People buy the $999 iPhone app
i35.tinypic.com
i35.tinypic.com
But the quality of approved applications isn't any better than what's available on the average Pocket PC software site. They're just rubber-stamping applications. Some applications have horrible engrish descriptions. Approved applications disappear and reappear depending on the whim this week. Updates to applications take forever.
Apple has dropped the ball on almost everything related to iPhone apps, from the app store to the fking NDA.
I don't think the gatekeepers' primary role is to keep apps out of the store. It's to make sure there's an easy way to yank apps back off the market, and issue a recall notice to every single affected user, after trouble strikes. Kind of like what's happening to this app right now.
If Apple weren't just rubber-stamping applications, the process would be even slower, and we'd be hearing even more complaints from the long list of people who are still waiting for their applications to go live.
As for the "horrible engrish descriptions"... can you imagine the firestorm if Apple were to reject apps on the basis of the quality of their ad copy? Not every iPhone developer writes fluent English, after all.
It is annoying that approved apps appear and disappear more than once. What other examples of this are there, besides the tethering app?
(I can well imagine why the tethering app might appear and disappear... it raises the question of whether Apple is allowed to sell an app which is explicitly disallowed by some customers' service contracts, but perhaps not by all of them. They've probably got AT&T lobbying on one side, the app's authors, Apple's marketing department, and every self-respecting developer lobbying on the other, and lawyers from several countries in the middle. Perhaps the availability of the app depends on which of these parties is shouting the loudest on any given day.)
If they'd have a better approval process, they wouldn't have to yank applications at all. It's one thing to simply not allow an application that nobody has ever seen and it's entirely another to make them just disappear after they've been bought. Which do you think is better for PR?
"can you imagine the firestorm if Apple were to reject apps on the basis of the quality of their ad copy?"
Firestorm? From who? Apple is vetting the applications, so I expect a higher quality experience. The ad copy might be written by the developer but it's part of the store. You don't expect bad ad copy on Amazon or Dell and you shouldn't expect it on Apple's store either. I'm expecting Apple to reject applications based on their quality. If users and developers have to jump through hoops, there should be a real tangible benefit.
You've never read bad ad copy on Amazon? You fortunate soul.
It's true, Apple could choose to run their platform more like Dell runs its third-party outlet, or Sony runs Playstation: With a relative handful of very strictly quality-controlled apps. We know they could do that if they wanted to, because they did so all last year... and they were met by an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. So now Apple is trying something else.
Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's approval policy tightens up in the future. Right now I believe they're still working through an enormous backlog. The easiest way to get through the backlog is to release apps unless there's an obvious reason not to.
In the meantime, why not develop a third-party rating service to pick out quality iPhone apps? If such a service is as valuable as you believe it is, and Apple's leaving that money on the table, why not pick it up?
How is Apple not allowing any 3rd party applications like how Sony runs the Playstation?
"they were met by an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. So now Apple is trying something else."
...And they're still met with an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users.
What we have now is the worst the both worlds: a closed platform without any closed platform benefits. I'd be just as happy if they opened the whole thing up. Or providing a tighter app store while opening the whole thing up.
And yes, they have enormous backlog but it's never going to go away because every update of every application also needs to go through the process. Every app that has been approved today will have to be approved again and again and again.
But now I know why :)
Gee really? What else is clicking "Buy" supposed to do?
Maybe the user was expecting one more level of confirmation than the AppStore actually had?
Confirmation steps, in practice, don't really help. After a few uses, people build up the muscle memory that "action, confirmation" is the action. Then the one time in a hundred they want to cancel, they don't realize until too late.
One approach to try would be, for any purchase over $5, make a "confirmation step" that looks like a restaurant bill, and require the user to sign it (with their finger). Perhaps "sign name next to a big number" would be enough to jar them.
But really, the solution is to make it undoable/refundable. No matter what barriers you put up, somebody will do it by mistake (guaranteed), and is going to want their money back. If I can return a $1000 jacket in real life, I should be able to return a $1000 no-op app.
Any money the dev got through "accidental" purchases is likely going to fly away again with interest.
But I still completely agree with you.
The app store has one more level of confirmation- this guy just "forgot" that he had it turned off.
If so, it strikes me as bad design that another user on another device can affect whether or not you get a buy confirmation on yours.
However, I can imagine people seeing "$999" and some pattern recognition firing in their brain interpreting it as "$9.99" because that would be a more reasonable price for an iPhone app, and clicking "Buy" before the rational part of the brain realized the error.
So I imagine that the whole point of setting an iPhone app price at $999 was to scam people in exactly this way.
Maybe a modification to one-click would be a "are you really, really sure" dialog for suspiciously high prices.
This person, of course, does not have this excuse, because they did correctly interpret "$999", and clicked anyway.
Obscured, hard to find or misleading price? Nope. False or misleading promises of what the program does? Nope.
So what's the scam? That you think it's overpriced? That he bought it and now doesn't want it? That the author created it with the sole intention of making money?
Caveat Emptor, and all that. Yes, I think there should be an "undo" option, a cooldown period, right to cancellation and money back no questions asked - but there's no wrongdoing here - he has no right to feel outraged or hard done by about the situation.
Or is this "one-touch" shopping?
;)
WTF? Unreal. It was a joke the day is was born. My god, I'm going to patent sitting on one ass cheek, cuz, you know, nobody's actually patented it yet. Think of the license fees!
The point is when he clicked that buy button he entered into a contract. The one-click aspect is just his way of trying to weasel out of it.
not hacker news.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/06/the-worlds-first-luxury...
Though if you buy a $50,000 diamond studded iPhone you don't really need a $1000 app to tell people you're rich...
Say that you didn't make the order.
They fix it.
No, you don't. And my suggestion was a fail-safe one. Realistically, he should 1) Demand a refund, then 2) See apple's policies about refunds and complain through them, then 3) See if his credit card allows chargebacks through "buyer's remorse" and if not, 4) Say you didn't buy it.
Obviously, this guy made a mistaken purchase, and if it was a physical store it would never have happened.
Regardless, the way that the Apple store tricked his muscle memory by not having a confirmation page borders on fraudulent. If they would not reverse this honest mistake when you present the situation to them, then I would have no problem perusing this by other means.
Why is no one paying attention to this?
I, too, think this app sucks... but "caveat emptor" doesn't still apply?
Check out Kottke (who I also am not especially fond of) for a reality check on why it's not apple's place to remove the app...
If you clicked on a link that says "Buy Now" and for whatever reason it ran your card on file and you didn't expect it to then that is good enough reason to get a refund from the merchant and if not from the merchant then put in a dispute.