With the clumsy iPad Pro ad still in mind, Apple is now attacking Patreon. With these actions, the company is wasting its image as the brand for creatives.
Is Apple really still for creatives?
After a long battle, Fortnite is finally playable on your iPhone again. The popular game was not available for download for four years and that all has to do with the well-known ‘Apple tax’. If someone buys something via the App Store, Apple wants to put a part of it in their own pocket.
That’s a hefty 30 percent (15 percent for small apps), which Apple says it uses to maintain and improve the App Store. Fortnite maker Epic Games just found it unreasonable that 30 percent of every in-app purchase also had to be paid.
Thanks to new EU rules, we can play Fortnite again and Epic Games no longer has to pay this Apple tax. In the hunt for profit, Apple has apparently set its sights on its next victim: Patreon.
Patreon: the platform for creative people
Patreon is a platform for creative people. Fans subscribe to creators via this app, so that they can produce creative work. The service is popular with podcasters, for example, because they are paid directly by their listeners to make more episodes.
From November Apple also wants 30 percent of all subscriptions made through the iOS app. If Patreon refuses, Apple threatens to remove the app from the App Store.
That’s a different kettle of fish than an in-app purchase in Fortnite or another game. Patreon is an indirect way to buy a product or service. For example, if you buy something via the Bol.com app, Apple doesn’t take thirty percent. If you support a product via the Kickstarter app, you don’t pay Apple thirty percent either.
This is also different, because Patreon is a particularly popular platform among creatives. This is where the people come together for whom Apple makes products. Apple’s message in its countless advertisements and presentations is consistent: we make your creative dreams possible with our devices.
Crush!
It was just three months ago that Apple used the much-criticized Crush! video to introduce the new iPad Pro. The video puts creativity in all its forms on stage. The most beautiful paints, instruments, models, clay, cameras, brushes, chalk and more are gathered, only to be demolished with a huge hydraulic press. When the press is lifted up again, the new iPad is there.
What Apple wanted to say was that an iPad Pro is enough to do all these creative things. But that message didn’t get across. Creators saw how Apple disrespected these tools and symbols of human creativity and destroyed them in exchange for a display. Apple even apologized: “We missed the mark.”
Still, it’s hard not to see the parallel between this video and the company’s current crackdown on creators on Patreon. Apple owes much of its success to creators, but its actions in pursuit of more profit are turning against them. How long will these promo videos featuring creators feel genuine?
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