John Gruber: Nick Heer on Patreon Creators Paying the Full 30 Percent App Store Rate for New Subscriptions

The whole notion of a platform like Patreon just doesn’t fit with the App Store’s model of taking a fee out of every single transaction for digital goods or services. It could, perhaps, if Apple were willing to only accept a commission from Patreon’s own share — a commission on a commission — but they’re not.

Yesterday I posted my immediate reaction to this news about APple coming for 30% of Patreon creators’ money (not great, Bob), and today I’m calling out this bit from Gruber for being one of the quintessential reasons I’ve been bearish on Apple controlling all commerce that happens on the iPhone. Not all businesses are built the same and you can’t apply one business model or revenue share to everyone, yet Apple’s draconian grip on payments (and some Apple fan’s defense of that absolute control) requires them to sit in board rooms and go, “it says it right here in the rules, these struggling creators should be earning less money.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I think Apple can either take a commission on all commerce they want on the App Store or they can be the exclusive place to get software for you iPhone and iPad, but they can not be both. As we’re spoken about before on this blog, iPhones are such an essential part of the market that it’s suicide for most businesses to not ship on the iPhone, which means they’re forced to use Apple’s terms and conditions. I think this gives too much power to Apple and they should be forced to either give up their excessive commissions or their exclusivity on software distribution. In my view, this story is Apple doing something bad for consumers, bad for businesses on their platform, and Apple has so much market power that these parties just need to follow orders.