To follow this logic: if you use an e-banking app, Apple will soon claim to be entitled to 30% of all transactions. Same for paypal, ebay, you name it
Just crank all iOS user payments up by 30%, explain why, and let nature sort itself out.
Apple doesn’t allow this - they expect your price to be the same everywhere or they’ll remove the app from their store or decline version updates. There have historically been a few high profile exceptions privately negotiated, and I think they were forced to relax this in the last year or two, but here they are again trying to claw away money they did literally nothing to earn.
Instagram puts way more than 30% on their ads when purchasing through iOS
If you buy 100€ of ad budget, they want you to pay an additional 42.5% apple service fee and additional taxes here in Germany.
If I do it through their ad center suddenly the taxes are already included in the budget so if I pay 100€ I get 100€. So in the end, Meta charges iOS users an additional 70% vs what they usually charge.
They would all be screaming shut up and take my money.
Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, or absorb the fee themselves, keeping prices the same across platforms.
It’s already an option and if you read the article, only 4% are still on the legacy billing system (no Apple tax at all)
iOS users using a browser don’t pay the Apple Tax. And the only reason to pay through the app is if you specifically want to use Apple Pay (e.g to pay with your phone bill instead of your credit card).
At this point it’s a “stupid tax” more than anything.
Small clarification. Apple Pay is not really paying with your phone bill. I think you can but most users just have their credit card or debit card linked.
That’s why I used e.g instead of i.e :) That’s one use case for Apple Pay that you can’t get from the website. Another would be that you don’t share your card details with whoever Patreon’s payment processor is - which might make sense if you trust Apple more than some particular processor
Terribly need degoogled android to become popular and/or a normal Linux distribution phone to become popular so that normal Linux market share couldn’t be ignored
New Jolla Phone will start shipping in 2026 H1
Is this one fully open source? Or is it still “well open source when we can”?
I don’t know. Are there some parts that have been closed when they should have been open?
If I was on Patreon I’d tell them to pull the app. Fuck em they have a website.
Right? You’d think Patreon would throw their weight against Apple, as this is clearly not in their best interest. Threaten to pull the app, and if Apple follows through, they get nothing. Alternatively, move payments entirely outside of the app and force Apple to either do something which is guaranteed to be extremely unpopular, or call their bluff. But they won’t do these things or even try to negotiate Apple’s cut.
Apple may appear to swing the biggest dick here, but I am so disgusted by these weak companies just immediately bending over without a fight.
As always, it’s the creators who will be faced with hardship, but neither entity seems to give a shit.
Is It better for patreon to lose 30% of income from Apple pay, or to have Apple users not being able to pay unless they open the webpage and pay from there? Is it better for them to remove the app altogether and have users on Apple forced to use it through the website?
I’d imagine they’d lose quite a bit of subscriptions if they did that. Is that more or less than 30% is something I don’t know.
They could go on the offensive with messaging and get subscribers to apply pressure on Apple to keep things the same… Would it work? Probably not, but it might get some of the Apple users onside.
And there goes your engagement.
Apples got them, and Apple knows it.
You can already pay on the website. If you pay through Apple Pay and therefore pay the extra 30%, that’s kinda on you at this point.
Cunt move by Apple, but the in-app purchase payment processing going through apple only rule has been there for a long ass time, Patreon got pretty lucky that they were given so much leeway for so long.
At what point do they just… Pull the app from stores. Like seriously. All it is is a portal to patron+push motifs, which mobile browsers can do
I fucking hate mega corps. It’s never fucking enough… Ever… Apple has more money than some countries yet these assholes want ever more…
Tax all these assholes into oblivion!
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” – Karl Marx
I reserve the right to hate apple regardless, thank you.
I agree, but don’t let it distract you from how much capitalism sucks balls comrade
What exactly does Apple think that they’re brining to the equation in order to deserve that 30? Is it simply that they’re hosting an app on their store, so therefore they’re entitled to a cut?
So if I write a novel, and get it published, Microsoft can say "We deserve 30% because you used our product to produce your product?
I’m so fucking tired of corporations. It’s well past guillotine-o-clock.
It’s a holdover from retail where had to physically hold your product and had limited space.
Now, the shareholders demand even more money and Apple has complete control on the OS and they are signaling that you can’t do shit and they will take whatever they want.
They can fight anyone in courts, and as long as the laws have no teeth, they will get away with it.
What exactly does Apple think that they’re brining to the equation in order to deserve that 30?
Because Valve can and Tim wants his yachts. No one is gonna stop em either. The App Store and Steam are the same thing: Store fronts that sell other peoples goods. You may say that Steam is just an app—don’t tell me, tell your representatives
Steam at least adda value for devs. What the fuck does apple do for Patreon creators?
It’s a little different though. Valve is providing the actual platform, and running it. Apple doesn’t own Patreon, they simply host a client.
It sure is different, but the people in charge dont know or care to know
Which device only allows you to run software downloaded from Steam?
You may say that Steam is just an app—don’t tell me, tell your representatives
Tell your representatives, not me. According to our representatives, what Apple has is not a monopoly. You don’t have to convince me, you have to convince them. If you truly care about this issue, vote accordingly.
I don’t understand why you think it’s ok to knowingly present a false equivalency then. You clearly know it’s not true, so why repeat the lie?
Because thats how they’re getting away with it? Who cares if it’s true or not, no one who can do anything about it cares. Tell your reps to start caring about monopolies.
Why are you booing them, they’re right.
They’re bringing the apple tax to the table
I had no idea Apple was so desperate for money
3.78 Trillion dollar market cap. You don’t get to that valuation by being generous to your customers. Apple is as capitalist as any of them. They’re just wrapped in shiny marketing. Now only if their fans understood that.
One way, or another, that revenue stream will go to shit, they’re just doing a smash and grab while they can.
Why isn’t Apple trying to take 30% of all purchases through the Amazon app? Or eBay? Or your local grocery delivery? It’s the same exact thing. Such a stupid greedy fucking attempt
Next they’ll take 30% on every transaction through my banking app.
Because Patreon creators can’t afford to sue them
I think they’re trying to kill Patreon for some reason. Maybe they’ll launch their own Patreon competitor? Maybe they noticed developers were giving away iOS apps and getting crowdfunded on Patreon?
Iirc it has to do with “monthly subscriptions” and they are arguing that Patreon is a monthly subscription and those get charged at the higher amount.
It’s why subscribing to YouTube premium within iOS app costs more because Google just makes up the difference that way.
Not that’s it’s right but it’s really debatable if Patreon should be considered a monthly subscription the same way streaming services are.
It’s why subscribing to YouTube premium within iOS app costs more because Google just makes up the difference that way.
I wish more businesses would do this. If a middleman is taking a cut, make it crystal clear to your customers.
This is my biggest gripe with Steam, for example. Valve can do 30% if they want, but dictating minimum prices on other stores that have nothing to do with Steam is just monopolistic.
They learned it by watching Amazon.
It’s not just monthly! Some creators let’s you pay when they release something. I’ve seen it a lot on certain audio dramas.
I could be wrong but I think this change forces everyone to use subscription only, not per X.
Yeah, it’s certainly not the same thing. The creators set the terms as they please.
These Silicon Valley parasites are taking way more than a fair share. Every industry is Consolidated and the few gatekeeping corporations left take more than their fair share that is the entire problem. Capitalism does not work without controls. Never has, never will. This absolute free market talk has always been ad hoc, to further the business interests of those making the arguments.
Didn’t they just lose a lawsuit along these lines? I can’t imagine this going well for them.
Luckily I’m about to switch to graphene OS soon. I’ll be forced to make a bunch of changes to choices I made out of convenience in the past
It’s wild that Steam is getting a class action lawsuit for charging 30% right now, and Apple doing shit like this at the same percentage and legally is getting a free pass.
I’ll throw a hat in the ring here. It’s because Steam has a grip on the gaming market that others want instead of them. That’s it, they want that money instead of Valve. Apple is getting a pass on this because it’s just fucking over the common guy which businesses couldn’t care less about.
But Valve doesn’t have a monopoly on PC games. You can sell your own game, or sell through GOG. On iPhone, Apple has the monopoly and they abuse it.
I was trying to avoid the monopoly complaint because it’s bogus for the reason you said. The truth, Valve has a massive market share and people are very used to Steam, tied to it in many cases. Other publishers tried to set out on their own with their own store fronts and most of those have utterly failed. Even Epic still sells their games on Steam. It’s a powerful market with a lot of brand loyalty that those companies really do want themselves.
Fair.
Other than the “not actually a monopoly” argument, I think it’s important that Steam has that marketshare because they add value. They have a stranglehold on the market similar to the way BarCodes do. You don’t have to register your product with the bar code authority, but it will sure make your product more accessible to more people.
And that’s before cloud saves, achievements, patching infrastructure, community forums, game recording/streaming, and other stuff built into the Steam client/API.
Whether that’s worth a blanket 30% is absolutely a conversation worth having. Maybe it should be a sliding / bracketed scale depending on revenue or units sold or something. But like you said, the big lawsuits are coming from competitors, not smaller developers.
I’d welcome actual, legitimate competition to Steam. That means it has to be as good if not BETTER than Steam in some ways. Epic, Apple, EA, Ubisoft, etc, sure as hell did not deliver. If anything it caused market segmentation and segregation.
True, but nobody is bound by it. There are other ways to sell on PC, there are no other ways to sell on iPhone. And games bought elsewhere will work just fine on a PC that has Steam installed. Anyone can leave at any time, or buy from anywhere. The only way to do that on iPhone is to switch your entire phone with Android. Apple’s position on the iPhone is far more controlling and monopolistic than Steam’s on PC.
The Steam tax might be too steep as well, but these are not identical situations. It’s far easier to avoid Steam if you don’t want it. I prefer to buy from GOG, and only buy from Steam when it’s cheaper or not available on GOG.
Right, but Valve is actually providing the service and infrastructure. Apple is not.
They are, I’m not arguing against Valve or for Apple. I’m explaining that business people want moar money and don’t like it when someone else makes it when they could.
Huh? It’s the businesses that will suffer from that 30% tax. It’s like suddenly seeing your Netflix subscription being more expensive and that triggers this “do I even need it anymore?” evaluation
If it costs 13€ to support a 10€ Patreon pledge, then how do you expect the company to cover for that? Paying the creator less? Still, that will spawn competition, which again hurts the business
Huh? It’s the businesses that will suffer from that 30% tax. It’s like suddenly seeing your Netflix subscription being more expensive and that triggers this “do I even need it anymore?” evaluation
Has been this way for a long time. You pay through Apple, you pay more. You pay on the website, you pay the regular fee.
If it costs 13€ to support a 10€ Patreon pledge, then how do you expect the company to cover for that? Paying the creator less? Still, that will spawn competition, which again hurts the business
The creators are the ones who choose how they handle this. Either charge their 10€ tier as ~ 14.29€ or receive 7€ instead of 10€ when it comes to Apple users.
The businesses ain’t gonna suffer shit.
Just nitpicking, but if the usual price is 10€ and you want to offload the 30% tax to the consumers, pretty sure the maths should be 10/(0.7) ≈ 14.29€
Honestly was just trying to show a point, math itself was secondary, my bad
To make this clear: Patreon is a platform mainly used by creators, artists, musicians to get a reliable income directly from their fans. Apple is trying to steal 30% of the income of our favorite artists.
Yeah, hopefully Patron doesn’t roll over and just removes the option to do it in iPhone. Taking away functionality will make Apple look bad, which they deserve.
They already caved.
On Wednesday, Patreon said Apple has renewed its requirement that all Patreon creators must move to subscription billing. The deadline to do so is November 1, 2026.
Good thing none of us have iPhones here, right, guys? Right?
But I like my blue iMessages!
Honestly I wouldn’t touch Apple products with a bargepole. I dislike closed ecosystems
I always end up with MacBooks after startups and love to have something I can just pick up and use whereas my PC is my command center. Most of my shit is web or local web services so just need a Mozilla terminal. Also, I can’t fathom buying one out of pocket. I’ve also never had an iPhone, it doesn’t make sense to my brain.
So…if you’re just using web stuff, you could probably save a heap by using a Chromebook. That’s what my wife’s personal laptop is and is perfect for web stuff (and has the option of Android apps too, like Mozilla). It’s not her only computer though.
Its not closed
The door is just very very tiny
You’d rather be spied on constantly by the largest panopticon ever created, because they allow sideloading.
Honestly this is voting for Trump over Kamala; we need a viable alternative. Why have they taken personal computing from us?
So you’d rather be spies on by the formerly largest panopticon ever created AND not be able to side load?
If you think Apple is some paragon of privacy you might want to do some research on that lol.
You can deGoogle Android if you want, hopefully better alternatives, that don’t suck, like Linux Phone™ 🙏 arrive before too long.
Except all the posts I see about degoogling start with purchasing Google hardware.
other options besides graphene exist, like lineage OS that work on a ton of different phones. and sure graphene requires google hardware but nobody says you have to buy the hardware from google direct. buying used is different than buying from google
No, I’d rather use my device like I want to use my device instead of how I’m told to use it. I don’t need to sideload on this device but glad I can if and when I want to. I prefer having a computer with me rather than a purposely stunted device kept that way to sell other devices in the ecosystem.
You say it’s purposely stunted, I say it has guardrails that saves me hours and hours of family IT support time un-fucking my elderly parents phones. This was something I’d have to do every single time I was home when we had android phones.
I would dump Apple in a heartbeat if something better existed. They’re not good but they’re the best for my personal scenario of the current options.
Were being spied on regardless, better to choose the option that allows one to do the most with it. If I could throw together my own phone and run a Linux variant on then I fucken would, but as it phone hardware is ass and Linux mobile doesn’t exist for my phone.
You can’t logic people out of an emotional decision. The hatred of Apple runs deep.
The obviousness of this is how Android users troll Apple discussions but Apple users don’t troll Android discussions.
They have insanely strong opinions on what other’s choices that it borderline religious.
Been locked in this ecosystem for a while guys. I’m not proud of it.
It’s better than the alternatives, unfortunately. I really want to dump Apple; the products are waning in quality and the company is spending a lot of time genuflecting for king tangerine. But it just works.
“Just install grapheneOS” my brother in Christ, I have no time or interest in fucking up with the primary communication device I rely on to reach family, friends, and work. I don’t have time for the hobbies I want to do let alone adding work-adjacent activities under the cloak of a hobby.
Just buy a Fairphone from Murena with /e/OS preinstalled. You don’t have to do anything yourself. It mainly works like a phone without any issues, all the features I need work on it and I didn’t have to install it manually and supported the devs
The ecosystem is really seamless, especially with a MacBook and Apple watch in the mix.
Though I don’t think there is any winning in the smartphone space. There is a duopoly and even if you personally use graphineOS you still are benefitting and helping the Google ecosystem by using Android apps.
Sadly I don’t think we can “vote with our wallets” on smartphones. We need legal legislation that forces both Apple and Google to be consumer friendly.
Installing graphene was not like flashing a ROM ten years ago. You just follow the simple steps on the web installer.
When for xiaomi…jpg
I’d love to jump ship.
Nothing would prevent you from communicating with a Graphene OS phone. It’s a smartphone OS, not compiling Arch here…
But use whatever excuse you can find to stay in the Apple ecosystem, that’s fine.
It totally could and probably would. I am a phone OS tinkerer myself, but the above poster is right that it is a lot of hobbyist type tinkering and you can brick your device and fuck it up so you can’t communicate with your friends and family.
I agree with the main sentiment that these alternative OSs for phones and computers are a lot better in a lot of ways, but we are unwise to act like getting your computer or phone that way is that easy. Trying to get an alternative OS working well on a device can very easily consume an entire waking day or more, and bricking is not impossible, especially with phones.
Never too late to switch to GrapheneOS.
I can’t unlock my bootloader so i’m fucked.
I am in it for not too long, I wanted a Framework notebook but they didn’t sell in my country so I couldn’t purchase it through my business so I went with macbook and iphone next to because, why not.
I generally don’t care much about things like in the op news tbh, as if I have a subscription for something I use it directly from the website
And stuff like the seemless integration when switching from my phone to my MacBook with my airpods is fucking great.
but I am not a normal techie, I am waaay overindexed on user experience over a lot of things, for example I pay for spotify because the Ux is great for me, I refuse to pay for streaming devices because my own plex/jellyfin server is a much better UX.
I am also refusing to buy cars without physical buttons.
Definetly not, wayyyy to closed.
Think. Of. The. Shareholders.
I’m an Apple shareholder and think this is a great way to lose engagement and revenue
Do you have enough shares for your vote to mean anything?
Willing to sell those shares?
