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Marques Brownlee, known as MKBHD, faced backlash over his new wallpaper app, Panels, due to its high subscription cost ($49.99/year) and concerns over excessive data permissions.
Brownlee acknowledged user feedback, promising to adjust ad frequency for free users and address privacy concerns, clarifying that the app’s data disclosures were broader than intended.
The app, which offers curated wallpapers and shares profits with artists, aims to improve over time, despite criticisms of its design and monetization approach.
Yikes
There are infinite list of things and services that are way too expensive for me to even consider buying but I also don’t go around complaining about them. Move on guys… If you want free wallpapers you can try one of the other 9000 free wallpaper apps available. This is recreational outrage.
“I hear you”
Corporate PR phrase detected. Product mentally blacklisted
50/50 cut is borderline predatory. It should be 30/70. It feels like marques is so out of touch with common people.
Removed by mod
He is fronting money for development. Which is not cheap.
Once dev cost stabilizes, I would love to have a better split for artists.
Removed by mod
Spoken like a true non-developer.
No sane individual is going to pay for a subscription for phone backgrounds.
That is absolutely a stupid business idea and the people who came up with it should be publicly shamed.
You think it’s new? It’s have already done by so many people in Android community. Like Widepaper, Wallfever, Wallbyte etc. These all apps are paid. People actually pay for Wallpapers.
I think buying an app for a couple of quid that has a good curated collection of wallpapers, a nice UX, etc. is a completely fair price to pay for the convenience. I like supporting devs. I fail to see the stupidity.
A $12 monthly subscription is an entirely different beast, though.
Or even a market that let you just buy individual wallpapers as you want them, like how you used to be able to buy individual tracks in itunes instead of a whole album.
A subscription model is a bit silly.
I’ve not looked into it, but it’s probably pitched as a feel-good way of supporting artists.
Back in the day people paid for ringtones, wallpapers, etc. Dumbest thing ever were ‘ringbacks’ where you paid to have a song or something play when people called you. So the people buying it didn’t even hear it, they just forced other people to listen to a shitty low fidelity garbled mess of a song they liked while you waited for them to pick up the phone.
Remember when people paid for ringtones? Doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid, especially as a subscription, but people do stupid things and other people take advantage.
And Ringback tones too. For when people called you, so they could listen to your favorite song instead of the ring of the phone while waiting for you to pick up.
I forgot about that! And most songs sound like ass when you hear it over a phone, especially before whatever they did in the last decade to make voice calls more clear
Paying for wallpapers is just not justifiable to me, especially when there are so many sources that offer high quality wallpapers for free, from apps to dedicated forums to simply online search.
It’s cool for people with lots of extra cash I guess. I like that 50% of profits go to the artists.
That said, I am certainly not one of those people with extra money to spend on wallpapers. Seems like we’re not the target demographic.
Maybe that’s part of this guy’s problem here. His channel has a broader appeal than the app, so the people outside the app’s target demographic got irritated.
Muzei - a free wallpaper changer on f-droid
It has many sources for images, like NASA APOD, masterpieces, NatGeo, Ghibli and others.
Walpy is also pretty good. Has various categories and credits each wallpaper′s author.
Here’s his wallpaper: MKBSD
looks like shit thanks 🙏👍
Calling them underwhelming is an overstatement. I can find at least 50 better ways to burn my money.
This professional guy shares handmade wallpaper for free.
I started to get worked up but then i remembered I don’t particularly care. He’s in it to make bank, not necessarily sell you a quality product. If he were, he wouldn’t be selling a wallpaper app.
Yeah it seems like a weird thing to get mad about. No one is forcing anyone to pay this guy for his wallpaper app. Keep watching his videos if you enjoy them or don’t. The wallpaper app seems as inconsequential as his DBrand shilling. I watch his reviews every year and I’ve never bought anything from DBrand lol. Mostly because the products look like shit tbh.
That just about sums it up.
I’ve never liked this guy, he just always felt like a smarmy asshole each time I tried to watch him and he shilled Apple stuff way too hard for my liking. Blocked his channel and several channels that collabed with him and was mostly able to ignore his existence. Doing something shitty like this kinda adds confirmation to my perceptions of him. What an out of touch douche move.
Lol screw this dude, never liked him to begin with.
The first time i saw one of his reviews, i thought, “This guy isn’t genuine.” “That’s not an opinion. it’s a specification disguised as an opinion.”
He gave off real shill vibes, and then i later found out he was an apple simp, and it all came together. He isn’t super biased, but he definitely gives more providence to apple products.
His recent review of the apple vr headset was too nice. He said some bad things but qualifies each critisism with a “but i like that” or “but it’s not a deal breaker.”
Maybe i created a bias against him based on my early impressions, but i just get a bad vibe from him. He doesn’t seem to give his opinions.
I will say, though, an exception would be that rabbit thing he reviewed poorly recently and got some backlash from the manufacturer for. I believe he then came back and justified his review. Although everyone was reviewing it poorly so he would give the game away if he said it was good. So perhaps its not an exception… i dont know. Im just freestyling this comment…
Totally on board with you. The only tech dudes I trust are ones that are around Linux space bc they usually tend to call out bs when they see it; mental outlaw, someordinarygamers to name a couple.
Tech bro knob slobber.
Apparently one of the wallpapers is just solid orange. It’s called “Orange”, is labeled as “abstract”, and is labeled with a copyright.
It’s a solid orange rectangle.
Maybe it’s inspired by Rothko
Could be, the man was a fucking genius hi created some of my personal favourite paintings.
Was that your point?
Anish Kapoor strikes again
The artist spent a lot of time on that!
That is a measure of exactly nothing.
https://www.nme.com/photos/30-minutes-or-less-19-famous-songs-written-at-staggering-speed-1422651
Your post makes it very clear that you have little experience in the creative world. There is no linear measure of successs or quality. You do a great disservice to those toiling with their creativity by making comments such as this one. We need artists, they are fragile things and should be treated with care.
I didn’t start this post planning to get hetup but I do feel that taking umbrage to your comment is fair, if not tautological.
I would encourage you to labour over a still life or wrestle a passable rendition of your favourite guitar riff. Try sing the first phrase of your favourite song in key. Trust me: none of those things are easy.
If you don’t like “Orange” then just look at something else and hold your tongue.
Yes your comment is tautological.
Months to get that perfect shade of orange.
Perhaps more likely years of work with colour and colour theory preceding a quick output of some content? Why the sarcastic tone?
The sarcastic tone is likely because of the price. There is something jarring about such a simple product, even if it was made by an artist with a good eye for color, being behind such a large paywall. Most people find this app, even forgetting “Orange,” to be overpriced, myself included. It should be expected for people to use the most extreme examples to point out the absurdity and to laugh at it, especially when it’s being marketed to the public.
Had this been an app you buy for $10 once, still there would be people like this, but much less. And if it were free, for example, nobody would bat an eye. The outrage is caused by price.
I’m not invested in this debacle at all, really. I just found your lack of understanding interesting. Not trying to offend you by that.
Sure. I definitely do not disagree about the price but I wish you’d made it about that and not the art. Have a good Friday!
And just the effort of painting every one of those pixels one by one, it’s not like we have some magic tool to fill an image with the same color and call it a day.
Can people no longer upload a JPG to their phones? What am I missing here?
It sounds like it’s a way to get high quality original art / photos for use as backgrounds and support the people making them too.
That’s what patreon is for.
I feel this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but if you want unique wallpapers, consider paying an actual artist, instead of an influencer
If I want a unique wallpaper I go on a walk in the great outdoors and take a picture
most unique things outdoors are photographed already
So? Photography is fun. My photos don’t exist until I take them.
So it makes sense to spend $50 a year on some pictures of those things that are already photographed?
I’m not sure how many times the things you’re taking a picture of has been photographed matters even slightly.
Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Avoid sites like Fiver, though. Lots of AI bullshit pretending to be real art.
Even before the flood of AI bullshit Fiverr really, really sucked for the human artists, creatives, coders, and other freelancers employed through the platform.
I made a Fiverr account once for my art services. I deleted it within an hour of creation after reading how much money they would steal from my commissions.
I don’t think that’s going to be an unpopular opinion around here. Maybe a little tricky in the logistics of distinguishing between an artist and influencer and finding an artist who you like and can pay for a phone background, but other than that you’re not going to find many Lemmings saying “no, pay an influencer!”
