Patiently waiting for a mandatory 30% fee on every transaction made with iOS banking software. Maybe that'll put a definitive stop to forcing mobile "apps" with jailbreak detection on customers and have banks think twice before crippling the functionality of their websites.
Please Apple, make this happen.
I just use the bank's website.
Many banks require you to two-factor authenticate with an app on your phone.
Never.
Popular apps have been exempt from these rules since the beginning of time - not that I agree with this.
Is Patreon not popular?
If their app didn’t exist on iOS,
would it be weird/embarrassing for Apple?
That’s what “popular” means, in this context.
That’s how they make their decisions.
I feel like it would definitely be weird.
But Patreon does have a web version but I am not sure how many people prefer web sites in Apple ecosystem especially on Ios so I do find the whole thing to be a bit weird because this ~30% cut essentially seems to rip off of creators in some sense.
Patreon is a very niche app in the grand scheme of things. There's the saying that only 1% of web visitors ever stop by and actually contribute, and I'd expect that number to drop to 0.001% when it comes to contributing monetarily through a tool like Patreon. This is an absolutely tiny minority.
Hell I'd argue more people are upset about the lack of an OnlyFans app than Patreon. OF has way more brand-recognition (outside of tech) than Patreon.
It rips off everyone.
Epic Games went to federal court over this with Apple like 40 fuckin times - a related fun read for you.
As an app? No.
Have they? Netflix, Spotify, Kindle, ...
A nickel for each iMessage…
Honestly… if we implemented $0.01 charge on every message, post and etc. the world would become an amazing place.
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 ridiculous. I have probably sent over a million public messages on Discord in the decade I've been using it. $10,000 is a pretty steep fee to do some chatting.
3. This is essentially a digital ID scheme with extra steps, and requires ceding privacy completely to communicate on the internet.
I understand your comment was probably an off-hand joke and not to be taken seriously but if you think about it for very long it becomes apparent that it would actually make the problem worse.
>spammers already have no issue paying for junk mail.
Junk mail isn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things. And I'd be surprised if the margins for this was so high that a mere 1 cent transactions wouldn't deter so many of them.
I see it the opposite. You will never stop truly motivated propaganda from spreading its messae. They put millions into it and the goal isn't necessarily profit. But you stop a lot of low time scammers with a small cost barrier.If only because they then take a cheaper grift.
It costs to mail physical letters, somehow I still get "spam" addressed to homeowner/resident in my physical mailbox.
I think that spammers would happily pay that rate.
Today out of curiosity, I tried looking at what is the cost of one PVA (Pre-verified account) of google. I found it to be around ~$0.03 (3 cents) or it could be an amazon account idk or maybe an youtube account
Like my point is that atleast for amazon/yt, these bots usually cost this much ~$0.03 to buy once.
Then we probably see a scammer buy many of these accounts and then (rent it?) on their own website/telegram groups to promtoe views/ratings etc./ comment with the porn ridden bots that we saw on youtube who will copy any previous comment and paste it and so on.
So technically these still cost 3 cents & scammers are happily paying the rate.
I mean...that's how SMS used to work? Or still works?
Once upon a time it was expensive to send messages and now it's cheap.
Yeah. Iirc, I used to have to pay $0.20 per SMS message, sent and received, before unlimited plans became a thing. Also had a limited amount of minutes for phone calls.
I remember Verizon wireless at the time had a plan with unlimited nights and weekends for calls and texts, so my friends and I would message each other like crazy on the weekends when it was free. Got grounded when I got my first girlfriend in high school for racking up the phone bill from text messages and promptly got my phone taken away.
That would totally amplify the voice of people you want to hear more from, not less /s
I miss the old school monopolies, where MS was a bad guy because they dared to include browser.
And yes, I do legalese details of that are much more complex. But it just makes no common sense.
It gets real depressing when you compare the recent case of Google to what was done to AT&T in the 80s.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but it feels like over the past couple of decades we've gone from a handful of clever guys coming together with an idea and starting companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, to celebrating buyouts of startups by large behemoths—that's how low the definition of success has dropped. Is competition law even a thing anymore?
Like try to break the internet and the java programming language? The former being most successful for years
If you mention Java, I think you may only incite more nostalgia for the monopolies of yesteryear. Was Microsoft's approach to Java evil and ill-intentioned, yes, absolutely. But it eventually resulted in .NET and C#, so I'd say that particular battle was a net benefit to humanity in the end. .NET is even truly cross-platform now, and open-source. Meanwhile Apple achieves interesting technical advances with their new hardware but I will never benefit from the existence of it because I will not use hardware that is locked to a prison OS.
I have a theory that they've actually succeeded with the latter too. I mean, look at Java now, and look how many mini-Javas (all those JIT-compiled languages and their runtimes) have emerged since. The point of Java was to unify, we've got more division than ever instead.
The point of Java was write-once, run everywhere, and that is perfectly viable these days. I don't want to live in a world where everyone is a Java programmer, and I don't think there is really any reason to suppose that unifying on a single programming language would be desirable for developers. IMO, Javascript already shows the dangers of over-unification; you get an ecosystem so full of packages that a significant portion of the language's developers are only capable of developing by stacking 1000 packages on top of each other, with no ability to write their own code and accordingly no ability to optimize or secure their programs according to the bespoke needs of the project rather than using general purpose off-the-shelf libraries.
You mean the web right? Or did Microsoft ever roll its own BGP code?
There's also the time they tried to kill the open-ness of SMTP
For some reason I am assuming that they are talking about dot net web servers with the servers running windows (though I can be wrong and I am a little confused by what they mean break the internet as well in this context as well)
Apple also includes a web browser on iOS, but forces every other browser you can install to use their browser engine. It's one of the many reasons they are being sued by the DOJ for anti-competitive practices.
Apple also sits on a board that approves new web technologies for standards formalization, so they can squash adoption of anything that might make web browser APIs as capable as a native application, so that they can force people to make native apps where they can extract a percentage from it (they can't do that with a web application). Rather than work out reasonable ways to support things other browsers allow, they just say "no thanks" and then there is no standard allowed to move forward.
It's extremely abusive and anti-competitive. I hope the DOJ continues to pursue litigation against Apple for this and many other things.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Apple has an impressive commitment to evil, similar to Oracle. They get better at it every year.
The tremendously, villainy evil of getting money for a service.
A service that Apple is mandating everyone to use or else get kicked off their operating system...
This would be an entirely different conversation if Patreon was still allowed to use other payment systems outside of Apple's IAP service. No, this is Apple forbidding competitors on their platform.
So
- the devs all need to get licesnses and specific hardware to develop for IOS
- They spin up their own servers to manage all the finances coming in
- They work on their payment processing solution separate from Apple. And Patreon still pays some fee to apple over the app.
- the model of Patreon only takes 5% off of creators, so that's not enough for Apple. It also wants a cut at the customers of the website who provide services. Customers not beholden to any one platform.\
- And to force them to do that, they are kicking the other processing plan off as an option, leaving only them to work with.
And it's somehow not evil? If I let a friend sleepover at my apartment, is the landlord in the right to demand a day of rent from them too?
Always hated apple for their putrid business practices. Add this to the pile.
Just do what we all do to dodge this, have the Account management and purchasing abilities sit inside an embedded browser window that opens up from a button push in the app. Yes it adds a little barrier but with Apple Pay it is a very small barrier and the juice is worth the squeeze.
Don’t they forbid this? Spotify couldn’t even link to their website in the US lol
In practice I’ve seen apps just game the system by (1) using IAP using the normal flow, and (2) giving user a button unrelated to purchasing that would open a new WebView, which just happens to contain a purchase button.
This was a result of the Apple vs Epic case, external payment processors avoiding the fee were enabled in the US in May 2025.
If it was enabled, why can Apple still demand 30% cut here? Couldn’t Patreon just switch to external payment processors citing the Epic case?
They'd have to require all current subscriptions be cancelled and the re-upped with the new payment processor, no? That's gunna be really costly
But then again to avoid a 30% fee.. probably worth it
Because Patreon doesn't want to do that. They could.
Spotify does link to their website to sign up in the US...
What are you going to do about it? Use Android?
Me? I'm working to help people get elected to Congress to help regulate this mess.
Why would you want to give the government such power? That always amazes me... when there is an issue, people jump on "let's vote for government to regulate this", but then they are surprised when a new government gets to power and uses this new regulation/capability against you.
Because this country needs a third funding, and I find your arguments incredibly moronic.
Political power is absolutely critical to help workers over the interests of the elites, deciding to actively cede this power is stupid because we do know who fills the vacuum and it's mostly evil people that want to continue to do evil things.
Please remember that every right we the people have was never given to us. It was forcibly taken by violence and force from those that abuse authority.
Advocacy is by far the worse way to enact real change. Organizing, literally expanding the base of political power, is the only way to change society.
People have forgotten how much power they hold and can yield, luckily there are those that do realize this and frankly I'm glad I spend my limited time on earth with those people than with your lot (those that complain but never do).
I may regret asking but what is your solution, then?
Use Android
[delayed]
[delayed]
there is little other remedy to monopoly power?
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
Apple is already getting sued by the DOJ for their abusive business practices. They should be regulated.
I want them to use antitrust regulation against everyone, including me. That's what having values is like.
Markets without competition degenerate. Markets are also artificial and always rely on government enforcement to exist - Apple sues people who try to get around its market manipulation. You just prefer that governments help enforce trusts and destroy competition that those trusts denote as unfair.
At the end of the day Apple is doing their damnedest to force the requirement to support other app stores. They want their cake, and they want to eat it too. Unfortunately they are going to make an epic fuckton of money before they get told to stop.
Bravo!
Yeah, lol.
Was all Apple since the iBook G4. Bought a Pixel last week. It's nice.
Google is also making Sideloading harder "to protect users"
launch an in-app browser and don't use apple as the payment processor.
The Epic v Apple lawsuit verdict makes this allowed now.
My understanding was that you could have a button that could take the user outside of the app to pay (i.e. your website). So progress, but not this level of freedom yet.
GrapheneOS
Can we please just have cheap/affordable linux phones at this point.
I am so close to having raspberry pi phones but even rasp pi 's are getting expensive because of AI dammit
This means Apple is literally going to take nearly 3x in fees from Patreon's customers than Patreon is taking from their own customers.
My understanding is that the reason the number 30% is so magical is a historical anomaly. When software was physically distributed back in the day, 15% of the MSRP was reserved for the distributor and another 15% for the retailer. When these digital marketplaces were set up, the companies just said "well, we're the distributor and the retailer, so we'll keep both". Forgetting the fact that the cost to distribute and retail the software is literally pennies on the dollar of what it used to be.
I think the irony in this case is that this is a greed problem of their own making. When Steve Jobs announced that apps on the original iPhone would only be $1-$3, he set off the first enshittification crisis in the software industry. In 2008, Bejeweled cost $19.99 if you wanted to buy it on the PC. On the iPhone it was $0.99! This artificially low anchor price is what kicked off the adoption of ad and subscription driven software models in the first place.
My understanding was that the retailer margin was 50% and the distributor margin was 10%. So Apple/Steam/etc went "half of 60% is a great deal".
Of course the retailer margin is never actually 50%. That's theoretical if 100% of product is sold at MSRP. Actual retail margins are about 25% because of sales, write-offs, et cetera.
OTOH when there's a sale in Steam, they still get their full cut (of the reduced price).
I remember writing apps for PalmOS (long time ago) distributors like PalmGear took over 60% from international developers like me, plus they held your earnings until you hit a minimum payout threshold. Add bank fees on top of that, and it was basically not worth developing for the platform. 30% felt like a godsend in comparison. (I'm not defending the Apple / Google tax)
From what I could find, it does seem that major retailers back in the day (CompUSA, Circuit City, etc) were only making 15% margin on software sales. This is much lower than other product categories - but also software didn't take up much floor space.
its agency model vs retail model. Recall - Amazon hated the agency model, where the publisher sets the price (and 30% cut goes to app store - Jobs sold this as amazing deal). Retail model the retailer sets the price, and the publisher is guaranteed the wholesale price. Amazon preferred the latter because they competed on dynamic price setting. this was so long ago we forget.
It coupled the small floor space with high prices, and an extreme overall easiness of management (low weight, resistance to small impacts, possibility of stacking, etc).
So that margin not only had to pay for small management costs, and had small opportunity costs on the floor space, but it also was divided by a large unitary price.
Had no idea about the history and the 15%/15% split but when the topic comes up I just remember how good the 30% seemed back in, what, 2008?
It made perfect sense that this shiny new iOS platform would take 30% of a cheap app to ensure that it matches the high quality of iOS. These were little productivity apps and games at the time.
This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?
What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
I was working for a small software company at the time and we thought it was outrageous. We were selling our software online direct through our own web site and the cost was far lower. A few percent for credit card processing fees, and the server/bandwidth cost was inconsequential.
>What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
I'm pretty sure Apple has discussed things exactly like this.
Their upper management really does tend to think that 30% of any monetary transaction on an Apple platform belongs to them. Too bad our government is too busy being ran by the billionaires to do anything about these abuses from billionaires.
Steve Jobs never announced a price ceiling for apps on the App Store. The well-known I Am Rich app for iPhone retailer for $999, the actual price ceiling.
That's why the DSA is a good idea that should be replicated worldwide.
Too many parasites between creators and consumers
I think I’m old enough to have experienced this cycle so many times with so many businesses that I just feel kind of silly to hate on Apple or Microsoft or whoever. They’re all just maximizing profits as designed.
I think people find it easier to scowl at the villain du jour than to dig into the deep complex issue of when capitalism doesn’t work, when the government isn’t doing enough, and what we could do about it… or the feeling that we really can’t do much.
> feeling that we really can’t do much.
That's why people don't dig into the deep complex issues. Because it's uncomfortable, and forces one to confront the potential reality that their worldview, and everything they've known about how our society works is wrong, broken, and collapsing in front of them.
It can be a very distressing and depressing state of mind. There's a reason "ignorance is bliss" is a common trope, because there's some real truth to it. For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
You don’t need to solve the problems of capitalism to call bullshit bullshit. Saying “companies maximize profits” doesn’t magically make the behavior acceptable and when Apple does this, it’s not just “the market at work,” it’s the use of market power.
Complaining about it is part of the system operating the way it operates. It’s factored in already. I just think that it’s not really interesting. It’s reasoning about the instance, not the class.
While its true that creators often share "extras" in return for support, it's crazy to call the support itself a "digital good." I can only assume they mean it is digitally good for their business.
"Nice business model ya got there, sure would be a shame if somethin' happened to it."
how is this legal
Sad, mean, and pointless
Apple needs this to stay afloat, you know
Those greedy artists and creators depriving Apple of their profits.
Poe's law hit me hard.
Knowing there are Apple fanboys around HN (I got downvoted for saying the liquid glass thing and the iphone air were pointless) I fear they will take your comment seriously
Boycott Apple services. It’s the only way they will listen.
Yea, that won't do much. How about convict Apple of monopoly practices.
Tim Cook hanging out with Trump at the White House a few days ago - not a good sign this will happen anytime soon.
Jeff Bezos commissioning an hagiography on Melania looking for other favours.
I really don’t understand this attitude. Of course it will. If enough people do it. This is how corporations change not through protest and we’re certainly not going to get any antimonopoly anything going on soon.
They make literally about 40% of their profit off of Apple services. Do you really think if people on mass stopped buying Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, an iCloud, they wouldn’t care?
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/2025-marked-a-record-...
I mean the minute people started talking a general worker strike in Minneapolis all of a sudden all these companies freaked our and wrote a letter protesting about IVE’s behavior in Minneapolis.
>I really don’t understand this attitude.
It's not an attitude, it's an observation. Corporations almost never change their behaviors because of protests and people bitching about them. It's one of the least effective ways of implementing change, especially when said company holds a locked in/monopoly position.
The thing is the end consumer is mostly hidden from the problems of Apples over charging, it deeply affects the companies selling services on the Apple platforms. What would affect Apple far more is not consumers not buying, but a huge part of the people offering on Apples market pulling out. But, Apple has that game rigged to. Particular suppliers get special deals with far lower costs. The competitors to those suppliers are now screwed. Apple will not offer them lower costs (again, Apple hides these contracts until they eventually get disclosed in court), every other company ends up paying a huge Apple tax because pulling out hand the competitor a huge market.
Honestly I'm fine with Apple charging whatever it wants for on its store. I am not fine with Apple selling you what should be a general purpose device and saying only its store can be used. Competitive stores on the device would quickly break Apple of it's monopoly behavior.
But it's completely wrong.
Having a boycott against you is like being hated. Firms spend enormous sums on advertisements.
Even a tiny group boycotting you has a substantial influence on your popularity-- they will tell their friends, etc. and will lead to reduced popularity.
It is not completely wrong. It's situational. The attention span of the general public is short, exceptionally short when it's about something that doesn't directly affect the general public too.
General public: "OMG, I should boycott Apple because they are making some other businesses life hard, why?"
It's a very hard sale because all the general public sees is Apple phones are easy to use and friendly. Attempting to explain the complexities that occur in the background gives Apple power in the narrative that they are doing everything to keep you "safe".
> if people on mass [sic] stopped buying
Ah, the "vote with your dollar" argument. How's that been working out.
I thought that already happened :)
But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops.
But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
That was my take anyways.
Per the article it's already happened for 96% of creators and this is the deadline for the remaining 4%.
> But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops. But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
Moreover, the fee only applies to the subscriptions made using Apple's payment system. That being said, in most jurisdictions their payment system is the only one developers can use in an app. IMHO, this is the real problem.
I can’t remember being more enraged than when I learned my YouTube premium was more expensive per month than it needed to be because I had signed up on iPhone, so many people wasting money every month, and YouTube isn’t allowed to mention the option to pay on web
If they weren’t a public company, you’d think they were the mob. I’ll never trust the Apple ecosystem ever again
Yep, the tax comes from using the Patreon's in-app purchase system. Using a browser on an iPhone/iPad or any other device will not be taxed. Seen many creators putting in their bios suggesting people use the browser instead of the in app purchase.
Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.
Isn’t this what Epic just sued and won over?
Epic didnt really win. If i recall correctly the ruling ended up being that 3rd party payment processors are allowed but 27% of app revenue is still owed to apple if that route is taken. So you can save 3% by using 3rd party payment processing but thats around how much those services cost anyway so no real saving
They tried that. The judge, correctly, went "uh the fuck you will".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
> While Apple implemented App Store policies to allow developers to link to alternative payment options, the policies still required the developer to provide a 27% revenue share back to Apple, and heavily restricted how they could be shown in apps. Epic filed complaints that these changes violated the ruling, and in April 2025 Rogers found for Epic that Apple had willfully violated her injunction, placing further restrictions on Apple including banning them from collecting revenue shares from non-Apple payment methods or imposing any restrictions on links to such alternative payment options. Though Apple is appealing this latest ruling, they approved the return of Fortnite with its third-party payment system to the App Store in May 2025.
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. Here's what I wrote when they tried to pull this shit a year and a half ago and then chickened out:
Patreon has two billing models, monthly (bills on the first of the month, or whenever they get around to it) and daily (charges you the moment you sign up.)
For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.
Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.
Here's a support request I just sent them, again, after clicking 15 levels deep into their FAQ before finding the thing that might contact a human. Since the email alerting me of this change came from a "noreply" address because of course it did.
Feel free to send your own:
---
Subject: Subscription billing is unacceptable
You recently sent mail saying that you're going to force me to switch from monthly billing to subscription billing.
Subscription billing is unacceptable for my Patreon. It does not work.
I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.
If you force me to switch from a monthly cycle to a daily cycle I will have no choice but to stop using Patreon.
To be clear: I do not give a shit about the iOS app. Not one fractional fuck is given. If the solution to this problem is that people cannot sign up for, or access, my Patreon from the iOS app, that is 100% acceptable to me.
I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.
(Also you are blaming this on Apple's bullying, which is simply not credible. You've been nagging me to change to subscription billing for years, with the little red error icon appearing everywhere. This is your decision. You are transparently using Apple as an excuse.)
---
I said this same thing to you a year and a half ago, the last time you tried to pull this nonsense. Second verse, same as the first. Last time, support replied that they "completely get why this change would be upsetting" and "will bring my feedback to the team." Uh huh.
Patreon's absolutely awful level of service and support has been a huge problem for quite some time, but I am really not looking forward to having to figure out how to implement recurring monthly billing on my own.
Patreon, YOU HAD ONE JOB.
[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/patreon-is-lying-again-and-...
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 them a membership card and cross their name off a list.
TLDR: if you still have any Patreon subscriptions through Apple’s in-app-purchase flow (look in Settings > Apple Account > Subscriptions) cancel them and restart them on patreon.com
When the App Store first launched I think 30% was pretty fair fee for Apple to collect, but that was a long time ago, and before IAP/Subscriptions. Apple might still be entitled to some percentage but they've expanded to cover more and more things (like this Patreon change or Kindle back in the day) and now we have moved far, far beyond the pale.
Apple (perhaps like all corporations but I'm focusing on Apple) is a greedy company that has massively lost it's way. Tim Cook support fascists and/or anything to improve the bottom line, especially if it increases "services" [0]. Alan Dye (thank god he is now busy screwing up Meta) shipped the worst UI revamp I've seen in a while from a company Apple's size and the iOS/iPadOS/visionOS/macOS software is all in dire straits. And they managed to do all of this while alienating developers left and right and playing chicken with governments around the world [0] instead of relaxing their hold on their platforms.
But who cares? The stock price went up. /s
I was overjoyed to see Alan Dye leave (and Jony Ive) and hope that we don't have to wait too much longer to bid Tim Cook adieu. Whoever takes over next has a lot of work ahead to dig out of the hole Tim Cook dug for Apple.
Tim Cook might be the best thing for shareholders but he has been horrible for product quality (software and hardware) and for democracy.
[0] Pay no attention to how much of services revenue came from the Google search deal with the majority of the rest coming from casinos for children and adults alike.
[1] Like the EU DMA, which, I have publicly and privately voiced my dislike of parts of it but Apple has no one to blame but themselves. By keeping a white-knuckle grip on their revenue they forced governments across the world to pass laws (often bad IMHO) that fragment and confuse the entire iOS market.
There's little assurance of safety or 'fitness for purpose' for apps in the App Store. Apple takes 30% for distribution, and you're basically on your own.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-betrayed-trust-says-iph...
30% was always excessive.
I suspect developers are looking for these workaround because of the 30%. If Apple had asked for, say, 10%, would there be as many developers looking for loopholes?
I don't know. Apple perhaps should ask for compensation for "vouching for" the developer's app, hosting the app, distributing the app. But Steam shows us another model where the developer themselves pay a modest up-front cost to have their app hosted ($100) and then Steam steps out of the way.
I wonder if this would go a long way too to thinning the herd so to speak from the Apple App Store—perhaps improve the overall quality of the apps submitted.
To be fair, the fee is really 15%- 30% only comes into play only after you've made $1mm USD in the prior year.
I think a lot of developers were willing to let it slide when App Store was a luxury market. You could just ignore it and make regular webapps and/or desktop software.
But now iOS is the most popular computing platform in the US. We no longer _have_ an option to ignore it.
And 30% is just crazy. And it's _on_ _top_ of all other expenses: Apple hardware that you need to buy to develop for iOS, $100 per year subscription fee, overhead of using Apple's shitty tools, etc.
Tim Cook has been horrible for software, but the hardware under his regime has been incredible.
May I introduce you to years he let Jony Ive control that. Which brought us things like the butterfly keyboard, thinness at all costs (battery life), and loss of ports (in part due to thinness) that had to be walked back.
Yeah, I have no love for Ive's anti-bauhaus philosophy of form-über-alles.
Ports hiding on the back so you have to endure the sound of USB-tin scraping against anodized aluminum, the round mouse, etc.
Incredible is stretching things. Apple had to catch up with AMD in efficiency, and they did that. Outside the mobile market, Apple is basically a non-entity.
Apple doesn't have huge sales volume for Macs because of macOS and their astronomical pricing schemes, but it's not because of the hardware. Macbooks are easily the best laptops you can buy for most purposes, and they have been since the M1 came out. That has never been true of Apple computers before.
It's because of the hardware. For mobile Apple is competitive, for desktop applications they don't even show up on most benchmarks next to AMD/Nvidia hardware.
For example, you have to scroll beneath last-gen laptop GPUs before you can find any Apple hardware on the OpenCL charts: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks
That's also because of software. Apple deprecated OpenCL in MacOS eight years ago. In productivity software with solid Metal implementations, like Blender, the M4 Max is on par with the top of Nvidia's (mobile) 5xxx line, except with much more VRAM.
No software fix exists, Apple's GPUs are architecturally limited to raster efficiency (and now, matmul ops). It's frankly bewildering that a raster-optimized SOC struggles to decisively outperform a tensor-optimized CUDA system in 2026.
I get the feeling you had a specific use case that didn't work well with Apple GPUs? I'd be curious what it was. The architecture does have some unusual limitations.
By software problem, though, I meant referencing OpenCL benchmarks. No one in 2026 should be using OpenCL on macOS at all, and the benchmarks aren’t representative of the hardware.
I agree that the early days when every app was a single purchase and the prices were much higher it made more sense. A lot of people got rich from the App Store. So 30% wasn't a huge piece when you were seeing consistent growth every year in the user base.
I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals. So it unfortunately comes down to who benefits more. If you have something Apple really wants then they will cut a deal. But if not then you pay the high tax. They've at least cut it down somewhat for smaller devs and teams, but the whole industry needs to change. IAP/Subscriptions shouldn't just inherit the pricing systems of old.
I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
> I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals.
I agree, there were deals down to 15% I think (maybe lower) but I don't think that's still happening? I mean, Netflix finally gave up but only after increasing their IAP fee to cover the difference for many years. I might be behind the times on this but I didn't think they still had better cuts for larger corporations. I do know not all developers are treated the same (see Meta still being on the app store after all the shenanigans they pulled with enterprise certs, or Uber), and that does suck. It means that if you are big enough you can break the rules while an indie dev can have everything taken due to an automated system or mistake, even when it's not their fault.
> I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
I agree that's likely, though the thought of him staying till the "end" of that is not attractive.
>but I don't think that's still happening?
Apple and the contracted company are very very unlikely to tell you they have a secret contract for lower prices in effect unless they are forced to under court disclosure.
Oh, I 100% agree. I was wrong, I thought they got in trouble for doing that but I think I am only remembering things that came out in discovery for the Epic case, which didn’t center on that or prevent Apple from having such arrangements.
Should be 50% at least.
I call this the Apple "idiot tax" - 'cos you have to be an idiot in letting Apple exploit you (the developer and the user) this brazenly.
This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you. There are differences, Google is somewhat better on this specific point, but there's enough things Google is worse at (such as privacy) that choosing Google isn't exactly without downsides.
Your mindset results in Apple users thinking "the problem is those stupid Android idiots who accept being in an ad tech company's spyware garden" and Android users thinking "the problem is those stupid Apple idiots who accept that 30% of literally everything they do goes to Apple". In reality, we have a common enemy in the big tech duopoly and extremely lacklustre regulation which lets them keep doing this shit. You calling me an idiot for making a different shitty trade-off than you helps nobody.
> This is counterproductive. The only alternative to letting Apple exploit you is letting Google exploit you.
Or allowing users to control their hardware and software and give them the freedom to install the hell they want on it?
We've been using computers for eternities where we still have the possibility, yet, as soon as it is about phones then "no way, we protecting you from bad actors".
Give me a break, you want to help protect me from bad actors implement proper software/hardware jails/containers for third party software and that's it.
As a user, I can not allow users to control their hardware. It is not up to me. I get to choose between Apple and Google, and neither is in the business of allowing users to control their hardware.
You do have an alternative to both Google and Apple, which gives you the best of both worlds - it's called the Sailfish mobile OS - https://sailfishos.org/ . (As for my snarky post, read my other comment in this same thread to understand why I posted what I posted.)
I don't think I can send or receive money to and from my friends or pay my public transport fare from Sailfish.
If there's an Android app for it, it should run on Sailfish OS too. They are working hard to make more and more apps compatible with it as this old discussion highlights - https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/banking-apps-on-sailfish-os/1...
These days, Google has foolproof ways for an app to query and check if it's running on a "genuine" (read: Google-controlled, locked down) system.
I'm not switching to Sailfish.
Who am I to tell you how to spend your money? The point is, there are alternative unlike what you claimed. There is currently no foolproof way yet for Google to block apps. Also, it doesn't matter, in the long run - once the adoption of Sailfish OS picks up and it reaches critical mass, developers will switch to building apps for it. The "digital sovereignty movement" also helps. Russia has already bought and forked the source code of Sailfish OS and adopted it as its "national" state-sanctioned mobile operating system. This has had a ripple effect where many Russian apps have now been ported to it. China too has already forked Android to create its own "official" OS and most Chinese apps now also work on it. Similar attempts are going on with other countries too, who don't wish to be trapped in the duopoly that is Apple and Google in the mobile phone industry.
I would like nothing more than for a third viable competitor to show up.
I don't think you calling me an idiot will make that happen faster, is the point.
Victim blaming
Every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want. - Don't most of you here tell me that corporates don't need regulations as smart people "vote with their wallet"? If this is what some want to spend money on, the term "idiot" sounds justified ... anyway, the point was not to offend; just to embarrass some mildly to introspect their purchasing decision.
Oh, now ios users are an oppressed group. How cute.
Being a victim and being an oppressed group are not the same thing...