Comment by nabla9

> Everybody will slowly move to "web only" as 30% would kill their ability to compete with anybody else.

This is why Apple makes PWAs so miserable in Safari and disallows other browsers unless they're just Safari with lipstick.

Apple users seem to be fine with everything being much more expensive. Not only the 30% apple tax itself, developers know Apple users pay more and specify higher prices on Apple.

> Everybody will slowly move to "web only" as 30% would kill their ability to compete with anybody else.

Frankly, yes, please. I mean, I'm biased as my whole career is in web app development, but there are so many things these days that do not need a whole native app. They're just communicating with a server backend somewhere, using none of the unique native functionality of the phone (much of which is available in browser APIs these days anyway). I can block ads in a web app much more easily. It's much harder to do customer-hostile things like block screenshots in a web app.

Native apps definitely have a place, but I think they're very overused, mostly for reasons that benefit the business at the expense of the customer.

You couldn't make that argument because Patreon is also a platform to host content, not just send money. If it was something like a twitch donation app the argument would make more sense

Next up, Apple starts taking a cut of every money transfer you do with your banking app.

> You could make the argument that Patreon isn't much more than a banking app.

Don't give them any ideas.

Honestly I wouldn't be that shocked if Apple tried demanding a 30% royalty on bank deposits and bills paid using iPhone apps. They've decided the future of their company depends on being huge assholes about it.

Imagine seeing a popup banner in an app each time you open it that interrupts whatever you're trying to do to say "open on our website!"

(Apple's censorship notwithstanding)

They currently do charge 0.15% on Apple Pay actually.

Presumably you also would agree that it's fair if Chrome, Windows, and Lenovo all charged me 30% each for using Patreon via Chrome+Windows on a thinkpad, right?

They're doing about as much to facilitate my use of Patreon as Apple is.

This isn't like a mall at all. This is like a web browser, where apps are webpages, and Apple is insisting that the contents of that webpage are something they can dictate all payment terms on.

For the airport analogy to work, it would have to be that you go to the Airport, go into the electronics store, buy a Kindle, and then the Airport insists it can take 30% not just on the purchase of the kindle, but 30% on every single book you buy on the kindle forever.

Apple taking a cut on the purchase price of an app that a user found via the app store does make some sense. Apple taking a cut of an in-app interaction with a creator that the user almost certainly found elsewhere is nonsense.

What next, should apple take a 30% cut of my rent because I found my apartment on the Craigslist app? Should they take a 30% of my train ticket that I purchased using the Safari app? Why does Patreon have to add a 30% cut on in-app content, when Safari lets me pay for in-app content with my credit card without taking any cut?

> 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 ticket to Disneyland where the seller of the product decided how I interacted with everything the device enabled.

I don’t think this should be disallowed. 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 subscribe to a half dozen creators and I have exclusively used the web interface to subscribe and consume this content. You cannot tell me with a straight face that if the only difference was I subscribed on my phone to someone who charges me $10/mo, Apple is entitled to $36 for the first year and $18/yr in perpetuity thereafter.

I don’t think anyone suggests Apple should get nothing for their app store services, just that it shouldn’t be 30% of every transaction processed through every iOS app.

Yes it's fine but the 30% should be charged to the customer who wants to stay within that ecosystem of course. If they want that white glove treatment they can pay for it. Of course once the users see how much that fluffy ecosystem actually costs them I bet most of them will just pay patreon directly :)

If the platform like patreon is supposed to absorb that fee they will increase prices for everyone even people who won't touch Apple like me. That's not fair. Or more likely, they will just give less to the content creators.

In the EU it's already forbidden to force payments through Apple or to forbid the platforms to charge the fee back to the customer.

Should Ford get a 30% cut every time you fill your gas tank ?

> Not even in the days of IE was I ever this frustrated.

I've been web devving since the days of IE as well and this reeks of hyperbole. Maybe things are different for browser games, but for me, everything has vastly improved since those days.

I tried something similar a couple years back, and fully agree. Safari is atrocious for trying to create a good mobile experience. It almost feels intentional.

You do know a phone has a browser installed right?

Because they don't control those. Apple could choose to only allow users to access websites that pay them a bit 30% fee, but users would notice the web was turned off on their device. They don't notice when the app store does it.

It might be a strong argument depending on the negative effects - I don't think it's very clear cut. Also no, neither Apple nor Google have a duopoly on the distribution of all consumer software. Microsoft exists, for example.

The other problem consideration here is negotiating power.

Today consumers don't have negotiating power over individual developers, but both Apple and Google do. If you complain to Meta about their unwanted tracking, you don't really have many options besides deleting the app (which you should do anyway). But if enough people complain to Apple or Google, they are more inclined to do something and have the power.

While it may be a marriage of convenience, it's undeniable that both companies through their app distribution models have also provided benefits to consumers that developers otherwise would have abused - privacy, screen recording, malicious advertising, &c.

If you want to argue from the standpoint of pro-consumer action, you have to remember that "developers" are usually pretty awful too and will get away with anything they can, even if it harms their customers. A good balance, instead of ideological purity about one "side" or the other is the smarter move. I tend to come down on the side of the mainstream app stores precisely because those asking for more "freedom" to do as they wish are a tiny minority and are usually more technical. I.e. they can jump through the hoops to install 3rd party app stores and jailbreak their phones today, and since you already can do what you want, maybe it's best to just leave the masses alone since they're very obviously happy with the duopoly.

Well, you have to balance it with how much you want to line the coffers of malicious actors.

If you go all the way to "everyone should have the freedom to get pwned", then you are also funneling the money of innocents into the pockets of some of the worst people in the world, and that's not a great outcome just to make life more convient for some HNers.

The question is about what trade-off makes sense for most people. That probably is some sort of escape hatch nontech people just won't do.

Maybe it's a hard thing to appreciate until you've watched aging family members get tricked by absolute scum, mostly enabled by how loosey-goosey modern computing can still be.

There is nothing stopping you from using non-Apple hardware to escape restrictions on downloading unreviewed software.

I hate the classic “everyone should be an expert at IT and it’s their fault and they had it coming due to their own ignorance if they make mistakes” argument far more than you hate mine.

The relevant market here is the creators not the consumers. As a creator you have no choice but to accept whatever fees Apple, Google, Steam etc set. Or whatever rates Spotify pays you per stream. The fact you "could" host your own website is irrelevant when the reality is nobody will visit it.

What is also totally voluntary is our decision to let Apple exist as an entitiy, to give them a government enforced monopoly over certain things, to make it illegal to break their technical protections of their monopoly etc.

> No one needs app, it’s not food or shelter

"No one needs app" is not the same as "No one has biological mandatory need to have an app"

Creators on Patreon are already loosely bound to the market of other creators. Not all creators are affected by this change.

The app store payment cut harms only creators who have disproportionately high percentages of patrons that primarily consume their content from iPhones - a demographic that they have no control over.

If they wish to increase their price to make up for this, they then are forced to risk turning away their other, non-iPhone-primary patrons. Notably, Patreon is forbidden by Apple from making this pricing scheme transparent and up-charging only iPhone users to keep the creator whole.

The only party with power here is Apple - and they are using it to strongarm.

I'm wondering what adjectives you hope to apply to a phone operating system. I'm content with mine when I don't have to think about it, for which "acceptable" seems about right, and discontent when I do.

I've used it for 3 years and the only app I couldn't use has been Google pay/wallet.

Truly is nearly. Some apps (banks) you need to toggle a compat mode.

I also don't use Apple, and I try to avoid the only other alternative by using GrapheneOS instead of an official Android build.

But at some point everything is going to be so closely tied to Google as well that that way of living is also going to become too painful, and at that point "or not use Apple or Google" is a bit like saying "or not use the roads".

This. Doing business with almost any major company is unethical, but Apple sits near the top of the big tech companies people shouldn't do business with. They are not a force for good in the world.

Correct, but that means that publishers are choosing to distribute via Steam, despite the existence of other options, because Steam's superior features, user base, etc. justify paying that premium. They could distribute on Epic games, or even self-distribute like how Blizzard does, but they choose Steam.

It's not analogous to iOS that has no other options for distribution.

Just to ground the discussion in Apple's criminal behavior a bit, here's some excerpts from a 2025 ruling about Apple's behavior in this regard:

> Apple’s response to the Injunction strains credulity. After two sets of evidentiary hearings, the truth emerged. Apple, despite knowing its obligations thereunder, thwarted the Injunction’s goals, and continued its anticompetitive conduct solely to maintain its revenue stream. Remarkably, Apple believed that this Court would not see through its obvious cover-up (the 2024 evidentiary hearing). To unveil Apple’s actual decision-making process, not the one tailor-made for litigation, the Court ordered production of real-time documents and ultimately held a second set of hearings in 2025.

> To summarize: One, after trial, the Court found that Apple’s 30 percent commission “allowed it to reap supracompetitive operating margins” and was not tied to the value of its intellectual property, and thus, was anticompetitive. Apple’s response: charge a 27 percent commission (again tied to nothing) on off-app purchases, where it had previously charged nothing,and extend the commission for a period of seven days after the consumer linked-out of the app. Apple’s goal: maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream. Two, the Court had prohibited Apple from denying developers the ability to communicate with, and direct consumers to, other purchasing mechanisms. Apple’s response: impose new barriers and new requirements to increase friction and increase breakage rates with full page “scare” screens, static URLs, and generic statements. Apple’s goal: to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream. In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...

They are not allowing other marketplaces, or creators themselves, to run apps on Apple devices directly.

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.