201–210 of 335 posts
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Copying texts is potentially copyright infringement, though.
Depends. Threshold of originality can be a bitch.
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.
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…
Fortunately making an app that does the same thing as an existing app isn't copyright infringement - that would be far worse than the Amazon "one click" patent, as there would only be one company allowed to make a web browser, word processor, spreadsheet, etc.
That's not the implication here. They're using copyrighted promo to promote an entirely different product at an unabashedly predatory cost; they clearly can't even replicate functionality. This is just fraud endorsed and assisted by a multinational.
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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.
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Or perhaps the app worked entirely differently during review?
Apple takes extra steps for that not to happen, and even then in this case it should suspend the app
Even if Apple has reviewers download the approved app from the store to double check it hadn’t changed behavior, they can be gamed. Remember the Uber App Review geofencing that went on for years?
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And this is just an example of how hard it is to do well, when determined scammers even scam the review process. If this happens on iOS, what do you think happens on Google play?
At least I don't need to pay 99 USD a year for some "review" that clearly only works in favor of Apple (they mostly seems to approve anything from smaller developers like shown in this post, while using draconian and arbitrary rules for competitor apps like Spotify).
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Some people want to create great, useful apps. That's what they want to do. They are willing to give away half of their earnings to different 3rd parties to just not deal with the bullshit. It's unlikely to be their full time job. They probably don't make that much money on it, cloning happens just when the app begins to make any reasonable profit. So dealing with all your described is just not practical. Time is val…
> App stores can't spend too many hours on each app because there's tons of them, In this specific case it seems they didn't even spend one minute, since the app is not working. If at Apple they don't have the resource to at least try to open every app (I doubt it, they are swimming in cash), they could at least find a way to decide which apps to test first, like complaints from other developers, reviews telling that…
Whether it works or not probably won't get you fired as an app reviewer. But miss some IAP workaround that an app is using and I'd bet it could be your job.
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.
But yes, it was still more than enough. I lived on around 600€ side job + 200€ government stipend before I made my app.
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The scammers scammed App Review, it’s not hard to do or understand. What the reviewers saw isn’t what customers see.
If the binary users download isn't the binary you sign and send to app review, what's the point of signing or reviewing anything?
Apps can behave differently based on a flag set in the cloud, that’s only triggered after approval.
They can behave differently based on geofencing areas, such as Cupertino.
As to the point of whether review matters, can you imagine the dreck the store would be filled with without review?