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.
Homie spreads apple propaganda like aids, he’s an awful tech influencer
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…
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.
$50 a year for wallpapers or I could go to wallhaven and get millions for free?
If you know an artist doing commissions that cheap they are depressed, desperate, or want to fuck you.
I’m an artist who has uploaded many of my works to wallhaven entirely for free online, alongside the games I put out and any other creative venture I’ve pursued over the years.
That part is problematic not relevant.
Did he disclose an amount?
5% to artists is very different than 40% to artists.
Or is he adopting the Spotify bottom line?
Only pay artists after X downloads and only pay a few cents after thousands of downloads and use the rest for profits
The wallpapers are nice but the website is hideous and unusable.
Edit: typo
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.
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.
