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

macrumors.com

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

#501

Post by patja »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #473
saimiam wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a user almost exclusively uses the Patreon ios app to consume the artist’s content and likes to live inside the ios ecosystem for frictionless payments using the card on file/privacy/UX/whatever, then I feel apple should get to set the terms of engagement. If you were a chain store in a high end mall where customers cars were all parked for free by valets, mall staff knew their names, and generally made them feel…

> If a user almost exclusively uses the Patreon ios app to consume the artist’s content and likes to live inside the ios ecosystem for frictionless payments using the card on file/privacy/UX/whatever, then I feel apple should get to set the terms of engagement. When I paid over $1000 to buy an iPhone I thought I was buying a technological product that I could use to improve my life. I didn’t realize I was buying a ti…

Is this sarcasm? Apple pretty much invented the walled garden of personal computing.

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

#502

Post by absynth »

nabla9 wrote: 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…

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.

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

#503

Post by NewsaHackO »

nabla9 wrote: post #470
NewsaHackO wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what are they even doing for regulators to have to step in? Making profits from someone selling their product in your market seems pretty valid to me. Are you saying this is anticompetitive to other possible app store storefronts like Google Play or something?

No. This is a result of a market failure caused by monopoly power. Regulators must make sure market capitalism works. I'm not sure what is the basis for your question but using market definition where Google Play and Apple Store are in the same market is not correct (market definition is essential part of any monopoly regulation). Markets are defined by choice of practice, not by choice in principle.

My question is: what is the basis for asserting that this market failure is due to monopoly power? Is your argument that their excessive profits from the services provided result from anti-competitive behavior? If so, what specific anti-competitive behavior are you referring to?

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

#504

Post by patanegra »

nabla9 wrote: 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…

One company's margin, is other company's opportunity.

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

#505

Post by patanegra »

SwtCyber wrote: post #414
nabla9 wrote: 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…

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

Yeah, because they built it. If people were using Linux everywhere, the situation would be different.

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

#506

Post by simondotau »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #493
simondotau wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems obvious to me that larger players will require different regulations than smaller players I agree with this in principle, but I don't think that principle applies here. Apple is not a uniquely large vendor of games. There are multiple ecosystems operating at similar orders of magnitude in games sales, at around $10B or more. Against that backdrop, portraying the App Store as some singular 400-pound gorilla…

It seems to me that you're cherry picking a product category while I am taking "mobile app market" as a whole. I did not suggest that Apple could escape laws that apply to a given product category. Quite the opposite - that I think it is reasonable for a behemoth to be subject to _additional_ regulations that cut across _all_ product categories. That was the point of my analogy. In physical retail big box stores are…

I agree with stringent regulations with respect to apps other than interactive entertainment. I disagree about interactive entertainment because I don't think that moral arguments for marketplace regulation extends to video games. Especially when it comes to cross-platform games like Fortnite. Nobody is forced to make games for iOS. Epic Games were certainly not forced to do business with Apple any more than Bungie or Naughty Dog weren't.

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

#507

Post by ghm2199 »

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?

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

#508

Post by gyulai »

Teever wrote: post #498
gyulai wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I certainly think it’s incredibly false marketing for Apple to claim I bought an iphone, when in reality I paid upfront for essentially AOL. I wonder if that has ever been tried against Apple or a similar company in a court of law, because I think there might be real merit there. One would have to get a bunch of people together claiming a refund on the purchase price on the grounds that ownership hasn't been transf…

I’ve been thinking for a while now that a really effective way to deal with problem companies would be coordinate a mass action on small claims closets around the world all on the same day. Often in small claims court you win by default if the other person doesn’t show up and I’m sure judges know average will sympathize with the kinds of arguments that you raised above.

I don't know. We don't have any such thing as small claims court in Germany, but my expectation would be that judges in low-level courts will try their very best not to get noticed for setting any kind of precedent whatsoever. The only thing that's going to happen if you rule against Apple in a low-level court is that they will go into revision, and carrying a high probability that the higher-level judge will overturn the decision and make the lower-level judge look bad in the process.

Also, any kind of effort to annoy someone by bringing coordinated actions in lots of venues all at the same time is probably abuse of process.

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

#509

Post by gortok »

blahgeek wrote: post #362
nabla9 wrote: 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.

“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.

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

#510

Post by stouset »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #403
nabla9 wrote: 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…

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!

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