Apple reverses stance on Amphetamine App
engadget.com
engadget.com
Each month, I use several hundred different "apps" (broader meaning)- how many of those are written by a two-person teams in Iraq or Kazakhstan who do not have thousands of monthly Medium readers? How many of your cache cleaners, debuggers, flashlights and mac utility managers are written by some kid in Northern England who never even heard of HN?
Every time somebody writes a "my app got finally restored :)" post hundreds or thousands of equally good and legit pieces of software get thrown into the abyss - and why? Because the author speaks no English, has no network, does not tweet enough. What a shitty reason.
In the long run, this makes the internet and tech culture as a whole more and more "Silicon Valley" and less and less diverse - and plain worse. Just because FAANG - the guys supposedly at the spearhead of AI innovation and diversity - cannot be bothered to moderate, except when there is a PR thread. I consider that quite the disgrace.
Or maybe it's too late. Apple is so rich and so big, this is just people being ground up in the gears of bureaucracy.
That sounds like "if you don't like how this country is run, immigrate elsewhere" - used usually by right wingers.
How about people liking other aspects of the country (or, in this case, liking the OS, the hardware, the ecosystem, and so on) and considering them worth staying over the alternatives? Should they move to what they consider a sub-par platform to "make a point" about some App Store policies or some other such thing?
And if most people are fine even with those things (e.g. could not give less fucks how the country is run as long as they're doing ok or don't care about some App Store faults) how is small scale immigration/skipping platform wont get lost in the noise?
Boycotting companies is only a real tool when there are very heavy issues at stake, and millions of people agree on it, and also they thing there are perfectly fine alternatives for their use cases. Easy to boycott Nike when there's 100 sneaker brands that will do.
How about improving the country/platform in other ways? Including publishing opinions, pressure groups, shaming when necessary, and so on.
All of those are optional for Apple to consider, not giving them money sends a signal they won't ignore.
(a) this just sends a fuzzy signal they can easily ignore
(b) for the signal to not be fuzzy needs the coordination of millions (good luck)
(c) those millions will also hurt themselves in the process, assuming they otherwise like the platform and prefer using it over others, their complaints about it aside (e.g. I needs people to go like: "Yeah, sure, lemme change the OS and hardware I love because the App Store is not managed well or there's this or that other flow, great idea, that will show them!") [1]
(d) ...and even then the signal will still be fuzzy enough ("Hmm, many people left the platform. Was it because we don't have enough color options for our laptops or because we mistreated some app developers?").
[1] Obviously people who have major qualms with Apple (as opposed to minor) would easily leave/have already left. But those are not the majority of people using and liking Apple products that gives the company top satisfaction ratings every year for example. Those would be those that dislike Apple or its current product line, not those that merely want to punish it for this or that issue (e.g. App Store policies).
In any case all of this is known of the Apple ecosystem. If you don’t like it then go develop for Windows.
Also, you're never going to get any network if Apple never approved your app in the place...
Polemic metaphors aside, I don't think the relationship you propose (quality app > network > you get help) is very consistent or reliable. Say I make an app for soccer moms with millions of users - do you think I would get significant Twitter support from my customer base if my app went away? Conversely, don't you think I can get the radicalized 50 customers of my pro-genocide to scream very loud on Twitter for weeks?
This does not even touch on founders/devs who want to stay anonymous for whatever reasons and a lot of other edge cases. It is a shitty system.
I have no such trust when downloading apps from alternate places
Apple policy could be described as an insult to the scientific principles that led to computing, let alone user rights to run software on devices they own (somewhat established in courts).
"In the famous Apple v. Samsung lawsuit, Apple even claimed ownership of geometric shapes such as rectangles with rounded corners", cited from The crisis of intellectual monopoly capitalism, Ugo Pagano
How about if there was a supply chain attack on the bank’s software?
A hack is a hack. A single point of failure is actually worse for everybody.
There are many, many technical means available to do this. I usually control security on my server...
What actual evidence do we have for this?
We know about edge cases that do make the media.
We know about cases that make the media but which don’t get much sympathy.
Is there any actual evidence that hundreds of useful app are being discarded?
I mean I've read countless stories of app/software being thrown into abyss here on HN itself. Does Apple release any such data? Where does a guy with no network report to about such incidents?
Please don't argue for the sake of argument.
Really? - I don’t remember the last time I read one. There are a few a year where there is a serious debate. Certainly plenty of people dislike the rules, but that isn’t the same as Apple just throwing away good apps.
I think the statement that hundreds of good apps are being thrown into the abyss is bullshit.
You are using the absence of evidence to support a strong claim.
We really don’t know whether there is any truth to it or not.
Given how many people seem to think this is such a problem, I’m surprised nobody has aggregated the stories.
>I think the statement that hundreds of good apps are being thrown into the abyss is bullshit
Nobody cares about what you think. You, too, could have refuted the claim with data.
Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
This is absolutely true.
I can’t prove there aren’t hundreds of apps being discarded.
However you have now admitted that there is no evidence that there are.
I challenged a poster who was making this claim as if it was a fact.
It isn’t a fact, as you now agree.
I think it’s important to call bullshit for what it is.
The comment you linked is a fine example of the Sheepple mentality.
Those that conform will have easy lives, riches, and will coast off the hard works of others.
Those that don't conform, and stay true to their own beliefs, will suffer for it, but are ultimately the ones that drive societies forward.
Agreed. Exactly like Rand and now her institute do[1].
1 - https://reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-ppp-ayn-rand-...
I'm absolutely a follower. I want an easy life. I'm not ashamed to admit it, and there is no shame in admitting that. The vast majority of us fit in this category.
But as much as I think this is a dumb move by Apple, I think it’s also a dumb name. I personally would have just used it as an opportunity to rebrand with some free marketing thrown in with the anti-Apple furore.
Is it? I know a lot of HN thinks in terms of stocks, options, VC rounds etc. but time and energy is not 'free' either and is exactly what the author had to spend.
I still think this wasn't an "Apple decision to ban the app". It was one reviewer (potentially two reviewers) interpreting the guideline in a weird way, and the publicity caused someone with both a functioning brain and authority to take a look and fix it.
This is the root cause behind sooo many "big company bans X" decisions. Each step in the review/appeals process has a false positive rate. If you have a 1% false positive rate, and 10000 apps, one of them will not only be taken down for no good reason, but the takedown will even be confirmed on appeal, purely due to human error.
I still always upvote the outrage posts, because they're the only way to get a third person to look at it.
And here we are squabbling over an “offensive” app name.
Its a distraction and it’s the height of hypocrisy.
And the worst part is that you're correct, they have few ethics, ewaste is a problem, etc. But that has nothing to do with their app store policies which often are a problem as well.
From the AppStore submission policies: "Apps that encourage consumption of tobacco and vape products, illegal drugs, or excessive amounts of alcohol are not permitted on the App Store ".
I don't believe "Apple can do two things" is a valid argument. You cannot promote "protecting" one set of people from drugs whilst exploiting another set of people for financial gain. It is twisted logic and we shouldn't stand for it.
Recently Apple lobbied against a Bill in Congress to aimed at protecting Uyghur minorities in China: https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/23/anti-forced-labour-bill-apple...
> Gustafson says Apple contacted him on December 29th and told him Amphetamine “appears to promote inappropriate use of controlled substances. Specifically, your app name and icon include references to controlled substances, pills.”
That sure sounds like Apple is trying to protect people from "inappropriate use of controlled substances", or more colloqually, "protecting people from drugs".
I'm not defending Apple; I'm glad Amphetamine is keeping its name. I'm saying they're not claiming to protect anyone.
Because the second group is at their mercy (or, the suppliers mercy, where chinese, taiwanese, indian, etc) for feeding their families, "free market" BS aside.
That's not Apple, that's capitalism in general (or any system where you're not given something like a UBI or ample social wealfare so that you can only work on production lines and such by choice).
It's not just capitalism as in capitalist's either. The whole "western world" benefits from such cheap goods, even people working McJobs at home. That said, there's a balance there, because after some point working/middle class jobs also go abroad, and new ones replacing them domestically are either crappier lower-wage than before or not-created. The 10% will always benefit from cheaper goods though - and they will be those with high quality jobs that can't/won't yet be jobs outsourced.
Now, pro-market people would say that at least this guys the developing countries some jobs, they wouldn't have otherwise, and low/exploitative wages and conditions of work are better than no jobs at all.
(That's debatable: often the developing folk are forced to go work in the cities/factories because of policies devastating their rural communities, not because of some free choice to "ascend" themselves in the rat race).
IMHO, the alternative would require either some kind of universal raise of both salaries (to total global equality) and costs of living (to same), or trade and outsourcing restrictions (so to avoid the race to the bottom).
Laws are sticks. Profits are carrots.
Reduce the costs of doing the right thing, and suddenly companies will do just that.
Look at the difference in Obama's treatment of corporate inversions and Trump's treatment of it with the TCJA -- as well as the associated repatriation tax holiday.
Hiding behind a legal structure yes, but just a bunch of people.
In terms of ethics, even Librem advise in their own literature that they cannot vouch for their upstream suppliers, the vast majority of which are in China. Presumably they don't have the resources to conduct the level of supplier auditing Apple carry out, there's no shame in that few companies do, I'm not knocking Librem they're fighting the good fight. Apple have ditched suppliers when they've found compliance violations though. Those are violations most other companies would never have even known about. Can you name another company that has actually done more on this issue than Apple?
The bottom line is the issue here is not Apple or Librem, or Amazon or any of the other companies doing business in China. They are all exposed to these risks. The problem is the Chinese government. Those are the people we need to be holding accountable.
While it seems like bad press has changed the review outcome it is plausible to me that the stance would be reversed regardless because it's such a grey area in the rules.
Id much rather have a human involved with some inconsistency and an appeal process, than an automated algorithm or rigid process that is consistently wrong.
Hardly “working as intended”.
You may be right but we should gather some metrics before jumping to claims about correlation between publicity/outcome. Perception bias is inevitable when remembering anecdotal evidences.
As a developer you may not have enought follower to publicize widely but you could fill a report. Theses report could then be audited by the independent plateform to label claims as legitimate or not (and maybe publicized or not).
I acknowledge this is a huge work, but this would be a good way to make a strong case and eventually go to court together. Collecting anecdotal evidence is not enough and is always biases toward publicized cases.
Why not?
Their intention is to make money (they do). And to do so, they have to maintain a good image and please different crowds. Some of them want very restrictive regulation, some none at all. Not possible to make them all happy and very expensive to try.
So they indeed make decisions based on public "feedback".
Is this fair? No.
But walled gardens by monopolists are never fair. But this is sadly where the money is.
Why does your software need an approval from some random American corporation to deploy on hardware?
Questioning the standard HN stance on this topic has led to instant downvotes for me before, but I'd genuinely like clarity on why it's considered a matter of civil liberty to develop whatever you want and force Apple to distribute it on their store?
I honestly don't understand it, and I'd really like someone to explain it to me, instead of just downvoting.
PS: I develop apps for the Apple store.
The issue about civil liberty is a byproduct, a stop-gap measure to deal with the monopoly that currently exists. The actual issue is that these companies have accrued for too much power that it prevents competition. Is the product good? Yes or folks wouldn't buy it. That doesn't negate the incentives to behave in an anti-competitive way due to shareholder supremacy. I recall that most publicly-traded organizations could be sued by their shareholders for not pursuing clearly profitable ventures (e.g. replicating a popular product with their vast resources).
This would indicate that there is no monopoly.
Ideally the store wouldn't exist, or at least it would be possible to bypass it.
You supposedly bought the device, you should be able to run whatever you damn please on it.
Because the way I see it and the way Apple markets the iDevices, they're not general computing devices. They're not computers in the Wozniak, IBM, Stallman, Torvalds sense. They're not DIY devices. The DIY tinkerer friendly computers exist and are sold as of today with various levels of DIY-ness -- and their user friendliness and security often suck because of their very nature.
It's literally because of the openness and customizability that the Linux desktop experience sucks HARD for any kind of non-programmer professional usage. (And before you hit that reply button, i KNOW that YOUR i3 no-mouse vim emacs org-mode Arch setup works just fine. I'm not talking about you.)
It's because of it, that your parents and grandparents' Windows boxes get viruses, because Windows apps regularly ship 200kB custom "installers" that download everything and spawn per-app daemons that handle software updates and everything is permitted and nothing makes sense.
It's because of it, that sw piracy is rampant on Android, that the Google Play is full of shitty iOS app clones, fakes and outright malware, that end users can buy Android devices that are outdated on their launch day, that are full of LONG KNOWN vulnerabilities that the manufacturer doesn't give a shit about.
And what you're saying is you want the manufacturer (Apple) introduce new, insecure functionality (app sideloading) into an appliance (iDevice) that was never supposed to have said functionality, because the appliance reminds you somehow of a general purpose computing device, despite the fact that neither Apple nor the (overwhelming) majority of the users consider it to be one.
I sure hope so. You should be able to do whatever you want with your own property.
> It's because of it, that sw piracy is rampant on Android
I don't see how Android app piracy is bad for consumers. If anything it seems to be a selling point to many in low income regions.
> Google Play is full of shitty iOS app clones, fakes and outright malware
Yes indeed. Just goes to show that walled gardens are not necessarily an effective strategy for stopping malware. The Apple App Store has had it's own fair share of malware also.
> Android devices that are outdated on their launch day
Because makers of appliances (such as those you mentioned in the beginning) are well know to always provide software updates with the latest security patches for many years (No, they aren't).
My dishwasher wasn't marketed as a platform for third-party wash cycles, the way iOS is. But I don't see how a customizable dishwasher wouldn't be strictly better than what we have at the moment.
On the other hand, my dishwasher doesn't try to limit the brand of soap that I use.
I do not condone any of their practices, and I dislike Apple, but... before you bought the device, you knew that you would not be able to run whatever you damn please on it, right? If so, why did you buy it? If not, can you not return it? In any case, we, the people, should buy products that allow us to do just that. I know that we do not have a huge selection of these devices, in all fairness. They all suck in some way or another, and we do need a phone...
Maybe you didn't realize the issue at the time. Maybe you got it as a gift (from your parents, for example). Maybe the choice seemed more viable back then, before the noose tightened (jailbreaking, safetynet, etc). Maybe you didn't really have a choice (for example, here in Sweden, BankID is pretty much mandatory at this point).
We don't let grocery stores sell rotten food, and then blame the people who buy it.
What do you think about BankID being mandatory?
I have never bought an Apple device, but have been forced by circumstances to use them in the past. But as I said, people make mistakes, and circumstances change. As is perhaps more relevant to me, Android isn't looking all that much better these days.
You do need to eat. And it looks like soon rotten food will be all that is available.
> What do you think about BankID being mandatory?
I hate it, but I can't really do much about it. Uninstalling it would mean losing access to:
1. All bank accounts 2. All insurance accounts 3. Filing my tax returns 4. Union account 5. Bostadsrättsförening account (think: home owners' association for appartment) 6. Mobile plan management 7. ...
I don't think that's a reasonable ask for the "privilege" of being able to use whatever damn phone you please.
There is finally some talk of building alternatives for it, but most of it seems to go in the direction of OAuth: they all fundamentally verify you the same way, and it's up to each service provider to support each of them separately. Expected end result for the citizen.. instead of needing a device that runs BankID, you need one in the intersection of BankID, Freja eID+, and whatever else crops up.
I do not believe it to be the case. As long as I have fire, I can cook stews of legumes which are healthy, for example, and quite cheap. In any case, I do not know where you are, but it does not seem likely around here.
> Android isn't looking all that much better these days.
Because it really is not. I do not know of a phone that is worth having. Maybe Librem, but I have not yet tried it. :/
> I hate it, but I can't really do much about it. Uninstalling it would mean losing access to [...]
Well yeah, this is where we should think about something that would help us achieve our goal. I do not have the answers, sadly.
Wouldn't have to force Apple to put it on their store store if they allowed third-party stores.
These devices aren't just phones, in fact the phone is the minor function these days. They're computers in fact and in the marketing copy, yet Apple exerts monopoly power[1] to capriciously decide what may run on the device that I bought, paying upwards ofa thousand dollars for[2].
[1] in terms of app revenue iOS is dominant. Apple is able to dictate usurious and abusive terms and vendors are effectively forced to capitulate due to the size of the market they control.
[2] I don't actually have an iPhone despite the superiority because of this, but couching it in third-person terms is awkward.
But aren't there alternative phone devices that you or anyone else is free to choose? There are even phones that can install open-source operating systems. So an Apple device isn't strictly a 'monopoly' is it?
In fact, the high price of the device could be said to operate against it being a monopoly: unlike (say) Amazon, that squeezes out local competition by strategically under-pricing until all other alternatives are unable to remain economically viable.
For me, these contentions seem to conflate a company's success with monopoly power.
Taking this problem into account, it is monopoly power. Allowing this party software installation is the only solution.
In this case, since it’s on macOS, the problem is moot. But on iOS, that is the only solution that will benefit consumers.
But pretty much the only substantive argument in favor of using legislation to attack Apple's 'monopoly' always seems to boil down to "their system is so much better than the alternatives that the user is locked-in".
If that's the best HN has got, then I think the standard stance is basically sour grapes.
Anyway, as others have pointed out, Amphetamine could totally have been distributed outside the supposed 'monopoly' store environment - so the app-developers bleating was especially egregious.
We can argue about technical definitions of what constitutes monopoly until the cows come home. But look at the behavior of vendors and the knock-on detrimental effects on consumers (high prices, lack of choice): these are the effects of monopoly, and the harms that that antitrust legislation is meant to prevent.
Stripe is successful without being a monopoly. Nokia phones had the market share to be called a monopoly, but they didn't wield monopoly power. Shimano is absolutely dominant in bicycle drivetrains, but if they tried anything from the monopolist's playbook bicycle vendors would laugh at them and SRAM would eat their lunch.
Fortunately for developers, there is an alternative. Most desktop/laptop computers run some flavor of Windows, which you can develop and distribute software for without paying any gatekeepers.
The situation is a bit different on mobile.
That's the root of the issue, and why saying "it's a private company" is not a good defense in context.
Companies that produce good products and market them well accrue power. At some point the incentives change, and the company starts to squeeze locked in customers, suppliers etc. who have nowhere else to turn to. In order to maintain a healthy market economy the government is forced to handicap the 'winner' by splitting them up, enforcing regulations, etc.
We've already seen Google prepare for this with Alphabet; Facebook went the other direction, integrating their acquired subsidiaries to make such a breakup technically difficult.
Microsoft narrowly escaped a breakup in the early 00's but with the new surveillance capitalism companies I see much bigger market threats and winner-take-all power than Microsoft had then. If you look at Apple, they are much harder to compete with than Microsoft was due to their complete vertical integration. At some point the government needs to step in and restore market balance, some way or another, or the entire small business and hobby side which is the seed for the next generation of technological innovation will die before it can really be born.
imo, it's desirable to live in a world where anyone can code up any app they want, and share it with people. This seems like a given to me if you care about equitable access to information technology or whatever.
Apple is creating a world where they're the only realistic way to get apps onto the personal computing devices of a large share of society.
Since that's Apple's choice, it's their responsibility to reconcile these two points.* If they're not doing that, it seems appropriate for society to create better incentives for Apple.
(* Promoting and processing payments for every sketchy unverified submission is probably not the right way to go about that, sure.)
Some value the civil liberties of individuals more than that of corporations.
People who are inside apples universe don't want the hazzle to get out of it. They rather want to influence the universe they are in, by all means avaiable. Where the legal system is the most powerful one to have an direct impact.
Same applies to facebook, microsoft, etc.
I can understand it as pragmatic, but personally I rather want to invest in open plattforms by default, instead of trying to change fundamentally flawed ones to make them somewhat bearable.
Let me put a simple analogy. Assuming the future continues with digitisation, whether that is online or offline, and Visa or MasterCard dedicate what you can sell, use or buy with their Network.
People will come and argue you can use cash with Offline. But what about online? Are these people left without a large portion of online opportunities?
People will argue you should start your own OS / Smartphone if you dont like it, Why dont people start their own Payment network ?
The reason why we dont have those problem with payment much is because of regulation. I couldn't think of a single industry which has more regulation than Finance.
One you have grown big enough into a Duopoly, and a foundation platform of the Digital Society, there are more responsibility to be hold. You can no longer act like Apple in 2010 when they dont have the market shares or the importance.
So the question is, why should two companies be so powerful to dictate all of our Digital Life, when Digital has increasingly become the norm.
Before Apple shifted its strategy to Services Revenue. App Store as an App Distribution platform was fine. That was 2015. Teaching App is't required to have Apple Sign in, 30% wasn't required for Education Apps to more than a few peoples. IAP wasn't strictly enforce for non-gaming Apps. And what apple calls "Reader" Apps, that is Netflix or the recent Hey.com didn't have much a problem. Right now Apple is trying to extract all the values it can, while being the gate keeper of the possibly largest Economic platform known to human history.
That doesn't just make Apple the Judge Jury and the Executioner. They are also the Tax Code writer and the Collector.
They should really remove that bit since its so obviously false and weakens all of the other guidelines they have.
Bullies.
Apple has so much power. They crush everyone like ants. They're a gravitational black hole in our industry.
We need the DOJ to force Apple to open the platform. Nobody should be forced to give up their customers to "Apple Login", pay a 15% tax, or be tied at the neck to Apple for distribution.
And not just apps! Web on Apple is held back because nobody can put a non-Safari rendering engine on the device. Or custom runtimes. This, too, needs to end.
Apple already makes a fuck ton of money, and they will continue to do so. They're making a car and a film studio, for fuck's sake. They shouldn't own all of computing for 50% of Americans. Not to mention these people will be increasingly cut off behind their own commerce Berlin Wall. It's like Apple customers are a nation state of pawns at Apple's disposal.
Complain to your representatives. Use the government. That's what it's there for.
Getting the DOJ and congress to force Apple to open their platform is generally a terrible idea, and will not likely find broad support in the US or EU.
Not only is it politically and legally highly dubious (listen to the judge in the Epic case , she can barely contain her contempt for Epic’s line of argument), it will cause far more problems than it solves.
Anything else is a pipe dream.
Solution 3, the most common solution available and that has a 100% track record: the market changes. People build new things, people buy different things. They don’t necessarily stop buying iPhones, but it becomes less important.
Case in point, Microsoft retains a PC monopoly with Windows. People still buy PCs. But no one really cares that much.
The smartphone App Store market is barely a decade old and we are ready to treat it like a utility to be enshrined for 50 years. It took decades to regulate electrical generation vs distribution. It also didn’t really “open things up”, it just enshrined the existing players as the standards.
The only pipe dream here is that the government will somehow force Apple to run other people’s App Store software on their devices, and remove any curation ability. Considering that curation and integration is what Customers actually want, I don’t see how any government enacts this in the consumer interests. It’s only in the interests of other vendors.
At best it would be an independent App Store approval process regulated by the government.
The "regulation" is that Apple will be forced to allow apps to be installed over the internet from packages. Hardly regulation.
Stop with the whole "app store" concept. This is Steve Jobs-induced Stockholm syndrome.
Your iPhone is a computer. You should be free to install whatever you want on it without the mafia saying it's okay to do so.
You don't need a big brother to protect you.
The Personal Computer with its tinkerer and hobbyists roots is the exception. I think tinkering is great. But I also think it’s legitimate for a user to trust their device can’t be tinkered with.
The restrictions of the iPhone are a feature. Getting rid of them is getting rid of one of the main drivers for its success. I think forcing Apple to allow jailbreaks without blocks is legit, as it allows for tinkering. But that’s not generally what people have in mind: they want the full Apple experience except Apple can’t set the rules anymore, but retain all the responsibilities for support.
Let’s also be clear - if I was a software developer, I can download and install my own software on my iPhone - without jailbreak! - today, without the App Store, and without Apple review, using ad hoc distribution. So personal software install and tinkering has never never been the issue.
This is about ISVs that want to force apple to lower their security restrictions so their 3rd party stores can curate and sell whatever they want, and Apple still has to support everyone.
This is not going to happen by the EU or US governmentS. At best they might regulate the App store process. But governments won’t cross customers and customers will en masse object to a Wild West experience like the PC.
I do appreciate computers that don’t have restrictions, but I don’t want or need that in my phone. If you do, then go ahead and buy one that acts that way. The happy iPhone users will continue to live in their walled garden.
The comment about banning single channel radio's was from an old ham radio book. If you think about it an old school AM radio that works on a single channel can be made really cheaply. I think you only need one tube and a couple of components.
If you look online you don't see anything about technical requirements. But you do notice that historically the FCC has had a serious bug up it's butt about making sure no one could buy up all the stations in an area. So you can imagine what the old FCC thought about radio stations selling radio's that can't pick up their competitors stations.
I use Android but will pay for a Linux phone as soon as one can be bought here in Denmark (importing can be really expensive) and I would happily pay a monthly fee to not be tracked/targeted (be free of Google at last).
Anything Android is unacceptable. Anything Linux doesn't run on devices of comparable physical format and spec.
So, all things considered, I can't stop giving Apple money, because it will very adversely affect the quality of my life.
That't the main issue and that's why Apple is an exploitative monopoly.
That's your opinion. Android is not perfect but at least I am free to sideload anything I want without jailbreak so I'm not stuck in Google's walled garden.
>I can't stop giving Apple money, because it will very adversely affect the quality of my life
Jesus, in what first world is giving up on Apple impacting one's quality of life? This is meme material.
Likewise, this is also just your opinion. Why can't you accept other peoples opiniin on their idea of quality of life?
And it actually makes sense to me (even though I never use apples products). Because it means changing (allmost) all your apps and software. Everything you set up to your liking. Don't you think changing this is hard and therefore lowers quality of life?
But I live in the first world and I don't want a IPhone as it would lower my quality of life as I want open systems.
Point being, quality of life is subjective.
And it is my world where giving up Apple smartphones and tablets will effectively means not using any of these, because as I said there are no suitable alternatives. So doing that will make my life far less convenient and comfortable than it is and it's not a real option.
Worth taking a look at them, noting they're not final yet.
It's especially bad because apple legitimately makes better built products than competitors. It's too bad that they use this lucrative position to take a sh*t all over not-"stupid" customers while simultaneously baiting the uninformed masses into giving away their computing freedom.
Proper adblocking is not even a consideration for most iphone users. Apple users have few defenses against predatory marketing and attention leeches. That's horrible for society, and a user shouldn't be forced to choose between good build quality and controlling their device...
App Store at the time was not part of Services Strategy and huge profit generating machine. App Store was used as a moat to sell iPhone. Steve always had a product strategy. Just like iTunes was used to sell iPod. It also kept things simple.
Apps and Smartphone was also not a necessity like they are today in a modern society. Steve passed away in 2011. That was the iPhone 4S. It is not even far fetch to say most of the world at the time were not even on Smartphone. ( It is crazy we think back now, how they world have changed in the space of 8-9 years.)
I did like to think Steve will have a different perspective. Tim Cook is exceptionally at execution. But he is not customer centric enough to see through the problem.
In a better world, this whole issue would have been averted by the first-level support escalating it to the supervisor who would have used common sense and the liberties of his leadership position.
It’s not. There’s an appeals process staffed by humans. He used it. This is the result.
Unless I’ve missed something, there’s no indication raising a stink helped in this case. The original article mentioned that he’d appealed the rejection with Apple which was still pending. This is the result of that appeal. In all likelihood this was a trigger-happy reviewer whose decision was always going to be reversed on appeal. Had the appeal failed, then that would have been newsworthy.
Apple has other problems, but it’s not difficult to get human attention from Apple when they reject your application. Use the appeals process; you always get to a human. I think perhaps you’re mixing it up with Google? They are notorious for leaving developers stranded with automated rejections without any route to speaking to a human.
Of course, there's no way to know. But do you 100% honestly believe reaching the frontpage of HN yesterday had nothing to do with the appeal being accepted today?
He filed the appeal, he didn’t wait for the result. The result has now come in. It’s a massive assumption to attribute that result to media attention.
Perhaps if your only experience of the Apple review process is hearing about it when it pops up on Hacker News then it’s easy to make the assumption that the media did this, because the media is always involved in those cases. But this is what happens without the media getting involved as well.
Not sure I agree that it guaranteed it but I do agree with you that it very likely had an impact - it would have come up on someone's radar.
All of these types of issues would evaporate if they were not in that position: banning programs over concern of public image (can't be even tangentially associated with drugs), irreconcilable political differences between countries (can't block criticism of a dictatorship without being undemocratic)... this is why anything resembling an app store should be federated, and the ability to install individual programs at will of the user should never be suppressed. But selling the most expensive and high profit electronics on the planet was not enough.
I don't think it was drug related?
They are typically written down in a manner that suggests rule of law, but morality is always rule of men, and it's always horribly inconsistent.
Imagine if the authors of this app and Apple had equal legal/media/effective power.
It's all about power.
Courts are extremely arbitrary and very often “find a way”.
In a process with human reviewers there will be mistakes and reversals all the time. Creating a fuss before you’ve even attempted to appeal the decision seems disingenuous and a way to create some PR.
Why do you care if it is on the app store or not? Just let users download it from your website. In any case people aren't discovering mac apps from the app store in any significant numbers.
You underestimate the amount of capital commanded by the angry mob that so easily becomes morally outraged.
As far as the actual issue goes, it's their App Store, they have their rules and are free to execute them as they see fit. Given how you can easily distribute your apps outside of App Store, it's a completely different situation from the duopoly on mobile devices, where developers don't have a choice.
I wonder what that means
I guess you have to choose your battles.
What a strange personal attack.
I'm not here to "defend Apple", but there's an undeniable irony in all of the posts decrying Apple's supposed 'monopolistic' rules 'forcing' developers to use the AppStore, when this application could have been freely distributed outside the AppStore - which was precisely what the developer did not want to do.
No in-app purchases either.
Also, if you have user accounts and plan for it in advance, you should upload the receipt to your server and associate it with a user account, which makes some things like this a lot easier.
If you're willing to make a serious case for why your app is called "Heroin" they might approve it. If you're clearly doing it to make a point, they have every incentive to censor it.
Genuine question. Is it somehow going to cause more drug use? By what mechanism?
Why do we accept censorship so easily? Is free speech not worth more?
I don't have a problem with any of those names but it's their policy which developers agree to before publishing apps.
But I'm guessing their aversion to drug references is more to avoid offending people than to discourage drug use: opiate (and amphetamine) abuse is a pretty serious problem around the world, and a lot of people have lost family or years of their own lives to addiction. Naming an app after something with so much destructive potential---and as a marketing gimmick, no less---might seem a bit insensitive to some of these people.
Again, I'm not saying I agree with this logic, but it's a perspective to be mindful of.