million for the “small business” devs, see https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program/
(Apple also has this but it is all or nothing IIRC. You go over a million, you’re hit with the full 30%).
Read through that link a little closer. Once you hit 1 mil, you are back to 30% unless you go an entire year below 1 mil. Let’s say you normally make 900k a year, but your app gets popular for a...
Read through that link a little closer. Once you hit 1 mil, you are back to 30% unless you go an entire year below 1 mil.
Let’s say you normally make 900k a year, but your app gets popular for a month in April and you surpass 1 mil. For the entire rest of the year, and the next year, you have double the fees with all purchases.
Even if your sales are consistent, there are weird perverse incentives. If you make $999,999 in revenue, you get $849,999 in take home. If you make $1,200,000 in revenue, your take home is $840,000. If you have the gall to make an extra $200,000, your reward is getting a thousand dollars *less. *
Google at least models this as a progressive tax like it should be. First 1 mil is at 15% and anything above that is at 30%. No extra paperwork for the small business to do, no other bullshit.
It does read like any sales after the 1 million would be at the 30%, (by specifying future sales) but not retroactively that first million, but you're correct that ruins your future year.
It does read like any sales after the 1 million would be at the 30%, (by specifying future sales) but not retroactively that first million, but you're correct that ruins your future year.
It's a situation with a lot of nuance, so I think that's fair. In my eyes, Apple deserves something since they provide the infrastructure that allows iOS users to download apps, and I'm pretty...
I have…probably more nuanced thoughts on the whole thing than I should.
It's a situation with a lot of nuance, so I think that's fair.
In my eyes, Apple deserves something since they provide the infrastructure that allows iOS users to download apps, and I'm pretty sure they also run part of what's required to push notifications.
However, Patreon is the one doing the heavy lifting after the initial app download. The content is hosted on their servers, so they're incurring the cost of hosting/streaming that content.
My proposal would be that any app that has external subscriptions would need to charge a one-time fee on the App Store (so the app itself wouldn't be free). Somewhere between $1 - $5 would get Apple a nice cut per download, which would certainly pay for their infrastructure. Then the services running the apps can do whatever they want, assuming they aren't doing Apple-linked in-app purchases.
Obviously this would generate less revenue for Apple, but their greed may bite them in the ass one day.
Apple isn't just "providing" the infrastructure to download apps, they are mandating it. I would agree with your points if Patreon had the option to distribute their iOS app independently, but...
Apple isn't just "providing" the infrastructure to download apps, they are mandating it. I would agree with your points if Patreon had the option to distribute their iOS app independently, but Apple's refusal to allow side loading or 3rd party app stores means they're wholly responsible for taking on that burden themselves.
IIRC Apple's primary justification for that is to protect user security. Seems highly suspicious to me that protecting user security is indistinguishable from strong-arming and aggressively rent-seeking every single person or business that wants to provide their product or service to iOS users.
An established company like Patreon wouldn't risk scaring away users by making them download an app from a third party site. Even if that was their own site, because it would require users to go...
An established company like Patreon wouldn't risk scaring away users by making them download an app from a third party site. Even if that was their own site, because it would require users to go into settings and check a scary box that has warnings.
Android allows this, but are any apps from big companies (officially) distributed on F-Droid or similar?
Lots of apps have historically been independently distributed for Windows and MacOS, and users weren't terrified of installing those. Also I'm pretty sure both Microsoft and Apple have some kind...
Lots of apps have historically been independently distributed for Windows and MacOS, and users weren't terrified of installing those. Also I'm pretty sure both Microsoft and Apple have some kind of notarization process that you can go through to become "trusted" without having to distribute your stuff through their stores and give them a slice of all your revenue, so the model for companies to distribute their own trusted apps already exists and is proven in the desktop world.
What you're describing is artificial fear mongering by Apple and Google to force users into their rent-seeking mobile walled gardens. And since mobile app distribution is relatively new and not bogged down by the same legacy of independent distribution that desktop software has, it's easier for them to get away with it.
Patreon is one of those services that doesn't even really benefit from an app IMO. Idk if iOS allows the faux app website shortcut. But I'd recommend doing something like that if so. Not sure...
Patreon is one of those services that doesn't even really benefit from an app IMO. Idk if iOS allows the faux app website shortcut. But I'd recommend doing something like that if so.
Not sure about the side loading from major companies though. I feel like there was one briefly that got attention but hell if I can remember.
I was gonna say, the app downloads for Patreon are almost certainly a drop in the bucket compared to handling recurring financial transactions like they do for their <glances at notes> entire...
I was gonna say, the app downloads for Patreon are almost certainly a drop in the bucket compared to handling recurring financial transactions like they do for their <glances at notes> entire business model.
They could probably save money by being website-only at the rates Apple is charging.
Out of curiosity, why are you OK with Steam doing this but not Apple? Their pricing structure is nearly identical. Valve gets 30% of all sales on Steam.
Out of curiosity, why are you OK with Steam doing this but not Apple? Their pricing structure is nearly identical. Valve gets 30% of all sales on Steam.
I read their comment on Steam as accepting one time transactions incurring a fee but their issue with subscriptions revenue taxing. I can understand a certain fraction needed to cover bandwidth...
I read their comment on Steam as accepting one time transactions incurring a fee but their issue with subscriptions revenue taxing. I can understand a certain fraction needed to cover bandwidth and platform costs but I agree 30% seems too high.
Yeah, basically this. (And also I think the 30% from steam is also likely high, but I guess that also maybe depends on if/how much more traditional retailers of physical media take as a cut or how...
Yeah, basically this. (And also I think the 30% from steam is also likely high, but I guess that also maybe depends on if/how much more traditional retailers of physical media take as a cut or how those logistics work).
I also think Steam potentially offers more to game developers using their platform than Apple does (for instance, the advertising on steam, access to steams multiplayer server infrastructure & cloud saves & friends lists & play with friends, all of which do have their own costs that are “free” to users of steam and have to be covered somehow - though I guess I’m not sure if there are other agreements/fees for developers using those features).
Which is why I think it’s OK for Apple to take some nominal percentage (because of their subscription management platform & other “benefits” to the consumer), but I think 30% is too high, especially for recurring subscriptions (and moreso for something like Patreon where individual amounts tend to be fairly small).
Again, this is all true for Apple customers too, though. Apple’s cut includes GameCenter, Cloud Kit, and advertising within the App Store. Steam doesn’t advertise for games outside of Steam so how...
Again, this is all true for Apple customers too, though. Apple’s cut includes GameCenter, Cloud Kit, and advertising within the App Store. Steam doesn’t advertise for games outside of Steam so how is this any different?
Made an expanded reply on the other reply to you, but I think that: Steam seems to provides more value (to both the consumer and the developer) that the fee is supposedly for I also think Steam’s...
Made an expanded reply on the other reply to you, but I think that:
Steam seems to provides more value (to both the consumer and the developer) that the fee is supposedly for
I also think Steam’s 30% is likely too high
It feels worse to me for recurring subscriptions & lower cost things
Valve allows devs to cut their own keys for their software that the dev can sell outside of Steam at a 0% cost to the dev (Well, 0% Valve incurred costs, there are likely costs for doing your own...
Valve allows devs to cut their own keys for their software that the dev can sell outside of Steam at a 0% cost to the dev (Well, 0% Valve incurred costs, there are likely costs for doing your own independent sales, but they're likely less than 30% all told.) The devs still get to use Steam's infrastructure for automatic patching, promotion, bandwidth, forums, user content, and everything else that comes with Steam and the only tradeoff is that they pay 30% for the purchases that happen within Steam. Hell, they allow you to sell your game directly without any Steam integration at all and still use Steam backend services (matchmaking and such) if you like so long as your game is also offered for sale on Steam. Granted that process isn't just plug and play, it takes a lot of heavy lifting on your end as a dev to integrate everything, but you can do it if you choose, it's at the very least allowed.
It's not even remotely the same as Apple's situation. Apple doesn't allow apps outside of their walled garden and they very much don't allow you to make money on your app without them getting a cut. They won't allow you to use your own services when an Apple version exists, they won't allow you to do your own payments, they won't suffer you even suggesting that there's an alternative out there, let alone encourage someone to leverage one.
I honestly don't think anyone can look at the competition in Steam's space and claim that what they're doing is easy. If that were the case, we'd have anything other than EGS, the UPlay store, Origin EA Desktop, or any of the other alternatives that offer far lesser experiences. Given that Steam is willing to allow devs to sell their game outside of Steam, taking a 0% cut of that sale, while still availing all the advantages of the Steam platform speaks to me that Valve are earning their 30% when they make a sale inside of their store. Given that they're subsidizing all the off-store Humble/Fanatical/GMG/IndieGala key sales that probably make the devs a decent chunk of change where Valve doesn't see a dime, the 30% in their store seems valid IMO. Apple is not providing anything near Steam value for the same 30%.
In addition to the points already made, Steam doesn't control the hardware in the same way as Apple, so they're not making it impossible for you to use a different storefront. While in practice...
In addition to the points already made, Steam doesn't control the hardware in the same way as Apple, so they're not making it impossible for you to use a different storefront. While in practice they're a de-facto monopoly in PC gaming, that's very different from their preventing you from using any other storefront through control of the hardware -- they don't even do that on the Steam Deck.
They don’t but they could. The majority of Steam Deck owners don’t use any other store because Valve doesn’t provide any way to do that. They just give you access to Desktop mode and stop support...
They don’t but they could. The majority of Steam Deck owners don’t use any other store because Valve doesn’t provide any way to do that. They just give you access to Desktop mode and stop support for that if you do. Warranty service requires a factory reset (I know because I had to do it with mine).
Even if you disregard that it's perfectly easy to add non steam games to a steam deck, you can get steam keys from GOG or other legitimate sellers, and activate them on steam deck. No need to use...
Even if you disregard that it's perfectly easy to add non steam games to a steam deck, you can get steam keys from GOG or other legitimate sellers, and activate them on steam deck. No need to use Steams store or payment system.
Yes, but you can’t advertise for those other places within Steam or the Steam Deck OS. The only difference here is that Apple restricts the installation of unsupported stuff. Valve and Apple both...
Yes, but you can’t advertise for those other places within Steam or the Steam Deck OS. The only difference here is that Apple restricts the installation of unsupported stuff. Valve and Apple both collect the same from devs and have nearly the same rules for their stores when it comes to purchases.
Okay, so when I launch Baldurs Gate 3, there's a big advert comes up for things I might want to buy outside of the steam store. Following these links takes you directly to Larian's store and Valve...
Okay, so when I launch Baldurs Gate 3, there's a big advert comes up for things I might want to buy outside of the steam store. Following these links takes you directly to Larian's store and Valve won't be taking any kind of cut from these.
Does this fit your definition of a company advertising its products for sale outside of the Steam Deck OS?
No. That prompt violates the Steam terms of service if it happens within the Steam store. If it happens in-game, then Steam can decide if that violates their terms.
No. That prompt violates the Steam terms of service if it happens within the Steam store. If it happens in-game, then Steam can decide if that violates their terms.
The fact that they don't but they could is what makes it so starkly different from Apple's behavior and why it's significantly less anti-competitive. The fact that you have access to desktop mode...
The fact that they don't but they could is what makes it so starkly different from Apple's behavior and why it's significantly less anti-competitive.
The fact that you have access to desktop mode at all makes it an extremely different model than Apple's. As for doing a factory reset when doing a warranty claim, not really sure how that's related to the current topic at all. Seems like a non-sequitur.
This is a fairly standard practice. It lets them use their standard tooling for diagnostics and repair. And it's not on Valve to advertise it? It'd be on the alternative store. "Hey, install our...
Warranty service requires a factory reset
This is a fairly standard practice. It lets them use their standard tooling for diagnostics and repair.
The majority of Steam Deck owners don’t use any other store because Valve doesn’t provide any way to do that.
And it's not on Valve to advertise it? It'd be on the alternative store. "Hey, install our store on the Steam Deck using these simple instructions." Last I checked, Steam is the only store that runs natively on Linux though. All the other major providers haven't even tried, so Valve gets my money.
To rephrase: It's not Valve's job to advertise alternative storefronts. But there is nothing stopping GoG from having a giant banner on their front page to install their store on the Deck.
To rephrase:
It's not Valve's job to advertise alternative storefronts.
But there is nothing stopping GoG from having a giant banner on their front page to install their store on the Deck.
What does this mean? You can replace it with Apple and it stays the same. “It’s not Apple’s job to advertise alternative storefronts. But there’s nothing stopping Android from having a banner on...
What does this mean? You can replace it with Apple and it stays the same.
“It’s not Apple’s job to advertise alternative storefronts. But there’s nothing stopping Android from having a banner on their front page to install their app on the iPhone.”
This is a meaningless statement. You can’t provide GoG as an option for people within a Steam listing just like you can’t provide a link to it in the Apple App Store listing. The fact that you can install it on a Steam Deck is irrelevant to the discussion.
It's not meaningless. Because GoG could actually get a store on the Steam Deck with 0 involvement from Valve, while Google could not get an alternative app store on iOS, even if they offered the...
It's not meaningless. Because GoG could actually get a store on the Steam Deck with 0 involvement from Valve, while Google could not get an alternative app store on iOS, even if they offered the app off of the App Store (which they also can't do). Although recent leglislation changes coming (that Apple lobbies against) does make that possible.
And many of my Steam games do have links out to alternative stores in the game itself. And that's what Apple banned (and got shut down for).
If a game developer wants to sell their game on their own website, I'm happy to pay them directly without going through Steam, at least as long as I'm not required to use some awful custom...
If a game developer wants to sell their game on their own website, I'm happy to pay them directly without going through Steam, at least as long as I'm not required to use some awful custom launcher.
I'd feel the same way about Apple if I could get apps from places other than the App Store.
I have been using Apple products for decades. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I love it. It's a great computer. The hardware is rock solid and absolutely incredible. But the people running...
I have been using Apple products for decades. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I love it. It's a great computer. The hardware is rock solid and absolutely incredible.
But the people running the company seem to have this weird idea in their heads that they are entitled to a cut of every single transaction that happens on an Apple device I know it's not this way on the Mac, but that's simply because of the age of the platform. If the Mac was launched today, they would absolutely try and lock it down (just look at the changes in the upcoming version of MacOS).
They can make all the arguments they want about safety and security, but there are tons of scammy apps and subscriptions on the App Store. The only difference is that Apple gets a cut of those subscriptions, so they don't care. It's gotten so bad that even Apple pundit stalwarts have been turning against them.
Their services division is eating the company and could be their downfall.
It's a nasty (and incorrect) attitude that has been the overriding narrative for the last few years. They won't stop until forced, because there's just too much money to take. Hopefully they lose big in their pending antitrust case in the US or the EU slaps them with some major, major, major fines.
The DOJ said it best in their lawsuit: "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests."...
They can make all the arguments they want about safety and security
The DOJ said it best in their lawsuit: "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests."
There's something to be said for protecting users from themselves, but it's to the point where if you bought an iPhone, you do not actually own it by any reasonable definition of the word. You can't get root access without hacky circumventions that degrade the device, you can't buy things using the platform of your choice, hell, you can't even install a different browser. Apple will always bring up their platforms security as a justification, but it's a crazy coincidence how every one of these "security" decisions just so happen to make them millions of dollars.
I like a lot of Apple's products, but the one thing that keeps me away from their platform is the way they think of their user base.
From years of interacting with them, it's clear that they view their users as a one size fits all mass of uneducated simpletons that they can just continuously charge out the ass and lie to under the guise of security or "best in class" features. Increasingly, whenever I use an apple product, I can't shake the feeling of "the person who designed this thinks I'm a moron".
That quote is a perfect encapsulation of their ideals. Not to defend them, but it isn’t much different on Android either. You can’t switch things away from many of the Google defaults without...
That quote is a perfect encapsulation of their ideals.
Not to defend them, but it isn’t much different on Android either. You can’t switch things away from many of the Google defaults without rooting, which isn’t even possible on many phones.
You can easily install a different browser on iOS, they just all have to use the built in WebKit rendering engine. And that limitation is being lifted in the EU relatively soon. But I get what you mean.
On Android, the way Google has let the AOSP stock apps languish in favor of Google-branded alternatives makes their priorities pretty clear. When I’ve toyed with AOSP spinoffs I’ve found myself...
On Android, the way Google has let the AOSP stock apps languish in favor of Google-branded alternatives makes their priorities pretty clear. When I’ve toyed with AOSP spinoffs I’ve found myself having to install a bunch of Google stuff because the stock apps are so barebones, which shouldn’t be necessary.
Yeah, they’ve spent the last few years making a concerted effort to pivot away from AOSP to their own “Pixel Experience” software. A lot of newer features aren’t even in a usable state in the open...
Yeah, they’ve spent the last few years making a concerted effort to pivot away from AOSP to their own “Pixel Experience” software. A lot of newer features aren’t even in a usable state in the open source builds of Android, if they are included at all, as they require Google services.
It seems like the people in charge at Google looked at iOS and said, “damn, we should have locked things down like that.”
Small nitpick, it’s possible to install a different browser, just not a browser using an engine that isn’t WebKit. “Reskinned Safari” gets thrown around a lot but is a bit of an exaggeration —...
Small nitpick, it’s possible to install a different browser, just not a browser using an engine that isn’t WebKit. “Reskinned Safari” gets thrown around a lot but is a bit of an exaggeration — while the core capabilities of a third party WebKit browser will more or less mirror those of Safari, all the UI code will be entirely bespoke.
For instance, Firefox for iOS is in fact less of a Safari reskin than say desktop MS Edge is a reskin of Chrome, because the former has all-new UI code while Edge shares much of its UI code with Chrome.
This is I think also perhaps the one restriction that holds the most water from a security and UX perspective. Modern web engines are labyrinthine monsters that rival operating systems in complexity, and each brings its own set of security holes. It’s no coincidence that jailbreaks across all platforms are often enabled by browser holes, the possibilities of which are multiplied for each unique engine installed.
There’s also the power usage aspect. It’s unlikely that either Google or Mozilla will care to optimize Blink and Gecko for battery efficiency to the degree that Apple has with Safari. They haven’t done so on the Mac, so why would they on iOS? Mobile Chrome (which is likely to become the dominant browser on iOS, as a result of developer pressure on users and aggressive promotion by Google) makes this worse by not supporting ad blocking extensions at all (Safari at least supports blocklist-based blockers). Will users recognize that their degraded battery life is a result of switching browsers, or will they blame their phone?
While I believe that neither of these are not Apple’s foremost concerns (I agree that they prize control), it’s almost a guarantee that they’re at least a consideration, especially the battery life point, because that’s the sort of thing that impacts purchase decisions.
Apple's desire to practically tax every other business (and often customers and creators as a result) for ever transacting money through apps on Apple's platform has always been, and continues to...
Apple's desire to practically tax every other business (and often customers and creators as a result) for ever transacting money through apps on Apple's platform has always been, and continues to be, ridiculous. The percentage is ridiculous and so is the very idea of app stores being able to essentially tax every single financial transaction that happens within an app- transactions that in only the smallest capacity involve Apple (or Google, or any other app store that does this) in any way.
I get the pro-consumer angle of having an easy place to view and cancel subscriptions. While I appreciate such a convenience, it coming at the expense of handing power to the app store owner to be an arbiter of financial transactions/relationships that they are otherwise not privy to, is ridiculous, especially when it involves creators (like Youtube, Twitch, and now Patreon).
It's also manipulative. The tyranny of the default, the ease of use, the fact that customers often don't know there's a way to do it outside the app, or that the price is even different (and often lower) if they do, and that Apple has historically been restrictive about allowing companies / app devs to even say anywhere in their app or description that their own users can purchase outside of the app...
I think it's about time app stores are subject to extreme regulation. Other companies literally having to reduce their options and change entire parts of their business structure (like per-creation and first-of-the-month billing models at Patreon) to more easily comply, is asinine. Apple should not have that power.
I am so tired of the duopoly of Android and iOS, especially their walled-garden versions and the asshole companies that run them
Make no mistake, a bunch of small creators are going to take a substantial hit here and it's just awful that Apple is choosing to steal money from their pockets so that they can get 30% of a $2-5...
Make no mistake, a bunch of small creators are going to take a substantial hit here and it's just awful that Apple is choosing to steal money from their pockets so that they can get 30% of a $2-5 monthly sub.
Several of my Patreons are struggling to make it as is, this may well put them out of the business of creating art they love and as a dude who generally hates apps I just don't understand why Apple thinks they need to do this. It's just fucking greed for greed's sake when there's a website right there doing the same thing for no cost beyond the cost of running that site itself.
I have one I follow that's homeless and couch surfing right now after his apartment was condemned. I'm genuinely worried about his mental health and well being and this is gonna hit him hard.
I have one I follow that's homeless and couch surfing right now after his apartment was condemned. I'm genuinely worried about his mental health and well being and this is gonna hit him hard.
Touché I guess it's just beyond the depths I previously imagined, but I suppose you don't become a trillion dollar company by allowing opportunities for greed and depravity to swing by unexploited.
Touché
I guess it's just beyond the depths I previously imagined, but I suppose you don't become a trillion dollar company by allowing opportunities for greed and depravity to swing by unexploited.
Pro tip: Do not buy subscriptions in apps. Android and Apple's stores have alternative fee structures that many third parties do not require for browser-based transactions, and the app should work...
Pro tip: Do not buy subscriptions in apps. Android and Apple's stores have alternative fee structures that many third parties do not require for browser-based transactions, and the app should work the same regardless of subscription method.
It's unfortunate, because there's real value in having a large number of one's subscriptions lined up in a settings page with a dead simple cancel button that when clicked, will just cancel...
It's unfortunate, because there's real value in having a large number of one's subscriptions lined up in a settings page with a dead simple cancel button that when clicked, will just cancel instead of trying to stall or guilt you into not cancelling or pester you into providing feedback or any of that annoying nonsense. That by itself could be a service that I think a lot of people would pay a small subscription fee for.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, it sounds like you're describing the business model of https://www.rocketmoney.com/ It'll never cease to amuse me that the "Find & Cancel Subscriptions" service is...
Unless I'm misunderstanding, it sounds like you're describing the business model of https://www.rocketmoney.com/
It'll never cease to amuse me that the "Find & Cancel Subscriptions" service is itself a subscription service.
Something like that is probably the closest that currently exists, but compared to the subscriptions dashboard in the App Store and Play Store it's indirect and messy. Apple/Google have direct...
Something like that is probably the closest that currently exists, but compared to the subscriptions dashboard in the App Store and Play Store it's indirect and messy. Apple/Google have direct control over the subscriptions in their stores, whereas Rocket Money has to handle each subscription differently (some I suspect manually) as a result of not being directly involved.
I assume they cancel it as a matter of being the one that actually holds your money. So in a way, they're involved in the transaction from the beginning, just on the other end of it. Presumably...
I assume they cancel it as a matter of being the one that actually holds your money. So in a way, they're involved in the transaction from the beginning, just on the other end of it. Presumably you cancel a service, and they identify whatever data or elements come in with a charge attempt related to your cancellation and they just deny it, as if your card was declined for insufficient funds.
I imagine that isn't totally solid for all services, for example gym memberships often have some contractual obligation the member signed and even if you stop the payment they may come after you for failing to make payments on an obligation, but I would guess most services it would work just fine.
It also shouldn't be like a chargeback where a company gets the money and the credit processor then takes the money back as part of the credit processor agreement with the service provider, so it shouldn't negatively impact your account standing like a chargeback would.
The app store fee discourse drives me kind of nuts because a lot of online discussion of it is driven by people who are online and who are either directly in or close enough to the tech industry....
The app store fee discourse drives me kind of nuts because a lot of online discussion of it is driven by people who are online and who are either directly in or close enough to the tech industry. It means a lot of the discussion is from the seller's POV. But Apple aside, for consumers the IAP structure is very good for exactly the reason you mentioned. Simple, secure billing in a single place that is easy to turn off and on on a per-subscription basis.
For those reasons I think Apple should be more flexible with the fee structure. On the other hand, I was very much alive and online when the App Store first showed up and the 30% cut seemed like a great deal to developers, so I see a lot of the contemporary acrimony as disingenuous.
That's because you're comparing apples to oranges. 30% to have a chance at a front page, analytics, a storefront to handle all of the downloads and updates, an index in a searchable application...
I was very much alive and online when the App Store first showed up and the 30% cut seemed like a great deal to developers, so I see a lot of the contemporary acrimony as disingenuous.
That's because you're comparing apples to oranges. 30% to have a chance at a front page, analytics, a storefront to handle all of the downloads and updates, an index in a searchable application database, automatic assurance of malware scans to consumers, handling of all payment processing, refunds, and first line customer support probably IS worth 30%. Hosting your own app on your own website as an executable or something would be atrocious even if apple did allow you to do that.
Charging that fee for a subscription where Apple does nothing except take your customers money is a very different story. The first one is a legitimate service that's extremely valuable to a developer. The second one is just parasitic.
As a mobile dev who’d like to maybe one day sell some kind of app or SaaS of his own, I’m kind of torn. On one hand, “no bullshit” cancellation and the like is very pro-consumer and Apple dealing...
As a mobile dev who’d like to maybe one day sell some kind of app or SaaS of his own, I’m kind of torn. On one hand, “no bullshit” cancellation and the like is very pro-consumer and Apple dealing with most of the headaches surrounding storefronts, refunds, etc is worth something. Some fee seems reasonable, and I’d argue that anybody advocating for no fee is being unreasonable.
On the other hand, 30% is a steep cut. It’d make more sense for apps built end to end with the Apple stack, e.g. being macOS/iOS exclusive built with AppKit/UIKit/SwiftUI with a back end powered by CloudKit. In that situation, you’re leaning pretty hard on Apple and a cut that high might actually be worth the trouble saved (particularly at larger scales — cloud hosting bills can get gnarly and are riddled with surprises and caveats).
For an app that only has macOS/iOS as one of its several target platforms with the bulk of the functional bits hosted on AWS/GCS or a Hetzner VPS box the cut looks a lot less reasonable.
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.
Apple really needs to open iOS they really have no excuse to keep it as is, the sad part is that instead of making iOS and iPadOS more like macOS they are doing the opposite. It sucks because I...
Apple really needs to open iOS they really have no excuse to keep it as is, the sad part is that instead of making iOS and iPadOS more like macOS they are doing the opposite.
It sucks because I prefer their hardware/software combo.
What exactly is Apple doing to deserve 30% of all Patreon revenue on their platform? At least Patreon has made it so that the cost increase can be put on the iOS users rather than the creators in Patreon.
This is a thing Apple (and iirc also Google on android) does across all apps that allow in-app purchases -- and that includes purchasing subscriptions to services like Spotify or, in this case, subscriptions to individual Patreons. This was a big part of the legal battle between Epic Games and Apple, iirc.
They maintain and host all the infrastructure required to process payments and subscriptions, including management of subscriptions. In most cases, I’m all for Apple doing this because I trust Apple far more than most other companies and the ease with which I’ve been able to sign up and cancel subscriptions without going through a bunch of dark patterns and spam portals is almost worth that price alone. That being said, this only takes money from small creators so I feel like they need to figure out a better solution for this.
I think that Apple potentially chucking the app out of the store because someone could sign up on the web with a per creation subscription format that isn't easily supported on iOS is a bit of a overreach. I can get charging when using the iOS app because that's on an Apple device, but affecting the options available on the Patreon website is a big extension.
Isn’t that whole thing to dissuade people from accepting payments through other platforms, though? If the main usage of the subscription is using the customers and infrastructure that Apple set up, why would they not have some kind of restrictions in place to prevent people from going around that while still getting the advantages of that setup?
If I set up a stand at a farmer’s market and the organizers spend money to promote the market and set up the space and booth I’m using to sell my goods, I shouldn’t be allowed to accept IOUs for afterwards to avoid paying the organizers. If I didn’t like the terms of the market, I could (and should) go set up at another one where I can collect payment directly. Apple is not preventing Patreon subscribers from signing up their subs online. They’re just saying you have to sign up through the Apple’s flow if you sign up from within the app.
In your farmer's market example, which is hard to work with since it's a very imperfect analogy, if you tell people you are setting up a shop at the market, you did the marketing to get that customer, not the farmers market. Now you benefited from the space, for whatever reason without that space you couldn't distribute your wares, but it wasn't the farmer's markets promotional spending that got you the customers that you yourself referred.
Of course we know what is actually happening with Apple, they're preventing you from distributing your wares EXCEPT for in their farmer's market, at least when it comes to customers in the Apple ecosystem. So even if you wanted to distribute them somewhere else, and market them all on your own, you can't.
Truly I probably wouldn't have as much of an objection to that model alone if not for the other things Apple has done or is doing. The customers are the ones who are choosing to let Apple hold their spending behaviors against the sellers, meaning that as long as Apple customers are willing to pay a 30% tax on everything over the baseline price the seller would normally offer or put up with less access to certain materials that otherwise just won't be sold, the sellers are the ones that can find a price point or model that works for that system. The main issue I see with that is Apple keeps adding new things to compete with those sellers and they advantage themselves. When iPhones first came out, a lot of the services Apple offers now didn't exist. Apple lets 3rd parties build up services and wait for the markets to develop to see what people want, then they swoop in and steal business by developing what is successful and pushing out established players by advantaging their own services in their own ecosystem.
The other problem I have with it is that Apple is using locked-in effects and sunk costs to manipulate people in their ecosystem, as well as leveraging US communication defaults to harm all users, even non-Apple users, which in turn allows them to lure people onto their platform through harm they cause to non-Apple users, then trap them into inflated costs through lock-in effects. They also make it so their products are purposefully less useful on their own or without other Apple products and services, so once someone has bought in, it often makes sense to keep buying into the Apple ecosystem because other services and hardware are disadvantaged.
They're also abusing the default status that Google just got blasted for in their most recent anti-trust case, on a few fronts. One aspect that was covered in that trial is that psychology of consumer behavior is such that default often ends up being perceived as better no matter what, because that's what consumers become used to. The actual quality of the product or service becomes almost secondary to maintaining a certain habit with the consumer. This removes much of the need to actually compete in the market.
That’s not really how farmers markets work. The organizers advertise for the market. While you can advertise on your own, most customers at farmers markets are the result of the organizers marketing. That’s why the App Store analogy fits. Android exists. People can market on their own. There’s a reason the Apple App Store outperforms those other options by a ton.
And you must not be a user of Apple products because most people, when asked, like the fact that Apple is at the reins of all the things you mentioned. What you state as lock-in effects, others may state as bonuses. When you say Apple makes their products less useful on their own, others might say they make them more useful and seamless with other products.
As long as Android exists, people have other options. There’s a reason, at least in the US, that Apple is as popular as it is and it’s not anti-competitiveness.
I know how they work, I was attempting to adapt it to the analogy but it's a very imperfect analogy. I've gone to farmer's markets on a few occasions solely because I knew people who were selling things at the markets, not because I just go to farmer's markets. The organizer's advertising literally was invisible to me and I wouldn't have even thought to go if not for knowing someone who was selling there. So should the farmer's market get 30% of the sale price of what the person sold me? Of course they couldn't ever because they have no way to actually enforce such a rule and it would just make them look greedy and stupid.
Even ignoring the aspect of how I learned about the farmer's market, are any of these markets taking a percentage cut of sales from every seller? From what I've seen, that doesn't seem to be the case, likely because they would also have very little way of enforcing this unless they forced every seller to use a payment provider that runs through the organizers. I suppose there's nothing stopping them from doing it except most sellers would probably just not set up a shop there if they thought it was not good for their sales or not going to recover their costs and farmer's markets are not monopolies, so anyone can run one that isn't a full-on greed operation trying to take 30% cuts of sales.
You're right, I'm not a user of Apple products, but I've nearly been strong-armed into Apple products in part because of Apple's decisions and manipulations of the market and consumers. At my prior job, I was literally told by my direct superior that I was being kept out of management group chats (thus impacting my ability to get promotions, raises and reducing cohesion with management/coworkers) because I didn't have an iPhone and the company was only providing phones to a few of the upper management, and she told me in reference to the owner 'He hates green bubbles' and the owner was her brother, so she would definitely know. And don't tell me it's just that business that's a problem, Tim Cook told someone to buy their mom an iPhone if they want to make the communications better. I've read comments on here and elsewhere from other people who gave in and bought iPhones solely because of this message issue, not because their first choice was an iPhone, but because it made it easier to communicate with other people who were already using iPhones. Apple deliberately has been sabotaging default communications in the US and even after being pressured to adopt RCS they're still doing it by not implementing E2EE. Yes I know it's Google's E2EE because encryption isn't in the RCS universal profile, but it's not a coincidence that they took this long to support RCS and then are still dragging their feet on E2EE. Apparently privacy and security only matter when it's good for profits, but not good for users.
I also know that the behavior described above about that business owner is not limited to him, there are lots of people who think that way and it does alter how they interact with people who don't have iPhones. Apple has been intentionally marketing and designing their messaging and platform to encourage that behavior.
Also Android itself is only one other option. You say "people have other options", but they have one other option, so not really options, and yes I know the easy response to that is that many manufacturers can make phones running Android with their own flair to it, but they're all very Google-bound in core ways so in certain aspects it's still just one other option.
I likely couldn't really care less what premium people paid for Apple stuff if Apple wasn't doing some dirty tactics, like stealing business from companies that did the work of developing a market first by advantaging their own products/services in their ecosystem, or enabling and supporting increased social friction to sell more iPhones. Let's not forget Google just lost an anti-trust case where they bilked nearly all users with increased ad costs by paying for default search wherever they could, so not only is Google the bad guy there, Apple was happy to take the payout for what amounted to close to extortion pricing for advertising since Google has a monopoly. I'm not going to pretend like Apple didn't know that was happening, and that's why it's also laughable to say there's other options when the other option is Google.
Keep in mind I have a bunch of subscriptions through Apple, and if I were ever to sell a subscription, I would use Apple as the payment processor even if developers could use alternatives.
That is a terrible excuse for a 30% cut. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction. And reportedly Apples tools for payment processor info is terrible compared to the competition. So maybe for the existing customer base or being more user friendly they could justify a higher cut. But only like 5% or 10%. Even 10% seems way to high for the service they offer as a payment processor.
Except it’s not just payment processing so Stripe isn’t an apples to apples comparison (I’m too lazy to come up with another phrase that’s not so on the nose). The 30% also covers hosting the actual app, services like GameCenter, update hosting, localization, and payment processing. The reason it’s 30% is because that scales as the app gets more downloads and also covers any free downloads (most apps are free downloads with IAP). They didn’t pull this number out of nowhere. Nearly every online storefront for hardware (Sony, Microsoft, Steam, etc.) starts with a 30% cut.
That’s exactly the problem. Developers who use only the payment processor aspect have no recourse. If Apple had to actually compete as a payment processor, that part of their product would be much better.
There’s no developer out there for iOS that inly uses the payment processor portion. Every app in the app store utilizes the hosting and update features and everyone has access to all the other features, whether they implement them or not.
Again, that’s exactly the problem. What if a developer doesn’t want those other features? For a company like Patreon, they now have to deal with a second, worse payment processor. So even having an Apple payment processor is a drawback, not a feature. I am sure Patreon would be happy to host the app downloads from a random s3 bucket, which would cost close to nothing. Nobody is finding out about Patreon through the App Store, so the “exposure” aspect of that is even pointless for them. Apple provides no value to Patreon, but is taking 30%.
To use an analogy, let’s say Home Depot was the only hardware store in town. Let’s say they require you to spend 30% of each order on a delivery fee where they deliver it to your house/job site. That is a useful value add, and some people will find that worth it. But a construction company already has plenty of ways to get supplies to their job site. So this hypothetical Home Depot charges this construction company an extra 30% for nothing.
Then don’t have an app on the iOS App Store! Use your website to host a web app or make a PWA and send your customers there. The only reason companies don’t want to do that is because they know they’re missing out on a customer base that has been curated by Apple that spends money on things like apps and donations.
To use your analogy, Home Depot isn’t the only store in town, though. There’s a whole other hardware store with its own storefront and marketplace just across the street. You can pickup your own stuff and haul it to the site on hour own. If you don’t like the first one, don’t buy their wares. But you can’t complain if other people prefer to just pay for delivery if it’s worth it to them.
That would be great if Apple didn’t also control the capabilities of what PWAs can do. The iPhone originally only had PWAs for third party app support. Apple opened up native support because even they knew it was shit.
Flighty is an indie train travel tracking app. It can send Apple push notification flight updates while you are on the plane, so you can get real time updates even if you don’t pay for plane WiFi. That’s supported it PWAs, right? Nope.
Citymapper is an indie public transit app. It has an Apple Watch app. That is supported in PWAs, right? Nope.
Patreon supports downloading podcast episodes or video files for offline playback in the app. That’s supported in PWSa, right? Nope. You can download things, but your app can’t then use those downloaded files.
All of these apps support being shown in the app drawer. PWAs have to be on the Home Screen.
To expand my analogy, it’s like if Home Depot allowed other companies to sell supplies, but only at specific locations, and all lumber had to be sold as a 2x6. You want 2x4? Cut a 2x6 down. You want plywood? Idk, deal with it.
Since iOS 16.4, Safari and installed PWAs have supported server-sent push notifications, at least. Not sure about local, but I could see the lifetime of page JS, workers, etc being difficult to reason about and increasing power consumption potentially being reason to not support them.
If PWAs were supported on watchOS, I would expect there to be some pretty heavy limitations — that’s an environment where resources are relatively scarce and something like a moderately heavy React app could cause performance and battery life problems.
You’re being a bit disingenuous. We’re talking about a specific subsection of apps that use subscriptions that aren’t really subscriptions. PWAs are still sandboxed just like other apps so of course they don’t have the ability to work cross-device unless that device also has a corresponding app or PWA.
Again, if app developers didn’t want that, they don’t have to support it or build for it. The only reason they want to, the only reason that matters to them, is that Apple’s curated audience spends money. If you don’t like Apple’s walled garden, then you have to live with the fact that you don’t get access to the people living voluntarily inside of it.
And those are mostly game platforms which serve can more data for a single game than many phones have entire storage.
Most apps I use on Android clock in at 200MB or less. The approximate cost for Apple to distribute these apps is 0.
The only reason they're able to have a 30% cut is people have this arcane notion that phones (and consoles) are not general purpose computers.
That cost is not $0. Also, saying that they’re general purpose computers doesn’t convey some kind of magical powers to them. They’re still hardware devices that you have to buy in a capitalist society. General purpose means absolutely nothing in that context.
The magical power is that you can run literally any software you want on them. The only reason you can't is because manufacturers have been legally empowered to lock you out of doing so.
Yes, the actual cost is close to zero for a single app's distribution. The nominal cost to transfer 1GB of data measures in microscopic fractions of a penny. Sure, cloud providers and ISPs will happily try to charge you multiple pennies/dollars per GB of data, but that doesn't reflect the actual costs to perform data transfers.
If you don’t like that, don’t buy it. No one is forcing you to use an iPhone. The walled garden is what Apple customers are paying for. You don’t like it but some people do. They don’t want to tinker. They want stuff that they know works that does what it says it does.
I don't. It's not just about me as an individual though.
Apple uses their power to make my life worse. They absorb services I use and then shut them down.
They lobby for laws that make it harder to fix my other devices. Or to breath life into my older device or reuse them. Apple is part of the reason farmers can't fix their own tractors.
Their disproportionate influence means they can make it harder for people to migrate in and out of the Apple ecosystem, further locking down their market.
They condition people to accept that hardware is a disposable fashion accessory. This is certainly ancedata, but I don't know any iPhone user who is using anything older than an iPhone 14, but about 20% of the Android users I know are running phones from before 2019.
They make design choices that I hate, and then all the other manufacturers chase what Apple is doing because they're the market leader.
Why is it that Apple spends so much money insuring that the walled garden is impenetrable then?
If the market loves the walled garden so much, Apple should have no qualms opening the gate to let the percieved insignificant tinkerers do as they please. Or allow unlocking their bootloader so third party operating systems become possible.
The real reason Apple (and others tbh) hold the walled garden so dear is because it allows them to continue to exert power over their userbase (developers included) long after the device is sold and prevent other players from competing.
And that at the end of the day, Apple knows that users trust large companies like Microsoft, Valve, and Epic to run an app store front or other software on their hardware with reasonably good QA without any of Apple's infrastructure. And that terrifies the bejesus out of them.
I think there might actually be valid security arguments for keeping iPhone bootloaders locked down. If it becomes possible to unlock them, care needs to be taken to make sure it doesn’t open holes that make it easier to install persistent malware/spyware, especially for more vulnerable users like journalists who often become targets. The current setup makes it such that even if something finds its way in, it gets purged at reboot, limiting damage.
I could see an argument for unlocking the bootloader alongside dropping support, or perhaps making it a deeply technical process that requires steps that make it impossible to be performed without the user’s knowledge.
I think it could be simple as authenticate, force a backup, acknowledge voiding of warranty, reboot, authenticate again (to insure a clean system), final warning screen, reboot to wipe and unlock.
I'm 100% fine with "unlock your boot loader and you lose access to all but a debugging interface." I'm sure someone would get Linux running on it inside 6 months.
Then I could have a proper alternative to Android that doesn't require me embracing everything I hate about Apple.
I would add some visible difference in the boot process (logo changes, banner is displayed, etc) like is seen when unlocking the bootloader on some Android devices (Pixels at least do this) so the user knows if e.g. they’re buying a modified used phone or someone other than themselves has managed to unlock it, but otherwise that sounds reasonable.
That’s a bit dishonest, imo.
Apple lobbies for laws that help their brand perception. Again, there are a majority if people that don’t care about repairing their devices and the laws that Apple has lobbied for are not against people repairing devices. They’re against third parties doing work that isn’t up to standard.
Your anecdata is also just that - anecdotes. I have an iPhone 13. I also own a few Mac computers, though, and a few PCs, a Steam Deck, and a Linux server. The Macs are, by far, my preferred computing device.
Your comments about the walled garden are disingenuous, at best. Apple defends the walled garden because people pay for exactly that. They don’t have to worry about viruses, malware, or any of the other nonsense. It’s fine if you don’t want or need that but you’re in the minority. Not everyone is like you and Apple’s market share shows that the amount of people that aren’t is greater than what you think it is.
That's a hell of a spin. They lobby against right to repair laws and allowing competitive stores, which is enough in my book. But they also are lobbying to make it easier for them to infringe patents and easier for them to keep using slave labor in China.
And none of those things really happen on Android. But you still have the option to escape with a single toggle. Or install apps that compete with Google's (or Amazon's) offerings.
Spin? You just completely ignored why Apple lobbied against these things.
They’re not against people repairing their own devices. They’re against repairs being made by third parties that could compromise their devices, something that harms their brand.
They’re not for using slave labor. Apple is the only tech company in the US that actively audits its suppliers for human rights violations. They’re lobbying against that bill because it’s not possible for them to guarantee that every one of their suppliers is not using forced labor because they don’t control the entire supply chain in China. They know this because they’re the only ones doing audits that would tell them this. They’ve also lobbied for requiring these audits from everyone else but you didn’t mention that.
Unless you hold the same view of every other tech company who builds their stuff in China, this position is dishonest.
Spin? Spin indeed.
Those are one and the same. If I can't repair it myself, as the owner of the device, I am free to have any third party I trust do it for me. Which means making parts available (which Apple lobbies against) to non-Apple parties. Google lobbies too, but not to the same extent, according to the people who've been on the receiving ends of said lobbying.
I don't listen to what Apple says, I see their actions. And their actions say "We don't want to suffer actual consequences that would preclude us from using slave labor in China."
And yes, I don't like that other companies do these things too. And why I support the law that actually impedes the sale of slave goods. If sales aren't impeded, there's no motivation to actually fix the problem....merely send out PR blasts to hide it. I'd also criticize anybody coming in to say "Google is just lobbying to defend their brand" as well.
That's all well and good, and I agree that they should get paid for doing that. They get paid in many ways, including the cost of a developer account, the cost of the phone, and even in their other services. iOS developers also have to pay for at least one Mac to do their development on as well.
The issue is that they don't allow any other options. I would have no problem with Apple taking a cut for providing payment processing, etc. if they allowed other forms of payment. But they explicitly ban any other form of payment if you're outside of the EU. And even then, they still collect a fee from apps installed outside of the App Store.
They do allow other forms of payment. You just can’t advertise those within the app to prevent people from bypassing their infrastructure. If you couldn’t, then people with Netflix couldn’t use the app on Apple devices. Netflix requires a subscription and it’s not processed via Apple. Same goes for Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Costco and several other apps.
I should have been more specific, I meant they do not allow other forms of payment from within the app.
They do allow other forms of billing if you are able to figure out that you have to leave the app, go to the app’s website and sign up there. But as you said, they aren’t allowed to advertise that, so it’s nearly impossible to figure out.
It’s not impossible and saying so is just not true. Netflix is the perfect counterpoint to this. Do you think people have issues with Netflix on iOS because the app doesn’t tell them to go to the Netflix website?
Respectfully, I did not say it was impossible. I said nearly impossible, but I am willing to admit that a better word choice would have been “more difficult”.
But yes, it does cause issues. I had to explain to my father that we had to sign up on the website, not the app. It didn’t occur to him to go to the Netflix website.
If you’re on Tildes, I assume that you’re at least somewhat tech savvy, or you probably wouldn’t have found this place.
I interact with people from all stripes of life as part of my job and people really underestimate how tech illiterate people are. Not just old people either. There are tons of younger people who just don’t know much about computers or how to use them. Tons of people know how to do what they need to for work and that’s it. It’s not that they aren’t smart. It’s just not something they know about.
I just don’t buy that. My anecdotal experience to counter yours is that I do media training for seniors and teach photo and video apps. I have never had issues with people not being able to use Netflix on their Apple devices. Ever. They download the app, they login because they already have it. Those that didn’t already subscribe to it got the app and then immediately went to Safari and searched for “Netflix” and got what they needed. The Netflix app is clear you need a subscription to use it. It’s not too difficult for people to start one.
Yes, but the whole point of Patreon is that they're not a subscription. They're a subscriptions-as-a-service provider.
Users don't subscribe to 'Patreon' the way they do Netflix. They subscribe to their creator who uses Patreon to handle the logistics.
Yeah… that’s why my original comment said that Apple needs to figure out a different solution fir this.
I am a little surprised Patreon isn’t going the route of Spotify and just not allowing purchases of subscriptions through the iOS app. I do agree with some of Spotifys points about it being anti-competitive for Spotify to have to fork over 30% but then Apple Music, since it’s part of Apple, doesn’t have that additional “cost”.
I remember watching a video from Dropout about a similar thing as well (but I think they just eat the 30%, so if you buy through the Apple app Dropout makes less money).
I have…probably more nuanced thoughts on the whole thing than I should.
Purchasing subscriptions through the Apple app is nice, because then it puts all your subscriptions in the same place and gives you a nice overview & easy way to cancel subscriptions. And I think it does make some sense for Apple to be able to charge a nominal fee for providing the platform to do so (similar to how Steam charges a cut of game sales on their platform). BUT- I do think a 30% fee is frankly ridiculous, especially on a recurring subscription (and even more-so on “cheap” ones like Patreon).
I think the “ideal” solution would be pricing transparency laws that would require the (ideally less than 30%) platform fee to be listed to the user when purchasing something, and charged separately rather than coming out of the creators cut. Like I think how a lot of delivery apps are being required to list out their extra fees.
So on iOS it’d show up something like:
It is pretty ridiculous to me that part of the app store rules are that you can’t include a link out to purchase through the web instead of the app (though this loosely makes sense for Apple to not allow, as then they can’t put it in their subscription manager or get any % for providing the platform), but that the apps can’t explain in the app the Apple is taking a cut is pretty bad IMO.
I'd go beyond "it's pretty ridiculous to me" all the way to "this is blatantly anti-competitive, and shows clearly that Apple needs to be broken up," but that's just me.
It's one thing to charge a 30% transaction fee for use of their billing system. It sounds a bit excessive, but not out of the ordinary for the industry. It's something else to disallow links to other methods of payment. My business with the developers of the software I use is between me and the developers. The manufacturer of the hardware I run it on is not automatically entitled to a cut of every transaction I perform on that hardware.
I suspect the reason
PayPalPatreon doesn't tell Apple to go sniff Steve's turtlenecks is because they expect they'll lose a significant portion of their revenue if they exclude users on iOS. This is clearly an abuse of their market position. It's shameful that regulators didn't step in to put a stop to this ages ago, but considering the sorry state of anti-trust regulation in the US, it's hardly a surprise.Edit: didn't notice that the phone autocorrected "Patreon" to "PayPal."
If I recall, Apple lost that particular lawsuit, but they still are allowed to collect some substantial fees for "reasons".
Those "reasons" are because they can, and they have faith that regulators won't do anything about it even if it is a blatantly anti-competitive practice.
I mean even if they later go after Apple for the "practice", they'll pay back a handful of percentage points compared to the profit collected and it's a write off for Apple as a "cost of doing business" and "making money while they can" model that fucking everyone loathes.
I agree with most of your thoughts. I think it ultimately comes down to the absurd 30% these storefronts picked up, as if they have millions of brick and mortar to upkeep. Financial transactions are 3-6%, Patreon and Kickstarter is 5% (and I believe most other crowd funding takes a similar lead).
Even Google with a similar issue has a few stipulations for that 30%. First million annually is 15%, so that at least helps out the smalller businesses (Apple also has this but it is all or nothing IIRC. You go over a million, you're hit with thr full 30%).
I'm still not sure how I feel in general for that cut to affect subscriptions though. Apps are "free", but I feel that was a self inflicted problem over IOS/Google causing a race to the bottom. IOS in particular are triple dipping since you need apple hardware to develop, and a license with a yearly subscription on top of that.
It makes sense for games utilizing the hardware to take that cut, but what's ultimately a website front end feels like a shakedown. Especially when Apple spent over a decade making it as inconvenient as possible to develop web apps to being with. Very monopolistic.
Can't wait for the DMA to come down hard on them. Decisions like this will definitely make it easy for a competing IOS store to draw in large customers.
The more I think about it, the more I really do want a requirement for anything taken out of the final price to be listed as part of the checkout process.
Like how Humble Bundles (do/did?) it with the sliders where you could choose amounts for Humble, the Devs/Publisher, and the Charity. Not enforcing sliders, but just something at checkout of digital goods to be like:
Like sure there are still things taken out from the creator’s portion (like publishers or engine fees or whatever else). But I think having storefront fees listed would be a good way of increasing both transparency and possibly storefront competition. (And would also make it easier to eventually go after exuberant amounts or “junk fees” like I think the US gov is starting to do for hotel bookings, airlines, and food delivery apps).
Agree with you, but small correction on this point: Apple (also) has it at 15% until the first million for the “small business” devs, see https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program/
Read through that link a little closer. Once you hit 1 mil, you are back to 30% unless you go an entire year below 1 mil.
Let’s say you normally make 900k a year, but your app gets popular for a month in April and you surpass 1 mil. For the entire rest of the year, and the next year, you have double the fees with all purchases.
Even if your sales are consistent, there are weird perverse incentives. If you make $999,999 in revenue, you get $849,999 in take home. If you make $1,200,000 in revenue, your take home is $840,000. If you have the gall to make an extra $200,000, your reward is getting a thousand dollars *less. *
Google at least models this as a progressive tax like it should be. First 1 mil is at 15% and anything above that is at 30%. No extra paperwork for the small business to do, no other bullshit.
It does read like any sales after the 1 million would be at the 30%, (by specifying future sales) but not retroactively that first million, but you're correct that ruins your future year.
Well, I never said it’s a good system. It isn’t, at all.
It's a situation with a lot of nuance, so I think that's fair.
In my eyes, Apple deserves something since they provide the infrastructure that allows iOS users to download apps, and I'm pretty sure they also run part of what's required to push notifications.
However, Patreon is the one doing the heavy lifting after the initial app download. The content is hosted on their servers, so they're incurring the cost of hosting/streaming that content.
My proposal would be that any app that has external subscriptions would need to charge a one-time fee on the App Store (so the app itself wouldn't be free). Somewhere between $1 - $5 would get Apple a nice cut per download, which would certainly pay for their infrastructure. Then the services running the apps can do whatever they want, assuming they aren't doing Apple-linked in-app purchases.
Obviously this would generate less revenue for Apple, but their greed may bite them in the ass one day.
Apple isn't just "providing" the infrastructure to download apps, they are mandating it. I would agree with your points if Patreon had the option to distribute their iOS app independently, but Apple's refusal to allow side loading or 3rd party app stores means they're wholly responsible for taking on that burden themselves.
IIRC Apple's primary justification for that is to protect user security. Seems highly suspicious to me that protecting user security is indistinguishable from strong-arming and aggressively rent-seeking every single person or business that wants to provide their product or service to iOS users.
An established company like Patreon wouldn't risk scaring away users by making them download an app from a third party site. Even if that was their own site, because it would require users to go into settings and check a scary box that has warnings.
Android allows this, but are any apps from big companies (officially) distributed on F-Droid or similar?
Lots of apps have historically been independently distributed for Windows and MacOS, and users weren't terrified of installing those. Also I'm pretty sure both Microsoft and Apple have some kind of notarization process that you can go through to become "trusted" without having to distribute your stuff through their stores and give them a slice of all your revenue, so the model for companies to distribute their own trusted apps already exists and is proven in the desktop world.
What you're describing is artificial fear mongering by Apple and Google to force users into their rent-seeking mobile walled gardens. And since mobile app distribution is relatively new and not bogged down by the same legacy of independent distribution that desktop software has, it's easier for them to get away with it.
Patreon is one of those services that doesn't even really benefit from an app IMO. Idk if iOS allows the faux app website shortcut. But I'd recommend doing something like that if so.
Not sure about the side loading from major companies though. I feel like there was one briefly that got attention but hell if I can remember.
I was gonna say, the app downloads for Patreon are almost certainly a drop in the bucket compared to handling recurring financial transactions like they do for their <glances at notes> entire business model.
They could probably save money by being website-only at the rates Apple is charging.
Out of curiosity, why are you OK with Steam doing this but not Apple? Their pricing structure is nearly identical. Valve gets 30% of all sales on Steam.
I read their comment on Steam as accepting one time transactions incurring a fee but their issue with subscriptions revenue taxing. I can understand a certain fraction needed to cover bandwidth and platform costs but I agree 30% seems too high.
Yeah, basically this. (And also I think the 30% from steam is also likely high, but I guess that also maybe depends on if/how much more traditional retailers of physical media take as a cut or how those logistics work).
I also think Steam potentially offers more to game developers using their platform than Apple does (for instance, the advertising on steam, access to steams multiplayer server infrastructure & cloud saves & friends lists & play with friends, all of which do have their own costs that are “free” to users of steam and have to be covered somehow - though I guess I’m not sure if there are other agreements/fees for developers using those features).
Which is why I think it’s OK for Apple to take some nominal percentage (because of their subscription management platform & other “benefits” to the consumer), but I think 30% is too high, especially for recurring subscriptions (and moreso for something like Patreon where individual amounts tend to be fairly small).
Again, this is all true for Apple customers too, though. Apple’s cut includes GameCenter, Cloud Kit, and advertising within the App Store. Steam doesn’t advertise for games outside of Steam so how is this any different?
Made an expanded reply on the other reply to you, but I think that:
What value does Steam provide that Apple does not?
Valve allows devs to cut their own keys for their software that the dev can sell outside of Steam at a 0% cost to the dev (Well, 0% Valve incurred costs, there are likely costs for doing your own independent sales, but they're likely less than 30% all told.) The devs still get to use Steam's infrastructure for automatic patching, promotion, bandwidth, forums, user content, and everything else that comes with Steam and the only tradeoff is that they pay 30% for the purchases that happen within Steam. Hell, they allow you to sell your game directly without any Steam integration at all and still use Steam backend services (matchmaking and such) if you like so long as your game is also offered for sale on Steam. Granted that process isn't just plug and play, it takes a lot of heavy lifting on your end as a dev to integrate everything, but you can do it if you choose, it's at the very least allowed.
It's not even remotely the same as Apple's situation. Apple doesn't allow apps outside of their walled garden and they very much don't allow you to make money on your app without them getting a cut. They won't allow you to use your own services when an Apple version exists, they won't allow you to do your own payments, they won't suffer you even suggesting that there's an alternative out there, let alone encourage someone to leverage one.
I honestly don't think anyone can look at the competition in Steam's space and claim that what they're doing is easy. If that were the case, we'd have anything other than EGS, the UPlay store,
OriginEA Desktop, or any of the other alternatives that offer far lesser experiences. Given that Steam is willing to allow devs to sell their game outside of Steam, taking a 0% cut of that sale, while still availing all the advantages of the Steam platform speaks to me that Valve are earning their 30% when they make a sale inside of their store. Given that they're subsidizing all the off-store Humble/Fanatical/GMG/IndieGala key sales that probably make the devs a decent chunk of change where Valve doesn't see a dime, the 30% in their store seems valid IMO. Apple is not providing anything near Steam value for the same 30%.In addition to the points already made, Steam doesn't control the hardware in the same way as Apple, so they're not making it impossible for you to use a different storefront. While in practice they're a de-facto monopoly in PC gaming, that's very different from their preventing you from using any other storefront through control of the hardware -- they don't even do that on the Steam Deck.
They don’t but they could. The majority of Steam Deck owners don’t use any other store because Valve doesn’t provide any way to do that. They just give you access to Desktop mode and stop support for that if you do. Warranty service requires a factory reset (I know because I had to do it with mine).
Even if you disregard that it's perfectly easy to add non steam games to a steam deck, you can get steam keys from GOG or other legitimate sellers, and activate them on steam deck. No need to use Steams store or payment system.
Yes, but you can’t advertise for those other places within Steam or the Steam Deck OS. The only difference here is that Apple restricts the installation of unsupported stuff. Valve and Apple both collect the same from devs and have nearly the same rules for their stores when it comes to purchases.
Okay, so when I launch Baldurs Gate 3, there's a big advert comes up for things I might want to buy outside of the steam store. Following these links takes you directly to Larian's store and Valve won't be taking any kind of cut from these.
Does this fit your definition of a company advertising its products for sale outside of the Steam Deck OS?
No. That prompt violates the Steam terms of service if it happens within the Steam store. If it happens in-game, then Steam can decide if that violates their terms.
The fact that they don't but they could is what makes it so starkly different from Apple's behavior and why it's significantly less anti-competitive.
The fact that you have access to desktop mode at all makes it an extremely different model than Apple's. As for doing a factory reset when doing a warranty claim, not really sure how that's related to the current topic at all. Seems like a non-sequitur.
This is a fairly standard practice. It lets them use their standard tooling for diagnostics and repair.
And it's not on Valve to advertise it? It'd be on the alternative store. "Hey, install our store on the Steam Deck using these simple instructions." Last I checked, Steam is the only store that runs natively on Linux though. All the other major providers haven't even tried, so Valve gets my money.
What? Valve doesn’t advertise for any outside storefronts and they definitely do not do that within their store.
To rephrase:
It's not Valve's job to advertise alternative storefronts.
But there is nothing stopping GoG from having a giant banner on their front page to install their store on the Deck.
What does this mean? You can replace it with Apple and it stays the same.
“It’s not Apple’s job to advertise alternative storefronts. But there’s nothing stopping Android from having a banner on their front page to install their app on the iPhone.”
This is a meaningless statement. You can’t provide GoG as an option for people within a Steam listing just like you can’t provide a link to it in the Apple App Store listing. The fact that you can install it on a Steam Deck is irrelevant to the discussion.
It's not meaningless. Because GoG could actually get a store on the Steam Deck with 0 involvement from Valve, while Google could not get an alternative app store on iOS, even if they offered the app off of the App Store (which they also can't do). Although recent leglislation changes coming (that Apple lobbies against) does make that possible.
And many of my Steam games do have links out to alternative stores in the game itself. And that's what Apple banned (and got shut down for).
If a game developer wants to sell their game on their own website, I'm happy to pay them directly without going through Steam, at least as long as I'm not required to use some awful custom launcher.
I'd feel the same way about Apple if I could get apps from places other than the App Store.
That’s fine. Don’t buy an iPhone then. Buy an Android device instead. We’re talking about subscriptions here and you’re allowed to do that.
I have been using Apple products for decades. I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro and I love it. It's a great computer. The hardware is rock solid and absolutely incredible.
But the people running the company seem to have this weird idea in their heads that they are entitled to a cut of every single transaction that happens on an Apple device I know it's not this way on the Mac, but that's simply because of the age of the platform. If the Mac was launched today, they would absolutely try and lock it down (just look at the changes in the upcoming version of MacOS).
They can make all the arguments they want about safety and security, but there are tons of scammy apps and subscriptions on the App Store. The only difference is that Apple gets a cut of those subscriptions, so they don't care. It's gotten so bad that even Apple pundit stalwarts have been turning against them.
Their services division is eating the company and could be their downfall.
It's a nasty (and incorrect) attitude that has been the overriding narrative for the last few years. They won't stop until forced, because there's just too much money to take. Hopefully they lose big in their pending antitrust case in the US or the EU slaps them with some major, major, major fines.
The DOJ said it best in their lawsuit: "Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple's financial and business interests."
There's something to be said for protecting users from themselves, but it's to the point where if you bought an iPhone, you do not actually own it by any reasonable definition of the word. You can't get root access without hacky circumventions that degrade the device, you can't buy things using the platform of your choice, hell, you can't even install a different browser. Apple will always bring up their platforms security as a justification, but it's a crazy coincidence how every one of these "security" decisions just so happen to make them millions of dollars.
I like a lot of Apple's products, but the one thing that keeps me away from their platform is the way they think of their user base.
From years of interacting with them, it's clear that they view their users as a one size fits all mass of uneducated simpletons that they can just continuously charge out the ass and lie to under the guise of security or "best in class" features. Increasingly, whenever I use an apple product, I can't shake the feeling of "the person who designed this thinks I'm a moron".
That quote is a perfect encapsulation of their ideals.
Not to defend them, but it isn’t much different on Android either. You can’t switch things away from many of the Google defaults without rooting, which isn’t even possible on many phones.
You can easily install a different browser on iOS, they just all have to use the built in WebKit rendering engine. And that limitation is being lifted in the EU relatively soon. But I get what you mean.
On Android, the way Google has let the AOSP stock apps languish in favor of Google-branded alternatives makes their priorities pretty clear. When I’ve toyed with AOSP spinoffs I’ve found myself having to install a bunch of Google stuff because the stock apps are so barebones, which shouldn’t be necessary.
Yeah, they’ve spent the last few years making a concerted effort to pivot away from AOSP to their own “Pixel Experience” software. A lot of newer features aren’t even in a usable state in the open source builds of Android, if they are included at all, as they require Google services.
It seems like the people in charge at Google looked at iOS and said, “damn, we should have locked things down like that.”
Small nitpick, it’s possible to install a different browser, just not a browser using an engine that isn’t WebKit. “Reskinned Safari” gets thrown around a lot but is a bit of an exaggeration — while the core capabilities of a third party WebKit browser will more or less mirror those of Safari, all the UI code will be entirely bespoke.
For instance, Firefox for iOS is in fact less of a Safari reskin than say desktop MS Edge is a reskin of Chrome, because the former has all-new UI code while Edge shares much of its UI code with Chrome.
This is I think also perhaps the one restriction that holds the most water from a security and UX perspective. Modern web engines are labyrinthine monsters that rival operating systems in complexity, and each brings its own set of security holes. It’s no coincidence that jailbreaks across all platforms are often enabled by browser holes, the possibilities of which are multiplied for each unique engine installed.
There’s also the power usage aspect. It’s unlikely that either Google or Mozilla will care to optimize Blink and Gecko for battery efficiency to the degree that Apple has with Safari. They haven’t done so on the Mac, so why would they on iOS? Mobile Chrome (which is likely to become the dominant browser on iOS, as a result of developer pressure on users and aggressive promotion by Google) makes this worse by not supporting ad blocking extensions at all (Safari at least supports blocklist-based blockers). Will users recognize that their degraded battery life is a result of switching browsers, or will they blame their phone?
While I believe that neither of these are not Apple’s foremost concerns (I agree that they prize control), it’s almost a guarantee that they’re at least a consideration, especially the battery life point, because that’s the sort of thing that impacts purchase decisions.
Apple's desire to practically tax every other business (and often customers and creators as a result) for ever transacting money through apps on Apple's platform has always been, and continues to be, ridiculous. The percentage is ridiculous and so is the very idea of app stores being able to essentially tax every single financial transaction that happens within an app- transactions that in only the smallest capacity involve Apple (or Google, or any other app store that does this) in any way.
I get the pro-consumer angle of having an easy place to view and cancel subscriptions. While I appreciate such a convenience, it coming at the expense of handing power to the app store owner to be an arbiter of financial transactions/relationships that they are otherwise not privy to, is ridiculous, especially when it involves creators (like Youtube, Twitch, and now Patreon).
It's also manipulative. The tyranny of the default, the ease of use, the fact that customers often don't know there's a way to do it outside the app, or that the price is even different (and often lower) if they do, and that Apple has historically been restrictive about allowing companies / app devs to even say anywhere in their app or description that their own users can purchase outside of the app...
I think it's about time app stores are subject to extreme regulation. Other companies literally having to reduce their options and change entire parts of their business structure (like per-creation and first-of-the-month billing models at Patreon) to more easily comply, is asinine. Apple should not have that power.
I am so tired of the duopoly of Android and iOS, especially their walled-garden versions and the asshole companies that run them
Make no mistake, a bunch of small creators are going to take a substantial hit here and it's just awful that Apple is choosing to steal money from their pockets so that they can get 30% of a $2-5 monthly sub.
Several of my Patreons are struggling to make it as is, this may well put them out of the business of creating art they love and as a dude who generally hates apps I just don't understand why Apple thinks they need to do this. It's just fucking greed for greed's sake when there's a website right there doing the same thing for no cost beyond the cost of running that site itself.
I have one I follow that's homeless and couch surfing right now after his apartment was condemned. I'm genuinely worried about his mental health and well being and this is gonna hit him hard.
...
Well there you go. It's pure greed and entitlement.
Touché
I guess it's just beyond the depths I previously imagined, but I suppose you don't become a trillion dollar company by allowing opportunities for greed and depravity to swing by unexploited.
Yeah…I mentioned in a different comment that there’s just too much money to be made here. They won’t change until they are forced to.
Pro tip: Do not buy subscriptions in apps. Android and Apple's stores have alternative fee structures that many third parties do not require for browser-based transactions, and the app should work the same regardless of subscription method.
It's unfortunate, because there's real value in having a large number of one's subscriptions lined up in a settings page with a dead simple cancel button that when clicked, will just cancel instead of trying to stall or guilt you into not cancelling or pester you into providing feedback or any of that annoying nonsense. That by itself could be a service that I think a lot of people would pay a small subscription fee for.
Unless I'm misunderstanding, it sounds like you're describing the business model of https://www.rocketmoney.com/
It'll never cease to amuse me that the "Find & Cancel Subscriptions" service is itself a subscription service.
Since I can't easily find a privacy policy for rocketmoney.com, I'd assume they're selling data as well as charging a subscription fee.
Totally. I wasn't linking rocketmoney as an endorsement, more of a "this thing that OP described already exists".
Something like that is probably the closest that currently exists, but compared to the subscriptions dashboard in the App Store and Play Store it's indirect and messy. Apple/Google have direct control over the subscriptions in their stores, whereas Rocket Money has to handle each subscription differently (some I suspect manually) as a result of not being directly involved.
I assume they cancel it as a matter of being the one that actually holds your money. So in a way, they're involved in the transaction from the beginning, just on the other end of it. Presumably you cancel a service, and they identify whatever data or elements come in with a charge attempt related to your cancellation and they just deny it, as if your card was declined for insufficient funds.
I imagine that isn't totally solid for all services, for example gym memberships often have some contractual obligation the member signed and even if you stop the payment they may come after you for failing to make payments on an obligation, but I would guess most services it would work just fine.
It also shouldn't be like a chargeback where a company gets the money and the credit processor then takes the money back as part of the credit processor agreement with the service provider, so it shouldn't negatively impact your account standing like a chargeback would.
The app store fee discourse drives me kind of nuts because a lot of online discussion of it is driven by people who are online and who are either directly in or close enough to the tech industry. It means a lot of the discussion is from the seller's POV. But Apple aside, for consumers the IAP structure is very good for exactly the reason you mentioned. Simple, secure billing in a single place that is easy to turn off and on on a per-subscription basis.
For those reasons I think Apple should be more flexible with the fee structure. On the other hand, I was very much alive and online when the App Store first showed up and the 30% cut seemed like a great deal to developers, so I see a lot of the contemporary acrimony as disingenuous.
That's because you're comparing apples to oranges. 30% to have a chance at a front page, analytics, a storefront to handle all of the downloads and updates, an index in a searchable application database, automatic assurance of malware scans to consumers, handling of all payment processing, refunds, and first line customer support probably IS worth 30%. Hosting your own app on your own website as an executable or something would be atrocious even if apple did allow you to do that.
Charging that fee for a subscription where Apple does nothing except take your customers money is a very different story. The first one is a legitimate service that's extremely valuable to a developer. The second one is just parasitic.
As a mobile dev who’d like to maybe one day sell some kind of app or SaaS of his own, I’m kind of torn. On one hand, “no bullshit” cancellation and the like is very pro-consumer and Apple dealing with most of the headaches surrounding storefronts, refunds, etc is worth something. Some fee seems reasonable, and I’d argue that anybody advocating for no fee is being unreasonable.
On the other hand, 30% is a steep cut. It’d make more sense for apps built end to end with the Apple stack, e.g. being macOS/iOS exclusive built with AppKit/UIKit/SwiftUI with a back end powered by CloudKit. In that situation, you’re leaning pretty hard on Apple and a cut that high might actually be worth the trouble saved (particularly at larger scales — cloud hosting bills can get gnarly and are riddled with surprises and caveats).
For an app that only has macOS/iOS as one of its several target platforms with the bulk of the functional bits hosted on AWS/GCS or a Hetzner VPS box the cut looks a lot less reasonable.
Apple really needs to open iOS they really have no excuse to keep it as is, the sad part is that instead of making iOS and iPadOS more like macOS they are doing the opposite.
It sucks because I prefer their hardware/software combo.