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Comment by celticninja | Hacker News Reader

If your app for children includes in-app purchases I will delete it as soon as I realise. At present this is just a frustration for my 2 year old as he doesnt understand why the game is no longer on the screen, but as he gets older he is more likely to try and pester me into buying. Not Going To Happen, plus I will leave a 1 star review of your app based on in app purchases alone.

iPads and iPhones are not bought by children, they are ocassionally givent o children to use for a while, as such apps should not seek to bill parents because their kids pushed the worng button or I gave them the iPad too soon after downloading a new app (and thus entering the password).

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This is an advantage of the android style permission system in this case, the 'Services that Cost you Money' section could reveal this dodgy behavior quite easily.

Apple could make this much more obvious than it is. Would be a good improvement to the app store.

Are you kidding me? They make it extremely obvious.

Apps with in-app purchases have a giant message on the App Store that, upon clicking, brings you to a list of things the application has for sale.

Not to mention there's a restriction on iOS devices that allow you to turn off in-app purchases all together.

It's like blaming Comcast because your child purchased expensive pay-per-view material when you could have easily blocked the channel.

You leave a 1-star review because you can't be bothered to do some research ahead of time? Or did you assume that a free app, that otherwise was of decent quality, should really be free and the developer should be making content for you and your kid just for the love of it?

In app purchase is a great way to let the user try the app before buying it. And there's a way to do it in kid apps that isn't unethical or taking advantage. I shudder to think of all the developers you hurt because you can't be trusted to use your ipad properly.

This is called "natural selection". You are currently observing an app-store customer in the wild, seeing its habits and preferences. You can't get another, domestic, customer because they die out in the cages from severe ADs overdose, so you are left with only two choices: 1. Do nothing new; 2. Learn how to interact with existing, wild, customer population, who, oh blasphemy!, doesn't like IAPs.

Your apps. Your choice.

Look if a game is marketed to and aimed at children then it should not have in-app purchases as kids will usually not have the means to pay for these purchases. I happily pay for apps and dont rely ont he free versions but if i have paid for an app and it includes in-app purchases and it is a kids app, then screw your unethical business.

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