> Looking at it that way, sure. It seems obvious. If a local distributor picks up a local product, and then a national distributor buys from the local distributor, it's pretty obvious that the national distributor brings more value.

That isn't obvious at all. In both cases the distributor's margin will reflect how much competition they have. If there is only one distributor, their margin will be large. If there are a thousand, competition will force their margins down. Whether they're local or national.

Moreover, in this context Patreon is the national distributor who needs to distribute content to everyone whether they have iOS, Android, web or something else, and each of the platforms is a local subcontractor for a subset of the customers. Which leads to exactly the problem. The notion that Google and Apple are in competition with one another in this context is false, because to distribute to Android customers you need Google and to distribute to iOS customers you need Apple. You can't switch from one to the other because Google can't distribute to iOS customers. They're each a different market serving different customers, and then they collect a monopoly rent.

What the usual trope that analogizes this to Walmart or Target is missing is that "Walmart customers" are also customers of Target or Amazon, but the large majority of iOS customers are not also customers of Google Play or any other app store.

> It is still competition even in this context, it just happens on a slightly slower cadence. The Apple customers, by and large, are paying good money to avoid Google's app store because they believe Apple is a better steward on net.

You're looking at a different market. The customer in this context is Patreon and the product is app distribution. Patreon needs a way to distribute their app to all of their customers. Many of their customers have iOS, so Patreon needs app distribution to customers with iOS, and there is only one supplier of that.

You are wildly overthinking it. The average apple customer spends money on the apple app store because there is no alternative. Simple as.

> The economics would suggest that Patreon should do away with their iOS app, focus iOS users on the web, and everyone would be ahead.

Apple doesn’t let web apps do everything that native apps can do. Their App Store is the only way people get apps on their device and if a search for ‘patreon’ in the App Store returns nothing, that’s a lot of confused or angry people that are going to wonder what their monthly bill is for. Maybe some very low double digit percentage of these people will try to load a pwa from patreon.com

> Their App Store is the only way people get apps on their device and if a search for ‘patreon’ in the App Store returns nothing, that’s a lot of confused or angry people that are going to wonder what their monthly bill is for.

I just searched the App Store for Patreon:

The top hit was an ad for Ashley Madison. Seriously.

The second hit was the Patreon app.

The third hit was ChatGPT for some reason.

But if the Patreon app was not in the App Store, no doubt there would be a bunch of scammers trying to pose as the official Patreon app.

That Ashely Madison listing is a paid listing. The first one or two items in results are always paid listings.

We're all aware of App Store Search Ads. I even said, "The top hit was an ad for Ashley Madison." But thanks for the mansplaining.

Isn’t the whole point of the 30% apple tax to make sure their App Store isn’t full of garbage?

Yep, interesting how that massive cut of revenue doesn’t do a thing to actually help consumers, who as a consequence are shunted with the bill anyway.

Not only but also; as with a real tax from a government, all the money goes into a big pot, gets mixed around, and then the expenses come out unevenly from that pot.

I'm not at all aware of where the boundary is between "that's fine" and "that's abuse of market dominance to fund uneconomical expansion".

Does anywhere have a specific "national defence" tax and another "police fund" tax etc. for each expense, rather than "income tax" and "sales tax" for each source?

IMHO profits should be ringfenced by activity and taxed accordingly - otherwise you end up with funds from one activity being used to subsidize another without taxation, creating an unfair environment for competition. Youtube being the perfect modern example.

In particular Patreon can host things like podcasts so has a media player. The app isn’t just about configuring billing

That's really a solved problem. As an example, Google manages to have a web version of Youtube that works on iOS mobile Safari adequately. (It's not perfect but it works.)

There doesn't seem to be anything snowflake special the Patreon iOS app needs to do that a web app cannot handle.

Does it support playing media even when it’s backgrounded? Stuff like Picture in Picture?

Yep. It works with Democracy Now!'s web player.

So Patreon will need to become a reader app like Spotify/Kindle then that can do all this offline but you cannot subscribe or pay in the app.

The problem is that Patreon wouldn't even be able to tell people they can donate to their creators elsewhere due to Apple's assinine anti-steering provisions

This is honestly the main problem I have with that. You can argue that in-app purchase brings convenience etc. etc. and Apple deserves a cut and so on. But this enforced secrecy makes users unaware of the cost - they can't actually decide if the cut is worth the convenience or not. Apple relies on people not knowing the cost of the fees and that feels very dodgy.

Are you implying a significant portion of the population who stop paying things like their water bill when they find no hits within the iOS App Store?

What? I have many many many monthly bills that are not iPhone apps. My gas bill may or may not have an iOS app, but I'm sure as hell not confused and angry if it doesn't.

Your gas bill is probably charged and billed directly by the gas supplier.

People get confused very easily when small digital subscriptions are charged through third parties on behalf of sellers whose name is often different from the app or service.

I'm not sure a shop app fixes that though. Better communication and better choice of names seems far more important.

I’m not sure who is regularly hitting the App Store to search for apps. I did back when the 3GS was out(, and maybe through the 5, but I assumed it was mostly boomers and the silent generation doing that.

>is it possible for a second-tier distributor to bring more value to a first-tier distributor than the first-tier brings to suppliers?

In the sense that [bigger company] can make more money and reach more people than [smaller company], yes. But if all they are doing is sitting there and using that bigger presence, you can see how that roads ends in antitrust.

>The economics would suggest that Patreon should do away with their iOS app, focus iOS users on the web, and everyone would be ahead.

two big issues.

1. No one wins. Users lose the convinience of an app, Apple loses money from a potential large customer, Patreon loses views from being visible on the app store. It's just bad buzz all around for no good reason.

2. The underselling point that Apple has actively sabatoged web apps and PWA's which is part of why the DMA is coming down hard on them. We're well past a monopolistic power using its power to stifle competition.

Let's not pretend this trillion dollar company that already forces devs to use IOS hardware to develop (and took down their server OS's to boot), and charges a yearly membership to dev is scaping for cash here.

> In the sense that [bigger company] can make more money and reach more people than [smaller company], yes. But if all they are doing is sitting there and using that bigger presence, you can see how that roads ends in antitrust.

I don't follow this at all. If a big record label strikes an international distribution deal with a small label, the big label brings more value to the artist than the small label does. Is that necessarily antitrust?

> Let's not pretend this trillion dollar company that already forces devs to use IOS hardware to develop (and took down their server OS's to boot), and charges a yearly membership to dev is scaping for cash here.

I think you replied to the wrong post? I certainly didn't assert that out of pretense or otherwise. Though it's hard for me to fault "forcing" devs to own the hardware they are developing for. Phone software and iOS software have enough quality issues without letting developers ship stuff that has never been tested on real HW.

>If a big record label strikes an international distribution deal with a small label, the big label brings more value to the artist than the small label does. Is that necessarily antitrust?

it ultimately comes down to what they are doing with that money in my eyes. Are they actually distributing as a presence inernationally, helping you gather talent, helping you to navigate the industry outside your area, introducing contacts and deals to you, and overall being pivotal to your small label? Sure, they get a bigger cut. They are actively growing you as a company.

Or are they saying "yeah I'll put you on our Spotify", pay you 10% of ad revenue, claiming exclusivity on your portfolio, and calling it a day? No, there's no value there that couldn't be done yourself. But you're paying for the "platform" they have. That is very much using their presence to exploit you. The key isn't necessarily "are they a monopoly" here, it's "are they abusing their position as a monopoly".

>Though it's hard for me to fault "forcing" devs to own the hardware they are developing for.

It's a tech specific sitution, but the main point wasn't the target platform, but development platforms. I can setup a Linux server rack with android emulators and use my Windows device to develop and deploy to said rack. I am forced to use mac as a development platform and they disconinued Mac's server OS. So I can't even scale up a test suite for IOS, I need to buy multiple iPhones or beefy desktop Macs to run a few emulators each.

>iOS software have enough quality issues without letting developers ship stuff that has never been tested on real HW.

great use of my subscription fee to maintain crappy emulators. They don't even have platform excuses like Android does.

Again, what am I really paying for here?