Live data from Hacker News

Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

macrumors.com

361–370 of 944 posts

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#361
post #263

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...

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#362
post #327

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…

> 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.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#363
post #327

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…

> 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?

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This would not deter bad actors in any way, spammers already have no issue paying for junk mail. An 0.01 cost means nothing if the action they're taking generates more than 0.01 for them (it generally does). In fact this essentially incentivizes bad actors; you get punished for not profiting off your messages, so people would be more inclined to find ways to monetize their posts. 2. The costs for this would be rid…

I was talking about good actors as well!

Yes. Now you have to dox yourself to the platform to be able to talk to anyone, because payment cards are linked to strong ID.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#365
post #327

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…

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.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#366
post #57
post #28

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.…

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 t…

> 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.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#367
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is outrageously wrong. Back in 2011, the pricing model for "an app in your pocket" was 99 cents. The universal pricing model of apps was a one-time fee and the pricing range was that of an mp3 roughly. 30% of that is a lot. App sales worked only in volume. If you sold software over the internet, you had PayPal, which had a flat fee of $0.35 + 1.7% or so and if your shareware was $30, the transaction fee essentia…

It's not a "processing fee". It's an distribution/access/market fee for the captive audience that Apple has spent tens of billions developing and supporting. If you think you can make any money selling software on the internet and paying nothing other than $0.35 + 1.7%, think again.

Yeah I heard this before, but no, it is mostly a processing fee. The reality is:

- Developers helped to make Apple the platform it is today.

- Apple had their 30% fee when the App Store was MUCH smaller. It's not like that fee came only after they had the audience.

- Apple will do zero marketing for you unless you are already successful.

- Apple doesn't earn money with the most popular free apps, but still hosts them. They could charge by traffic, by downloads, whatever, but they won't.

- Apple will charge you if you make money in the app. They will force you to use their payment processor if you want to make money.

So, it is 100% a processing fee and everything else either came later or isn't congruent with what they actually charge money for.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#368

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?

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

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#369
post #327

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…

> 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 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.

Re: Apple to soon take up to 30% cut from all Patreon creators in iOS app

#370
post #309
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a time were operators where charging up to 90% for other stores. Those with listings of SMS codes for which app to download, depending on the phone OS. So it was a great deal back in 2008.

You are talking about phone apps, I'm talking about "software licenses sold over the internet".
Post reply on HN