Panels, a New Wallpaper App From Marques Brownlee

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

A swing-and-a-miss from MKBHD. Criticism of the app is on two separate levels, but they’re being conflated. Level 1: the app is not good. Level 2: a paid wallpaper app? — LOL, wallpapers are free on Reddit. That second form of criticism — that there shouldn’t even exist a paid wallpaper app — is annoying and depressing, and speaks to how many people do not view original art as worth paying for. But it also speaks to the breadth of Brownlee’s audience, which I think is more tech-focused than design-focused. Scott Smith, on Mastodon, observed:

It’s really interesting to compare the reaction from the indie iOS community of @Iconfactory’s Wallaroo to the mainstream tech community’s reaction to @mkbhd’s Panels. I know they are not the same by any means but it sheds light on how many people in mainstream tech circles are still flabbergasted at paying for artwork.

So there’s that, and it is what it is. To some extent that freeloading cheapskate perspective can be ignored. If one’s argument is that all wallpapers ought to be free, that’s not a valid starting point for criticism of a paid wallpaper app/service.

The problem is, Panels is not a good app:

  • It crashed on me during first run on iPhone.

  • The UI is big and bulbous, and while it looks almost the same on iOS and Android (which is probably why it’s so crude), it looks native on neither platform. It looks and feels more like the interface to a game than an app. If anything, it looks and feels more Android-y than iOS-y, if only because “doesn’t really look native anywhere” is more of an Android thing. If Brownlee is down with how this app looks and feels, it explains quite a bit (more) about how he’s willing to spend large stretches of time daily-driving Android phones.

  • Totally subjective, but I don’t think the wallpapers themselves are good. I mean like none of them. They feel like user-generated content, not professional content curated by a trusted tastemaker like Brownlee.

  • The app has a crummy privacy report card, including using your general location for tracking, and on iOS brings up the “Ask App Not to Track” dialog. It’s even worse on Android. Not premium. (Panels doesn’t ask for GPS location access, but it uses your IP address for tracking, which Apple classifies as “location”. Apple ought to clarify that distinction in App Store privacy report cards — asking for GPS is not the same thing at all as IP-based geolocation — but it’s a bad look for the app.)

  • “SD” (1080p) wallpapers are free to download from some creators but require watching a minute or two of video ads. Not premium.

  • Subscribing costs $50/year or $12/month ($144 a year!) — which are, to say the least, premium prices. (Wallaroo is a far better app with — subjectively — far better wallpapers and costs $20/year or $2/month.)

It’s entirely plausible for a premium wallpaper app to justify a price of $50/year. But Panels isn’t a premium app. Premium apps don’t ask to track you across apps. Premium apps don’t make you watch ads to get to their free content. Premium apps look and feel native to their platforms. Premium apps don’t have sketchy privacy report cards. As it stands, Panels is incongruous and incoherent.