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

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321–330 of 1001 posts

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

#322
post #282
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's missing is you pay for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and it's yours forever. Then when CS3 comes out you can upgrade with a nice discount.

Ah, alright. There's nothing actually stopping you from doing this — it requires two things: 1. either a third-party licensing server (and thus some SSO auth system — but just require Apple's own SSO for it and it'll still be a clean-ish workflow) to share/sync the transaction status from one app to the other; or a local Group Container plus logic in each app to write the transaction statuses fetched for the given ap…

So whereas authors used to ship a new version, and let people upgrade to that version at a discount, the author now assumes the burden with each new release of maintaining and testing V1 (that’s with all the feature flags turned off) as well as every feature flag between V1 and Vcurrent turned on. One at a time. Sounds like insanity to me.

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

#323
post #233

In my eyes the most egregious aspect of this is it’s a financial transaction between two people that they’re taking a 30% cut of. I see 30% as fine for things like IAP for digital games and such, but somehow in this lens it feels wrong. One proposal for a compromise that would feel fair: Apple gets 30% of the app creator’s take rate. IE if patreon’s take rate is 8%, Apple should get 30% of that , not 30% of the full…

I expect Apple and platforms would not be happy with this model. Apple now has to trust that platforms are properly reporting their gross take. Platforms now have to give detailed financial records to a (potential) competitor.

The current situation with Apple as the middleman lets them ensure they get every dollar without any accounting shenanigans.

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

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are presented the final cost up-front. There is no "hidden cost" here. When you sign up for a hotel room and they add on room cleaning charges at the end of your stay, that's a hidden cost, especially since the charge is the same no matter what you do while you are there. Ironically, "sales tax" feels like a hidden cost to me. Yes, everyone knows it exists, but not everyone knows what the local value is wherever…

The reason sales prices are quoted without tax in North America is because there's a million different permutations governing what the sales tax is going to be in different situations (who's buying what, from whom, where, when), and this changes all the time. Local governments can shift their taxes at any time to encourage or discourage certain things. I'd argue this flexibility is very good, but the downside is calc…

If we only had databases and computers which can track and calculate those advanced math stuff.

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

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has just over 60% of the US market share and employee a whole arsenal of tactics to create artificial friction with other platforms in order to increase that market share.

That's big, but in the minds of most, that's not a monopoly. Duopoly with Google, sure, but convincing a court of a monopoly when a lot of people in that court have living memory of Windows being 80%+ of the total OS installs in the country is going to be a tall ask, especially considering that didn't even stick, long-term, as a rationale to keep MS under the original terms of its punishment.

Windows (Microsoft) never tried to charge 30% on top of all commerce occuring on the platform.

What would your opinion be if they did?

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple users (I'm not one of them) seem fine with that arrangement.

In a survey of my non-technical friends, only a very small minority seemed to know that Apple took any cut whatsoever.

How would they know and why would they care?

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

#327
post #282
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's missing is you pay for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and it's yours forever. Then when CS3 comes out you can upgrade with a nice discount.

Ah, alright. There's nothing actually stopping you from doing this — it requires two things: 1. either a third-party licensing server (and thus some SSO auth system — but just require Apple's own SSO for it and it'll still be a clean-ish workflow) to share/sync the transaction status from one app to the other; or a local Group Container plus logic in each app to write the transaction statuses fetched for the given ap…

@jayd16 - it’s been a few years since I read the Apple Developer Agreement but at that time downloading code and executing it within your app was forbidden by the agreement. A sensible security safeguard IMO.

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

#328
post #309
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's not forget that if Apple created something called "Apple Creators", they would instantly gain 100% of the market share because there would be no fee (assuming feature parity)

This forcing apps to use your payment platform through extortion is anti-competitive. Full stop.

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

#329
post #10

I remember reading that per-creation billing is a very important feature for Patreon creators, because it removes the moral obligation to produce content just to justify a subscription. If Patreon really doesn't want to kill the feature itself, but is just responding to Apple's enforcement, then it seems like a really clear illustration of monopoly power - pushing unrelated markets to change their own structure and p…

Maybe I am missing something but Apple supports consumable purchases. Think any game with purchasable virtual currency. Can't Patreon support a ton of different-priced SKUs and let creators use those SKUs for one-off purchases?

I think what your missing is that these aren't one-off user initiated purchases. I back a couple of patterns that are a per-video model, so if the content creator produces 2 videos I'm charged 2x $amount that month. If they produce nothing I'm charged nothing. Apple doesn't provide a way of doing this. In the scenario you described I'd have to monthly count up how many videos said content creator produced and manually submit an order through the app... And users aren't going to do that. Hell, I'm not going to do that.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the guy that literally had to be fired from his very own company because he refused to change course, the guy that most probably died earlier than necessary because he did not change his stance on pharmaceutical medicine? I believe he would very much love the current Apple Tax system and would eagerly fight the EU in court for this, both out of spite and out of arrogance for "his" Apple.

> You mean the guy that literally had to be fired from his very own company because he refused to change course Kind of a ridiculous complaint because we all know what happened to the company afterwards. He was more right than they were. > guy that most probably died earlier than necessary because he did not change his stance on pharmaceutical medicine Hilariously irrelevant. > both out of spite and out of arrogance…

Both him getting fired and possibly dying earlier are directly related to the fact that the man does not easily change his mind. For his company, this turned out to be the better way, yes. For his body, it may have been better to go some other way. Either way, the point is that Steve Jobs does not easily change the course that he himself set.
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