Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales
Revenue $32 B
Operating Costs $7 B [1]
Estimated Profit $25 B
Operating Margin ~78%
[1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs.
Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.
Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were so high that even Apple's own executives were sometimes surprised by the internal financial reports.
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edit: There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.
The operating cost is the maximum Apple can come up with when their accountants attribute everything they possibly can to digital sales for the sake of legal argument. R&D shouldn't really be included, and Apple uses those same tools and APIs themselves. I think the actual profit margin is closer to 90%, and Apple could maintain a 20% margin with just a 3–4% fee.
I'd say that in the case of Patreon, any fee for Apple is unjustified. Apple can justify their fee on app purchases/subscriptions in the app store, but Patreon is not an app subscription, the money goes mostly from the patrons to the people they support. Ok, Patreon takes a cut to cover their operating costs, and also make a profit (not sure how profitable they are currently), but I really can't see how Apple, who don't have anything to do with this process except for listing the Patreon app on the app store, can justify taking a cut.
Certainly not defending Apple's behavior in this instance, but isn't the success of the larger product ecosystem a direct driver of their App Store profitability? To strictly evaluate the App Store finances in isolation seems to be the sort of accusation you've levied against Apple in the opposite direction..
I like Apple less and less these days for various reasons, but I haven't purchased an app on the App Store in more than a decade. It's strictly a vehicle for local utilities when, for whatever reason, a browser will not suffice. Nearly all purchasing is done on the 'open' web.
What really makes it uncomfortable is that Apple isn't just a neutral marketplace. They control the OS, the distribution channel, and the payment rails, so creators and platforms like Patreon can't realistically opt out
Don't forget they also directly compete with Patreon with podcast subscriptions. You can support a podcast through Apple podcasts or Patreon, but only one of those has a 30% chunk taken out.
That's pretty much the conclusion the EU came to and why they introduced the notion of gatekeepers in the DMA.
It doesn't matter if you are not technically in a dominant position if your special role in a large ecosystem basically allows you to act like one in your own purview.
You could say this kind of move invites more scrutiny but the regulators are already there watching every Apple's move with a microscope and their patience with Apple attempts at thwarting compliance is apparently wearing thin at least in the EU if you look at preliminary findings.
The problem is the monopoly over distribution channels. Regulation needs to force devices to allow A) downloading and using packages & executables from the internet, and B) any app to download and install other apps.
Regulating the fees for one central app store is no solution.
> no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism
Right on. But that's exactly the wiggle room where voters could pull some of those cards like "climate change mitigation (of consequences)", "climate change preparation", "upcoming waves of climate change refugees", "AI dividing the population", "Universal Basic Income", all of which are things companies like Apple won't do anything for (or against) while their goods are still mostly for proper earners and not for people who buy stuff at a discount (I'm exaggerating).
Since corporate altruism is definitely not on the menu, government institutions and NGOs will have to pick up way more than they are currently prepared for.
We are in a strange phase of calm before the storm, despite all those wars and conflicts--or in spite of them, I don't know. Shits' gonna hit the fan sooner or later and it's up to the voters to demand adequate preparation.
Big Corps caused significantly more damage than they had to cause for all those profits, whether as a side effect or not, and they did that long enough.
Job cuts, whether due to AI or not, will remain a thing while no "new" giants will rise for quite a while ... and corporations will sing the song "it's what the people want" only as long as voters will stay quiet.
Sure, bribes, corruption and blablabla, but it doesn't change how votes work and none of it changes how the devoted clerks in the administration do their jobs and write laws (if they have to have to) ...
> Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.
We can say this to any company, "$X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits", but it doesn't really make any sense. Making profits is what makes a company a company instead of a non-profit organization.
It does make sense to highlight, because this kind of statistic is a very strong indicator that the market is not competitive. This is not a normal kind of profit margin and basically everyone except for Apple would benefit from them lowering the margins.
In normal markets there are competitors who force each other to keep reasonable profit margins and to improve their product as opposed to milking other people's hard work at the expense of the consumer.
Makes me think of the concept of involution in Chinese business and how they understand all of this very differently, and how difficult it is to compete because of that.
Agreed, but this is about to be a special case if it's not already. We're contending with compulsory digital IDs and cashless economies that must be used on authorized devices, and Apple is one of the two makers. While it's certainly not necessary to use Patreon, not having it or something like it is an actual barrier to individual trade. I don't think I can get behind a schema that means Apple can take whatever portion it wants from a transaction initiated on a device that it creates and that is otherwise fairly necessary for day-to-day life in the developed world.
it sounds like it does make sense because if they are making $Z profits then they are still making profits and are not non-profit.
there could also be cases where cutting back to $Z profits might be preferable in case not doing so were to prompt legislation causing someone to be forcibly cut to $Z-1 or even $0 profits from a particular profit source.
Which it has been my observation that when someone is saying "X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits" it often coincides with saying therefore company X should be legislated on this particular profit source.
When parts of a market become dominated by one or few companies operating in a limited choice environment, consumers can't just opt to not use both Apple and Play store. You need to choose one in practice.
At this point the regulators should investigate what the barriers are to new entrants and if it's too costly and nobody has managed to cut in the last few years, establishing some rules is probably a good thing. This happens as industries mature and become critical, it happened in transportation (most bus, train companies), energy, water supply, trash, etc, depending on the country and market conditions.
Until it turns into cancer because of unrestrained growth.
Like it or not capitalism is a part of an ecosystem. We’ve been “educated” to believe that unrestrained growth in profits is what makes capitalism work, and yet day after day there are fresh examples of how our experience as consumers has gotten worse under capitalism because of the idea that profits should forever be growing.
Let's be honest if this was a European company it would be capped by law at 5-10%. Problem is who has an incentive to do the right thing here? Not apple and certainly not the US government (most of this revenue comes from outside the US).Nobody can defend it, yet nobody wishes to stop it.
The US government should absolutely do that, but they won't because they defends the interests of big companies rather than the interests of small companies or US citizens.
That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.
> That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.
While technically true, this argument doesn't provide any merit to the discussion. The App Store backed purchase for the Patreon subscription would not exist at all without the creator's work and investment in creating their form of content.
In the absence of the App Store, the creator would still have access to their patrons via mobile web and payment via the methods already provided by Patreon. The app is merely a convenience - it's a hard sell that this convenience is worth 30% of the creator's revenue through the platform.
I’m surprised they were surprised because operating costs should be pretty much nil. What do they do, pay a few thousand app reviewers, a few hundred software engineers? Pretty sure if they had to, they could operate App Store for a few tens of millions of dollars per year.
I really think I might be done with Apple. The only thing keeping me using them is how much I hate Android. The _millisecond_ a competitor arrives, I'm dropping my iPhone like a bad habit.
Off topic, but is there anything specific that you hate about Android? I find it acceptable. I'm trying to cut down my phone usage so maybe I'm more tolerant.
GrapheneOS on a Pixel is that competitor. Open source, more secure than Apple, compatible with nearly all Android apps. It's all the positive aspects of Android without the downsides (Google).
I keep hoping and wishing for a daily drivable linux phone that's compatible with all the us networks to come along. I'll keep hoping and wishing. Someday I hope we will get there!
They could lower the rates even more and still afford the government bribes and solid gold tchotchkes, but the whole point of the bribes is to not do that.
The problem is that Apple owns the platform and half of the mobile ecosystem. You can't just launch a competitive marketplace which could compete alongside Apple's app store, nor can you launch an alternative operating system. You have to launch a whole new smartphone stack complete with operating system, app distribution and app ecosystem.
There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.
This is all money that is reducing expenditure elsewhere. I get it: capitalism and economics. Yet I still think humanity could do better and I think capitalism itself suffers. Economics theory is broken if it thinks this is good for society in general.
I think what confuses me is that Apple is taking so much profit that it reduces their profits.
It's a classic direct-indirect management problem. Think about Android for a second. It costs nothing to put an app on their app store. People can make apps for themselves and then just publish because either "why not" or it's an easy way to distribute to friends and family. So basically it is making app creation easy. Meanwhile Apple charges you $100/yr to even put something up on the store, makes it hard to sideload, and consequently people charge for apps, which Apple rejoices as they get a 30% cut (already double dipping: profiting from devs, profiting from the devs' customers).
BUT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SMARTPHONES
A smartphone is useless without apps! People frustrated they can't find the apps they want on iPhone? They switch to Android. People on Android want to get away from Google but they can't do half the shit they want to on iPhones (and the other half costs $0.99/mo)? They bite their tongue or rage quit to Graphene.
The only reason this "fuck over the user" strategy works is because there's an effective monopoly.
All of this is incredibly idiotic as the point of a smartphone is that it is a computer that also makes phone calls. We have made a grave mistake in thinking they are anything but general purpose computers. All our conversations around them seem really silly or down right idiotic when you recognize they are general purpose computers. And surprise surprise, the result is that seeing how profitable and abusive the smartphone market can be leads to a pretty obvious result: turn your laptops and desktops into smartphone like devices. Where everything must be done through the app stores, where they lock you out of basic functionalities, where they turn the general purpose computer into a locked down for-their-purposes computer.
The thing that made the smartphone and the computer so great was the ability to write programs. The ability to do with it as you want. It's because you can't build a product for everyone. But the computer? It's an environment. You can make an environment that anyone can turn into the thing they want and they need. THAT is the magic of computers. So why are we trying to kill that magic?
It doesn't matter that 90% of people don't use it that way, and all those arguments are idiotic. Like with everything else, it is a small minority of people that move things forward. A small percentage of players account for the majority of microtransactions in videogames. A small percentage of fans buy the majority of merchandise from their favorite musicians. And in just the same way, it is a small number of computer users (i.e. "powerusers") that drive most of the innovation, find most of the bugs, and do most of the things. I mean come on, how long did it take Apple and Google to put a fucking flashlight into the OS? It was the most popular apps on both their stores for a long time before it got built in. Do you really think they're going to be able to do all the things?
Advocating for regulators to step in is already a value judgement. Why is "high profitability" a cause for regulatory scrutiny? The optimal behaviour in any ecosystem (corporate or natural) is to defend as much territory as is within your power, not to keep only to what covers your "needs". Why have you deemed this behaviour, which is emergent anywhere competition between organisms exists, as in need of regulation?
Apple is succeeding largely on merit, within the bounds of civilized, peaceful competition. Shouldn't we all just be grateful for the contributions they have made to our civilization?
What we need much, much less of in this world is government force, especially during these trying times of government force and outreach (something I expected my more left side of the isle colleagues to have finally realized by now).
COIVD really was a test of how much governmental draconianism we would take, and we failed spectacularly, and not only that, but are demanding more government.
So no, we don't need more regulation, especially given this country's history of regulatory capture. We need new solutions.
We don't need "more" government, we need the government to do its job. We need the regulators who have been legally appointed to oversee these areas to actually respond to these behaviors. Regulatory capture is the issue, but the solution isn't less government. It's getting corporate money and lobbying out of the government (Citizens United is to blame for most of our woes), increase the enforcement of anti-corruption laws, and get antitrust back on the table.
I want big corporations to be scared. I want them to fear for their own survival, and to tread lightly lest the sword of damocles fall upon them.
But what about my banking app! I think it’s only fair Apple take 30% on every transaction I make. After all they put in a huge amount of work validating and making sure my banking app is safe and functional.
Edit: Maybe I am greedy now, but it would be nice if large transactions like say buying a house only would cost me a 15% transaction fee to Apple.
Developers are a tricky market for this because they could realistically move to different platforms if stuff like this started to happen. Or at least work on remote machines.
If gaming on Macs ever became popular though this would be a real risk.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if macOS starts locking down CLI tools towards an App Store model too.
The day that happens is the day Apple sees a mass exodus of developers to Linux, I don't think they'd be that stupid. They enjoy enough goodwill right now as the platform of choice (vs. Windows for those that don't want to run desktop Linux), I can't imagine they'd casually just throw that away.
I'm not sure Claude Code is making enough for Apple to take notice & drastically alter their CLI like that? CC has 100-150k users across all platforms, paying $200-1200/yr each. Even if every developer is on the top tier Max plan, and on MacOS, that's $180mn in revenue at Anthropic. So even in the most optimistic scenario, that's only ~$50mn revenue for Apple at a 30% take.
That pales in comparison to the hardware & subscription revenues Apple brings in by being a dev-friendly OS.
If Claude Code was in the Mac App Store, they would have signed an agreement to do so (offer an in-app purchase option and Apple gets a 30% cut of subscriptions for the first year, 15% after that).
They would also be sandboxed such that the app wouldn't have access to the level of system integration it needs.
You joke, but legally they could. If game engines can charge a licence fee as a % of revenue from games developed on those engines, then legally there's not much to stop apple doing the same. Of course consumers and enterprises wouldn't tolerate it, but the barrier is commercial rather than legal.
I've long believes that the requirement to use in-app purchasing was to make such revenue sharing easier to audit - if you can only use Apple's payment system to do certain things (or else your app isn't approved), then Apple doesn't have to worry about things like audits.
Since various countries have regulated the ability to do third party payments from apps, Apple has since added API to launch said payments, to help generate statistics on use so that they can then demand third party auditing that the commissions are still being properly paid.
In the US there was a court decision that they couldn't meter or charge commission, which may very well be walked back and will lead to lots of fun future articles.
It made sense in the early days, phone operators were charging up to 90% for the infrastucture to send an SMS, and get a download link to a J2ME/Windows CE/Pocket PC/Symbian/Palm/Blackberry download link to install the app.
So everyone raced to the iOS app store, it was only 30%, what a great deal!
The problem is that two decades later it is no longer that great deal in mobile duopoly world.
It's kind of interesting that while the structure is largely the same, the underlying behaviour/intent has morphed from a disruptor-model into being toxic rent-seeking behaviour.
Isn't it strictly worse that they're already thinking they're entitled to 30% of your salary because your clients use Apple hardware? You can change what you use, you can't change what they use.
Stuff like this is ironic but I do think it's escape hatches like this that will make these tech companies, if they ever go down, go down kicking and screaming. Any platform holder that ever finds themselves in a bad place financially will 100% pull all the levers like this.
All the regulators in the world have their sights set on them and they know it. The light is half on already and the music is slowing. This party is soon to be over. It's a last ditch attempt at milking all they can.
30% of profit from stock sales initiated on Apple hardware should automatically go to Apple. Because why not. It's a digital sale, there is no physical goods changing hands. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. /s
The wealthiest company in the world really needs that last little bit from those Patreon creators who have it way too easy in their lives. It's not as if the people that take that meager bit of cash are going to invest it in Apple stock so they're going to have to pay up.
Sometimes I think the 30% was supposed to be 3% originally, and no one noticed the decimal was in the wrong place when they shipped it, and then people paid it anyway, so they kept it.
30% is just so unreasonable that it would be totally understandable if someone would believe this.
In 2008, the app store was launching, and physical software was still sold at Targets, Walmarts and other large retailers. A 30% margin was roughly what retailers would make off of physical software sales. By setting the App Store to be the same, Apple was signaling to retailers that they were not trying to undercut their margin, and keep a healthy relationship with them.
No one was buying boxed software in 2008. The second we had broadband, call it 2002-ish, everyone was downloading everything. For many of us that began in the 90s before we had broadband. Overnight downloads over 56K phone modems was already overtaking boxed purchases. More people downloaded Netscape in 1995 than bought it boxed.
It was 2008; "big box" software was largely seen as obsolete to the vast majority of developers. Marketing was done online, and the benefit of investing in retail had stopped outweighing the consequences. Online updates quickly became the norm, and service features supplanted point-of-sale business model (much like Apple's double-dip into microtransaction profits).
Apple chose 30% because they knew they weren't a retailer. You can hunt for a cheaper Diablo II copy online or at Wal-Mart, but not on iPhone.
Steam, the Kindle Store and iTunes all had similar sales cuts since before the app store launched in 2008.
It’s egregious now but at the time it wasn’t crazy because software developers often made way less than that when going through traditional publishing routes. Plus everyone was just happy to be making money off the new platform.
2035: Apple takes 30% of my Patreon, Google matched it through their "Competitive Parity Agreement," and the EU fined them both €2 billion which they paid in 45 minutes of revenue then raised fees to 32% to cover legal costs.
The real innovation was convincing us this was inevitable.
You can be the patron of a creator and Apple in the same time! Jokes aside, this is awful...I like/use Apple products but this unacceptable, I hope everyone dodges this and pays through the website
In all seriousness, finance people see everything through the lens of margins and money primarily. Since any company's function is to deliver value to its shareholders, if allowed, bean counters will scorch the earth for it.
Ultimately, this is at odds on how Jobs approached things, i.e., money was not the end all be all.
Apple's 30% tax was introduced under Steve Jobs and there were no small business exemptions back then. Jobs died in 2011. It's time to stop extrapolating what Jobs would be doing 15 years later in 2026 if he were still around. Could be the same, could be better, could be worse.
Tim Cook is usually good at politics, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Nobody other some CNBC guests really gets too upset when they take 30% from tinder, music or mobile gaming companies. And those types of apps run by unpopular large companies make up the majority of App Store revenue.
However, newspapers and content creators are popular in a way that carries political weight. It'd be wise for Apple exempt these categories and write off the few hundred million in forgone revenue as a political expense.
For example allowing the NYT or Joe Rogan to have nice paid apps with no fees would be a much more effective use of money than the same amount in political donations.
I'm running a small service, sub 150 users, no online signup kind of business, B2B. Small EU country. 95% of users ask 'do you have an mobile app?' in first 5 minutes of onboarding. Telling them how to install a PWA (and what it is and so forth) is an uphill battle. Unfortunately App Stores rule the non technical crowd.
This is not an accident. This is exactly why Apple (and Google also) have made the PWA experience bad for years. They must force users to believe their app store is the only source of programs.
To many users, an app seems to be perceived as the blessed way to access the web. While on a mobile, they are mostly a way to organize symlinks or bookmarks. Except, off course a web browser does its best to protect the user while most apps don't.
Meanwhile I continue doing the Lords work by telling kids that apps are not the internet. Hopefully, that 95% percentage will eventually decrease.
There may be a time where we have to push back, though, and this may be it. "There is no app" may sound terrifying now, but once we've educated users, it will only get less scary, until we might actually claim back some ownership of our own stuff from the likes of Apple.
This may just be more of a design and communications challenge for you, than your users. I have seen several design templates that use various forms of visuals to assist the user through the “add to Home Screen” process, which is just three steps; Share—-> More —-> Add to Home Screen. It Is arguably even a faster process than going through the App Store, even if users may be more familiar with it.
You could accompany it with some copy explaining how it keeps the service efficient and affordable, i.e., possible stating if you were to offer an app you would have to increase the price by 75% to pay Apple their fee and for the extra costs.
I suspect other arguments for PWAs would not really matter, like that you have no need to track them or use other abilities an app affords, etc. Most people only care about very few things engineers actually care, let alone know about.
I’ve always been an advocate of PWAs whenever it makes sense and will even design and architect to that objective. But even when I would deal with clients, I think the real “up hill battle” is that apps allow for higher fees and charges because they’re more work and come with greater expenses for for-profit apps, so there has been very little incentive to spread general user awareness about the “add to Home Screen”/PWA.
It’s a bit of a paradox, but I guess that seems to be an under-appreciated driver in something like “advanced consumer capitalist economies”, where the “rational actor” simply does not exist anymore.
BTW, you don't need the app store for that. You can use Firebase App Distribution which doesn't require you to go through the review process.
Basically you just ask their email address and add it to a list in Firebase. Upload your ipa to firebase and the user will receive an email with a link to download
What kind of users are these? Power-users or normal users (Android etc.) or dum..Apple users?
Because in my circle, power-users and beyond. Everybody is angry with apps needed for everything, you want buy bread in store, "do you have our app?" It's a meme here.
And in our local subreddit, 600k users. Sentiment is the same.
We also tried to bypass stores apps with generating new accounts and distributing QR/cards for free to everyone.
It was kinda popular.
And problems are more real with each day, eg.: scammers have their work way easier, since dumb users can take a huge loan directly from banking app in their phone.
Clients and customers will not stand for this. I don’t agree but I’ve seen it enough times now it doesn’t surprise me. They want an app, doesn’t matter if you have an identical web-based version that does the exact same thing, they want an app.
I write cross platform apps using Vue/Quasar (previous Angular/Ionic, and before that Titanium), I have put up a web-based version of their app (as a fallback and as an early MVP) and it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to even play with it. Then you put an app up on TestFlight and suddenly they are using it.
And that’s just trying to get the to use the web while I’m still setting up crap for a “native” app. The idea of not having an app is a non-starter.
Again, I don’t agree with them, I’m just telling you what it’s like out there if you are developing software for other people. An app brings “prestige”, they want be able to say “we have an app”. And no, saving a webpage to the home screen is not a viable alternative (trust me, I’ve tried). Clients and customers reject that and there are extra limitations with that approach (or there were last time I tried, around using the camera feed, things that work fine in mobile Safari).
OK, but you sound like you consult for businesses. Who may not be rational. That doesn't necessarily mean end users are demanding an app. They could be, but your anecdote here doesn't support that conclusion. Patreon's clients are end users.
Apps are usually built so people can't skip ads. Its the only reason to have an app. Other than esoteric reasons like "we also have an app because x,y,z also have apps".
I don't think that applies to Patreon which, as far as I know, doesn't have any ads in the first place?
The app might make it easier for them to enforce DRM-like behaviors to prevent people from pirating creators content, but I strongly suspect people aren't doing that on iOS regardless.
Yep, it's the driving force why I rarely install apps. If the mobile site doesn't work well, it's a good filter that I shouldn't use it. (Doom scrolling trap).
For those that are not aware, on Android you can install Firefox and Ublock-Origin. Life saver!
I use the Patreon app. It's great. I get to see stuff from my favorite creatives weeks (sometimes months) early, and ad-free. Since many of them are youtubers and I don't pay google to show me less ads, this is a huge value prop. And, the Patreon app can cast videos to my TV, so it's really a complete experience.
Hard agree. I hate it when a website force me to get an app now. I feel like websites have matched apps in terms of feel-good on mobile that I don’t really use apps anymore
I think they could get pretty far with a PWA, but there are legitimate arguments to go native. For use cases like podcasts, where users can download them ahead of time, it seems like Safari limits storage to 1GB [0]. Plus playing background audio might not be as good an experience.
Patreon isn't something you need to be checking all the time, though, unless you patronise a LOT of people. It can pretty much be a "setup and forget" kinda deal.
I use the app for its native podcast integration. The RSS URL also works but I have yet to find a decent RSS client that will synchronise progress across devices well.
Funnily enough I stopped using the Patreon app for podcasts with the big rewrite a while back where it became almost unusable and switched to Overcast instead.
Because apps are the lowest-friction path to users. If you publish a tool that targets an audience of more than a very specific niche of people, you'll get people asking for an app literally every day. My inbox used to be full of them.
That's not a reasonable solution. Have you used the Patreon app? I use it regularly on Android, and have dozens of audio podcast files downloaded through it.
I've been trying to find a decent 16'' laptop (to replace my thinkpad x1 carbon).
Been running linux (popos) for donkey years and I entertained the thought I should go back to Apple and get the MacbookPro-16 (which is probably the best laptop you can buy imho).
Then I remembered all this crap that Apple does and dismissed it.
A few years ago I got the m1 macbook air (lovely hardware!). Some software update fully bricked it, which is really annoying already. Then I found out the only way to restore it was to connect it to another macbook. That was it for me.
Google play store and steam are the same. This is regulatory. Hating a company for maximising profits is really something you should aim at legislation to control unchecked capitalism.
Except neither of those two are the exclusive way to install software on a computer that you own. All 3 have their issues, but Apple is uniquely bad in this way. I don't find myself Hating Steam/Valve.
I still can't believe developers love to work for this feudal overlord. They are building a wall around our profession. Have a little foresight and move your business elsewhere.
It's not so much that I love giving 30% to Apple, and more that there is no way to move your business elsewhere because Apple monopolizes mobile app distribution.
And the other half of the mobile app market is monopolized by Google who copies the pricing model while delivering even worse (if any) service to developers.
It's either getting out of mobile apps or paying up.
This is not going to change without drastic steps by regulators, which both Apple and Google fight tooth and nail.
You know some of us remember Mac System [7|8|9] and how MSFT pretty much ruled everything (Apple had low %).
We kept working on the platform and developing tools and things changed. Of course Apple is a lot more powerful than MSFT back then and the general population is their target.
When iPhone came out the sentiment was clearly opposite. The “sweet solution” was ridiculed and workarounds found. When web caught up, it was plagued with self inflicted performance issues. And eventually Apple decided to not invest in good PWA support.
I was an app advocate for a long time, now I made a PWA and it’s maybe 90% there. But you still get behaviors that you can not fix.
IMO the worst however is products that have a fully functional website, but refuse to let you use it (e.g.: Instagram)
Yes. It's improved now, but the mobile web was bad for a long time. The early days of Android experienced a "web-first" ecosystem by force, as lazy businesses just threw a webview around their site, and it was awful
Web is much better when the data should be public.
Apps are much better when any kind of data privacy is required.
The trouble is, market forces always try and push things the other way.
The Reddit App for example is totally unnecessary. It's just public web content and should be a website.
SaaS on the other hand shouldn't really be a thing at all. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea for their private data and app state to be on a cloud somewhere they don't control.
Note that this does not preclude the use of cloud services that users can control e.g. by specifiying trusted endpoints. I'm trying to build the idea of "data locality first" software. I.e. you know where your data are and where they aren't.
I strongly prefer apps. The thing that goes wrong here is: Duopoly bad. Competition good.
Since app distribution is not a fair market anymore, it needs to be regulated. Either the fees have to go down close to cost or alternative app stores should be allowed. And not the malicious compliance version of it (as Apple is trying in the EU).
> Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?
Because the web is still barely usable for anything more complex than showing a few lines of static text and an image?
Because for almost as long as (modern) mobile apps exist the web was even less usable?
Because even now you can whip up a fast complex mobile app with 60fps animations and native behaviours probably in minutes? While on the web you're lucky if you can figure out which state/animation/routing library du jour isn't broken beyond all hope?
I might be in the minority but I have a really hard time using iOS and their apps in general (I use Android).
I struggle (and mostly curse) to figure out what swipe gesture to use to get simple stuff to just work. Not super sure all the 60fps animations and wizz-bang behaviours are being used the way you think they are.
Interestingly, Patreon doesn't give creators an option of "Just don't accept donations for us from Apple users" instead, which is what my old project (SQLite Browser / DB Browser for SQLite) would have gone with if available. :(
I've instead handed the reins to others, so I don't have skin in this game any more. ;)
Apple generally frowns upon things like that. At one point they wouldn't even let you disclose in your UI that Apple was taking a 30% cut of transactions, it was against the rules to do so.
I don't get it. Apple is the top 3 most valuable companies in the WORLD. THE WORLD. They act like a greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500, because you ordered a side of fries which they did not eat.
Aren't they making the majority of their money from selling hardware and iCloud subscriptions? Why they go on and milk developers, who make apps FOR THEIR ECOSYSTEM?!
$1500 represents the money you've already given them to purchase the hardware. You already overpay for that - fine - then they demand a 30% cut from $5 you're giving to a struggling independent creator. It's pure greed coming from one of the richest companies in the world.
They are greedy because Apple fans would by a turd in a box if it had an Apple logo.
If I was in charge of Apple I would do the same thing. In fact, I would likely increase the Apple cut to 40%. People would pay, they like their slick toys.
The developers will continue to make apps for their ecosystem regardless.
Just do what we all do to dodge this, have the Account management and purchasing abilities sit inside an embedded browser window that opens up from a button push in the app. Yes it adds a little barrier but with Apple Pay it is a very small barrier and the juice is worth the squeeze.
In practice I’ve seen apps just game the system by (1) using IAP using the normal flow, and (2) giving user a button unrelated to purchasing that would open a new WebView, which just happens to contain a purchase button.
I actually love Apple for pushing this matter this hard and sticking to its guns. This will bring in more regulatory scrutiny not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. That will force Apple to give up (maybe in a decade or so) this practice of arbitrary rules and squeezing the last penny from others.
Thanks a lot, Eddy Cue, for all that you do to bring Apple down to its knees!
Patiently waiting for a mandatory 30% fee on every transaction made with iOS banking software. Maybe that'll put a definitive stop to forcing mobile "apps" with jailbreak detection on customers and have banks think twice before crippling the functionality of their websites.
Question for the indie developers here; do you get more paying users from Apple devices?
I’ve never even considered publishing apps for other platforms as my gut tells me juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. Or to put it another way, I would prefer customers who already proved they have deep(er) pockets and are price insensitive.
Yes, I have the same app on iOS and Android, and for a long time it brought in half the revenue on Android for twice the effort (really messy SDK combined with too many OS versions and devices). Lately the gap has been closing, but it's still roughly 40% Android and 60% iOS, though I have slightly more installs on iOS.
And this is a big part of why I don't own an iOS device, and likely won't be purchasing another laptop from them, despite liking the hardware generally.
Not that I like Google much more re: Android and locking down side-loading more than before.
I was considering GrapheneOS when I bought my latest phone 2 years ago, but decided to stay with Android in the end. It has become very clear to me that I made the wrong choice.
I’m surprised at the comments here. Why should the government set the “right” margin?
If you cap the margin, you’re entrenching the monopoly forever. Allow them to charge what they want, and set tax rates on corporations commensurate with the size of their profits. Make it easier for competitors to start.
The path to a sustainable marketplace does not come from top down enforcement of margins. It comes from competition
> Why should the government set the “right” margin?
For monopolies, that is the least bad option. What would be way better, though, is mandating an end to that monopoly by allowing all users to install any apps they want on their iPhones without needing Apple's permission in any way, shape, or form.
You’re permanently entrenching them as the winner, and reducing the incentive for a competitor to emerge. The cost of developing these platforms is high and clearly it’s hard enough to compete, why would you kneecap future competitors from the get go?
And competition comes from creating a competitive market. Rent seeking behaviour is not new. This is monopolistic behaviour that should be regulated. I agree that capping fees is not solving the crux of the problem though.
I don't understand, doesn't the market solve these issues? Here's what I figure would happen:
1. App creators will pass the extra cost over to the iPhone users.
2. Android (and other platforms that can host smartphone apps) will be more competitive and start to look better for both app creators and consumers.
Sure, there's a bit of a context switching cost. Not everyone will just be able to automatically change over to an Android phone tomorrow. But it doesn't need to happen all at once. These phones get updated and replaced every 1-2 years. If iOS users see their app store prices rising too high, and they aren't OK with this, then they will switch to Android eventually, once it's worth it.
Otherwise, I don't see any problem with Apple reaping the benefit of their powerful and well-built walled garden ecosystem.
> If iOS users see their app store prices rising too high, and they aren't OK with this, then they will switch to Android eventually, once it's worth it.
Or they'll stop buying as many apps, or stop supporting people on Patreon.
There is a lot of stickiness associated with apple products. Be it their walled gardens or having better hardware or brand recognition. This is especially true in the American market
At the end of the day Apple is doing their damnedest to force the requirement to support other app stores. They want their cake, and they want to eat it too. Unfortunately they are going to make an epic fuckton of money before they get told to stop.
Why would you want to give the government such power? That always amazes me... when there is an issue, people jump on "let's vote for government to regulate this", but then they are surprised when a new government gets to power and uses this new regulation/capability against you.
My understanding was that you could have a button that could take the user outside of the app to pay (i.e. your website). So progress, but not this level of freedom yet.
This is also a political issue. The administration could have ftc investigate this under anti-trust, and the government could also pass tighter laws preventing this. But this current administration is likely too friendly to big corporate interests.
Well. I own an iPhone, a Macbook, Airpods, Apple Watch. I'm in the Apple ecosystem since the last 16 years.
Unfortunately, due to their behavior in the latest years, I'm not going to buy anything Apple anymore.
Fortunately for me, I prefer Linux to MacOS so I never have been totally tied in the Apple ecosystem and I know how to leave the boat without a lot of hassle.
I'm really saddened because they know how to make great products when they want to. It's just infuriating that everything that is shitty in their products is never due to randomness or bugs or whatever, but ALWAYS because they decided to fuck you.
It is more clunky and less polished than android. On the other hand, it is far more secure.
I was a user of android for 15+ years, and I had been using a pixel 4a when the battery issue came up last year. Google handled that so terribly I bought a used pixel 7a and installed Graphene.
Installation is quite easy. The lack of native voice-to-text was a pain; I installed a 3rd party utility (FUTO) for that, but unlike the native one where it translates while you talk, FUTO waits for you to finish then translates everything.
The messaging app is less integrated too. Android finally fixed things up with Apple such that emoji responses (heart, thumbs up, +1, etc) would appear as an annotation after the text message I sent, but now I'm back to getting "So and so likes your comment <full text of my comment>".
Some of the other pain was because I have tried to cut down on other google properties. I use "here we go" for mapping instead of google maps. Due to the scale of things, the real time traffic updates on google maps is far better than on here we go. I use fastmail instead of gmail and I'm 100% happy with that solution.
Use Android or use websites instead of apps. Apple pushes their app ecosystem so hard because it's their walled garden. If you want to support a creator, go their website and click whatever they offer.
This means Apple is literally going to take nearly 3x in fees from Patreon's customers than Patreon is taking from their own customers.
My understanding is that the reason the number 30% is so magical is a historical anomaly. When software was physically distributed back in the day, 15% of the MSRP was reserved for the distributor and another 15% for the retailer. When these digital marketplaces were set up, the companies just said "well, we're the distributor and the retailer, so we'll keep both". Forgetting the fact that the cost to distribute and retail the software is literally pennies on the dollar of what it used to be.
I think the irony in this case is that this is a greed problem of their own making. When Steve Jobs announced that apps on the original iPhone would only be $1-$3, he set off the first enshittification crisis in the software industry. In 2008, Bejeweled cost $19.99 if you wanted to buy it on the PC. On the iPhone it was $0.99! This artificially low anchor price is what kicked off the adoption of ad and subscription driven software models in the first place.
My understanding was that the retailer margin was 50% and the distributor margin was 10%. So Apple/Steam/etc went "half of 60% is a great deal".
Of course the retailer margin is never actually 50%. That's theoretical if 100% of product is sold at MSRP. Actual retail margins are about 25% because of sales, write-offs, et cetera.
OTOH when there's a sale in Steam, they still get their full cut (of the reduced price).
I remember writing apps for PalmOS (long time ago) distributors like PalmGear took over 60% from international developers like me, plus they held your earnings until you hit a minimum payout threshold. Add bank fees on top of that, and it was basically not worth developing for the platform. 30% felt like a godsend in comparison. (I'm not defending the Apple / Google tax)
From what I could find, it does seem that major retailers back in the day (CompUSA, Circuit City, etc) were only making 15% margin on software sales. This is much lower than other product categories - but also software didn't take up much floor space.
Had no idea about the history and the 15%/15% split but when the topic comes up I just remember how good the 30% seemed back in, what, 2008?
It made perfect sense that this shiny new iOS platform would take 30% of a cheap app to ensure that it matches the high quality of iOS. These were little productivity apps and games at the time.
This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?
What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
> What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
You joke but this already happens with places like DoorDash. They take 30% of the order from the store owner after adding their own additional fees to the order that customers pay.
Someone I know owns a pizza store and his prices are 30% higher on DoorDash but some people still pay. The big difference is it's not a monopoly. He offers regular delivery at normal store prices and 95% of his deliveries go through that.
>What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
I'm pretty sure Apple has discussed things exactly like this.
Their upper management really does tend to think that 30% of any monetary transaction on an Apple platform belongs to them. Too bad our government is too busy being ran by the billionaires to do anything about these abuses from billionaires.
I was working for a small software company at the time and we thought it was outrageous. We were selling our software online direct through our own web site and the cost was far lower. A few percent for credit card processing fees, and the server/bandwidth cost was inconsequential.
>This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?
That's the other part of the surrogate war happening with mobile. The web was unregulated and hard to profit off of, so Jobs took great strides to push the "there's an app for that" mentality that overtook that age. This had the nifty side effect of killing off flash, but it's clear the prospects didn't stop there. Not to mention all the other web hostile actions taken on IOS to make it only do the bare minimum required to not piss off customers.
It very much could just be a website with no reliance on IOS as a dependency. But Apple clearly doesn't want that.
Steve Jobs never announced a price ceiling for apps on the App Store. The well-known I Am Rich app for iPhone retailer for $999, the actual price ceiling.
30% might be fair when you have a choice of either marketing and selling your app yourself, or just using an app store to do everything for you. But when you are forced to use the app store, things get really stupid really fast.
Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.
The Mac app store, being optional for developers, is a good example of how much people actually want something like this.
> Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.
Oh, no, they can comprehend, they just don't care. Apple controls access to a valuable pool of business, and they are going to extract as much value as possible from people wanting access to that pool. And, of course, they are going to try to burnish it with marketing speak, but that doesn't mean they believe their own marketing.
To keep their growth rates going, these mega companies soon need to swallow the whole country’s GDP. I really wonder where this is going. They can’t keep growing at some point.
This might become technocracy at some point, if the corporations become stronger than the state govs. In that case, the entire NOAM region will become a so-called technate, ruled by a form of ToS. I'd say, technocracy is way worse than even autocracy.
I think you may have fundamentally misunderstood what a technocracy is: it has nothing to do with tech companies whatsoever. From literally the article that you have linked:
> The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy.
Technocracy is probably not the right word for what you mean. Oligarchy is probably a better one. This will probably evolve into idiocracy if you have seen the similarly named documentary .
I’ve heard it said that monopolies aren’t a flaw of the system—they’re its product. What else could perpetual, cutthroat competition lead to? This isn’t an unintended consequence. In every new era, even when an industry is disrupted or reinvented, a small number of dominant companies work aggressively to prevent real upheaval—by acquiring smaller competitors, engaging in regulatory capture, and shaping the rules in their favor. Historically, governments have often served the interests of their corporate patrons. The system itself is built for maximal extraction, and there is no “invisible hand” waiting in the wings to protect consumers. There are no evil and good CEOs, just cogs in this machine doing what they're incentivized to do, accumulate.
There is no monopoly here though. Android makes up a pretty substantial proportion of users. That users continue to use Apple devices despite this kind of greed (and that people on HN cheered when Apple defeated Epic in court) shows that users don't care, which is unfortunate.
Wait a minute, there is a payment surface you can build in iOS(e.g. iirc a stripe demo video from the epic ruling last year), where one can pay outside the apple in-app payment method. The surface could specifically get you to your own web view(i.e. your own domain or stripe's surface) for payments. The bigger idea, I thought, would not let apple figure out a company's take was, to ask them to pay up.
How does this shakedown work for companies/orgs that have large number of paying iOS DAUs?
Apple is doing to creators what the recording industry did to musicians. Enjoy what's left of the Golden Age of Patreon content because greed is going to suffocate it out of existence.
> "According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over."
If a fan starts a $10/mo Patreon membership inside the iOS app, Apple's subscription terms imply $3/mo goes to Apple for the first year (then $1.50/mo after), and Patreon's platform fee still applies on top. Patreon says Apple is also forcing the remaining ~4% of creators using legacy billing to migrate to subscription billing by Nov 1, 2026 or risk the app being pulled. That's a meaningful hit to creator economics for something that's closer to "patronage" than a typical in-app digital good.
I don't pay attention to all of Apples behaviors (still running an iphone 11) but this feels quite rent-seeky and creator hostile.
This is actually against their App Store rules, and likewise the article has the following bit:
> Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, [...]
it would totally not fly with Apple. They don't let this 30% commission to be visible by users, just like every other company that does such commissions. You don't see that the creator only gets about half of your donation on YouTube or Twitch, you never see that Visa takes 1% of your payment in a store, etc. Even governments do that. I don't see the value of VAT in the price of goods in stores. The US sales tax is an exception.
A lot of people would complain about how high those fees (or taxes) are if they saw them spelled out for them.
IE was not just used to break the internet. It also had advantages. It supported features other browsers didn't.
Without IE, we wouldn't have had XMLHttpRequest, which means we wouldn't have had Gmail, which means we wouldn't have seen the bloom of "web 2.0" websites.
As for Java, Microsoft's C# is way ahead of Java in terms of language features. No idea how the runtime performance compares these days (both are very fast), but I'd rather have Microsoft Java than Oracle Java.
Microsoft's intent was always to break the competition, but they did it by offering features others wouldn't or couldn't. Evil Microsoft's Windows was the most feature-packed operating system out there because they threw every possible feature at the wall, kept what sticked front and center, and bothered to maintain what didn't stick. Microsoft Agents, the shitty Clippy things, were supported well into the Windows 7 era despite dying out the moment Bonzi Buddy was found out to be malicious. But Microsoft dared to break backwards compatibility with .NET 1 to fix the typing problem with generics that Java has to this very day; they just ended up supporting both, side by side.
I have a theory that they've actually succeeded with the latter too. I mean, look at Java now, and look how many mini-Javas (all those JIT-compiled languages and their runtimes) have emerged since. The point of Java was to unify, we've got more division than ever instead.
If you mention Java, I think you may only incite more nostalgia for the monopolies of yesteryear. Was Microsoft's approach to Java evil and ill-intentioned, yes, absolutely. But it eventually resulted in .NET and C#, so I'd say that particular battle was a net benefit to humanity in the end. .NET is even truly cross-platform now, and open-source. Meanwhile Apple achieves interesting technical advances with their new hardware but I will never benefit from the existence of it because I will not use hardware that is locked to a prison OS.
It gets real depressing when you compare the recent case of Google to what was done to AT&T in the 80s.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but it feels like over the past couple of decades we've gone from clever guys coming together with an idea and starting companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, to celebrating buyouts of startups by large behemoths—that's how low the definition of success has dropped. Is competition law even a thing anymore?
It is, but the problem is that no one is enforcing the laws both old and new. That is why the elites hated Lina Khan, she was simply enforcing laws already on the books.
Apple also includes a web browser on iOS, but forces every other browser you can install to use their browser engine. It's one of the many reasons they are being sued by the DOJ for anti-competitive practices.
Apple also sits on a board that approves new web technologies for standards formalization, so they can squash adoption of anything that might make web browser APIs as capable as a native application, so that they can force people to make native apps where they can extract a percentage from it (they can't do that with a web application). Rather than work out reasonable ways to support things other browsers allow, they just say "no thanks" and then there is no standard allowed to move forward.
It's extremely abusive and anti-competitive. I hope the DOJ continues to pursue litigation against Apple for this and many other things.
Why can't Patreon hike up prices in their iPhone app?
It would not only shift the cost to the user, it makes them cover the 30%, while discouraging the use of the iPhone app itself.
They could add a banner before the payment is processed that says "you could be paying less for the same benefit to the patron if you pay from our website. The price is higher here because of Apple, and you're covering the fee."
The regulator must step in now and allow installing applications outside of the AppStore! We are witnessing in real-time what a monopoly and a walled garden leads to.
I'm not betting the US to do this right now. But look at the EU... Alternative app stores are allowed (forced by EU regulations), and it already lead to lower fees.
The vast majority of people will continue find and install (and pay for) stuff via the AppStore.
Let this be a cautionary tale for Google's plans with Android (developer verification, etc).
With this logic, one should pay Google for making purchases in their browser or Netflix should pay e.g. Samsung a fee, as users consume content on their devices. Truly ridiculous.
Am I the only one that dislikes phone apps?! For example, I do NOT want to install an app for my power company. Just text/email me if you need to reach me and I can do anything else through their website.
I do support apps that support unique phone features: Phone, camera, GPS, etc.
So the company that also lets you support your favorite podcasts via a subscription decided their competitor should pay 30% more just to do the same thing? Cool.
Jack up every Apple user's monthly payment by 30%.
When they go into the app to figure out what the hell happened, they will find big red text saying "want to avoid the Apple tax? re-subscribe through our website! (Link)"
They click the link, it opens a webpage where all the payment info has been auto-filled. They click "ok." Bam, fee gone.
Can someone explain how much of value the iOS app is to users? I'm a noob at Patreon, aren't creators receiving their support through the website's payment gateway already? I'm not really against a company setting the rules if it's their platform, if the market cannot accept it then alternatives (competitors) will eventually find new ways.
> 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.
I'm curious what percentage of creators chose which
This was a great reminder to me that I needed to cancel every subscription I have tied to my Apple account. I'll give it to them though, they do make it very easy - I just cancelled all 10 of them in 10 seconds.
For those who, like me, are looking to break free from Apple but were tied to it through photo storage in iCloud, here's a first step towards independence: Immich! I self-host an instance for my whole family, and it works like a charm.
Yeah. I get charging for hosting an app in your store, that requires work to build the ecosystem and security and stuff. But you have to draw the line on a platform and ecosystem and vetting that someone else has done. What did apple do to build kindles library of books? What did apple do to attract creators that patreon's users would like to support? Nothing. They should get 30% for installing paid apps that they are vetting and hosting, but nothing for things third parties are hosting and vetting
Isn't Patreon effectively a sort of payment processor? So how is this different from Apple demanding a 30% cut of transactions conducted by (for example) Paypal? (Assuming Paypal has an iOS app ofc, I have no idea.)
Good point. That makes them a combined platform and payment processor. So it seems to me the logical question would be, shouldn't they just break the platform part out then? But isn't that exactly what their percentage fee amounts to? So Apple should be entitled to 30% of their (IIRC) 5%, right?
Really they ought to further split that out into "processing fee" and "platform services fee" and Apple would then be entitled to 30% of the latter.
I assume this is only for purchases made using the app, right?
Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense. Google gets a cut of all revenue, Apple gets a cut of all revenue, x, y, z, ... there would be nothing left over.
Until there will be a broad regulation that enforce any general purpose computing device to allow installing non-provisioned apps, we'll be in those situations.
The amount of people defending this because it's apple in here is astounding. This is possibly the least consumer friendly thing apple has done in a while, and that's saying something.
I really don’t understand this attitude. Of course it will. If enough people do it. This is how corporations change not through protest and we’re certainly not going to get any antimonopoly anything going on soon.
They make literally about 40% of their profit off of Apple services. Do you really think if people on mass stopped buying Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, an iCloud, they wouldn’t care?
I mean the minute people started talking a general worker strike in Minneapolis all of a sudden all these companies freaked our and wrote a letter protesting about IVE’s behavior in Minneapolis.
I refuse the purchase any apple products (I was never a fan and don't like paying premium for a walled garden) but it's impossible to offer an app if you don't also make one for apple devices.
There is no way around it especially in an apple dense market like Switzerland.
They have a clear monopoly and together with Google a duopoly.
I can thankfully continue with my refusal to purchase from HP perfectly fine.
Apple has an Apple Pay for Donations[1] program, which doesn't apply for rent seeking entities like Patreon. I wonder if Patreon's 10% fee is commensurate with the negligible value that they provide?
This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you. There are differences, Google is somewhat better on this specific point, but there's enough things Google is worse at (such as privacy) that choosing Google isn't exactly without downsides.
Your mindset results in Apple users thinking "the problem is those stupid Android idiots who accept being in an ad tech company's spyware garden" and Android users thinking "the problem is those stupid Apple idiots who accept that 30% of literally everything they do goes to Apple". In reality, we have a common enemy in the big tech duopoly and extremely lacklustre regulation which lets them keep doing this shit. You calling me an idiot for making a different shitty trade-off than you helps nobody.
> This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you.
Or allowing users to control their hardware and software and give them the freedom to install the hell they want on it?
We've been using computers for eternities where we still have the possibility, yet, as soon as it is about phones then "no way, we protecting you from bad actors".
Give me a break, you want to help protect me from bad actors implement proper software/hardware jails/containers for third party software and that's it.
You do have an alternative to both Google and Apple, which gives you the best of both worlds - it's called the Sailfish mobile OS - https://sailfishos.org/ . (As for my snarky post, read my other comment in this same thread to understand why I posted what I posted.)
Every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want. - Don't most of you here tell me that corporates don't need regulations as smart people "vote with their wallet"? If this is what some want to spend money on, the term "idiot" sounds justified ... anyway, the point was not to offend; just to embarrass some mildly to introspect their purchasing decision.
Just to put things into perspective: Visa and MasterCard interchange fee in EU is 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Apple taking 100x this is just ridiculous.
While its true that creators often share "extras" in return for support, it's crazy to call the support itself a "digital good." I can only assume they mean it is digitally good for their business.
So how do I avoid apple taking the cut? Unsubscribe from people in my ios app and resubscribe on the web? I subscribe to super small creators where this 30% cut makes a meaningful difference.
Yeah, I don't understand this at all. I use Patreon and I support a couple of tech content creators. But my use of Patreon intersect in no way with iOS and I'm not sure how it would. Can someone please explain?
Okay so basicially apple users are dumb as rocks which is why iOS is so profitable in the first place, and they are corraled into installing apps and making in-app purchases.
I think I’m old enough to have experienced this cycle so many times with so many businesses that I just feel kind of silly to hate on Apple or Microsoft or whoever. They’re all just maximizing profits as designed.
I think people find it easier to scowl at the villain du jour than to dig into the deep complex issue of when capitalism doesn’t work, when the government isn’t doing enough, and what we could do about it… or the feeling that we really can’t do much.
That's why people don't dig into the deep complex issues. Because it's uncomfortable, and forces one to confront the potential reality that their worldview, and everything they've known about how our society works is wrong, broken, and collapsing in front of them.
It can be a very distressing and depressing state of mind. There's a reason "ignorance is bliss" is a common trope, because there's some real truth to it. For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
> For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
I think it isn't just some, it's effectively everyone, the nature of being human. Instead, there's a group of people who are willing to sacrifice their emotional and wellbeing to face these problems of reality, and try to use the limited power they do have to improve them, for the greater good.
We can do a lot if we pressure the company or the regulations around it. Maybe not right now in this current regime, but tides will shift.
The issue is that people's attention spans on this are much too short. The fervor around this may not even last to the end of this month, let alone until a change in power allows a new administration to properly go after the company.
You don’t need to solve the problems of capitalism to call bullshit bullshit. Saying “companies maximize profits” doesn’t magically make the behavior acceptable and when Apple does this, it’s not just “the market at work,” it’s the use of market power.
Complaining about it is part of the system operating the way it operates. It’s factored in already. I just think that it’s not really interesting. It’s reasoning about the instance, not the class.
Good question considering apps unequivocally have the right by court order to use their own billing, and considering the contempt ruling and referral for criminal investigation Apple already got for violating that order.
> According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over.
I've never used the Patreon app even once -- those creators I support, I set it up on the website.
> But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops. But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
Moreover, the fee only applies to the subscriptions made using Apple's payment system. That being said, in most jurisdictions their payment system is the only one developers can use in an app. IMHO, this is the real problem.
I can’t remember being more enraged than when I learned my YouTube premium was more expensive per month than it needed to be because I had signed up on iPhone, so many people wasting money every month, and YouTube isn’t allowed to mention the option to pay on web
If they weren’t a public company, you’d think they were the mob. I’ll never trust the Apple ecosystem ever again
Yep, the tax comes from using the Patreon's in-app purchase system. Using a browser on an iPhone/iPad or any other device will not be taxed. Seen many creators putting in their bios suggesting people use the browser instead of the in app purchase.
Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.
Knowing there are Apple fanboys around HN (I got downvoted for saying the liquid glass thing and the iphone air were pointless) I fear they will take your comment seriously
Tech companies are pushing their clients step by step out of new devices, platforms, subscription services, SaaS, ...
Governments are pushing citizens step by step into Tech to control and tax their lives.
At the end we, as simple humans, are always in the middle.
Imagine if Visa or Mastercard decided they were going to take a 30% cut as a merchant fee. Governments wouldn't allow it. Why does Apple get a complete pass?
if many people subscribe via ios then obviously apple is bringing creators more paying subscribers no so seems kinda fair to charge for access to that ecosystem?
Does this apply to creators that aren't even in the Apple ecosystem or is it only for the patreons paying through the iOS app? What if everyone moved to the website?
Epic lost on 9 counts out of 10 in the original lawsuit. The one they won is being appealed and in the process Fortnight was ordered to be reinstated in the US. I wouldn't bet that this arrangement will survive appeals.
Epic didnt really win. If i recall correctly the ruling ended up being that 3rd party payment processors are allowed but 27% of app revenue is still owed to apple if that route is taken. So you can save 3% by using 3rd party payment processing but thats around how much those services cost anyway so no real saving
> While Apple implemented App Store policies to allow developers to link to alternative payment options, the policies still required the developer to provide a 27% revenue share back to Apple, and heavily restricted how they could be shown in apps. Epic filed complaints that these changes violated the ruling, and in April 2025 Rogers found for Epic that Apple had willfully violated her injunction, placing further restrictions on Apple including banning them from collecting revenue shares from non-Apple payment methods or imposing any restrictions on links to such alternative payment options. Though Apple is appealing this latest ruling, they approved the return of Fortnite with its third-party payment system to the App Store in May 2025.
A service that Apple is mandating everyone to use or else get kicked off their operating system...
This would be an entirely different conversation if Patreon was still allowed to use other payment systems outside of Apple's IAP service. No, this is Apple forbidding competitors on their platform.
- the devs all need to get licesnses and specific hardware to develop for IOS
- They spin up their own servers to manage all the finances coming in
- They work on their payment processing solution separate from Apple. And Patreon still pays some fee to apple over the app.
- the model of Patreon only takes 5% off of creators, so that's not enough for Apple. It also wants a cut at the customers of the website who provide services. Customers not beholden to any one platform.\
- And to force them to do that, they are kicking the other processing plan off as an option, leaving only them to work with.
And it's somehow not evil? If I let a friend sleepover at my apartment, is the landlord in the right to demand a day of rent from them too?
web is now so good that mobile apps lost any meaning to exist - unless you need to access some local hw or data on consistent basis(the app must run as daemon or something like that). in other words, if you app is a service, just use web. if it is not a service, then you just sell it as you would a desktop program.
Happy to pay 42% higher Patreon fees in exchange for ease of subscription control, visibility, safety and ease of payment with in-app Apple payments.
It’s funny seeing people call 78% operating margin too high, while we all know that software VCs demand 90% margin from their startups, and if it wasn’t Apple, people here would call that an excellent business.
Apple's ecosystem is the 8th wonder of this world. Nowhere else you can put a logo on a piece of cloth or aluminum wheel and sell them for hundreds of dollars. Greatest capitalist company of all time.
With only two mobile OS providers, they should be highly regulated. But given Tim Cook gave Trump a golden award and attended the premiere of the Melania documentary, I doubt they’ll get any antitrust trouble. Disappointing rent seeking behavior.
This goes way beyond rent seeking, it is much closer to outright theft, for rent you get something in return. This is just a nice form of robbery and I'm sure it is all legal by some stretched definition of the word but it makes me sick.
Yesterday we had the monthly Woz adulation article, I really like the man but would like him even more if he told Cook to his face that this is not the Apple that he had in mind when he co-founded the company. It's not like he has anything to lose.
On the contrary. There is an ongoing DoJ antitrust case against Apple with a long list of grievances. Most of those were already addressed by Apple (since the case was filed a pretty long time ago) the rest will be tested in the courtroom in the following years.
I think it’s not that simple. These are not my words and I cannot only post the link [0] as the author uses the referrer to hide his articles from HN, but here’s the text:
Once again, Patreon is going to strong-arm all of us into "charge at the moment of sign-up" instead of "charge on the first of the month." They have wanted this for years, and once again they are saying that Apple has given them cover to demand it.
Here's what I wrote when they tried to pull this shit a year and a half ago and then chickened out:
Patreon has two billing models, monthly (bills on the first of the month, or whenever they get around to it) and daily (charges you the moment you sign up.)
For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.
Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.
Here's a support request I just sent them, again, after clicking 15 levels deep into their FAQ before finding the thing that might contact a human. Since the email alerting me of this change came from a "noreply" address because of course it did.
Feel free to send your own:
---
Subject: Subscription billing is unacceptable
You recently sent mail saying that you're going to force me to switch from monthly billing to subscription billing.
Subscription billing is unacceptable for my Patreon. It does not work.
I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.
If you force me to switch from a monthly cycle to a daily cycle I will have no choice but to stop using Patreon.
To be clear: I do not give a shit about the iOS app. Not one fractional fuck is given. If the solution to this problem is that people cannot sign up for, or access, my Patreon from the iOS app, that is 100% acceptable to me.
I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.
(Also you are blaming this on Apple's bullying, which is simply not credible. You've been nagging me to change to subscription billing for years, with the little red error icon appearing everywhere. This is your decision. You are transparently using Apple as an excuse.)
---
I said this same thing to you a year and a half ago, the last time you tried to pull this nonsense. Second verse, same as the first.
Last time, support replied that they "completely get why this change would be upsetting" and "will bring my feedback to the team." Uh huh.
Patreon's absolutely awful level of service and support has been a huge problem for quite some time, but I am really not looking forward to having to figure out how to implement recurring monthly billing on my own.
Patreon's whole shift away from the bulk billing never made sense to me.
I subscribe to like 10 patrons each at $1-$3/month. Right now they can just charge me once, $20/mo, pay 3%+30c card fee on that, they pay a buck in fees, get $19, great.
Instead they want to charge me $1, 10 times a month, hit with a 30c fee every time, instead paying a total of $5 in fees, getting way less proportionally.
They must really make their bulk on big patrons paying like $20+/month to a single patreon
Why do you have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis? Just inform people before signup that you only send out membership cards on the first of the month and if they sign up at any other time they'll have to wait until the first of the next month to get their card sent in the mail.
Alternatively, they could show up at the nightclub in person and bring their phone with proof of purchase and the bouncer could hand them a membership card and cross their name off a list.
TLDR: if you still have any Patreon subscriptions through Apple’s in-app-purchase flow (look in Settings > Apple Account > Subscriptions) cancel them and restart them on patreon.com
When the App Store first launched I think 30% was pretty fair fee for Apple to collect, but that was a long time ago, and before IAP/Subscriptions. Apple might still be entitled to some percentage but they've expanded to cover more and more things (like this Patreon change or Kindle back in the day) and now we have moved far, far beyond the pale.
Apple (perhaps like all corporations but I'm focusing on Apple) is a greedy company that has massively lost it's way. Tim Cook support fascists and/or anything to improve the bottom line, especially if it increases "services" [0]. Alan Dye (thank god he is now busy screwing up Meta) shipped the worst UI revamp I've seen in a while from a company Apple's size and the iOS/iPadOS/visionOS/macOS software is all in dire straits. And they managed to do all of this while alienating developers left and right and playing chicken with governments around the world [0] instead of relaxing their hold on their platforms.
But who cares? The stock price went up. /s
I was overjoyed to see Alan Dye leave (and Jony Ive) and hope that we don't have to wait too much longer to bid Tim Cook adieu. Whoever takes over next has a lot of work ahead to dig out of the hole Tim Cook dug for Apple.
Tim Cook might be the best thing for shareholders but he has been horrible for product quality (software and hardware) and for democracy.
[0] Pay no attention to how much of services revenue came from the Google search deal with the majority of the rest coming from casinos for children and adults alike.
[1] Like the EU DMA, which, I have publicly and privately voiced my dislike of parts of it but Apple has no one to blame but themselves. By keeping a white-knuckle grip on their revenue they forced governments across the world to pass laws (often bad IMHO) that fragment and confuse the entire iOS market.
I suspect developers are looking for these workaround because of the 30%. If Apple had asked for, say, 10%, would there be as many developers looking for loopholes?
I don't know. Apple perhaps should ask for compensation for "vouching for" the developer's app, hosting the app, distributing the app. But Steam shows us another model where the developer themselves pay a modest up-front cost to have their app hosted ($100) and then Steam steps out of the way.
I wonder if this would go a long way too to thinning the herd so to speak from the Apple App Store—perhaps improve the overall quality of the apps submitted.
I think a lot of developers were willing to let it slide when App Store was a luxury market. You could just ignore it and make regular webapps and/or desktop software.
But now iOS is the most popular computing platform in the US. We no longer _have_ an option to ignore it.
And 30% is just crazy. And it's _on_ _top_ of all other expenses: Apple hardware that you need to buy to develop for iOS, $100 per year subscription fee, overhead of using Apple's shitty tools, etc.
May I introduce you to years he let Jony Ive control that. Which brought us things like the butterfly keyboard, thinness at all costs (battery life), and loss of ports (in part due to thinness) that had to be walked back.
Incredible is stretching things. Apple had to catch up with AMD in efficiency, and they did that. Outside the mobile market, Apple is basically a non-entity.
There's little assurance of safety or 'fitness for purpose' for apps in the App Store. Apple takes 30% for distribution, and you're basically on your own.
It was the opposite. US mobile operator stores charged upward of 50% to sell stuff on their feature phones, with cherry on top in the form of paid submissions.
You think that's bad? Grugnar charge 80% to sell rocks in front of cave, but Grugnar killed by Bugluk and then cave belong to Bugluk. Bugluk eat you and take rocks if you try sell in front of cave.
I agree that the early days when every app was a single purchase and the prices were much higher it made more sense. A lot of people got rich from the App Store. So 30% wasn't a huge piece when you were seeing consistent growth every year in the user base.
I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals. So it unfortunately comes down to who benefits more. If you have something Apple really wants then they will cut a deal. But if not then you pay the high tax. They've at least cut it down somewhat for smaller devs and teams, but the whole industry needs to change. IAP/Subscriptions shouldn't just inherit the pricing systems of old.
I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
> I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals.
I agree, there were deals down to 15% I think (maybe lower) but I don't think that's still happening? I mean, Netflix finally gave up but only after increasing their IAP fee to cover the difference for many years. I might be behind the times on this but I didn't think they still had better cuts for larger corporations. I do know not all developers are treated the same (see Meta still being on the app store after all the shenanigans they pulled with enterprise certs, or Uber), and that does suck. It means that if you are big enough you can break the rules while an indie dev can have everything taken due to an automated system or mistake, even when it's not their fault.
> I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
I agree that's likely, though the thought of him staying till the "end" of that is not attractive.
What a weird comment lol. You can write a bot asking "why would anyone use (the product mentioned in title)" to every HN thread. That's how much it contributes to the discussion.
HN is becoming more and more like Stackoverflow. Half the comments pretend this is not an issue or irrelevant and the other half posts hasty, incorrect solutions.
I genuinely don’t know, which is why I asked. Even on mobile I only ever use the website and can see literally no benefit whatsoever to there being an app.
There's a kind of dissonance here that Patreon should be allowed to take a cut, being a platform on which creators can earn money - but Apple should not be allowed to take a cut, being a platform on which companies can operate their business.
I agree that 30% is high but the arguments I see online are generally in favor of a cut to 0%, not a reduction. If you get into the weeds of what the cut should be then it gets messy, who gets to decide? How do you determine what is actually fair for all parties?
I would argue Patreon is far more parasitic than Apple in this case, they're shaving off 10% for a pretty simple service.
The dissonance is conflating criticism of someone's fee structure with a demand that someone be disallowed from charging a fee. That's just dishonest spin.
No one thinks Apple shouldn't be allowed to make a buck. No one thinks Patreon shouldn't be allowed to make a buck.
But Patreon's fees are near-universally held to be reasonable and fair, and Apple's are some bullshit.
Apple’s App Store profits on commissions from digital sales
[1] R&D, security, hosting, human review, and including building and maintaining developer tools Xcode, APIs, and SDKs.Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.
Fun Fact: During the Epic trial, it was revealed that Apple's profit margins on the App Store were so high that even Apple's own executives were sometimes surprised by the internal financial reports.
---
edit: There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.
The operating cost is the maximum Apple can come up with when their accountants attribute everything they possibly can to digital sales for the sake of legal argument. R&D shouldn't really be included, and Apple uses those same tools and APIs themselves. I think the actual profit margin is closer to 90%, and Apple could maintain a 20% margin with just a 3–4% fee.
I'd say that in the case of Patreon, any fee for Apple is unjustified. Apple can justify their fee on app purchases/subscriptions in the app store, but Patreon is not an app subscription, the money goes mostly from the patrons to the people they support. Ok, Patreon takes a cut to cover their operating costs, and also make a profit (not sure how profitable they are currently), but I really can't see how Apple, who don't have anything to do with this process except for listing the Patreon app on the app store, can justify taking a cut.
Certainly not defending Apple's behavior in this instance, but isn't the success of the larger product ecosystem a direct driver of their App Store profitability? To strictly evaluate the App Store finances in isolation seems to be the sort of accusation you've levied against Apple in the opposite direction..
I like Apple less and less these days for various reasons, but I haven't purchased an app on the App Store in more than a decade. It's strictly a vehicle for local utilities when, for whatever reason, a browser will not suffice. Nearly all purchasing is done on the 'open' web.
Or you could argue the App Store wouldn’t exist without the hardware, so the relevant reporting is both combined - lower margins.
> ...for the sake of legal argument. R&D shouldn't really be included
That's an incredibly ridiculous take. R&D is an operating cost and it's an ongoing expense related to the app store existing.
> I think the actual profit margin is closer to ...
You can replace "think" there with "feel".
What really makes it uncomfortable is that Apple isn't just a neutral marketplace. They control the OS, the distribution channel, and the payment rails, so creators and platforms like Patreon can't realistically opt out
They could opt out - by sticking to web platforms.
Apple cannot charge for that. However, apple does attempt to gimp the web platforms on mobile to "subtly" push for apps.
While inconvenient and likely to reduce patrons, the article does describe how they can opt out: use the web to do any payment activity.
Don't forget they also directly compete with Patreon with podcast subscriptions. You can support a podcast through Apple podcasts or Patreon, but only one of those has a 30% chunk taken out.
Yeah, because they built it. If people were using Linux everywhere, the situation would be different.
That's pretty much the conclusion the EU came to and why they introduced the notion of gatekeepers in the DMA.
It doesn't matter if you are not technically in a dominant position if your special role in a large ecosystem basically allows you to act like one in your own purview.
You could say this kind of move invites more scrutiny but the regulators are already there watching every Apple's move with a microscope and their patience with Apple attempts at thwarting compliance is apparently wearing thin at least in the EU if you look at preliminary findings.
The problem is the monopoly over distribution channels. Regulation needs to force devices to allow A) downloading and using packages & executables from the internet, and B) any app to download and install other apps.
Regulating the fees for one central app store is no solution.
> downloading and using packages & executables from the internet
Oh boy, now my mom can get the full experience of having malware on her phone too!
> no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism
Right on. But that's exactly the wiggle room where voters could pull some of those cards like "climate change mitigation (of consequences)", "climate change preparation", "upcoming waves of climate change refugees", "AI dividing the population", "Universal Basic Income", all of which are things companies like Apple won't do anything for (or against) while their goods are still mostly for proper earners and not for people who buy stuff at a discount (I'm exaggerating).
Since corporate altruism is definitely not on the menu, government institutions and NGOs will have to pick up way more than they are currently prepared for.
We are in a strange phase of calm before the storm, despite all those wars and conflicts--or in spite of them, I don't know. Shits' gonna hit the fan sooner or later and it's up to the voters to demand adequate preparation.
Big Corps caused significantly more damage than they had to cause for all those profits, whether as a side effect or not, and they did that long enough.
Job cuts, whether due to AI or not, will remain a thing while no "new" giants will rise for quite a while ... and corporations will sing the song "it's what the people want" only as long as voters will stay quiet.
Sure, bribes, corruption and blablabla, but it doesn't change how votes work and none of it changes how the devoted clerks in the administration do their jobs and write laws (if they have to have to) ...
> Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.
We can say this to any company, "$X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits", but it doesn't really make any sense. Making profits is what makes a company a company instead of a non-profit organization.
It does make sense to highlight, because this kind of statistic is a very strong indicator that the market is not competitive. This is not a normal kind of profit margin and basically everyone except for Apple would benefit from them lowering the margins.
In normal markets there are competitors who force each other to keep reasonable profit margins and to improve their product as opposed to milking other people's hard work at the expense of the consumer.
High profit margins are a sign of market failure.
Makes me think of the concept of involution in Chinese business and how they understand all of this very differently, and how difficult it is to compete because of that.
Agreed, but this is about to be a special case if it's not already. We're contending with compulsory digital IDs and cashless economies that must be used on authorized devices, and Apple is one of the two makers. While it's certainly not necessary to use Patreon, not having it or something like it is an actual barrier to individual trade. I don't think I can get behind a schema that means Apple can take whatever portion it wants from a transaction initiated on a device that it creates and that is otherwise fairly necessary for day-to-day life in the developed world.
it sounds like it does make sense because if they are making $Z profits then they are still making profits and are not non-profit.
there could also be cases where cutting back to $Z profits might be preferable in case not doing so were to prompt legislation causing someone to be forcibly cut to $Z-1 or even $0 profits from a particular profit source.
Which it has been my observation that when someone is saying "X could reduce price by $Y and still make $Z profits" it often coincides with saying therefore company X should be legislated on this particular profit source.
Note: $X didn't make much rhetorical sense.
When parts of a market become dominated by one or few companies operating in a limited choice environment, consumers can't just opt to not use both Apple and Play store. You need to choose one in practice.
At this point the regulators should investigate what the barriers are to new entrants and if it's too costly and nobody has managed to cut in the last few years, establishing some rules is probably a good thing. This happens as industries mature and become critical, it happened in transportation (most bus, train companies), energy, water supply, trash, etc, depending on the country and market conditions.
“Growth is what makes a cell a cell.”
Until it turns into cancer because of unrestrained growth.
Like it or not capitalism is a part of an ecosystem. We’ve been “educated” to believe that unrestrained growth in profits is what makes capitalism work, and yet day after day there are fresh examples of how our experience as consumers has gotten worse under capitalism because of the idea that profits should forever be growing.
I think it's a little known fact that societies don't exist for the benefit of companies. It's actually the other way around.
"Why wait until tomorrow to get one golden egg when I can kill the goose today and get all the golden eggs?"
It makes sense that regulators can step in without destroying a company.
Let's be honest if this was a European company it would be capped by law at 5-10%. Problem is who has an incentive to do the right thing here? Not apple and certainly not the US government (most of this revenue comes from outside the US).Nobody can defend it, yet nobody wishes to stop it.
The US government should absolutely do that, but they won't because they defends the interests of big companies rather than the interests of small companies or US citizens.
> even Apple's own executives were sometimes surprised by the internal financial reports.
Was this recorded or just people drawing lines between Epic's expert witness claims and the executives trying to down play them?
That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.
Microsoft Office: Revenue $45B Operating Costs $12B Profit $33B Operating Margin 75%
Google Search Ads: Revenue $175B Operating Costs $45B Profit $130B Operating Margin 75%
Being a monopolist is good fun until they storm the Bastille.
> That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.
While technically true, this argument doesn't provide any merit to the discussion. The App Store backed purchase for the Patreon subscription would not exist at all without the creator's work and investment in creating their form of content.
In the absence of the App Store, the creator would still have access to their patrons via mobile web and payment via the methods already provided by Patreon. The app is merely a convenience - it's a hard sell that this convenience is worth 30% of the creator's revenue through the platform.
Apple's App Store business model is the same as Nintendo's eShop business model.
Obviously Epic would like to pay lower platform fees to Apple than it pays to Nintendo, but there is no logical reason why it should.
Plus more than $20B for the Apple developer fee without which you cannot publish the their stores.
I’m surprised they were surprised because operating costs should be pretty much nil. What do they do, pay a few thousand app reviewers, a few hundred software engineers? Pretty sure if they had to, they could operate App Store for a few tens of millions of dollars per year.
> The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik...
Agreed, there are bad privately held corps, and worse privately held corps, with badness usually proportional to their size and profit.
I really think I might be done with Apple. The only thing keeping me using them is how much I hate Android. The _millisecond_ a competitor arrives, I'm dropping my iPhone like a bad habit.
Off topic, but is there anything specific that you hate about Android? I find it acceptable. I'm trying to cut down my phone usage so maybe I'm more tolerant.
GrapheneOS on a Pixel is that competitor. Open source, more secure than Apple, compatible with nearly all Android apps. It's all the positive aspects of Android without the downsides (Google).
I keep hoping and wishing for a daily drivable linux phone that's compatible with all the us networks to come along. I'll keep hoping and wishing. Someday I hope we will get there!
They could lower the rates even more and still afford the government bribes and solid gold tchotchkes, but the whole point of the bribes is to not do that.
One company's margin, is other company's opportunity.
The problem is that Apple owns the platform and half of the mobile ecosystem. You can't just launch a competitive marketplace which could compete alongside Apple's app store, nor can you launch an alternative operating system. You have to launch a whole new smartphone stack complete with operating system, app distribution and app ecosystem.
Indeed, that's why the former blocks the latter: not to lose margins to those opportunities
Well said. Glad to see this at the top. Google also takes 30%. And I think steam too. This is 100% a regulatory issue.
But competitors to Steam exist: Epic Games Store only takes a 12% cut. Publishers have an option to use other distributors but choose not to.
Those margins are pretty normal in software, especially a mature product like that.
But people still use/buy it so why would they cut the cost?
There is no ideological argument for voluntary action here. The entire goal is to force regulators to step in. The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik, no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism.
and that exactly what monopoly allows you to do.
This is all money that is reducing expenditure elsewhere. I get it: capitalism and economics. Yet I still think humanity could do better and I think capitalism itself suffers. Economics theory is broken if it thinks this is good for society in general.
But those profits made possible by actually having other infrastructure parts existing(OS, hardware, marketing, etc).
The $160 billion of cash Apple is sitting on doesn't contribute to any infrastructure.
I don't think Apple could actually, unless they could prove to shareholders that it would create more value
> shareholders
Yeah that has to be a good 95% of why businesses do bad things.
The last thing Apple wants is for people to think they've plateaued. Stock starts going down to normal P/E ratios, expensive engineers leave, etc.
I think what confuses me is that Apple is taking so much profit that it reduces their profits.
It's a classic direct-indirect management problem. Think about Android for a second. It costs nothing to put an app on their app store. People can make apps for themselves and then just publish because either "why not" or it's an easy way to distribute to friends and family. So basically it is making app creation easy. Meanwhile Apple charges you $100/yr to even put something up on the store, makes it hard to sideload, and consequently people charge for apps, which Apple rejoices as they get a 30% cut (already double dipping: profiting from devs, profiting from the devs' customers).
BUT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SMARTPHONES
A smartphone is useless without apps! People frustrated they can't find the apps they want on iPhone? They switch to Android. People on Android want to get away from Google but they can't do half the shit they want to on iPhones (and the other half costs $0.99/mo)? They bite their tongue or rage quit to Graphene.
The only reason this "fuck over the user" strategy works is because there's an effective monopoly.
All of this is incredibly idiotic as the point of a smartphone is that it is a computer that also makes phone calls. We have made a grave mistake in thinking they are anything but general purpose computers. All our conversations around them seem really silly or down right idiotic when you recognize they are general purpose computers. And surprise surprise, the result is that seeing how profitable and abusive the smartphone market can be leads to a pretty obvious result: turn your laptops and desktops into smartphone like devices. Where everything must be done through the app stores, where they lock you out of basic functionalities, where they turn the general purpose computer into a locked down for-their-purposes computer.
The thing that made the smartphone and the computer so great was the ability to write programs. The ability to do with it as you want. It's because you can't build a product for everyone. But the computer? It's an environment. You can make an environment that anyone can turn into the thing they want and they need. THAT is the magic of computers. So why are we trying to kill that magic?
It doesn't matter that 90% of people don't use it that way, and all those arguments are idiotic. Like with everything else, it is a small minority of people that move things forward. A small percentage of players account for the majority of microtransactions in videogames. A small percentage of fans buy the majority of merchandise from their favorite musicians. And in just the same way, it is a small number of computer users (i.e. "powerusers") that drive most of the innovation, find most of the bugs, and do most of the things. I mean come on, how long did it take Apple and Google to put a fucking flashlight into the OS? It was the most popular apps on both their stores for a long time before it got built in. Do you really think they're going to be able to do all the things?
Advocating for regulators to step in is already a value judgement. Why is "high profitability" a cause for regulatory scrutiny? The optimal behaviour in any ecosystem (corporate or natural) is to defend as much territory as is within your power, not to keep only to what covers your "needs". Why have you deemed this behaviour, which is emergent anywhere competition between organisms exists, as in need of regulation?
Apple is succeeding largely on merit, within the bounds of civilized, peaceful competition. Shouldn't we all just be grateful for the contributions they have made to our civilization?
> force regulators to step in
> force
> regulators
That's my whole problem, personally.
What we need much, much less of in this world is government force, especially during these trying times of government force and outreach (something I expected my more left side of the isle colleagues to have finally realized by now).
COIVD really was a test of how much governmental draconianism we would take, and we failed spectacularly, and not only that, but are demanding more government.
So no, we don't need more regulation, especially given this country's history of regulatory capture. We need new solutions.
We don't need "more" government, we need the government to do its job. We need the regulators who have been legally appointed to oversee these areas to actually respond to these behaviors. Regulatory capture is the issue, but the solution isn't less government. It's getting corporate money and lobbying out of the government (Citizens United is to blame for most of our woes), increase the enforcement of anti-corruption laws, and get antitrust back on the table.
I want big corporations to be scared. I want them to fear for their own survival, and to tread lightly lest the sword of damocles fall upon them.
How long until they make the argument that they're entitled to 30% of your salary because you use Apple hardware to do your work?
But what about my banking app! I think it’s only fair Apple take 30% on every transaction I make. After all they put in a huge amount of work validating and making sure my banking app is safe and functional.
Edit: Maybe I am greedy now, but it would be nice if large transactions like say buying a house only would cost me a 15% transaction fee to Apple.
Visa/Mastercard take like 1 or 2%. That's why they cannot compare to Apple...
Large transactions are riskier, let’s give them 45%. After all, I’d really hate to see their margins suffer.
They must be looking at the revenue Claude Code is making on Mac and thinking “Why aren’t we getting 30% of that?”
Wouldn’t be surprised if macOS starts locking down CLI tools towards an App Store model too.
Developers are a tricky market for this because they could realistically move to different platforms if stuff like this started to happen. Or at least work on remote machines.
If gaming on Macs ever became popular though this would be a real risk.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if macOS starts locking down CLI tools towards an App Store model too.
The day that happens is the day Apple sees a mass exodus of developers to Linux, I don't think they'd be that stupid. They enjoy enough goodwill right now as the platform of choice (vs. Windows for those that don't want to run desktop Linux), I can't imagine they'd casually just throw that away.
I'm not sure Claude Code is making enough for Apple to take notice & drastically alter their CLI like that? CC has 100-150k users across all platforms, paying $200-1200/yr each. Even if every developer is on the top tier Max plan, and on MacOS, that's $180mn in revenue at Anthropic. So even in the most optimistic scenario, that's only ~$50mn revenue for Apple at a 30% take.
That pales in comparison to the hardware & subscription revenues Apple brings in by being a dev-friendly OS.
If Claude Code was in the Mac App Store, they would have signed an agreement to do so (offer an in-app purchase option and Apple gets a 30% cut of subscriptions for the first year, 15% after that).
They would also be sandboxed such that the app wouldn't have access to the level of system integration it needs.
Presumably if you buy an AI subscription through an iOS app you also have to pay 30% Apple tax. Nice work for them.
Hilarious how this is more than my tax rate. My tax rate gets education, healthcare, policing, etc etc.
Oh but you do get policing...
Feels more like a sales tax (VAT) though, which is the same for everyone.
On the other side Apple gets money, so they can make *whole* world better, not just your country.
Think about how many lives were improved just by M* CPUs or Siri
/s
You joke, but legally they could. If game engines can charge a licence fee as a % of revenue from games developed on those engines, then legally there's not much to stop apple doing the same. Of course consumers and enterprises wouldn't tolerate it, but the barrier is commercial rather than legal.
I've long believes that the requirement to use in-app purchasing was to make such revenue sharing easier to audit - if you can only use Apple's payment system to do certain things (or else your app isn't approved), then Apple doesn't have to worry about things like audits.
Since various countries have regulated the ability to do third party payments from apps, Apple has since added API to launch said payments, to help generate statistics on use so that they can then demand third party auditing that the commissions are still being properly paid.
In the US there was a court decision that they couldn't meter or charge commission, which may very well be walked back and will lead to lots of fun future articles.
Guess it is no different than Docker Desktop charging based on your revenue. The idea being charging based on some second order.
It made sense in the early days, phone operators were charging up to 90% for the infrastucture to send an SMS, and get a download link to a J2ME/Windows CE/Pocket PC/Symbian/Palm/Blackberry download link to install the app.
So everyone raced to the iOS app store, it was only 30%, what a great deal!
The problem is that two decades later it is no longer that great deal in mobile duopoly world.
It's kind of interesting that while the structure is largely the same, the underlying behaviour/intent has morphed from a disruptor-model into being toxic rent-seeking behaviour.
Isn't it strictly worse that they're already thinking they're entitled to 30% of your salary because your clients use Apple hardware? You can change what you use, you can't change what they use.
They already do if you're always buying a new apple product
That's of course on top of the 30% they take on things you buy using your salary via Apple devices.
and the 30% they take from the things you sell via apple devices, once your work is done.
Stuff like this is ironic but I do think it's escape hatches like this that will make these tech companies, if they ever go down, go down kicking and screaming. Any platform holder that ever finds themselves in a bad place financially will 100% pull all the levers like this.
Honestly that joke is uncomfortably close to how the logic already works...
30% of my yearly unrealised gains would be fair.
Don't worry, they're ethical because interns will only pay 15%.
They certainly would if they could.
All the regulators in the world have their sights set on them and they know it. The light is half on already and the music is slowing. This party is soon to be over. It's a last ditch attempt at milking all they can.
Don't give them any ideas haha
Come on, if you work on a MacBook then Tim Apple deserves at least one of your kidneys. It's only fair.
30% of profit from stock sales initiated on Apple hardware should automatically go to Apple. Because why not. It's a digital sale, there is no physical goods changing hands. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. /s
The wealthiest company in the world really needs that last little bit from those Patreon creators who have it way too easy in their lives. It's not as if the people that take that meager bit of cash are going to invest it in Apple stock so they're going to have to pay up.
The Mafia can learn a thing or two from Cook.
This is the machine. The behavior is much larger than any CEO or even trillion dollar company.
The CEO could easily stop this.
I guess that's how you become the wealthiest company in the world.
no wonder Tim Cook hangs around Trump a lot.
Both employ mafia tactics
Sometimes I think the 30% was supposed to be 3% originally, and no one noticed the decimal was in the wrong place when they shipped it, and then people paid it anyway, so they kept it.
30% is just so unreasonable that it would be totally understandable if someone would believe this.
In 2008, the app store was launching, and physical software was still sold at Targets, Walmarts and other large retailers. A 30% margin was roughly what retailers would make off of physical software sales. By setting the App Store to be the same, Apple was signaling to retailers that they were not trying to undercut their margin, and keep a healthy relationship with them.
And it was a great deal compared to the 90% cut you had to give phone carriers to highlight your java apps
No one was buying boxed software in 2008. The second we had broadband, call it 2002-ish, everyone was downloading everything. For many of us that began in the 90s before we had broadband. Overnight downloads over 56K phone modems was already overtaking boxed purchases. More people downloaded Netscape in 1995 than bought it boxed.
It was 2008; "big box" software was largely seen as obsolete to the vast majority of developers. Marketing was done online, and the benefit of investing in retail had stopped outweighing the consequences. Online updates quickly became the norm, and service features supplanted point-of-sale business model (much like Apple's double-dip into microtransaction profits).
Apple chose 30% because they knew they weren't a retailer. You can hunt for a cheaper Diablo II copy online or at Wal-Mart, but not on iPhone.
Steam, the Kindle Store and iTunes all had similar sales cuts since before the app store launched in 2008.
It’s egregious now but at the time it wasn’t crazy because software developers often made way less than that when going through traditional publishing routes. Plus everyone was just happy to be making money off the new platform.
Nah, they probably used pre-existing marketplaces like steam as an example of what "they could get away with"
2035: Apple takes 30% of my Patreon, Google matched it through their "Competitive Parity Agreement," and the EU fined them both €2 billion which they paid in 45 minutes of revenue then raised fees to 32% to cover legal costs.
The real innovation was convincing us this was inevitable.
You naively assumed that they would actualy disbourse 2 G€ in payments for those fines.
Reality disagrees: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/12/13/data-regulato...
You can be the patron of a creator and Apple in the same time! Jokes aside, this is awful...I like/use Apple products but this unacceptable, I hope everyone dodges this and pays through the website
Another outstanding decision vetted by Tim Cook.
In all seriousness, finance people see everything through the lens of margins and money primarily. Since any company's function is to deliver value to its shareholders, if allowed, bean counters will scorch the earth for it.
Ultimately, this is at odds on how Jobs approached things, i.e., money was not the end all be all.
Apple's 30% tax was introduced under Steve Jobs and there were no small business exemptions back then. Jobs died in 2011. It's time to stop extrapolating what Jobs would be doing 15 years later in 2026 if he were still around. Could be the same, could be better, could be worse.
Jobs was a greedy bastard like all the other CEOs. The difference is that he also had mostly good taste as far as products go.
Tim Cook is usually good at politics, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Nobody other some CNBC guests really gets too upset when they take 30% from tinder, music or mobile gaming companies. And those types of apps run by unpopular large companies make up the majority of App Store revenue.
However, newspapers and content creators are popular in a way that carries political weight. It'd be wise for Apple exempt these categories and write off the few hundred million in forgone revenue as a political expense.
For example allowing the NYT or Joe Rogan to have nice paid apps with no fees would be a much more effective use of money than the same amount in political donations.
If it is really so unacceptable, why don't you stop buying apple products?
Just stop publishing the app, not every little thing needs an app. What the use for the app anyway? Notifications and apple pay?
I'm running a small service, sub 150 users, no online signup kind of business, B2B. Small EU country. 95% of users ask 'do you have an mobile app?' in first 5 minutes of onboarding. Telling them how to install a PWA (and what it is and so forth) is an uphill battle. Unfortunately App Stores rule the non technical crowd.
This is not an accident. This is exactly why Apple (and Google also) have made the PWA experience bad for years. They must force users to believe their app store is the only source of programs.
To many users, an app seems to be perceived as the blessed way to access the web. While on a mobile, they are mostly a way to organize symlinks or bookmarks. Except, off course a web browser does its best to protect the user while most apps don't.
Meanwhile I continue doing the Lords work by telling kids that apps are not the internet. Hopefully, that 95% percentage will eventually decrease.
Why do they need to install a PWA?
We do mobile friendly Web UIs, that is enough.
Their customes, employees, go to the respective company website, get a responsive UI for their device, done, the services require to be online anyway.
There may be a time where we have to push back, though, and this may be it. "There is no app" may sound terrifying now, but once we've educated users, it will only get less scary, until we might actually claim back some ownership of our own stuff from the likes of Apple.
This may just be more of a design and communications challenge for you, than your users. I have seen several design templates that use various forms of visuals to assist the user through the “add to Home Screen” process, which is just three steps; Share—-> More —-> Add to Home Screen. It Is arguably even a faster process than going through the App Store, even if users may be more familiar with it.
You could accompany it with some copy explaining how it keeps the service efficient and affordable, i.e., possible stating if you were to offer an app you would have to increase the price by 75% to pay Apple their fee and for the extra costs.
I suspect other arguments for PWAs would not really matter, like that you have no need to track them or use other abilities an app affords, etc. Most people only care about very few things engineers actually care, let alone know about.
I’ve always been an advocate of PWAs whenever it makes sense and will even design and architect to that objective. But even when I would deal with clients, I think the real “up hill battle” is that apps allow for higher fees and charges because they’re more work and come with greater expenses for for-profit apps, so there has been very little incentive to spread general user awareness about the “add to Home Screen”/PWA.
It’s a bit of a paradox, but I guess that seems to be an under-appreciated driver in something like “advanced consumer capitalist economies”, where the “rational actor” simply does not exist anymore.
Not sure I understand. So people don't use websites anymore?
Specifically, do people not use websites that have rich/complex data driven functionality anymore?
If they do, I'm wondering what determines whether an application is seen as needing a mobile app vs being ok as a regular web app.
BTW, you don't need the app store for that. You can use Firebase App Distribution which doesn't require you to go through the review process.
Basically you just ask their email address and add it to a list in Firebase. Upload your ipa to firebase and the user will receive an email with a link to download
What kind of users are these? Power-users or normal users (Android etc.) or dum..Apple users?
Because in my circle, power-users and beyond. Everybody is angry with apps needed for everything, you want buy bread in store, "do you have our app?" It's a meme here. And in our local subreddit, 600k users. Sentiment is the same.
We also tried to bypass stores apps with generating new accounts and distributing QR/cards for free to everyone. It was kinda popular.
And problems are more real with each day, eg.: scammers have their work way easier, since dumb users can take a huge loan directly from banking app in their phone.
Also small EU country, btw.
>95% of users ask 'do you have an mobile app?' in first 5 minutes of onboarding
Did you ask them why?
Clients and customers will not stand for this. I don’t agree but I’ve seen it enough times now it doesn’t surprise me. They want an app, doesn’t matter if you have an identical web-based version that does the exact same thing, they want an app.
I write cross platform apps using Vue/Quasar (previous Angular/Ionic, and before that Titanium), I have put up a web-based version of their app (as a fallback and as an early MVP) and it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to even play with it. Then you put an app up on TestFlight and suddenly they are using it.
And that’s just trying to get the to use the web while I’m still setting up crap for a “native” app. The idea of not having an app is a non-starter.
Again, I don’t agree with them, I’m just telling you what it’s like out there if you are developing software for other people. An app brings “prestige”, they want be able to say “we have an app”. And no, saving a webpage to the home screen is not a viable alternative (trust me, I’ve tried). Clients and customers reject that and there are extra limitations with that approach (or there were last time I tried, around using the camera feed, things that work fine in mobile Safari).
OK, but you sound like you consult for businesses. Who may not be rational. That doesn't necessarily mean end users are demanding an app. They could be, but your anecdote here doesn't support that conclusion. Patreon's clients are end users.
Apps are usually built so people can't skip ads. Its the only reason to have an app. Other than esoteric reasons like "we also have an app because x,y,z also have apps".
I don't think that applies to Patreon which, as far as I know, doesn't have any ads in the first place?
The app might make it easier for them to enforce DRM-like behaviors to prevent people from pirating creators content, but I strongly suspect people aren't doing that on iOS regardless.
Yep, it's the driving force why I rarely install apps. If the mobile site doesn't work well, it's a good filter that I shouldn't use it. (Doom scrolling trap).
For those that are not aware, on Android you can install Firefox and Ublock-Origin. Life saver!
Most of them still source their ads from a known domain so you can easily block them using DNS.
I work on a website that doesn't have any mobile-specific features, new users ask me all the time why we don't have an app.
My sister and my parents basically ~only read newspapers from their apps, despite it being static text with some images.
I don't know how, but Google and Apple are really good at nudging people to use apps instead of websites.
I use the Patreon app. It's great. I get to see stuff from my favorite creatives weeks (sometimes months) early, and ad-free. Since many of them are youtubers and I don't pay google to show me less ads, this is a huge value prop. And, the Patreon app can cast videos to my TV, so it's really a complete experience.
I don't see anything there that isn't also a valid description of the Patreon website.
If your TV supports AirPlay, you just tap the icon on a video in Safari.
Does the 30% cut only apply to patrons who subscribe within the app? I’m assuming yes, but just checking since I haven’t seen confirmation of this.
Hard agree. I hate it when a website force me to get an app now. I feel like websites have matched apps in terms of feel-good on mobile that I don’t really use apps anymore
We really need to build more awareness for PWAs (Progressive web apps). Users (and developers) need to be educated on
- how to install them
- what advantages (and disadvantages) they have. In particular regarding censorship and privacy!
Apple and Google need to be pressured to make PWAs
- easier to install
- more capable
- less buggy (Mobile Safari in particular).
If your app's needs can be met with a PWA, you owe it to your users to offer one!
Here are a few PWA showcase links:
https://pwa-showcase.com/#/all-cards
https://whatpwacando.today/
And a lazy AI-generated list of things that PWAs can do today on top of the things a normal web page can do:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/make-a-list-of-all-things-p...
I think they could get pretty far with a PWA, but there are legitimate arguments to go native. For use cases like podcasts, where users can download them ahead of time, it seems like Safari limits storage to 1GB [0]. Plus playing background audio might not be as good an experience.
[0] https://web.dev/articles/storage-for-the-web
Apps are more sticky. Users forget about websites more easily
Patreon isn't something you need to be checking all the time, though, unless you patronise a LOT of people. It can pretty much be a "setup and forget" kinda deal.
It's highly unlikely for someone to use the internet in 2020s but be unaware that Patreon is a thing.
Don’t need an app for Apple Pay
Its the convenience. 1 or 2 button clicks from the home screen to open "the app".
Sure you could do it in a browser, but half the time the credentials dont cache, or you have to waste 4 clicks and 20 seconds finding a bookmark.
They want convenience. For better or worse.
I use the app for its native podcast integration. The RSS URL also works but I have yet to find a decent RSS client that will synchronise progress across devices well.
Funnily enough I stopped using the Patreon app for podcasts with the big rewrite a while back where it became almost unusable and switched to Overcast instead.
Serving ads and tracking
Because apps are the lowest-friction path to users. If you publish a tool that targets an audience of more than a very specific niche of people, you'll get people asking for an app literally every day. My inbox used to be full of them.
That's not a reasonable solution. Have you used the Patreon app? I use it regularly on Android, and have dozens of audio podcast files downloaded through it.
I used to subscribe to some podcasts that were distributed to subscribers via the app.
> What the use for the app anyway?
Works offline?
Sure, if your app has something worthwhile to do offline.
a) does it actually work offline (seems unlikely for a payment app, although I guess it could batch stuff)?
b) if so, does it work any better than a web app can offline?
PWA also work offline.
yeah for entertainment content you just cant get away with it sadly
What is the use of an app that could be the website? Easy: Circumventing the protections a web browser offers your vict.. ah.. users.
I mean, the Patreon app has a podcast player in it... can't do that on a webpage
Always hated apple for their putrid business practices. Add this to the pile.
I've been trying to find a decent 16'' laptop (to replace my thinkpad x1 carbon).
Been running linux (popos) for donkey years and I entertained the thought I should go back to Apple and get the MacbookPro-16 (which is probably the best laptop you can buy imho).
Then I remembered all this crap that Apple does and dismissed it.
A few years ago I got the m1 macbook air (lovely hardware!). Some software update fully bricked it, which is really annoying already. Then I found out the only way to restore it was to connect it to another macbook. That was it for me.
The Services version of apple is the worst. Tim Cook might actually be the worst ceo apples had
The Nineties would like a word.
Google play store and steam are the same. This is regulatory. Hating a company for maximising profits is really something you should aim at legislation to control unchecked capitalism.
Except neither of those two are the exclusive way to install software on a computer that you own. All 3 have their issues, but Apple is uniquely bad in this way. I don't find myself Hating Steam/Valve.
Apple making sure to stay in lock step with the US' general decline into late stage capitalist decline.
I still can't believe developers love to work for this feudal overlord. They are building a wall around our profession. Have a little foresight and move your business elsewhere.
It's not so much that I love giving 30% to Apple, and more that there is no way to move your business elsewhere because Apple monopolizes mobile app distribution.
And the other half of the mobile app market is monopolized by Google who copies the pricing model while delivering even worse (if any) service to developers.
It's either getting out of mobile apps or paying up.
This is not going to change without drastic steps by regulators, which both Apple and Google fight tooth and nail.
It's not just about making apps. Anything you do for this company is going to backfire at some point and hurt us.
This even includes developing open source tools for MacOS.
And even if it doesn't backfire it is largely a wasted effort.
You know some of us remember Mac System [7|8|9] and how MSFT pretty much ruled everything (Apple had low %).
We kept working on the platform and developing tools and things changed. Of course Apple is a lot more powerful than MSFT back then and the general population is their target.
Apps bad. Web good.
Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?
When iPhone came out the sentiment was clearly opposite. The “sweet solution” was ridiculed and workarounds found. When web caught up, it was plagued with self inflicted performance issues. And eventually Apple decided to not invest in good PWA support.
I was an app advocate for a long time, now I made a PWA and it’s maybe 90% there. But you still get behaviors that you can not fix.
IMO the worst however is products that have a fully functional website, but refuse to let you use it (e.g.: Instagram)
Yes. It's improved now, but the mobile web was bad for a long time. The early days of Android experienced a "web-first" ecosystem by force, as lazy businesses just threw a webview around their site, and it was awful
Web is much better when the data should be public. Apps are much better when any kind of data privacy is required.
The trouble is, market forces always try and push things the other way.
The Reddit App for example is totally unnecessary. It's just public web content and should be a website.
SaaS on the other hand shouldn't really be a thing at all. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea for their private data and app state to be on a cloud somewhere they don't control.
Note that this does not preclude the use of cloud services that users can control e.g. by specifiying trusted endpoints. I'm trying to build the idea of "data locality first" software. I.e. you know where your data are and where they aren't.
I strongly prefer apps. The thing that goes wrong here is: Duopoly bad. Competition good.
Since app distribution is not a fair market anymore, it needs to be regulated. Either the fees have to go down close to cost or alternative app stores should be allowed. And not the malicious compliance version of it (as Apple is trying in the EU).
> Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?
Because the web is still barely usable for anything more complex than showing a few lines of static text and an image?
Because for almost as long as (modern) mobile apps exist the web was even less usable?
Because even now you can whip up a fast complex mobile app with 60fps animations and native behaviours probably in minutes? While on the web you're lucky if you can figure out which state/animation/routing library du jour isn't broken beyond all hope?
I might be in the minority but I have a really hard time using iOS and their apps in general (I use Android).
I struggle (and mostly curse) to figure out what swipe gesture to use to get simple stuff to just work. Not super sure all the 60fps animations and wizz-bang behaviours are being used the way you think they are.
#include<"old-man-yells-at-clould-meme">
Interestingly, Patreon doesn't give creators an option of "Just don't accept donations for us from Apple users" instead, which is what my old project (SQLite Browser / DB Browser for SQLite) would have gone with if available. :(
I've instead handed the reins to others, so I don't have skin in this game any more. ;)
Apple generally frowns upon things like that. At one point they wouldn't even let you disclose in your UI that Apple was taking a 30% cut of transactions, it was against the rules to do so.
I don't get it. Apple is the top 3 most valuable companies in the WORLD. THE WORLD. They act like a greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500, because you ordered a side of fries which they did not eat.
Aren't they making the majority of their money from selling hardware and iCloud subscriptions? Why they go on and milk developers, who make apps FOR THEIR ECOSYSTEM?!
Maybe that's exactly how you become one of the most valuable companies.
Good thing GenAI is about to destroy capitalism, finally!
Even the stupid many headed hydra can't survive when an 8 year-old kid has a super intelligence capable of autonomously manufacturing a bio weapon.
You get it though. They ARE the top 3 most valuable company in the world. How do you think they got there? Greed all the way down.
> greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500
30% is not that.
$1500 represents the money you've already given them to purchase the hardware. You already overpay for that - fine - then they demand a 30% cut from $5 you're giving to a struggling independent creator. It's pure greed coming from one of the richest companies in the world.
Analogy =\= Precise Maths
woosh
What don't you get?
They are greedy because Apple fans would by a turd in a box if it had an Apple logo.
If I was in charge of Apple I would do the same thing. In fact, I would likely increase the Apple cut to 40%. People would pay, they like their slick toys.
The developers will continue to make apps for their ecosystem regardless.
After the $1k monitor stand I don't doubt Apple can get away with selling ANYTHING.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mx5n3ll/a/pro-stand
Just do what we all do to dodge this, have the Account management and purchasing abilities sit inside an embedded browser window that opens up from a button push in the app. Yes it adds a little barrier but with Apple Pay it is a very small barrier and the juice is worth the squeeze.
Don’t they forbid this? Spotify couldn’t even link to their website in the US lol
In practice I’ve seen apps just game the system by (1) using IAP using the normal flow, and (2) giving user a button unrelated to purchasing that would open a new WebView, which just happens to contain a purchase button.
This was a result of the Apple vs Epic case, external payment processors avoiding the fee were enabled in the US in May 2025.
Spotify does link to their website to sign up in the US...
Or add a 45% apple tax afyer they click buy. E.g. costs $100, price comes up as.$100 with added apple tax as line item. total $145.
Click here to avoid apple tax takes you to web page if allowed.
Not allowed. They ban your app immediately if you inform people they are robbing them!
I could be wrong but seem to remember this being explicitly disallowed by Apples terms
Except the juice is for you and the squeeze is for your customers.
And it's still a net loss.
I actually love Apple for pushing this matter this hard and sticking to its guns. This will bring in more regulatory scrutiny not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. That will force Apple to give up (maybe in a decade or so) this practice of arbitrary rules and squeezing the last penny from others.
Thanks a lot, Eddy Cue, for all that you do to bring Apple down to its knees!
In the U.S. I wouldn't expect meaningful regulation from an administration that accepts bribes in the form of literal gold nuggets.
Tim Cook has been spending a lot of time sucking up to Donald Trump recently, so I think the U.S. federal government will only be assisting Apple
So in about a trillion or two dollars of revenue’s time, then.
I think this is relevant, Cory Doctorow's recent speech to Canadian government and texh leaders: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ott...
He talks about Apple's app store
Take from the poorest to give to the richest of the rich -- that is the new way of doing business.
I feel like I've just watched a man in a $4000 suit wresting the change jar out of the hands of a homeless person
Took his mobile phone and shoes too!
Patiently waiting for a mandatory 30% fee on every transaction made with iOS banking software. Maybe that'll put a definitive stop to forcing mobile "apps" with jailbreak detection on customers and have banks think twice before crippling the functionality of their websites.
Please Apple, make this happen.
I just use the bank's website.
Many banks require you to two-factor authenticate with an app on your phone.
They will, the moment your bank starts selling media inside the app.
A nickel for each iMessage…
Some countries still charge for SMS. That's why WhatsApp is so popular in many places of the world.
Honestly… if we implemented $0.01 charge on every message, post and etc. the world would become an amazing place.
Never.
Popular apps have been exempt from these rules since the beginning of time - not that I agree with this.
Is Patreon not popular?
Have they? Netflix, Spotify, Kindle, ...
Question for the indie developers here; do you get more paying users from Apple devices?
I’ve never even considered publishing apps for other platforms as my gut tells me juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. Or to put it another way, I would prefer customers who already proved they have deep(er) pockets and are price insensitive.
Yes, I have the same app on iOS and Android, and for a long time it brought in half the revenue on Android for twice the effort (really messy SDK combined with too many OS versions and devices). Lately the gap has been closing, but it's still roughly 40% Android and 60% iOS, though I have slightly more installs on iOS.
Interesting insight, thanks.
And this is a big part of why I don't own an iOS device, and likely won't be purchasing another laptop from them, despite liking the hardware generally.
Not that I like Google much more re: Android and locking down side-loading more than before.
I was considering GrapheneOS when I bought my latest phone 2 years ago, but decided to stay with Android in the end. It has become very clear to me that I made the wrong choice.
I’m surprised at the comments here. Why should the government set the “right” margin?
If you cap the margin, you’re entrenching the monopoly forever. Allow them to charge what they want, and set tax rates on corporations commensurate with the size of their profits. Make it easier for competitors to start.
The path to a sustainable marketplace does not come from top down enforcement of margins. It comes from competition
> Why should the government set the “right” margin?
For monopolies, that is the least bad option. What would be way better, though, is mandating an end to that monopoly by allowing all users to install any apps they want on their iPhones without needing Apple's permission in any way, shape, or form.
You’re permanently entrenching them as the winner, and reducing the incentive for a competitor to emerge. The cost of developing these platforms is high and clearly it’s hard enough to compete, why would you kneecap future competitors from the get go?
And competition comes from creating a competitive market. Rent seeking behaviour is not new. This is monopolistic behaviour that should be regulated. I agree that capping fees is not solving the crux of the problem though.
I don't understand, doesn't the market solve these issues? Here's what I figure would happen:
1. App creators will pass the extra cost over to the iPhone users.
2. Android (and other platforms that can host smartphone apps) will be more competitive and start to look better for both app creators and consumers.
Sure, there's a bit of a context switching cost. Not everyone will just be able to automatically change over to an Android phone tomorrow. But it doesn't need to happen all at once. These phones get updated and replaced every 1-2 years. If iOS users see their app store prices rising too high, and they aren't OK with this, then they will switch to Android eventually, once it's worth it.
Otherwise, I don't see any problem with Apple reaping the benefit of their powerful and well-built walled garden ecosystem.
> If iOS users see their app store prices rising too high, and they aren't OK with this, then they will switch to Android eventually, once it's worth it.
Or they'll stop buying as many apps, or stop supporting people on Patreon.
There is a lot of stickiness associated with apple products. Be it their walled gardens or having better hardware or brand recognition. This is especially true in the American market
Look, I’m not switching to an Android just because I want to subscribe to a few podcasts.
What are you going to do about it? Use Android?
Me? I'm working to help people get elected to Congress to help regulate this mess.
At the end of the day Apple is doing their damnedest to force the requirement to support other app stores. They want their cake, and they want to eat it too. Unfortunately they are going to make an epic fuckton of money before they get told to stop.
There is so much stuff that needs to get fixed in congress over this issue is even a blip on the radar.
Bravo!
Why would you want to give the government such power? That always amazes me... when there is an issue, people jump on "let's vote for government to regulate this", but then they are surprised when a new government gets to power and uses this new regulation/capability against you.
Yeah, lol.
Was all Apple since the iBook G4. Bought a Pixel last week. It's nice.
Google is also making Sideloading harder "to protect users"
launch an in-app browser and don't use apple as the payment processor.
The Epic v Apple lawsuit verdict makes this allowed now.
My understanding was that you could have a button that could take the user outside of the app to pay (i.e. your website). So progress, but not this level of freedom yet.
This is also a political issue. The administration could have ftc investigate this under anti-trust, and the government could also pass tighter laws preventing this. But this current administration is likely too friendly to big corporate interests.
Well. I own an iPhone, a Macbook, Airpods, Apple Watch. I'm in the Apple ecosystem since the last 16 years.
Unfortunately, due to their behavior in the latest years, I'm not going to buy anything Apple anymore.
Fortunately for me, I prefer Linux to MacOS so I never have been totally tied in the Apple ecosystem and I know how to leave the boat without a lot of hassle.
I'm really saddened because they know how to make great products when they want to. It's just infuriating that everything that is shitty in their products is never due to randomness or bugs or whatever, but ALWAYS because they decided to fuck you.
Half of the apps on the app store can easily be replaced by a PWA that works on iOS and Android.
GrapheneOS
It is more clunky and less polished than android. On the other hand, it is far more secure.
I was a user of android for 15+ years, and I had been using a pixel 4a when the battery issue came up last year. Google handled that so terribly I bought a used pixel 7a and installed Graphene.
Installation is quite easy. The lack of native voice-to-text was a pain; I installed a 3rd party utility (FUTO) for that, but unlike the native one where it translates while you talk, FUTO waits for you to finish then translates everything.
The messaging app is less integrated too. Android finally fixed things up with Apple such that emoji responses (heart, thumbs up, +1, etc) would appear as an annotation after the text message I sent, but now I'm back to getting "So and so likes your comment <full text of my comment>".
Some of the other pain was because I have tried to cut down on other google properties. I use "here we go" for mapping instead of google maps. Due to the scale of things, the real time traffic updates on google maps is far better than on here we go. I use fastmail instead of gmail and I'm 100% happy with that solution.
Use Android or use websites instead of apps. Apple pushes their app ecosystem so hard because it's their walled garden. If you want to support a creator, go their website and click whatever they offer.
Walled garden is marketing speak.
Its a walled prison
Can we please just have cheap/affordable linux phones at this point.
I am so close to having raspberry pi phones but even rasp pi 's are getting expensive because of AI dammit
What's the big barrier stopping Linux from becoming a viable mobile OS? Or at least some completely de-googlefied AOSP?
This means Apple is literally going to take nearly 3x in fees from Patreon's customers than Patreon is taking from their own customers.
My understanding is that the reason the number 30% is so magical is a historical anomaly. When software was physically distributed back in the day, 15% of the MSRP was reserved for the distributor and another 15% for the retailer. When these digital marketplaces were set up, the companies just said "well, we're the distributor and the retailer, so we'll keep both". Forgetting the fact that the cost to distribute and retail the software is literally pennies on the dollar of what it used to be.
I think the irony in this case is that this is a greed problem of their own making. When Steve Jobs announced that apps on the original iPhone would only be $1-$3, he set off the first enshittification crisis in the software industry. In 2008, Bejeweled cost $19.99 if you wanted to buy it on the PC. On the iPhone it was $0.99! This artificially low anchor price is what kicked off the adoption of ad and subscription driven software models in the first place.
My understanding was that the retailer margin was 50% and the distributor margin was 10%. So Apple/Steam/etc went "half of 60% is a great deal".
Of course the retailer margin is never actually 50%. That's theoretical if 100% of product is sold at MSRP. Actual retail margins are about 25% because of sales, write-offs, et cetera.
OTOH when there's a sale in Steam, they still get their full cut (of the reduced price).
I remember writing apps for PalmOS (long time ago) distributors like PalmGear took over 60% from international developers like me, plus they held your earnings until you hit a minimum payout threshold. Add bank fees on top of that, and it was basically not worth developing for the platform. 30% felt like a godsend in comparison. (I'm not defending the Apple / Google tax)
From what I could find, it does seem that major retailers back in the day (CompUSA, Circuit City, etc) were only making 15% margin on software sales. This is much lower than other product categories - but also software didn't take up much floor space.
Had no idea about the history and the 15%/15% split but when the topic comes up I just remember how good the 30% seemed back in, what, 2008?
It made perfect sense that this shiny new iOS platform would take 30% of a cheap app to ensure that it matches the high quality of iOS. These were little productivity apps and games at the time.
This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?
What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
> What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
You joke but this already happens with places like DoorDash. They take 30% of the order from the store owner after adding their own additional fees to the order that customers pay.
Someone I know owns a pizza store and his prices are 30% higher on DoorDash but some people still pay. The big difference is it's not a monopoly. He offers regular delivery at normal store prices and 95% of his deliveries go through that.
>What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
I'm pretty sure Apple has discussed things exactly like this.
Their upper management really does tend to think that 30% of any monetary transaction on an Apple platform belongs to them. Too bad our government is too busy being ran by the billionaires to do anything about these abuses from billionaires.
I was working for a small software company at the time and we thought it was outrageous. We were selling our software online direct through our own web site and the cost was far lower. A few percent for credit card processing fees, and the server/bandwidth cost was inconsequential.
>This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?
That's the other part of the surrogate war happening with mobile. The web was unregulated and hard to profit off of, so Jobs took great strides to push the "there's an app for that" mentality that overtook that age. This had the nifty side effect of killing off flash, but it's clear the prospects didn't stop there. Not to mention all the other web hostile actions taken on IOS to make it only do the bare minimum required to not piss off customers.
It very much could just be a website with no reliance on IOS as a dependency. But Apple clearly doesn't want that.
Steve Jobs never announced a price ceiling for apps on the App Store. The well-known I Am Rich app for iPhone retailer for $999, the actual price ceiling.
That's wild I had to look up if anyone bought it. Apperantly 8 people did!
> https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/technology-blog/story...
It only really makes sense on the one time purchase of a product, not the subsequent in app purchases they don’t have to touch apples infra.
30% might be fair when you have a choice of either marketing and selling your app yourself, or just using an app store to do everything for you. But when you are forced to use the app store, things get really stupid really fast.
Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.
The Mac app store, being optional for developers, is a good example of how much people actually want something like this.
> Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.
Oh, no, they can comprehend, they just don't care. Apple controls access to a valuable pool of business, and they are going to extract as much value as possible from people wanting access to that pool. And, of course, they are going to try to burnish it with marketing speak, but that doesn't mean they believe their own marketing.
To keep their growth rates going, these mega companies soon need to swallow the whole country’s GDP. I really wonder where this is going. They can’t keep growing at some point.
This might become technocracy at some point, if the corporations become stronger than the state govs. In that case, the entire NOAM region will become a so-called technate, ruled by a form of ToS. I'd say, technocracy is way worse than even autocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy_movement
I think you may have fundamentally misunderstood what a technocracy is: it has nothing to do with tech companies whatsoever. From literally the article that you have linked:
> The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy.
Technocracy is probably not the right word for what you mean. Oligarchy is probably a better one. This will probably evolve into idiocracy if you have seen the similarly named documentary .
I’ve heard it said that monopolies aren’t a flaw of the system—they’re its product. What else could perpetual, cutthroat competition lead to? This isn’t an unintended consequence. In every new era, even when an industry is disrupted or reinvented, a small number of dominant companies work aggressively to prevent real upheaval—by acquiring smaller competitors, engaging in regulatory capture, and shaping the rules in their favor. Historically, governments have often served the interests of their corporate patrons. The system itself is built for maximal extraction, and there is no “invisible hand” waiting in the wings to protect consumers. There are no evil and good CEOs, just cogs in this machine doing what they're incentivized to do, accumulate.
There is no monopoly here though. Android makes up a pretty substantial proportion of users. That users continue to use Apple devices despite this kind of greed (and that people on HN cheered when Apple defeated Epic in court) shows that users don't care, which is unfortunate.
Fair, but duopoly then, not much better
Cartel arrangements can still be a monopoly.
Didn't apple lose the case brought against them by Epic for this very reason? Are they still operating illegally against the order of the court?[0]
[0]: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
Wait a minute, there is a payment surface you can build in iOS(e.g. iirc a stripe demo video from the epic ruling last year), where one can pay outside the apple in-app payment method. The surface could specifically get you to your own web view(i.e. your own domain or stripe's surface) for payments. The bigger idea, I thought, would not let apple figure out a company's take was, to ask them to pay up.
How does this shakedown work for companies/orgs that have large number of paying iOS DAUs?
What am I not getting here?
Apple is doing to creators what the recording industry did to musicians. Enjoy what's left of the Golden Age of Patreon content because greed is going to suffocate it out of existence.
Or setup payments through the website
Is it still true that Apple bans you from telling users, in app, they can pay through alternative platforms?
> "According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over."
The very last line of the article.
Yes, because intimidation and scare tactics work
This means that 4% are subverting the 30% fee.
If a fan starts a $10/mo Patreon membership inside the iOS app, Apple's subscription terms imply $3/mo goes to Apple for the first year (then $1.50/mo after), and Patreon's platform fee still applies on top. Patreon says Apple is also forcing the remaining ~4% of creators using legacy billing to migrate to subscription billing by Nov 1, 2026 or risk the app being pulled. That's a meaningful hit to creator economics for something that's closer to "patronage" than a typical in-app digital good.
I don't pay attention to all of Apples behaviors (still running an iphone 11) but this feels quite rent-seeky and creator hostile.
Incoming "please pay on webpage, else you have to pay 30% more" banner in the app
This is actually against their App Store rules, and likewise the article has the following bit:
> Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, [...]
it would totally not fly with Apple. They don't let this 30% commission to be visible by users, just like every other company that does such commissions. You don't see that the creator only gets about half of your donation on YouTube or Twitch, you never see that Visa takes 1% of your payment in a store, etc. Even governments do that. I don't see the value of VAT in the price of goods in stores. The US sales tax is an exception.
A lot of people would complain about how high those fees (or taxes) are if they saw them spelled out for them.
Version update rejected by Apple
I miss the old school monopolies, where MS was a bad guy because they dared to include browser.
And yes, I do legalese details of that are much more complex. But it just makes no common sense.
Like try to break the internet and the java programming language? The former being most successful for years
IE was not just used to break the internet. It also had advantages. It supported features other browsers didn't.
Without IE, we wouldn't have had XMLHttpRequest, which means we wouldn't have had Gmail, which means we wouldn't have seen the bloom of "web 2.0" websites.
As for Java, Microsoft's C# is way ahead of Java in terms of language features. No idea how the runtime performance compares these days (both are very fast), but I'd rather have Microsoft Java than Oracle Java.
Microsoft's intent was always to break the competition, but they did it by offering features others wouldn't or couldn't. Evil Microsoft's Windows was the most feature-packed operating system out there because they threw every possible feature at the wall, kept what sticked front and center, and bothered to maintain what didn't stick. Microsoft Agents, the shitty Clippy things, were supported well into the Windows 7 era despite dying out the moment Bonzi Buddy was found out to be malicious. But Microsoft dared to break backwards compatibility with .NET 1 to fix the typing problem with generics that Java has to this very day; they just ended up supporting both, side by side.
I have a theory that they've actually succeeded with the latter too. I mean, look at Java now, and look how many mini-Javas (all those JIT-compiled languages and their runtimes) have emerged since. The point of Java was to unify, we've got more division than ever instead.
If you mention Java, I think you may only incite more nostalgia for the monopolies of yesteryear. Was Microsoft's approach to Java evil and ill-intentioned, yes, absolutely. But it eventually resulted in .NET and C#, so I'd say that particular battle was a net benefit to humanity in the end. .NET is even truly cross-platform now, and open-source. Meanwhile Apple achieves interesting technical advances with their new hardware but I will never benefit from the existence of it because I will not use hardware that is locked to a prison OS.
You mean the web right? Or did Microsoft ever roll its own BGP code?
It gets real depressing when you compare the recent case of Google to what was done to AT&T in the 80s.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but it feels like over the past couple of decades we've gone from clever guys coming together with an idea and starting companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, to celebrating buyouts of startups by large behemoths—that's how low the definition of success has dropped. Is competition law even a thing anymore?
It is, but the problem is that no one is enforcing the laws both old and new. That is why the elites hated Lina Khan, she was simply enforcing laws already on the books.
Apple also includes a web browser on iOS, but forces every other browser you can install to use their browser engine. It's one of the many reasons they are being sued by the DOJ for anti-competitive practices.
Apple also sits on a board that approves new web technologies for standards formalization, so they can squash adoption of anything that might make web browser APIs as capable as a native application, so that they can force people to make native apps where they can extract a percentage from it (they can't do that with a web application). Rather than work out reasonable ways to support things other browsers allow, they just say "no thanks" and then there is no standard allowed to move forward.
It's extremely abusive and anti-competitive. I hope the DOJ continues to pursue litigation against Apple for this and many other things.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Starts to make a lot of sense why Tim Cook is out there ruining his image for the sake of some favors.
Why can't Patreon hike up prices in their iPhone app?
It would not only shift the cost to the user, it makes them cover the 30%, while discouraging the use of the iPhone app itself.
They could add a banner before the payment is processed that says "you could be paying less for the same benefit to the patron if you pay from our website. The price is higher here because of Apple, and you're covering the fee."
Apple doesn't allow communicating that to the user and neither price differentiation to compensate their fees.
The regulator must step in now and allow installing applications outside of the AppStore! We are witnessing in real-time what a monopoly and a walled garden leads to.
I'm not betting the US to do this right now. But look at the EU... Alternative app stores are allowed (forced by EU regulations), and it already lead to lower fees.
The vast majority of people will continue find and install (and pay for) stuff via the AppStore.
Let this be a cautionary tale for Google's plans with Android (developer verification, etc).
With this logic, one should pay Google for making purchases in their browser or Netflix should pay e.g. Samsung a fee, as users consume content on their devices. Truly ridiculous.
What bugs me about this isn't even the 30% in isolation, it's the category creep
Am I the only one that dislikes phone apps?! For example, I do NOT want to install an app for my power company. Just text/email me if you need to reach me and I can do anything else through their website.
I do support apps that support unique phone features: Phone, camera, GPS, etc.
Well, I certainly won't sell my fiction to Apple for them to turn it into a series in the future.
Unless they pay me 30% of all hardware and software revenue because popularity is a vehicle to sell more under the Apple brand.
So the company that also lets you support your favorite podcasts via a subscription decided their competitor should pay 30% more just to do the same thing? Cool.
For anyone seeking more info, check out these articles -
https://www.patreon.com/posts/apple-has-its-on-148395613
https://www.patreon.com/posts/128473586
If I'm patreon, here's what I'm doing:
Jack up every Apple user's monthly payment by 30%.
When they go into the app to figure out what the hell happened, they will find big red text saying "want to avoid the Apple tax? re-subscribe through our website! (Link)"
They click the link, it opens a webpage where all the payment info has been auto-filled. They click "ok." Bam, fee gone.
Much of what you suggested would not pass apple review, and would get your app removed from the app store if you tried to hide it during review.
Can someone explain how much of value the iOS app is to users? I'm a noob at Patreon, aren't creators receiving their support through the website's payment gateway already? I'm not really against a company setting the rules if it's their platform, if the market cannot accept it then alternatives (competitors) will eventually find new ways.
Probably the only added value is direct notifications of new content.
Patreon is probably going to shut down the payment feature from the app and orient people to the website. That's what I'd do... And bad mouth Apple.
Given Patreon's clients is influencers, this is a fairly bad PR move by Apple, for probably zero return...
The Beggar Barons strike again! https://zedshaw.com/blog/2022-02-05-the-beggar-barons/
Insane PR move to further whittle down direct payments to people's favorite content creators
4% of Patreon iOS users. That's how many use the legacy system Apple is insisting they remove. The other 96% already are using IAP.
> 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.
I'm curious what percentage of creators chose which
Which makes it even more petty coming from Apple.
Money number must go up!
If I buy a gift card through my banking app, using reward points, is Apple entitled to 30% of that?
Yes. You owe Apple and Patreon as much ad they want to charge, because you are a mental slave
This was a great reminder to me that I needed to cancel every subscription I have tied to my Apple account. I'll give it to them though, they do make it very easy - I just cancelled all 10 of them in 10 seconds.
For those who, like me, are looking to break free from Apple but were tied to it through photo storage in iCloud, here's a first step towards independence: Immich! I self-host an instance for my whole family, and it works like a charm.
I've been saying its a 'walled prison'.
This is low even for apple. They havent earned commision on this at all
As they don’t for all the other digital-content purchases they have taken 30% for many years already.
Which is why we have been getting great UX like being unable to buy books in the Kindle app.
Yeah. I get charging for hosting an app in your store, that requires work to build the ecosystem and security and stuff. But you have to draw the line on a platform and ecosystem and vetting that someone else has done. What did apple do to build kindles library of books? What did apple do to attract creators that patreon's users would like to support? Nothing. They should get 30% for installing paid apps that they are vetting and hosting, but nothing for things third parties are hosting and vetting
They don't mind.
Isn't Patreon effectively a sort of payment processor? So how is this different from Apple demanding a 30% cut of transactions conducted by (for example) Paypal? (Assuming Paypal has an iOS app ofc, I have no idea.)
They also host and serve videos. Not sure about other media
Good point. That makes them a combined platform and payment processor. So it seems to me the logical question would be, shouldn't they just break the platform part out then? But isn't that exactly what their percentage fee amounts to? So Apple should be entitled to 30% of their (IIRC) 5%, right?
Really they ought to further split that out into "processing fee" and "platform services fee" and Apple would then be entitled to 30% of the latter.
Well, it's called greed
Really shitty to see how greed and money corrupts everything.
"Use our payment system"
"No thanks, our current system works just fine"
".. or get kicked off our store"
"Okay, I guess I'll do it then"
"Okay you're on our payment system; we take 30% off all purchased using our payment system."
"Get fucked"
I assume this is only for purchases made using the app, right?
Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense. Google gets a cut of all revenue, Apple gets a cut of all revenue, x, y, z, ... there would be nothing left over.
The core problem is still the same.
Until there will be a broad regulation that enforce any general purpose computing device to allow installing non-provisioned apps, we'll be in those situations.
The dark side of your walled garden is they can abuse you as they see fit, and when they become a giant, your options are to like it or leave.
The amount of people defending this because it's apple in here is astounding. This is possibly the least consumer friendly thing apple has done in a while, and that's saying something.
> Note: This image has been edited to include a pile of cash.
I giggled
every system that gets too greedy eventually gets squashed (e.g. regulations) or kills its host (e.g. cancer).
I've noticed watching blood money on Netflix that greedy systems tend to get greedier and greedier, and this is the best way to catch bad actors.
On the other hand, criminals that try not to become too big and remain low-profile are the ones that never get caught.
Sounds ... like the mafia.
You MUST use our billing system. Oh, btw, because you are using our billing system, we get 30%.
Ok, cool - Apple is doing Apple things. And Patreon: will they comply?
Man that should not be allowed. 30% (pre-tax) loss, plus taxes, plus platform cost. Thats insane
Can't they just remove this option from app and redirect to the web? Wasn't this the same story with Spotify?
Yes, which suggests internal metrics show this to still be the better path.
Boycott Apple services. It’s the only way they will listen.
Yea, that won't do much. How about convict Apple of monopoly practices.
Tim Cook hanging out with Trump at the White House a few days ago - not a good sign this will happen anytime soon.
I really don’t understand this attitude. Of course it will. If enough people do it. This is how corporations change not through protest and we’re certainly not going to get any antimonopoly anything going on soon.
They make literally about 40% of their profit off of Apple services. Do you really think if people on mass stopped buying Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, an iCloud, they wouldn’t care?
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/2025-marked-a-record-...
I mean the minute people started talking a general worker strike in Minneapolis all of a sudden all these companies freaked our and wrote a letter protesting about IVE’s behavior in Minneapolis.
I refuse the purchase any apple products (I was never a fan and don't like paying premium for a walled garden) but it's impossible to offer an app if you don't also make one for apple devices.
There is no way around it especially in an apple dense market like Switzerland.
They have a clear monopoly and together with Google a duopoly.
I can thankfully continue with my refusal to purchase from HP perfectly fine.
Apple has an Apple Pay for Donations[1] program, which doesn't apply for rent seeking entities like Patreon. I wonder if Patreon's 10% fee is commensurate with the negligible value that they provide?
[1]: https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/nonprofits/
Yes but you cannot restrict content or features based on whether or not someone is a donor, which is basically what Patreon is for.
Source I run a non-profit and we have an app that takes donations via Apple Pay
Did you even bother to look up what Patreon is providing for that fee?
How does this work if I signed up to patreon on the web and have never used the app?
I call this the Apple "idiot tax" - 'cos you have to be an idiot in letting Apple exploit you (the developer and the user) this brazenly.
This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you. There are differences, Google is somewhat better on this specific point, but there's enough things Google is worse at (such as privacy) that choosing Google isn't exactly without downsides.
Your mindset results in Apple users thinking "the problem is those stupid Android idiots who accept being in an ad tech company's spyware garden" and Android users thinking "the problem is those stupid Apple idiots who accept that 30% of literally everything they do goes to Apple". In reality, we have a common enemy in the big tech duopoly and extremely lacklustre regulation which lets them keep doing this shit. You calling me an idiot for making a different shitty trade-off than you helps nobody.
> This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you.
Or allowing users to control their hardware and software and give them the freedom to install the hell they want on it?
We've been using computers for eternities where we still have the possibility, yet, as soon as it is about phones then "no way, we protecting you from bad actors".
Give me a break, you want to help protect me from bad actors implement proper software/hardware jails/containers for third party software and that's it.
You do have an alternative to both Google and Apple, which gives you the best of both worlds - it's called the Sailfish mobile OS - https://sailfishos.org/ . (As for my snarky post, read my other comment in this same thread to understand why I posted what I posted.)
Victim blaming
Every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want. - Don't most of you here tell me that corporates don't need regulations as smart people "vote with their wallet"? If this is what some want to spend money on, the term "idiot" sounds justified ... anyway, the point was not to offend; just to embarrass some mildly to introspect their purchasing decision.
Oh, now ios users are an oppressed group. How cute.
Not cool Apple, bad look, I like you less for this.
They work to make Apple rich. It's a bit like the mafia, but not as rememberable.
Just to put things into perspective: Visa and MasterCard interchange fee in EU is 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Apple taking 100x this is just ridiculous.
Can't they just link out to their site to do billing?
While its true that creators often share "extras" in return for support, it's crazy to call the support itself a "digital good." I can only assume they mean it is digitally good for their business.
This is why holding Apple stock is almost a can't lose.
So how do I avoid apple taking the cut? Unsubscribe from people in my ios app and resubscribe on the web? I subscribe to super small creators where this 30% cut makes a meaningful difference.
For the price of paying Apple, Patreon should be able to develop a web app instead. Why isn't this happening? Why an app when the web will do?
Yeah, I don't understand this at all. I use Patreon and I support a couple of tech content creators. But my use of Patreon intersect in no way with iOS and I'm not sure how it would. Can someone please explain?
Okay so basicially apple users are dumb as rocks which is why iOS is so profitable in the first place, and they are corraled into installing apps and making in-app purchases.
are they going to pay 30% towards refunds/fines etc. due to crimes committed using iOS?
I think I’m old enough to have experienced this cycle so many times with so many businesses that I just feel kind of silly to hate on Apple or Microsoft or whoever. They’re all just maximizing profits as designed.
I think people find it easier to scowl at the villain du jour than to dig into the deep complex issue of when capitalism doesn’t work, when the government isn’t doing enough, and what we could do about it… or the feeling that we really can’t do much.
> feeling that we really can’t do much.
That's why people don't dig into the deep complex issues. Because it's uncomfortable, and forces one to confront the potential reality that their worldview, and everything they've known about how our society works is wrong, broken, and collapsing in front of them.
It can be a very distressing and depressing state of mind. There's a reason "ignorance is bliss" is a common trope, because there's some real truth to it. For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
> For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
I think it isn't just some, it's effectively everyone, the nature of being human. Instead, there's a group of people who are willing to sacrifice their emotional and wellbeing to face these problems of reality, and try to use the limited power they do have to improve them, for the greater good.
>or the feeling that we really can’t do much.
We can do a lot if we pressure the company or the regulations around it. Maybe not right now in this current regime, but tides will shift.
The issue is that people's attention spans on this are much too short. The fervor around this may not even last to the end of this month, let alone until a change in power allows a new administration to properly go after the company.
You don’t need to solve the problems of capitalism to call bullshit bullshit. Saying “companies maximize profits” doesn’t magically make the behavior acceptable and when Apple does this, it’s not just “the market at work,” it’s the use of market power.
Complaining about it is part of the system operating the way it operates. It’s factored in already. I just think that it’s not really interesting. It’s reasoning about the instance, not the class.
Maximizing profit is the essence of capitalism but this is pure rent seeking. They are extracting excessive fees for no obvious value creation.
I'd rather they garner a few dollars this way than look to actually shady monetization practices, like most other big tech companies do.
Not a bit deal really, a tiny minority of people will be a few dollars out of pocket, because the loophole most of us don't enjoy has been closed.
Nostr and Zaps, problem solved.
Can you mind elaborating further how this would work? I am somewhat familiar with both of them.
Are you suggesting some sort of app store or web page to send money/bitcoin?
Nostr is a decentralized social protocol where people can send btc tips, called zaps, directly to creators.
Technofeudalism at its finest.
Attitude like a true mob boss.
how is this legal
Good question considering apps unequivocally have the right by court order to use their own billing, and considering the contempt ruling and referral for criminal investigation Apple already got for violating that order.
Trump fired Lina Khan on day one of his adminstration, so there's a start.
This is obscene.
Soon Google will do the same thing. And then what?
The practical way out is to just buy QQQ and get some of your money back.
seems that 96% are already doing this:
> According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over.
I've never used the Patreon app even once -- those creators I support, I set it up on the website.
That's why the DSA is a good idea that should be replicated worldwide.
Too many parasites between creators and consumers
I thought that already happened :)
But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops.
But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
That was my take anyways.
> But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops. But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
Moreover, the fee only applies to the subscriptions made using Apple's payment system. That being said, in most jurisdictions their payment system is the only one developers can use in an app. IMHO, this is the real problem.
Per the article it's already happened for 96% of creators and this is the deadline for the remaining 4%.
> But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
Yet. Apple forces a specific browser engine on all apps, so they have the means to block patreon website too.
I can’t remember being more enraged than when I learned my YouTube premium was more expensive per month than it needed to be because I had signed up on iPhone, so many people wasting money every month, and YouTube isn’t allowed to mention the option to pay on web
If they weren’t a public company, you’d think they were the mob. I’ll never trust the Apple ecosystem ever again
Yep, the tax comes from using the Patreon's in-app purchase system. Using a browser on an iPhone/iPad or any other device will not be taxed. Seen many creators putting in their bios suggesting people use the browser instead of the in app purchase.
Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.
Sad, mean, and pointless
Apple needs this to stay afloat, you know
Those greedy artists and creators depriving Apple of their profits.
Poe's law hit me hard.
Knowing there are Apple fanboys around HN (I got downvoted for saying the liquid glass thing and the iphone air were pointless) I fear they will take your comment seriously
Tech companies are pushing their clients step by step out of new devices, platforms, subscription services, SaaS, ... Governments are pushing citizens step by step into Tech to control and tax their lives. At the end we, as simple humans, are always in the middle.
Greed
Imagine if Visa or Mastercard decided they were going to take a 30% cut as a merchant fee. Governments wouldn't allow it. Why does Apple get a complete pass?
Who pays for Patreon via iOS?
if many people subscribe via ios then obviously apple is bringing creators more paying subscribers no so seems kinda fair to charge for access to that ecosystem?
If I were a creator, I'd start looking into platforms other than Patreon. What does Patreon offer that makes them worth giving up 30% of my revenue?
Apple doing Apple things... nothing to see here
Does this apply to creators that aren't even in the Apple ecosystem or is it only for the patreons paying through the iOS app? What if everyone moved to the website?
So weird, why do you need Patreon dedicated app in appstore?
There is really so many people visiting Patreon, only because it's in Crapple appstore?
Or is this because they want to support as many payment methods as possible. And Apple Pay support requirements is to have an app?
Would be great, if they simple take a hit and gutted the app and redirect all people into website.
If they have good PR team, with proper messaging, they could make even more money, since people on Patreon usually don't like corpos.
Apple obviously needs this to save themselves from bankruptcy.
What is the strategy for “app” distribution for the mobile market that bypasses iOS / other vendors ? Is this even possible?
Isn’t this what Epic just sued and won over?
Epic lost on 9 counts out of 10 in the original lawsuit. The one they won is being appealed and in the process Fortnight was ordered to be reinstated in the US. I wouldn't bet that this arrangement will survive appeals.
Epic didnt really win. If i recall correctly the ruling ended up being that 3rd party payment processors are allowed but 27% of app revenue is still owed to apple if that route is taken. So you can save 3% by using 3rd party payment processing but thats around how much those services cost anyway so no real saving
They tried that. The judge, correctly, went "uh the fuck you will".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
> While Apple implemented App Store policies to allow developers to link to alternative payment options, the policies still required the developer to provide a 27% revenue share back to Apple, and heavily restricted how they could be shown in apps. Epic filed complaints that these changes violated the ruling, and in April 2025 Rogers found for Epic that Apple had willfully violated her injunction, placing further restrictions on Apple including banning them from collecting revenue shares from non-Apple payment methods or imposing any restrictions on links to such alternative payment options. Though Apple is appealing this latest ruling, they approved the return of Fortnite with its third-party payment system to the App Store in May 2025.
Apple has an impressive commitment to evil, similar to Oracle. They get better at it every year.
The tremendously, villainy evil of getting money for a service.
A service that Apple is mandating everyone to use or else get kicked off their operating system...
This would be an entirely different conversation if Patreon was still allowed to use other payment systems outside of Apple's IAP service. No, this is Apple forbidding competitors on their platform.
So
- the devs all need to get licesnses and specific hardware to develop for IOS
- They spin up their own servers to manage all the finances coming in
- They work on their payment processing solution separate from Apple. And Patreon still pays some fee to apple over the app.
- the model of Patreon only takes 5% off of creators, so that's not enough for Apple. It also wants a cut at the customers of the website who provide services. Customers not beholden to any one platform.\
- And to force them to do that, they are kicking the other processing plan off as an option, leaving only them to work with.
And it's somehow not evil? If I let a friend sleepover at my apartment, is the landlord in the right to demand a day of rent from them too?
"Nice business model ya got there, sure would be a shame if somethin' happened to it."
web is now so good that mobile apps lost any meaning to exist - unless you need to access some local hw or data on consistent basis(the app must run as daemon or something like that). in other words, if you app is a service, just use web. if it is not a service, then you just sell it as you would a desktop program.
Happy to pay 42% higher Patreon fees in exchange for ease of subscription control, visibility, safety and ease of payment with in-app Apple payments.
It’s funny seeing people call 78% operating margin too high, while we all know that software VCs demand 90% margin from their startups, and if it wasn’t Apple, people here would call that an excellent business.
Ahaha.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
I mean, keep buying their phones or whatever.
Apple's ecosystem is the 8th wonder of this world. Nowhere else you can put a logo on a piece of cloth or aluminum wheel and sell them for hundreds of dollars. Greatest capitalist company of all time.
With only two mobile OS providers, they should be highly regulated. But given Tim Cook gave Trump a golden award and attended the premiere of the Melania documentary, I doubt they’ll get any antitrust trouble. Disappointing rent seeking behavior.
> rent seeking
This goes way beyond rent seeking, it is much closer to outright theft, for rent you get something in return. This is just a nice form of robbery and I'm sure it is all legal by some stretched definition of the word but it makes me sick.
Yesterday we had the monthly Woz adulation article, I really like the man but would like him even more if he told Cook to his face that this is not the Apple that he had in mind when he co-founded the company. It's not like he has anything to lose.
On the contrary. There is an ongoing DoJ antitrust case against Apple with a long list of grievances. Most of those were already addressed by Apple (since the case was filed a pretty long time ago) the rest will be tested in the courtroom in the following years.
Those cases take a long time.
I think it’s not that simple. These are not my words and I cannot only post the link [0] as the author uses the referrer to hide his articles from HN, but here’s the text:
Once again, Patreon is going to strong-arm all of us into "charge at the moment of sign-up" instead of "charge on the first of the month." They have wanted this for years, and once again they are saying that Apple has given them cover to demand it. Here's what I wrote when they tried to pull this shit a year and a half ago and then chickened out:
Patreon has two billing models, monthly (bills on the first of the month, or whenever they get around to it) and daily (charges you the moment you sign up.)
For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.
Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.
Here's a support request I just sent them, again, after clicking 15 levels deep into their FAQ before finding the thing that might contact a human. Since the email alerting me of this change came from a "noreply" address because of course it did.
Feel free to send your own:
---
Subject: Subscription billing is unacceptable
You recently sent mail saying that you're going to force me to switch from monthly billing to subscription billing.
Subscription billing is unacceptable for my Patreon. It does not work.
I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.
If you force me to switch from a monthly cycle to a daily cycle I will have no choice but to stop using Patreon.
To be clear: I do not give a shit about the iOS app. Not one fractional fuck is given. If the solution to this problem is that people cannot sign up for, or access, my Patreon from the iOS app, that is 100% acceptable to me.
I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.
(Also you are blaming this on Apple's bullying, which is simply not credible. You've been nagging me to change to subscription billing for years, with the little red error icon appearing everywhere. This is your decision. You are transparently using Apple as an excuse.)
---
I said this same thing to you a year and a half ago, the last time you tried to pull this nonsense. Second verse, same as the first. Last time, support replied that they "completely get why this change would be upsetting" and "will bring my feedback to the team." Uh huh.
Patreon's absolutely awful level of service and support has been a huge problem for quite some time, but I am really not looking forward to having to figure out how to implement recurring monthly billing on my own.
Patreon, YOU HAD ONE JOB.
[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/patreon-is-lying-again-and-...
Patreon's whole shift away from the bulk billing never made sense to me.
I subscribe to like 10 patrons each at $1-$3/month. Right now they can just charge me once, $20/mo, pay 3%+30c card fee on that, they pay a buck in fees, get $19, great.
Instead they want to charge me $1, 10 times a month, hit with a 30c fee every time, instead paying a total of $5 in fees, getting way less proportionally.
They must really make their bulk on big patrons paying like $20+/month to a single patreon
Why do you have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis? Just inform people before signup that you only send out membership cards on the first of the month and if they sign up at any other time they'll have to wait until the first of the next month to get their card sent in the mail.
Alternatively, they could show up at the nightclub in person and bring their phone with proof of purchase and the bouncer could hand them a membership card and cross their name off a list.
> Why do you have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis?
Because the "daily" billing model is prorated IIUC. Seems a bit unfair not to be given access to something you've paid for.
> bring their phone with proof of purchase
One does wonder.
Why is this person selling “nightclub” memberships via patreon?
The what and why of the nightclub memberships are explained pretty well on the patreon's about page: https://www.patreon.com/dnalounge/about
The person in question is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
with the direction their hardware is going, that's not going to last another decade
TLDR: if you still have any Patreon subscriptions through Apple’s in-app-purchase flow (look in Settings > Apple Account > Subscriptions) cancel them and restart them on patreon.com
When the App Store first launched I think 30% was pretty fair fee for Apple to collect, but that was a long time ago, and before IAP/Subscriptions. Apple might still be entitled to some percentage but they've expanded to cover more and more things (like this Patreon change or Kindle back in the day) and now we have moved far, far beyond the pale.
Apple (perhaps like all corporations but I'm focusing on Apple) is a greedy company that has massively lost it's way. Tim Cook support fascists and/or anything to improve the bottom line, especially if it increases "services" [0]. Alan Dye (thank god he is now busy screwing up Meta) shipped the worst UI revamp I've seen in a while from a company Apple's size and the iOS/iPadOS/visionOS/macOS software is all in dire straits. And they managed to do all of this while alienating developers left and right and playing chicken with governments around the world [0] instead of relaxing their hold on their platforms.
But who cares? The stock price went up. /s
I was overjoyed to see Alan Dye leave (and Jony Ive) and hope that we don't have to wait too much longer to bid Tim Cook adieu. Whoever takes over next has a lot of work ahead to dig out of the hole Tim Cook dug for Apple.
Tim Cook might be the best thing for shareholders but he has been horrible for product quality (software and hardware) and for democracy.
[0] Pay no attention to how much of services revenue came from the Google search deal with the majority of the rest coming from casinos for children and adults alike.
[1] Like the EU DMA, which, I have publicly and privately voiced my dislike of parts of it but Apple has no one to blame but themselves. By keeping a white-knuckle grip on their revenue they forced governments across the world to pass laws (often bad IMHO) that fragment and confuse the entire iOS market.
30% was always excessive.
I suspect developers are looking for these workaround because of the 30%. If Apple had asked for, say, 10%, would there be as many developers looking for loopholes?
I don't know. Apple perhaps should ask for compensation for "vouching for" the developer's app, hosting the app, distributing the app. But Steam shows us another model where the developer themselves pay a modest up-front cost to have their app hosted ($100) and then Steam steps out of the way.
I wonder if this would go a long way too to thinning the herd so to speak from the Apple App Store—perhaps improve the overall quality of the apps submitted.
I think a lot of developers were willing to let it slide when App Store was a luxury market. You could just ignore it and make regular webapps and/or desktop software.
But now iOS is the most popular computing platform in the US. We no longer _have_ an option to ignore it.
And 30% is just crazy. And it's _on_ _top_ of all other expenses: Apple hardware that you need to buy to develop for iOS, $100 per year subscription fee, overhead of using Apple's shitty tools, etc.
To be fair, the fee is really 15%- 30% only comes into play only after you've made $1mm USD in the prior year.
Steam takes 30% cut, though?
Tim Cook has been horrible for software, but the hardware under his regime has been incredible.
May I introduce you to years he let Jony Ive control that. Which brought us things like the butterfly keyboard, thinness at all costs (battery life), and loss of ports (in part due to thinness) that had to be walked back.
Incredible is stretching things. Apple had to catch up with AMD in efficiency, and they did that. Outside the mobile market, Apple is basically a non-entity.
There's little assurance of safety or 'fitness for purpose' for apps in the App Store. Apple takes 30% for distribution, and you're basically on your own.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-betrayed-trust-says-iph...
It was the opposite. US mobile operator stores charged upward of 50% to sell stuff on their feature phones, with cherry on top in the form of paid submissions.
You think that's bad? Grugnar charge 80% to sell rocks in front of cave, but Grugnar killed by Bugluk and then cave belong to Bugluk. Bugluk eat you and take rocks if you try sell in front of cave.
I agree that the early days when every app was a single purchase and the prices were much higher it made more sense. A lot of people got rich from the App Store. So 30% wasn't a huge piece when you were seeing consistent growth every year in the user base.
I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals. So it unfortunately comes down to who benefits more. If you have something Apple really wants then they will cut a deal. But if not then you pay the high tax. They've at least cut it down somewhat for smaller devs and teams, but the whole industry needs to change. IAP/Subscriptions shouldn't just inherit the pricing systems of old.
I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
> I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals.
I agree, there were deals down to 15% I think (maybe lower) but I don't think that's still happening? I mean, Netflix finally gave up but only after increasing their IAP fee to cover the difference for many years. I might be behind the times on this but I didn't think they still had better cuts for larger corporations. I do know not all developers are treated the same (see Meta still being on the app store after all the shenanigans they pulled with enterprise certs, or Uber), and that does suck. It means that if you are big enough you can break the rules while an indie dev can have everything taken due to an automated system or mistake, even when it's not their fault.
> I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
I agree that's likely, though the thought of him staying till the "end" of that is not attractive.
If only we could find a way to blame Putin for this.
Should be 50% at least.
Why would anyone use Patreon’s app?
What a weird comment lol. You can write a bot asking "why would anyone use (the product mentioned in title)" to every HN thread. That's how much it contributes to the discussion.
HN is becoming more and more like Stackoverflow. Half the comments pretend this is not an issue or irrelevant and the other half posts hasty, incorrect solutions.
Why would you think reality shows so many people using patreon app?
I genuinely don’t know, which is why I asked. Even on mobile I only ever use the website and can see literally no benefit whatsoever to there being an app.
Why would anyone spend any money on the appstore?
There's a kind of dissonance here that Patreon should be allowed to take a cut, being a platform on which creators can earn money - but Apple should not be allowed to take a cut, being a platform on which companies can operate their business.
There's "a cut" and then there's 30%. Pretending Patreon's cut is morally or even objectively equivalent to Apple's is a little bit of a stretch.
I agree that 30% is high but the arguments I see online are generally in favor of a cut to 0%, not a reduction. If you get into the weeds of what the cut should be then it gets messy, who gets to decide? How do you determine what is actually fair for all parties?
I would argue Patreon is far more parasitic than Apple in this case, they're shaving off 10% for a pretty simple service.
Apple has already been compensated in the form of $1,000-$1,500 for the phone.
Apple was also compensated by Patreon in the form of the developer fee.
This is the triple-dip attempt.
The dissonance is conflating criticism of someone's fee structure with a demand that someone be disallowed from charging a fee. That's just dishonest spin.
No one thinks Apple shouldn't be allowed to make a buck. No one thinks Patreon shouldn't be allowed to make a buck.
But Patreon's fees are near-universally held to be reasonable and fair, and Apple's are some bullshit.