"But I like Apple's walled garden because they verify and quality check everything on there"
And not only should be the developers bitches, they should, according to you, accept and enjoy this dubious "honor".
Right?
There is very little IP protection for software in general.
If the app conforms to the rules, Apple may not be able to determine that it’s a violation of any rule.
Then what?
Apple should inform developers about edge cases of the app store and developers should know about it before they enter the contract.
Apple advertises the benefit of its App Store that thanks to the diligent manual review, such fraud simply has no place there. They also maintain that the fees are high because the review process is top notch and thus expensive.
Now they have to admit that either the walls in their garden are worse than Swiss cheese by letting bad actors in, or that they are complicit in that fraud, because someone had to approve that shit.
Now if I’m just as likely to be screwed over by an Apple-approved app from their walled garden as I am by sideloading random crap, what’s the point in it for me, as a user? If I have to exercise just as much caution, I can just as well sideload what I want.
This is legal liability. That matters.
> Now if I’m just as likely to be screwed over by an Apple-approved app from their walled garden as I am by sideloading random crap, what’s the point in it for me, as a user? If I have to exercise just as much caution, I can just as well sideload what I want.
If this were true, then sure.
But it obviously isn’t.
Even the Google Play store is way worse in terms of risks than the App Store.
On the other hand, the rhetoric Apple's marketing employs all the time suggests the App Store is the Internet Safety Panacea, a risk-free Teletubbyland for everyone. Which is far worse because it entices you to assume it's totally safe and let your guard down.
You are not comparable to “Joe D user” if you know how to protect yourself against these things. He does not.
It actually is safe for most people to let their guard down with Apple’s store. A few counter examples show that it’s a moving target to keep it safe, but nothing more.
The other 70% goes to programming the app, doing design, QA, advertising, customer support. That's a lot to do.
For its 30% Apple only has to validate that the App is as advertised, and isn't trying to cheat you.
If they can't even do that, why do they exist except as a way to steal 30% from everyone off the top?
Edit: Apparently my downvoters can’t think about what really happened here so I’ll explain it.
In App Review this app worked fine. Oh, the keyboard was likely lame and not useful, but the scam screens were no where to be seen. Then the app is approved and placed on the store. Now the scam screens appear.
It’s trivial to do, is done all the time even by legitimate developers, and incredibly hard for Apple review to detect.
For example, if the app reviewer’s touch interaction with an app were recorded and the resulting screens diffed with the same pattern after publishing, there should be no changes.
This is a method used as part of some UI testing with selenium.
There could be apps this does not work for, such as when content changes or conversion type UI is shown.
But I imagine there is some amount of low hanging fruit here. And even that once a “scam” app like this one is reported, Apple should want to review past diffs to look for the example of the violation.
I also agree that for the price, this is what apple should be preventing on behalf honest developers
It is also worth noting that DMCA is embraced ITT whereas with Github’s response to DMCA recently it did not get the same treatment.
There are lots of valid reasons for apps to change based on outside events (location, time, online content). For example apps displaying weather forecast or current news.
This means there's some switch built into the code that changes its behavior, either after a certain date, or on certain known IPs that Apple tests on, or after a certain URL changes value.
At this point, the complaints pour in. People ask for refunds and claim it's not as advertised. The $400 subscription fee has to be mentioned in some complaint.
And at this point, Apple falls flat on its face. It does not investigate any of these serious complaints, which are easily validated.
Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world. If they can't afford to do the right thing, they shouldn't run this fake "walled garden" app store. If 30% of my app dollar goes to them, an app that doesn't try to steal hundreds of dollars from me is a very very reasonable expectation.
Just because Apple doesn’t immediately remove a scam doesn’t mean they aren’t working to remove it.
It's not unique to Apple of course — Amazon customers could benefit from honest reviews as well.
If this happens on iOS, what do you think happens on Google play?
Periodically testing apps to see they haven't become a scam.
Apple takes 30% - one dollar in three goes to them, and the remaining 2 has to go to writing and testing software, design, customer support, advertising.
It's ridiculous that so many people think Apple can just take this huge cut and then allow people to be literally robbed by scam apps and just shrug.
Apple should figure out a better automated solution for this specific problem, but it’s ignorant to not acknowledge they already do far more than other app stores.
Google manages all of that with a measly one time $25 developer fee. Clearly $99 of recurring developer charges is the bigger scam here.
You’ll see most people flock to where they can get stuff for free or very little, exactly as it is on the web.
We already see a race to the bottom and massive duplication of apps.
It will only get worse if there are more stores, and then nobody will be in a position to fix it.
Apple should be being pressured to do something about this, but forcing the store open will have the exact opposite effect of what is desired.
But some won't. And if people get used to it, they will go elsewhere for a specific app and leave the scams behind.
At which point Apple will have to do something or their marketplace will devolve into a cesspool and everybody will leave.
People be forced will go to really shitty stores that are way worse than Apple’s one for specific apps, and the overall app market will become much less safe.
Why? Because people establishing new stores will just pay for exclusives.
Or for some reason if it's a Chinese app Apple will just not bother?
Even if Apple has reviewers download the approved app from the store to double check it hadn’t changed behavior, they can be gamed. Remember the Uber App Review geofencing that went on for years?
Does anybody know of a firefox addon or monkeyscript to filter articles on Hackernews? At this point I just want to hide any article with "M1" or "Apple" in it.