I am annoyed by something else: today Apple stepped on the wrong toe, the community will cry foul and someone from Apple who reads HN will rush to salvage the situation. We have seen this pattern before (usually but not exclusively with Apple). But what about the thousands of small and nameless developers that were crushed by some script bug or killed by operator misclick? Who will ever help them?
What I found unacceptable is "We are banning you and we won't tell you anything about it". This pattern is extremely common. And extremely frustrating. You can't put one in jail without telling why (and right to defend). In many developed countries you can't even fire a worker without a solid reason. It should be prohibited for companies to halt service someone without providing a reasonable explanation.
I am banned from being an Amazon marketplace seller. I have no idea why. They say there is no way to learn more, and it's for life. I've never even sold anything there.
My wife was banned a bit before more. She sold one textbook and fulfilled the transaction perfectly. She found out she was banned when they said they were keeping her money for 45 days, and they would be kind enough to release it to her if the buyer confirmed receipt of the book (they did, and she did get her money eventually).
Based on the mail that was arriving, we _think_ that someone who lived at our apartment before us was doing something shady. Amazon doesn't care though.
This kind of thing is why it's incredibly frustrating that people blithely let a few companies control most commerce.
I wonder if that attitude is reflective of simply how tech companies whitelist and blacklist stuff for many things. Once, my organization's email server was considered a spammer because it had a new IP address that apparently was part of a blacklisted IP block. It took us so long to get everything sorted out and get ourselves off of all the blacklists.
Admittedly, we at least had recourse, while you don't for whatever reason, in the event that you one day do want to become a marketplace seller. My point is that it's really easy to get blacklisted. Perhaps it's because they prefer to have some false positives, rather than deal with real bad actors. Just a conjecture.
You really should be able to sue them for cheap. Like filing it by yourself, without any lawyer, at a small claims or conciliation court (<$5000). There should be a guide explaining how to do that and the justice ministry needs to support that guide. Lawyers will not come up with such things. E.g. http://hirealawyer.findlaw.com/do-you-need-a-lawyer/before-y...
Might be $500 max for the court fees.
Then they eventually have to explain it and litigate with you. And eventually revise their ridiculous CS practices.
>It should be prohibited for companies to halt service someone without providing a reasonable explanation.
By US standards, that would require an absurd level of legislative and/or judicial overreach. I don't think I'd even want to do business in that kind of regulatory climate.
This is very true. However, I wonder if we as engineers and the like can provide a better TLDR ratings guide for marketplaces. Kinda like https://tosdr.org/ or a BBB that works... Then we as engineers refuse to build apps for marketplaces below some kind of score.
Or does it even matter if the Apple App store is the only marketplace of its kind?
Self reply- it appears that Sam Altman made this assertion in a recent New Yorker article as well as a blog post. I think the observation of low growth is good, but the assertion that democracy does t work without a economic growth is less persuasive. All forms of progress need not be measured by GDP. In fact, many issues indicative of social progress have difficult to measure economic impact or even potentially negative economic impact with good social benefits.
On a related note, as a small startup I am looking for some TOS generator that I - the single developer - could also understand and that will be clear and fair to my users. Any advice?
How could that be worse than doing business in an environment of dominant platforms that will arbitrarily shut you down whenever the business they lose to a false positive (i.e. none, because the business just moves to the next guy) is cheaper than the investigation that would avoid the false positive?
Electricity providers, water providers, road maintanance, phone systems, etc... Infrastructure everywhere is either in public hands or tightly regulated. Infrastructure provision is simply not a problem for which unregulated markets are a good solution, for fairly obvious reasons.
Sooner or later the IT infrastructure companies will need to be regulated like infrastructure providers.
The reason these things are regulated is because they are fundamentally limited by and tied to land property/ownership laws and there is no way to efficiently reach a consensus without violating them.
IT infrastructure has nothing in common with this aside from ISP.
Large internet services do not form natural monopoplies. Amazon has New egg, ebay, walmart, plus a million new ones trying to overthrow them. The local cable company only has the local Phone company.
For Amazon this might just about be true, however, there are strong platform effects. Amazon is growing faster than the market. There is a fairly obvious argument to make for why its a natural monopoly: If its the first place buyers go to look for stuff, it's the first place sellers go for stuff. If it's the place where all the sellers are, it's the place buyers go to look first.
Really, given that this is a market that is growing double digits by year, the amount by which amazon dominates it is shocking.
And that is in a market that is still growing rapidly. For Facebook/Whatsapp this is even more obviously not true. Facebook even failed to leverage its social network monopoly to establish its messenger against insurgents, simply because they were a bit late.
That might look the way in theory, but it is not so in practice. There will never be another Google, or another Facebook, or another Amazon - efficiency based on scale and network effect mean they are entrenched as monopolies for ever, too big to fail.
Which is why Facebook replaced MySpace and Google replaced Yahoo and Altavista and so on.
The idea that economies of scale make it impossible for a company to never face competition is ridiculous. The only thing that can do that is govenment protectionism.
Along with economies of scale is the opposite effect: the inefficiency of bureaucracy and having competing interests between business units.
Yahoo was in a completely nascent unsettled market, and Microsoft didn't go anywhere. Microsofts net revenue and net income are large than Alphabets/Googles.
Except apple is not society. It is not democracy. It's a for profit company, and can do whatever it wants. It is in no way entitled to be fair.
If you don't want it to behave this way, as a consumer or developer, you just have to choose to not deal with it. But you don't want to, because it makes you money and makes you life more comfortable in some way.
What it means is that you value money/confort more than been respected by this company. Accept this is what you choose and don't bitch about it, this is dishonest. You can't have it both way.
Society can decide what behavior is allowed and what isn't. Just because a company is a company doesn't mean it's out of reach of judicial rules.
A company can't dump chemicals in any river without oversight; it could be compelled to accept an appeals process when terminating a contract with a developer.
These aren't even in the same league of similarity. Dumping chemicals harms society -- even those who are not participating in a particular market. Apple dumping a dev? Not even remotely close. A company should have the right to terminate a business arrangement provided the terms of the contract governing such an arrangement are upheld.
Imagine it this way: you are a contract developer, should you have no right to terminate a contract with a client under the terms of the agreement? Almost every contract I'be ever signed as a developer has some form of "either party can terminate this agree with <some days> notice."
From what I am reading here, we want to hold Apple to different rules than the ones we ourselves routinely follow?
I get it: Apple should give the guy an explanation. However making laws to require it? That's absurd. Should there be a law that when a girl (or guy) doesn't accept a dinner invitation that they provide a valid reason? That's really what this comes down to. And no, Apple isn't a monopoly. This company can still sell their products, just not at that particular store.
I feel bad for the situation, but extending government power into private business relationships is a bad idea. Contract law already covers this.
Society isn't harmed by this company not being able to sell on the App Store. This isn't dumping chemicals into rivers or denying service based on skin color.
If the developer was wronged, he could file a lawsuit. However given that the contracts governing the relationship were known in advance, the situation is just the realization of the risks inherent in doing business.
> the situation is just the realization of the risks inherent in doing business.
Precisely. You signed the contract. You could have not done so, but you wanted the money. And you wanted it to come from this source, because this source fits some of your needs. So you decided it was worth putting your life into their hands, and sometime, you loose. It sucks, but you are half responsible.
>Now we can act as a society to make it illegal, but this won't happen.
Certainly not if everyone heeds your advice to "Accept this is what you choose and don't bitch about it". Bitching about stuff is a necessary part of the democratic process.
No, debating, finding solution and acting is part of the democratic process. Bitching is just acting like the victim you aren't, since it's just the consequence of your choices. There will always be apple like players. Either you do something about it, or you don't.
Making this illegal is a dangerous slippery slope. It could end up like France where firing an employee can be a multi year process and the result-- a shortage of permanent contract employment because employers fear being stuck with an employee forever.
Making this illegal would result in an arduous approval process just to join a marketplace. Additionally it could result in bad actors being unable to be expelled from a market while the legal process unfolds. That could result in a net loss to consumers. Imagine a malware developer -- Apple can't evict them quickly because they'd have to perform extra legal investigation so they wouldn't get in trouble for acting too quickly.
What you are saying is "to avoid making it inconvenient for apple, we shall let them the right do juge people guilty unless proven innocent, and not give any feedback about it".
There is a reason we don't accept that for our law system. We currently accept that from companies, and I don't think it's a good idea.
But don't get me wrong. I don't think going legal is the right way to go. I think either you accept it, and enjoy the benefits of playing with apple and stop complaining, or you don't accept it, complain AND follow the complaining with action such as putting your business elsewhere.
Any unavoidable monopoly is indistinguishable from a government. Whether Apple has reached that point is obviously debatable -- I think most people would say 'No.' But still: their goal is to be the only game in town, and if they reach that goal, we will have to change the rules.
When a corporation behaves this way, it needs to hurt.
How should the law define "reasonable explanation?" In the US that kind of thing is litigated, which small companies can't afford.
Such protections exist for employees, involve lots of lawyers and complexity, and sometimes screw companies and sometimes screw employees and sometimes screw both (though they do also fill an important need). But the economic cost of compliance and management of these rules is quite high, and there are a lot more employees than software developers by several orders of magnitude.
A law could be written so it only applies to larger companies. Those companies both have greater leverage/power over consumers and small businesses (making the regulation more important), and have more resources to handle the overhead. I believe some existing regulations in the US already have an annual revenue threshold before they kick in.
They don't need to disclose how they caught it, just what said misconduct was - going "yeah we're closing your account due to misconduct" is like fining someone for no reason. It'd be a violation of human rights if that happened, and in this particular case, it's potentially ruining someone financially.
Except false positives always happen, and when you have such a policy, innocent people are caught in the middle and face an accusation of vaguely defined misconduct with no details to use to try and appeal the incorrect accusation, because they don't even know what they're being accused of.
Is it? I don't think the idea is that they can't stop service for whatever reason, but that they have to provide a reason. On the other hand, I guess it doesn't have any teeth if they can just say, "Because you smell funny plus it's Tuesday..."
Do you mean the kind where my wedding cake costs twice as much because I'm gay or the kind where my car insurance costs twice as much because I'm a serial car wrecker?
well depending on the service you are not allowed to halt that service for various reasons - for example you can't halt or refuse to provide service in just about anything for reasons of race in countries whose legal systems I am familiar with, therefore there is some requirement to provide a reasonable explanation for refusal of service in almost any business - it just so happens that an app store type business seems different enough that it does not have to provide the same level of explanation.
No, I was replying specifically to the parent comment that said it was a terrible idea that a reasonable explanation be provided. Although, depending on the relevant legal system, just specifying fraudulent conduct without providing a lot more detail would be in itself problematic.
Take this question for what it is-- I'm not blaming the victim here-- but how much responsibility do small and nameless developers bear for making a deal with the devil to begin with? Don't they go into this knowing that Apple can at any time capriciously cut them off from the sole means of distribution of their product at will?
I get that there is money to be made on the iOS app store-- but why is there a willingness to set up shop in a town where if one of the local officials doesn't like you-- for any reason-- he or she can effectively confiscate your hard-made product so you can't sell it anywhere else and kick you outside the walls?
The choice is that if you're going to develop software for sale to the public, you can choose to develop software for sale in another market which is not so restrictive and oppressive. Other platforms and marketplaces exist, and money can be made there. To contemplate the actual possibility of sweating for years building a business, slaving over software, creating marketing campaigns, and a brand and fighting to beat out the competition, all while knowing that at any point for any reason Apple may decide to pull the plug and leave me with absolutely nothing-- no sellable product and no other avenue to sell it-- sounds like a pretty obvious choice: Don't ever get in business under circumstances like that unless there truly is no other choice.
Stories like this from Dash (and others) is a real-living and breathing worst-case scenario... it makes the choice to not participate in this marketplace all the more obvious to me.
"The choice is that if you're going to develop software for sale to the public, you can choose to develop software for sale in another market which is not so restrictive and oppressive."
The smartphone 'market' is an oligarchy, ergo, it's not really a free market, and those kinds of principled positions just don't hold.
It's pretty reasonable to argue that Apple's arbitrary control of the AppStore is an anti-competitive practice.
If the market were commoditized, like, the choice you have for where you want to 'eat lunch' or 'buy a car' - it would be different.
Just goes to show that selling App's in a walled ecosystem is NOT the exact same as building a software business. You lose so much control over your product, you essentially become commission-only contract software developers. Publishers have been pushing for this kind of control for a long time.
People work and go into business and otherwise partner with people who can capriciously screw them over all the time, that's how businesses work. You can put a certain amount of things in contracts and internal procedures but ultimately you need to trust your partners/boss/employees not to screw you over. The App Store is no different and many people build their businesses around it because it is a huge market and Apple has built up a lot of trust that mistakes (presumably like this) are corrected and AFAIK they do not go around wantonly destroying people's businesses.
Can we drop the whole "need to eat" language when talking about software development? We're talking about people with abundant opportunity to make tons of money. Tugging on the heartstrings with "they need to eat" or "feed their families" is preposterously over the top rhetoric.
Yes of course, your family needs to eat and you need to eat. If you're most concerned with just making enough money to eat, you have a huge number of jobs available. If your app's failure vs. success is the difference between eating and not eating, you've made that decision consciously, knowing that you (necessarily) have the skills to get other jobs without such dire consequences.
The point I was making is that this rhetorical device of "I need to eat" is used way too often as a euphemism for "I want to make a lot of money". It's used that way because the former statement elicits sympathy and the latter statement attracts derision.
In the context of the original comment, the "need to eat" phrase was used in the context of an app developer. You don't create an app on the app store as a last ditch attempt to feed your family. You do it to make money, and you do it knowing the risk that it won't be successful and you won't make any money. Apple's inscrutable opaque approval process is another annoying risk on top of that, but whether you're going to eat shouldn't be a part of the equation here.
I was going to say something clever and snarky here, but then I realized that I am an "at will" employee for a single company that could ruin me financially with one arbitrary decision, and they would have no obligation whatsoever to justify it to me in any way.
At least Apple only takes ~1/3 of the value of the work you put into in the App Store.
It is not the case that all developers have easy access to abundant income. It is at least as wrong to assume that is true as to assume that they are living hand to mouth.
For those developers, it makes even less sense to pony up for a Macbook and an Apple Developer license and spend all their time on an app that's going into someone else's environment - especially someone who has a history of treating developers on their platform as second-class citizens.
It is fairly easy to assume that there are other routes to food than publishing apps in Apple's App Store. No one is guaranteed abundant income in general, never mind via some third-party business.
If a particular practice is acceptable for Apple, then it is presumptively okay for other software companies to do, too. And conversely, if everyone in the market for software-development labor wouldn't be allowed to do something, we shouldn't allow Apple to do it, either.
If a particular bit of conduct would be a poor idea if everyone were to do it, that's a pretty good idea it shouldn't be allowed at all.
Yes, developers have multiple opportunities, but often they don't choose what actually works. I did many things over my career, the only one that was truly successful financially was in a closed, proprietary environment. My open-source projects are all semi-failures. So where I spend my time is not my choice, it's my customers'.
So much this. There are also weird quirks to deal with when dealing with browsers vs. native. On iOS, native scrolling 'just works,' but within our app (Cordova-based) it took a bunch of hand-holding to make it a decent experience.'
One example, on iOS WebKit if you flick to scroll, and then "click" (touch) on the screen while the scroll animation is still running, the click event will report a position on the webpage that was as if the scroll had never happened (e.g. you had clicked on the same place on the screen without having scrolled in the first place).
Well, then all browser vendors are to blame, because the experience with Apple browsers is no better or worse than any other browser for serious web-based apps.
When people say "there is no choice" it usually means there is a choice. A better way to have the discussion is to avoid the binary framing and talk about the tradeoffs.
Here is one key tradeoff I see: the App Store brings more visibility in exchange for a cost. This situation accentuates another downside: plug-pulling for intentional or unintentional reasons.
The thing the pisses me of about these cases is this:
"I called them again and they said they can’t provide more information."
They terminate your account and then they even refuse to tell you why. A basic human thing, a chance to fix the issue, but no. Go f* yourself from Apple and that's it.
In their eyes, it's more like "we give you 70% of OUR sells in OUR platform, to OUR captive customers, they just happen to buy your App but they will buy something else if we want to ban you..."
It's a matter of perspective. In their eyes, they are being incredibly generous with that deal.
I own an app that pays social media celebrities to respond to fans, we pay them 60% of our profits. Apple broke their own app store rules stating we would be disqualified from IAP and forced us to use it. So after we pay out our partners of which our entire app exists, Apple are making 3x more money than we do from our own app. And take 2 months to pay us. Oh, and provide no transaction id's for unique customers so if one of them requests a refund or does a chargeback we have no way of tracking it back to his account. To say there's a culture of hatred towards Apple in our team is an understatement.
are you the guys who pay celebs to advertise that random social media app on their snapchat/instagram with taglines like "more on [social media app i've never heard of and a chance to talk to me"?
really amusing tactics that abuse the core fanbase's rabid enthusiasm for content from their favorite personalities. i never considered that the appstore is probably taking a lot of money from you too
That may be true at first, but when they have a huge part of the market... they could argue: "without our customers, you wouldn't have that many users". Kind of like a chicken and egg situation. When they already have such a large slice of the pie, they start to care mostly about the bigger app developers, and the small ones are just something they need to show big numbers, but they are not that important anymore...
(Just to be clear: It's not that I think they are not important, it's what I perceive as their attitude when things like this happen)
$100/year? What if you have say a company of 5 people whose salaries get paid by the virtue of your app. One noreply email from Apple and Google and their jobs and your $1m/yr company is over? This has only become possible with the invention of curated app stores. You cannot even be fired from a normal job in the US instantly by a noreply email.
It's extreme but it's not entirely new. A new version of an operating system or Internet service you depend on could make your app impossible or infeasible.
For what it's worth, both Amazon and Google can be the same way. (I've had to deal with such from both of them before.)
That said, it's not always that way with them, and I suspect Apple is similar. We always hear about the rough encounters, but few people write about "I just had this issue, and it got cleared up immediately. The end."
You have other means to distribute your app w/Android, including self-distribution. It's an uphill climb to be sure, but there are apps who do that. Correct me if I'm wrong, but iOS doesn't offer that opportunity as sideloading and non-Apple markets are not possible unless you jailbreak your device
To clarify, I didn't mean pulling the app, or anything app-related at all. I just meant Amazon and Google both can have such Kafka-esque "you're not allowed to appeal" responses to issues. I've personally experienced it with Amazon, and have read about it with Google.
I don't know how much I should believe you since a comment above you said "(I've had to deal with such from both of them before.)" and now you say you have read about it with Google.
Ha. Sorry, it was a long day at work today... Forgot about the Apps For Business (or whatever they've changed the name to) issues I had back in the day when I had to set it up for the store I work at. Not nearly as mind-bogglingly frustrating an experience as my most recent Amazon issue, which I detailed in another comment of mine in this thread somewhere.
Humble Bundle hosts mobile bundles frequently (Android only). Although they are not as successful or popular as HB's PC games bundles, they certainly bring decent level of exposure and revenue to game developers outside the play store bubble. They're only possible because of side-loading.
That's very common with anything where a company claims fraud is suspected, because they argue that sharing any details will allow scammers and people doing fraudulent activity to figure out ways to game the system.
Google does the same thing when they kill your AdSense account for "invalid click activity" right before you're about to get a big payout. Amazon does the same thing with Amazon Payments. No explanation, no recourse. Infuriating.
For seller accounts, Amazon provides tons of indicators that let you know you are about to be shut down. After being shut down, you can fix the problem, prove that you fixed it and they may let you sell again on their platform.
You should never be faced to a wall, unless you know you cheated the system someway.
That's not quite right. I've been selling on Amazon for 6+ years and have lost selling privileges a few times (every time due to an issue with our order management software). Sometimes dealing with it was as you described. But I can state factually that they don't always indicate that you're about to be shut down, nor do they always make it remotely easy to get back on or even figure out why you were shut down.
For instance, I went through quite a Kafka-esque nightmare just a few months ago. Something got messed up with our order software so that when we shipped something it wasn't marked as shipped and the tracking info was not uploaded to Amazon for a few days during a busy season. Customers weren't complaining since they were getting their stuff. Amazon sent a warning that our late shipment rate was too high just an hour or so before they sent an notification saying we lost selling privileges. I immediately figured out what went wrong. I got the order software working right again, and I manually marked all the "unshipped"-but-actually-shipped orders as shipped and added the tracking. I wrote to Seller Performance about this, exactly as they instruct you to. I explained what happened, showed them how I fixed it, and explained how we'd ensure it didn't happen again. Their response was simply that our late shipment rate was too high and that my account was suspended as a result. I sent the same info I had sent, and this time included full tracking info for all of the affected orders (and by this time most of them had already been delivered). I received the same response as before. I tried doing their "Contact Us" methods, but no one would respond to my messages or talk to me on the phone, since the account was suspended. All anyone would say is that I need to contact Seller Performance to attempt to get back on. Finally, after several emails to Seller Performance about this, where I basically explained the situation and how I fixed it and how all the supposedly-unshipped orders were actually fine or already delivered, but just phrasing it slightly differently each time, I was unceremoniously let back on, more than a week later. I asked very politely why it took me so many attempts to get back on, even though I just told them the same thing each time, and they said they could not discuss it, and that I may have my account suspended (!) if I contacted them again about this.
So maybe you've had an experience having your account suspended on Amazon that went smoothly, but that's definitely not how it always is.
Based on your side of the story it sounds pretty shady. Total speculation: maybe someone got a ticket assigned to them and slacked off, closing it over and over with a canned response. A rep can probably watch a lot of YouTube if they do that to most of their tickets. Then when you'd reopened it by replying enough times to make them worried about their manager noticing they fixed it quietly and closed it. Asking why it took so long spooked them bad enough to threaten you for asking questions about their service/response which I imagine is prohibited unless the customer is being hostile.
Fair to guess, but I doubt that's it. The store I work for has been selling on there for almost a decade (it was selling since before I was hired), steadily, with very high customer feedback.
I just have a standard Amazon Payments account I used maybe once or twice. I set it up to use Kickstarter back when they only supported Amazon Payments. Then they started using Experian for identity verification and because I had no credit history, I didn't exist in Experian's system and they disabled my account and requested that I submit various identity documents to reenable it. Every time I tried to do so, I would hit an error saying I couldn't submit my ID because my identity couldn't be verified.
After getting frustrated with the absurdity of that situation, I contacted support and they said it was a mistake and they reset my account and to try again. I did. Same errors. Then support told me that if I didn't submit ID documents within a certain number of days, my account would be permanently closed. I responded saying I had been trying to do so repeatedly over multiple periods of time and constantly got locked out and prevented from continuing every time I tried. No reply. Then a final announcement my account was permanently banned.
In the year since, I've contacted them sporadically trying to see if they've changed their policy or will reconsider, and just get blanket statements about my account being closed and nothing they can do. The last time I did this, they got fairly aggressive and said they could not and would not be reinstating my account, would not tell me why, and would not respond to any further inquiries from me.
No. I sold a bunch of stuff on Amazon. Then one day a lens I sold arrived three days late. The buyer complained. Amazon blocked my account from seeking. I appealed, said I was willing to be FBA only (Fulfilled by...). "After a review we have determined that your seller account will remain permanently closed". One complaint on thirty things sold.
> Google does the same thing when they kill your AdSense account for "invalid click activity" right before you're about to get a big payout. Amazon does the same thing with Amazon Payments. No explanation, no recourse. Infuriating.
And we still continue to use their service lika a b*ch we are :( They have no incentive to change, because no one else cares.
Or it could just mean that the person they talked to couldn't see any other information beyond what had already been communicated to the developer (terminated for fraudulent activity). Assuming this was human error on the part of Apple this would make sense, because there was no actual fraudulent activity and so no info would be available beyond the fact that someone flagged the account as such.
>Or it could just mean that the person they talked to couldn't see any other information beyond what had already been communicated to the developer
Which is, in and of itself, a problem.
It's understandable that the information might not be immediately on hand, but then the correct response would be to direct the caller to someone who can help. Otherwise, yes, it does come off as a big "fuck you".
Why are you assuming there's anyone who could help? Machine learning is used heavily in anti-fraud systems. Machine learning is also relatively opaque—a spam filter can't be prodded to "explain its thinking." I suspect there's frequently not a single human being in the company who could pull up the raw score vector fed to their anti-fraud model and use it to tell you what exactly made you look bad.
So instead of fobbing him off they should have said "sorry, on the help desk we can't see that information, I'm escalating this issue to X who will contact you with more information in Y days"
That isn't how you deal with fraudsters. You tell them nothing, complete stonewall. Anything you say about why they were flagged will assist them in not getting flagged next time, so you tell them nothing. Some non-zero percent of time you will flag the wrong person and start a social media shit storm but that's just the cost of doing business.
That seems stupid- if they really thought the person was a fraudsters, Apple could ask for more information to investigate, they could get additional contact and/or identity information from the suspected fraudsters, and after investigating, if it turned out it was indeed fraud, they would have more data to report to authorities and make it easier to stop the fraud. But instead, Apple takes the lazy approach.
They do not want to investigate. They do not care about pursuing matters with the authorities (unless there is major carnage). They just want to keep involvement low, close the case as quick as possible and move on. Fraud mitigation is a cost center.
Yes, customer service is a cost center- and cutting corners on the said customer service is exactly what previous commenters were complaining about- app store developers pay Apple n extraordinary amount of money, they should get better customer service in return.
I think maybe you're operating under a wrong idea here. iOS developers are not customers. They are not treated as customers nor considered as customers.
There really is no analogue to the relationship Apple has with iOS developers except perhaps, "Extremely bad contracting relationship." Apple has a lock on the perception that you need to publish on their platform to be serious about mobile dev. As such, they don't need to treat developers well unless there are very large corporate relationships to maintain (and while I assure you such things are in play, sadly I'd be in very big trouble for getting into specifics on any of them).
Apple's model is to convince developers that they're obligated to prop Apple's platform. It is not the stunning core iOS experience that drives people to the platform, nor the beautiful default app toolkit. It's the sweat and prowess of its developer community, and yet the power of the relationship is completely inverted.
While Google can be a faceless cancelmachine, my experience shipping a few apps now is that Google is actually really responsive once you get to the stage where you have a direct rep. Getting Apple to respond to my needs historically has been Game of Thrones level politics and a function of how connected our startup funding network was.
Yes, perhaps 'partner' would be a better term... but I am not operating under the wrong idea... I am fully aware of Apples abusive relationship with developers, and that is why I have stayed away from their platform.
Sigh, let's remind ourselves that businesses misrepresenting themselses do not deserve special air cover. I'm not sure what you're hoping to gain by pretending this is a customer relationship and you can somehow coerce Apple by pretending you could get money back from them.
Any developer who thinks they are a "customer" in any meaningful sense of the word needs to re-read their click-thru contract with Apple. The concept of "customer" is distorted beyond belief here.
The lazy approach is probably way cheaper. Unless the social media shit storm is too big in which case they can correct after the fact.
Not saying it is ok to do it. Just that business will always pick the cheapest option they can get away with - that is, that does not affect the bottom line.
If it's industry standard response then it's a valid argument against the claim that this particular company's policy is somehow out of line with normal practices.
You're of course correct that it doesn't justify the questionable actions. But it shows that it's a much bigger problem than one company... Is there some reason such issues happen all of these multiple companies? Can we do anything about that so that other companies don't also start doing this?
If you're actually paying Google money, they have pretty decent support. I've gotten support for their ad platforms, their apps for work, Google Fi, and my Nexus phones/tablets.
I see no reason for them to, nor do I expect them to, provide me support for things like GMail, or Hangouts, or their search.
I think he has a good point. A lot of our business and life are under the rule of big private companies. We are merciless to question their behavior even when their acts have great impact upon us.
Sure, we should add add a lot of names to this list: "Try contacting [Apple|Google|EBay|PayPal|AmazonAws|.*] about anything."
Could it be because of legal reasons? maybe you have a lower chance of suing them when they don't provide you with any details? (either way, it's wrong but I'm just trying to find a possible reason why they do this)
When a serious action is going to be taken for any reason, that action should be PRECEDED by at least an E-mail to the owner and the path to reverse the action should be clear. The E-mail should not just be a terse message, it should contain a wide variety of resources; something like: "Your account and applications will be disabled in 2 days for <reason>. Please select from the following links to attempt to resolve the issue, or call <number> as soon as possible.".
It’s not just apps, either. There is frequently a “less disruptive” option for any major action; for instance, you can “delete” files by starting with the instantly-reversible "chmod 000", and after some period of time you actually go ahead and "rm -Rf". If, in between, a panicked user E-mails you back and says they really needed those files, you undo your "chmod" and instantly fix the issue. Why should anything on the App Store take days?
They can't give you advanced notice for "fraud" though. If your app actually commits fraud it's got to go right away to limit the amount of fraud you commit. They at least think some kind of fraud was happening, correctly or not.
No, they still could. The message could say: “We have received X complaints of fraud for your app, "Totally Not a Scam Lite", and it will be removed in 2 days unless you contact us immediately at <number>. In addition, if this is found to be true, any sales of your app will be refunded and not credited to your developer account.”.
Sure, they could, but it doesn't make business sense. This scheme might even cause a class action lawsuit from the people who bought it AFTER they knew it was fraud but BEFORE they removed it. Refunds very likely cost money in the form of credit card transaction fees and wages (people doing the refunding as well as CS fielding calls for two days).
Isn't that a classic cost of business which they're charging 30% of each transaction to cover? Banks do that kind of thing all the time with things like wire transfers where the fees and delays are, in part, expected to cover the cost of errors and abuse.
First, a class action suit for 48 hours of downloads on an app is not likely.
And certainly when fraud is detected some refunds will occur. So they set the tolerances such that they can pay those refunds with the fees they extract on the other side of the curve.
First of all, if it's actually fraud that totally doesn't scale.
But in a more nuanced case, look at the iMessage App that allowed people to send images that looked like a stock Messages blue bubble. Good idea for humor, not so good for non-trolling UX. Apple pulls it but gives the developer a week to see if there's any way to salvage the situation to ease the heartstrings and pocketbook.
IMMEDIATELY calls go out to download the infringing app, several thousand more than anyone who might otherwise (full Streisand effect)...
Then imagine that app actually has Malware! Lots to think about, and if people hate on Apple for this, fair enough — as an iOS dev it's tough to defend. Really love Dash. Hope it gets straightened out. 8 years in on the platform and you can do a ton of things you couldn't do back in 08, and vice versa.
Kinda puts it in perspective how weird it is that companies have so much control over how software is distributed and sold these days. This would never have happened a decade ago.
A curated app-store should not be considered synonymous with walled garden. android allows side-loading. windows has "install.exe", the microsoft store and steam co-existing side-by-side. linux distros have their package managers, container images and `curl ... | sudo bash`.
Anyone who argues that all users must be herded into a walled garden in the name of security and alternatives are not acceptable is essentially advocating a digital nanny state.
You missed the essence of my argument. The curl approach serves as an example of some less trustworthy, unvetted ways of installing software, similar to downloading an installer or apk from some random website.
Is it a bad idea? Maybe, especially if you're not technically versed. Does that mean we should take everyone's freedom to make their own choices. "because we know what's best for you"? I don't think so.
I believe that most non-technical users are self-aware enough that they stick to curated app-stores of their own volition.
Better for you maybe, but not better for the average user who ended up with malware infecting their systems left and right because they weren't technical enough to avoid it.
Exactly. I have personally been on the receiving end of plenty of phone calls from users who had no idea they couldn't necessarily trust an application downloaded from a 3rd party site. "But it's the same application!" Sure it is, but who knows what else you're getting, even if it's as 'benign' as shitty toolbars. Has no one ever seen a parent/grandparents nightmare of toolbar hell in a browser window?
We did. And somehow the computer revolution still happened even though people actually had to learn a bit about how their tools worked.
Meanwhile in that crazy wild west the whole OSS infrastructure powering the most important global computer network was born. Tools, operating systems and software that isn't allowed to exist in app stores because they might be "dangerous" to the average user (whoever that is).
people actually had to learn a bit about how their tools worked.
They didn't, though; they just muddled through and asked their friends or some tech support service to reinstall Windows occasionally, when the viruses, adware and other crap made the computer too slow, or when the ramsomware encrypted all their files.
a) Educate users and give them more knowledge and better tools to easily protect themselves
or
b) Have app-stores organized in such a way that user interests and legitimate security concerns are not conflated with commercial interests of the platform owners as it's currently the case. Either treat app stores as a public utility with rights and regulations or require all devices to support competing stores.
You don't necessarily need a walled garden to solve that problem - package managers on Linux distribution do the same.
It needs the appropriate user experience for non-technical users.
This is an excellent example: all of those less "walled gardens" ended up a mess of malware and abusive advertising. It's a pretty clear trade-off so far as I can tell.
To be honest I think the chrome extension storefront(?) is pretty decent as well. It's just a matter of curation from the point they've got it at. The reality is that the average user _wants_ a barrier to entry: no one likes what download.com or sourceforge have become.
Mozilla now, and not sure how long it's been doing this, does code review on all submitted extensions to their extension marketplace. Google chrome's store is less restrictive as they don't do any review of it but rely on user reports to find violations of TOU/malicious activity.
Similar approaches to the apple app store vs. android store... up front binary check from apple vs. a permissive store with user reports being the primary thing that pulls apps from circulation.
They've improved user security, but the amount of garbage to sift through is terrible.
From my POV, it's like complaining that the seat belt left a bruise after an automotive collision; IOW, missing the bigger picture. I can sort my own garbage, thanks (and that's not to say that you're not right about the quality in app stores). It's easy, and if I screw it up then I've just got a garbage binary taking up space that is otherwise harmless.
But what I grow increasingly tired of is wondering if bad actors have found new ways to make my life difficult before I install that random app. Download from an app store, the app might be garbage, but at least I can be confident that it won't trash my machine. Servers, my dev machine? Sure, I'm willing to put up with a little more rigamorole for more control, etc. But my phone? I don't want to put up with that crap, vetting everything binary that goes on the box. I just want to tap and download, and if the quality of the app sucks, then fixing that is a long-press away.
A fair point that I apparently missed. Because, yeah, though an app from an app store might not trash my machine, it ain't all rainbows and roses in AppStoreLand, either.
It was more than that, originally, it just degraded over time. They also bought up all the good competitors (softseek anyone?) and then killed them off.
A decade ago there were many more, much higher hurdles to software distribution.
This developer's woes are nothing compared to the challenges to getting shrink-wrapped software in boxes, getting people to download and install an executable, or god forbid getting a mobile app onto one of the mobile carrier's app stores,
Or, increasingly, the web. Sure some things will always have to be native but that list is getting shorter all the time and would be shorter still if Apple were keeping up with web standards in Safari.
No, the walled garden is the walled garden. The expert consultant is often a relative or favorite blogger or golfing buddy or corporate IT person.
How many of us have set up a clueless person's computer? We give them a restricted user account, so they can't install 500 random spyware/adware toolbars. We change the IE/Edge shortcut to open Firefox instead. We install ad-blockers and script-blockers with an overly generous whitelist. Maybe we even install Linux with remote admin, and automatic updates, and just slap on a wm that looks vaguely like Windows. Their expert is us, or people like us, and our services are not always bought with spendable currency.
I don't always enjoy being that expert, or getting paid for it in cookies and ugly sweaters. And in that situation, the walled garden is great. We can all roll our clueless friends up in carpets and dump them over the wall, where they can stumble around all day without getting hurt.
But some people can actually make a business out of it. They do exist. And some of them won't shamelessly price-gouge their clueless customers.
The difference is, that that user can turn off the walled garden if they will. That user can also choose what it wants inside the garden instead of being told what he can use by someone from California which may or may not share the values or culture.
And what I'm saying is that for most people that expert is Apple, or Microsoft, or Google depending on what OS/Device we're talking about. And the company running the walled garden is that expert because they have already paid them to be such.
I make a regulatory compliance software. Apple refused to list my App until I removed functionality at their request. Functionality that is required for compliance.
Apple's arrogance in running their store may eventually cause it's decline.
I wouldn't expect Apple to understand compliance for every possible use case. Apple doesn't have to bend their rules to comply with apps that want to comply with local/state/provincial/federal laws, they can just say "We don't support x feature, and therefore you can't distribute through our store."
> I wouldn't expect Apple to understand compliance for every possible use case.
Wait, you're actually saying that the richest business entity on the world can't be expected to employ people that use their brain and do a bit of fact checking on outlying cases?
No I'm not saying that. Let's take an example. Let's say a local government wants to deploy iPhones to all their staff but as part of their local laws, all communication on government owned equipment can be monitored. So a developer writes up an app to record all typing on the iPhone (this is a hypothetical). They submit to Apple and Apple rejects this because it's against their policies (apps are sandboxed and wouldn't really be able to do this, but you get the point). Apple shouldn't be forced to comply with this local requirement, nor could they since every single government or private business would have different pieces of compliance. It would be impossible for them to develop an operating system that would allow for all these corner cases.
Were there any articles describing how they actually work? I wouldn't be surprised at all if they simply employed a number of clerk-level people following a set of rules for the app verification. Otherwise it would take a lot of very experienced QA engineers.
Silly decisions like banning dictionaries for including swear words only seem to confirm it. The rules matter, not the judgement.
But that will mean that they can't be too upset when industries that require whatever compliance they won't allow into software moves to another ecosystem. It seems arbitrary to me to ask devs to remove functionality (except for in-app purchases that evade iOS or similar), but it's hard to judge without details.
> But that will mean that they can't be too upset when industries that require whatever compliance they won't allow into software moves to another ecosystem
That is quite right, and they don't get upset at all. Apple don't pretend to compete in every market for every niche and have no interest in doing so. If the Apple way doesn't suit you, they'll quite happily wave you goodbye as you move to Android or elsewhere.
I often see people get upset because Apple doesn't address their particular use case or preference, but the fact is Android, Windows and Linux exist and are fine options for many people. The only case where this is really an issue IMHO is when someone buys in the Apple but didn't realize the limitations they would be under or when the limitations change to become more restrictive but that's not very common. Usually restrictions actually ease over time, such as the explosion in cross application functionality and opening of access to the JIT javascript engine in iOS made possible by secure cross process communication in recent iOS versions.
Arrogance is exactly the right word. Arrogance that is not justified at all by their execution lately. Developers were willing to look the other way while the app store gold rush lasted but those days are long over and it's increasingly looking like a Faustian bargain sold cheap.
Translation: edoceo built an app to help marijuana stores sell weed and keep track of weed and implement controls on the amount of weed purchased and where it came from and where it went.
Other apps either do the same thing or are less obvious about what their functionality is for, and Apple ignores it or is unaware or turns a blind eye.
edoceo thought an app which documents compliance with State law (and documents non-compliance with Federal law) should be allowed in the app store. Apple didn't.
This really sucks - just bought a copy of his MacOS app through his website to try and help compensate. At this point I'm starting to avoid buying software through the Mac App Store unless it's not available anywhere else. Even if it's slightly easier to make a purchase initially, you risk the headache of situations like this where you can't even migrate your license.
Additionally the apps outside the app store tend to work a lot better (nearly all the apps I wrote work far better in the website versions, not having the restrictions of the MAS versions), and also the developer gets more of the money, 95% instead of 70%. And then you're a customer of the developer, not of the app store, which is also better.
At this point, this is neither surprising, not unexpected. There is ample precedent, there are tens of stories like this every days (maybe even counting only those that hit the HN frontpage).
To avoid these problems, don't sell on the App Store, it's as simple as that (and very sad). Apple's processes suck and Apple doesn't care, as it has had year to fix things, but hasn't. Complaining won't change it. People have complained, and it didn't change.
> there are tens of stories like this every days (maybe even counting only those that hit the HN frontpage)
As someone who comes here every day, I don't think tens (or even ones) of this type of story hits the frontpage every day. I'm not saying it's not a problem, though.
In any large organization there are islands of mass stupidity. Apple is no different. I bet this ends with a mea culpa caused by the 1000 people at Apple who use the product who are now pissed. Note the review team operates in an airless void separate from the rest of the company on purpose; however those 1000 know where they sit.
It doesn't look like this was caused by the app review team, the whole developer account was canceled due to fraud reasons, which doesn't sound like something the app review team would be responsible for. But the rest of your comment stands.
A plug for it: I love Dash. I was on the fence for a while ("I'm not more than a terminal window away from 'man foo'; why pay for it?") but now I love having a common interface to lots of the docs I use. It also integrates nicely with common editors, so a single key combo in Emacs pops open a Dash window for the thing I was looking at. Yeah, I know Emacs has that built-in, but Dash in a separate window on a separate screen is still more pleasant to use and look at.
I like to think this is a foulup and will be fixed soon. However, XCode 8's help system is massively improved and this might be a case of Apple trying to force developers down that route. Which is a bloody shame. I really hope this is just some screwup :(
I used to have Dash when it was still free and in beta, but had some use hiccups (was on an older machine) and recently considered getting a license for it and getting the iOS versions as well... So now I have a problem, because my main point was not the Mac version (I could even use the emacs compatible package to browse Dash documentation) but iOS, and that can't be maintained.
More likely they simply don't care. Developers are a tiny fraction of their overall userbase, and there are plenty of devs who will put up with any kind of abuse just to have a shot at App Store riches.
The OS X platform already has a stupid easy download-and-install process with their .app folders. It's a shame that some users prefer to instead use an alternative distribution method controlled by a centralized party rather than buying software directly from the developer.
I used to dislike purchasing from the Mac App Store too, so when I got my new iMac a few months ago I decided against migrating all the unused junk from my old MacBook and would instead start with a fresh OS X install.... great idea, right up until I realised that I didn't have all the install files for dozens of audio tools I use.
The App Store ones were a simple matter of logging in with my Apple account and reinstalling (this included Dash, mentioned here). The other tools meant hunting around for installers, realising that most of the installers now were several versions ahead of the ones I used, in many cases breaking my music projects. It also meant trawling through 9 years of emails to find licence file attachments and serials numbers so I could re-register the applications, or try and purchase upgrades for those where I couldn't find an installer with the same version as I had bought.
Giant PITA. For once I was glad that App Store apps were all auto updated through the time I had them, and I didn't have to bother with activation codes etc. In fact, I ended up trashing the fresh install idea and migrated my old machine to the new. I was actually easier to put up with old junk apps I didn't use anymore than to try and manually install just the ones I needed.
And this is a reason, why I take care in archiving installers, license keys, serials, etc for every application I use. Learned my lesson some 25 years ago, when there wasn't Internet to try to find the installer and email archive to hunt for licenses.
Good point - and I do have a registry of installers and serial numbers for my crucial development software. However, I have literally hundreds of audio plugins and utilities that are tedious to track. End of the day, it is an admin cost to maintain such an archive - and some days I think it is far easier to outsource that archival maintenance and recording to a third party... such as an App Store... :)
NB: A lot of my audio software is licenced via an iLok device. Whilst I HATED the idea of a 'dongle' like an iLok before, this hardware upgrade has made me appreciate the fact that I didn't have to worry about re-licencing all of my audio production software the used the iLok either.
> The other tools meant hunting around for installers
`brew cask install $APP`
> ...to find licence file attachments and serials numbers
Store these in 1Password (other password managers are available)
Your point about versioning is a good one though. A lot of sites don't make it easy to find older versions of their software and I don't think package managers like homebrew support versioning (although I could be wrong).
No standard update mechanism, no standard uninstall mechanism, and going from "I have this .dmg/.zip file in my downloads folder" to "I'm running this app from my Applications folder and don't have any leftovers in my downloads folder" is several non-obvious steps.
.app bundles are great, just not a complete solution.
Sparkle is the de-facto standard used by almost all apps.
>no standard uninstall mechanism
Deleting the .app file would do that for most apps. The config files might be handy to keep around if you re-install (and are inert anyway), else it's pretty easy to remove those too. It would be nice for the OS to be able to track "all files installed by an app" though in case those are installed by an installer (and thus, are not self-contained in the .app folder).
>and going from "I have this .dmg/.zip file in my downloads folder" to "I'm running this app from my Applications folder and don't have any leftovers in my downloads folder" is several non-obvious steps.
It's a few steps, but its still as obvious as things get in computing. If users can't manage that, how they'd manage USING the app?
I have known several people who were otherwise pretty competent computer users but would download a DMG, mount it, and run the app from the disk image every time.
There's a reason so many downloads include a custom background image with a big "DRAG ME TO THE APPLICATIONS FOLDER" message and an arrow pointed to a /Applications alias. This is such a common use case that I don't understand why Apple didn't just make a "This disk image is an installer" flag, and automatically prompt the user with "Do you want to install this to the Applications folder?"
>I have known several people who were otherwise pretty competent computer users but would download a DMG, mount it, and run the app from the disk image every time.
Perhaps, but they just need to be told once what to do, and it's dead easy. Having an installer is not that more intuitive -- they'd still have to be shown how to use their first one.
>This is such a common use case that I don't understand why Apple didn't just make a "This disk image is an installer" flag, and automatically prompt the user with "Do you want to install this to the Applications folder?"
Yeah, some apps do it automatically when opened from the DMG.
The goal of an installer would be that when someone fumbles through an installation for the first time with no guidance, the correct path is more obvious than the incorrect one.
The reason it's a problem now is that screwing it up is easier than doing it right, and unless the DMG's author manually added it, there's not even a hint that you should do something other than open the image and run it from there.
IMO the "some apps do it automatically" is even worse because it's inconsistent. Some apps will do it automatically and teach you that it's the way to get things installed, and then the rest of your apps won't. If checking on run and offering to move is the solution, it ought to be standardized systemwide so that users can (correctly) learn to expect it.
> I have known several people who were otherwise pretty competent computer users but would download a DMG, mount it, and run the app from the disk image every time.
Is there anything particularly wrong with doing this? I know that it's not the typical use scenario, but it doesn't seem like it causes any problems, and it's dead easy even for people for whom the correct procedure is hard.
>"Do you want to install this to the Applications folder?"
This is a sort of question that makes me hate windows. Do you want to browse files or play music? Do you want to uninstall program? Do you want to change that setting? You have unused icons, so I decided to install updates now, you can't stop me. Oh, come on!
There are a million ways it could be implemented, I didn't mean to suggest that's the only one.
For a more Mac-like method, make it a special Finder mode where instead of showing the directory contents, installer DMGs display a big icon of the app with an Install button under it.
If you really want to get at the files directly, right clicking in the DMG could give a "Show disk image contents" item similar to how app packages are handled. Right clicking on the big application icon would include an "Open" item to circumvent installation and execute from the disk image.
Config files aren't inert and can be terribly problematic if you're reinstalling to fix broken config files. Case in point updating graphics card in linux, those random nodejs apps that leave broken symlinks everywhere, and the windows registry
I'd love a to be able to download a single file representing an app, double-click to install it (it doesn't matter where it lives on disk, as long as it's predictable) and then have the system facilitate sandboxing, permissions, and one-click updates and removals.
Just like the App Store, but without the App Store.
Is draggin an .app file to "Applications" directory such a hard exausting thing to do you'd rather give up the choice of which apps you can use and functionality of said apps (sandbox!)?
Give up? I wish more apps were sandboxed! If an app can function inside the sandbox (and the overwhelming majority of apps have no problem with being sandboxed) then they absolutely should be. It's a major security benefit.
Except that there are whole swaths of tools and applications that cannot be published at all due to limitations of Sandbox, making your computer limited to a whim of someone on the other side of the world.
Yes they can, they just can't be published on the Mac App Store. But the existence of the MAS does not affect anybody's ability to distribute applications outside of it.
> making your computer limited to a whim of someone on the other side of the world
That's a really weird way to say this. Security is not a whim.
Except that there are whole swaths of tools and applications that cannot be published at all due to limitations of Sandbox
You're right, just ditch whole damned sandbox thing because a few tools won't work.
Or in an ideal world where we didn't have to decide between one extreme or the other, we could sandbox everything that doesn't have a problem with it, reserving the exceptions for those few tools that don't get along well with a sandbox. (Vetting the hell out of those non-sandbox apps, of course, because we don't want to "<make our computer> limited to the whim of someone on the other side of the world" which in this case wouldn't be Apple.)
The macOS App Store has problems but as a user, I appreciate applications that use it as the update process is a lot smoother than with applications that have their own update system.
And suspending account on PayPal for whatever reason is unheard of.
I'd say that setting up your own payment-processing/distribution will leave you with many more points of failure, except in that case you won't be able to get your story on front page.
Apple contacted me and told me they found evidence of App Store
review manipulation. This is something I’ve never done.
Apple’s decision is final and can’t be appealed.
Having seen the internals of many an application that deals with both "human" and "group" accounts, I'm not surprised that something like this would cause an issue. Unless things are designed from the ground up to support it (which they never are), those types of migrations always have a bunch of edge cases that aren't properly handled.
Sure it sucks but the real test of whether Apple gives a rats behind is if they fix it a reasonable amount of time. If this drags on for more than a day without a human response from their support line I'd say, no they don't care. I bet that happens.
I'm trying to imagine the sort of system where a migration from "human" to "group" accounts results in a flag for fraud on that account. It's giving me nightmares. Surely they are more competent than the code/architecture I'm imagining it would take.
I'm going to hypothesize that this isn't a technology glitch. It seems more likely that the move triggered a look at his account by some human who for reasons that are unknown to us decided his account looked fishy.
"... all who draw the sword will die by the sword."
This sort of thing will continue as long as people persist in developing for proprietary walled gardens like iOS.
Once again, and despite my annoyance with the man in general, Stallman is right. This sort of thing is unethical, and we as developers shouldn't be supporting it by developing for iOS.
I don't know why anyone develops apps for Apple's walled prisons. I can't imagine the anxiety of having a widely used app in the app store, and knowing that any day, for any reason that you may or may not understand or be privy to, an invisible hand can simply reach in and shut down your account or remove your app with nothing more than a curt message about your non-compliance of their terms.
Even though It might be a simple error on Apple's end, this is both morally and economically unacceptable. As long as it is not a top-high critical issue with the account or the application, a considerable time should be given to developer to solve the issue.
They can even freeze the money that goes to developer until the issue resolved, but cutting the app from the market and failing on both app users and the developer?
I did look into this situation when I read about it today. I am told this app was removed due to repeated fraudulent activity.
We often terminate developer accounts for ratings and review fraud, including actions designed to hurt other developers. This is a responsibility that we take very seriously, on behalf of all of our customers and developers.
I hope that you understand the importance of protecting the App Store from repeated fraudulent activity.
I find it ironic that the EU goes after Google for allowing third party stores (Samsung, Amazon, Nvidia, etc) and sideloaded APKs and allows you to build your own APKs for free...
... but Apple just randomly removes apps that people have purchased from the Apple Store (thus stealing their money and their product, doing everything short of uninstalling it, but preventing reinstallation), and the EU stays silent?
Not allowing third party stores in the Store is a security feature because they can install APKs that have not passed through Google's security scanner.
Google does not prohibit you from installing third party stores.
Also, how are they using their dominance for search and browsers to do something? I can install Firefox on Android, I cannot install Firefox on iOS. I can do "Hey, Cortana" if I install Cortana on my Android phone and do Bing searches, but not with iOS. I can install the Bing app and get a launcher widget to perform searches with, just like I can with the Nexus Launcher's integration, but not with iOS. I can change the launcher out entirely, I can't on iOS. I can replace the lockscreen, but not with iOS.
And as for taxes, Google paid the taxes that was required of them by Ireland. The EU thinks that they can post-facto change the law to effect Irish companies. This is illegal and immoral.
This is also what the founders of Google have complained about, that US companies can do this, and are forced to do this by their shareholders. They are being punished by the EU for not following the status quo and being made an example of.
So, explain to me, again, how Apple is the bastion of user freedom? Android is a shit OS, but at least it allows me to run whatever I damned please.
>> The EU thinks that they can post-facto change the law to effect Irish companies. This is illegal and immoral.
You are severely misinformed.
Ireland broke rules it agreed to under treaty in order to join the single market that have been enforced for decades, often regarding EU based companies. State aid is defined as giving advantages to one company but not others, thereby distorting competitive markets. Ireland is required to apply the same tax rules to all companies and not deal under the table to certain favourites. If they want to distort their markets in this way fine, they can, they just need to leave the EU first.
I'm in no way a Google fanboy: I'm typing this on my Mac, in Safari, which has DuckDuckGo set its search engine. But I think it's kind of nuts that Google could negotiate a tax arrangement with an entity and abide by it in good faith, then have another entity come along and say "your terms are invalid. You owe more in taxes now."
For instance, suppose I were the CEO of a company that negotiated a deal with, say, Utah. I held up my end of the agreement. I'm happy. Utah's happy. Then the US Gov't comes along and says "Utah, you and I agreed that you were going to charge more than you did." Why is that now my problem? I did everything I was supposed to. I don't why if someone has to be on the hook for the difference, then it's me and not Utah (or Google and not Ireland).
If your lawyers didn't catch that the contract with Utah was in violation of federal law, then they fucked up their due diligence. That's on you. It's also on Utah.
A sports team might win a championship match due to corrupt officials fixing it for a gambling syndicate. Despite the team's innocence, the result still needs to be annulled to preserve the integrity of the game.
Are you seriously suggesting that the Apple and Google negotiators aren't aware that they're bending the laws to their limits? It's pretty far from the innocent 'good faith' that you're suggesting, and better described by the term 'back-room dealing'.
If its the state aid enforcement, then the EU won't. The EU will force Ireland to collect the missing tax because they can't let the infringement succeed i.e. a fair market must be restored.
I don't know which action you are specifically referring to but I know Google have broken any number of accounting rules though e.g. in the UK they claim to carry out no sales activities, all happening in Ireland, despite of course collecting millions of GBP and employing hundreds of UK sales staff...
Before stating as fact what Ireland did or did not do it is worth waiting until the results of the appeal process.
It isn't as clear cut since Ireland is stating that they never offered Apple any unique benefits but rather there were available for any company in a similar situation.
This. It's far from a clear cut case. The Commission is highly political, under pressure from various advocacy groups, and we can't take it for granted that their opinion on law is correct; the judiciary should decide that.
No, the EU commission believes that Ireland gave Google an illegal tax break, which is almost self-evidentiary.
There was no post-facto change of the law. It is simply very normal for illegal acts to be discovered after they were perpetrated. Anything else would border on precognition.
> So, explain to me, again, how Apple is the bastion of user freedom?
Who said Apple was ?
It's hilariously bizarre how you put this strawman up like criticising Google for their legitimately dodgy and anti-competitive practices has anything to do with Apple.
They are using their dominance in search to push chrome on users every chance they get, which has resulted in them dominating the browser space as well. Or do you think Chrome was just good enough to push out IE entirely on merit?
> This is illegal and immoral
Immoral is exploiting tax loopholes for billions of dollars.
I simply don't understand this either. Sure Android has the larger market share by units, but Apple has a much higher share of revenue & profit in the market. Which is really the proper measure of market power?
For antitrust purpose, pricing power is, as I understand, the "gold standard"; various measures of market share (which isn't itself a single measure) are sometimes evidence which supports a conclusion about the likely existence of pricing power, especially when direct evidence one way or another on pricing power is hard to find.
Apple apologists will pick whichever metric suits the current argument.
Suing Google for running a far more open platform while Apple continues to exert as least as much if not more control on the direction of the market is just another case of misguided European regulatory overreach.
Thing is that laws haven't really followed the state of the market. You hear the excuse commonly here - "They don't have a monopoly so it's ok!". It's not and it's damaging the basic way how free markets do and should function - essentially the integrated, DRMed, lockeddown systems prevent choice which is the basic driving force of market innovation. Right now we're in a state where a few companies (mostly Apple, Amazon, Google) pretty much funnel and lock you into a narrow choice of products and then lock them down in a way to basically make choosing a product that helps you the most as hard as possible.
Which means they just made "voting with the wallet" infinitely harder - you can't choose a phone with headphone jack, because you're locked into iOS ecosystem which means that your choice of phone has resulted in your choice of communication platform (iMessage), house appliances (HouseKit), TV (AppleTV), source of media (iTunes), car (CarPlay and iPod integration) and others. If you want to exercise your choice as a consumer, you're essentially forced to give a lot of things to get a feature you want and that also hides consumer wishes to the corporations themselves.
The state of electronics market is getting pretty dire, sometimes I'm starting to feel like we're back in 1985 on the eastern side of Iron Curtain with a single item of each type on the store shelf.
You can choose your own messaging platform (WhatsApp, Line) home appliance integration (Zigbee), media player (Spotify, Tidal), TV (Plex), car integration (Bluetooth). I use all of those apps and technologies daily and none are dictated by Apple.
Well, I'm afraid you kinda missed my larger point due to a nitpick into an example. Please replace it with something else appropriate (physical keyboard? USB-C or microUSB port? whatever really) and argue about that :/
How about we just don't argue at all, because you're clearly misinformed if you think iTunes is the only way to get music on iOS. Or pretty much any of your other assertions.
Then you should have mention that and not use your weak arguments to try to prove your point.
I have an iPhone and I don't use HomeKit, AppleTV, CarPlay or the iTunes Store, and use Whatsapp instead of iMessage.
And I'm afraid I can't see how replacing the headphone jack with a physical keyboard would make your argument better. If you want to charge your phone using microUSB there are hundreds of options.
From what I understand, Apple doesn't force anyone. It's up to them to use it or not. They can always NOT deliver apps for iOS if they think 30% is too much.
Yes they do. This is why Spotify is more expensive if you subscribe through the app -- because they cannot take payment details through the app for digital goods/services.
So any music streaming service that wants to try to compete with Apple music has to pay a tithe to Apple of 30% or miss out on half of America (or make customers jump through hoops).
The 'you dont have to use it' comment is moot -- iOS accounts for millions upon millions of people; you generally need to use it.
>The 'you dont have to use it' comment is moot -- iOS accounts for millions upon millions of people; you generally need to use it.
No, you don't need to use it. You want to use it, and you want to make money using it -- which is a different thing, and this is what Apple charges for: having built a platform/market with millions upon millions of people in it.
When a company uses their dominance in one market to stifle competition in another market, in the long term, the consumer loses out on both price and innovation. Sure, it was smart and innovative of apple to create the iphone and the app store, but it's in the consumers best interest for there to be many music streaming providers as an example.
>That's … a bit drastic. Why should Apple have any say over whose software I choose to install on a device once I have bought it from them?
So that they can fully control, secure and curate the experience, which is what I am buying Apple phones for.
Well, not really (I'm mostly buying them for the hardware and software combo, which I prefer to Android offerings), but I can appreciate that having a single, sandboxed, signed, etc source of software on a phone, makes it more secure and hassle free thing for users (of which an extremely tiny minority are in any way computer geeks). It also creates a ecosystem that moves in lockstep with the hardware and OS changes -- even if just because it is forced to.
For others, there's always a custom Android install.
I don't trust Apple to have my best interests at heart. Out of all the people and organisations in the world, only I have my best interests at heart. Thus, only I can be trusted to control, secure and curate my experience.
>I don't trust Apple to have my best interests at heart. Out of all the people and organisations in the world, only I have my best interests at heart. Thus, only I can be trusted to control, secure and curate my experience.
Yes, but it's not about individual interests. It's about the aggregate interests of users of a platform, the majority of which are average Joes which would otherwise get every malware possible in their phone.
It's kind of like democracy: you may know your best interests yourself, but you only get one vote. So what laws get passed etc, is what the majority decides. Only in this case Apple makes their political platform (iOS) and people vote with their wallets whether they like it or not.
For lone-wolfs that tend to their own personal interests, there's always Android, or even OpenMoko.
>On my devices it sure as heck is about my individual interests.
And you're always free to individually buy something else.
>I hate that a generation is being raised without the freedom to tinker, to own their hardware and to own their data.
You mean the same generation that has all kinds of compilers and developers tools for free (unlike back in the 80s and 90s), can reach the whole globe with a simple $5/month server app, and has hardware platforms like Arduino and Pi for less than $100 backs?
I lived in the 80s. We didn't tinker on our smartphones because we didn't have any. Now we have something like 10,000 PDP-11s on our pockets, and an environment so accessible that there are 1,500,000 apps for it. And if we don't like forking $100 to the gatekeeper to get to publish apps for it, there are also web-apps, and Android, where we can just publish anything.
> Thus, only I can be trusted to control, secure and curate my experience.
I think this is conflating two different meanings of trust. Apple hopes that you will trust them to choose to respect your best interests; but what I think most people are inclined to trust is that they are able to respect your best interests. The vast majority of non-techie users are not able to act in their best interests, even though they (presumably) want to do so.
>Why should Apple have any say over whose software I choose to install on a device once I have bought it from them?
A valid reason is that you trust them to curate available programs according to values that you agree with. This reduces your risk considerably. (Consider the state of Windows executables in the bad old days.)
Problems arise when a) you don't agree with their values, b) they don't actually act on their values. A lot of people are content to make the uninformed choice to trust Apple, and will continue to do so until their is an obviously better alternative.
In 20 years? That doesn't make any sense. Until iOS, Apple had no say in what you installed on your device. And even on desktop, the App Store is completely optional.
So basically, you haven't bought an Apple product in 20 years for reasons that really have nothing at all to do with this discussion, and that aren't even indicative of anything wrong on Apple's part, merely that you like Linux (although many people seem to think that Apple's laptops are the best laptops to use even for Windows and Linux, so it's surprising to me that you'd consider this a reason to avoid Apple's hardware, even if you don't use their software).
> So basically, you haven't bought an Apple product in 20 years for reasons that really have nothing at all to do with this discussion
No, Apple's control of the iPhone was perhaps the major reason I never bought one, way back before I had a smart phone (or even a cell phone).
I have several major problems with Apple: I prefer Linux; their software is not free (this is related to the previous item); they control your devices (this is related to the previous item); since they got rid of the old iBooks and iMacs their design language has been boring and, frankly, ugly; I dislike the cult aspects of Apple (having once been a True Believer); I am tired of Apple's high opinion of itself (this is related to the previous item); I think their hardware is over-priced. I could probably think of more.
Now, some of that is just a matter of taste (some people like Jony Ives's rectangles and circles — that's OK), but some of that is indicative of things which are, from my perspective at least, 'wrong on Apple's part,' to use your phrase.
I don't get why people downvote this comment, it is factually correct. You are not entitled to do whatever you feel is right on the platform of someone else.
I don't like giving Apple a cut but I recognise that it is their property and I cannot dictate that Apple has to change their rules to accommodate me.
> From what I understand, Apple doesn't force anyone. It's up to them to use it or not. They can always NOT deliver apps for iOS if they think 30% is too much.
Is it not clear that he is talking about the 30% cut that Apple takes for distributing apps on their app store? Do you own the app store if you buy an iPhone? Is it this what you are saying?
> Do you own the app store if you buy an iPhone? Is that what you are saying?
No, I'm saying that if I bought an iPhone, then it would be my right to install software written by anyone I pleased on it. I'm also saying that any software developer who wishes to has a right to write software for that putative iPhone. Apple simply isn't a party to such transactions.
You can jailbreak it and install whatever you want. But Apples app store has rules to primarily make Apple profit and also create an ecosystem with certain standards that Apple believes users would appreciate. (and judging by the sales numbers average users do)
You have the right to do with your property as you please, but what you really want is that Apple changes their product so it's easier for you to install what you like. You simply do not have this right. This limitation is well known and advertised so you should have known before you bought an iPhone, and even if you didn't - you can return the iPhone and get your money back.
this year there needs to be another option next to the downvote button.
1) Upvote
2) Downvote
3) User made a politically charged comment in a thread that has nothing to do with politics as a way to insert opinions.
As for what the third button does. I don't know. It doesn't really even have to do anything, it'd make me feel better just being able to count the appearances of such comments in every thread this election year.
To be honest, I was really on the fence about making that comment because of exactly this. It's that raw "slimy but legal so it's ok" attitude that I'm trying to capture.
It's unfortunate that a presidential candidate epitomizes that sentiment, but that's what comes to mind when I hear something like "It's just business".
Edit: now I need to go and rewatch "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"
I don't think the parent comment was actually agreeing but instead of mocking Donald Trump's response to Hillary's comment about him not paying federal income tax. But I could be wrong.
I suspect the comment you replied to was also quoting Trump, specifically a moment during the first debate when he leaned into the mic and whispered "wrong" repeatedly to counter something Hillary had said. Surprisingly, I can't find the gif right now considering how rampant it was.
Atttibuting 1-word quotations is a guessing game, I might as well be...wrong
Android also has the similar ToS regarding in app purchase, the only difference is that they do not currently enforce it.
For an indie developer it doesn't sound like a big issue, but for big corporations uncertainty in the business model is a big deal. Often large budgets and many jobs depend on it.
Android does not have a ToS regarding in-app purchases, the Play Store does. You are free to distribute your android app outside the play store.
And the play store ToS rules around in-app purchases also don't apply to physical goods, or products or services that can be used outside the app. This means that a companies like netflix or spotify are free to collect payments for their services without giving google a 30% cut, like they have to give apple. This is not an unenforced clause, a grey area, or a cause for uncertainty; the play store terms are very clear.
> Android does not have a ToS regarding in-app purchases, the Play Store does.
I think you know very well that I was talking about the Play Store.
> And the play store ToS rules around in-app purchases also don't apply to physical goods, or products or services that can be used outside the app
Apple in app purchase ToS:
3.1.5 Physical Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than IAP to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry. Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies (e.g. Bitcoin, DogeCoin) provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions.
It is not identical (I wrote it is _similar_) as Netflix does have to give Apple a cut, but there are many exceptions both on Apple's side just as there are other exceptions on Google's side.
What really annoys me about your comment though is that my comment wasn't about saying Apple is better or Google is better (clearly some people here can't even mentally handle anyone criticising their beloved company), I'm not even interested in such a conversation.
My comment was about the issues companies have with the fact that Google doesn't enforce their own ToS. (or even worse, maybe they do in some cases and most developers don't know)
Small developers are incentivised to ignore the rules while larger businesses can't risk allocating large budgets towards a business model that contains such uncertainty.
Maybe you can next go through my comments and correct me on grammar errors. English is not my native language after all so I'm certain there's lots of material to find there. Have a nice day!
Typically when they remove something from the App Store, people who already downloaded or bought it can still download it again. In the past, even things that were blatantly against the TOS for the App Store were simply removed from sale, including emulators, proxy/tethering apps, etc.
So if Apple really leaves Dash off of the Purchases tab (I can't find it here), it would be the first time I'm aware they've done this.
Hopefully they'll work things out soon one way or another.
Being removed for fraudulent activity is one of the times where it makes sense for Apple to remove the download completely from the store, because you don't want the fraudulent activity to continue. Obviously it was a mistake in this case though. But I bet Apple's done this before, just not with any app that people actually gave a shit about.
"... but Apple just randomly removes apps that people have purchased from the Apple Store (thus stealing their money and their product, doing everything short of uninstalling it, but preventing reinstallation), and the EU stays silent?"
That's never been true. If you bought it, you can still download it.
Head over to /r/androiddev sometime. You'll see constant wailing and gnashing of teeth from people because Google banned their account or sent them a warning over their app.
>... but Apple just randomly removes apps that people have purchased from the Apple Store (thus stealing their money and their product, doing everything short of uninstalling it, but preventing reinstallation), and the EU stays silent?
Because it's not a monopoly, and they can do whatever the damn they like while not one?
Presumably that would cause the app to be rejected due to not complying with the app review guidelines, not terminating the entire developer account for fraud.
Is there a way for us to remark to apple that this is something we want to see? I would gladly email support.
This might be an effective way to handle these as I've seen a bunch of them.
EDIT: I would like to know the source, I have apps on the app store and I wonder if it is a simple as someone putting in a fraudulent claim of fraudulence.
In my opinion, if an internalized market has more than (say) 10K independent people making a profit from it, the government should step in and require it to be opened up, and follow the rules of the free market.
This should hold not only for Apple, but also Google, Uber, AirBnB, et cetera.
I ended up removing my app from the app store after I realized that Apple would never actually allow me to do what I wanted to do without having me go through hoops to get it approved every time i made an update.
Never been happier. I am sure Dash will do just fine outside the app store too.
Not even that, copyright concerns distribution, Dash isn't distributing anything, it's a tool the user uses to download stuff. Even if Apple misunderstood it, that would still not result in marking the account as fraud.
I have to say, the way he has handled this has been fantastic. Within a day, he has published a license migration tool; fully explained the situation; and basically made it as painless as possible for all his users (versions 2 and 3) to start using non-App-Store licensing. I immediately paid $10 to upgrade from 2 to 3.
Seems to me if Apple doesn't resolve this in a few days, he should move to the ad hoc build-your-blob and side load it like f.lux did. Enter a license key to prove you've paid.
It's beyond Apple's intent for the free version of Xcode, but what does he have to lose? Fuck 'em.
Well, that was a complete waste of time. I requested a refund or credit for Dash as I paid $29 for it.
Chat and Phone T1 and T2 Advisors all said there is nothing they can do and kept suggesting I restore a backup. Too bad "Transfer Purchases" was removed in iOS 9 with App Slimming - meaning that there is no way to backup/extract an ipk file from iOS using native tools. They also couldn't offer any sort of iTunes Store credit or refund.
Long story short, if Apple decides to remove an App from their platform, it's gone - period and they don't give a sh*t how much you paid for it.
This is why anytime you are dealing with things that anyone could conceivably find questionable you either develop a website or skip Apple. Their fanboys tend to have money, but let this be a lesson..
I bought my version of Dash on the App store.... shame on me ! and this is the exact reaon I avoid the app store and buy things directly from the developers when I can.
So Apple, how do I get my $$$ back so I can rebuy it from a reputable source ???
It looks like Dash downloads documentation from various sources and displays it offline. I wonder if one of the documentation sources has a license that doesn't permit this use, and then they filed a DMCA notice.
Not mean to be offensive but I will think this way:
App Store is a commercial service. When you post something there, you're solidating service from Apple.
So if they reject to serve you, it's like a store reject to sell something to you (not because you cannot pay for it).
My first response is why don't distribute it on your own, like an HTTP link to 'apk'... then I realised general user cannot install stuff without App Store.
Why open source project bother to support people not using open source system? You cannot save to whole world (like someone lock himself intentionally during a fire, and reject to open the door. It might not be a good example but I hope you get my thought)
i'm a little skeptical this is the right approach...
everytime i've encountered a problem that someone couldn't resolve with apple over the phone, i've managed to resolve it by phoning them.
i wonder how much effort the developer really made, and how he talked to the people he dealt with. my experience of apple, and infact most customer service is that if you are nice and sympathetic and explain thoroughly the nature of the problem, then people will do their best to resolve it.
Apple has not only screwed the developer, but also EVERYONE that paid for this through the app store... I will no longer be afforded upgrades that the developer makes...
This is disturbing. I've been working on an open-source Dash alternative [1] for Linux (anything with GTK actually) that is compatible with Dash docsets. Dash is a really cool piece of software, and it's really surprising to see something like this happen. I hope that this is resolved, and that we are Apple take steps to change their policy in the future.
No, it verifies your DUNS number at the moment you click "next" when going through the process.
How do I know? I'm still waiting for two weeks to get apple to see my company DUNS number that was generated for me pretty much instantly. I try every day, but so far nothing happens.
I conversed with the developer of Dash a while back and found him to be a rather cordial and frankly honest person. He's from Romania, and had you done a single Google search for "Popescu" you might have seen this:
Popescu is a very common family name in Romania, don't think this has something to do with this. The same would apply for american family names as well.
Just want to complain that I bought Dash 2, and there's no way to access it after the Dash 3 is out. I don't understand why the guy wants to make money this way. Good job Apple.
The #3 item on the front page has (Longest humans can live) had 44 points and was posted more than 1 hour ago. The #4 item (Typora) has 42 points and was posted more than 1 hour ago.
However, this post on the App Store is at #8 even though it has 172 points and was submitted 47 minutes ago.
Apple is choosing to only support a few cryptocurrencies and hasn't given any criteria for their choices. This is all people want, Apple--reasoning! The sting from incidences like these, at least for me, comes mostly from the information scarcity that proceeds them.
Unfortunately, it seems, the writing truly was on the wall once Dash had to be removed from Jaxx Wallet.
I'm not even a Dash user, but choice in such a new space is important.
