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Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

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Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#391

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?

Human support is supposed to 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 providin…

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#392
post #309
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about price discrimination? Should that be legal or illegal?

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?

What about the case where your car insurance costs twice as much because some of your neighbours are serial car wreckers?

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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.

Class actions suits have to show damages, no? After the money is refunded, what would the plaintiffs allege?

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human support is supposed to 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 providin…

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 re…

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#396
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

iOS developers are not customers.

$100/year says you're wrong.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#398
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."

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.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#399

I wonder if Apple knows how many developers use Dash. They probably don't realize what a high-profile faux pas they're making.

High profile what?

Developers will continue using and supporting Apple products regardless. We hear a story like this at least three or four times a year.

Geeks love their Apple products far too much to ever walk away no matter what Apple does.

Re: Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try contacting Google about anything.

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.

> If you're actually paying Google money, they have pretty decent support.

I wish I could pay for my browser, my email and my search...

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