IMHO, this should be litigated. As a fallback, conscious developers should start boycotting Apple native platform. If that happened to RescueTime, it could happen to any other app at any time. Not the fist case too.
Apple has removed us from the App Store
31–40 of 183 posts
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#32Time for some anti-trust regulations on the app store. In the "mobile apps" market, Apple is an overwhelming monopoly with 66% market share [1]. Some stats: - Total app store market revenues for 1st half (1H) of 2018: ~$33B - Apple's app-store revenue for 1H-2018: $22B - Apple's market share: 66% They constantly abuse their power and stifle competition by: 1. Banning apps (this app, steam streaming, ....) 2. Stifling…
Or you know instead of getting the government involved, you could just get an Android phone like 80% of other smart phone users....
How do you protect developers & their businesses from abuse at the hands of a channel (Apple) that controls access to ~70% of revenues, and probably more in profits.
The answer is not for users to switch to Android, but for the FTC & EU to step in, as they did for Android, and for MSFT's browser related cases.
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Apple a “monopoly” with less than 20% of the smart phone market?
100% of that market. The apple app market is not the same as the android app market. They're not in competition with each other. Owners are captive.
So does that make every console maker a “monopoly”?
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#34Time for some anti-trust regulations on the app store. In the "mobile apps" market, Apple is an overwhelming monopoly with 66% market share [1]. Some stats: - Total app store market revenues for 1st half (1H) of 2018: ~$33B - Apple's app-store revenue for 1H-2018: $22B - Apple's market share: 66% They constantly abuse their power and stifle competition by: 1. Banning apps (this app, steam streaming, ....) 2. Stifling…
This is not an abuse of power. This is looking out for their users' privacy. I would have thought most people at this time would know that Apple does not take lightly a situation where an app is sending lots of privacy related user behavior to some kind of server somewhere. At a minimum, store this analytics on the phone only. But then again, you may use APIs for reasons other than their intended purpose.
They also don't take competition lightly. Just look at how they banned Steam's game streaming app [1], and retroactively modified app-store policies to substantiate their abuse of power.
[1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/552995/app-store-rules-steam-link/
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#35> Critically, using the persistent location API also allows us to use an acknowledged acceptable way to capture when our users have active screen time. They're admitting to using background location to infer screen time, which is clearly "misuse" according to section 2.5.4. Whether the decision is right or wrong, I find it hard to believe that the developer is actually confused by this.
The app has a feature that allows you to see where you are spending your time on your phone. This could be helpful to get an idea about time wasted at work vs. commuting by train or whatever. I'm not going to say it's super useful, but it has a use.. I would categorize this in the same bucket as Snapchat needing your GPS. Anyway, the complaint is that they are using this data for more than features and functionality.…
You can almost always make that claim about any sneaky use of a platform feature. The test that will be used to determine compliance is whether the intended, expected use of the feature complies, not with whether there are any compliant uses.
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
How could it be illegal? If you sold bread in a grocery store and the grocery store decided they preferred their own brand and didn't wanna sell yours anymore... would that be illegal?
It should be if there are 3 grocery stores in the country, and your bread can't be sold by other 2. This is a great case to be a precedent.
The great case of the application that abused a platform location feature --- one of the more privacy-sensitive features on the phone --- to do something privacy-invasive?
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Apple a “monopoly” with less than 20% of the smart phone market?
100% of that market. The apple app market is not the same as the android app market. They're not in competition with each other. Owners are captive.
That is like saying Hacker News has a monopoly because it is 100% of the Hacker News market.
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% of that market. The apple app market is not the same as the android app market. They're not in competition with each other. Owners are captive.
So does that make every console maker a “monopoly”?
Yes. It's only becomes an issue if they're using that to an anti-competitive end.
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#39It is of note in this case that "misuse" is perfectly arbitrary. The RescueTime app did use location, only locally on the device, to enrich the information provided to users. It also happened to capture screen time, obviously important to the app. Be clear here: Apple has not said this aspect is misuse. Screen time recording is blessed by Apple. There are at least three other apps active in the app store that do the same thing, and advertise themselves as screen time management tools. It cannot be argued that location is the primary reason the api is used for any of these, but it can be argued that it is an important aspect. Just like RescueTime claims.
Apple's issue here is there is no consistency for "misuse" where misuse is defined as location being secondary or primary to the API use. That is what their review board is claiming, and it so far used in a capricious and anti-competitive fashion.
Note: this is Mark from RescueTime.
Re: Apple has removed us from the App Store
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It "nationalizes" the monopoly app by creating a generic version of the same app. Out of curiosity: Is there a generic version of RescueTime? > The problem is, the generic app versions are exceptional in that they have much deeper access to the phone than a traditional independently built App Store app. This is what Microsoft allegedly did with Office. Sysinternals' Mark Russinovic documented that so called "Native…
Every single application built since the dawn of OOP has public documented methods and private methods....
In this case, the allegation is that the OS itself had private APIs which Office used, while other apps had less access to because they were not documented. (Let’s not forget, private API can still be discovered and called, especially on Windows 95 and NT).