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App store shenanigans

cdixon.org

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Re: App store shenanigans

#21

Post by hboon »

gyardley wrote: post #17

I've worked with a lot of applications that have bought installs, because that was how my last company, Flurry, made money. In my experience, an application that buys installs but lacks broad appeal falls off of the top lists as fast as it bought its way there. If it's up there long enough for Chris Dixon to notice, it's because there's a significant number of people who actually want the thing. Chris's line of criti…

Are you saying Apple is tracking how often and how long users are using iOS apps?

Re: App store shenanigans

#22

Post by rbarooah »

hboon wrote: post #21
gyardley wrote: post #17

I've worked with a lot of applications that have bought installs, because that was how my last company, Flurry, made money. In my experience, an application that buys installs but lacks broad appeal falls off of the top lists as fast as it bought its way there. If it's up there long enough for Chris Dixon to notice, it's because there's a significant number of people who actually want the thing. Chris's line of criti…

Are you saying Apple is tracking how often and how long users are using iOS apps?

Yes. People opt in to anonymous usage tracking when they turn on 'Genius for Apps'.

Re: App store shenanigans

#23

Post by gyardley »

hboon wrote: post #21
gyardley wrote: post #17

I've worked with a lot of applications that have bought installs, because that was how my last company, Flurry, made money. In my experience, an application that buys installs but lacks broad appeal falls off of the top lists as fast as it bought its way there. If it's up there long enough for Chris Dixon to notice, it's because there's a significant number of people who actually want the thing. Chris's line of criti…

Are you saying Apple is tracking how often and how long users are using iOS apps?

Well, they're at least recording this information and syncing it with your computer - and I can't see why they'd bother recording it if they weren't also beaming it off to the mothership.

You can see this for yourself if you sync your phone with your laptop. Go to your phone's backup folder. On this Mac, it's ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/[big random string here]

Once you're in that directory, grep for the file that contains the sqlite database by looking for a text string used only in it: 'grep appLaunchCount *' works. You'll get one result. Pop that baby open with a sqlite editor - I use MesaSQLite, myself, but it doesn't matter which.

In the database's Scalars table, you'll see three columns - key, daysSince1970, and value. For each day in the last couple of weeks, and for each app you've used, there will be the following keys:

-- appActivationCount.com.[app name here]

-- appActiveTime.com.[app name here]

-- appBackgroundActiveTime.com.[app name here]

-- appLaunchCount.com.[app name here]

The values are the number of times the app was launched & activated that day, and how long the app was active in seconds. Not 100% sure on the difference between appActiveTime and appBackgroundActiveTime - perhaps the latter involves the app actively doing something while in the background?

There's a bunch of other data in that file as well, but that's the stuff relating to frequency and length of app usage.

Re: App store shenanigans

#24

Post by gyardley »

rbarooah wrote: post #22
hboon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying Apple is tracking how often and how long users are using iOS apps?

Yes. People opt in to anonymous usage tracking when they turn on 'Genius for Apps'.

Whether you turn on Genius for Apps or not, the usage information's saved in your mobile backup. Perhaps in that case it's just not getting sent to Apple.

Re: App store shenanigans

#25

Post by cdixon »

d_r wrote: post #18

(Disclaimer: I'm an indie iOS/Android developer, so I may be more biased on this issue.) There are a number of apps of this type. "Real FBI GPS Phone Tracker Pro" (under various names) is another repeat offender. The description goes on to say that the application uses GPS satellites to pinpoint the location of any phone number, "It works, guaranteed!" and then as a last sentence mentions that it's a gimmick. This ap…

I think thee crappy apps are mostly a scam and hurt Apple and all of us devs. Sure, Flashlight is trivial but at least it works. Night Vision is a true lie and feels like adware/spyware is invading the IOS world.

Re: App store shenanigans

#26

Post by EtienneJohnred »

cdixon wrote: post #25
d_r wrote: post #18

(Disclaimer: I'm an indie iOS/Android developer, so I may be more biased on this issue.) There are a number of apps of this type. "Real FBI GPS Phone Tracker Pro" (under various names) is another repeat offender. The description goes on to say that the application uses GPS satellites to pinpoint the location of any phone number, "It works, guaranteed!" and then as a last sentence mentions that it's a gimmick. This ap…

I think thee crappy apps are mostly a scam and hurt Apple and all of us devs. Sure, Flashlight is trivial but at least it works. Night Vision is a true lie and feels like adware/spyware is invading the IOS world.

Apple knows about these apps and exploits (and various other exploits), yet they do little to get rid of them. Apps like these should be prohibited by the guidelines. Nobody needs hundreds of apps that serve absolutely no purpose at all besides attempt to scam people out of 99¢.

Apple doesn't do much about them because the issues aren't in the public eye and from the media's perspective, they're not very newsworthy so I doubt much will change along these lines. It's not like these are new issues by any stretch of the imagination.

So yeah, while this does hurt us devs to some extent, it has little negative effect on Apple, IMO.

Re: App store shenanigans

#27

Post by nikcub »

I thought the whole point of having a closed and reviewed platform is that you keep all this stuff out.

Hard to believe that these apps have been reviewed in anyway - the app store is starting to look like Facebook a few years ago

The only way to explain it is that Apple don't really care since they take their cut anyway.

Re: App store shenanigans

#28

Post by phil »

There's already a refund mechanism; it's just buried, inconvenient, and kinda hard to figure out.

I bet a lot of the crapps would go away if more users knew they could get a refund when they got scammed.

Re: App store shenanigans

#29

Post by mkjones »

TillE wrote: post #4
mryall wrote: post #2

A more difficult question is how you solve problems in a gigantic marketplace like the App Store. Better verification of sellers? Verification of review comments? Limiting cross-linking of apps? Tougher review process by Apple? All of these would engender more criticism against Apple for policing their "walled garden" but is there a better way to solve it?

I think a simple flagging mechanism ("this is crap, Steve wouldn't want it in the store, take another look") would suffice. A supposedly curated app store should be enforcing a certain level of quality. And if they're not doing it already, only publish reviews from accounts with a credit card.

Sadly it's pretty easy to get fake or stolen credit card numbers. Even barring that, it's pretty easy to phish normal users (who all have credit cards on their accounts, as a sibling post points out) and use them to vote without their knowledge.

As far as "this is crap, go build something better" - that's tough to say when developers show high (albeit juked via cross-promotion) download numbers, and is also difficult for developers to stomach without some kind of objective measure of what makes for a good app.

Re: App store shenanigans

#30

Post by cosmicray »

rbarooah wrote: post #22
hboon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying Apple is tracking how often and how long users are using iOS apps?

Yes. People opt in to anonymous usage tracking when they turn on 'Genius for Apps'.

with enough responses, apple is effectively crowd-sourcing usage patterns (the usual error rates apply). so, if one app is getting reviews that are way out of line with the crowd-sourced usage pattern (when compared to other similar app's patterns) that might trigger a "lets go look at this one" flag at apple.
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