Being in the AppStore gives you access to a lot of people. I don’t feel it’s at all relevant whether you happen to also have other exposure elsewhere. Apple charges you for the exposure you get from them, period. If you don’t want to pay for it, because you’re so successful on other channels, just don’t. Don’t have an iOS app. But for years we’ve had people who want an iOS app but also want to complain about sharing what they make from it. They still make too much to be willing to pull their app, but they complain anyway: because who doesn’t want higher margins.

Oh is there some case where Apple is creating the content inside the app??? Do tell.

We can safely assume that alternative app stores would have less effect on iOS than they have on Android, where Google desperately wants others to step in and develop their ecosystem. And they aren’t very significant on Android at all. I tried distributing my app on Samsung Galaxy in addition to GPlay and despite its preferential positioning with the world’s largest phone maker, I got peanuts for installs. Not even a rounding error. I literally took the app down. Oh and then Xiaomi got banned from the SDK and they stole my APK for their third party app store and began sending me bug reports about how it was “broken” there. Ah yes the power and glory of alternative app stores… Apple are wise not to dump this cesspit into their ecosystem, which people love because all they want is one decent, unified default that works well.

It’s logical but it probably scares away some customers. That’s why the “just eat it” option exists. iOS gives you access to an enormous market and payments are slick and easy. Creators may want $5 but if they can get 30% less from 500% more people, it’s still a good business for them. There’s no strict reason why they must obsess over taking 100% of the sticker price. There are a million examples of businesses who are willing to accept a discount for high volume business.

It reminds me of gas stations that only accept ATM cards and not credit cards, because they don’t want to lose the 3% that credit card companies take per transaction. They’re trying not to lose that 3%, but it will inconvenience some customers and lose them some business. That could easily be worse than 3%.

So yes Patreon could say “go find a laptop and enter your credit card number in our web page” but there are people who won’t do all that because they expect to be able to pay with one tap. And businesses are on the AppStore because that great payment experience makes it super easy for them to convert customers.

It’s just not as straightforward as saying “fuck you Apple, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

This is THE way that Apple gets any revenue from the enormous and highly successful app platform and ecosystem they created. They say “go nuts, make money on our platform, but share some with us in exchange for our maintaining that platform.” This is reasonable. Apple is providing a service to Patreon, and access to their tremendous user base. That ain’t nothing.

I agree that subjecting creator donations to the 30% is about the shittiest use case for this and I wish they would make an exception. But your post about how Apple is doing absolutely nothing here is garbage.

I really think this move blows and I wish they would reverse this decision and make an exception.

However Tim Cook didn’t wake up one day and wonder how he could fuck creators. Apple takes a 30% cut of all app transactions. This is how they benefit from the enormous and highly successful app platform and ecosystem they created. It’s not pure evil to say “hey use this platform all you want but you must share some of what you make there with us.”

It does suck that they won’t let creators off the hook though. This is like taxing rips.

There’s definitely a breed of douche bag out there whose entire justification is “well I can’t quite afford the Rivian…”

If the decline was expected, that had already affected the stock price. If you look ONLY at what happens on the day that expectation is finally official, in writing, then yes it’s counterintuitive. But it makes perfect sense that if a huge decline was already built into the price, then that price would rise a little when it’s found out that the decline wasn’t as bad as expected.

Another way of saying it is that shares had already gone down because this was expected. When it wasn’t quite as bad as expected, they got a little bump back.

Thanks for noting this. People get all gleeful without knowing how connected everything is. The other thing I like to remind them is that fatcat bankers aren’t the only ones invested in the stock market. Regular people with 401ks or college savings set aside for their kid are exposed as well.

I’m so out of the loop after deleting my Twitter account a while ago. Is it now just a porn generator instead of a website?

Thing could slow down if it loses velocity. Film at 11.

One factor here is that they are all under pressure from their boards and investors not to miss the AI wave and get left behind. All companies are doing some level of AI theater. Some actually believe it. But it’s not like hundreds of CEOs all came to this judgment purely on their own, with no outside influences. It’s a mass craze.

You are absolutely right about that. Passively detecting your location? Fuck that. We are getting into an era where bots are overwhelming and user verification is a valid topic to discuss. I think additional device permissions can be one element in that discussion. But this idea he popped off the dome is a miserable example of such.

That’s a fair point. Reddit has been openly hostile to its own users these past several years. It might help moderate that to have another alternative on the table, even if it too is a soulless corporate enterprise.

No, I mean: “As Wikipedia cites sources, so do these AI tools.”

Ie: these tools cite sources, like Wikipedia.

I realize now that was unclear.

Soy sauce is made from fermented soybeans.

I agree with you that education is not primarily workforce training. I just included that note as a bit of context because it definitely made me chuckle to see these two posts right together, each painting a completely different picture of AI: “so important you must embrace it or you will die” versus “what the hell is this shit keep it away from children.”

I fall in between somewhere. We should be very cautious with AI and judicious in its use.

I just think that “cautious and judicious” means having it in schools - not keeping it out of schools. Toddler daycares should be angelic safe spaces where kids are utterly protected. Schools should actually have challenging material that demands critical thinking.

It did that, but we had an overly rosy view of what “democratize” meant. We thought that citizen journalists would leaven the bulky corporate media of the time. And they did. But there was also a torrent of bullshit. We have no excuse for not seeing this. The Greeks and Romans spent a great deal of thought on what would happen if the rabble were given a voice. We dismissed their ideas as gatekeeping oligarchy, but it turns out that populism is moatly a dirty word.