AppStore Reviews Should Be Stricter

That’s an awfully simple view of the world. And it’s just not feasible. Even games that are well done have these anti patterns. For example, my kids have been playing “Among us” a lot with their friends. On iOS at least, this is a free game that shows ads to continue. Not playing the game was not really a good option for them from a social perspective.

Thankfully, there is an in app purchase to remove the ads.

But this is to illustrate that even “good” apps still sometimes have these dark patterns.

On the Mac App Store, you can’t even initiate a search in a category; you must start with text. From there, you can select Filters; the only price options are “Any” or ”Free” (ridiculous), the only categories are extremely broad things like “Games” (yes, just that). So I want to be able to say things like “Search -> Games -> Puzzles”, with checkboxes like “No In-App Purchases”. That is a simple query but you’d go crazy trying to compose that list with the current Store.

Worse, existing groups do not represent apps faithfully. A store link that says “See All” really means “see a list of about 12 things that random Apple employees threw together using $UNKNOWN_CRITERIA, and we refuse to show you anything else on the store that certainly belongs in this category”. So I want a list to actually have the apps for sale in that category, not something from Apple’s “experts”.

As far as banishing apps...sometimes I just want to search more quickly but there are definitely apps that I think have no right to exist (like trivial apps with absurd subscription prices designed to scam people, or games with built-in massive in-app purchases that are repeatable).

Fundamentally, my opinion is that Apple (or any device manufacturer) should not be restricted what an end user can or cannot do with a device they own, and that includes restricting what software can be installed. I largely switched away from iOS (I still have an iPad for drawing and reading, but my phone is Android) because I philosophically resent this patronizing approach.

BUT I also think that most of the points in the linked article have merit, and frankly the App Store has become a dumpster of clone apps and scammy pay-to-win games.

To me the obvious solution from a technical point of view would be to allow side-loading and alternative app stores on iOS. If Apple's store were just one way among many to install software on iOS (but the only one enabled out of the box), Apple could and should be much more selective in what they allow in their store, without impacting choice for customers who go looking for it.

It would also be trivial to implement parental controls to block non-Apple sources on kids' phones/school devices/etc.

Of course, Apple would then have a much harder time to justify themselves rent-seeking from pay-to-win apps :troll: