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A top-grossing scam on the App Store

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Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#31

Apple and Google are poor stewards of the mobile app distribution market. It's time that their 13+ year stranglehold on app distribution is disrupted.

You know, I was thinking last night about the parallels between this and the anti-trust investigation into Microsoft back in the 90s. Back then Microsoft was in a heap of trouble over the fact that they bundled IE and didn't allow vendors to bundle other alternative browsers. Users could still install other browsers, but the fact that the OS came bundled with IE was seen as an abuse of Microsoft's market position. Ye…

Microsoft wasn’t selling the computer.

Anyone is free to buy an iPhone, install apps on it, and resell it.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#32
post #5

So it's not just a scam, it's a scam pretending to be a medical app? The walled garden method has been proven a failure and needs to go urgently.

It's never been about quality. It's about control.

Let me just give you a hint: you don't even get the faintest chance to have one-millionth of Apple's level of potential "control" without creating many many years of quality, first. I'm surprised you don't see that.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#33
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it yourself: > an abuse of Microsoft's market position Apple has no such market position to abuse. It's perfectly legal to put restrictions on your product. It's perfectly legal to be a monopoly. It's only a problem when you abuse your monopoly position to restrict competitors.

I wonder if just business size can be used here rather than monopoly position. If your business is above a certain size, then more restrictions apply to what you can do. The reasoning is that the bigger you are the more people you impact, regardless of your market position and poor behaviors of smaller players to compete with larger players is also an issue. The current economic model of monopolies is very limited in…

I think size may also be construed as "infrastructure." For example, Facebook now has a couple of billion users. It has reached the point where we often have to get Facebook accounts/pages, if we want to reach certain users. In short, Facebook has become necessary to "survive," in a sense.

That sort of puts it into the realm of a utility; like power or water.

The idea of a utility, is that it is deliberately allowed to become a monopoly, sometimes, with state enforcement. The flip side, is that it is now required to provide a lot of services.

For example, if some old folks can't pay their electric, in winter, the utility might be required to supply them with electricity anyway, and eat the cost, or claim it as a tax deduction.

That's the downside. The upside is...MONOPOLY, BABY! WOO-HOO! PAAAARTAAAY!

So there's a big carrot, as well as stick. People who own utilities tend to get pretty damn rich.

This all kinda breaks down, if the utility is already a monopoly, so the state assigning them monopoly status means nothing. No carrot; only stick. It also breaks down, if the utility manages to corrupt the regulators, thus eliminating the stick.

Facebook is already a monopoly. It doesn't need the state to give it anything; certainly not with a stick, attached. Thus, the "Standard Oil" remedy.

Apple isn't quite like Facebook, but it's getting there. The problem is that a lot of what gives its products value, is that iron-fisted control Apple has over their configuration. If that control is diluted, then it would also reduce the value of Apple products.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#34
post #5

So it's not just a scam, it's a scam pretending to be a medical app? The walled garden method has been proven a failure and needs to go urgently.

It's been proven a rousing success, actually, and needs to stay, urgently.

It's literally the most rousing success of any product in the history of civilization. You might want to re-calibrate your sensors a bit about what is successful.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#35
post #5

So it's not just a scam, it's a scam pretending to be a medical app? The walled garden method has been proven a failure and needs to go urgently.

I often wonder what it would be like if the iPhone followed Steve Jobs original announcement and stated vision. There was no mention of an app store, at all. Apps were to be, basically, PWA's using html and javascript with api's to hardware. They called it "web 2.0 + ajax" and claimed if you knew how to write apps using the "latest web standards," you could write apps just as good as apples native apps. If you wanted to update your app, you just update your server hosting the app.

Here's the specific portion of the original Jobs iPhone announcement that I'm referring to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvQ9JNm_qWc

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#36
Patrick McGee from Financial Times had a whole twitter thread [1] on it. It got everything from banning apps for competitive reason to Apple's FEAR ( Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk ) team saying the current App Store review process is inadequate.

I am starting to think there is a much deeper problem with Apple, it is that without Steve Jobs, no one is being the yard stick of quality, especially in UX.

A decade of App Store, you are wondering if they have actually put any effort in its Apps Search Engine. It took them 3 years to admit they have problem with Keyboard and offering an update after 5 years. For things that are easily quantify, like Sales, Hardware Performance ( Apple Silicon ), Logistics and Operation. They are absolutely excelling under Tim Cook. For everything else it seems they are loose, at least from an Apple Standard point of view, although that is still far higher than their competitors.

To quote Steve, it seems people are too focused on the process, and forgot about the content.

[1] https://twitter.com/PatrickMcGee_/status/1380194940236353536

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#37
post #34
post #5

So it's not just a scam, it's a scam pretending to be a medical app? The walled garden method has been proven a failure and needs to go urgently.

It's been proven a rousing success, actually, and needs to stay, urgently. It's literally the most rousing success of any product in the history of civilization. You might want to re-calibrate your sensors a bit about what is successful.

Yes, it's been successful at creating the illusion that as long as I'm in Apple's garden all is well. Meanwhile extremely profitable scams (for both Apple and the scammer) remain in the store.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#38
post #6
post #2

There has to be another step here that we're missing - such as malware that buys apps for you or subscribes to apps without your knowledge, or uses the App Store to launder money. I can't see a scam app being a top grosser without something like that.

Users don't read and just click on things.

I can see you are being downvoted but this is literally how this works. People install things and click rapidly thru the startup screens. These apps generally get legal consent from everyone who is billed, they just either didn't read it or forgot to cancel.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#39
Remember, the App Store offers you the most secure, curated, and safe experience you can ever have with your Apple devices.

Each app submitted to the App Store undergoes a thorough review process. Each app update is checked and approved by an Apple employee. It's not like some automated process which you can game left and right. Each app on the App Store is guaranteed, thanks to the strict review process, to adhere to a minimum standard of quality which is higher than competing app markets are offering.

You can trust Apple's judgement on the content that is published on the App Store.

Re: A top-grossing scam on the App Store

#40
post #28

I'm just going to say one simple thing: very few people are qualified to assess what Apple actually "seems to care" about. And this poster definitely isn't one of those people. As for the invented-from-whole-cloth link title: please don't do that.

Yeah, but if it came to Google, Facebook, or Amazon, you'd be all over them with a pitchfork.

Users of HN really have some rose coloured blinders on when it comes to Apple.

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