Tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, or MKBHD, is stepping out of the reviewer function and into the mindset of a builder. This week, he launched a wallpaper app referred to as Panels on iOS and Android, the place he’s personally curating high-quality digital wallpapers from artists — however after all, there’s a catch. As a way to entry high-resolution wallpapers with out viewing adverts, customers must cough up about $50 per 12 months, or $12 monthly.
With virtually twenty million YouTube subscribers, Brownlee holds quite a lot of energy in his tech opinions. He’s so influential that he’s been blamed for tanking hyped firms like Fisker and Humane after he posted unfavourable movies about their merchandise. These accusations are misguided — Fisker’s vehicles had critical safety flaws, and Humane’s AI pin barely labored regardless of elevating $230 million earlier than transport a product, which most likely contributed extra to those firms’ failures than a YouTube video. Nonetheless, given Brownlee’s popularity as a keen-eyed, discerning tech reviewer, followers had excessive expectations when he introduced that he was launching an app.
The Panels app has a powerful premise. When Brownlee is reviewing a brand new cellphone, laptop computer, or smartwatch, his gadgets at all times have significantly trendy wallpapers. As he identified when saying the app, in the event you kind “the place does mkbhd…” into Google, one of many first ideas is “… get his wallpapers.”
He couldn’t have picked a greater time to launch the app, both. Final week, Apple launched the iPhone software program replace iOS 18, which emphasizes lock display screen and house display screen customization. So, there needs to be an urge for food for modern, high-resolution wallpapers that enable you to get essentially the most out of iOS 18. However the flaw of Panels is that the costs are too steep. You should utilize the app totally free and obtain decrease decision pictures in the event you watch two thirty-second adverts per picture — however that form of money seize appears like one thing Brownlee himself would disparage.
A redeeming high quality of the app is its try to unlock a brand new revenue stream for digital artists in a time when generative AI is such a menace. Brownlee stated that funds are being break up 50-50 with artists — if a person buys a wallpaper for about $8, and Apple takes 30% of the fee, then the artist could be left receiving about $2.80 per buy. Because it’s really easy to search out cool, high-res images on-line, Brownlee is attempting to create a marketplace for one thing that folks aren’t used to paying for. However, if anybody has the sway to make it work, it might most likely be a tech influencer with as a lot attain as Brownlee. If artists could make some further, passive revenue from the app, what’s the hurt?
Effectively, when it comes to knowledge privateness, there might be hurt. Followers rapidly identified that in accordance with the App Retailer, Panels may observe customers’ location, utilization knowledge, and private identifiers throughout different apps and web sites. To Brownlee’s credit score, he posted on X quickly after the launch to deal with the problem.
“Very first thing we’re doing is fixing the extreme knowledge disclosures, as individuals rightfully introduced up. For transparency, we’d by no means really ask on your location, web historical past, and so forth. The information disclosures (that everybody is screenshotting) is probably going too broad, and largely pushed by what the advert networks counsel. Working to repair that ASAP,” he stated.
He added that he will even dial again advert frequency for the free model of the app.
For what it’s price, you’ll be able to nonetheless get cool new wallpapers from the free model of Panels. However the lower-resolution pictures don’t look nice until you add Apple’s filters, and it’s tough to think about paying the value of a Spotify subscription to get round that barrier.
“A part of constructing in public is getting mass suggestions instantly, which is fairly dope,” Brownlee wrote. “Nearly precisely like publishing a YouTube video.”
