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%
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 so high that even Apple's own executives were sometimes surprised by the internal financial reports.
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edit: 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.
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...
If they tried to take significantly more, cash would be a lot more popular.
Yet Apple can get away with taking 30% and companies still accept this and push their apps rather than websites.
> Yet Apple can get away with taking 30% and companies still accept this and push their apps rather than websites.
companies and users!
Visa/MasterCard take like 0.3% the rest of the interchange fee goes to the issuing and acquiring banks.
Large transactions are riskier, let’s give them 45%. After all, I’d really hate to see their margins suffer.
Who's downvoting this? When you think online sarcasm is so obvious that no-one could believe it, someone's always there to prove otherwise
Maybe because its not really contributing anything new to the discussion?
I worry about their finances
They must be looking at the revenue Claude Code is making on Mac and thinking “Why aren’t we getting 30% of that?”
Wouldn’t be surprised if macOS starts locking down CLI tools towards an App Store model too.
> Wouldn’t be surprised if macOS starts locking down CLI tools towards an App Store model too.
The day that happens is the day Apple sees a mass exodus of developers to Linux, I don't think they'd be that stupid. They enjoy enough goodwill right now as the platform of choice (vs. Windows for those that don't want to run desktop Linux), I can't imagine they'd casually just throw that away.
Developers are a tricky market for this because they could realistically move to different platforms if stuff like this started to happen. Or at least work on remote machines.
If gaming on Macs ever became popular though this would be a real risk.
Apple fans on the other hand are not a tricky market. They swallow whatever Apple gives them.
It doesn't matter if they are developers or not.
I'm not sure Claude Code is making enough for Apple to take notice & drastically alter their CLI like that? CC has 100-150k users across all platforms, paying $200-1200/yr each. Even if every developer is on the top tier Max plan, and on MacOS, that's $180mn in revenue at Anthropic. So even in the most optimistic scenario, that's only ~$50mn revenue for Apple at a 30% take.
That pales in comparison to the hardware & subscription revenues Apple brings in by being a dev-friendly OS.
Source for the numbers? I am asking since Anthropic's revenue is 5+ billions, I'm guessing it's mostly from developers.
There is a $2400 plan as well.
Claude code reached $1B in six months in early Dec and given what I am seeing on ground, I wouldn't be surprised if just in last 2 months after that their revenue grew by double.
[1]: https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-acquires-bun-as-cla...
Presumably if you buy an AI subscription through an iOS app you also have to pay 30% Apple tax. Nice work for them.
It does work like that.
For me personally, I have used this method to spend my Apple gift cards purchased on a discount. Effectively I got a Claude subscription at 15% off. (You could argue this only works because OpenAI/Anthropic charge the same price across web/mobile, and I agree.)
So, as much as I despise Apple's business model, in some sense I have directly benefitted from it (other than stock price).
Hilarious how this is more than my tax rate. My tax rate gets education, healthcare, policing, etc etc.
Oh but you do get policing...
Look at how many different APIs you get as a developer on iOS.
Feels more like a sales tax (VAT) though, which is the same for everyone.
Exactly, not even a progressive tax!
dont give Apple any ideas!
On the other side Apple gets money, so they can make *whole* world better, not just your country.
Think about how many lives were improved just by M* CPUs or Siri
/s
> Think about how many lives were improved just by M* CPUs or Siri
But these were paid for by the hardware purchase.
You joke, but legally they could. If game engines can charge a licence fee as a % of revenue from games developed on those engines, then legally there's not much to stop apple doing the same. Of course consumers and enterprises wouldn't tolerate it, but the barrier is commercial rather than legal.
Guess it is no different than Docker Desktop charging based on your revenue. The idea being charging based on some second order.
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What is absurd is finding yourself paying 30% on every digital item purchased on a smartphone app. It would never even occur to us that Microsoft takes a 30% margin on Steam, yet that is what happens on webtoon apps.
> Microsoft threatened to take 30% margin on all Steam transactions. That's why Valve embraced Linux and made the Steam Deck and Steam Machine.
This is totally made up.
Yeah but there was a big difference: As a developer you could opt out of that distribution and go your own way. I knew people who sold floppies out of their garage. IBM or whoever made your hardware, and Microsoft or whoever made your OS, could not prevent your users from installing your software on their machine.
Gov't taking a cut from tha App store is already happening [1] and it's a legitimate concern unlike the concept of Apple taking cuts from people's salary (LOL).
[1] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/12/app-store-and-japanese-co...
> when you develop an app for iOS or macOS, using Apple's APIs, platform and app store tech, it's reasonable to pay Apple something
Is it?
We spent several decades of the PC world, MSDOS and Windows, with zero platform license fees or approvals. This was hugely beneficial for innovation, and this is why everyone hates the sudden rise of platform landlordism.
Can't they add a rent clause to the ToS of MacOS, claiming that any commercial use (work for money) requires commercial licence?
Can Bic add a ToS to using their biros, so 15% of contract value goes to them if it's signed with their pen?
It would likely get voided as unconscionable if they just unilaterally demanded it, but it might hold up in specific circumstances (if the user is well-aware of the salary demand when they accepted the contract, and the user gets some proportionate value out of giving Apple a percentage of salary).
This is based on the controversial Unreal licensing, which is percent of revenue: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license
It’s reductio ad absurdum to make a point. But you could argue that income from Patreon forms part/all of a creator’s salary.
I don’t agree that this is an Apple hating thread. Its commentary on a pretty despicable action that Apple is taking.
“Despicable” is by an order of magnitude softer word compared to “Apple can legally take your salary”
Sure, Apple is greedy. But it doesn’t deserve what is usually assumed: legal persecution.
> If Apple can legally claim 30% of your salary then a doctor using an iPad to demonstrate results of a scan to a patient has to pay Apple 30% of their consultation fee.
Apple could absolutely do this. They could say that professional medical use of macOS requires a commercial license, and the price of that commercial licence could be linked to revenue.
Doctors - or rather their hospital IT/procurement departments - would be held to the terms of service they agree to. Far more rigorously than ordinary consumers.
It made sense in the early days, phone operators were charging up to 90% for the infrastucture to send an SMS, and get a download link to a J2ME/Windows CE/Pocket PC/Symbian/Palm/Blackberry download link to install the app.
So everyone raced to the iOS app store, it was only 30%, what a great deal!
The problem is that two decades later it is no longer that great deal in mobile duopoly world.
It's kind of interesting that while the structure is largely the same, the underlying behaviour/intent has morphed from a disruptor-model into being toxic rent-seeking behaviour.
Stuff like this is ironic but I do think it's escape hatches like this that will make these tech companies, if they ever go down, go down kicking and screaming. Any platform holder that ever finds themselves in a bad place financially will 100% pull all the levers like this.
Isn't it strictly worse that they're already thinking they're entitled to 30% of your salary because your clients use Apple hardware? You can change what you use, you can't change what they use.
That's of course on top of the 30% they take on things you buy using your salary via Apple devices.
and the 30% they take from the things you sell via apple devices, once your work is done.
Honestly that joke is uncomfortably close to how the logic already works...
30% of my yearly unrealised gains would be fair.
Come on, if you work on a MacBook then Tim Apple deserves at least one of your kidneys. It's only fair.
Don't give them any ideas haha
They certainly would if they could.
All the regulators in the world have their sights set on them and they know it. The light is half on already and the music is slowing. This party is soon to be over. It's a last ditch attempt at milking all they can.
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
Sometimes I think the 30% was supposed to be 3% originally, and no one noticed the decimal was in the wrong place when they shipped it, and then people paid it anyway, so they kept it.
30% is just so unreasonable that it would be totally understandable if someone would believe this.
In 2008, the app store was launching, and physical software was still sold at Targets, Walmarts and other large retailers. A 30% margin was roughly what retailers would make off of physical software sales. By setting the App Store to be the same, Apple was signaling to retailers that they were not trying to undercut their margin, and keep a healthy relationship with them.
Steam, the Kindle Store and iTunes all had similar sales cuts since before the app store launched in 2008.
It’s egregious now but at the time it wasn’t crazy because software developers often made way less than that when going through traditional publishing routes. Plus everyone was just happy to be making money off the new platform.
Nah, they probably used pre-existing marketplaces like steam as an example of what "they could get away with"
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How does one even come about creating a thought like this?
Please explain.
this is sarcasm, right?
Yes
seems like no one else got that. tough crowd.
The wealthiest company in the world really needs that last little bit from those Patreon creators who have it way too easy in their lives. It's not as if the people that take that meager bit of cash are going to invest it in Apple stock so they're going to have to pay up.
The Mafia can learn a thing or two from Cook.
I guess that's how you become the wealthiest company in the world.
no wonder Tim Cook hangs around Trump a lot.
Both employ mafia tactics
2035: Apple takes 30% of my Patreon, Google matched it through their "Competitive Parity Agreement," and the EU fined them both €2 billion which they paid in 45 minutes of revenue then raised fees to 32% to cover legal costs.
The real innovation was convincing us this was inevitable.
You naively assumed that they would actualy disbourse 2 G€ in payments for those fines.
Reality disagrees: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/12/13/data-regulato...
I think this is relevant, Cory Doctorow's recent speech to Canadian government and texh leaders: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ott...
He talks about Apple's app store
You can be the patron of a creator and Apple in the same time! Jokes aside, this is awful...I like/use Apple products but this unacceptable, I hope everyone dodges this and pays through the website
Another outstanding decision vetted by Tim Cook.
In all seriousness, finance people see everything through the lens of margins and money primarily. Since any company's function is to deliver value to its shareholders, if allowed, bean counters will scorch the earth for it.
Ultimately, this is at odds on how Jobs approached things, i.e., money was not the end all be all.
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".
Jobs was a greedy bastard like all the other CEOs. The difference is that he also had mostly good taste as far as products go.
At that time 30% was not something you would consider high in contrast to the situation before the advent of app stores.
I was thinking about something comparable, where there is a digital storefront, payment processing, security, delivering, installing on all my devices and so on...
Steam comes to mind. They take 30% (and I think 5% for credit card or whatever).
So I do not think that "outrageously wrong" is characterizing my remarks adequately.
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.
Processing fees were way less than 30% before the App Store. And considering how overrun the App Store now is with junk apps there is basically no service Apple provides other than taking money.
Tim Cook is usually good at politics, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Nobody other some CNBC guests really gets too upset when they take 30% from tinder, music or mobile gaming companies. And those types of apps run by unpopular large companies make up the majority of App Store revenue.
However, newspapers and content creators are popular in a way that carries political weight. It'd be wise for Apple exempt these categories and write off the few hundred million in forgone revenue as a political expense.
For example allowing the NYT or Joe Rogan to have nice paid apps with no fees would be a much more effective use of money than the same amount in political donations.
For anyone seeking more info, check out these articles -
Just stop publishing the app, not every little thing needs an app. What the use for the app anyway? Notifications and apple pay?
I'm running a small service, sub 150 users, no online signup kind of business, B2B. Small EU country. 95% of users ask 'do you have an mobile app?' in first 5 minutes of onboarding. Telling them how to install a PWA (and what it is and so forth) is an uphill battle. Unfortunately App Stores rule the non technical crowd.
This is not an accident. This is exactly why Apple (and Google also) have made the PWA experience bad for years. They must force users to believe their app store is the only source of programs.
For Apple, sure. But Google has been leading efforts to make the PWA experience good. In origin trial right now is the ability for websites to install PWAs: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/....
This would make it much easier to find and install web apps than the current method.
To many users, an app seems to be perceived as the blessed way to access the web. While on a mobile, they are mostly a way to organize symlinks or bookmarks. Except, off course a web browser does its best to protect the user while most apps don't.
Meanwhile I continue doing the Lords work by telling kids that apps are not the internet. Hopefully, that 95% percentage will eventually decrease.
It's not users who are pushing this. It started off with just superfluous but optional apps of websites. Now every year I find there is something I used to be able to do, which I now must own a smartphone to do. And it's not just getting discounts at coffee chains, it's increasingly stuff like accessing healthcare plan benefits, or verifying my identity for banking
A few sites throw up a blocking screen to download the app, which disappears once you spoof a desktop UA. But the big problem is businesses now having no web interface at all
Very good point, though I believe it's both market push and consumer expectation.
Because we have such limited control over our devices, they effectively provide the security of a jail locking down what users can do. That is appealing from a healthcare or banking perspective because it obfuscates the client-server API and gives exact control over the UI. As a bonus, the coffee chain gets to glean lots of details from your phone that would be unavailable in a browser.
As individuals we can do little more that push back: don't let yourself be trapped by coffee chains (go to a different one) and bother your bank's service line about having to use their app. The rest is up to government intervention, I fear.
>To many users, an app seems to be perceived as the blessed way to access the web. While on a mobile, they are mostly a way to organize symlinks or bookmarks. Except, off course a web browser does its best to protect the user while most apps don't.
That is an education problem. What do school computer courses teach these days? Do schools even have computer literacy classes anymore? Do they still teach students about the internet?
This made me realize, Firefox needs to create a launcher that just creates PWAs out of bookmarks (or vice versa). That way, people get the "app feel" without needing to download every single app.
The OS is what protects the user. Have you ever seen the prompts asking the user if they want to share their location?
Why do they need to install a PWA?
We do mobile friendly Web UIs, that is enough.
Their customes, employees, go to the respective company website, get a responsive UI for their device, done, the services require to be online anyway.
So they can potentially work offline and deliver push notifications.
It’s about convenience in most cases; an “app” to tap on, not a URL to remember and enter or a bookmark to save, name, file, and locate.
Just like apps in general, PWAs are mostly a mobile heavy modality. Bookmarks and the browser is largely still fine on laptop/desktop, but even there you see the app design language start prevailing with things like bookmarks and “recent sites” being presented like app icons.
You could even have a button on website to install an icon on the launcher which goes directly to the site in a webview
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They said that the users are asking for it.
The users are asking for an app on the app store, not a PWA.
Notifications.
There may be a time where we have to push back, though, and this may be it. "There is no app" may sound terrifying now, but once we've educated users, it will only get less scary, until we might actually claim back some ownership of our own stuff from the likes of Apple.
This may just be more of a design and communications challenge for you, than your users. I have seen several design templates that use various forms of visuals to assist the user through the “add to Home Screen” process, which is just three steps; Share—-> More —-> Add to Home Screen. It Is arguably even a faster process than going through the App Store, even if users may be more familiar with it.
You could accompany it with some copy explaining how it keeps the service efficient and affordable, i.e., possible stating if you were to offer an app you would have to increase the price by 75% to pay Apple their fee and for the extra costs.
I suspect other arguments for PWAs would not really matter, like that you have no need to track them or use other abilities an app affords, etc. Most people only care about very few things engineers actually care, let alone know about.
I’ve always been an advocate of PWAs whenever it makes sense and will even design and architect to that objective. But even when I would deal with clients, I think the real “up hill battle” is that apps allow for higher fees and charges because they’re more work and come with greater expenses for for-profit apps, so there has been very little incentive to spread general user awareness about the “add to Home Screen”/PWA.
It’s a bit of a paradox, but I guess that seems to be an under-appreciated driver in something like “advanced consumer capitalist economies”, where the “rational actor” simply does not exist anymore.
BTW, you don't need the app store for that. You can use Firebase App Distribution which doesn't require you to go through the review process.
Basically you just ask their email address and add it to a list in Firebase. Upload your ipa to firebase and the user will receive an email with a link to download
What kind of users are these? Power-users or normal users (Android etc.) or dum..Apple users?
Because in my circle, power-users and beyond. Everybody is angry with apps needed for everything, you want buy bread in store, "do you have our app?" It's a meme here. And in our local subreddit, 600k users. Sentiment is the same.
We also tried to bypass stores apps with generating new accounts and distributing QR/cards for free to everyone. It was kinda popular.
And problems are more real with each day, eg.: scammers have their work way easier, since dumb users can take a huge loan directly from banking app in their phone.
Also small EU country, btw.
By definition power users and beyond are a minority
>95% of users ask 'do you have an mobile app?' in first 5 minutes of onboarding
Did you ask them why?
Clients and customers will not stand for this. I don’t agree but I’ve seen it enough times now it doesn’t surprise me. They want an app, doesn’t matter if you have an identical web-based version that does the exact same thing, they want an app.
I write cross platform apps using Vue/Quasar (previous Angular/Ionic, and before that Titanium), I have put up a web-based version of their app (as a fallback and as an early MVP) and it’s like pulling teeth to get anyone to even play with it. Then you put an app up on TestFlight and suddenly they are using it.
And that’s just trying to get the to use the web while I’m still setting up crap for a “native” app. The idea of not having an app is a non-starter.
Again, I don’t agree with them, I’m just telling you what it’s like out there if you are developing software for other people. An app brings “prestige”, they want be able to say “we have an app”. And no, saving a webpage to the home screen is not a viable alternative (trust me, I’ve tried). Clients and customers reject that and there are extra limitations with that approach (or there were last time I tried, around using the camera feed, things that work fine in mobile Safari).
We really need to build more awareness for PWAs (Progressive web apps). Users (and developers) need to be educated on
- how to install them
- what advantages (and disadvantages) they have. In particular regarding censorship and privacy!
Apple and Google need to be pressured to make PWAs
- easier to install
- more capable
- less buggy (Mobile Safari in particular).
If your app's needs can be met with a PWA, you owe it to your users to offer one!
Here are a few PWA showcase links:
https://pwa-showcase.com/#/all-cards
And a lazy AI-generated list of things that PWAs can do today on top of the things a normal web page can do:
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/make-a-list-of-all-things-p...
I work on a website that doesn't have any mobile-specific features, new users ask me all the time why we don't have an app.
My sister and my parents basically ~only read newspapers from their apps, despite it being static text with some images.
I don't know how, but Google and Apple are really good at nudging people to use apps instead of websites.
Hard agree. I hate it when a website force me to get an app now. I feel like websites have matched apps in terms of feel-good on mobile that I don’t really use apps anymore
I use the Patreon app. It's great. I get to see stuff from my favorite creatives weeks (sometimes months) early, and ad-free. Since many of them are youtubers and I don't pay google to show me less ads, this is a huge value prop. And, the Patreon app can cast videos to my TV, so it's really a complete experience.
Does the 30% cut only apply to patrons who subscribe within the app? I’m assuming yes, but just checking since I haven’t seen confirmation of this.
Apps are usually built so people can't skip ads. Its the only reason to have an app. Other than esoteric reasons like "we also have an app because x,y,z also have apps".
I don't think that applies to Patreon which, as far as I know, doesn't have any ads in the first place?
The app might make it easier for them to enforce DRM-like behaviors to prevent people from pirating creators content, but I strongly suspect people aren't doing that on iOS regardless.
Yep, it's the driving force why I rarely install apps. If the mobile site doesn't work well, it's a good filter that I shouldn't use it. (Doom scrolling trap).
For those that are not aware, on Android you can install Firefox and Ublock-Origin. Life saver!
And for iOS, Orion.
Most of them still source their ads from a known domain so you can easily block them using DNS.
Apps are more sticky. Users forget about websites more easily
Patreon isn't something you need to be checking all the time, though, unless you patronise a LOT of people. It can pretty much be a "setup and forget" kinda deal.
A lot of people pay for the exclusive content which is curated on Patreon and their app.
Nearly every Patreon creator I know of has subscription tiers with exclusive content. Posts can require a minimum tier to view them, creator pages list the tiers you can join, and your feed teases you posts you could access if you joined the right tier from creators you follow.
It's highly unlikely for someone to use the internet in 2020s but be unaware that Patreon is a thing.
Don’t need an app for Apple Pay
I use the app for its native podcast integration. The RSS URL also works but I have yet to find a decent RSS client that will synchronise progress across devices well.
Funnily enough I stopped using the Patreon app for podcasts with the big rewrite a while back where it became almost unusable and switched to Overcast instead.
That's not a reasonable solution. Have you used the Patreon app? I use it regularly on Android, and have dozens of audio podcast files downloaded through it.
Because apps are the lowest-friction path to users. If you publish a tool that targets an audience of more than a very specific niche of people, you'll get people asking for an app literally every day. My inbox used to be full of them.
Serving ads and tracking
I used to subscribe to some podcasts that were distributed to subscribers via the app.
> What the use for the app anyway?
Works offline?
Sure, if your app has something worthwhile to do offline.
It allows you to download Patreon-exclusive videos for e.g. viewing it on a flight, similar to how Youtube does it. It's literally the only reason I have it installed as an app.
I've never seen a PWA do that feature well.
a) does it actually work offline (seems unlikely for a payment app, although I guess it could batch stuff)?
b) if so, does it work any better than a web app can offline?
PWA also work offline.
yeah for entertainment content you just cant get away with it sadly
What is the use of an app that could be the website? Easy: Circumventing the protections a web browser offers your vict.. ah.. users.
Interestingly, Patreon doesn't give creators an option of "Just don't accept donations for us from Apple users" instead, which is what my old project (SQLite Browser / DB Browser for SQLite) would have gone with if available. :(
I've instead handed the reins to others, so I don't have skin in this game any more. ;)
Apple generally frowns upon things like that. At one point they wouldn't even let you disclose in your UI that Apple was taking a 30% cut of transactions, it was against the rules to do so.
Always hated apple for their putrid business practices. Add this to the pile.
I've been trying to find a decent 16'' laptop (to replace my thinkpad x1 carbon).
Been running linux (popos) for donkey years and I entertained the thought I should go back to Apple and get the MacbookPro-16 (which is probably the best laptop you can buy imho).
Then I remembered all this crap that Apple does and dismissed it.
The Services version of apple is the worst. Tim Cook might actually be the worst ceo apples had
The Nineties would like a word.
Apple making sure to stay in lock step with the US' general decline into late stage capitalist decline.
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Take from the poorest to give to the richest of the rich -- that is the new way of doing business.
I feel like I've just watched a man in a $4000 suit wresting the change jar out of the hands of a homeless person
Took his mobile phone and shoes too!
I still can't believe developers love to work for this feudal overlord. They are building a wall around our profession. Have a little foresight and move your business elsewhere.
It's not so much that I love giving 30% to Apple, and more that there is no way to move your business elsewhere because Apple monopolizes mobile app distribution.
And the other half of the mobile app market is monopolized by Google who copies the pricing model while delivering even worse (if any) service to developers.
It's either getting out of mobile apps or paying up.
This is not going to change without drastic steps by regulators, which both Apple and Google fight tooth and nail.
You know some of us remember Mac System [7|8|9] and how MSFT pretty much ruled everything (Apple had low %).
We kept working on the platform and developing tools and things changed. Of course Apple is a lot more powerful than MSFT back then and the general population is their target.
It's not just about making apps. Anything you do for this company is going to backfire at some point and hurt us.
This even includes developing open source tools for MacOS.
And even if it doesn't backfire it is largely a wasted effort.
I’m surprised at the comments here. Why should the government set the “right” margin?
If you cap the margin, you’re entrenching the monopoly forever. Allow them to charge what they want, and set tax rates on corporations commensurate with the size of their profits. Make it easier for competitors to start.
The path to a sustainable marketplace does not come from top down enforcement of margins. It comes from competition
> Why should the government set the “right” margin?
For monopolies, that is the least bad option. What would be way better, though, is mandating an end to that monopoly by allowing all users to install any apps they want on their iPhones without needing Apple's permission in any way, shape, or form.
You’re permanently entrenching them as the winner, and reducing the incentive for a competitor to emerge. The cost of developing these platforms is high and clearly it’s hard enough to compete, why would you kneecap future competitors from the get go?
And competition comes from creating a competitive market. Rent seeking behaviour is not new. This is monopolistic behaviour that should be regulated. I agree that capping fees is not solving the crux of the problem though.
Apps bad. Web good.
Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?
When iPhone came out the sentiment was clearly opposite. The “sweet solution” was ridiculed and workarounds found. When web caught up, it was plagued with self inflicted performance issues. And eventually Apple decided to not invest in good PWA support.
I was an app advocate for a long time, now I made a PWA and it’s maybe 90% there. But you still get behaviors that you can not fix.
IMO the worst however is products that have a fully functional website, but refuse to let you use it (e.g.: Instagram)
Yes. It's improved now, but the mobile web was bad for a long time. The early days of Android experienced a "web-first" ecosystem by force, as lazy businesses just threw a webview around their site, and it was awful
Web is much better when the data should be public. Apps are much better when any kind of data privacy is required.
The trouble is, market forces always try and push things the other way.
The Reddit App for example is totally unnecessary. It's just public web content and should be a website.
SaaS on the other hand shouldn't really be a thing at all. I have no idea why anyone thinks it's a good idea for their private data and app state to be on a cloud somewhere they don't control.
Note that this does not preclude the use of cloud services that users can control e.g. by specifiying trusted endpoints. I'm trying to build the idea of "data locality first" software. I.e. you know where your data are and where they aren't.
I strongly prefer apps. The thing that goes wrong here is: Duopoly bad. Competition good.
Since app distribution is not a fair market anymore, it needs to be regulated. Either the fees have to go down close to cost or alternative app stores should be allowed. And not the malicious compliance version of it (as Apple is trying in the EU).
> Why did we let mobile go down the one-app-per-website path?
Because the web is still barely usable for anything more complex than showing a few lines of static text and an image?
Because for almost as long as (modern) mobile apps exist the web was even less usable?
Because even now you can whip up a fast complex mobile app with 60fps animations and native behaviours probably in minutes? While on the web you're lucky if you can figure out which state/animation/routing library du jour isn't broken beyond all hope?
I might be in the minority but I have a really hard time using iOS and their apps in general (I use Android).
I struggle (and mostly curse) to figure out what swipe gesture to use to get simple stuff to just work. Not super sure all the 60fps animations and wizz-bang behaviours are being used the way you think they are.
#include<"old-man-yells-at-clould-meme">
Question for the indie developers here; do you get more paying users from Apple devices?
I’ve never even considered publishing apps for other platforms as my gut tells me juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. Or to put it another way, I would prefer customers who already proved they have deep(er) pockets and are price insensitive.
Yes, I have the same app on iOS and Android, and for a long time it brought in half the revenue on Android for twice the effort (really messy SDK combined with too many OS versions and devices). Lately the gap has been closing, but it's still roughly 40% Android and 60% iOS, though I have slightly more installs on iOS.
I don't get it. Apple is the top 3 most valuable companies in the WORLD. THE WORLD. They act like a greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500, because you ordered a side of fries which they did not eat.
Aren't they making the majority of their money from selling hardware and iCloud subscriptions? Why they go on and milk developers, who make apps FOR THEIR ECOSYSTEM?!
Maybe that's exactly how you become one of the most valuable companies.
Good thing GenAI is about to destroy capitalism, finally!
Even the stupid many headed hydra can't survive when an 8 year-old kid has a super intelligence capable of autonomously manufacturing a bio weapon.
Except BigSilicon is the new capital needed to drive GenAI.
You get it though. They ARE the top 3 most valuable company in the world. How do you think they got there? Greed all the way down.
> greedy friend that would ask you to pay back $1.54 for a meal of $1500
30% is not that.
$1500 represents the money you've already given them to purchase the hardware. You already overpay for that - fine - then they demand a 30% cut from $5 you're giving to a struggling independent creator. It's pure greed coming from one of the richest companies in the world.
Analogy =\= Precise Maths
There is a difference between paying 30% and 0.1% that goes beyond "precise maths".
It's an egregious share, and Apple is making an estimated $30 billion a year with this, at a margin perhaps more than twice as high as on iPhone sales.
woosh
What don't you get?
They are greedy because Apple fans would by a turd in a box if it had an Apple logo.
If I was in charge of Apple I would do the same thing. In fact, I would likely increase the Apple cut to 40%. People would pay, they like their slick toys.
The developers will continue to make apps for their ecosystem regardless.
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
They don't have to "cite the Epic case", it's just functionality available to everyone now. Your app is no longer blocked from approval for including an external payment provider.
They'd actually have to do it though and that could lead to a large loss of revenue for themselves and their subscribers.
_in the US_
Because Patreon doesn't want to do that. They could.
Spotify does link to their website to sign up in the US...
Or add a 45% apple tax afyer they click buy. E.g. costs $100, price comes up as.$100 with added apple tax as line item. total $145.
Click here to avoid apple tax takes you to web page if allowed.
Not allowed. They ban your app immediately if you inform people they are robbing them!
This and the practice of forcing you to use same pricing on different platforms should just be made illegal and it would fix so much of this.
I could be wrong but seem to remember this being explicitly disallowed by Apples terms
Except the juice is for you and the squeeze is for your customers.
And it's still a net loss.
I actually love Apple for pushing this matter this hard and sticking to its guns. This will bring in more regulatory scrutiny not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. That will force Apple to give up (maybe in a decade or so) this practice of arbitrary rules and squeezing the last penny from others.
Thanks a lot, Eddy Cue, for all that you do to bring Apple down to its knees!
In the U.S. I wouldn't expect meaningful regulation from an administration that accepts bribes in the form of literal gold nuggets.
Tim Cook has been spending a lot of time sucking up to Donald Trump recently, so I think the U.S. federal government will only be assisting Apple
So in about a trillion or two dollars of revenue’s time, then.
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.
I've yet to encounter one in the US, but I suppose that would make me install it.
They're all going to move that way - it's sort of fundamental to PassKey. It can be done with just a laptop and their built in hardware but I suspect that since everybody has a mobile phone the UX will be built around that more often than not.
I quite like it though. At one of my banks I don't even use a password. My browser has the right material (from a prior authn) and then it pushes a validation request to my phone and with FaceID I'm in.
Capital One now for a while and a local credit union. Amex does provide this as an option but supports SMS as well.
Within the EU, there is a law that mandates accessibility without a smartphone. The banks will sell you some proprietary dotcode scanners then which are all manufactured by the same crappy UK company (as a sidenote).
But the upside is: they work offline, and makes your 2FA app unhackable because it's not an app and instead a physically separate device.
If you're as serious about your opsec as I am, I heavily recommend to not use apps on smartphones for banking.
My chase only allows sms or call 2fa. Wish they would add passkeys or other options
> Which banks do you use?
My local credit union (TechCU) does none of that nonsense, and I highly recommend a credit union over any of the big banks in any case.
>Which banks do you use? I’m looking to switch away from Chase (which does this).
Do you mean SMS codes or a Chase Bank App?
I have to deal with the former because I auto-delete cookies when I close tabs and use Multi-account containers on Firefox.
I've never been required to install any application (Chase branded or otherwise) on my phone in order to use the Chase website. I'll note that I've been a Chase customer since they acquired Chemical Bank in 1996.
Am I missing something important here? If so, I'd love to hear about it.
2-factor auth is free, so it doesn't incur the 30% cost.
> 2-factor auth is free, so it doesn't incur the 30% cost.
The all new modern push notifications! Pay only 99ct per 2FA message, that's a steal deal!
For now.
They will, the moment your bank starts selling media inside the app.
A nickel for each iMessage…
Some countries still charge for SMS. That's why WhatsApp is so popular in many places of the world.
in a lot EU countries, still today telco contracts are marketed with "...and unlimited number of SMS into all networks..."
Its still widely used :-D
No way really .. amazing in 2026 if true
There's basically two mobile worlds in India. The middle class has mobile plans basically like the rest of the world, while the poor (especially the rural poor but also to some extent the urban poor) have a pay-per-use account that also functions as their bank. So sending a text might cost 2 rupees, and an MMS might cost 6.
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.
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.
>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.
This was Bill Gates' idea with regard to a bit-tax, and goes someway to explaining why Microsoft initially didn't believe the internet would take off (and tried to push their own MSN walled garden as an alternative).
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.
You had to pay for receiving SMS?
That would totally amplify the voice of people you want to hear more from, not less /s
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.
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.
I follow a number of creators on Patreon and have never once thought I want/need a Patreon app.
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, ...
And this is a big part of why I don't own an iOS device, and likely won't be purchasing another laptop from them, despite liking the hardware generally.
Not that I like Google much more re: Android and locking down side-loading more than before.
I was considering GrapheneOS when I bought my latest phone 2 years ago, but decided to stay with Android in the end. It has become very clear to me that I made the wrong choice.
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?
Insane PR move to further whittle down direct payments to people's favorite content creators
To keep their growth rates going, these mega companies soon need to swallow the whole country’s GDP. I really wonder where this is going. They can’t keep growing at some point.
This might become technocracy at some point, if the corporations become stronger than the state govs. In that case, the entire NOAM region will become a so-called technate, ruled by a form of ToS. I'd say, technocracy is way worse than even autocracy.
I think you may have fundamentally misunderstood what a technocracy is: it has nothing to do with tech companies whatsoever. From literally the article that you have linked:
> The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy.
Technocracy is probably not the right word for what you mean. Oligarchy is probably a better one. This will probably evolve into idiocracy if you have seen the similarly named documentary .
If I'm patreon, here's what I'm doing:
Jack up every Apple user's monthly payment by 30%.
When they go into the app to figure out what the hell happened, they will find big red text saying "want to avoid the Apple tax? re-subscribe through our website! (Link)"
They click the link, it opens a webpage where all the payment info has been auto-filled. They click "ok." Bam, fee gone.
Much of what you suggested would not pass apple review, and would get your app removed from the app store if you tried to hide it during review.
Apple is doing to creators what the recording industry did to musicians. Enjoy what's left of the Golden Age of Patreon content because greed is going to suffocate it out of existence.
Or setup payments through the website
Is it still true that Apple bans you from telling users, in app, they can pay through alternative platforms?
I think it depends on the laws controlling Apple where you live
This was a great reminder to me that I needed to cancel every subscription I have tied to my Apple account. I'll give it to them though, they do make it very easy - I just cancelled all 10 of them in 10 seconds.
So the company that also lets you support your favorite podcasts via a subscription decided their competitor should pay 30% more just to do the same thing? Cool.
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.
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.
There is so much stuff that needs to get fixed in congress over this issue is even a blip on the radar.
Bravo!
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.
I may regret asking but what is your solution, then?
> On top of that Patreon is a closed centralized platform that's bound to have issues like this and that's where I very much prefer using protocols (vs platforms) that enable the same. There are very similar solutions to Patreon, but based on nostr and related protocols.
The problem here isn't that Patreon is centralized, but that the app store is. Apple could easily require a cut from any app using nostr and related protocols. Or simply ban them altogether.
Not saying government mandates are ideal, but I don't see any other way to force some sense into Apple (or Google). App stores should be some sort of independent institutions (non-profits) but companies have no incentive to cede that revenue. Until that happens, best not download from app stores unless absolutely necessary.
> My point is that you ask for regulation hoping that it will prevent this type of issue, but the regulation that you actually get will be barely having any effect and it will enforce ID + picture verification, it will enforce downloading specific government sanctioned keylogger app,
This is nonsense. Yes bad regulation is bad regulation, that's not an argument against regulation but an argument against bad regulation. Not all regulation is bad regulation - in fact most of it is good regulation. I enjoy not drinking feces for example but I'd love to hear your thoughts on how regulation against poopy drinking water is going to be turned against me.
> New systems, new complexity, harder for newcomers to start business... Things like this are always added in the fine print.
Good regulation recognizes that small businesses don't have the same ability to comply with complex requirements, so it creates exceptions for small business or relaxes requirements.
By all means, please advocate for good regulation and call out bad regulation, but pretending that regulation is unnecessary or inherently harmful only serves the interest of capital at everyone else's expense.
That is the user's solution. Patreon (the company having trouble with Apple) is not in the position to get ~50% of it's users to use a different phone.
Apple should not be allowed to be in the middle of business and half the users of the world.
And yes, that is very much something that governments have regulated for decades. In fact it's basically why anti-trust was invented. Train companies and deals with Standard Oil meant together they controlled the market since if you didn't go through them you couldn't ship your product.
Android is actively in the process of trying to kill off the ability to install your own software that is not Google-approved, so this is temporary solution at best.
That's only a solution until Google does the same. And then we're stuck. What do we do when the two largest phone platforms perform this stuff? Go off the grid instead of talking to our representatives?
there is little other remedy to monopoly power?
>Why would you want to give the government such power?
Because the government is the only body equipped to create and enforce consumer rights laws. Do you think we'd have refund policies if the government didn't regulate them?
>then they are surprised when a new government gets to power and uses this new regulation/capability against you.
Okay. How is the act of forbidding platforms from banning alternative payment processors going to backfire?
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.
Apple doesn't _need_ to sue people. They can just stop distributing their apps.
That's it. No "government monopoly" or anything, just regular commercial monopolism.
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.
[flagged]
Google is also making Sideloading harder "to protect users"
Yeah, lol.
Was all Apple since the iBook G4. Bought a Pixel last week. It's nice.
This is also a political issue. The administration could have ftc investigate this under anti-trust, and the government could also pass tighter laws preventing this. But this current administration is likely too friendly to big corporate interests.
Well. I own an iPhone, a Macbook, Airpods, Apple Watch. I'm in the Apple ecosystem since the last 16 years.
Unfortunately, due to their behavior in the latest years, I'm not going to buy anything Apple anymore.
Fortunately for me, I prefer Linux to MacOS so I never have been totally tied in the Apple ecosystem and I know how to leave the boat without a lot of hassle.
I'm really saddened because they know how to make great products when they want to. It's just infuriating that everything that is shitty in their products is never due to randomness or bugs or whatever, but ALWAYS because they decided to fuck you.
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.
Half of the apps on the app store can easily be replaced by a PWA that works on iOS and Android.
GrapheneOS
Use Android or use websites instead of apps. Apple pushes their app ecosystem so hard because it's their walled garden. If you want to support a creator, go their website and click whatever they offer.
Walled garden is marketing speak.
Its a walled prison
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
What's the big barrier stopping Linux from becoming a viable mobile OS? Or at least some completely de-googlefied AOSP?
GrapheneOS is already a viable de-Googled and significantly hardened and improved fork of AOSP. It runs on Google Pixels at present, with an OEM device planned for release in 2027.
I guess yeah, Most of my concerns were with Privacy but yea looks like grapheneos is a tradeoff I might have to make some day
but honestly its also the fact that I love cli tools and yea I can and I have used termux in the past but I really wish for a more first class for cli tools as well and I don't know but I just really wish to support linux tools.
Like I am just not satisfied with the current options we have right now and you can look at fragmede's comment as to why I mean that. I mean I just want a cheap affordable linux phone with just decent specs nothing too fancy. By decent I mean that I used to be on a dumb phone for a year with 32 mb ram iirc so perhaps my specs can be considered to be minimal but I feel like 2-4GB ram might be a good start. (prefer the 4gb option as to favour both me anad the masses)
Can framework or some other company go ahead and create a linux phone too please?
Hardware. Mass manufacturing, plus the deep pockets of a corporation, mean that we've come to expect cheap prices for inanely powerful hardware. Yes I'm calling an $1,800 iphone cheap for what you get. That's cheap for what you get because if you're a tiny company, you can't get a phone of that level manufactured that you can still for anywhere near that price, and that's a super high end model. How many people are going to shell out $1,000 for a model with the specs of a $500 model just because it runs Linux? And that's before you even actually deal with the software. Specifically, driver support, battery life, and app support are the three big show stoppers there. The best option this second is a Pixel running GrapheneOS, and that's based on Android on Goolge hardware. (They did just announce getting off Pixels tho.)
A Linux smartphone has been tried before. That's not too say someone shouldn't try again, but just to say there are lessons to be learned from those attempts.
> How many people are going to shell out $1,000 for a model with the specs of a $500 model just because it runs Linux? And that's before you even actually deal with the software
Thanks for writing this comment because that's exactly something which I wanted to convey with my original comment too
There is a way to run waydroid/android applications in Linux. I have personally tried it and honestly it does work great for the most part.
If I buy a gift card through my banking app, using reward points, is Apple entitled to 30% of that?
Yes. You owe Apple and Patreon as much ad they want to charge, because you are a mental slave
Can't they just link out to their site to do billing?
Can someone explain how much of value the iOS app is to users? I'm a noob at Patreon, aren't creators receiving their support through the website's payment gateway already? I'm not really against a company setting the rules if it's their platform, if the market cannot accept it then alternatives (competitors) will eventually find new ways.
Probably the only added value is direct notifications of new content.
Patreon is probably going to shut down the payment feature from the app and orient people to the website. That's what I'd do... And bad mouth Apple.
Given Patreon's clients is influencers, this is a fairly bad PR move by Apple, for probably zero return...
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?
> What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
You joke but this already happens with places like DoorDash. They take 30% of the order from the store owner after adding their own additional fees to the order that customers pay.
Someone I know owns a pizza store and his prices are 30% higher on DoorDash but some people still pay. The big difference is it's not a monopoly. He offers regular delivery at normal store prices and 95% of his deliveries go through that.
>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.
Really hope the 2nd wave of Sherman hits these bit tech companies hard if/when this regime inevitably falls. I just hope there's something left of America when it happens.
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.
>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?
That's the other part of the surrogate war happening with mobile. The web was unregulated and hard to profit off of, so Jobs took great strides to push the "there's an app for that" mentality that overtook that age. This had the nifty side effect of killing off flash, but it's clear the prospects didn't stop there. Not to mention all the other web hostile actions taken on IOS to make it only do the bare minimum required to not piss off customers.
It very much could just be a website with no reliance on IOS as a dependency. But Apple clearly doesn't want that.
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 wild I had to look up if anyone bought it. Apperantly 8 people did!
> https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/technology-blog/story...
It only really makes sense on the one time purchase of a product, not the subsequent in app purchases they don’t have to touch apples infra.
30% might be fair when you have a choice of either marketing and selling your app yourself, or just using an app store to do everything for you. But when you are forced to use the app store, things get really stupid really fast.
Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.
The Mac app store, being optional for developers, is a good example of how much people actually want something like this.
> Apple still insists that the app store "provides value" for developers. They simply can't comprehend the harsh reality that these days, for most developers, the app store isn't the godsend service that helps their app get discovered, but instead an asinine bureaucratic obstacle they have to clear, and then regularly attend to, to have an iOS app at all.
Oh, no, they can comprehend, they just don't care. Apple controls access to a valuable pool of business, and they are going to extract as much value as possible from people wanting access to that pool. And, of course, they are going to try to burnish it with marketing speak, but that doesn't mean they believe their own marketing.
> "According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over."
The very last line of the article.
Yes, because intimidation and scare tactics work
This means that 4% are subverting the 30% fee.
Like Apple subverted the court order to allow apps like Patreon to use their own billing.
What bugs me about this isn't even the 30% in isolation, it's the category creep
Incoming "please pay on webpage, else you have to pay 30% more" banner in the app
This is actually against their App Store rules, and likewise the article has the following bit:
> Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, [...]
it would totally not fly with Apple. They don't let this 30% commission to be visible by users, just like every other company that does such commissions. You don't see that the creator only gets about half of your donation on YouTube or Twitch, you never see that Visa takes 1% of your payment in a store, etc. Even governments do that. I don't see the value of VAT in the price of goods in stores. The US sales tax is an exception.
A lot of people would complain about how high those fees (or taxes) are if they saw them spelled out for them.
Version update rejected by Apple
Well, I certainly won't sell my fiction to Apple for them to turn it into a series in the future.
Unless they pay me 30% of all hardware and software revenue because popularity is a vehicle to sell more under the Apple brand.
Man that should not be allowed. 30% (pre-tax) loss, plus taxes, plus platform cost. Thats insane
This is low even for apple. They havent earned commision on this at all
As they don’t for all the other digital-content purchases they have taken 30% for many years already.
Which is why we have been getting great UX like being unable to buy books in the Kindle app.
They don't mind.
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.
Like try to break the internet and the java programming language? The former being most successful for years
IE was not just used to break the internet. It also had advantages. It supported features other browsers didn't.
Without IE, we wouldn't have had XMLHttpRequest, which means we wouldn't have had Gmail, which means we wouldn't have seen the bloom of "web 2.0" websites.
As for Java, Microsoft's C# is way ahead of Java in terms of language features. No idea how the runtime performance compares these days (both are very fast), but I'd rather have Microsoft Java than Oracle Java.
Microsoft's intent was always to break the competition, but they did it by offering features others wouldn't or couldn't. Evil Microsoft's Windows was the most feature-packed operating system out there because they threw every possible feature at the wall, kept what sticked front and center, and bothered to maintain what didn't stick. Microsoft Agents, the shitty Clippy things, were supported well into the Windows 7 era despite dying out the moment Bonzi Buddy was found out to be malicious. But Microsoft dared to break backwards compatibility with .NET 1 to fix the typing problem with generics that Java has to this very day; they just ended up supporting both, side by side.
>IE was not just used to break the internet.
It still did. Did you ever have to write specific code for ie6? <shudder>
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.
I can quickly think of problems we have to deal with trying to make a real cross-platform application, or worse, a cross-language interface to a system/library, but not many that would stem from having a single dominant (non-stagnant or proprietary) language.
The overuse of dependencies is a problem, sure, but it's completely unrelated to "over-unification". Every ecosystem with a built-in package manager suffers from this, be it Node.js, Python, or Rust, to name a few. In fact, it's not even the package manager, it's the ease in adding new dependencies. Go demonstrates that pretty well.
I believe one enables the other. If the package ecosystem wasn't oversaturated to the degree it is, they wouldn't be able to masquerade as developers and publish anything. But because there is a Javascript component for everything, they can do enough of an impression of a developer to ship things and get hired without ever learning how to actually program.
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.
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)
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 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?
It is, but the problem is that no one is enforcing the laws both old and new. That is why the elites hated Lina Khan, she was simply enforcing laws already on the books.
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
Starts to make a lot of sense why Tim Cook is out there ruining his image for the sake of some favors.
I believe he'd be doing that regardless of the DOJ suit. Tariffs are another issue he is dealing with. Apple likes money, and will do practically anything to secure more of it.
Sounds ... like the mafia.
You MUST use our billing system. Oh, btw, because you are using our billing system, we get 30%.
The dark side of your walled garden is they can abuse you as they see fit, and when they become a giant, your options are to like it or leave.
How does this work if I signed up to patreon on the web and have never used the app?
So how do I avoid apple taking the cut? Unsubscribe from people in my ios app and resubscribe on the web? I subscribe to super small creators where this 30% cut makes a meaningful difference.
4% of Patreon iOS users. That's how many use the legacy system Apple is insisting they remove. The other 96% already are using IAP.
> Patreon gives creators the option to either increase their prices in the iOS app only, or absorb the fee themselves, keeping prices the same across platforms.
I'm curious what percentage of creators chose which
For those who, like me, are looking to break free from Apple but were tied to it through photo storage in iCloud, here's a first step towards independence: Immich! I self-host an instance for my whole family, and it works like a charm.
I've been saying its a 'walled prison'.
The amount of people defending this because it's apple in here is astounding. This is possibly the least consumer friendly thing apple has done in a while, and that's saying something.
This is why holding Apple stock is almost a can't lose.
Isn't Patreon effectively a sort of payment processor? So how is this different from Apple demanding a 30% cut of transactions conducted by (for example) Paypal? (Assuming Paypal has an iOS app ofc, I have no idea.)
They also host and serve videos. Not sure about other media
Good point. That makes them a combined platform and payment processor. So it seems to me the logical question would be, shouldn't they just break the platform part out then? But isn't that exactly what their percentage fee amounts to? So Apple should be entitled to 30% of their (IIRC) 5%, right?
Really they ought to further split that out into "processing fee" and "platform services fee" and Apple would then be entitled to 30% of the latter.
Well, it's called greed
every system that gets too greedy eventually gets squashed (e.g. regulations) or kills its host (e.g. cancer).
I've noticed watching blood money on Netflix that greedy systems tend to get greedier and greedier, and this is the best way to catch bad actors.
On the other hand, criminals that try not to become too big and remain low-profile are the ones that never get caught.
The core problem is still the same.
Until there will be a broad regulation that enforce any general purpose computing device to allow installing non-provisioned apps, we'll be in those situations.
I assume this is only for purchases made using the app, right?
Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense. Google gets a cut of all revenue, Apple gets a cut of all revenue, x, y, z, ... there would be nothing left over.
Really shitty to see how greed and money corrupts everything.
"Use our payment system"
"No thanks, our current system works just fine"
".. or get kicked off our store"
"Okay, I guess I'll do it then"
"Okay you're on our payment system; we take 30% off all purchased using our payment system."
"Get fucked"
Can't they just remove this option from app and redirect to the web? Wasn't this the same story with Spotify?
Yes, which suggests internal metrics show this to still be the better path.
Apple has an Apple Pay for Donations[1] program, which doesn't apply for rent seeking entities like Patreon. I wonder if Patreon's 10% fee is commensurate with the negligible value that they provide?
Yes but you cannot restrict content or features based on whether or not someone is a donor, which is basically what Patreon is for.
Source I run a non-profit and we have an app that takes donations via Apple Pay
> Note: This image has been edited to include a pile of cash.
I giggled
are they going to pay 30% towards refunds/fines etc. due to crimes committed using iOS?
Just to put things into perspective: Visa and MasterCard interchange fee in EU is 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards. Apple taking 100x this is just ridiculous.
For the price of paying Apple, Patreon should be able to develop a web app instead. Why isn't this happening? Why an app when the web will do?
Yeah, I don't understand this at all. I use Patreon and I support a couple of tech content creators. But my use of Patreon intersect in no way with iOS and I'm not sure how it would. Can someone please explain?
Okay so basicially apple users are dumb as rocks which is why iOS is so profitable in the first place, and they are corraled into installing apps and making in-app purchases.
They work to make Apple rich. It's a bit like the mafia, but not as rememberable.
Happy to pay 42% higher Patreon fees in exchange for ease of subscription control, visibility, safety and ease of payment with in-app Apple payments.
It’s funny seeing people call 78% operating margin too high, while we all know that software VCs demand 90% margin from their startups, and if it wasn’t Apple, people here would call that an excellent business.
Boycott Apple services. It’s the only way they will listen.
I refuse the purchase any apple products (I was never a fan and don't like paying premium for a walled garden) but it's impossible to offer an app if you don't also make one for apple devices.
There is no way around it especially in an apple dense market like Switzerland.
They have a clear monopoly and together with Google a duopoly.
I can thankfully continue with my refusal to purchase from HP perfectly fine.
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.
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".
My impression is that Apple as a corporation is really sensitive to their public image. I happen to believe that some corporations are actually highly sensitive to dollar losses but I also think what Apple worries about is a kind of downstream effects of brand image being lost.
I don't think that's all it would take but I kind of see Apple worrying that their products will start to be like fur in the 1980s or something... something that gradually fades and loses its brand value.
I guess in the end I sort of agree with the OP that boycotts can work and fretting about numbers initially leads to this kind of chicken and egg problem. If you try it it might work, if you try it repeatedly it's more likely to work, but if you never try it will never work.
> if people on mass [sic] stopped buying
Ah, the "vote with your dollar" argument. How's that been working out.
It ended apartheid in South Africa.
I do think it will work. I also think most people won't even know this is a thing, and that many who do know won't be clamoring to ditch their tech anytime soon. I never owned an apple service, so I'm just paying lip service if I say I'm "boycotting apple". I can't do much more on my front as a customer.
I can do a bit more as a voter, but not in this current administration. It's sadly not even a top 10 pressing issue compared to what BS is going on right now. But I won't forget this.
>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.
Yes. And it took not one, but two blatant murders on the street to do that. Tech is much more ephemeral in its evils.
Greed
Nostr and Zaps, problem solved.
Can you mind elaborating further how this would work? I am somewhat familiar with both of them.
Are you suggesting some sort of app store or web page to send money/bitcoin?
Who pays for Patreon via iOS?
if many people subscribe via ios then obviously apple is bringing creators more paying subscribers no so seems kinda fair to charge for access to that ecosystem?
If I were a creator, I'd start looking into platforms other than Patreon. What does Patreon offer that makes them worth giving up 30% of my revenue?
Imagine if Visa or Mastercard decided they were going to take a 30% cut as a merchant fee. Governments wouldn't allow it. Why does Apple get a complete pass?
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.
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.
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...
Technofeudalism at its finest.
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.
Apple doing Apple things... nothing to see here
What is the strategy for “app” distribution for the mobile market that bypasses iOS / other vendors ? Is this even possible?
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.
> For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
I think it isn't just some, it's effectively everyone, the nature of being human. Instead, there's a group of people who are willing to sacrifice their emotional and wellbeing to face these problems of reality, and try to use the limited power they do have to improve them, for the greater good.
>or the feeling that we really can’t do much.
We can do a lot if we pressure the company or the regulations around it. Maybe not right now in this current regime, but tides will shift.
The issue is that people's attention spans on this are much too short. The fervor around this may not even last to the end of this month, let alone until a change in power allows a new administration to properly go after the company.
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.
Maximizing profit is the essence of capitalism but this is pure rent seeking. They are extracting excessive fees for no obvious value creation.
I'd rather they garner a few dollars this way than look to actually shady monetization practices, like most other big tech companies do.
Not a bit deal really, a tiny minority of people will be a few dollars out of pocket, because the loophole most of us don't enjoy has been closed.
Does this apply to creators that aren't even in the Apple ecosystem or is it only for the patreons paying through the iOS app? What if everyone moved to the website?
how is this legal
Good question considering apps unequivocally have the right by court order to use their own billing, and considering the contempt ruling and referral for criminal investigation Apple already got for violating that order.
Trump fired Lina Khan on day one of his adminstration, so there's a start.
Soon Google will do the same thing. And then what?
The practical way out is to just buy QQQ and get some of your money back.
Attitude like a true mob boss.
So weird, why do you need Patreon dedicated app in appstore?
There is really so many people visiting Patreon, only because it's in Crapple appstore?
Or is this because they want to support as many payment methods as possible. And Apple Pay support requirements is to have an app?
Would be great, if they simple take a hit and gutted the app and redirect all people into website.
If they have good PR team, with proper messaging, they could make even more money, since people on Patreon usually don't like corpos.
Apple obviously needs this to save themselves from bankruptcy.
seems that 96% are already doing this:
> According to TechCrunch, only 4% of Patreon creators are still using the platform's legacy billing system, with the rest having already switched over.
I've never used the Patreon app even once -- those creators I support, I set it up on the website.
That's why the DSA is a good idea that should be replicated worldwide.
Too many parasites between creators and consumers
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.
> 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.
Per the article it's already happened for 96% of creators and this is the deadline for the remaining 4%.
> But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
Yet. Apple forces a specific browser engine on all apps, so they have the means to block patreon website too.
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.
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
web is now so good that mobile apps lost any meaning to exist - unless you need to access some local hw or data on consistent basis(the app must run as daemon or something like that). in other words, if you app is a service, just use web. if it is not a service, then you just sell it as you would a desktop program.
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?
I see you don't have much interaction with landlords and their thought processes.
Isn’t this what Epic just sued and won over?
Epic lost on 9 counts out of 10 in the original lawsuit. The one they won is being appealed and in the process Fortnight was ordered to be reinstated in the US. I wouldn't bet that this arrangement will survive appeals.
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.
That judge's ruling was essentially overturned last month on appeal.
> Even though Apple was no longer prohibiting linked-out purchases, the district court held that this new approach effectively prohibited linked-out purchases, and it violated the spirit of the injunction. The district court then enjoined Apple from imposing any commission or fee on linked-out purchases. However, the Ninth Circuit panel found that the complete ban was overbroad and punitive. Apple should be permitted to charge a commission based on costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary for its coordination of external links and linked-out purchases, but not more.
"Genuinely and reasonably necessary", not being defined, will naturally be taken by Apple's malicious compliance department to mean "26%", I'm sure, and we'll get to enjoy a continued round of show trials in court with no meaningful effect for years to come.
However, given we've seen how flagrantly they violated the first injunction, it's easy to believe they will take the liberty to interpret this one as maliciously as possible as well. Sure, if the fees are too high they'll end up back in court to attempt to prove costs, and maybe something will happen years later after bouncing around in appeals and violating new injunctions, or maybe it won't.
"Nice business model ya got there, sure would be a shame if somethin' happened to it."
Apple's ecosystem is the 8th wonder of this world. Nowhere else you can put a logo on a piece of cloth or aluminum wheel and sell them for hundreds of dollars. Greatest capitalist company of all time.
With only two mobile OS providers, they should be highly regulated. But given Tim Cook gave Trump a golden award and attended the premiere of the Melania documentary, I doubt they’ll get any antitrust trouble. Disappointing rent seeking behavior.
> rent seeking
This goes way beyond rent seeking, it is much closer to outright theft, for rent you get something in return. This is just a nice form of robbery and I'm sure it is all legal by some stretched definition of the word but it makes me sick.
Yesterday we had the monthly Woz adulation article, I really like the man but would like him even more if he told Cook to his face that this is not the Apple that he had in mind when he co-founded the company. It's not like he has anything to lose.
On the contrary. There is an ongoing DoJ antitrust case against Apple with a long list of grievances. Most of those were already addressed by Apple (since the case was filed a pretty long time ago) the rest will be tested in the courtroom in the following years.
Those cases take a long time.
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-...
Patreon's whole shift away from the bulk billing never made sense to me.
I subscribe to like 10 patrons each at $1-$3/month. Right now they can just charge me once, $20/mo, pay 3%+30c card fee on that, they pay a buck in fees, get $19, great.
Instead they want to charge me $1, 10 times a month, hit with a 30c fee every time, instead paying a total of $5 in fees, getting way less proportionally.
They must really make their bulk on big patrons paying like $20+/month to a single patreon
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.
> 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.
Why is this person selling “nightclub” memberships via patreon?
The what and why of the nightclub memberships are explained pretty well on the patreon's about page: https://www.patreon.com/dnalounge/about
The person in question is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
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.
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.
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.
To be fair, the fee is really 15%- 30% only comes into play only after you've made $1mm USD in the prior year.
That's the issue, though. These aren't the Patreon devs running the app. These are creators using Patreon. It's 2nd level rent seeking.
Steam takes 30% cut, though?
Yes, and that is also excessive.
I have to respond to your point, though. Whether 30% cut is excessive depends on whether devs feel like they are getting a good deal. As far as I can tell, game developers don't seem to complain about Steam cut very much, it seems like the value you get is worth it.
For example, this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/10wvgoo/do_you_think... seems like majority is positive about it, even though people debate. When Apple tax is brought up, there's almost never even a discussion there, it's pretty universally hated.
Apple seems to have almost adveserial relationship to its developers. I deploy to App Store and I feel like I'm getting screwed. Even compared to Google, which takes the same cut, but does bahave a lot more nicely to its developers.
You're right, I didn't know it was 30%.
Checking an LLM, it sounds like they more or less all charge 30%. That's shit.
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.
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.
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...
It was the opposite. US mobile operator stores charged upward of 50% to sell stuff on their feature phones, with cherry on top in the form of paid submissions.
You think that's bad? Grugnar charge 80% to sell rocks in front of cave, but Grugnar killed by Bugluk and then cave belong to Bugluk. Bugluk eat you and take rocks if you try sell in front of cave.
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.
If only we could find a way to blame Putin for this.
Should be 50% at least.
Why would anyone use Patreon’s app?
What a weird comment lol. You can write a bot asking "why would anyone use (the product mentioned in title)" to every HN thread. That's how much it contributes to the discussion.
HN is becoming more and more like Stackoverflow. Half the comments pretend this is not an issue or irrelevant and the other half posts hasty, incorrect solutions.
Why would you think reality shows so many people using patreon app?
I genuinely don’t know, which is why I asked. Even on mobile I only ever use the website and can see literally no benefit whatsoever to there being an app.
TLDR: user reach and convenience (or avoidance of the inconvenience artificially created by the app store companies to ensure own monopoly).
App stores are another source of distribution of the platform. Apps create another engagement channel. Apps are another way to reach more people and keep them "hooked" longer (push notifications, tighter integration with the system). Poor performance of the website-only apps is often offputting showing lower retention and engagement metrics. People don't konow how to create a web app icon on the home screen, but know how to search for apps in the appstore.
Some platforms make website-based apps harder to create and manage (in the name of the resource optimisation or security). So no background players, no face-based logins, no airplay, battery drains way faster with web based apps, no proper file storage, hard to handle guestures, no restoration of the state of the pages, etc, etc.
When inside patreon company there is a question "do we do the native app or we keep the website" there is no good argument from project manager side why not to do the app as it increases all the metrics they care about and accept future possible risk that something will change from Apple side.
Cheers. It's hard to distinguish genuine from non-genuine people online. Especially when they ask things which appear trivial from where one stands. Thanks for having patience.
There's a kind of dissonance here that Patreon should be allowed to take a cut, being a platform on which creators can earn money - but Apple should not be allowed to take a cut, being a platform on which companies can operate their business.
There's "a cut" and then there's 30%. Pretending Patreon's cut is morally or even objectively equivalent to Apple's is a little bit of a stretch.
I agree that 30% is high but the arguments I see online are generally in favor of a cut to 0%, not a reduction. If you get into the weeds of what the cut should be then it gets messy, who gets to decide? How do you determine what is actually fair for all parties?
I would argue Patreon is far more parasitic than Apple in this case, they're shaving off 10% for a pretty simple service.
Payment processors are generally really wary of services like Patreon. Cohost tried to set one up and was unable to find someone willing to stick by a commitment to process payments for an equivalent service.
I think it's reasonable to say Patreon shouldn't take 10%, but you can't ring up Visa and get a regular 2-3% rate from them for something like Patreon, most likely, due to things like brand risk, chargeback rates, etc.
Then there's all the administrative overhead involved in disbursing payments to creators from all sorts of different legal jurisdictions and reporting information to the right government agencies. I can easily imagine the operating costs of Patreon being something like 7-8% of the money they handle.
I haven't seen anyone in this particular thread calling for Apple's cut to be 0%. I do think they could afford that, but a common refrain is that Epic's rate of 12% would be sustainable, and I agree with that. It's also the case that Apple moved to a gradual rate system where low-income developers only pay 15%, which kind of proves that they don't actually need 30%, they just want 30%.
Thanks, I didn't consider these things.
Apple has already been compensated in the form of $1,000-$1,500 for the phone.
Apple was also compensated by Patreon in the form of the developer fee.
This is the triple-dip attempt.
The dissonance is conflating criticism of someone's fee structure with a demand that someone be disallowed from charging a fee. That's just dishonest spin.
No one thinks Apple shouldn't be allowed to make a buck. No one thinks Patreon shouldn't be allowed to make a buck.
But Patreon's fees are near-universally held to be reasonable and fair, and Apple's are some bullshit.
The operating cost is the maximum Apple can come up with when their accountants attribute everything they possibly can to digital sales for the sake of legal argument. R&D shouldn't really be included, and Apple uses those same tools and APIs themselves. I think the actual profit margin is closer to 90%, and Apple could maintain a 20% margin with just a 3–4% fee.
I'd say that in the case of Patreon, any fee for Apple is unjustified. Apple can justify their fee on app purchases/subscriptions in the app store, but Patreon is not an app subscription, the money goes mostly from the patrons to the people they support. Ok, Patreon takes a cut to cover their operating costs, and also make a profit (not sure how profitable they are currently), but I really can't see how Apple, who don't have anything to do with this process except for listing the Patreon app on the app store, can justify taking a cut.
You could make the argument that Patreon isn't much more than a banking app.
It just focuses on the receiver of the money than the sender.
I think Apple is slowly killing apps with this policy. Everybody will slowly move to "web only" as 30% would kill their ability to compete with anybody else. This will likely be much stronger in countries where iPhones do not have the same market share as in the US.
> 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.
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
> You could make the argument that Patreon isn't much more than a banking app.
Don't give them any ideas.
> I think they're very overused
I disagree, native apps on iOS have important abilities that no web application can match. The inability to control cache long-term is alone a dealbreaker if trying to create an experience with minimal friction.
Apple makes sure it's not practical.
You still can't have a "share to" target that is a web app on iOS. And the data your can store in local storage on safari is a joke.
Of course, forget about background tasks and integrated notifications.
In fact, even on Android you miss features with web apps, like widgets for quick actions, mapping actions to buttons and so on.
And no matter how good you cache things, the mobile browser will unload the app, and you will always get this friction when you load the web app on the new render you don't have on regular apps.
Next up, Apple starts taking a cut of every money transfer you do with your banking app.
I would be surprised by that because iPhone users would notice that. I think the App Store model relies on their fee being invisible to consumers, and the increased price you’re paying not being linked to them. AFAIK apps aren’t allowed to explain that they charge more if you subscribe on iPhone to users either, or why they do so.
When you use Apple Pay, Apple collects ~0.15% (15 bps) from the issuing banks for credit. $1B in transaction volume = $1.5M
In 2022 the total volume was estimated at $6T * .15% = $9B. Real number would be maybe half due to lower fees on debit, but it's hugely profitable for Apple, and carries zero risk.
Something interesting is that Apple and Google Pay charge a tiny commission (don't have the number at hand). Which banks didn't like, so at least on Android they created their own NFC payment stacks for a while. Only to then discover that maintaining such a stack cost them more per year than the commission.
Next up, 2% cut whenever you use any banking or payment app. Only 1.5% when you use Apple Pay!
They currently do charge 0.15% on Apple Pay actually.
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 special, you’d not balk at a higher commission to be paid to mall for access to their customers, right? Airports come to mind for this.
I believe apple lets you set whatever price you want on their store, just not tell customers that they could get a lower price elsewhere/on the vendor’s website (I don’t follow App Store policies very closely so my info is probably out of date).
>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?
Sure they could, and usage of those products to purchase goods would nominally drop to 0%. People do not care about a lot of things, but they do care about losing money.
> certainly found elsewhere
I agree that if someone discovered the artist elsewhere, Apple has weaker standing in claiming a huge commission. But if they found an artist elsewhere, they would also know that they can support that artist elsewhere and not through the iOS app. If the patron found them through the patreon iOS app and use the app to consume the artist's content, then clearly the patron has indicated that they prefer the iOS experience.
Chrome, Windows and Lenovo don't have the payment system baked in, with all the consumer protections that come with it.
I'm not entirely pro-Apple percentage in this argument, but I think people often dismiss the magical thing that Apple created with the app store and their payment/subscription system. The rest of the world keeps ripping users off, and Apple's walled garden is as protected a thing as it gets.
I've gone directly to my bank for subscription charges billed directly to my credit card and they wouldn't reverse or stop them. Cancelling and reversing on the App Store is basic, easy, and friction-free.
Plus, the Android environment doesn't yield nearly the same sales volume even with significantly more installed units.
People spend on iOS and they don't spend on other platforms.
30% hurts and it sucks, but.. Patreon will probably take it because they'll do the math and it won't come out in favor of the alternative. That's what really sucks, beyond Apple max-max-maxing this.
> 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.
If you're the sort of person who posts on HN and you bought an iPhone after they hit the $1000 price point, you probably did know that.
It surprises me a little that so many people who do know still make that choice.
> 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 transferred and therefore Apple is in breach of contract in relation to the contract for sale of an iPhone. Then those people would have to bring a class action, and the case would revolve around the concept of "ownership". Because "ownership", to a first approximation, means the legal right to do with some piece of property essentially as you please, and Apple is clearly basing much of their business on the assumption that users do not have those rights and is taking positive action to prevent users from exercising such rights.
I don't know much about the law in the rest of the world, except Germany, but in Germany that would certainly be the case, and there is a surprising amount of case law revolving around such things as horses or other animals being sold, and the former owner then trying to restrict the new owner in exercising their ownership rights, which generally end with ownership rights being upheld by courts.
Is this sarcasm? Apple pretty much invented the walled garden of personal computing.
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.
The EU has the right approach. Don't try to legislate exactly what is a fair/unfair amount of profit to make - change the rules of the game by requiring third party marketplaces and payment platforms so apple has to lower rates or lose every app into a third party store.
Apple can easily say "Use our store exclusively and you get our security/privacy guarantees. Go outside our store and you're in the wild west". App developers can then decide how much fee they are willing to pay for access to the user base who refuse to venture into the wild west. Other stores might try to persuade users that they are more secure and more private too via stricter review policies or more locked down permissions etc.
What they should get is customers for their phones and computers.
I think that is in fact exactly what GP is suggesting.
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.
Don't worry, we are well into "car branded fuel only" territory with electric vehicles.
"Buy our electricity at a huge markup to power your vehicle. Oh, you don't have one of our vehicles? Sorry, that's an extra 10% on top"
This was dystopic scifi like 20 years ago and Americans are so clueless they just sleepwalked into it because they'd rather not have a government at all.
Certainly not defending Apple's behavior in this instance, but isn't the success of the larger product ecosystem a direct driver of their App Store profitability? To strictly evaluate the App Store finances in isolation seems to be the sort of accusation you've levied against Apple in the opposite direction..
I like Apple less and less these days for various reasons, but I haven't purchased an app on the App Store in more than a decade. It's strictly a vehicle for local utilities when, for whatever reason, a browser will not suffice. Nearly all purchasing is done on the 'open' web.
> ...for the sake of legal argument. R&D shouldn't really be included
That's an incredibly ridiculous take. R&D is an operating cost and it's an ongoing expense related to the app store existing.
> I think the actual profit margin is closer to ...
You can replace "think" there with "feel".
> no one on either side of the political spectrum wants these systems to be fixed voluntarily with corporate altruism
Right on. But that's exactly the wiggle room where voters could pull some of those cards like "climate change mitigation (of consequences)", "climate change preparation", "upcoming waves of climate change refugees", "AI dividing the population", "Universal Basic Income", all of which are things companies like Apple won't do anything for (or against) while their goods are still mostly for proper earners and not for people who buy stuff at a discount (I'm exaggerating).
Since corporate altruism is definitely not on the menu, government institutions and NGOs will have to pick up way more than they are currently prepared for.
We are in a strange phase of calm before the storm, despite all those wars and conflicts--or in spite of them, I don't know. Shits' gonna hit the fan sooner or later and it's up to the voters to demand adequate preparation.
Big Corps caused significantly more damage than they had to cause for all those profits, whether as a side effect or not, and they did that long enough.
Job cuts, whether due to AI or not, will remain a thing while no "new" giants will rise for quite a while ... and corporations will sing the song "it's what the people want" only as long as voters will stay quiet.
Sure, bribes, corruption and blablabla, but it doesn't change how votes work and none of it changes how the devoted clerks in the administration do their jobs and write laws (if they have to have to) ...
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
They could opt out - by sticking to web platforms.
Apple cannot charge for that. However, apple does attempt to gimp the web platforms on mobile to "subtly" push for apps.
The whole Epic vs Apple was about Apple blocking this. Before being slapped by regulators, Apple had anti-steering policies forbidding iOS apps from even mentioning that purchasing elsewhere is possible.
Even after EU DSA told them to allow purchases via Web, Apple literally demanded a 27% cut from purchases happening outside of App Store (and then a bunch of other arrogantly greedy fee structures that keeps them in courts).
Apple knows how hard is not to be in the duopoly of app stores. They keep web apps half-assed, won't direct users to them, but allow knock-off apps to use your trademarks in their search keywords.
They do and it’s awful. I’m making a browser based game and it works great on desktop browsers but Apple refuses to allow css filters on canvas forcing you to build your own filters and apply them to image data. The web audio api is also a pain to get working properly on iOS safari and a bunch of other arbitrary but feels like they’re intentional obstacles found only on iOS. I’m almost considering just using webgl instead of a 2d context but who knows what obstacles apple is hiding there also it will make everything so much more verbose for no real gain.
Not even in the days of IE was I ever this frustrated.
Well maybe we are doing different things. Back in those days Javascript and CSS were much simpler people would cry about the position of elements and easy stuff like that. However I have to manually manage web audio api memory because if you don't release the buffers and other things the memory won't get released until the tab in closed, so it's easy for a tab to inexpertly take up 6gigs plus of ram (1min of audio is ~80mb), it's impossible to know that, that is happening unless you know, so you have this missive memory leak that even refreshing the tab won't fix and you have no idea why it happening, that is true frustration. You have to manage memory in canvas too especially if you are using bitmaps and if you are on iOS because it will crash the page because you looked at it wrong. I don't know anything that would have crashed the page in IE back in the day. So no, it is not hyperbole :)
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.
Why could Apple not charge a percentage for any user using their mobile device? Why would it be limited to app store?
I don't think people would notice if Apple just made the website behind a paywall. Most people are not going to be aware that they can access the same content without paying a fee to Apple. They may only even have an Apple device to access the internet, so they'd just see it as normal
While inconvenient and likely to reduce patrons, the article does describe how they can opt out: use the web to do any payment activity.
Don't forget they also directly compete with Patreon with podcast subscriptions. You can support a podcast through Apple podcasts or Patreon, but only one of those has a 30% chunk taken out.
Yeah, because they built it. If people were using Linux everywhere, the situation would be different.
That's pretty much the conclusion the EU came to and why they introduced the notion of gatekeepers in the DMA.
It doesn't matter if you are not technically in a dominant position if your special role in a large ecosystem basically allows you to act like one in your own purview.
You could say this kind of move invites more scrutiny but the regulators are already there watching every Apple's move with a microscope and their patience with Apple attempts at thwarting compliance is apparently wearing thin at least in the EU if you look at preliminary findings.
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!
With freedom also comes responsibility, and some innocent people will inevitably shoot themselves in the foot. This is not a strong enough argument for putting everybody else in a cage and letting a duopoly take over virtually all of the distribution of consumer software.
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.
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.
Let's not put everybody in a cage because we can't stop dumb people from walking off cliffs.
I hate the classic apple users' "mom" argument. Why are all your moms morons? And why do you want to fuck up the entire mobile landscape to baby proof it for them. Im not gonna ruin my experience with technology because you dont expect your mom to be able to wipe her ass without apple's help
There is nothing stopping you from using non-Apple hardware to escape restrictions on downloading unreviewed software.
That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.
Microsoft Office: Revenue $45B Operating Costs $12B Profit $33B Operating Margin 75%
Google Search Ads: Revenue $175B Operating Costs $45B Profit $130B Operating Margin 75%
Being a monopolist is good fun until they storm the Bastille.
> That's not how business works. The App Store in current form would not exist without all the collective investment that went into all of Apple's hardware, for instance.
While technically true, this argument doesn't provide any merit to the discussion. The App Store backed purchase for the Patreon subscription would not exist at all without the creator's work and investment in creating their form of content.
In the absence of the App Store, the creator would still have access to their patrons via mobile web and payment via the methods already provided by Patreon. The app is merely a convenience - it's a hard sell that this convenience is worth 30% of the creator's revenue through the platform.
> Apple could take just 7% cut and still make 20% profits.
We can say this to any company, "$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 does make sense to highlight, because this kind of statistic is a very strong indicator that the market is not competitive. This is not a normal kind of profit margin and basically everyone except for Apple would benefit from them lowering the margins.
In normal markets there are competitors who force each other to keep reasonable profit margins and to improve their product as opposed to milking other people's hard work at the expense of the consumer.
Might not be competitive but it’s totally voluntary. No one needs app, it’s not food or shelter, so clearly consumers are willing and able to pay this.
The consumer is willing to pay the price based on the perceived value from the App Store
> 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.
Collective action by the creators would help.
All they have to do is dual-host (a fairly trivial matter, compared to organised collective action). What would make things even better is if they dual host on a competing platform and specify in their content that the competing platform charges lower fees. If even 10% of the creators did this:
1. Many of the consumers would switch. 2. Many of the creators not on the competing platform would also offer dual-hosting.
The problem is not "As a creator you have no choice but to accept whatever fees Apple, Google, Steam etc set". The problem is the mindset that their content is not their own.
I say it's their mindset, because they certainly don't act as if they own the content - when your content is available only via a single channel, you don't own your content, you are simply a supplier for that channel.
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"
Agreed, but this is about to be a special case if it's not already. We're contending with compulsory digital IDs and cashless economies that must be used on authorized devices, and Apple is one of the two makers. While it's certainly not necessary to use Patreon, not having it or something like it is an actual barrier to individual trade. I don't think I can get behind a schema that means Apple can take whatever portion it wants from a transaction initiated on a device that it creates and that is otherwise fairly necessary for day-to-day life in the developed world.
High profit margins are a sign of market failure.
Not so much a failure. Rather, there is no intent for there to be a market here at all. A market relies on offerings being reproducible. Intellectual property laws are designed specifically to prevent reproduction.
"Competition is for losers"
Makes me think of the concept of involution in Chinese business and how they understand all of this very differently, and how difficult it is to compete because of that.
For anyone else wondering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neijuan
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.
>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.
Not in an environment where regulatory capture costs so much less than any change legislation could bring. The remedy in almost every recent monopoly case has been remarkably nothing. Politicians don’t actually want change, they want the threat of legislation so that industries bring truckloads of money to line their pockets.
When parts of a market become dominated by one or few companies operating in a limited choice environment, consumers can't just opt to not use both Apple and Play store. You need to choose one in practice.
At this point the regulators should investigate what the barriers are to new entrants and if it's too costly and nobody has managed to cut in the last few years, establishing some rules is probably a good thing. This happens as industries mature and become critical, it happened in transportation (most bus, train companies), energy, water supply, trash, etc, depending on the country and market conditions.
“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.
"Why wait until tomorrow to get one golden egg when I can kill the goose today and get all the golden eggs?"
I think it's a little known fact that societies don't exist for the benefit of companies. It's actually the other way around.
It makes sense that regulators can step in without destroying a company.
Let's be honest if this was a European company it would be capped by law at 5-10%. Problem is who has an incentive to do the right thing here? Not apple and certainly not the US government (most of this revenue comes from outside the US).Nobody can defend it, yet nobody wishes to stop it.
> 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?
Plus more than $20B for the Apple developer fee without which you cannot publish the their stores.
They could lower the rates even more and still afford the government bribes and solid gold tchotchkes, but the whole point of the bribes is to not do that.
Those margins are pretty normal in software, especially a mature product like that.
> The debate over 'good vs. bad companies' is just online noise and rhetorical trik...
Agreed, there are bad privately held corps, and worse privately held corps, with badness usually proportional to their size and profit.
I really think I might be done with Apple. The only thing keeping me using them is how much I hate Android. The _millisecond_ a competitor arrives, I'm dropping my iPhone like a bad habit.
Off topic, but is there anything specific that you hate about Android? I find it acceptable. I'm trying to cut down my phone usage so maybe I'm more tolerant.
Not OP, but: "acceptable", that's the problem. Also I dislike Google more than Apple.
GrapheneOS on a Pixel is that competitor. Open source, more secure than Apple, compatible with nearly all Android apps. It's all the positive aspects of Android without the downsides (Google).
I keep hoping and wishing for a daily drivable linux phone that's compatible with all the us networks to come along. I'll keep hoping and wishing. Someday I hope we will get there!
One company's margin, is other company's opportunity.
The problem is that Apple owns the platform and half of the mobile ecosystem. You can't just launch a competitive marketplace which could compete alongside Apple's app store, nor can you launch an alternative operating system. You have to launch a whole new smartphone stack complete with operating system, app distribution and app ecosystem.
Or not use apple.
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.
Indeed, that's why the former blocks the latter: not to lose margins to those opportunities
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.
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.
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?
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...
Why should they have to allow third parties to run apps on their platform? The fact that it is a clear security risk already gives them justification, but even looking past that, Apple is not the only platform that bars users from running third-party software or marketplaces on their products. For example, playstation, xbox, and switch all disallow running unauthorized games on their platforms. What makes Apple different?
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?
and that exactly what monopoly allows you to do.
But those profits made possible by actually having other infrastructure parts existing(OS, hardware, marketing, etc).
Advocating for regulators to step in is already a value judgement. Why is "high profitability" a cause for regulatory scrutiny? The optimal behaviour in any ecosystem (corporate or natural) is to defend as much territory as is within your power, not to keep only to what covers your "needs". Why have you deemed this behaviour, which is emergent anywhere competition between organisms exists, as in need of regulation?
Apple is succeeding largely on merit, within the bounds of civilized, peaceful competition. Shouldn't we all just be grateful for the contributions they have made to our civilization?
I don't think Apple could actually, unless they could prove to shareholders that it would create more value
> force regulators to step in
> force
> regulators
That's my whole problem, personally.
What we need much, much less of in this world is government force, especially during these trying times of government force and outreach (something I expected my more left side of the isle colleagues to have finally realized by now).
COIVD really was a test of how much governmental draconianism we would take, and we failed spectacularly, and not only that, but are demanding more government.
So no, we don't need more regulation, especially given this country's history of regulatory capture. We need new solutions.
We don't need "more" government, we need the government to do its job. We need the regulators who have been legally appointed to oversee these areas to actually respond to these behaviors. Regulatory capture is the issue, but the solution isn't less government. It's getting corporate money and lobbying out of the government (Citizens United is to blame for most of our woes), increase the enforcement of anti-corruption laws, and get antitrust back on the table.
I want big corporations to be scared. I want them to fear for their own survival, and to tread lightly lest the sword of damocles fall upon them.