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Apple has locked me out of my developer account

rambo.codes

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Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#431

Post by bogwog »

supernova87a wrote: post #411
bogwog wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are perfectly free to develop apps and sell them elsewhere. Yeah, you just lose access to a giant chunk of the market and severely limit your growth potential. The entire industry with its millions of jobs and immeasurable value to society is two stores owned by two companies. That needs to be regulated.

Well, your conclusion that "this needs to be regulated" is highly debatable as a matter of public policy. Clearly I disagree. "Inhibited growth potential", especially in the pursuit of developing apps for iPhone, certainly doesn't fall on the side of being a fundamental right that people are being deprived of. I personally exercise a bit more restraint in saying that things call for government intervention.

> doesn't fall on the side of being a fundamental right that people are being deprived of

What does that have to do with this? Anti-trust laws are to protect competitive forces in the market, not human rights.

Allowing these companies to have limitless control over millions of jobs with no regulation whatsoever gives us the crappy situation we have today. Someone could have their developer account terminated by accident/laziness, and then that person's entire livelihood is destroyed and they're left with no recourse because Apple/Google can't be bothered to even answer the phone. The Play store is an endless sea of malware, adware, and spyware, and any attempt at making a competitive marketplace is hopeless and instantly attacked by Google (remember Fortnite installer fiasco?). There's so much anti-competitive and clearly harmful (for developers and consumers) bullshit going on in these two stores every day that it's ridiculous that there still is not any strong regulatory action against them.

> I personally exercise a bit more restraint in saying that things call for government intervention.

Good for you. I heard that a lot in college. People who just took an economics class for the first time felt compelled to "pick a side", and everyone always picked that same side as you (me too). Yet that decision is made so so far detached from any real life problems or data that it's effectively arbitrary. If you feel that this characterization doesn't apply to you, then please contribute to the discussion with some actual substantive arguments and not hand-wavy virtue signaling.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#432

Post by yepthatsreality »

yepthatsreality wrote: post #189
cmcd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X and iOS development both require Apple hardware anyways, so shouldn't you have that as a developer?

Unless you hackintosh...

Not sure why I'm being down-voted for the parent comment, but this is an obvious way to get around a lot of software limitations.

I didn't state this was a valid/legal/good path or trying to defend anyone whom does use a hackintosh. The truth is that there are people who can't afford Apple products to develop and they will abuse this loop hole until they can.

This comment wasn't rude or aggressive, but I was merely proposing an alternative solution. The down-votes are more aggressive than the comment could have even been misconstrued.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#433

Post by PhasmaFelis »

fjabre wrote: post #372
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see. So Apple watches, iPads, and iPhones & other devices owning at least half the US market They don't. Not in the US, not in phones[1] or watches[2]. They may have the majority market share in US tablets. > isn't a monopoly whatsoever? No, not even if that was true. Monopoly doesn't mean "any company I don't like." You're acting like "Apple isn't a monopoly" means "there's no problems with Apple at all." Monopo…

Legal definitions change all the time and laws are updated. Monopoly means whatever the decision of the high court says it means and that is squared with the legislative. There are no hard and fast rules in litigation or civil law.

> Monopoly means whatever the decision of the high court says it means and that is squared with the legislative.

Monopoly has a very specific definition in US law, in fact. https://definitions.uslegal.com/m/monopoly/ The legislature might conceivably change that definition in the future, but that's not relevant to the law as it stands today, which is what we're talking about. Microsoft came much closer to that definition a few decades ago than Apple does now, and they still managed to avoid serious consequences.

> There are no hard and fast rules in litigation or civil law.

There are quite a lot of hard and fast rules to be found in every area of the law. It's kind of a fundamental property of the law.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#434

Post by eitland »

pdonis wrote: post #370
eitland wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started as a huge Google fan. I am not anymore. To be honest though they might have put in the biggest effort themselves when it comes to making sure everyone dislike them.

I'm not a fan of Apple or Google. But I also don't see any reason to think that Apple or Google cares whether I'm a fan or not.

They (Google) probably probably care about if people leave their ecosystem, and even more if we go around encouraging other users to leave and investigators to investigate.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#435

Post by briandear »

rgovostes wrote: post #39

> I’m just an indie developer trying to make good products. Apple should separate Rambo's software development from his reporting rather than retaliate against him, if that is indeed what is happening, but it is a little disingenuous for him to make the above claim. Rambo reverse engineers Apple products and publishes findings on 9to5Mac.com, in particular future product references that have slipped prematurely into…

So he clearly and unambiguously violates the NDA and he wonders why he is in trouble? The NDA is pretty specific. How he thinks he can write an article about a product he has access to because he is in the developer program is beyond me.

Want to be in the Apple Dev program? Don’t violate NDAs by publishing what they expressway say you can’t publish.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#436

Post by wildmusings »

cmcd wrote: post #151
atonse wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said it better than I could've – there are some pretty obvious reasons why Rambo's account could've been suspended, the clear violation of NDAs being the main one, with him publishing information about unreleased products. I'm honestly kind of surprised they let him keep his Developer account all this time. My bigger issue here is the complete lack of transparency or visibility into the process. It's this kind of stu…

with regards to the App Store being the only way to get apps on iOS The App Store is the only Apple supported way to release apps, there are unsupported third party app stores as well. Lack of transparency is not good, but I'm not sure what the issue is with there being only one officially supported way to download apps. It is Apple's product and software, they are selling the "Apple Experience" as much as the hardwa…

That’s just not true. Apple actively works to prevent jailbreaks and there are often multi-year periods where no publicly released jailbreak exists for particular phones. When one does appear, Apple patches it as quickly as possible—for good reason I should add because jailbreaks work by exploiting security vulnerabilities.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#437

Post by [deleted] »

Razengan wrote: post #357
garyb2 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. My experience with Apple is that they do what they want and getting anything out of them occurs on their timeline. If you don't like it, get stuffed, they won't budge.

There was a past story right here on HN where a suspended developer riled up a mob, only to have it turn out that he wasn't being fully honest. I'm trying to find those posts.

[deleted]

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#438

Post by Reelin »

pdonis wrote: post #427
Reelin wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say they knowingly chose to take a risk, but I'm arguing that in many cases they won't have had a choice. At present, there is functionality that you simply cannot provide without a native app. If your competitor chooses to provide that functionality and you don't, your business will no longer be viable. In many cases, a business simply cannot choose to ignore a significant percentage of their potential user base…

> in many cases they won't have had a choice In the sense that they either do what Apple says they can, or they don't get to play in Apple's sandbox, yes, of course. That's because Apple owns the sandbox and therefore gets to make the rules for everyone that plays in it. And everybody who wants to build Apple apps knows that going in. > there is functionality that you simply cannot provide without a native app. If yo…

> your argument is "Apple should allow other businesses to use their infrastructure, which they have spent many years and many billions of dollars building, however those other businesses want"

No. My argument is that companies which choose to place themselves as sole gatekeepers of their devices, and which also have such significant market share, should be subject to some minimal regulation that includes neutrality, oversight, and transparency requirements (at minimum).

> no business in the history of the world has done that with something they own

This claim is factually incorrect. Rail companies (in the US and Europe), telecoms, electric, gas, and other utilities all immediately come to mind. In most of the western world (but notably not the US), ISPs are subject to open access laws; these have been very successful.

> that's because the banks are also large businesses and Apple can't just ignore them. It's not because Apple is under any requirement to be nice.

I understand there is not currently any legal requirement; I'm arguing that we need one.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#439

Post by jachee »

bogwog wrote: post #401
saganus wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that there are other app stores in other platforms, so monopoly rules don't apply. Their app store is their monopoly, sure, but if you don't want to use Apple products you are not barred from using other cellphones and app stores. This is different than, e.g. saying that there is a monopoly with the electricity provider. If you don't want to use company A for that, you have absolutely no access t…

> as per the current definition, it's not a monopoly. That's why I said they should be regulated...because they currently aren't. When anti-trust laws were being written, software walled gardens weren't a thing. They should be updated for modern times, since the App Store is basically its own industry. It brings in tens of billions of dollars in revenue every year, which is more than the GDP of some countries.

And Apple built it from the ground up. It's their hardware. They control what runs on it.

iOS isn't great software (ok, "good software" for 13) in a vacuum. It's inherently, inextricably tied in with Apple's world-class hardware; and vice versa as well. To allow unfettered access to both is a risk to users, whose trust in Apple has been built up over more than a decade.

It's not a monopoly. It's an experience.

Re: Apple has locked me out of my developer account

#440

Post by jachee »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #321
kemayo wrote: post #202

Lots of people saying that Apple doesn't owe him any explanation, and that telling people why they're banned is just going to prompt "yes, but..." arguments in response. I've dealt with humans, so I'm sympathetic to that... and I've also been caught up by false-positives, so I can see how it can go horribly wrong. I feel that what's being missed here is that Apple, per Rambo, explicitly said they'd get back in touch…

Your last sentence, in parentheses (yay, Lisp!), is what I was thinking. The person seems to be flagrantly defaming Apple, in tantrum fashion, because the person violated Apple rules and got scolded?

That's the thing... he doesn't know why he's locked out. They haven't "scolded" him or told him that he violated Apple rules. They simply locked him out and are giving him the silent treatment.
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