If Patreon doesn’t like Apple’s rules, they should just take their app off the App Store.
All these companies moaning about Apple yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave.
If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Apple’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Apple wants. I support creators on Patreon, what exactly is wrong with just doing everything via their website? The mobile web is a thing, what more do they need for their glorified payments processing platform?
"If Netscape doesn’t like Microsoft’s bundled IE with Windows, they should just take their app off the Windows OS.
All these companies moaning about Microsoft yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave.
If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Microsoft’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Microsoft wants."
The irony is striking: Microsoft (Windows/IE) is often criticized for being a monopoly, while Apple, a behemoth with a trillion-dollar valuation and unlimited resources, is paradoxically seen as a humble, independent studio despite its questionable business practices on HN.
Again: you can literally go on Patreon.com on your iPhone right now and subscribe to any creator you want without paying Apple’s fees. The mobile web is literally a suitable alternative and competitor right now, but for some reason people on HN have given up on this concept and think every website needs an app. Patreon should just leave the App Store and invest in their already great multi platform website with no gatekeeping of distribution.
Same here: the default option is not to put your website on the App Store, I’m sorry but it isn’t. It’s 2024 and there have been so many advancements in web technology, I’m tired of people arguing that the web isn’t even an option for the vast majority of websites out there.
I get that some apps need the computing power and unique APIs that you can only get via building a native app, but Patreon should not be an app. And the crazy thing is they already have a great website that works really well on mobile. What do you need the App Store for?! Just leave Apple to their practices that you disagree with and focus on yourself, making the best possible product for your users that is distributed via the open web.
No, you just don’t have an argument. Patreon has a perfectly working mobile application called Patreon.com that doesn’t have any gatekeepers. It’s fully mobile, responsive, and allows me to do everything I want to do right now.
If the article they wrote had said “We’re leaving the App Store because we don’t agree with Apple’s fees” then people who want to support creators will continue to use their excellent mobile site.
Apple’s App Store is NOT the only distribution platform that exists for iPhones, so please stop pretending that it is. The web is a thing.
Counterpoint, monopolization is not a good thing, and as long as Apple doesn't allow alternative app stores, we can talk about how the value they provide is artificially gatekeeping the devices of over a billion people from running the software they would like. There's not only business in this equation, and historically attacking tech monopolies through legislative power has been more effective than suggestion that businesses exclude themselves from business to make a statement.
But they’re not stopping me from supporting creators. I can go to Patreon.com on my iPhone right now and subscribe to any creator without Apple’s fees. If they took their app off the App Store tomorrow I will continue to be able to have all of the functionality because they have a functioning mobile website that allows me to do everything I want to do. The web is a perfectly suitable alternative here and it’s working, so why exactly do they need to be on a store with rules they don’t agree with?
>If they took their app off the App Store tomorrow I will continue to be able to have all of the functionality because they have a functioning mobile website that allows me to do everything I want to do. The web is a perfectly suitable alternative here and it’s working, so why exactly do they need to be on a store with rules they don’t agree with?
Because majority of the people expect that app exists for everything and because Patreon.com is not just a website, it is a complex web app. And a complex web app usually works better on smartphones when it is in the form of native mobile app than just a website in the internet browser.
I think PWAs are the viable future. Native apps are too much problematic when it comes to developing and managing them; taking in consideration you need to wrestle with two monopolistic behemoths like Apple and Google on top of all the technical complexity behind like I said developing and managing them.
> because Patreon.com is not just a website, it is a complex web app
I don’t agree with this as someone who uses Patreon relatively frequently. It’s actually quite a simple website, and the main thing I care about is the ability to manage my subscriptions, which I can do on the mobile website today.
Maybe there’s an argument for the creator posts being a bit more complex, but nothing a non PWA shouldn’t be able to handle well.
Also with Patreon specifically, the creators tend to tell users how to support them, so it’s trivial to include “make sure to visit the website, it works on mobile too!” When they call out.
> There are also users who want to take the responsibility on themselves. They want the ability to host their own apps for free (or lower costs), faster update cycles, and just overall freedom. Those people don't want a highly curated app store (or rather, they want a co-existing alternative to the highly curated app store).
Why force Apple to make that App Store? This is what every argument like this boils down to. Apple are free to have their own opinion of what they want their product to be, and a tightly integrated experience is that opinion.
If users want something else, they can go elsewhere. If there is enough market demand for this, a company will exist and provide a product for it because that’s what companies do. But there isn’t, so they don’t.
No one is forcing apple to make that uncurated, open app store. They already exist. They want to force apple to allow that app store to be installed from their own app store.
> Apple are free to have their own opinion of what they want their product to be
While this would be fine in a free market with lots of competition, the market does not have that competition. Regulations are necessary so that the individual players in the market can't carve off their own separate realm. Apple is free to have a very tightly integrated experience with their devices and their app store and the very rigorously reviewed apps on that app store. It isn't like a non-default app store will destroy that. But that shouldn't mean that the users who are fine with a slightly less integrated experience for more freedom and control should be left without a choice.
> If there is enough market demand for this, a company will exist and provide a product for it because that’s what companies do.
There also needs to be space for such a company. No one (or mostly no one) will package their apps for a new OS so a standardised app format is required. No one will trust their phone number and identity and everything related to that to a new provider so a standardised way to switch the provider needs to be provided. Etc.
Make it so that I can switch out one part of the experience and the rest of it can't just refuse to work.
Unlike Reddit, Apollo was stopping users from seeing ads and Reddit gaining ad revenue from them, so they went to charge the Reddit app devs for this loss in revenue.
The YouTube embed API supports ads, and works perfectly with Premium so Google are not losing any potential revenue with this app existing.
Sounds like Christian learned his lesson with his experience with Reddit: "don't get in the way of the company's ad revenue".
Your statement still stands though, you are ultimately correct.
That's an interesting way to frame the reddit debacle. Reddit could have mandated ads to be displayed as a part of their TOS of API usage, but just decided not to - for the clear reason of centralizing users to their app. It wasn't /just/ about the loss of revenue - it was also about the metrics they can collect on their platform which they could not do on others'.
Look up Xim, it gives an unfair advantage to console players by allowing a mouse and keyboard input when the developer hasn’t intended so (official APIs exist if they do). Cronus is also especially bad.
It also allows you to effectively nullify recoil through custom scripts uploaded to it. It’s everywhere in multiplayer PvP games on console.
Doesn't the Adaptive Controller basically give you the same thing?
If people want to plug random usb controllers, this doesn't stop them. It just means that Microsoft gets to charge you for the adaptor rather than a 3rd party.
> It also allows you to effectively nullify recoil through custom scripts uploaded to it.
Valve seems to have done a pretty good job dealing with this in their games. Surely there exist more sophisticated anti-cheat mechanisms than "just ban third-party accessories"?
Valve's anticheat is atrocious, Counter-Strike is an absolute cesspool (so much that they've had to separate players who bought the game from players who play the free version), and Team Fortress 2 has had more bots than players for like 10 years now.
This seems like the kind of thing that is repeated so much because some people want to believe it, and most of the time I bet it's people who haven't played a Valve multiplayer game ever.
To be fair -- it's been a couple of years since I played Valve multiplayer games regularly. Has cheating increased at a high rate in the past, say, 3-4 years?
I will say, I think the biggest problem contributing to high levels of cheating is the move away from dedicated servers. I actually find that VAC is historically very effective at catching cheaters, but with a necessary lag between detection and bans -- and that lag used to be handled by server admins.
I'm sure somebody will design the exact same thing with an official controller stripped out with the buttons remapped into a mouse and keyboard with a custom pcb.
There's no way to prevent that from happening with software changes.
Xim users destroying the integrity of multiplayer FPS causes this, unfortunately.
The fact of the matter is if you’re allowed to plug in any peripheral into a game console, you can and will get prolific cheaters in a multiplayer environment.
Maybe only bring in this check if your console is not in offline mode? And please make it cheap to actually get certified.
Regular accessories that don’t alter gameplay can and should always be an option for a user. If a certification process has to happen to use the accessory online, so be it, but I hope this doesn’t hurt the market too much.
Edit: I’m aware that Xim currently uses controller authentication to work and therefore this specific change may not affect it. I wasn’t claiming that this would get rid of Xim, but arguing that a huge reason for this change is to begin the process of cracking down on rampant cheating in online multiplayer games (shooters in particular).
Except that you have fundamentally misunderstood, like so many who decide to defend big corps, the actual impact.
XIM and similar tools are grey market - they do not care for compliance, nor do they mind breaking the terms of service to work. Thats the entire fucking point. They are workarounds for people wanting to either cheat or who want to hack their device for greater freedom of input.
These people will.be unhindered by this change, because XIM has an excellent history of spoofing a controllers input to the console. The people who will really miss out are the younger or poorer people who will have cheaper 3rd party controllers or unofficial adapters. Less freedom for the user. More money for corpos.
Sometimes I wonder if this is hackernews or corponews
Everyone who makes this kind of comment must not play video games online.
The "money play" is a cut on digital sales, and balancing subscription fees with the cost of services rendered. I can't imagine how little they make on accessories/certification to be the reason behind this move. I think this is the start of set of changes that culminates in hardware verification for the (leaked) revision of the console.
> because XIM has an excellent history of spoofing a controllers input to the console
That it does now, but Microsoft can upload firmware to their devices and have full control of the software it runs on.
Call of Duty is one of their biggest games, and I think being a platform that nullfies Xim and Cronus will convince people to play those games on that platform, especially with Crossplay off and the games being free on Game Pass. This makes more sense as a "money maker" to me (i.e. fuelling Game Pass subs).
Microsoft will happily sell you a fully certified controller breakout box [1] into which you can plug whatever you want, including your cheating device of choice. Sure, devices like Xim might be cheaper and more convenient, but cheaters are clearly not the main target of this move.
Leave that up to the game devs. Expose a platform API call with all relevant information about the accessories currently plugged into the console.
That way a game can check that API whenever cheating matters for that particular game - which may mean different things: playing with strangers, playing certain 'competitive' modes, getting achievements or high scores, etc.
So you go to purchase a device from a company who has been doing this since their very existence, is known for doing this, and has never pretended or tricked consumers into thinking they don’t do this. A closed ecosystem is Apple’s M.O. - and I can’t think of any sane person who cares about repairability who goes to them. They all own open phones such as the Fairphone. I love mine.
And a business has freedom to restrict their products to prevent what they believe isn’t the use case they want. And users have the freedom to put their money where their mouth is by purchasing alternatives on the market.
I don’t understand how this is Anti Consumer in any way? I have an iPhone and a FairPhone. One’s niche is that it’s repairable, and the other is that it’s not. A consumer who wants a repairable would buy something like a FairPhone (modular parts!!!) and someone like my mum can get her all-in-one “nice” experience.
They’re allowed to have an opinion, and with engineering there are tradeoffs. They tradeoff design with repairability and have the opinion that it is a good tradeoff. They want to test that opinion with the market and it resonated. What’s wrong with this?
I genuinely am confused as to the anti-consumer moniker when the consumer has never had more choice?
> and someone like my mum can get her all-in-one “nice” experience.
This is a great example of what I had in mind. Apple has successfully convinced you that pairing every part of the phone to the motherboard such that it can never be replaced by anyone other than Apple (usually for a price greater than the phone itself) is somehow essential to the iPhone Experience™ and beneficial to the user.
Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up?
You still haven’t explained how choosing to tradeoff design over repairability is anti-consumer when the consumer can buy a FairPhone right now (who, I can tell you, have a significantly worse experience and design than my iPhone, but I don’t care because I can tinker with it!)
I think you just don’t like the company and are looking for silly reasons to bash them.
> Why would a consumer like my mum care about opening the phone up?
Because in a few years the phone will be unusable because of the battery. Your mum probably doesn't care about how new and fast it is, it will likely still work fine for her, but she'll likely have to replace the whole phone because of the battery.
She does replace it every couple of years (well, I do anyway) and she loves that fact.
What confuses me about all this is the fact that anyone who wants an easily repairable phone has access to them on the market, as I’ve been saying, I support companies who make this stuff because I like tinkering with hardware.
I think Apple should continue to be a company that biases towards design - trading off repairability if it comes to that. That’s ok because if I don’t like it I can buy a different phone.
My mum just wants a phone with the feature she cares about, and when it gets slow or bad, she rings me up to upgrade.
All these companies moaning about Apple yet aren’t doing the one thing they have the power to do which is just leave.
If they refuse to leave, then they’re admitting that Apple’s platform is providing value to them and they should pay what Apple wants. I support creators on Patreon, what exactly is wrong with just doing everything via their website? The mobile web is a thing, what more do they need for their glorified payments processing platform?