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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

#81

Post by comboy »

coldtea wrote: post #73
comboy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Well, suc…

Very much indeed. But this reality is created by ecosystem of our society. If you suppress highly creative individuals who don't want to deal with BS, it's gonna suck for you too. We live in a highly connected world. Changes take years, but even from purely egoistic point of view, to say that suffering of a group of people does not affect you is plain wrong if you think about it long enough.

What do you care about people in North Korea? If the country was doing well, maybe they would have the biggest semiconductor fab. Or maybe you would be using some great open source that came from there.

I agree that there is no point shouting at the clouds when there is no action that you can take to fix the problem. But in some cases you can take some action, even if it's as little as discussing the issue here which makes it slightly louder which could fix the problem, or deciding that you don't want to use Apple because of it etc.

Personally I keep thinking about decentralized web of trust which could make app stores deprecated or at least create a market of app stores. http://comboy.pl/wot.html - I'm working on a better version and a github repo.

And yes, impact of your actions, unless they are really great, is likely very small, so you can just be completely egoistic and world won't be much different. But this works on all scales. If you are not trying to make people around you happy then you live surrounded by unhappy people. So I guess what I'm suggesting, is that this approach will not make you happy, and I'd like you to be. And while internet stranger words have low value for you, it's an input that may affect later output.

You may not necessarily be optimizing for happiness, but if your utility function is not aligning with the most popular one in this case (people seem to want great work to be well rewarded), it would be nice to give us a glimpse of it, to put your statement in a context which makes sense.

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

#82

Post by solarengineer »

coldtea wrote: post #72
gman83 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally against the terms of service, so they could remove it for that reason: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#cop...

And how would they know it's one or the other party that violated the terms? "Because our app was posted first" is not enough.

“Because our app was posted first” is actually what I thought of. Could you explain why this isn’t enough?

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

#83

Post by perryizgr8 »

arp242 wrote: post #59
perryizgr8 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If an app scams users, is Apple going to be liable for that?

If they don't take reasonable action on complaints, then yes, of course. Why do you think YouTube etc. are so trigger-happy with DMCA complaints? Exactly to avoid these kind of liability issues.

DMCA is a special case for copyright infringement. I don't think such obligations are there for most other scammy activities.

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

#84

Post by shinycode »

mrighele wrote: post #54
comboy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When I first published my app, they asked for a video of video fully working. Then once I had a bug and they sent me a video of it with the steps to the bug. So there are definitely people opening and testing apps

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

#85

Post by andix »

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.

Vienna for example. Although it is possible to survive with around 700-900€ per month, eat, live and study.

But if you also want to go out, go to restaurants/bars regularly and live in a nice place (not a shared dorm room), 1500-2000€ are way better.

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

#87

Post by grishka »

1_player wrote: post #8

I never understood the App Store rating figures. Here's the scam app: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/keywatch-watch-keyboard/id1499... Apparently the paid for 5 stars comments have been deleted, all that's left are comments in the 1 star range but the app is still rated 4.1/5. It's not the first time I see this discrepancy and makes it very hard for a user to understand who to believe: the 1 star comments or the very…

The "more by this developer" app list is also telling. A bunch of utilities, with all of them having in-app purchases, most having weekly subscriptions too. I don't understand how any of these apps passed the review.

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/keywatch-watch-keyboard/id1499...

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

#88

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

coldtea wrote: post #72
gman83 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally against the terms of service, so they could remove it for that reason: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#cop...

And how would they know it's one or the other party that violated the terms? "Because our app was posted first" is not enough.

One of the reasons I like to open-source my work (even in “source-available” form), is so that there is clear “prior art.”

However, I have yet to write an app that has been highly successful, so being copied has not been a problem for me.

Seeing the behavior of these scammers, I have no doubt that they would gleefully take my source, tweak the storyboard, and release a clone. They don’t seem to have any sense of shame, at all. Some of these shops have stables of hundreds of apps; each, a minor tweak of other apps in their roster.

It is annoying that Apple gives me a hard time for some small cosmetic detail on my app, while rubberstamping these tsunamis of pure, shameless garbage.

I do get annoyed by “looks like” scams. A couple of years ago, my wife accidentally purchased a “looks like” app that was basically a screengrab of another app (and was approved on the App Store!).

She was able to get the subscription (!) canceled, but it was a pain. Apple also left the junk app on the store.

She was also so unnerved by the situation, that she never got the original app, so it shows that these spam/scam apps can cause a lot of collateral damage.

Getting a refund did not fix the problem.

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

#89

Post by whywhywhywhy »

coldtea wrote: post #77
lm28469 wrote: post #66

Remember that you pay a 30% fee because they need the money to maintain their infra and to offer a good platform for users to find your app(s). /s

Yes, so? It's still a 100 billion market they've built, for devices, OSes, and SDKs they build. And it still has better paying customers than the Play store, and 1/50+ less malware (according to stats), so more customer trust. Is it perfect? No.

>OSes, and SDKs they build

They build the OS and SDK on Mac too, why do they not get a % cut on all apps there too?

Actually when you're in Safari you're using their OS and SDK too why don't they get a % cut of purchases and software there too?

Just interested why one scenario is considered the norm yet these two others that fall under the same justification seem absurd.

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

#90

Post by Ma8ee »

saagarjha wrote: post #52
foepys wrote: post #6

I think it's time for freelance developers to behave like companies. Write big tech support once, wait a week and if the issue isn't solved, contact a lawyer and let them handle it. Otherwise you will be eternally bouncing around customer support departments until you write a tweet in the hope of getting noticed by somebody afraid of a PR disaster.

What freelance developer has the time and mental energy to deal with a lawyer every time they have to contact support?

Maybe the question should be “what freelance developer has the time and energy to try to do the job of a lawyer” whenever they have some legal issues to resolve.
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