Developer account removed by Apple
seraleev.notion.site
seraleev.notion.site
That said, other commenters are pointing out a very large revenue figure relative to the popularity of these apps. That smells more like money laundering or fraud. In that scenario, Apple should have been more specific in their communications.
A company at Apple's level absolutely doesn't see "frozing $100K" from random devs (or the amount that would result in aggregate from all those freezings) as a profit center.
But Apple doesn't care, because it relies on shady apps for a significant part of App Store income.
So the decision is "Do we make significant money from addictive games and scams and tolerate the occasional false positive that nukes a legitimate developer? Or do we spend significant resources curating an App Store full of quality apps and no noise, with high quality support for devs with problems?"
Guess which one of those is going to bring in significantly more money.
This has been going on for a long time.
Developer good will lost? Then they can just go to the other iOS store to sell there apps, oops.
Google can’t figure out how to make money without ads, so they punish people (blocking ad blockers on chrome and not allowing access to YouTube if using an ad blocker) because of their own failure.
They can and they have. YouTube Premium exists! You can pay for it!
The two business models that are feasible for YouTube are (1) free and you have to see ads and (2) paid and you don’t have to see ads. They offer both. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect to be allowed to pick (1) but opt out of the ad side of the bargain. Their ad-blocking shenanigans are obnoxious, but it’s disingenuous to claim that they “can’t figure out” how to monetize YouTube without ads when they actually do provide that option.
Lots of people have called me a "sucker" or worse, a Google shill, for paying money for a "free service." These same people then turned around and threw a temper tantrum when YouTube started detecting and punishing ad blockers.
I think after years of enjoying a free service people have become extremely entitled about it.
YouTube created this mess. Under the disguise of "free money" they attracted all kind of creators/organisation lured into a video hosting platform (something that is expensive to do at scale) under the unsustainable promise of "we host your stuff for free and you can even make money out of it". This removed most of the risk for launching video production activity but also killed diversity of potential business models and alternative sources/technical solutions. Now both parties are extremely greedy and want even more money because somehow, they think they have a captive audience. YouTube shove more ads and creators shove more sponsor bullshit. They are the ones full of shit, it's not the people requesting a fairer deal that are entitled, you have it backward. I used to watch YouTube completely with ads up until 1-2 years ago; it just became unwatchable and pretty much every "creator" has some sort of ad in the video anyway.
It's particularly disgusting because in general those are people already making 3-4 times median/average wage with complete freedom and what would be considered low output in a traditional job paying way less. Like most tech companies, YouTube enforced winner take all feudalism and single source for maximum control on the market.
If those creators had started their own website with their own hosting and figured out a way to monetize this (subscriptions, their own ads with sponsors, products, etc) and actually taken any risk to start (like pretty much every single business has to) we would not be here.
It's a situation entirely created by dishonest representation of reality and then trying to impose rules by force to extract even more money. If YouTube needs more money to run, they better ask the creators placing ads all over their content to pay for the bandwidth/views. It's completely wrong to blame AdBlock users, they alone created wrong incentives and they alone are the one responsible for all the monetization shenanigans/cheating going on...
As far as I'm concerned, I'm pretty happy they are going at war with AdBlock, because we will see what's what. It may open up opportunities somewhere else, because I don't see people paying for Premium and I don't see people sticking around with so many ads. People's attention is going to be redirected somewhere else (free or cheaper content exists, starting with the public library or TV) and we may get something better out of that.
The problems with youtube are not the victims fault. It's fucking garbage.
Honestly, Youtube is probably the service I'm most happy to pay for. Could it be run better? Probably! But it's still great.
No they haven't. YT Premium price goes up by a significant amount each year, without a corresponding increase in value. That's not a business model, it's an experiment to see what the profitability price point is.
If they knew what it was, they could go Netflix and make it paid-only. But then they'd lose out on all the sweet sweet ad revenue which apparently still doesn't cover the bills.
Since they haven't reached it, and since 95% of their audience still accesses it with ads,
It’s not a company I’d ever do business with.
All these stores are basically little monopolies with zero incentive to not suck. They also suck from a user point of view. Search is terrible, they’re full of shovelware, etc.
No experience on Steam but a few indie-game devs I know think it's OK. I've not heard them complain like App-devs on those phone-stores.
https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-takes-steps-against-steam-revi...
I don't think it's unreasonable to flag that.
IMO this is directly due to Gabe Newell's leadership. Taking an attitude of "piracy is a service problem", and proceeding to offer such a good service that it's preferable to pirating, results in a great service for everyone involved.
Whether this will outlast GabeN's tenure as CEO remains to be seen, but for now my understanding is that both users and developers are overwhelmingly happy with Steam.
My favourite way to phrase this is that "steam is the most anti-piracy store available. With piracy, you play games you didn't buy. On steam, you buy games you never play."
And Valve saw that coming some time ago, and invested in making both Steam and the games sold through it run on Linux.
Often AML policy prohibits this because it could be constituted as tipping off the offender.
It sucks because people who have been clearly committing fraud then plaster you with negative reviews and sob stories but casually fail to mention it was their own egregiously fraudulent activity that caused their account to be shut down.
And it also sucks because people who may not have actually done anything wrong get caught up by these controls sometimes and have effectively zero recourse.
Honestly, it's up to Apple to moderate the reviews and detect review farms. If posting fake reviews is all it takes to take down my competitors out of the store, it's game on.
I guess the App Store fraud prevention team hasn’t necessarily found a good solution yet.
0: https://youtu.be/tJeEuxn9mug?t=22m57s&si=CVfkqSqEULyFTx-8
The most essential device of the century is owned by two companies. The ability for them to completely control software and business activities on top of something that is almost as essential as public transportation is appalling.
The DOJ needs to remove the "app store" racket for essential computing devices. Software needs to be freely installable, sans vendor control, unfair competition, scare tactics, mandatory taxation, and adversarial ad placement by the cellphone duopoly.
Not only is cell phone compute freedom essential, but we desperately need more than just two vendors.
No stores. Web install. Web first class. No "only Safari/webkit engine" limitation.
If Apple is so genius, they can solve malware with all of those engineering minds and dollars they have. They don't need to hind behind a store to do that. The tools and techniques are readily available and accessible for a company of their size and stature.
Permission layer, app runtime heuristics, and fingerprints are a start. They can do this. They just don't want to / have to, because they're currently Gods of the Phone Universe with unfettered and completely unfair control over "their domain".
And the threat surface of the iOS sandbox is so large that it’s impossible to secure everything everywhere the first time. Every iOS jailbreak since at least iOS 10 starts with a sandbox escape exploit and executed via a sideloaded app (besides the single hardware exploit found in recent years, checkm8)
An App Store with a human review process is one tool in the toolbox.
> Permission layer, app runtime heuristics, and fingerprints are a start. They can do this.
I think this is Google’s approach. How’s that been going?
How does that work? If it's open web download and install with no notarization (because that's also gatekeeping) then we're back to the good ol' days of the 90's and early 00's. In other words, anything goes and it's up to the user to keep themselves secure, which in practice means rampant security failures and users getting scammed and hit with ransomware at every turn.
I don't like Apple having so much control over everything. I really preferred the old days of the web and the anything goes, full control over my computers I had back then. But the web is absolutely way nastier today. It's jam packed with scammers and ransomware gangs and botnets. It's really quite sad and frustrating for anyone who grew up with the full potential of computing.
A lot of the solution is just not to install random shit out of app stores, and to install software that has a good reputation (and use adblockers on search engines like google so you don't click on trojan ads).
If you scroll down to the 10th page of the listings for 2048-clone games and install something at random you're probably going to get hacked.
They installed some kind of DNS redirector, so, when he thought he was contacting Apple, he was actually talking to a scammer.
Their customer service was great, which I told him, should have been a red flag.
In any case, he was able to extricate himself from the scammers, but not before they had grabbed a bunch of PiD, so he’s still dealing with the whole identity theft issue.
Not sure how he got owned. Likely, some drive-by malware on a Web site. He basically uses Safari as his operating system.
An insurer/ health insurer, employer, government, etc will require it, and just like that the "just don't use them" crowd will hold up their hands and pretend that no one could have imagined this disaster.
If the problem is truly Apple exhibiting favouritism or limiting competition through their app approval process: then the EU should have just forced them to spin it out into an independent entity for the EU stores, or even take control of it themselves - but they didn't and 2024/25 is going to be a shitshow for it.
Legislating for side loading and multiple app stores is the least imaginative and most obviously flawed approach to the competition problem and the sole reason why Android's share of malware is staggering in comparison to iOS.
You’re making a very simple issue way more complicated than it needs to be. Having Apple spin out EU specific new corporate entities with unclear relationships to its parent company sounds extremely complex.
Requiring Apple to allow people to install apps they want on their own device is pretty simple and should be a fundamental expectation of a free society.
If normal user wants the walled garden Apple experience, that’s fine. Make it unintuitive to install third party apps. Require checking a big red disclaimer that you might brick your phone. But just have some sort of path where if party A made an app and party B wants it on the device they paid a lot of money for, they can do that without some unqualified drone in Cupertino blocking it .
Countless examples of the App Store review being broken , and just on principle, Apple has what’s effectively a monopoly on mobile phones in that you can’t make a mobile app and ignore iPhone and for them to unilaterally decide all software that’s allowed is way too much power.
Somehow Microsoft went to the Supreme Court for putting IE on the desktop but Apple is off the hook for a complete lockdown. At least you could download Netscape on Windows 95! What Apple is doing is like if AOL and AOL keywords became the only entry point to the web. Then you go on Hacker News and people say that’s s good thing because AOL only allows quality websites and otherwise people make malware and scam websites. It doesn’t matter, it’s too much power for one company and mobile phones are more critical to society in 2023 than the web was in the 90s. Mobile phones are not appliances.
It’s still unfathomable to me this is even a conversation on this website. Apples complete lockdown of the most important computing devices is plainly bad for consumers and society.
It's interesting to me that your core argument is about making a choice whether or not to embrace side-loading and 3rd party app stores. However aren't users making this choice when they buy the phone to begin with. Side loading and 3rd party app stores aren't a secret, many Android manufacturers use this as a selling point and include their own stores baked-in.
I'm somehow to believe that users are simultaneously clever and dumb - and I'm not buying it.
Or how else do you claim there is two sides here?
Pretending that Apple is protecting consumers is silly, they have repeatedly said internally the lock is for revenue alone. No claim of security protection has lasted past "wouldn't sideloaded apps be sandboxed the same as App Store apps and thus have the same security overall"? (Apple failed to counter that point)
That's clearly not what is written, don't invent a false narrative with your lack of comprehension skills.
Also going to need a citation for this beauty:
>"they [apple] have repeatedly said internally the lock is for revenue alone"
But judging from your reading skills earlier, I don't have confidence in it being forthcoming.
The reality is the author dismissed Apple supporting side loading as fundamentally impossible in a thread talking about how Apple should offer more choices.
Calling users dumb for wanting side loading on Apple is ridiculous on its face. Users didn't choose Apple to side load they might have sacrificed side loading to get Apple but calling them dumb for making a choice is ridiculous.
Apple makes $86 billion from the App Store a year. That is a quarter of their revenue from iPhone sales. No shot a 25% increase in revenue with phenomenally higher margins isn't of extreme importance to Apple.
They got in their head that users were stupid for choosing Apple when they wanted side loading but that isn't stupid in the context of "should Apple allow sideloading".
I'll support any sideloading regulation that includes all of these protections. As it stands this is only a law in some countries/regions and certainly not something everyone will be protected by if they happen to be outside of EU (and maybe US) jurisdiction.
If my company is mandating the installation of software on my devices, I'll request a corporate device and assume the company has root access on said device.
Employer installed apps is a use case Apple officially support.
On Android where alternate storefronts are a possibility, I have yet to be made aware of a single instance of this happening. Not even Epic in their crusade against established mobile stores made its' own platform.
1. You're not looking very hard, surveillance ware exists for employment, examinations and so on. It's not available on iOS, but is available on Android via side loading. Both Facebook and Google used iOS certificates to side load tracking apps onto iOS for regular consumers. Even rental cars brands have utilised surveillance software to track speed and apply fines. The more you dig here the more you find: it's not some outlandish concept.
2. The inability to run such types of software on iOS prevents these approaches from moving forward across the industry. Much the same way that QR codes weren't widely utilised until both Android and iOS supported it.
That's doing a lot of work. There's "... to be usable" but also "... to be automatically and unfilterably merged".
They are very different situations. What specifically are you concerned about? I'd guess that latter but you seem to be defending the former as though it is the latter.
Have we visited the same appstore? Just few days ago I tried to find a puzzle game for my kid and myself to play together. A whole bunch of them, from top results, resulted in games which had shady dark UI initial screens trying to get to $14.99 or similar monthly subscriptions. Eventually I caved in to arcade sub because I couldn't trust any of the results or find a normal paid one (once). Scammy at best.
The crApp Store is full of scams. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/06/06/apple-a...
https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-scams-apple-app-store-go...
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/pig-b...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2021/05/15/apple-ip...
https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/11/developer-exposes-another-mul...
There's practically endless proof and documentation for this.
The App Store is actually a honeypot for scammers. It's a single point of failure, because once you get past app review, which is easy, you're home free, and it's also relatively easy to manipulate App Store search, App Store ratings and reviews, and App Store Search Ads.
As a non-scam App Store developer, my biggest problem is discovery, i.e., getting my app in front of the eyeballs of potential customers. It's vastly easier to do that in the App Store than it is via so-called sideloading, especially if you have no ethics. (Unfortunately, I do have ethics, which significantly limits my options for discovery.)
Your logic states that because an app can occasionally slip through the review process, that we should remove -all- protections. That isn't better, that's worse.
A scam is also a relatively low bar to set for such drastic change, since scams also frequently occur over chat apps and the kinds of access that side-loading and 3rd party stores can avail opens the door to significantly more sophisticated malware. If you truly think the situation right now is bad, just wait until there are no protections for users.
You should also recognise that there is actual data for malware on these platforms. Every year Nokia drive home the same point for why Android has such an outsized share of malware: "...most smartphone malware is distributed as trojanized applications and since Android users can load application from just about anywhere, it’s much easier to trick them into installing applications that are infected with malware."
Since all experts point to the same sources of malware - perhaps that's not the change we should be legislating. How about we do something different.
I know that this system may be unattainable for some, namely children, the elderly and the intellectually disabled. But maybe we shouldn't be designing general purpose computers around the lowest common denominators of society, for the same reason you wouldn't design a car for the legally blind or a book for the illiterate.
The nature of smartphones and the internet has some pretty large consequences for the economy, politics, war, and global surveilance. I understand that some people don't know how to manage their own computer, but if you really think everyone's computers should be controlled by dictators and buerocrats maybe you should just go live in a third world country instead.
Then the consumer can make that decision for themselves.
Your position here seems to be that consumers are too dumb to make that decision, but clever enough to fend off sophisticated malware attacks. You are even so gracious to note that perhaps this might be out of reach for ordinary users (well done you! you nearly got there)
If only there was a large and popular platform of devices with side-loading and 3rd party app stores available for us to already see the consequences of what this change does to malware rates. Let's call this hypothetical platform "Android", and then a well respected security report, say by Nokia, could include statistics about this "Android" malware.
Well, you're in luck dear friend! Actual security experts state: "most smartphone malware is distributed as trojanized applications and since Android users can load application from just about anywhere, it’s much easier to trick them into installing applications that are infected with malware". (worth stating twice because I don't think it sunk in the first time.)
So real security experts are advising the opposite approach from you, funny that.
As for a 3rd world country, maybe you should run one since you have the ego of a dictator.
I think somehow Apple found a way to group both limited intellects and intellectually dishonest. This way the second group can pry on the first one and they seem very happy about that.
If you were to listen to them, every windows PC is infested with malware, yet even my grandma that is over 80 years old operates a windows PC without much trouble. She doesn't install nonsense and ask competent people about stuff. Which is exactly the kind of relation Apple wants to steal. So they can charge a lot of money for it, making people dependent so they are fragile. And when they have no other choice anymore, charge as much as you can. Classic sociopath behavior...
If you need to strawman the opposing point of discussion. Then you don't have an argument, instead you're the fanatic.
On top of the strawman nonsense, you attack me as naive. You said the previous poster he had the ego of a dictator. If there is someone who needs to rely on something else than reasonable argument (personal attacks) that's clearly you. It's rather funny because you illustrate exactly the point I alluded to before: intellectual dishonesty.
Well no, the appstore is as full of scams, malware and adware as everywhere else.
They managed somehow to convince people it's a safe space though, not sure how but I consider it a bad thing since people are more likely to trust it blindly.
> such as people at higher risks of being targeted by nation state actors
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/absher-%D8%A3%D8%A8%D8%B4%D8%B...
The Saudi Arabian app to track what your wife is doing is still on the appstore, no need for a thirdparty store.
While I usually don't like the saudi system but this app in particular is about making it easy to manage official government paperwork online [1]. This applies for all residents (citizens or not) and people really like it. So it is not an app to track females movements. While you can disagree or agree on the male approval requirements for a female to travel (I disagree) but it is not like it tracks movements using GPS or any invasive data. It just make it easier to manage the permits and all other interactions with the government without having to drive long distances and wait in lines.
Well as a complete outsider in another country who probably never went to Saudi Arabia like yourself, I would be more careful.
I'm open to some kind of argument like "apple has no choice in such dictatorship" but this argument is contradictory with the argument that its protecting from nation states.
And since we mentioned Saudi arabia, we can also mention China where icloud is dodgy, it's not a unique case. I'm sure they are others I don't know about.
This is one service among all other government interactions services that the app provide. If the app is not here. Women still need to get male guardian approval because this is local law. You can disagree on that matter (I am not defending or debating it). I was just clarifying.
And yes, apple has to follow local laws. The app doesn't collect privacy invasive information used to track movements as your comment suggested. And it is not required to be on your phone.
Android allows third party app stores and it is not a significant cause of problems. I am sure there must be some bad app stores out there, but the well known ones like F-Droid are probably better curated than Google's own.
Linux has always allowed third party repositories. Again, rarely a source of problems - again, there must be some bad things out there but the percentage of users affected is tiny.
If you bought an iPhone because you wanted protection from the purported dangers of third-party apps, then ... just don't install any...?
These alternative app stores will be infinitely more trust worthy than apple, amazon, google etc
If there is no payment or the trial is canceled one could use the digital id.
Apple could even gather some simple statistics. Opening the app and using it for 1 minute would be a special kind of review. You wouldn't count 1 star reviews like that until manual review-review confirms the app is really that bad.
Refusing other users the freedom to run the apps they want without Apple's permission just because you might get mildly inconvenienced by it seems very immoral to me.
People could pay Apple to vette sources to indicate that software therein isn't malware even if it doesn't follow other Apple standards.
Anyone maximally concerned would just only use Apple sources. If Apple was less onerous about trying to get a cut most major software would be in the official store. Say a 5% cut.
Remember at one time the manufacturer trying to get a cut of the action on a device was rightfully absurd.
Your oven doesn't refuse to bake a pie unless Betty Crocker cut in GE nor did Magnavox require a cut from blockbuster.
Both could be implimented for your protection and both would have been protection rackets. Apple's arrangement is as well it's just that the mob actually oversees permits too and charges on the way in.
If you could trivially use only official apps and most apps would be available as such how would you be harmed?
Android phones can have alternate appstores, and yet we don't see widespread malware, fraud etc from that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanwhitwam/2018/08/25/epic-gam...
And then
https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/ratmilad-android-ma...
As long as people play along, yes it is indeed.
If more people were installing a free mobile OS, and thus take back ownership of their hardware and digital lives, the story would be much different.
It's the same story with PCs. If you actually want to control the hardware you own, install Linux. It's not as if the alternatives to corporate control didn't exist.
The fact is most of the stuff that makes phones what they are, is hidden behind closed hardware and firmware. Even Android, which as you know is Linux, has closed binary blobs in its kernel tree.
You can get away with that somewhat for devices like the SoC on the Raspberry Pi. But things get a lot more complex when half the stuff that makes your phone usable is closed hardware and firmware blobs. What you ultimately end up with is still a device you don’t fully control but with the added inconvenience of a less mature software ecosystem too.
I don’t see this problem being solved any time soon. In fact quite the opposite, I think it’s getting increasingly difficult with each passing year.
The problem with binary blobs is entirely a corporate one. And frankly I don’t blame them for wanting to keep their products closed. I makes complete sense for them to do so. Really this is no different to nvidia keeping their GPU drivers closed. Except you can still have a functional laptop without Cuda, whereas you cannot have a functional phone without the ability to connect to cell networks and make phone calls.
They exist, but break my touchpad upgrading to kernel 5.19 from 5.15. I'd rather pay for something locked down than something that breaks.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/2002356
I think people would if there were a viable free option.
Also it isn't easy to find good mid-range hardware. I bought HMD(Nokia) for years but then I spent 250 on one of their new models and the phone was absolutely unusable (laggy UI).
Having to research models and software versions of CyanogenMod every few years just wastes my time. And then run into issues.
Plus security matters to me.
Microsoft failed to enter the market with billions spent - it isn't an easy problem.
Meanwhile on iOS the best we seem to get is the EU Digital Markets Act setting some rules for fairness on the big marketplaces.
Ah, that was news to me, so Amazon Vega is predicted to be some sort of immutable OS with web apps. It seems they are thinking of starting some Chrome OS resembling thing. iOS also intended to only have Web apps and look where we are now. I don't have high hopes for OS developed for Fire devices, it will be soaked in DRM and filled with ads.
Let's imagine there's a company called Ticketmuster that had a monopoly on ticket sales. If they tolerate a shitty little kiosk selling a score of tickets a day, does this mean Ticketmuster does not have a monopoly share of the market?
I'm not sure that adding more would make all that much difference. One player would have absolute pricing power. Two keep one another at least a little in check.
That assumes no collusion, and that's not entirely true, by not completely false either. Many cases of similar behavior are just them responding to the same market in similar ways.
I think that completely free and open player you want isn't going to be much of a competitive advantage. It has a small niche but not enough to break into the insane levels of overhead in creating a complete ecosystem. Especially since most users just want the device to work with a minimum of grief. And especially since the use of public airwaves means a ton of regulation.
it became a strategy to copyright strike your own app, have proof ready so that no downtime was necessary, then you have the temporary immunity so that competitors couldn't submit a copyright strike, which costed them nothing to do and had no consequences if they were wrong about it
That the author hired somebody to dump review, does something fishy with money like those above noted, and then sues for more money.
Levine over at Bloomberg had an interesting article where ransomware gangs are now filing SEC reports, as a way to pressure companies to pay, or minimize ROI.
Not every streamer knows that they can forward such threats to Twitch's support staff, and if they don't, their stream is at risk from automated bot detection penalizing them.
And it shouldn't be Apple's problem. Apple is not a court of law. They have no business knowing about their developers internal affairs, imagine the conflicts of interest. This is a matter for an actual court of law, that can issue warrants and subpoenas, where perjury is a thing, where there is fair trail and where you can ask damage and the guilty party get charged for fraud. You obviously don't want to give these powers to a private company.
But yea, if you're a business that makes money promoting other people's content then you're responsible for that content. Similarly, I'd argue that a skywriting company that writes libel in the sky should be held responsible as an accessory to the client if they were aware the statements were libelous.
In that scenario Apple is highly constrained in what they can say.
Does Apple get to decide this, and just keep the money, without involving any court of law? Someone mentioned anti-money laundering laws and secrecy, but can that manifest as losing your money, without trial or even being informed that you're accused of anything? That would seem to violate a few constitutional rights.
I’m a capitalist at heart but this is anti-competitive, it’s closer to feudalism than capitalism.
There is some chance that it will end up with only two of these players depending on who reaches the point where they have enough free cash that they can further consolidate, assuming regulators don't step in.
Google on the one side, Apple on the other, with AWS owning retail and Microsoft absorbed by either Apple or Google (unless their OpenAI bet pays off further). FB up for grabs and Twitter will die.
It could easily happen. So, which side of the web do you want to be on? I want to be on the open web, not in some walled garden, no matter who owns it.
The most popular destinations on the internet may be “siloed”, or most business will occur in the silos, but the internet itself is as accessible as it ever was.
For example, I can post a URL in this comment, and you would be able to visit it, even if Google did not keep it in its search index.
The only question is how much work do people want to do to spread knowledge of theirs or others’ website, and how much work do people want to do to find them.
And it is much easier these days than even pre Google, since there are very capable alternatives to Google (and ubiquitous broadband).
For now, it looks like they have no competition, but the foundation is here, it's just that the potential competitors are starved for ressource. Just a bit of redirection will get the ball rolling and a lot of choices will suddenly appear.
The only thing is that most people do not care and have very basic needs. We mostly shouldn't care about those people. They cannot for the life of them being interested in anything technical and will not make any effort to learn and use worthwhile tools. They also have very low interest in knowledge. So, they will follow without much questioning, I know this for a fact from all the servicing I do around me. They will do what you tell them, if you tell them Google or Chrome is bad, they will accept.
The problem is getting something as good as Google or Chrome. So far nothing really match...
If you want to be creative and earn money apps are a decent way. Apple/Google take care of a lot of things and you get their reach.
Is it without risks? No, nothing is in life. Is the risk high? Probably not for 99.99% of developers.
But honestly, that's just life. Every business takes risks. You take a risk every time you step out the door.
It's silly to say every app developer is enabling the situation. I mean, you might as well say anybody who allows payment in USD is enabling American foreign policy. But it's not helpful.
The risk/reward ratio for genuinely useful, non-scammy apps is quite excellent.
In real life, nothing is about whether something is a binary possible yes/no, because mistakes always happen in everything. We're only human. Everything is just a question of probabilities -- risk and reward.
App stores are an economic matter we can choose to regulate or not via existing mechanisms of representative democracy. For now, the US population hasn't shown much interest in it.
The user forgets about the subscriptions and ends up paying for a while before cancelling
This is probably what apple means by "bait and switch"
Of course I can't say if these app did this or not, I am just saying this is a common practice
That may be true but it may just be that Apple hates this but has trouble writing the right set of rules that don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
And then when they get the slightest excuse (the fake fake reviews yes double fake) then they take the opportunity to close the unpleasant account.
Actually if 20% of the apps don’t do these scummy dark patterns, I’d just as soon see only those better apps in the store.
I was a bit disappointed that they don't live up to the standards they expect of 3rd party devs.
This is how AppleTV works. I assume Apple does this with other services too.
I don't see apple going after gambling like behavior in freemium games as long as they get a 30% cut for example.
If apple can't enforce an ethical stance as a standard uniformly, then they aren't being ethical.
Edit: Ahh yup, that's exactly what this is
> A simple and convenient collage maker will help you make cool videos for TikTok and Instagram, Facebook.
> Subscription price $ 3.99 / week, $ 19.99 / year and $ 39.99 / forever
$3.99/week subscription is deliberately predatory. It tries to bait people in thinking "oh it's just $3.99", and then forgetting and now paying $17/month for a photo collage app.
I'm not sad this developer's had their account cancelled.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xJlbYZ...
> One day before removal, we had 1209 active trials. (money in our pockets)
> [...] established a help center with articles on canceling trials (cause we have a UI team dedicated on making it complicated)
How is that predatory? It makes perfect sense to me and I’d probably do it myself if I ever were to sell an app this way. If someone just installs my app once, to make a single video, then immediately cancels, I still want to make some money off that.
That’s probably how 90% of these apps are used.
It's 6 of them, so more like ~5K USD/month revenue.
I'm sorry that you've never built something meaningful, but that revenue bracket is actually low for a decent app with some marketing going on.
They tell you what kind of manipulation, in what they hastily tried to unwind when caught... a whole TODO list for scammy apps:
"Within 10 days, we updated each of the six applications: removed all rating requests, revised all payment screens in line with Apple's recommendations, added Intercom for swift user assistance, established a help center with articles on canceling trials, requesting refunds, and implemented subscription management directly within the applications."
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/10/apple-and-kapeli-respond/
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/05/30/dash-for-ios-returns-to-t...
Dash for macOS continues to this day, though not in the App Store.
He continues to sell it directly[2] and on Setapp[3], and has lately pivoted to the subscription-ware revenue model.
[1]: https://daringfireball.net/2016/10/apple_dash_controversy [2]: https://kapeli.com/dash [3]: https://setapp.com/apps/dash
Incorrect. I already gave a link showing that Dash returned to the iOS App Store: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2017/05/30/dash-for-ios-returns-to-t...
Technically, it was the end of "sales" in the iOS App Store, because the developer had already open-sourced Dash for iOS and made it free:
https://github.com/Kapeli/Dash-iOS
Nonetheless, it's indisputable that Apple approved Dash to be in the iOS App Store in 2017.
> Apple decided to respond publicly only after he published the recording of the phone call with the Apple rep.
Also incorrect. Compare the timestamps of these tweets:
https://twitter.com/theloop/status/785600832335073280 5:00 PM · Oct 10, 2016
https://twitter.com/kapeli/status/785621704081022976 6:23 PM · Oct 10, 2016
It's also worth noting that selling directly outside the Mac App Store still requires an Apple developer account in order to sign with a Developer ID certificate and notarize the app. It's not surprising, though, that the developer chooses to no longer use the Mac App Store.
Again, Michael Tsai's blog post has extensive coverage, including a link to the Daring Fireball post that you linked.
It never did. Please read links before posting them. The original developer open sourced it under a GPL license and a few people decided to re-package it and resell it, in violation of the source code's license.
> Also incorrect. Compare the timestamps of these tweets:
I stand corrected on that.
> It's also worth noting that selling directly outside the Mac App Store still requires an Apple developer account in order to sign with a Developer ID certificate and notarize the app.
Indeed.
Um, how about you take your own advice?
https://twitter.com/kapeli/status/867424309274390529 "Dash for iOS is back on the App Store and it's completely free"
https://blog.kapeli.com/dash-for-ios-back-on-the-app-store "TL;DR: Dash for iOS is back on the App Store and it’s completely free."
"Quite a few “developers” have even added it to the App Store themselves, violating the GNU GPL license in the process. Apple has been very responsive in removing these apps, but the developers kept adding it back in different shapes and forms and I got tired to fill the same copyright claim forms over and over.
I’ve made a personal developer account which Apple accepted and the review for Dash for iOS went through without any issues. I hope this will somewhat stave off the pirated copies of Dash from appearing on the App Store. We’ll see.
The macOS version of Dash will continue to be sold exclusively on kapeli.com."
https://blog.kapeli.com/goodbye-dash-for-ios
"I’ve decided to discontinue Dash for iOS, as maintaining it is no longer sustainable.
Every year, Apple releases a new version of iOS, which requires updating Dash to support the new OS and work around any new bugs. Dash for iOS worked great on iOS 12, but is an unusable mess on iOS 13 and will only get worse.
Dash for iOS also uses UIWebView extensively, which won’t be accepted on the App Store starting with December 2020. Migrating to WKWebView would be more work than it’s worth."
There’s also a big disconnect between the average of the text reviews and the “score only” ones.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sarafan.re...
This was an update and the app was making money (according to the article).
The accounting liability gets erased after a few years and the asset stays on the books
Like Starbucks gift cards that go unused.
Not sure why they got shutdown, probably the competition really burnt them with the fake reviews.
That's really ugly.
My thinking is that would remove the need for a singular approval process. Liberating all developers to build what they want.
Of course security is always a concern. PWA in sandboxes of some sort sounds like the best path forward.
Asking for review after 20 second of app installation? Also most 5 star reveiw looks fake.
And I am glad you didn't do it. I personally find it so annoying. I am do ask for reviews but lemme use it for a while first?
This is what Uber does. Not just a 'rate your trip' but also the 'add a tip' prompt. Only way to get rid of the screen is to select something or hit Back a bunch of times.
It doesn't matter what the platform T&Cs say, know your country's laws and you'll avoid unnecessary headaches.
Now thinking about it, it might make sense for some developers to publish their apps in specific countries to mitigate this kind of risk...
Honestly it sucks but when this happens with Google and others there's sometimes a person in the comments here: "Send me your info and I'll escalate this internally". Which also sucks, but the PR at least has some impact.
I think it's doubtful that this kind of PR impacts Apple as much.
I don’t have an opinion on whether they were targeted by a third party.
> We hired the law firm Buzko Krasnov to file a pre-trial claim against Apple.
Unlikely but not impossible. In this case, it's less about the apps or the developer and more about the lack of specificity. If Apple suspend accounts without due process, that affects everyone within that ecosystem, and people should be concerned and should ask questions.
On the other hand, I certainly understand that having your business shut down with little or no notice and right of appeal lies with the "prosecution" can feel crummy.
I don't think that's necessarily a "bad" thing but I hardly find it reasonable to believe they are charging for the privilege.
If it is, that’s Instagram’s trademark.
There are other patterns they allow that I’m unfamiliar with. Perhaps “X Maker” is one of them because it appears there are many other developer accounts using this pattern from a quick search.
The point is that using another trademark isn’t itself a violation necessarily
https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-b...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/boomerang-video-maker/id145467...
Would be surprised if you're even using theirs.
What is it about the apps that you feel either does or should violate policy?
OK, using the article's words, let's count the ways:
Within 10 days, we updated each of the six applications: removed all rating requests, revised all payment screens in line with Apple's recommendations, added Intercom for swift user assistance, established a help center with articles on canceling trials, requesting refunds, and implemented subscription management directly within the applications.
6 apps * ~5 fixes = 30 problems ... they knew what they were doing
"Dear citizen, we have detected wrongful behavior on your part. Stop doing the wrongful behavior. You should know what we mean. As long as the behavior continues, the state will appropriate 20% of your salary. Here is a list of behaviors that you might or might not have been engaging in: [link to the penal code]"
Amazon sellers live in dread of this scenario, not only because of the frozen funds, but also the inability to get a clear answer of what policy was broken. Or, Amazon's automated shutdowns make accusations that are impossible to disprove such as review manipulation or running multiple seller accounts. You can see a sample here: https://twitter.com/AmazonASGTG
https://proofed.com/writing-tips/idiom-tips-bury-the-lede-or...
See also:
> "The spelling lede is an alteration of lead, a word which, on its own, makes sense; after all, isn't the main information in a story found in the lead (first) paragraph? And sure enough, for many years lead was the preferred spelling for the introductory section of a news story. So how did we come to spell it lede? Although evidence dates the spelling to the 1970s, we didn't enter lede in our dictionaries until 2008."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/bury-the-lede-versu...
The term was invented to distinguish the head paragraph of a story specifically because it would cause confusion with "lead", which at the time was widely used in newspapers to refer to lead type and to actual strips used to add spacing between lines (indeed it's still called "leading" in typesetting). It is standard newspaper jargon. But more importantly, "bury the lede" is specifically a newspaper phrase. I think that saying it should be changed to "lead" for the uninformed is like saying that you should change "Smalltalk" to "Small Talk" when addressing the uniformed. No! It's Smalltalk.
More importantly, HN is definitely not the uniformed when it comes to newspaper printing technology and journalism.
Every authoritative source says "bury the lead" is a perfectly acceptable variant, and nowadays there's no reason not to return to it. English spelling is already complicated enough that the last thing we need to be doing is to be introducing extra spelling variations.
If the platforms continue to be a major source of income for many people, then those people need to petition their elected representatives to force the platforms open. The OS has to give you a choice of browser, so the smartphone should have to give you a choice of app store.
I do agree in that I personally wouldn't give mega corporations that much power over my livelihood.
It is repeated many times, this is not the first here
Illustrates the problem with building businesses based on those "walled garden" services
We have seen reports like this not just about the apple store, but about YouTube and Facebook too
30% cuts and you get removed with no warning, negotiation, nothing.
Seriously, if you think it’s fraud then there should be a police report, if it’s a ToS violation close the account and ban the user, but if they haven’t actually committed fraud it’s their money.
https://companies.rbc.ru/id/1215600010141-obschestvo-s-ogran...
It is even a Russian company. It was registered a bit before the war started and liquidated not so long ago.
Chile has been a popular destination for Russians to escape the war because it's easy to get a visa and a permanent residency via business immigration.
Being Russian doesn't make you suspicious of anything.
There are lots of young Russian people coming to Latin America recently, presumably (if I had to guess) to escape the war. Source: seen this with my own eyes.
It could be sanctions, and it is not related to reviews at all.
It's bigotry, however.
And you know what? Some other people might say: 'Well, this guy is black, and black guys are more likely to commit crimes, so it makes sense if we follow him around the store to make sure that he doesn't steal anything.' And some other people might say: 'Well, he looks like he might be a Muslim, and radical Islamists are more likely to be terrorists, so it is fair that we select him for some additional screening at the airport.'
Would you agree with all those people as well? And if not, what do you think is the difference between you and them?
And yes, sanctions are half baked and poorly enforced. "West" continues trading with Russia.
Russians overseas send a grand total of $5M back to the country every month.
Europe purchases a few million tons of oil, $5B/year.
Numbers made up, and just for illustrative purposes.
Which makes it pretty dishonest, especially when you augment it with mixing month and year ;)
> Russians overseas send a grand total of $5M back to the country every month.
Remittances to Russian individuals are like $25B/year; this is a whole lot. Yah, oil industry revenues are 10x higher (after having about a 20-30% bite taken out of them by sanctions), but of course, in order to get that revenue a decent chunk of the hard currency has to flow back out of Russia to pay for various O&G related expenses.
It would be nice, of course, to trim down the O&G revenues more, but any policy actions that countries take against a hostile state need to hurt the adversary more than themselves, and it's not too clear how to go further on O&G and meet this criteria.
And everyone is ok with such "racism".
By applying tons of restrictions to the people based on their passport or place of birth.
For example getting a green card for Indian people.
Or visiting US. What is frictionless for people with Swiss passport is almost impossible for people with "hostile" passport. Getting a US travel visa is not trivial.
As an American it is basically impossible for me to immigrate to India and establish citizenship without my parents being Indian and knowing an official language fluently or by "investing" approximately $2 million USD and hiring at least 20 people to work for me.
There are countries where it is much harder to get residence (not citizenship) than your case with India.
While I acknowledge the point, as a Dutch citizen it’s harder for me to travel to the US than India. That still seems weird to me.
As a foreign student myself, I would not risk trying to navigate the US visa process knowing my status could be jeopardized at any time. Berkeley isn't the only university in the world worth attending.
The nation will be judged by its government's actions, because the gov is supposed to be kept in check by the people.
Do you know how ridiculous you sound right now?
Looks like Russian majority has been supporting occupation of Georgia, occupation of Crimea and probably now doesn't care about current occupation of Ukraine.
Ruling party was reelected before, during and after that.
Of course I understand that many people have justifiably strong feelings about this sort of thing, but that's why HN's rules specifically say: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
We had far more complicated fraud detection algorithms at the startup than at the fortune 500.
This would be a bit weird in previous life (before the war), but today it's normal b/c wrong nationality means you'll be assumed as evil orc who worship pu*in and support tha war bla-bla-bla. So mentioning that you at least don't live there and you business in not there helps a bit. Source: I'm in the same situation.
And those who actually support the crazy dictator (by making fake companies across the world to bypass sanctions, for example) don't mention their names on the internet, don't ask public for help fighting Apple's decision, and probably don't sell mobile apps at all.
OR maybe they're by acquaintances of the author that have some beef with him and have decided to sabotage him?
Is it possible that Apple is discovering some connection between these reviewers and the author that the author is not aware of?
The pattern is usually the same: the story gets a lot of upvotes from people who don't pause to think about the story, the first few comments are filled with outrage, and then the more thoughtful comments trickle in pointing out all the holes in their claims (in this case, weirdly large revenue numbers and many dark patterns described in reviews that line up with Apple's assertions). But by the time the commenters have done the research and figured out that the story is overblown, it's already too late: the company got the attention they wanted. "A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."
I don't doubt that there are people who are actually damaged illegitimately by unilateral actions like this, but every time we swarm to upvote a fishy one like this, the effectiveness of HN as an escalation platform gets weaker.
Apple makes you feel powerless
They don't give a f**. They treat you like a peasant, while constantly making review mistakes (like asking questions explained all caps in the review notes), unexplained white screens, bugs & unreachable appstore connects.
I often had an app rejected because IAPurchase takes too long because of Apple's server being too slow. Then they take days to respond just because they claim it's your mistake. On second try it works and they find something else to complain.
Honestly bad karma. It will come back at some point. But it will take a while, the App Store is not build on quality & care, but on pure power.
- OP develops apps
- OP's apps get flagged and removed from iOS store for violating Appstore rules.
- OP learns his app has been cloned down to the last pixel by one NIGII Technologies
- OP learns that NIGII Technologies launched and attack on his "Rolly app" by paying fake accounts to make bogus reviews on OPs app account.
- Attacker (NIGII Technologies) purchasing fake reviews to comment on OPs original app causes Apple to shut down OPs Apple Developer account.
- OP wants you to help him sign a petition https://chng.it/5dpJHY6KGf
- OP would also want you to write a letter to the App review team appreview@apple.com
"Within 10 days, we updated each of the six applications: removed all rating requests, revised all payment screens in line with Apple's recommendations, added Intercom for swift user assistance, established a help center with articles on canceling trials, requesting refunds, and implemented subscription management directly within the applications."
All methods to juice and retain MRR at users' literal expense.
This NEEDS to be regulated. If thousands of companies make a living in your marketplace, you simply can't be allowed to take destructive unilateral action against their business without due process.
One guy reviewing tickets in a random location worldwide, working for minimum wage, takes a 30 second look at your case and closes down your account. Your company loses millions and goes out of business before any dispute even gets processed (If they even have a dispute system)
This is simply an insane way of doing business.
Then don't? Apple clearly lays out the rules beforehand?
I don’t see how "being able to sell software on the platform a company allows you to sell on yet not following the platform creator's rules" should be a human right?
If you don't want to take the risk of Apple disapproving you selling your software on their platform, maybe don't start a business depending on Apple not doing so?
So why should Apple be forced to keep you on their platform if you willingly break their rules?
Mistakes DO happen, yknow?
Also, why are they freezing funds when banks cant do that? Seems illogical.
Some marketplaces are so big that not participating is simply not an option. Do you want to break them up instead?
I think they should be treated as utilities after a certain size and have a suitable legal framework to solve these issues.
Lots of things in commerce are not human rights but are regulated to prevent bad outcomes for society.
Is due process really that much to ask for? Shouldn't you be allowed to defend yourself BEFORE they take away your livelihood? Why is apple allowed to unilaterally freeze your funds but banks are very notoriously not allowed to do that? Why does paypal also freeze your assets without any regulation? This happens all over the place and I think it shouldn't.
"Within 10 days, we updated each of the six applications: removed all rating requests, revised all payment screens in line with Apple's recommendations, added Intercom for swift user assistance, established a help center with articles on canceling trials, requesting refunds, and implemented subscription management directly within the applications."
There is a good argument that the world as a whole would be better off without the current App Store model, but it makes sense for individuals to aim to profit from the existing model.
I'm going to launch another mobile app for some side income in the future but I'll never launch a real business based on that, that's for sure.
I suspect Apple themselves don't realize that their own policies have inhibited the development of apps which would blow away what currently exist at the high end, given the unacceptable business risk of depending on such control-freak caprice. The laisse-faire world of PCs is bigger and better simply for that reason - an enormous swath of hardware and software that simply has to adhere to an objective technical standard.
I would bet that bigger companies with an influential base of customers are not capriciously rejected. A major airline or bank or some other business where Apple would catch PR flak is probably going to get personalized treatment.
I suspect they not only know this but are counting on it. Apple have become plain old monopolists and quality of product is not the first consideration because, by definition, there is no competition by which they would have to care in order to maintain their position in the marketplace.
Did you do these user hostile things?
"Within 10 days, we updated each of the six applications: removed all rating requests, revised all payment screens in line with Apple's recommendations, added Intercom for swift user assistance, established a help center with articles on canceling trials, requesting refunds, and implemented subscription management directly within the applications."
You say "inhibited development of apps ... at the high end". On the contrary, these are all features of the lowest of the low end. Users want those inhibited.