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Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

news.patreon.com

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Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#301

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

kmeisthax wrote: post #45
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #14

The world where Apple is just completely fine with Apple users paying $13 instead of $10 for a subscription if they do it through an app is an interesting one. Obviously this makes a lot of money for them but when you think about it they must think very little of their customers treating them with disrespect like this. This is how 'Tim Cook's Apple' should be remembered.

The App Store model was specifically implemented and approved by Steve Jobs. There's old internal e-mails from him complaining about Amazon's reader app making it too easy to buy books without paying the (increasingly literal) Apple Tax. In fact, the reason why antitrust lawsuits seem to never stick to Apple is because all the mens rea was stored in the mind of a guy who tried to cure his pancreatic cancer with fruit…

  …him complaining about Amazon's reader app making it too easy to buy books without paying the (increasingly literal) Apple Tax.
Heh. Attempting to buy a book from the Kindle app was how I first became aware of these policies. Was fruitlessly searching for a buy button, but could not find anything. Did a web search to figure out why I was an idiot who could not spend my money. Only to discover that I was purposely getting a worse user experience because some mega corporations all wanted a taste of my transaction.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#302

Post by theturtle32 »

cyrnel wrote: post #275
bluGill wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon doesn't lose anything to Apple - they give creators on Patreon a choice - charge Apple users more to cover the 30%, or eat the loss. I don't know what Patreon's take is, they are going to take the same either way. However they know their customers and users will lose from this and it is good for them to look out for their customers (it doesn't costs them much)

Customers leave when prices rise above their willingness to pay. Some customers will realize on their own that they can bypass Apple's fee by subscribing through the browser, but most won't (since Apple forbids even mentioning this trick).

This, imo is a solid argument for "fine then, we're just gonna pull our app and use mobile web exclusively."

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#303

Post by SirMaster »

lozenge wrote: post #268
Arainach wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take Apple out of the loop entirely. Why does Patreon need an app? Have users go through the website. Send them updates when people post new content. I've never used the Patreon app on either Android or iOS. I support a number of creators and I have no idea why I'd want an app. Money is taken from my account. Receipts are sent to my email. Articles from creators are sent to my email, and if they're long enough I clic…

The app's useful for audio posts. But mostly it's just an extra chance for them to make money. Push notifications, the home screen icon, etc. Most people I know, their inbox is barely functional due to the marketing emails, and they're reliant on features like Gmail's "Important" which only highlights real people, not Patreon content. You're not the average user, and if the average user gets a billing email and hasn'…

Can't you do all those things with a PWA?

What does the Patreon app do that a PWA can't?

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#304

Post by maxglute »

bkraz wrote: post #80

As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support, the news is terrible: Patreon informed me that all creators must switch to a monthly subscription schedule instead of the per-creation schedule that I and many other currently use. The whole point of per-creation is that it allows me to take time off, and only charge people when I release something, thus incentivizing me, and being fair to my suppo…

Applied Science in the wild! Your videos look expensive, does per video patreons tend to cover them?

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#307

Post by bluescrn »

advael wrote: post #149

We need to kill the phone duopoly A big part of it is restrictive and onerous standards on cellular firmware that act as a compliance moat for Apple and Google (and seem designed to enable surveillance more than anything), but if we fail to get open-source alternatives via commonsense regulatory reform the antitrust guns need to come out. When smartphones are often the only authentication mechanism accepted by major…

> We need to kill the phone duopoly

We also need to save the world wide web. Most of these 'apps' have no need to exist.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#308

Post by imchillyb »

nicolas_t wrote: post #221
wmf wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Apple's perspective they say they are helping their customers with things like making subscriptions easy to cancel and Apple thinks that's genuinely worth 30%. The fact that Apple doesn't want their customers to know they are paying more is an interesting wrinkle though.

That's funny, I actually hate Apple's subscriptions because they are a pain to cancel. My wife has an iphone, she travels regularly to different countries for work. Because apps on apple store regularly have country restrictions (apps are not available in different countries), she has multiple apple accounts to deal with that. Now this is also a problem with Android (and it's the fault of the app developers), but And…

What you’ve described is not an Apple problem but a specific use case scenario that is in direct violation of Apple user agreement.

Apple’s policy is one account and other family sharing or child accounts.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#309

Post by diggan »

Izkata wrote: post #123
kllrnohj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patreon doesn't currently and doesn't want to us Apple's infrastructure. They're being "forced" to do so, hence this post.

Putting it in quotes is misleading, they are actually being forced: > Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.

> Putting it in quotes is misleading, they are actually being forced:

They're not literally forced, they have a choice: A) abide by the rules of the platform or B) leave the platform.

I agree that it's shitty by Apple, but if you start playing the game (being on the AppStore), don't be surprised when you have to continue playing the game by adjusting how you do things.

Re: Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

#310

Post by [deleted] »

dannyobrien wrote: post #248
bkraz wrote: post #80

As a longtime YouTube creator who uses Patreon for financial support, the news is terrible: Patreon informed me that all creators must switch to a monthly subscription schedule instead of the per-creation schedule that I and many other currently use. The whole point of per-creation is that it allows me to take time off, and only charge people when I release something, thus incentivizing me, and being fair to my suppo…

I don't understand why Patreon has to drop the per-creation model. Can they not just not offer that on iOS, and continue it on other platforms? (Perhaps with a "convert from susbcription to per-creation" feature online?)

[deleted]
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