I don't have any Apple devices, but as a Patreon customer, I'm going to be affected by this requirement that Apple is forcing upon Patreon.
The entire point of this article is that Apple is abusing their market power to force other companies to do things that affect people who are not even Apple customers.
But regardless, your argument is laughably wrong. We don't have "countless other brands". We have iOS and Android. They are not fungible. There are pros and cons to both platforms, and sometimes it's impossible to reconcile a showstopper negative on one platform with a different showstopper negative on the other. Or to reconcile a must-have feature on only one platform, even though that platform also has a showstopper negative.
Yes, it's nice that there are many Android manufacturers, but they are still largely very similar products, with the "differentiation" being annoying most of the time, not a benefit. The idea that we have "choice" is hilarious.
Anyway, any time someone suggests "don't have a smartphone at all" as an alternative, my respect for their opinion drops to zero.
Patreon built their organization partly on how easy it is to get donations from Apple users through the app ecosystem. As an Apple user, I personally spend a lot more on apps every month than in my pre-Apple days because it feels secure, easy, and premium.
So even as a non-Apple user, you benefited from Apple's system. The same is true for Patreon, and for the content creators.
As for your complaints about the dearth of ecosystems, I guess the rest of the world can only apologize to you for not pouring even more hundreds of billions of dollars into developing an ecosystem that fits your requirements * just so *. (By the way, I was talking about phone brands, nice work shifting the goalposts)
> Anyway, any time someone suggests "don't have a smartphone at all" as an alternative, my respect for their opinion drops to zero.
Well, I am devastated. But "no smartphone" is indeed one of the options, as is "Apple smartphone", "Samsung smartphone", "flip-phone", and many others. Can't find one that is perfect in every way? Welcome to the real world.
And yet the point of this post is that, thanks to Apple's dominance, all users will lose the "pay per finished production" payment option regardless of whether they use an iPhone or not.
The beauty of capitalism is that you can choose the color of your car as long as it's black.
You act as if all the iPhone Patreon donations would've rolled in regardless of the app / app store, but also that Apple is somehow going to kill it. It's logically inconsistent.
1. If Apple plays a key part in getting those donations, then the 30% is not a problem: the content creator is not getting 70c on the dollar; the content creator is getting 70c instead of 0c. Apple gets people to donate that wouldn't otherwise have done it. There's a ton of money flowing through the Apple ecosystem purely because Apple made it a premium experience.
2. If Apple does not play a key part in getting those donations, then the 30% is still not a problem: the content creators / app makers / Patreon can simply switch to some other platform and get the same results.
The beauty of capitalism is that we used to have horses and shoes only, then black cars became an option, and now you can buy any color you like. I guess some people think they appear to be clever, thoughtful, and fair-minded finding an issue with every step forward.
HN is incorrigable. Life is not a bipolar axis of capitalism and communism like a 60s propaganda film. Since the beginning of the United States, taxes and regulation have been used to protect the market from abuse and harm. You are privately allowed free enterprise, but said free enterprise does not protect you when you break the law. If you sell an illegal firearm to someone, the legal nature of the transaction doesn't cover for the fact that you're violating export restrictions and municipal law. It's the basic communitive property.
You can jeer when the FTC throws your favorite corporation a yellow-card, but what else are you going to do? Europe's not going to stop, Apple hasn't payed taxes to half their jurisdictions in God knows how long. Japan doesn't care since Apple schemes ways to avoid their hardware duty. Your broader point can be whatever you make it, but the world doesn't owe you shit if you deliberately organize a criminal racket.
This is why I love capitalism!