Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#221

Post by bananabill » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #213

cft wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

True, but something changing and your app not running, is different than them just blocking you from using it at all.

You can fix an app if the platform changes, but you can't put an app on a platform if the platform won't let you.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#222

Post by viraptor » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #146

giarc wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#223

Post by ptaipale » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

jnordwick wrote: post #186

EGreg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who here has read Franz Kafka?

Is that a blog or Twitter account?

Someone probably thinks it's a manual for best practices.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#224

Post by coredog64 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #42

Sidnicious wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No standard update mechanism 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 installe…

There are plenty of popular, non-trivial apps that install via a .pkg file.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#225

Post by duncanawoods » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:40 PM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #123

duncanawoods wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

Why is the EU going after Google if Ireland is the one that broke an agreement? Usually we go after the entity that did something wrong.

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...

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#226

Post by ptaipale » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:41 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #174

duncanawoods wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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…

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#227

Post by fedesilva » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

ensignavenger wrote: post #205

jeremyjh wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#228

Post by dec0dedab0de » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#229

Post by SunShiranui » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:44 PM UTC

blktiger wrote: post #106

1_2__3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And having lived through that, and now lived through the walled garden/App Store experience, I'll say with confidence the old way was better.

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.

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#230

Post by wlesieutre » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 10:46 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #173

wlesieutre wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "…

>"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.