Marques Brownlee says he’s working to dial back the ads.

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.

  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    38·
    2 months ago

    Paying for ANY wallpaper is just silly, much less a subscription model.

    The only time you should pay for one if it’s an artist you want to actively support and/or thank for that specific work.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.netEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      For the last 30 years, they’ve been trying to charge for dumb shit like wallpapers, screen savers, mouse cursors.

      Who are these people who buy them? And what’s wrong with you?

      • BruceTwarzen@lemm.eeEnglish
        19·
        2 months ago

        When toy story came out, i saw this toy story pc game. I put all my money together just to then find out that it wasn’t a game, it was a cd rom with like 12 wallpapers on it.

    • AWildMimicAppears@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      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)

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I actually do have WPE… it was in a bundle one time, so I got it for free. Tried it once, but I’m conceptually not a fan of running extra software on my gaming PC to run fancy wallpapers.

        Supposedly it’s not TOO power hungry and can turn itself off when gaming. How’s your experience been with that?

        • AWildMimicAppears@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          I’m currently running 2 displays at 1080p (one HDMI, one DP) on a 3070TI. Idle TDP with just plain color is 37-40W, 2 different scenes with features like audio reactivity and mouse input @15FPS are 55-60W. They get paused automatically when a window is maximized (per display), the secondary display pauses additionally when i run a fullscreen/borderless window on the main display.

          It is absolutely useless eye candy. I love it lol

          ETA: They DO have over 15000 curated wallpapers, if you stick to that you can avoid the questionable content easily. if you look at it from this perspective, that’s worth the price of a small meal.