Readit NewsI'm glad that walled gardens like Apple and their App Store teach people how valuable is the Open Web.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
There are users who want (or need) a curated, trustworthy experience. For them, an app store that heavily reviews all apps allowed on there and puts lots of restrictions on what they are allowed to do is ideal. 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).
Perhaps the ideal situation would be that device comes with one default app store. That app store is highly curated and selective but it also allows other app stores on it. Those app stores can be reviewed in terms of their own quality but not on the quality of the apps they allow installing. The default app store can have huge warnings that these other store-like apps are not like the other apps and should be used carefully.
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.
You have to build on something, and there's going to be a corporation somewhere in your stack.
Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc. that have become hostile to third parties have free APIs to reel in developers to make their platform more attractive to users, and once they’ve reached critical mass, they turn around and fuck over those developers. This is because their primary business model is serving their users, and developers eventually “get in the way”.
So the person you’re replying to should add an addendum: never build your app/business on top of third parties IF their primary business models aren’t providing services to developers.