AppGratis pulled from the App Store. Here’s the full story

I will save HN the time:

"I can't believe that it's 2013 and people are still basing their entire company around the App Store with it's murky rules"

"But there's a lot of money to be made there, it's worth it!"

"Apple needs to change their procedures"

They're all true. Basing a business around an app is both risky and potentially very profitable. Apple should change their practises but have little incentive to. So, for now, I can just express sympathy- this situation sucks.

A former colleague of mine had a series of "cheat" apps which included answers to popular games on the app store. He started to see his apps pulled on Sunday. It could be a coincidence, but he had upwards of a million active users and never had an issue before either. Maybe Apple decided it was time to crack down on some of the rules they hadn't been enforcing.

Not the way to do it, Apple.

But this is an amazing way to deal with the situation. He's frank, honest and comes off looking like he's got the situation under control. Marketing types should bookmark this for future reference - great way to address a situation.

This is a little confusing to me; if the issue is the push notification why don't they simple stop doing the push notification? Or is it already too late for that?

EDIT: The All Things D article sheds more light on what might really be going on here: http://allthingsd.com/20130408/confirmed-apple-kicks-appgrat...

I believe the issue has less to do with that than with capricious enforcement of rules, and little in the way of recourse for the victims of such.

If there were a formal review procedure with rules for when an app gets notified about scheduled future actions (and when those can be superseded when needed), as well as a procedure for fixing problems before negative actions (if there is it sure doesn't seem it's followed), then we would see less of these stories.