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Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

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Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#171

Post by archi42 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #65
yarcob wrote: post #5

Oh my god, they don't even bother implementing the app any more... It reminds me of my first App Store experience. I made an app that was somewhat successful (about 2000€ a month, enough to pay for a students living expenses). Within short time, a chinese speaking developer cloned it. They copied the icon (slighlty different color), they copied the UI, they even copied all the text in the dialog boxes. They released…

>about 2000€ a month, enough to pay for a students living expenses Just out of pure curiosity, where did you live/study that 2000 Euros are student living expenses? In my neck of the woods in central-western Europe (Austria), 1000 Euros per month is already really good money for most students and 2000 is what you make as a junior full time employee in a good tech company.

Depends on the city and the student. E.g. Munich is known to be quite expensive. 2000 Euro would probably still be comfortable there, but 1000 Euro would probably require quite some frugality.

At my alma mater (SW Germany) you could live on 450 Euro with the same frugality. OTOH a friend (living in the same dorm!) burned through 2500 Euro a month, that's until his parents started to expect some progress after a few years.

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#172

Post by valuearb »

jansan wrote: post #163
valuearb wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get paid for nearly 60 days so if someone reports you all the work you did for your scamming is for naught.

I assume that the money earned neither goes back to the customer nor to the honest competitors. If I am correct here, Apple would even have a financial incentive that these frauds exist.

I guarantee Apple automatically refunds users when they ban a scam app.

Any iOS user can get a refund from the App Store, they just have to ask, and the process is pretty much automated.

Unfortunately few know this. I had a template email for unhappy customers that would walk them through it.

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#173

Post by shawnz »

valuearb wrote: post #142
ikurei wrote: post #96

An app that does nothing passed review? I hope this doesn't happen often, and that the processes are reviewed. May be reviewers have too much work to do and just click OK sometimes to move on? Also, I understand that the App store has a million apps, and they can't be super thorough with all of them. What I don't understand is how an app that is actually getting a lot of downloads and reviews, and that charges a huge…

The scammers scammed App Review, it’s not hard to do or understand. What the reviewers saw isn’t what customers see.

If the scammers are going to the effort to create apps that can actually pass review, why not just sell those apps unaltered?

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#174

Post by matheusmoreira »

yarcob wrote: post #5

Oh my god, they don't even bother implementing the app any more... It reminds me of my first App Store experience. I made an app that was somewhat successful (about 2000€ a month, enough to pay for a students living expenses). Within short time, a chinese speaking developer cloned it. They copied the icon (slighlty different color), they copied the UI, they even copied all the text in the dialog boxes. They released…

It's not illegal to create an app that does the same thing as another app. Method of operation is explicitly not protected by copyright. Copying your icons and text could very well be illegal.

Still, threatening legal action against the people they plagiarized? The audacity of this chinese...

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#175

Post by bookofjoe »

bluGill wrote: post #145
staticman2 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the infringing App is in a foreign country the scenario is much more complicated than you are suggesting.

It is, but the US and the EU legally recognize each other's copyrights. So he can sue the Chinese company in his country, and when they don't show up send Apple a notice to freeze assets related to the company, which just needs a US lawyer. In the end the lawyers win, but it is a straight forward case (assuming all the facts are as given...)

"I have never been ruined but twice in my life — once when I lost a lawsuit, and once when I won one."—Voltaire

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#176

Post by ncann »

shawnz wrote: post #173
valuearb wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scammers scammed App Review, it’s not hard to do or understand. What the reviewers saw isn’t what customers see.

If the scammers are going to the effort to create apps that can actually pass review, why not just sell those apps unaltered?

Because the scammed version is way more profitable? They can code up some buttons in a layout roughly resembling a keyboard that insert the character when clicked on in like 15 minutes which will probably pass review. The "keyboard" of course will be unusable for practical purpose.

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#177

Post by valuearb »

shawnz wrote: post #173
valuearb wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scammers scammed App Review, it’s not hard to do or understand. What the reviewers saw isn’t what customers see.

If the scammers are going to the effort to create apps that can actually pass review, why not just sell those apps unaltered?

It’s trivial to create an app to pass review and turns into a scam. Far harder to create an actually good and useful app.

On this example, it could have gone like this. They create a simple keypad on the watch, and some subscription screens. The app reviewer verified that there is a keypad on the watch, that the screens language and subscription process is reasonable and approves.

Then when the app appears on the store, now it works entirely differently and all the user sees are the scam screens.

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#178

Post by matheusmoreira »

panic wrote: post #135
xwdv wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then enforce your copyright. No one will do it for you.

YouTube automatically enforces copyright on behalf of the recording industry. Why shouldn’t Apple do it on behalf of their app developers?

> in no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery

Just because another app works similar to another app does not mean it's infringing.

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#179

Post by newscracker »

A scammy subscription of $400+ a year?! And this gets to the top of the charts because Apple makes more money from it!

These are the instances where the 30% commission (or even the recently announced 15% commission for those earning less than $1M in revenue a year) seems like extortion. Apple really needs to step up on app reviews in terms of false positives (banning legitimate apps for frivolous reasons and reinstating them after social media uproar) and false negatives (allowing scam apps and clones to thrive while hurting the original apps).

Hopefully the threats of regulation can’t manifest soon enough for this to get better for the developers and the users. On one side of the equation you have the developers and users for whom the App Store ecosystem is getting toxic. On the other side of the equation you have two parties making a lot of money for low effort — the crooks and Apple. This is not a good look, Tim Apple and Apple.

(I don’t even want to get into how much worse the Play Store is since it’s a digression from the topic)

Re: Apple watch keyboard developer put off by app store scammers

#180

Post by maeln »

This is a problem that poison every platform these days. Apple Store and Play Store are full of borderline or outright scam apps. Google and Facebook keep pushing literal scam or porn-baiting advertisement[0]. Every search engine is poisoned by those shitty top-X, article spamming, fake news website making searching for an answer to some question a real chore. Amazon is full of fake product and scam. Even Steam is now spammed with shitty game that are sometimes not even playable ...

The current states of the "mainstream" internet just make it way to easy to make money making the cheapest content possible or scam. And the company / individual running those are usually in country that keep them safe from any legal repercussion so they can keep doing it over and over again. While not everything is easily fixable, a lot would be better if Google, Apple, Amazon and co would finally step in and enforce their "quality control", make every app, ads, etc, go through and actual human verification process, but that would hurt there margin and it looks like they have no incentive in doing that. They usually have a monopoly or at least a duopoly, so why would they care about the cesspool that their services have become ? Its not like another company can compete with them.

Want to have a real quality app store ? Its not possible on Apple devices and Google make it as hard as possible. Want to compete with Youtube or Twitch ? Be ready to throw a lot of money to attract customer and creator and still fail (hello Mixer) or become a cesspool either way (hello DailyMotion, rutube, ...).

Sure you can try DMCA take down, copyright infringement lawsuit, ... But it will cost you a lot of time and money, which could have been put in your product, and it will be ultimately useless. By the time the request is processed or the lawsuit takes places, they will have already created 10 more clone, push 100 more scam, and other fun stuff.

[0] Google literally allowed a ad for a "one night stand" app that use a underage girl in ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/l9y8rz/ya_til_que_m...

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