Marques Brownlee says ‘I hear you’ after fans criticize his new wallpaper app

Maybe it's inspired by Rothko

The artist spent a lot of time on that!

Anish Kapoor strikes again

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've not looked into it, but it's probably pitched as a feel-good way of supporting artists.

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.

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.

The "shares its profits with the artists" part is relevant here.

Use Muzei and either curate your own collection or pull in one of their pre-made ones.

This. Hell you can generate literally endless wallpapers for free.

digitalblasphemy.com ftw

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-decision-lab/201109/product-pricing-and-framing-when-are-we-likely-pay-more

Short version: there’s an $80 bread maker with 5 features, a $120 bread maker with 12 features, and a $475 bread maker with 14 features.

The $475 bread maker only exists to make the $120 version look like a bargain.

I want to understand where the price justification is

The justification is that people should be yearly subscribers when they can more easily forget to cancel it.

Probably because you can pay for a month and download all the wallpapers and cancel.

Marques has a decent chunk of his fan base that's...kinda rich? That's the only thing that can explain why he reviews supercars and expects people to use their phone without a case. So if he's directing some of that fan base's money toward artists, I'm all for it, assuming the profit sharing is reasonable (and I have no reason to believe it's not).

I mean, I'm not going to pay that sort of money on a wallpaper (I almost always use photos of family or friends anyway). But if the people who buy it like it, and the people who sell art for it are treated well, you go MKBHD.

Regarding Wallpaper Engine on KDE Plasma, since I switched to Linux a few days ago: here is the repo for the one KDE Wallpaper Plugin i found that worked fine on Nobara. Subscribe to the Wallpapers in Steam, point the plugin to the steam library, done. just know that there are some wallpapers not working yet, which makes plasmashell crash, but no biggie, change the wallpaper and restart plasmashell again.

I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. You have to ask yourself a question: is offering an expensive upfront subscription for an evolving product an endorsement of assessing future value into your purchase. In my view, it isn’t and it’s not what he’s saying.

What he is saying is that to the minority who will find this a good value or who are okay donating to help them implement new features, go ahead and hit that button. Then separately he’s saying “the price will make more sense to more people as features are added” which is true but is not an endorsement of paying the current price for those promised features. At least from what’s in the article and what I’ve seen.

It’s the difference between saying that you should buy Minecraft because it will become an awesome game one day versus saying you should buy Minecraft because it’s either worth it to you now or you’re okay with helping to fund the development of future features you’ll receive. Those are very different.

It's kind of a paradox when you think about it. Good reviewers are often just regular people with a passion for tech but as they become more popular and prolific they become part of the industry itself. Once that happens even if they try to stay objective and critical their perspective is so different from regular people that reviews are just part of the sales and marketing strategy rather than pro tips from an enthusiast.

I agree, although i DID spend 5€ on wallpaper engine and i am very happy with it. (just know that our chinese friends are using the steam workshop for WPE to upload/download porn because most porn sites are great-firewalled lol, so take care regarding your filter settings)

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.

Walpy is also pretty good. Has various categories and credits each wallpaper′s author.

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.

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.

Calling them underwhelming is an overstatement. I can find at least 50 better ways to burn my money.

looks like shit thanks 🙏👍

Whose website is this? Many of these look like Justin Maller's (IG)

The highrises are by Chris Hytha, a pretty cool dude whose work I do enjoy.

I hear you, but it was worth a try.

He is quite harsh on Apple for someone who gets exclusive access. In this video he is talking about how nothing has changed, barely considered an update and that the new things dont even come with the phone.

MKBD covers all major manufacturers at this point. Unless you want him to say that Apple sucks, don’t see what the complaint is?

What? He’s in the pocket of all the major OEMs. He’s had zero credibility for years because of this, but he’s never been more deferential to Apple than he has been to Samsung or Google.

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....

Tech bro knob slobber.